Island Getaway, An Art Crime Team Mystery (9 page)

Or maybe that was just the beer.

Curt started the conversation with the
stranger the same way he’d started the one with Annika earlier.
“Mind if we join you?”

The man glanced up, a pair of watery blue
eyes processing them, before he grunted something. Curt took it as
an invitation. Annika was not at all sure it had been meant that
way. She gave him an apologetic smile when she maneuvered onto the
bench opposite, and got a churlish look for her trouble.

“I’m Curt,” Curt added, “and this is
Annika.”

He paused expectantly. The man gave him a
look Annika could only describe as sourly amused. Obviously Curt’s
brand of jovial camaraderie wasn’t cutting it this time, because
the man made no move to tell him his name.

“My father was from Gotland,” she told the
stranger, and waited for Curt to volunteer the same information
about his mother. When he didn’t—why?—she continued, “He left a
long time ago and never went back. And now he’s passed on. I’m
trying to find someone who might remember him.”

The man contemplated her in silence for a
moment. “Why ask me?” he wanted to know eventually, in stilted but
serviceable English.

So far everyone she’d come in contact
with—the receptionist at the Emma Hamilton Hotel, the sales girl at
the boutique, the staff at the bus station and ferry—had spoken
very good English with the lilting accent she’d been used to
hearing in her father’s voice. This man was of a different
generation, and unlike her father hadn’t spent his adult life in an
English-speaking country, so she should probably be grateful he
could communicate with her at all.

She made sure to keep her words short and
simple. “You look like you might be the same age. He would have
been sixty two.”

The man nodded. Annika took that as
encouragement to continue. “His name was Carl Magnusson. He left
Gotland more than thirty years ago.”

There was a pause. The man looked at her.
Annika wasn’t sure whether he was struck dumb by the news or
whether he was inspecting her face looking for signs of her father.
He kept looking until she was blushing and squirming on the hard
bench. Finally he said, “Your father was Calle Magnusson?”

Annika nodded. “You knew him?”

“I did. He’s dead?”

“He died last month,” Annika said.

The man laughed. “Of course he did.” He
lifted his glass and tossed the contents to the back of his throat.
After swallowing, he coughed. The tears in his eyes could have been
due to that, or the strength of the liquor he’d just drunk. Annika
wasn’t sure. But just in case the news had brought on a reaction he
didn’t want to show, she gentled her voice.

“He never talked about growing up on
Gotland. We never came to visit. But he wanted me to bring his
ashes back here. I think he must have missed it even if he never
said so.”

The man stared at her for a moment. Then he
pushed to his feet. Annika watched, blinking, as he blundered out,
knocking into benches and tables on his way to the door.

“What’s wrong with him?” Curt said.

Annika shrugged. “You sat right there. You
would have heard it if he’d said anything. I guess he just didn’t
want to talk anymore.”

“Huh,” Curt said.

“At least I found someone who remembers him.
Maybe there’s someone else, too.”

She turned around, just as the waitress
pushed her way over to their table. She stopped beside Annika and
folded her arms under her breasts, which pushed the already
impressive cleavage up to epic proportions. “What happened?”

“Excuse me?”

The waitress tossed her head in the
direction of the door. “What did you say to Gustav?”

“Nothing. I mean, nothing that should have
made him run away.”

The waitress didn’t look convinced. “He’s
not a bad guy, you know. He drinks too much, but other than that
he’s harmless.”

“I’m sure he is,” Annika said. “I wasn’t
giving him a hard time. I was just telling him about my
father.”

“Your father?”

It hadn’t crossed Annika’s mind to talk to
the waitress, who was a decade or more younger than Carl Magnusson
had been. But maybe she should. If she were local, the woman looked
like she might have been in her teens when Annika’s father
left.

“His name was Carl Magnusson. He grew up
here, and then he left. Thirty-some years ago.”

The waitress shook her head. “Long before my
time. I’m from the mainland. I haven’t been here that long. Gustav
has.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Curt asked.

