Old World Murder - Kathleen Ernst [3]
Chloe checked her watch. Time to head out, anyway.
Once she retrieved her green Pinto from the main parking lot, she drove down the site’s twisting entrance road. The village of Eagle lay to the left, but Chloe turned right onto Highway 67. She passed the 1940s-era house that inconveniently held Old World Wisconsin’s administrative offices. Another right turn onto County Highway S took her past a tree-lined prairie that marked, if she remembered correctly, the edge of the museum’s German area. The huge historic site warranted several access gates for staff use.
A mile or so later she slowed and turned right again onto a gravel drive with a fading sign that proclaimed “Restoration Area.” In front of her was a long, low building that housed the maintenance staff. A pole barn held a few large artifacts and two of the big trams used to haul visitors around the site.
Two ancient trailers squatted off to the left, almost hidden in a grove of pines. The words “Celebrate The Bicentennial! Visit the History Mobile!” were barely legible in peeling paint on one. The other, an ugly pinkish-gray rectangle on cinder blocks, gave no hint of its lineage. Both trailers had been pressed into temporary service for collections storage, and were crammed with shelves of artifacts.
Chloe climbed rickety steps to the pink monstrosity. The tiny kitchen area had evidently provided desultory office space to a curator who, in a whirlwind of energy, had furnished the exhibit buildings before Old World’s grand opening six years earlier, in 1976. The burned-out curator had soon after joined the Peace Corps and moved to New Guinea. State-imposed budget cuts had left Old World Wisconsin without someone to oversee its collections ever since.
The office held a miniscule table and two chairs. It was cramped and dusty, and smelled of mice. Chloe had been aghast that morning when the museum’s receptionist had handed her a note with the meeting arrangements on it. “You told a potential donor to meet me at the trailer?”
The receptionist—what was her name?—had shrugged. “Look, once this lady heard you’d actually been hired she called half a dozen times, wanting to know when your first day was. She was determined to come out today.”
Chloe turned on the ancient faucet. After several moments of agonized burbles and clanks, a dribble of rust-colored water reluctantly emerged. She used the tap water and a few paper towels to wipe down the yellow Formica table and two wooden folding chairs. She jumped when a phone rang. She hadn’t known she had a phone in here. By the fifth ring she’d located the ancient rotary-dialed monster—an artifact in its own right—behind a stack of black notebooks.
“Chloe? Listen, are you expecting a Mrs. Lundquist? She ended up over here at Ed House by mistake.”
Chloe mentally fast-forwarded through a filmstrip of her morning. Ed House … yes, she remembered. Education House. Another of the empty homes left behind when the state bought out the few properties that infringed on the projected Old World Wisconsin site, now used by research and interpretation staff. If she wasn’t mistaken, this male voice belonged to the curator of interpretation.
“Right,” she said. “I’m waiting here at the trailer.”
“I’ll send her along.”
“Thanks …”—she went for broke—“… Brian.”
Small silence. “It’s Byron.”
“Byron. Right. Sorry.”
“I’ll send Mrs. Lundquist over.”
“Thanks,” Chloe began, but a dial tone already rang in her ear. Evidently Byron was a tad touchy about his name.
Day One. She’d annoyed a security guard and irritated the curator of interpretation.
A few minutes later car tires crunched slowly over gravel, and Chloe went outside. The big Buick dwarfed the elderly woman who emerged. She wore Easter Sunday-best—a pale yellow linen dress, white pumps, matching handbag. Chloe winced, picturing what the trailer’s dust would do to that outfit.
“Mrs. Lundquist?” she asked. “I’m Chloe Ellefson. I’m so