The Body in the Fjord ff-8 Page 2

  Faith looked askance at the heavy turtleneck Pix was packing. Could it get that cold in Norway in June? Obviously Pix thought so. She continued her line of questioning. “Marit hasn’t heard anything from her since the call on Friday?”

  “No, and she’s desperate. It’s possible that Kari and Erik slipped, falling into the river, or one tried to save the other, but that doesn’t explain the knapsacks—and of course Marit has no idea why they were quarreling.”

  It was this information that had sent Pix home from her mother’s to pack after a call to Sam and nine or ten others canceling various obligations.

  “Knapsacks? Quarrel?” Pix had told Faith recently that she was so afraid of repeating herself, a dreaded sign of the encroachments age made on memory, that she found she was, instead, forgetting to tell friends and family whole bunches of things. This was obviously one of those times.

  “I must have left this part out.” Pix was stuffing socks into the toe of a Bass Weejun. “Anyway, you know Norway is a small country, a little over four million people. The discovery of Erik Sørgard’s body has been big news. The police asked anyone who might have seen either Kari or Erik to get in touch with them. So far, no one has reported seeing them, except for the people on the tour, and of those, only one woman saw them after the group boarded the train in Oslo. There weren’t enough seats, so Kari and Erik had gone to another car. This woman was looking for the food cart and passed Kari’s and Erik’s seats. She told the police they were having ‘a vicious argument’—those were her words. Since she doesn’t speak Norwegian, she had no idea what it was about.

  “Then the knapsacks. One of the clerks in the lost-luggage bureau at the Oslo railway station noted their names on two knapsacks a conductor had turned in late Saturday. One of the clerk’s jobs is to transfer names and addresses on items to a master list they keep. When he heard the news, he called the police. He remembered their names, because his last name is Hansen, too—although there are so many Hansens in Norway, I don’t know why Kari’s name stuck with him.”

  Faith ignored the Hansen conundrum. “At least this gives you a place to start. You have to find out how the knapsacks got to Oslo. It’s on the east coast, right? And the train was on the west coast? Why weren’t Kari and Erik carrying them? And was it a lover’s spat or something more? Even if she couldn’t understand what they were saying, the woman might remember what their gestures conveyed.”

  While appreciating Faith’s advice, Pix hadn’t finished. As Faith, with the wisdom of someone ten years younger, constantly told her, there was nothing wrong with Pix’s memory, and if Pix occasionally had trouble dredging up details like the name of the kid who sat behind her in third grade, it was because her fertile brain was weeding

  out useless information to make room for new, more important facts—like these.

  “There’s more. Everything appeared to be in Erik’s sack, but things were missing from Kari’s.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “According to her grandmother, her passport, driver’s license, and money,” Pix said grimly. “The report of the quarrel—and Kari does have a quick temper, which I’m sure the police have managed to find out from someone by now—has caused them to change the bulletin from ‘missing’ to ‘wanted for questioning.’ The passport is particularly puzzling, because Norwegians don’t need one to travel within Scandinavia. Erik had his passport, too. It was still in his knapsack.”

  Faith reached for her pocketbook, a large Coach saddlebag, dug down, and added a few things to Pix’s suitcase: a penlite with fresh batteries, the ultimate Swiss army knife, a Côte d’Or dark chocolate bar, matches, surgical gloves, skeleton keys, and a small can of hair spray—tools of the trade. She wished she was going more than ever, although Norway, where boiled potatoes accompany most meals and dried cod soaked in lye is the pièce de rèsistance of the groaning Yule board, had never attracted her in the past. Fjords or no fjords. You had to eat.

  “Put these where you can get at them easily—your jacket pocket, whatever—after you land. And be sure to carry fifty dollars or more in Norwegian currency on your person, not in your bag, at all times.”

  “Hair spray?” Pix had eyed the other items and they made some sense, although the thought of a situation where she might have to use the gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints was not comforting. But hair spray? Her short, thick dark brown hair fell into place and stayed there.

