Old World Murder - Kathleen Ernst [88]
“Well, I think Gro made the bowl,” Chloe said stubbornly. “I just have this gut feeling. Instinct.”
Roelke imagined trying to explain Chloe’s line of reasoning to Chief Naborski. “I need facts.”
Chloe frowned and looked out the window for a moment. “Well, there’s also the Nika connection. Nika desperately wanted to find a good ethnic woman’s artifact that she could research and write up.”
“But how would she have even known about the ale bowl?”
“She was here for a whole week before I was. She could have gone through the accession books. Somebody tore out that page …” Chloe sighed. “Although it is hard to believe that Nika would get so obsessive about the ale bowl based on just the sketchy information on that accession form,” she admitted. “I didn’t understand the bowl’s significance myself until I saw the genealogy my mom sent, and realized that the rosemaled pieces had passed from mother to daughter for four generations.”
Roelke pressed his knuckles against his forehead before speaking. “Even if Nika did decide to look for the ale bowl after she started working at Old World, why had Berget Lundquist suddenly decided she desperately wanted the ale bowl back? You said Berget Lundquist had started in on that before you or Nika started working at Old World, right? And if Nika had actually found the bowl, and wanted more information from the donor, wouldn’t she just have called Mrs. Lundquist and asked? It seems to me that Nika finding the bowl, and figuring out what she could about its history, would be all she needed to write her article or whatever. Someone has been trying to steal the ale bowl, presumably to sell. Your Nika theory doesn’t add up.”
“Well … maybe.” Chloe scooched down in the seat and propped her feet on the dashboard. “What doesn’t line up for me is the apron. It shows up in Nika’s workspace, and then it disappears. I don’t know where the apron originally came from. But with the same Norwegian phrase as Berget’s plate? No way is that a coincidence.”
“Is there any way Nika might have seen that plate?”
Chloe’s shoulder’s drooped. “I don’t know. Shit! How stupid is that? I was there, and I didn’t even ask the curator! I didn’t think of it.”
“The curator would have mentioned it though, don’t you think? If someone else had recently asked to see those very pieces?”
She thought about that. “Yes. But they have interns up there too, student workers … the person who helped me in Iconography today was probably a work-study student. It is possible that someone other than the curator showed Nika the smorgåsbord, especially since she was there on a Saturday. Unless they’ve got a big exhibit launch coming up or something, museum curators generally work regular office hours. And the artifact storage area isn’t public, so they don’t keep a visitor log the way they do in Iconography.”
Roelke leaned his head against the window. “You’ve spent time with this woman. Do you think Nika is capable of getting mixed up in something … unethical? Illegal?” Another car came and went on the highway, this one traveling west. A Ford, driven too fast. Roelke reminded himself that he wasn’t on duty.
“I’ve come to like Nika,” Chloe said slowly. “And in a lot of ways, I really respect her. But she’s lied to me, and she’s sometimes evasive. She’s got an explosive temper. She’s driven. Her fiancé mentioned once that Nika has a lot she wants to accomplish, but also some things to leave behind.”
“What’s Nika’s last name?”
“Her full name is Tanika Austin. She’s going to grad school in Illinois, but she grew up in Milwaukee.”
“Hunh.” Roelke chewed that over. Then he reached across, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out a couple of index cards so he could make notes.
“I think that once Nika sets her mind on something, some goal … she’s probably capable of doing whatever she needs to do to get what she wants.”
“If nothing else, she may have stolen the apron,” Roelke said. “Could it be identified?”
“It would be marked with an