Murder on the Lake, page 4
"Roarr?" I called as I unlaced my boots and left them in the mudroom with my walking stick. My art bag I kept with me, bulky as it was. In fact, I found myself clutching it tightly as I stepped up into the hall then followed it towards the back of the house where I remembered the living room to be, with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the southern end of Villmark spread across the hill below.
"Hello?" I called again, not liking how small and tremulous my voice sounded. Nefja must have just left Roarr. So where was he? Where were his parents?
"Anyone home?" I stepped down from the hallway into the living room, the southern light through the windows temporarily blinding me. I blinked until my eyes adjusted, then looked up towards the kitchen that overlooked the living room, but no one seemed to be up there.
I started to turn to try calling up the stairs to where I assumed the bedrooms to be, but instead collided with a wide chest, stumbling back as I avoided the hands that reached out to steady me.
"Stop it!" Roarr said, throwing up his arms as if to protect his head. Like he thought I was going to start hitting him.
"Roarr, it's me, Ingrid," I said.
"I know who you are," he said, but he still had his face turned away from me behind his raised arms.
"Do you know why I'm here?" I asked.
"No," he said. Just a little word, but his voice imbued it with such epic sadness it tore at my heart. Of course, it wasn't strange for him to have down days. He had only lost his fiancée a few months before, after knowing her for most of his lifetime. How unmoored would I feel if that had happened to me?
I took a moment to gentle my own tone, to release the white-knuckled grip on my bag and untense my body language. But it took time to calm myself, and before I could get those calmer words out, he said something else that had my blood running icy cold through my veins.
"I mean, unless it's about that murder."
Chapter 5
He just let those words drop like they were just nonsense small talk, nothing of import, and turned towards the kitchen. "Nefja said I should eat something. I'm going to do that. You can come in the kitchen with me if you want."
For a moment I was frozen in place, probably with my mouth hanging open, although I was so numb I couldn't really tell. Was he confessing? Before I had even accused him of anything?
But then I ran his words back through my mind. No, that hadn't been a confession. Not exactly. But how did he already know about Gullveig if he hadn't been involved?
And his mood was all over the place. That epic sadness had shifted to something like serene acceptance, like the fact that I was there to talk to him about the murder was exactly what he needed to snap out of his fugue and remember that he needed to eat.
The smell of honey rye bread darkening in a toaster snapped me out of my own paralysis, and I scurried up the steps to the kitchen. Roarr was taking a plate out of a cabinet. He held it out to me with a questioning raise of one eyebrow and I nodded.
Well, I had missed breakfast.
"I'll have coffee too in a jiffy," he said.
"Roarr, we need to talk about this," I said.
"I know," he said. His shoulders started to slump resignedly, but then he steeled his spine and turned his attention back to setting out butter and jam. "I'm sorry if I seem offhand about all this. It's just that I've been waiting for you for so long."
"You have," I said, thinking back on the events of the morning. The time I had spent with Jessica and my grandmother, the time before that on the lake shore, the time it took Andrew to come fetch us. And I had no idea how long Gullveig had lain there before Jessica and Michelle had stumbled across her. Maybe hours. Maybe she'd been there since the day before.
"I can tell every time you look at me that you have questions you want to ask me, but you never do," he said. The toaster popped, and he divided the slices between the two plates and loaded up more bread before bringing the plates to the table.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You know what I'm talking about," he said with a flash of annoyance.
"Roarr, I don't think I do," I said. "I've just now come here, not exactly straight from the body, but I certainly haven't seen you in the time between. It's only been an hour or so since I even knew there was a murder." I didn't add, but I was thinking, that when I had tried talking to him downstairs in the living room he had refused to even meet my eyes. So what questions had he thought he saw in my eyes without even looking at me?
He had a slice of buttered toast halfway to his mouth. It hovered there for a long moment before he set it back down on the plate. "Ingrid, what are you talking about?"
"Gullveig," I said. "What are you talking about?"
"Gullveig?" he repeated. "What happened to Gullveig?"
"She was murdered," I said. "Last night or this morning."
"Murdered," he said. For a moment he looked like he was going to slip back into that slack-faced fugue state he so often favored. But then he covered his face with his hands. His eyes had just started to glisten wetly before he hid them from my view.
"Roarr-" I started to say, but he cut me off.
"I was talking about Lisa," he said, his voice muffled by his hands. "I am always talking about Lisa."
"Oh," I said. "I see."
He had been waiting for me to talk to him about Lisa? For months now?
But before I could ask about that, he lowered his hands. His eyes were red-rimmed, but he had choked back the tears I knew would've spilled if I hadn't been there. "Why do you think I murdered Gullveig?" he asked.
"We found her on the lake shore," I said. "She was dressed in modern clothes but with no shoes. Not dressed for swimming."
"It's November," Roarr said. "Why would she be swimming?"
"Hence the suspicion of foul play," I said. "Even if she had fallen off a boat or a dock or something, why wasn't she wearing shoes? Outside in November?"
"Foul play," Roarr said with a nod. "But you didn't answer my question."