  “Because they’re not about to let you into the country that awards the Nobel Peace Prize, or any other one for that matter, with a can of Mace or pepper spray, so this will have to do. Hope put me onto the brand.” Faith’s

  sister, Hope, a real estate appraiser for Citibank, and her husband, Quentin, lived in New York City, where the two sisters had been born and raised. She regularly passed on news to perennially homesick Faith, from what was hot in self-defense to the closing of the Quilted Giraffe, one of their favorite restaurants.

  “Here, take this comb. It snaps into the mirror. The hair spray will feel more legitimate then.” Faith knew her friend well.

  For a brief moment, Pix found herself wishing Faith was coming, too. She’d never carried a weapon before. Gingerly, she picked up the spray as if it were a live grenade and slipped it into her toiletries bag. She zipped her suitcase shut and set it on the floor. She’d take that sweater out after Faith left. For now, she was ready to go.

  It wasn’t going to be a pleasure trip. In fact, all thoughts of any pleasure had been shelved by Marit’s call for help—help in trying to make sense of a nightmare. According to Marit, there was only one way to find Kari and she couldn’t do it. Someone had to pose as a Scandie Sights tourist—as soon as possible.

  Someone had to blend in with the group: “The Little Mermaid Meets the Trolls: Copenhagen to Fjord Country.” The Mermaid/Troll tour. The tour where Kari and Erik had last been seen.

  Pix leaned back into her seat. It was ten o’clock at night and they were still in Newark. It had already been the flight from hell and they weren’t even in the air. First, the plane from Boston was delayed—something about thunderstorms in New Jersey. One of the legion of dark-suited businesspeople glued to their cell phones had pried himself away to shout to a companion that one of the tanks at the oil refineries near the turnpike had been struck by lightning and that things were totally screwed up. For some reason, they both thought this was hysterically funny.

  When the flight finally was announced for boarding, the surge of humanity threatened to engulf them, until Mrs.

  Arnold Lyman Rowe whipped out her folding cane and parted the seas. Pix had never seen this cane before, and as they were ushered to the head of the line, Ursula flashed her a triumphant look. “I only use it when I have to,” she whispered. Clearly this was going to be a no-holds-barred trip.

  Strongly citing extreme inconvenience, Ursula got them bumped to first class after they arrived at SAS in Newark, where they discovered their flight was at the gate but that the doors were closed. They would be forced to wait several hours for the next flight. She also made them call Marit. By the time they got on the plane, Pix was exhausted. Ursula was, of course, fresh as a daisy and perky to boot. Pix wondered why on earth her mother had thought she would need her daughter’s help. So far, the only thing Pix had done was use one of the meal chits SAS had issued to secure a cup of tea for Ursula. The hamburgers that had been sitting wrapped in foil for many hours and fries from before that had held little appeal for either of them. Well, she could start taking charge now.

  “I think the best thing to do is put on these masks and go right to sleep. That way, we’ll be on Norwegian time when we arrive. I’ll tell the steward we don’t want the meal.”

  Ursula had been examining the contents of the bag thoughtfully provided to first-class passengers for many hundreds of dollars extra with all the excitement of a child opening a very large birthday present.

  “Even toothpaste!” she exclaimed. The Rowe women, besides traveling lig
ht, always traveled economy class.

  “I’m going to reset my watch now.” Pix adjusted her footrest. They would be able to sleep in these seats, something impossible on every other flight she’d made. Fitting her long, angular frame into an airline seat was like trying to put those springy joke snakes back in the fake mixed-nuts can. Both mother and daughter were tall—and attractive, although Pix had never believed she was, despite a husband given to unrestrained, unlawyerly rhapsodies

  about her dark chestnut hair and deep brown eyes. Ursula’s hair was white, a clean white, like new-fallen snow. It too was short, but, unlike Pix’s, it curled slightly. Ursula’s cheekbones had become more pronounced, yet age had not clouded her brown eyes.

  Pix reached for the button to summons the steward.

  “What are you doing, dear?”

  “Calling the steward, so we won’t be disturbed when they serve dinner. We can wear these sleep masks.”

  “But I want my dinner. It could be something nice.” Her mother sounded uncharacteristically plaintive.