The waitress bristled. “Nothing’s wrong with
him. He’s a lonely old man who sometimes drinks too much.”

“Is he married?”

The woman shook her head. “Never has been,
that I know of. He lives alone in a little cottage outside the
wall, and then he comes into town to get drunk at night.”

“Does he have a job?”

“He’s retired,” the waitress said. “Used to
be the janitor for the police department. He’s not that smart,
Gustav. But there’s no harm in him.”

Annika hadn’t thought there was. “Do you
think he might talk to me more if I go see him tomorrow? When he
hasn’t been drinking?”

The waitress shrugged, setting shoulders and
breasts into jiggling motion. “If you can catch him. He spends most
of his time walking the dunes, waving a metal detector.”

“Looking for buried treasure?” Curt
suggested with a grin.

The waitress spared him a glance. “It
happens all the time. Between 700 and 800 hoards of Viking coins
have been dug up on Gotland. You can’t hardly put a spade in the
ground here without coming up with a coin or two.”

“Why is that?” Annika asked. If she’d had
access to her eReader and her guide books, she’d probably know this
information by now, but since she didn’t...

The waitress turned back to her. “Visby was
a big trading center during the middle ages. One of the wealthiest
towns in Europe. People were always afraid of being sacked, so they
hid some of their wealth where no one would find it.”

“Like when Valdemar IV attacked in
1361?”

The waitress nodded. “Gustav finds a bit of
loot once in a while. Someone’s wedding ring once, that had been
lost on one of the beaches. There was a small reward for that. And
a few years back, he stumbled over a treasure trove in a field down
on the southern side of the island. A few hundred Viking age coins
and a crucifix.”

“What happened to it?” Surely you didn’t get
to keep something like that if you found it?

“It’s in the museum,” the waitress said.
“There are so many old silver coins in that place it’s a wonder it
doesn’t sink into the ground from the weight.” She smiled.

Annika smiled back, making a mental note to
visit the museum. She would also seek Gustav out again. He’d known
her father, and when he hadn’t been drinking—and when she was
alone—maybe he’d be more inclined to talk to her. Curt was nice,
but he was perhaps a little... direct.

“Where does Gustav live, did you say?”

“Cottage,” the waitress said. “Outside the
wall. If you head out through the North gate, and you follow Bridge
Road toward the airport...”

Annika nodded, mentally filing away
directions to Gustav’s small red cottage with white trim as the
waitress went on. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” The waitress went to
move off, but then seemed to change her mind. “Just don’t do
anything to upset him. He’s not as young as he used to be. And it
won’t do any good to dredge up the past.”

“What past?” Annika asked, but by then it
was too late; the waitress had moved away to clear a nearby table.
Annika turned to Curt, who gestured to the door.

“Shall we?”

They may as well. They had finished their
meal, and Annika wasn’t about to accost any more strangers. She
headed for the door with Curt following behind.

It had gotten darker while they’d been
inside. It was late enough in the year that the days were starting
to get long so far north, but it wasn’t summer yet. The sun had
set, and the sky was turning midnight blue with stars emerging
against the dark velvet. A slim crescent moon bathed the warren of
narrow streets in a pale, unearthly light, and Annika shivered as a
chill crept down her spine; part temperature and part just being
here, surrounded by the history and mystery of the place.

Curt grinned. “How about a walk?”

“Sure.” Did he really think she was going to
refuse? She’d even run out before dinner to pick up a cheap pair of
white canvas tennis shoes just for walking around Visby. The silver
sandals were beautiful, and she wanted to wear them all day every
day, for every occasion and with every piece of clothing she owned,
but she didn’t want to twist an ankle on the uneven footing, or
risk breaking one of the slender straps. The canvas shoes had
seemed the smarter choice.

“Come along, then.” He set off down the
narrow street. Annika arched her brows and followed, more
leisurely, looking around.

