Old World Murder - Kathleen Ernst [51]
“Hunh.”
On the radio, Olivia Newton John was begging someone to get physical. Skeet pulled a polo shirt over his head. “Say, do you know if that uniform allowance got approved?”
“It did,” Marie said over her shoulder. She didn’t stop typing. “It’ll show up two checks from now.”
Roelke reminded himself that there was no such thing as a private conversation when Marie was in the building.
“See you tomorrow,” Skeet said, slamming his locker. “I’ve got class.”
Skeet was taking criminal justice classes at Waukesha Tech, one at a time, somehow squeezing them in between work and family life. He’d probably get the full-time spot, sloppy reports or not, Roelke thought sourly. He folded his map away. Time to head out.
“Roelke.” Marie actually stopped, swiveled in her chair. “You got a problem with that house at the end of Marigold?”
“Not really,” Roelke said carefully. “Why?”
“Because my mother lives on Marigold. When I was giving her a perm the other day, she was complaining about all the traffic in and out of that house. She said it had suddenly gotten bad in the past couple of weeks.”
“Yeah?” This was getting more interesting.
“Yeah. A lot of kids, mom said.” Marie snorted. “Teens, she meant. There’s mostly older folks on that street, so it stands out.”
“Any pattern? Particular days, or times of day, that she sees people coming and going?”
Marie shrugged. “I didn’t ask. Just told her to call it in if she saw anybody breaking any law. Last I knew, it wasn’t illegal to have a lot of company. Mom’s bored, and she always has to have something to fuss about. I don’t pay much attention. You and Skeet just reminded me, that’s all.” She swiveled her chair back to the typewriter. Conversation over.
That was OK. Marie had given Roelke something new to mull over as he headed out on patrol.
“So, what’s the problem here?” Nika asked, as she and Chloe approached the Tobler house.
“The wallpaper is already peeling away from the plaster. And the village lead wants some interpretive context for the artifacts in here.” Chloe took a long slow breath, and unlocked the door.
The remembered sensations slapped Chloe as soon as she stepped inside. A corporeal sense of unhappiness quivered in the small room.
Nika crouched by one of the wallpaper seams, fingering a puckering edge. “I ran into this problem in grad school. Do you use modern paste, knowing it will be more durable? Or period formulas?”
Chloe’s skin began to prickle. She sensed frustration.
“My professor said …”
Enough. Chloe pivoted and stepped back into the sunshine.
Geez Louise. This was going to be a problem.
Chloe couldn’t remember the first time she’d felt a presence in an old building. Her memories of family vacations were a blur of long car rides and visits to historic sites. Sometimes these creaking places gave her distinct impressions of emotions: contentment, sadness, loneliness. “This is a happy house, Mommy,” she remembered whispering loudly in the middle of a guided tour. Her parents had smiled, the guide had been charmed, and Chloe hadn’t realized that she was being indulged, not affirmed. It was only on another trip, when she’d burst into tears at the front door of a homesteader’s cabin, that she’d learned that everyone else didn’t react to old buildings the way she sometimes did. “Don’t go in!” she’d sobbed. “It’s a bad house!” Her father had eventually carried her to the gift shop while her mother and older sister Kari took the tour.
Eventually Chloe got used to tuning the sensations out—just as she tuned out background chatter when reading or studying in a crowded coffee shop. She also learned not to speak of her impressions. By the time she’d decided to enter museum work, it took an unexpected whammy to rattle her.
The Tobler house rattled her.
Nika followed her outside, looking cool, collected, and distinctly unrattled. “Hey, you OK?”
“Just a little tired. I was listening, though.”
Nika looked dubious, but she shrugged. “Well, as I was saying, I