  Pix had heard Faith on the subject of airplane food and thought it unlikely that SAS had whisked a cordon bleu chef aboard especially for this flight.

  Ursula persevered. “It will probably be something Scandinavian. You know how much you like salmon. It could be salmon.”

  “All right, we’ll have dinner, then go to sleep immediately after.”

  Her mother had pulled a menu from the pocket in front of them. “See, smoked salmon to start. Now, you don’t want to miss that.”

  Pix was seeing a new side of Ursula: Ursula the traveler. Yes, mother was intrepid, still gardening, living on her own, fiercely independent. She’d asked for a kayak for her eightieth birthday and plied the waters of Maine’s Penobscot Bay with aplomb. In between worrying about her children—Mark, almost twenty; Samantha, a senior in high school; Danny, a seventh grader—all worrisome ages—Pix worried about her mother, despite her self-sufficiency, or maybe because of it. But she knew her, or so she thought. The long wait in Newark Airport had revealed another Ursula: Ursula the outgoing. Pix had spent the time slumped in a tortuous molded plastic seat, trying to read the Fodor’s guide Faith had insisted she bring so she’d know where to eat. Her mother, meanwhile, was making friends, and as they departed for their various destinations, she filled Pix in on the lives of these new ac

  quaintances. Ursula’s Christmas card list was growing faster than Pinocchio’s nose.

  “I never knew the copper in the Statue of Liberty is Norwegian copper. That interesting man I was just talking to told me all about it when I mentioned where we were going. At the time it was cast, a French company owned the copper mine in Norway and that’s how it happened. I wonder if Marit knows.”

  Pix had been amazed. On her own turf, her mother never spoke to strangers and was even known to be reserved with friends. Talk about off the leash.

  The plane bumped down the runway and soon they were in the air. Ursula had insisted that Pix take the window seat and was now craning over to see if she could spot the Norsk Lady Liberty in the net of twinkling jewel-like lights spread below, enveloped by darkness as they gained altitude. She leaned back and was soon captivated by the map on the movie screen marked with altitude, speed, mileage, time, and their tiny plane inching along the Eastern Seaboard.

  A few bursts of static, then a voice: “This is Einar Magnusson speaking. I am your captain tonight. On behalf of Scandinavian Airlines, I would like to welcome all of you on board and I’m very sorry for the long wait on the runway. I promise to make up the time. You will be in Oslo before you know it!” His voice was cheerful, sincere, contrite. He repeated the announcement in his native tongue, sounding even more cheerful, sincere, and contrite. Pix was vaguely alarmed. Exactly how did Einar propose to make up this time? Her mother’s thoughts were elsewhere.

  “Danish. You can always tell. You know what Marit says. They sound like they have a potato in their mouths.”

  Pix wasn’t going to touch this one. Dane, Swede, Norwegian, Hindustani—she didn’t care, so long as he got them to Oslo safely. Mother, on the other hand, seemed to have picked up some of Marit’s intense nationalism—the “Forty thousand Swedes ran through the weeds chased

  by one Norwegian” kind, or “The only thing the Swedes have that the Norwegians don’t are good neighbors.” Norway had only been independent from Sweden since 1905 and feelings still ran high.

  Dinner arrived. The lox—“røketlaks” in Norwegian, Ursula pointed out—was followed by decidedly non-Scandinavian sirloin tips. Pix passed on the mango mousse and turned her light off. She hadn’t had to supervise Danny’s homework, or deal with dinner. She was missing a meeting and Samantha’s senioritis, which veered wildly from counting the days until graduation to tears at leaving. Pix had been able to just leave after all. She wasn’t indispensable. If only it hadn’t been for such a horrible reason.

  “Good night, Mother.”

  “Good night, Pix. If you wake up, wiggle around or step over me and walk up and down. They say this helps you with jet lag.”

  Ursula read a lot, Pix reminded herself, and she wondered what other travel tips awaited her. Before drifting off to sleep, she lifted her mask to check on her mother. Ursula had headphones on and was watching the movie. Pix pulled the mask down. Mother didn’t get to the movies much.

