Old World Murder - Kathleen Ernst [87]
Roelke had control of his temper; he absolutely would—not—grab Chloe’s thin shoulders and shake her. But he really, really wanted to.
“Would you use your brain, then?” he snapped instead. “The person who murdered Bill Solberg may very well be the person who came here tonight, in the dark, and—”
“But he didn’t hurt me. I think he just wanted to scare me.”
I will find him, Roelke thought. I will find him and put him behind bars.
“I was in the living room when it happened,” Chloe was saying. “It could have been much worse. I won’t say it didn’t freak me out.” She shuddered. “But I’m OK.”
“What you say may be right. But I’m still angry.”
“Well, I’m angry too! I’m angry at whoever killed poor Mr. Solberg and probably threatened poor Mrs. Lundquist until she had a heart attack. And if you’re done yelling at me, I would like to tell you some things I discovered today.” She looked at her wrist; no watch. “Well, no, that’s stupid, it’s very late, and—”
“Would you stop trying to be so damn rational?” Roelke was aware instantly of how irrational that sounded. “Get your keys. Lock up the house.”
She looked wary. “Why?”
“I don’t want to talk here. Nothing’s open at this hour, but we can at least get away from this place.”
For a moment he thought she was going to argue, but with uncommon good sense, she refrained. “OK,” she said. “Let me just grab the files I was looking at.”
Five minutes later Roelke parked his truck in the tiny lot at the La Grange crossroads, usually used by people switching to bicycles to explore the Kettle Moraine State Forest. He felt better ensconced in the cab, on Highway 12, close enough to a street lamp that he could see anything coming. His revolver was in the glove compartment and his tank was full of gas.
“OK,” he said. “Start at the beginning and tell me what you learned.”
Chloe began to rapidly outline her discoveries. “Wait,” he said. The adrenaline rush was fading. “Start over. Leave out words like ‘accession’ and ‘iconography.’”
“Berget Haugen Lundquist donated three rosemaled wooden pieces to the State Historical Society in 1962. Two plates and an ale bowl. In 1977, one of those pieces—the ale bowl—was transferred to Old World Wisconsin.”
“Right, got it. Go on.”
She told him about the embroidered apron and the rosemaled smorgåsbord, Andreas Dahl photographs and Mrs. Lundquist’s family tree. “Berget Lundquist’s ale bowl was passed down from her great-grandmother, Gro Skavlem. But the odd thing is that it was a straight matrilineal line of succession—”
“Would you please try to keep it simple?” Roelke longed for a cup of coffee.
Chloe looked at him triumphantly. “I think Gro Skavlem was the rosemaler!”
“So?”
“So? Don’t you get it? Rosemaling was not a traditional women’s art. All the known rosemalers from the nineteenth century were men. Rosemaled pieces that date to the period between the first wave of immigration and the twentieth-century revival are rare to begin with, but if we can prove that a woman painted the bowl—”
“Wait, back up. What makes you think this Gro woman painted the bowl?”
“It’s just a hunch,” she admitted. “But here it is. First, the curator who talked with Berget Lundquist in 1962 noted that the pieces ‘were from’”—she used her fingers to indicate quotes—“Gro Skavlem. Now, that could be interpreted as ‘handed down from.’ But I think it also could be interpreted as ‘made by.’”
“Wouldn’t the curator have noted that down?”
“Today, absolutely. But record keeping wasn’t always as thorough back then.”
A pair of headlights appeared in the west. Roelke watched them approach. A Dodge Mirada. “I don’t know,” he said, when the car had flashed by.
“Then there’s the notation that the ale bowl we’re looking for was decorated with a cow head motif.” She looked at him expectantly. “Cows! Get it?”
“Obviously not,” he growled.
“Historically, in Norwegian families, dairying was women’s work. It was probably a holdover from Viking days, when men sailed off and left all the chores to them. Women milked, made cheese, tended the cows. See?”
Roelke chewed that over,