Chapter 7 #3
“All right, ladies! Time for the next task,” Madam Brooch announces. “Each of us will share the Viking trait we admire most.”
Answers roll around the table. Loyalty. Strength. Protection. One woman offers “conquest” with a wiggle of her brows, and the table hoots.
Nettie doesn’t wait to be called on. “Abs. I admire their abs.”
The entire café erupts.
Bess drops her head into her hands. “I don’t know her.”
“Yes, you do,” Nettie says cheerfully. “We’re besties and you’re stuck with me.”
“I’m tragically aware,” Bess says, but she bumps her shoulder against Nettie’s as she does.
“For what it’s worth,” I tell the table, “she admires their loyalty too. It just lives underneath the abs.”
Madam Brooch quickly restores order and points across the table. “Freya, dear? What do you have to say?”
The striking woman with the waist-length raven braids, the same one I spotted arguing with Astrid at the sail-away party, grins. “The Viking trait I admire most is freedom. But abs are a close second.” She takes a moment to wink at Nettie, and the women laugh once again.
Freya. So that’s her name. Honestly, with the braids and the cape and enough silver to sink a rowboat, anything less Norse would’ve been false advertising.
“See?” Nettie gestures triumphantly at her new soulmate. “She gets it.”
Poppy offers a warm “Devotion” and collects approving nods from around the table.
Sienna clutches her battered messenger bag and raises a hand. “I admire mercy.”
The word lands heavy, and I wonder if she’s thinking about Astrid, whose reputation for mercy could fit inside a thimble with room left over for the thumb.
The woman in the “My Other Boyfriend Is a Viking” T-shirt breaks the silence. “Honey, the only mercy a Viking shows is letting you catch your breath between chapters.”
The table roars, and the moment passes for everyone but me.
Mercy. In a week like this one, that word isn’t traveling light.
I’m watching the dynamics while systematically destroying my second cinnamon bun of the day.
Poppy looks completely relaxed, chatting easily with the women on either side of her.
Sienna seems quieter, more withdrawn, but she’s smiling whenever people include her in conversation.
Freya’s on her phone briefly, but lots of people are.
Posting vacation photos or texting family back home, most likely.
“They all seem so nice,” Marina whispers my way.
“They do,” I agree. “Nettie’s already made about seventeen new best friends.”
“That’s because I’m very likable,” Nettie declares, somehow hearing us from three seats away.
“She has bionic ears and no shame,” Bess says. “It’s a dangerous combination.”
I nod because it is. Somewhere in Vermont, there’s an entire town that learned to whisper in code, and Nettie Butterworth is the reason.
Between cafés, Nettie insists we stop for a group photo beneath a bakery sign painted with grinning cartoon Vikings.
“More Vikings, less cinnamon!” she directs, organizing fifty women with the confidence of a wedding photographer on her third espresso.
“You, yes, you in the velvet, move left. Perfect. Now everyone say ‘Thor!’”
“Thor!” they sing with laughter.
Phones click away, capturing the moment from a dozen angles.
I notice in passing that Poppy and Freya end up on opposite ends of the group, but with fifty women elbowing into one frame, that hardly qualifies as suspicious.
I note it anyway. It’s probably nothing.
My list of things that are probably nothing could wallpaper a cruise ship.
Sienna stands toward the back, half hidden behind taller women, but she’s wearing a genuine smile, and it takes years off her. I hope she has nothing to do with any of this. I like her.
That’s the trouble with this inadvertent sleuthing hobby of mine. You start liking people right before you have to accuse them of murder.
“This is a blast,” one of the book club members shouts. “You ladies should join us for more events!”
“Done,” Nettie says without hesitation.
“We’ll consider it,” Bess translates.
“I already said done, but good try, Bessie.”
As the group starts drifting toward the third café, I spot Sienna slipping away down a narrow side street, moving with purpose.
Perfect.
I’m two steps into my pursuit when Marina appears beside me, her electronic notebook conspicuously absent. “Not without me, you don’t,” she says firmly.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I grin her way. “Now let’s go see what our friend Sienna is up to.”
Somewhere between Copenhagen and this cobblestone street, Marina traded her iPad for a magnifying glass, and I can’t say I mind the upgrade.
We head down the side street together, leaving Bess and Nettie behind to entertain the Velvet Vikings with further commentary on fictional men while gobbling up all the pastries they can get their hands on.
It turns out solving murders in Sweden requires a buddy system, excellent cinnamon buns, and a willingness to follow suspects through charming historic districts.
Time to question my first suspect.
With any luck, she’ll be my last.