The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [70]
It was hard, but she was absolutely determined. With the legs set right against the windowsill she grabbed the bench mid-length, took a deep breath, and wrestled it into place.
The legs stayed jammed against the window frame. The angle was wrong.
“Dammit!” she gasped. She inched sideways, arms quivering. The bench she was standing on trembled. Her hands and shoulders hurt like blazes. But finally, with a sudden whoosh, the bench legs scraped through the narrow opening and into the night.
With the sudden release, Chloe lost her balance and fell to the floor. She landed on one hip and elbow so hard that tears came to her eyes. She lay there for a moment, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry. Then she staggered to her feet. She had tried her best to slide the window open far enough for her to crawl through, and failed. But now she had a lever.
Chloe leaned against the end of the bench that extended into the dressing room, and shoved. The window didn’t move. She pushed harder. The window still didn’t move. Chloe let loose a string of her best swear words, including several in Suisse-Deutsch.
Then she stepped back, aimed one shoulder like a linebacker, and slammed against the bench. With a protesting screech, the window inched sideways. Chloe repeated the movement, again and again, yelping with pain. Several minutes later the window had grumbled far enough over that she was sure she could wriggle through the opening.
“Hallelujah!” she panted. She pulled the lever-bench back into the dressing room, righted it, and shoved it into place against the wall. Then she wriggled her upper body through the window.
This was not going to be pretty. Chloe didn’t care. She shoved off with her feet. Belly, hips, and thighs scraped painfully over the sill. Her long skirt caught on something and ripped. Her palms hit the ground first, and she tumbled to the earth. Slowly, gingerly, she began moving various parts—arms, legs, shoulders, knees. She hurt all over, but everything still seemed to work.
Chloe rolled over on her back. The sky was clear, and a hundred thousand stars winked in glorious congratulation. She began to laugh as she staggered to her feet. “I’m free!” she exulted. “And with no damage done to the sauna, thank you very much.”
She didn’t have the strength to tug the damn window closed again, but that was of no real consequence. Come morning the interpreters would arrive, and wonder, and that would be the end of it. Ralph Petty would never know.
She was halfway to the road before she remembered what she’d come to Ketola for in the first place. Her master building key was still pinned inside her apron pocket, so she fetched matches from the sauna and lit the kerosene lantern. In the Ketola kitchen she quickly found the canned goods Dellyn wanted, and put a jar each of beans and carrots in a basket. With both house and sauna locked up behind her, she was on her way.
Navigating by starlight and the lantern’s glow, she left the Finnish area with lantern in one hand and basket in the other. Her spirits rose even higher, and she stifled the urge to swing one or both in exuberant arcs. Instead, she laughed out loud again, giddy with relief.
When Chloe reached the Sanford Farm, she found the barn locked. Boy-oh-boy, whatever guard was on duty tonight had been busy! After letting herself in, she proceeded with caution. One wrong move with the lantern and the stored hay would go up like a torch. It would be just her luck to extricate herself Houdini-style from the sauna, and then burn down the barn. That would get her butt fired for sure.
She dumped the basket of canning jars on the appropriate table. Dellyn could add them to the display in the morning, and send the