The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [68]
Then she tried the dressing room window. It was an unusual side-by-side arrangement, but a track permitted one window to slide sideways. Chloe pressed her palms against the sash and shoved with all her strength. Groaning with protest, the window slowly edged sideways a little … and stopped. “Ow,” Chloe whimpered as she tried again. Her already-scraped palms and bruised shoulder throbbed in protest. The window refused to budge any farther.
Finally Chloe gave up, rubbing her hands as she eyed the narrow opening she’d created. She was skinny, but she was pretty sure she couldn’t slide through. And the only prospect worse than being discovered next morning inside the sauna was the vision of being found stuck halfway through the window, flopping like a beached sturgeon.
Chloe dropped onto one of the benches in the dressing room and leaned against the wall. “I gotta get out of here,” she muttered. She could imagine Ralph Petty questioning her about the episode. “Miss Ellefson, why, exactly, did you go inside the sauna at that hour anyway? … You wanted to commune with dead Finnish women? Ah. I see.”
She winced. Was getting locked in an exhibit building overnight grounds for dismissal? Surely not. Surely she could fabricate some plausible task that could send a dedicated curator of collections into the sauna.
But it would be easier to come up with said task if there were actually any collections in the building. The very few items in the sauna—even the benches in the dressing room—were all inexpensive reproductions. In the growing gloom, she took quick inventory. The inner room contained firewood and some sauna stones, a jar of matches, an empty bucket and tin dipper. The dressing room held several woven rag rugs, and some bundles of twigs the interpreters had made to help explain how the old Finlanders smacked themselves to get their circulation going after their sweat bath.
A kerosene lantern was visible through the window, hanging near the door, mocking her. She’d have traded a month’s salary to get her hands on that! But she couldn’t. Short of smashing a window, or actually setting the building itself on fire, Chloe didn’t see how she could get out. And damaging this historic building in any way was not an option. Not even a last-ditch, desperate option.
“Don’t panic,” she ordered herself. She had to catch a guard’s attention somehow, that was all. Should she try to light a fire in the sauna? Smoke coming from the chimney at this hour would attract notice, right? But—no. It was already getting dark. By the time she got a fire going, the smoke would be invisible.
How often did the security guards make the loop at night, anyway? She had no idea. The sauna sat near the road, which might be helpful. She could throw stones through the open window, or small pieces of firewood . . . but those things wouldn’t make a guard blink.
She grabbed one of the rugs and draped it over the sill of the window she’d inched slightly open. “Feeble,” she muttered. Unless a vehicle’s headlights actually hit the rug, and the guard actually remembered that the rug hadn’t been there when he locked the building, he would simply drive by.
It all seemed improbable.
Chloe was tired, and hungry, and thirsty. She kinda needed to pee, too. And it looked like she wasn’t going anywhere until morning.
August, 1876
“Mr. Bachmeier!”
Albrecht set his shovel aside, whipped the shapeless felt hat from his head, and looked straight up. Clarissa Wood’s troubled face regarded him from forty feet up. “Yes ma’am?” he called.
“It’s well past noon. Don’t you want something to eat?”
Albrecht hesitated. He was hungry. If he climbed to the surface, he’d have the chance to talk with Clarissa. Alone, since Charles had gone to buy milk from a neighbor. Albrecht imagined her setting cold meat and cheese on her embroidered tablecloth in the kitchen. And there’d be some kind of wildflowers in a crock, with maybe a bluebird feather tucked among the blooms. Clarissa did take such pleasure in pretty things,