Free Island Getaway, An Art Crime Team Mystery by Jenna Bennett Page B

smile.
    Annika blinked at him. “Why do you
care?”
    “I want you to find out who your father
was,” Curt said. “Come on. Before he gets too drunk to understand
what we’re asking.” He got up from the bench.
    “Fine.” Annika followed, reluctantly. “But
if he didn’t know my father, I’m not asking anyone else. I’ll check
the church registers and the newspaper archives tomorrow, but I’m
not making a fool of myself tonight.”
    Curt didn’t answer, just gave her a look
over his shoulder.
    It was fine for him, Annika thought as she
followed him across the floor, threading her way past tables and
benches. He obviously didn’t have any trouble talking to strangers;
just look at the way he’d picked her up on the ferry earlier. Going
up to a perfect stranger and starting a conversation probably
didn’t make him feel nauseous, the way it did her.
    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