"Why I suspected you?" I said. He nodded again. "I saw you talking with her on Halloween."
Roarr huffed out a breath and turned his attention back to his toast. "Pretty much everyone spoke to her on Halloween. Your list of suspects is going to be quite long."
"Maybe," I conceded. "But you seemed particularly annoyed with her. Because she was talking with Andrew."
"Who's Andrew?" Roarr asked. He was still pushing the toast around on his plate but making no effort to eat it.
"A Runde man," I said. "A friend of mine."
"Oh, that guy who hangs around with Loke," Roarr said. "Why would I care if Gullveig talked to him? Like I said, she talks with everyone."
"You weren't feeling jealous, maybe?"
"Oh, I see," Roarr said. "You think I was smitten with Gullveig."
"You weren't?" I asked.
"No," he said darkly. "I don't think I will ever feel again what I felt for Lisa. I certainly don't expect to."
"But you were talking with Gullveig," I pressed. "More than talking. You lit up being near her. I could see it."
"You don't know what you're talking about," Roarr said and pushed away from the table. He turned his back on me to fuss with the coffee, even though clearly neither one of us was making much of a go at having breakfast.
"I'm not trying to explain your own emotional state to you or anything," I said. "I can't say what you were feeling in that moment or any other. I'm just telling you what I saw."
He didn't answer me, just poured out two mugs of coffee, then turned to set them on the table. He didn't sit back down, though. Instead, he folded his arms over his chest and loomed over me.
"It's not like I don't understand why I'll always be a prime suspect in everyone's mind," he said. "I know how things look to the others. They don't know what I went through. How could they? But you do, Ingrid. You do. You disappoint me."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, but then I realized that I knew. "Halldis' spell?"
"She didn't make you do anything," he said. "She just kept you frozen helpless in a chair. But you know if she wanted you to do something, she could've made you do it. Your body was no more than a puppet to her, one she could control. And there would've been nothing you could've done to stop it."
"I don't know that at all," I said. "You said before you weren't sure how much of what you did was her directing you and how much was just you, choosing to play along."
"I never murdered anyone," Roarr said.
"Accessory after the fact," I said. "That's what we call what you did in the rest of the world."
"You mean moving Lisa's body? I couldn't undo what she had done, so what difference did it make? Nothing I could've done would've mattered. And nothing I do now matters."
"That attitude just makes you sound even more like a suspect," I said. "Maybe even the culprit."
Roarr glowered down at me, and I was all too aware of how much larger he was than me. If he wanted to hurt me, he could. And even if I summoned all five Thors to my aid, they'd never reach this kitchen in time.
I reached for my toast and crunched into it then looked up at Roarr with as unbothered an air as I could muster while I chewed.
I don't think he noticed the way my hand shook.
Finally, he expelled a breath and slumped back down into his own chair. "I was here all night with my parents," he said. "They can swear to that. They've been extra watchful since... well."
"I'm sure," I said.
"I don't own a boat, nor do I have access to one," he went on as if he hadn't heard me. "I guess I can't prove I didn't steal one from the harbor behind the waterfall."
"The Thors are comparing notes as we speak," I said. "If anyone did go down to the boats last night, I'll know soon enough."
"Then you'll know I'm not lying about that either," he said. Then he took a bite of his own toast, a bite half the size of the entire slice. "What more do you need from me?"
"Do you want to explain more about Gullveig?" I asked. "You said I had it all wrong. So enlighten me."
He washed his toast down with a long swallow of coffee, then wiped at his beard. "Did you know Gullveig was close with Lisa?"
"No, I don't think I did," I said. "I didn't think Gullveig spent much time with anyone from Runde."
"Not lately. Not since Lisa died," Roarr said. "But before? That was a different story. She even went to Duluth a few times to spend the weekend with Lisa at her college campus. They went to parties and things together. I only went to see Lisa one time. It was all too much for me. Too much noise, too many people, too many ways to say something wrong or stupid.
"But Gullveig doesn't have that problem. She loves noise and people, and she never feels foolish because of anything she said or did. She just fits in everywhere, you know?"
"I do," I said.
"But after Lisa died, I think all the joy that Gullveig took in your world, it died with her," Roarr went on. "She withdrew. Even here in Villmark, she didn't get out much. Not for weeks and weeks."
"Like you," I guessed.
"Like me," he agreed. "I've tried going back to my old routines, but they never feel right. I was starting to think they never would again. But then Gullveig was there, hanging with people from Villmark and people from Runde all together, just like she always used to. And she was, if not exactly as happy as she used to be, at least taking steps back to that place."
I sensed he needed a moment to gather his thoughts, so I didn't speak. I really wanted more of that toasted honey rye, but the crunch would be too loud, so I made do with another sip of coffee.
"I saw her moving forward, and I thought maybe I could do it too," Roarr said, his eyes on a melted pool of butter congealing on his plate. "I guess that was why I looked all lit up or whatever you thought you saw. I honestly don't remember this fellow you said I was glowering at. Like I said, she talked with everyone that night, and I had absolutely nothing to feel jealous over since I'm not now nor never was attracted to her in that way. But my mood did change that night. Because I can't push Lisa into my past as easily as Gullveig seemed to."
