the people who just joined us. Now everyone can get to know one another!”
Exactly, thought Pix, and thank you, Scandie Sights, for making my job a little easier. She was not interested in the new arrivals, since they wouldn’t have been on the tour when Kari and Erik were with it. She’d need to find some way to figure out where the list divided, since the alphabetizing seemed erratic. Voluble Marge “Information, Please” Brady was the place to start.
Pix turned to her. “I wonder how many of us joined for the fjord cruise.” It was enough.
“Oh, that’s easy.” Marge picked up her list. “Let’s see. Oscar Melling is at the end of our list—I mean the group that started in Copenhagen.” Clearly, Marge was sensitive to issues of exclusion. “That makes fifteen who joined at Voss.”
“It seems like an extremely congenial group,” Ursula said. “I’m sure we’re going to have a lovely time together.”
Mother paving the way for future conversation. Pix nodded in agreement—and approval.
“Yes, it has been a good bunch,” Don agreed. Then, as a ruddy-faced elderly man strode by, he modified his
statement. “Of course, you always have a rotten apple or two.”
“Oh honey, not rotten! That’s not the right word for Oscar!” She appeared embarrassed by her husband’s bluntness.
Louise Dahl quickly began talking about the weather. “Only one day of rain in Bergen. And even that didn’t last long.”
Marge jumped in, a veritable geyser of facts, “Bergen’s on the coast. You know if you measured it in a direct line, it would be about two thousand miles long, but it’s really over twelve thousand five hundred with all the ins and outs. Plus, there are a hundred and fifty thousand islets offshore that protect the coast and make a kind of passageway for ships. The route was called the North Way—get it, Norway?”
They got it. Pix made a mental note to get Marge alone and find out more about Oscar. She scanned the list next to her plate—Oscar Melling, New Jersey. No town listed. Meanwhile, she held up her end by contributing a few meteorological comments of her own. How did people live in rainy places? Seattle was another, and so on.
The rest of the meal was uneventful: poached cod, boiled potatoes, apple cake. Because of the lateness of the hour, there was no evening program planned, although, Jan announced, the bar would stay open. He also urged a walk by the shores of Lake Vangsvatnet.
“And tomorrow, we don’t bother you too early. No wake-up calls.” A few people clapped. Pix hadn’t thought about this aspect of the tour. “You have a nice breakfast, explore the village”—his
Ursula and Pix said good night to the Dahls and the Bradys.
“Bed, yes?” Pix didn’t know whether it was the time difference finally catching up with her or the situation she found herself in, but extreme fatigue had arrived.
“Yes, but first why don’t you come to my room? We need to talk.”
Pix had assumed she and her mother would be bunking down together. Yankee thrift would seem to preclude the hefty supplement for a room of one’s own, but her mother had declared, “I like my own bath, dear. You’ll be fine.”
Marit had supplied them with a flask. “It’s scandalous what they charge for a drink at the hotels,” she’d said.
Ursula poured some scotch and the two sat by the window.
“Maybe we should make some notes,” she suggested.
Pix shook her head. “Nothing written down. We aren’t going to be handling our own bags, and even if we keep notes in our pocketbooks, it’s a bit chancy.”
“All right, then, what have we learned?”
“Not much,” Pix said dismally. Her head was spinning. She really was tired and slightly disoriented. It was five o’clock in the afternoon eastern standard time and soon it would be tomorrow here.
“I thought the man at the station told you something,” Ursula said. Pix had whispered words to that effect as they boarded the bus for the hotel.
“Yes, but I’m not sure where it fits in. No one saw Kari or Erik at Voss. They—or rather, Erik—phoned the station with the message that they were eloping.”
“So they could have been anywhere.”
“Yes. From what Marit said, the last place anyone actually saw either of them was on the train from Oslo to Flam.”
“I’ve taken it dozens of times,” Ursula said. “It stops at an enormous waterfall, Kjosfossen, so people can take pictures. Kari and Erik would have gotten off the train then, wouldn’t they, to make sure the tour group got back on again?”
“I remember Kjosfossen, too. Given that Erik was found in the river below, the waterfall would have been the most likely place for him to have fallen in, or whatever.”
“Whatever,” said her mother. Neither woman liked the other possible scenario, involving his fiancee and a mighty push.
“They weren’t on the bus from Flam to Aurland. Carl, the guide who spoke to Marit, was very specific about that.” Ursula tipped her glass back and finished her drink.
“So Kari may have gotten off at Flam and taken another train or met someone there.” Pix had practically memorized the Scandie Sights Mermaid/Troll brochure on the train from Oslo. This particular tour, once having reached Norway, tried to give its members the quintessential Viking experience, which meant plenty of fjords, folk museums, salmon, and the Flam railway. They took it down the mountain, changed to a bus for the short ride to Aurland, where their fjord cruiser was waiting at the dock, took a ride up the Aurlandsfjord, an arm of the spectacular Sognefjord, then got on a bus to Voss and the train to Bergen for several days. Now they were back to fjord country again for a perfect finish.
Ursula stood up, opened her window to let in the cool night air, and closed the shades against the daylight.
“We have a lot to do tomorrow. We’d better divide up and talk to as many people as we can. I thought that man at dinner tonight seemed a little ill at ease, but it could have been his wife—all those plans.”
Marge Brady had told them that since her husband’s retirement, they were working their way down her own personal list of the wonders of the world. They’d already “done” the pyramids, the Rock of Gibraltar, the chateaux of the Loire, the Great Wall of China, and gondolas in Venice. Fjords had been next, to be followed by Mount Kilimanjaro. Pix only just prevented herself from suggesting Marge send her list in to the Letterman show.
Pix kissed her mother good night. It was all she could do to keep from crawling fully clothed under the
“Good night, dear. Sleep well.” Her mother kissed her back and shut the door.
In bed, teeth brushed—the scotch would produce extremely unpleasant morning mouth—Pix had just enough mental energy for a nagging fear. Erik never made it to Flam. Had Kari?
Was she dreaming or was she still on the train? Pix sat up in bed, confused. And what was that knocking sound? She looked at the clock. It was 2:00 A.M. and the knocking was at her door.
Mother! She ran to open it. What could be wrong?
But it wasn’t her mother. It was a woman about her own age, but with radically different taste in night wear. Pix’s was
L. L. Bean, while the woman’s was straight from the pages of Victoria’s Secret.
“A man just tried to get from the balcony into my room and I can’t make the phone work!” She was wide- eyed with fright.
Pix dashed to her own phone, the woman following closely. “I’m in the next room, one oh five. I thought Norway was supposed to be safe for women traveling alone!”
“But he didn’t get in, right?” Pix asked as she waited for the front desk to answer.
“No. I screamed and he started to climb back over. I didn’t wait to see if he made it.”
The front desk finally answered. Scarcely had Pix hung up when they heard the sound of running footsteps in the hall, voices, and, after a few moments, a knock on the door.
