“But it could just be that the closet was put in later and fitted to an awkward space. Did you see any way of getting into it?”
“No. There isn’t any light in the closet, and my old eyes aren’t what they used to be. Besides, I’d have needed a flashlight.”
Considering Ursula still did intricate counted cross-stitch without the aid of spectacles, her old eyes were holding up fine. Yet Pix knew what was coming next.
“You’ll just have to get on the boat tonight and see if you can open it. It’s the only lead we have so far.”
This was true. “What made you think there was some kind of hiding place on our fjord cruiser?” Pix also
wanted to add, And why didn’t you tell me? But a mother’s mind often worked in strange and mysterious ways.
“I didn’t think of it until after you all left,” Ursula confessed. Hearing that, Pix felt a bit better. “I stayed behind to have a look around—you probably guessed that—but when I asked myself what I was looking for, a hiding place was the only thing that made sense. What can boats be used for? Smuggling, of course, and Norway has its drug problems, the same as the rest of the world.”
“So, it’s possible Erik and Kari discovered some scheme that involved using the boat to transfer drugs, or”— Pix recalled her mother’s earlier remarks about the Russians—“oil secrets.”
Ursula nodded. Neither she nor Pix gave voice to the corollary—discovered it or were part of it.
“We’d better go down to the lobby and pretend to meet Marit. She must surely be here by now,” Pix suggested.
And she had a lot of questions for Kari’s grandmother.
Kvikne’s Hotel occupied the most beautiful site for lodging that Pix had ever seen. Even the incongruity of the 1877 Swiss chalet style of the original building and the high-rise modern addition could not detract from the breathtaking splendor of the view. She’d begun to think in guidebook language—“breathtaking splendor”; it was hard to avoid superlatives. The hotel was set on a peninsula jutting out into the Sognefjord, and when one was sitting on the long porch in front, as she, Marit, and Ursula were now, one was surrounded on three sides by smooth waters and snowcapped mountains. Off in the distance, the glacier, the Jostedalsbreen, glistened. There were no bad seats in the house.
It was a Swiss chalet by way of Bergen, though, and the gingerbread had a marked Viking flavor inside and out. Carl had announced before they left the boat at the small dock in Balestrand, a few steps from the hotel’s entrance, that dinner would be at 7:00 P.M. “And afterward we will take coffee in the
carvings in the dragon style by Ivar Hoivik. The hotel has many fine artworks and interesting objects. Be sure to see the chair where Kaiser Wilhelm was sitting when he got the news about World War One. I think he must have been quite annoyed to have his fishing interrupted. He was a well-known sight in the village here. He used to walk his six dogs, all with bells on their collars, every day himself. When you look at the fjord now, it seems so calm and peaceful, but imagine it in 1914 with the kaiser’s steamer accompanied by a flotilla of twenty-four warships—all just by the dock here.”
Maybe Norway should have KAISER WILHELM FISHED HERE plaques. Pix hadn’t thought much about the kaiser since modern European history at Pembroke, yet his luxuriously mustached face seemed to be before her at every turn. And come to think of it, why were they called kaiser rolls? It was incredible to think of the fjord with all those warships.
“I think we can assume if we talk softly, we will not be overheard out here,” Ursula was saying. They’d ordered coffee, of course. It was impossible to have a conversation in Norway without it, especially before the sun went over the yardarm.
“I’m afraid I don’t have much to tell you,” Marit replied. “The police haven’t turned up any new leads. The only thing they did find out was that a member of the maintenance crew found the knapsacks under the seats where Kari and Erik had been sitting when he was cleaning the train that night in Oslo. It had made the return trip. He turned them in to lost luggage.”
“So, nothing there. Except who removed Kari’s things? Kari, or someone else?” Pix asked.
Marit shrugged.
Pix asked another question. “I know you said Kari was probably calling Annelise, her friend in Bergen, to find out how she was. But could there have been any other reason? Had Annelise ever worked for Scandie Sights?”
“No. Annelise moved to Bergen to take a job at the Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum—the West Norway Museum of Decorative Arts. I’m sure if she’d worked for the tour group, Kari would have mentioned it.”
The Museum of Decorative Arts—the one Helene Feld had been so eager to see, the one where she’d spent her time in Bergen instead of sticking to the tour’s itinerary. Pix filed the thought away.
“But what about you?” Marit asked anxiously. “Have you found out anything at all? I feel at times I am going mad. That Kari will walk in the door and that this will be a bad dream.”
Pix and Ursula told her the few facts they’d managed to ferret out—Pix’s conversation with the stationmaster in Voss, Helene’s account of the argument. Pix omitted Carol Peterson’s description of Kari, but she related their other attempts to get information from the guests. Ursula told of the possibility that there was some kind of secret compartment on the boat.
“You have done so well.” Marit was impressed. “Now all Pix has to do is go see what’s in it.”
Pix had been thinking of this very thing. It seemed so simple to her elders. Piece of cake. Let Pix do it. Pix the
They finished with some more random impressions and an account of the intruder on Jennifer Olsen’s balcony at the Stalheim Hotel.
“Oh, and last but not least, when we woke up this morning, someone had painted a giant red swastika on the lawn in front of the hotel, just before you get to the edge of the cliff,” Pix told her. She was amazed to see the powerful effect her words had on their old friend.
Marit looked as if she’d seen a ghost.
“A swastika?” she whispered. “At Stalheim?”
“Yes.” Ursula reached for her friend’s hand. “What’s wrong? What does it mean?”
“I can’t tell you here.” Marit seemed very close to tears. “Meet me in my room. It’s three oh seven.”
Puzzled, Pix and Ursula waited five minutes before crossing the lobby to the elevator. A Japanese tour bus had arrived and the two women were forced to wait for the next elevator. As soon as one had arrived, the group rushed on and there had been no more room.
“The Japanese are perhaps the most polite people on the planet, the most aware of social ceremonies. The only reason I’ve ever been able to come up with for their kind of lemming-like behavior abroad is that they’re terrified of getting separated—or, worse still, getting left behind forever.”
“Like the North Dakota farmers.”
“Precisely.”
Neither woman had referred to Marit since she’d made her dramatic exit.
They exited the elevator into a deserted hallway and quickly went to room 307. Marit opened the door at their knock. She must have been standing just inside.
The room was spacious and had a comfortable sitting area. Ursula drew Marit next to her on the love seat. “Now, what is it?”
“It’s so complicated and it was so long ago. Hans and I were going to tell you; then we thought it better to tell no one. We were trying to erase the past, and you can never do that.”
“What are you talking about, Marit?” Ursula’s direct question hadn’t worked. Maybe a second one would do it, Pix thought.
“The Stalheim Hotel was used in the war for something the Germans called a
duced with their soldiers would be tall, strong, and blond. After the Occupation, German soldiers were encouraged to father children with Norwegian women. It was their duty to the Reich. When they got pregnant,