"That's understandable," I said. "You had different relationships with her. Your grief won't follow the same paths."
I was working hard to be diplomatic, playing the high-stakes round of "what would my grandmother do?" But I kept trying to recall exactly what I had seen in his eyes that night. It had been more than a week ago. Was my memory fuzzy? Was I imposing things on it in retrospect, in light of Gullveig's murder?
Or was Roarr lying to me now? Telling me what he thought I needed to hear to get me off his trail?
Was he that good of an actor?
He sighed and rubbed at his forehead, and the red tinge to his eyes grew a little more intense. "I guess you really don't understand what I went through, do you? Halldis kept you trapped, and you fought against it every moment with everything you had."
"I did," I said.
"Yeah, it was different with me," he said. "It was less aggressive, but more insidious. She took my feelings and my thoughts and my deeper impulses, and she subtly redirected them. Slowly, over time. Like training a vine to follow a trellis. The vine just thinks it's growing towards the sun, like it wants to. But the gardener is really the one in control."
"I'm not sure how I feel about that," I said. "Like you said, her spell was different on me. I'm not sure I'll ever know what it felt like to go through what you went through."
"You don't believe me," he said, his tone carefully inflectionless.
"I don't disbelieve you," I said. "I just don't know."
"Do you believe I had nothing to do with Gullveig's death?" he asked.
"For now," I said as I got up from the table. "Do you know what would help? You say Gullveig was close to Lisa in both worlds. You might stumble across a lead I'd never find on my own. I'm not asking you to investigate if that's too much for you to handle. If you need to just stay in and take care of yourself, I totally understand. But if you do hear anything that might help, let me know."
"I will," he said, also getting up to walk me to the front door. I snatched up the last of my toast to eat on my way back to my grandmother's house. "But I should warn you. I haven't been getting out much of late. I doubt I'll be able to turn up anything useful, even if I go hunting for it. I've... lost a lot of friends."
"Just, whatever you can do," I said. I held the toast in my mouth as I tied my boots so I couldn't speak again until I was stepping out the door. But I turned back to look at Roarr one last time. "The intention to help is the important thing. If you really want people to see you differently after all that happened with Lisa, you need to get out and become a part of things again. You have a lot of work to do to mend those bridges."
"Sure," he said, but he sounded tired, like he was about to lapse back into that fugue state, which would help no one. Least of all himself.
"I'll check in with you later," I said, and he nodded.
There was nothing I could say to him. Not until I had real time to invest in a proper conversation. So I just gave him a little wave, crossed his garden patio and let myself out of his front gate.
Chapter 6
I had closed the gate behind me and had just decided to head back to the cave to wait for Thoralv and hear what Thormund had said.
But then I saw Mjolner perched on a fence post on the other side of the street. He had been grooming his ears, not even looking my way, but I was sure he had been waiting for me. Especially after he finished bathing with a vigorous shake of his paw, then hopped down from the fence to slink up the cobblestone road, back across town towards the meadow.
When it looked like he knew exactly where he was going, I'd found it was usually a good idea to follow him. I ran to catch up and walk beside him. He gave me the briefest of glances out of the corner of his eye, but otherwise walked on as if on his own little stroll.
We passed through the cave, the bonfire now banked down to a soft glow of embers. Thoralv was still with his brother, then, or tending to another of the endless tasks those brothers shared. Mjolner didn't stop or even look around, so I pressed on as well.
He didn't stop at my grandmother's house either. The windows on the sides of the house that faced the road were smaller than on the other two sides, but I could see someone moving around in the kitchen. Probably my grandmother, but the only reason she would still be there so late in the day was because Jessica was still there with her.
"I thought your job was being an emotional support kitty today?" I said to Mjolner. He ignored me. Or at least, he didn't turn his head. But there was an indignant stiffness to the way he was holding his tail, as if I had offended him.
"Don't be mad. You're very good at it. I suppose that's how you wrapped up early? Jessica was doing well enough for you to slip away?"
The very end of his tail gave a little twitch. He had deigned to forgive me for treating him like a lackey, there for the pleasure of the humans.
No, he was most certainly not that.
We continued to where the road made a bend, shifting from following the river to following the lake shore. It was well past noon now, not that I could tell through the steely gray skies. But it was a high, benign cloud cover. No sign of the storm that my bones were still achingly foretelling.
A yellow fluttering something caught my eye. Police tape. Mjolner was heading towards it at his own slow pace, but I quickened my steps and lengthened my stride, anxious to see what the police had left behind.
The deep treads of tire marks on the gravelly beach. About a million footprints, the ones closer to the lake half-filled with water. Lots of little numbered flags that marked the location of since-removed pieces of evidence. And an enclosure of yellow tape that had already been snapped in several places by the ever-present wind.
I could tell where I wasn't supposed to go: the exact spot where Gullveig had still been lying when I had left this place earlier. But there was nothing else to show she had ever been here. Someone walking by now would have no idea what had happened here.
