Free The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2) by Neve Maslakovic Page B

have a bit of everything— Big Ol e bobbleheads shared shelf space with teepee Christmas ornaments. There were plastic Viking helmets, as well as runestone T-shirts, runestone mugs, and runestone license plate frames. As we waited for a customer to finish paying at the cash register, I rifled through the T-shirt rack to find one for Sabina and turned to see that Nate had donned one of the plastic helmets. It was gold, with horns like elephant tusks sticking out on either side, like he had a big U on his head. It looked ridiculous on him.
    “Well, what do you think?”
    “They didn’t really wear them, you know,” I said, suppressing laughter. “Dr. Holm told me that.”
    “Really? I’m crushed. I think I’ll buy it as a souvenir anyway.”
    “Should we tell them?” I nodded toward the cash register, where a museum staffer was ringing up a purchase.
    “I expect they’ll find out soon enough.”
    We bought the helmet along with the T-shirt for Sabina and headed into the main display area. The small museum was nearly empty, and most of the guests were families with small children in tow.
    Propped up on a stand inside a protective glass case, the runestone held the spot of honor. Around it, wall panels explained the meaning of the runes and the history of the stone. Off to the side were more display rooms with exhibits on pioneer and Native American life.
    My first impression was that the runestone seemed small, smaller than I had expected from the poster in the Coffey Library and the picture of Quinn’s grandfather with it. About the size and shape of a tombstone, it was dark gray, except for the lower left corner, where there was a triangle of lighter gray. A nearby panel noted that the stone weighed just over two hundred pounds.
    My second impression, possibly influenced by all the kitsch we had just seen in the gift shop, was one that immediately made me relax: It’s fake .
    Because these were not runes carved in a hurry; they couldn’t have been. Steady hands had worked neatly and painstakingly—stick-like symbols followed one another in careful row after row, nine rows in all, covering well over half of the face of the stone. As if the carver had decided to give up and switch surfaces upon reaching the light-gray and rougher bottom third of the stone, the text continued on one side. The three additional rows of runes were there, and, near one edge, someone had chiseled an H . I was pleased to see that the modern letter didn’t look any different from the runes themselves—that is to say, neither the runes nor the H seemed very old at all.
    “Which part is the date?” Nate asked, consulting some of the support materials on the walls.
    “Here.” I pointed. “The symbol that looks like half a T, that’s the number one. The one that looks like an F is the number two, and so on. The six has that funny loop.”
    We circled to the other side of the glass cabinet, where a detail on the back of the stone caught our attention. Parallel scratches ran down the uncarved side, as if the stone had been dragged across something sharp.
    Nate explained that it must have been the other way around. “I’ve seen those before. Glacial markings. They’re from when the stone was part of the bedrock and a glacier passed on top of it, dragging rocks with it. Those tracks were made before the stone itself was dislodged and moved by the glacier.”
    At an angle across the back of the stone were two wavy lines, newer and sharper looking, thin and white, with one continuing down the side of the stone. The roots of the aspen, tracing out a path as the tree grew over the stone? I didn’t like it. It matched Olof Ohman’s account.
    “Looks like the tree roots left a mark. How old was the tree when it was cut down?” Nate asked.
    I remembered that from my reading. “A decade or two seemed to be the consensus.”
    “Doesn’t that put Olof Ohman in the clear? He had bought the land, what, only a few years previously?”
    “I