  A horrible reason…The steward had given her two blankets and they actually had some heft to them, as opposed to the tissue-paper ones issued to economy class. She pulled one up around her shoulders and tried to let sleep, so close, claim her. Marit would be waiting for them. Marit, a Scandinavian version of Ursula, tall, poised. Pix had a hard time imagining the two stately old ladies as silly little girls, the way they described themselves when they looked at the old pictures.

  The Larsens, Marit’s parents, had emigrated to the United States sometime in the early 1900s. They had been intending to join relatives who had settled in Minnesota, but arriving in New York, Mr. Larsen had mistakenly purchased railway tickets for Hampton, New Hampshire, rather than Hampton, Minnesota. A thorough man, he was conscientiously following a map as they traveled, and upon

  hearing the names of places that did not appear on his route, he realized his error and got his wife, great with child, off the train in Boston. At this point, Mrs. Larsen had had enough of travel and enough of the United States. Unlike her husband, she did not speak any English and was already longing for herring. They decided to stay put and see how things went. Norwegians tend to be bodies that do not stay in motion once having arrived someplace. The one thing Mrs. Larsen did do was insist that her husband get on a trolley with her and ride until they found a place enough like home so she could tolerate their sojourn in this foreign land. The place turned out to be Aleford, twenty minutes west of Boston. Of course, Aleford no more resembles the rolling green meadows, deep fjords, and towering mountains of the Larsen birthplace than it does the Amazon rain forest, but it did have some birch trees and red barns. That was enough for Mrs. Larsen. After the birth of her first child, Nils, Marit’s older brother, now passed away, along with her only other sibling, Lars, Mrs. Larsen started doing wash for various ladies in Aleford, who promptly became “her ladies.” And her favorite lady was Ursula’s mother, Mrs. Lyman.

  The Lymans lived in a sprawling old house with a backyard that sloped down to the Concord River, a branch of which ran through town. Ursula had inherited the house and it was where Pix and her brother, Arnold, had grown up. It seemed as much a part of the family as the people who had inhabited it over the generations. Pix didn’t want to think what would happen to the house after Ursula died. Didn’t want to think about that at all.

  The Larsens’ house also backed onto the river, farther downstream. From the pictures, it seemed this generation took to the water the way Pix and her brother had. Ursula and Marit in a canoe, swimming, rowing. But always Ursula and Marit. Both were the only girls in their families and they sought each other’s company on eve
ry possible occasion. Marit was such a frequent guest for dinner, she had her own napkin ring.

  Mr. Larsen was a carpenter and his business prospered throughout the twenties. Ursula liked to point out all the houses he had built in Aleford and the surrounding towns. “There’s one of Pete’s,” she’d announce as they drove past. Mrs. Larsen stopped doing wash and devoted herself to handwork, inviting her ladies for coffee and cakes. The smell of cardamom, Ursula once told Pix, could still transport her instantly back to the Larsens’ kitchen. Then the Depression hit and people weren’t building houses anymore. Peter Larsen eked out a living repairing stoops and doing other odd jobs. Mrs. Larsen started washing again. But when they finally made the big decision to return home, they told the Lymans that they had never touched their savings—savings securely tucked into the bank in Norway, where their cousin, Olav, worked in Tønsberg. The Larsen boys were grown, married, and on their own, doing as best they could. Marit had recently finished high school. It was time to go.

  When that time came, Mrs. Larsen was as sorry to leave as she had been to come, but it was Marit who was the most bereft. She and Ursula swore to remain friends forever, write often, and visit as soon as they had the money. It would be a long time before the first visit, but they wrote constantly. The war years were very hard. Marit lost both her parents. Heart problems, the doctor said, but she knew it was the lack of good food. The Lymans sent packages, many that never arrived. The years after the war ended were lean, too. Pix remembered packing dried fruit and jars of peanut butter for people she’d heard so much about, she felt she knew them. Marit had married shortly before losing her parents. Her daughter, Hanna, was born during the occupation.

  Now the Norwegians were the rich ones, with their black gold, the North Sea oil. Ursula had been astonished at the wealth of the country she’d observed during her trip the previous summer. No more food packages, although she wondered how people could afford anything at all, even to eat, with prices so high.