Old World Murder - Kathleen Ernst [64]
He chuckled. “That’s all right. I don’t go to bed until after Johnny Carson. I don’t like that new guy, that David Letterman. I don’t think he’ll last. And I never turn the darned tube on during the day. But Johnny’s always good. He’s got Bob Newhart on tonight.”
Chloe glanced at her watch, making sure she wasn’t encroaching on Johnny’s monologue. “I was wondering if I could visit you this weekend. I’m still trying to learn more about your friend’s missing heirloom, and I hoped you might take me back into her house.” She waited, hoping Mr. Solberg didn’t ask what she thought she’d find that she hadn’t found the first time.
“Well, let’s see,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ve got a boy coming ’round to take out the storm windows tomorrow, and there’s a Carol Burnett reunion show on tomorrow night. I’ll be ready for bed after that. Then service on Sunday morning. So Sunday afternoon would be best.”
Chloe wondered if the storm window operation would take all day, or if the lonely old man simply wanted to spread out his company. “Sunday it is,” she told him. “Thank you.”
____
By mid-afternoon on Saturday, Chloe was walking in circles inside her farmhouse. She’d gone to a Laundromat in Elkhorn, and picked up crackers, peanut butter, coffee, and a few other non-perishables at the grocery store. What she wanted to do was head back to Old World to continue her search for Berget’s ale bowl. “But I don’t know where to look!” she muttered.
OK, she needed a new strategy. And she needed to get out of the house.
She stuffed a towel and notebook into a canvas bag and drove to Palmyra’s public beach. Since Libby had mentioned that her kids would be with their dad this weekend, there was little chance of running into anyone she knew. Libby did not strike Chloe as a lay-in-the-sun kind of person.
The beach at Lower Spring Lake was small, with a picnic pavilion sporting a Lions International sign, a couple of grills, and a small playground. A studly young man with zinc oxide on his nose reigned supreme from his lifeguard chair. Toddlers played in the sand with brightly colored buckets and pails.
Chloe staked her claim to a quiet spot well off to one side, settled down, and pulled out her notebook. If she didn’t know how to find the ale bowl, perhaps she could figure out why someone else was trying so hard. Something made this bowl particularly desirable. What?
She wrote POSSIBLE REASONS across the top of a fresh page, then began collecting her thoughts:
1. Bowl came from a particular region of Norway.
2. Bowl was made in Wisconsin, not Norway—rare.
3. Bowl was made by a well-known artist.
What else? Chloe tried to think. What had she told all of her trainees about valuing artifacts? Artifacts are most important because of what they reveal about the people who made, owned, or used them.
4. Bowl was owned by a famous person.
Chloe nibbled her lower lip as she looked over her list. She hadn’t written the obvious because it made no sense. But nothing about Berget Lundquist’s quest made sense, so Chloe scribbled one more item:
5. Bowl was a treasured family heirloom that some unknown descendant wants back.
Mr. Solberg believed that all of Mrs. Lundquist’s relatives were dead, but what if he was wrong? Chloe stared over the water, where teen-aged boys dove from a wooden platform anchored well off shore, and teen-aged girls in barely there bikinis bobbed on inflatable rafts, pretending to be unaware of the boys. And suddenly Chloe thought of something new.
Mrs. Lundquist’s son had been killed in Vietnam. Could he have had a child before leaving for Vietnam, or while there? If so, perhaps Mrs. Lundquist hadn’t known about it. Maybe she discovered late in life that she was indeed a grandmother, and desperately regretted giving away her family heirloom.
It was also possible that some other distant relative—a long-lost cousin?—might have surfaced. And that, Chloe thought, is what I will try to discover when I go back to Mrs. Lundquist’s house tomorrow. The photograph albums, buried correspondence,