Visby’s nickname was “the City of Roses and
Ruins,” and there were plenty of both to be seen. In 1525, an
invading army of Lübeckers burned down all of Visby’s churches save
the big cathedral.
Of the original seventeen
churches, only ten remained, and nine of those lay in ruins. Annika
could see the towers of the only remaining church, St. Mary’s
Cathedral, rise above the tiled rooftops of the houses, and nearby,
the ruins of St. Hans, St. Lars, St. Olof and St.
Nicolai.

The narrow street they
traversed—more of an alley, really—was cobblestoned, with cottages
on either side. Stuccoed walls and half-timbered gables brought to
mind Bavarian chalets, and Annika was reminded again that Visby was
a Hanseatic merchant town until 1470.

The climbing roses were
everywhere. Every house and building had at least one bush hugging
its walls; many had several. The air was heavy with perfume, and
Annika drank it all in, growing almost dizzy with the scent and
wondering again how her father could have lived here and left it
all.

It was easily the most romantic
place she’d ever been. Yes, she’d thought the same thing last night
in Stockholm’s Gamla Stan—and Nick’s presence might have had
something to do with that—but Visby, with its fairytale setting of
half-timbered cottages and roses, and the star-flecked sky arching
high above, with the moon reflecting in the ocean... it was like
nothing she’d ever seen, or for that matter ever imagined
seeing.

The only thing that would have
made it better was if she’d had someone to share it with. Someone
other than Curt, whose back was two car-lengths ahead of her and
getting further away with every step.

For a moment her mind slipped back
twenty four hours to Gamla Stan and Nick. How different the evening
had been with him.

It wasn’t just that he was
movie-star handsome, while Curt was... well, in justice to him, he
certainly wasn’t ugly. Nothing wrong with him, really. Under other
circumstances—before she met Nick—she might have thought he was
good-looking, in an average sort of way. Medium hair, medium eyes,
pleasant if unremarkable features. It was just that Nick was
so
drop-dead
gorgeous that anyone else paled by comparison.

Although Nick’s fabulous looks
were the least of his appeal, really.

He had a wonderful personality. He
was nice. Funny. Charming. He’d taken care of her when she hurt
herself. When they were together last night, he hadn’t looked past
her to scope out other women, not even when the receptionist at the
Lady Hamilton Hotel gave him an eyeful of her charms. He’d smiled
at her—Annika—like he meant it, and when he’d told her she was
beautiful, the surprise in his voice had made her believe he meant
that, too. It wasn’t too flattering, she supposed, but it was
honest. Honesty was good.

And she’d connected with him in a
way she didn’t with Curt. Strangely, since on the surface of it,
she and Curt ought to have more in common. Usually, Nick would be
the type to make her feel tongue-tied and awkward, while she’d be
more comfortable around someone like Curt. But there was something
about Nick that made him easy to talk to. And something about Curt
that made her wonder why he’d picked her up on the ferry and why
he’d asked her to dinner tonight when he didn’t seem all that
interested in her. At least when she was with Nick, he gave her his
undivided attention. While Curt was four car-lengths ahead by now,
and didn’t even seem to have noticed that she had fallen
behind.

Then again, she had questions
about why Nick had asked her out too. And about his friend with the
gun. At least Curt didn’t seem to be a threat to her life, or for
that matter her virtue. Nick she wasn’t so sure about. On either
count.

“Are you coming?”

The voice cut through her reverie.
Up ahead, Curt had finally realized she wasn’t keeping up and had
stopped to hustle her.

Annika nodded. “I’m enjoying the
walk. The roses are beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Sure,” Curt said. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

He grinned. She could see his
teeth gleaming in the darkness. He had very nice, straight, white
teeth. “I thought we’d check out the Maiden’s Tower. See if she’s
awake.”

She?

Annika swallowed and let him take
her arm to pull her along.

The Maiden’s Tower was definitely creepy. Tall and gray and
forbidding, it dominated its part of the
Ringmur
. Annika stood in the
shadow between the western wall and a line of tall trees and peered
up at it, trying not to turn tail and run.

Curt grinned, teeth flashing in
the dusk. “Scared?”

Annika pushed her glasses more
securely up on her nose. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

OK, so that wasn’t entirely
true.