The Body in the Fjord

daughter’s door. She would surely be back by now. There had been no response, so Ursula had knocked harder.

Again, the door remained shut. She went back to her room and called Pix’s room number. She let the phone ring fifteen times, hung up, and tried again. Then she called the front desk for them to try. They did not receive an answer, either.

“Please have someone come up with a key immediately. I want to be sure my daughter is all right.” Ursula had felt her throat constrict with apprehension, yet her tone suggested only instant compliance. A security guard had appeared and together they opened the door.

Pix’s bed had been slept in, but she was not in the room. Ursula looked and quickly noted that her daughter’s jacket was gone, although apparently nothing else. She had thanked the guard and then awakened Marit.

“I can’t imagine that she is still at the boat, but we have to check. We’ll check the grounds, too.”

The two women, wearing several layers against the chill morning air, had walked straight to the dock. It was deserted, as were the grounds they passed through. The clerk at the desk had given them an odd look but made no comment beyond saying, “God dag.” Guests sometimes did strange things, and dawn strolls were comparatively tame.

All the doors on the Viking fjord cruiser were locked. They knocked and called Pix’s name but got no response. They checked the area around the hotel. Captivated by the light, maybe Pix had decided to take some photographs of the old houses. On impulse, they went into the church, St. Olav’s.

Here, Marit had turned to Ursula. “We have to tell the police.” Ursula sank to her knees, said a prayer for

her daughter—and Kari’s safety—allowed herself a sob, then got up and followed Marit to the phone box in front of the post office. The conversation was brief. “They will find the inspektor and we are to wait in the hotel lobby.”

Thirty minutes later, Marcussen had entered with the smell of sleep and only a hasty wash still on him.

Although he had already received the message, Ursula had needed to say it directly herself. “My daughter, Mrs. Samuel Miller, the one who found the body of Oscar Melling, is missing and we think it is very serious.”

So had the inspector. After obtaining some more information, he’d disappeared into the room behind the front desk, leaving an officer with them. After a while—a wait that seemed interminable to Ursula—he had returned to tell them a search of the area would be under way as soon as possible and that he himself was going down to the boat with the captain.

Now as the tour members filed out of the Dragon Room, Marcussen motioned for Ursula and Marit to stay.

“As you must have assumed, we have nothing to report yet. I’m very sorry. Will you come with me where we can talk in private? There are some things I don’t understand.”

Some? thought Ursula ruefully as she followed him out the door.

Pix Miller was not a drinker. Yes, she was partial to a dram of scotch now and then, particularly Laphroaig, but hangovers had been few and far between. The one she had now, she thought, not even able to open her eyelids, unaccountably turned to lead, was the mother of them all. The grandmother, the great-grandmother. Her leaden lids flew up. Wait a minute—she wasn’t sure if she was speaking aloud or not because of the pounding in her head—I wasn’t drinking.

The coffee. The farmer. That sweet little flaxen-haired wife. She wasn’t back in their hytte or whatever it was,

nor on their streamlined water taxi. Where the hell had she

awakened this time?

At least she’d awakened.

It was dark and cold. She moved one arm carefully, then the other, and wiggled her legs around, checking to see that everything worked. It did. Someone had thrown a blanket over her. Unfortunately, it did not afford much warmth. She still had her jacket on and she buttoned it to her neck. Her hand groped the ground next to her. It was dirt, but as her eyes became accustomed to the dark, she could tell she wasn’t outdoors. She sat up unsteadily and touched the wall beside her. It was rough-hewn stone—another cabin or farm building. Pix was becoming uncomfortably intimate with Norwegian rural architecture, although the opportunity for a monograph in the immediate future was slight. In any case, she would have preferred to study the subject in a crowded folkemuseum.

The effects of the drug had not worn off—her headache was worse, if anything, and the thought of food was quelled as soon as it arose lest it lead to immediate vomiting. But her mind was beginning to clear. A perfect setup. The farmer with his water-taxi service was a familiar figure on the local fjords and among certain people it would also be known that he would pay a good price for Tante Inge’s coffee spoons, too. Scandie Sights stopped to visit the farm throughout the summer, but the goods were probably delivered at other times. Maybe arranging the farm visit had been the source of the initial contact: like-minded people meeting one another. It must have been the farmer on Jennifer Olsen’s balcony at Fleischer’s Hotel, mistaking it for Carl’s room next door. The argument Pix overheard the following evening at Stalheim had either been over the screwup, or maybe something more—splitting the take? And it had been the dark-bearded farmer on the boat in Balestrand the other night when Pix first tried to search the closet. Dark-bearded. Pix heard Carl’s voice screaming after her as she tried to escape. “Stoppe”

had been clear. Also “Sven.” Dark hair, east coast—a city boy, his wife had said, the right age—could the farmer be Kari’s father? Had she discovered his identity and what he was doing?

The ground was hard and damp, yet sitting up hurt more. She debated putting the blanket under her, then decided it would quickly absorb moisture from the earthen floor and would do more good draped across her.

She knew she should get up and start to search the place for a door or window—some way to get out—but she couldn’t summon the strength at the moment. If she could sleep, she might feel better when she woke up. Next time, she’d tell Faith to put some analgesics in her survival kit—that is, if there was a next time.

Pix drifted off into a half sleep. Images of Carl laughing, his face grotesque, passed through her mind. Was Jan a part of it, too? And Sonja, Anders? The captain? Was Scandie Sights itself a front?

She thought she could sleep. It was the most sensible thing to do, and Lord knows, that was what she was. “Pix is so sensible,” everyone always said. “So dependable.” It sounded like a dog, a hund….

Mice. She wasn’t a mouse, but the place had mice. She didn’t mind mice, yet the idea of those scratchy little feet running across her midriff was not appealing. But no, not mice. Something bigger than mice. A cat? She searched her mind for recollections of Norwegian wildlife. A fox? A troll?

A person. Someone had coughed. Not an animal cough. A definite human cough. Then a voice speaking rapid Norwegian.

Pix replied with one of her few Norwegian phrases—she was really going to have to get some tapes —“Jeg snakker ikke norsk. Snakker du engelsk?”—I don’t speak Norwegian. Do you speak English?

The person did. “Don’t move. I have a gun.”

Oh no, not again, thought Pix, lying absolutely still.

“There was nothing in the closet, Mrs. Rowe. Yes, it did sound a little hollow in the back, but Captain Hagen told us that the boat has been remodeled so many times in its history that half of it sounds hollow. In this section, they’ve made bathrooms from what were the crew’s quarters—these were coastal boats, used for the mail and other deliveries. The closet backs onto a bathroom and it’s probably where the pipes are, but we are continuing to search the boat. We have not seen any signs of a struggle. In fact, no signs that anyone had been there, and it was all locked up tight last night, as usual. The captain checks himself last thing.”

Pix had not shown Marit and Ursula, Faith’s bon voyage gifts. If she had had to say why, she would have acknowledged a recurrence of the adolescent impulse that prevents teenagers from telling their parents anything that might reflect unfavorably on a particular friend. Jeez, all Mother has to do is find out Faith gave me skeleton keys and she’ll never let me go over to her house again. It was absurd, of course. Pix had also felt somewhat reluctant to share the information that the wife of her mother’s spiritual adviser had slipped a can of Mace-like hair spray in for good measure. While Faith was not the leading light of the Ladies Alliance, she was a member in good standing, donating many jars of toothsome peach/cassis and wild strawberry jam to the Autumn Harvest Fair. The