“Relax.” Eiric clapped him on the back. “I’ll come back in a couple of days to see her.”
Nils’ pale-gray eyes opened wide. “You never visit so often.”
Ingrid appeared at that moment with a plate full of crispy fried fish and a mound of roasted potatoes, interrupting the conversation. Eiric gratefully accepted the food from her and popped a fry into his mouth. So he wasn’t the most attentive boss. The place ran just fine without his interference, turning enough profit to be a worthwhile investment. But apparently, he was absent so much, his employees were used to running things without him.
He faced Ingrid. “Do you remember seeing Mikkel at the bar the night he died? One of the local guys said he had company.”
The police had established a timeline leading up to the accident, which was actually very thorough of them, but sinceto them, nothing pointed at foul play, they hadn’t bothered following through with an investigation of Mikkel’s mysterious companion. It might have been a friend, but Mikkel didn’t have many local friends, not that Eiric knew about.
None of them did. It was a side effect of having too many secrets. It was easier to keep people at a distance than to risk blabbing to them in a moment of weakness.
Ingrid chewed over his question. “I know I saw him in the restaurant, but I wasn’t paying attention to him.” Her mouth pulled down at the corners. “Such a shame about that accident. He was a good boy.”
Nils snorted and covered it with a cough. Ingrid glared at him, then hustled to fill an order that came from another waiter.
Eiric, however, turned to his manager and lifted his eyebrows.
Nils sighed. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.”
Eiric waited, silent, for the inevitable. Nils was a good—if somewhat too-chatty—source of information.
“Oh, fine,” the younger man blurted out. “Your brother probably hooked up with every unattached woman between the ages of twenty and forty, and sometimes he didn’t even bother to check the ‘unattached’ part.” Nils waved his hand in the air. “‘Good boy’ is the worst possible description for him.”
This was hardly news to him. Still, it didn’t paint his brother in a very flattering light, especially if Charlotte’s claim about the paternity of her babies was true.
Speaking of…
“Do you remember him picking up a woman named Charlotte? That would have been…” He counted on his fingers. She’d said the babies were five months old, so… “Sometime last winter. January, or maybe February.”
Nils’ eyes went round. “No way! He’s Lottie’s baby daddy?”
Eiric snapped to attention. “You know her?”
“Of course,” Nils said. “She’s the nurse at Dr. Teigland’s office. We’ve all been wondering if it was him, because people saw them together, but she never said.”
He thought about that. Charlotte—Lottie—seemed to be the subject of local gossip. Nothing surprising in that: she was an attractive single mother. He was shocked the single men in the village weren’t banging at her door. Blinking, he realized that she might have a partner already. She didn’t seem to be searching for Mikkel to restart some ill-advised romance, only to get him to sign some papers. Maybe she had already found someone to spend her life with. His temper soured, and he forced his mind to focus back on what Nils was saying.
“…and she organizes tea parties for old people here.”
“She what? Why haven’t I heard about this?”
Nils was gawking at him as though he’d grown a second head. “Because you’re not interested in day-to-day business?” He said that as a question, but they both knew it was true. “And those tea parties don’t make a lot of profit. It’s usually seven or eight guests, not counting Lottie, and she negotiated a special senior discount for them.” The manager paused for a moment, frowning. “She’s an excellent negotiator.”
Eiric didn’t doubt that. She’d been persuasive and determined earlier. She also seemed to be much more a part of this community than he was, even though her Norwegian was barely passable and she even looked like a foreigner. It wasn’t her physique so much as her clothes and manner that had struck him as different, though she was slighter than most people here. The locals were sturdy, big, sensible people made to withstand the harsh winters this land endured, but Lottie wore a bright yellow parka and a blue hat the exact same shade as her eyes. He wondered how she’d coped during the long, dark period with two young children, and wished he’d been there to help her.
“So she and Mikkel had been dating?”
Godsdamnit, he hadn’t meant to ask that. Refusing to meet Nils’ gaze, he stared into his half-empty glass.
“Mm.” Nils tapped the bar with his fingers. “I wouldn’t exactly call itdating. I only saw them together once. It was a Friday night, and we had some live music. They’d both been drinking, so I’d say it was more of a one-time thing. Lottie’s been here for a while, but that was the only instance I’ve seen her take a man home.”
For all his youth, Nils was a shrewd judge of character, so Eiric had no reason to question his reasoning. But something bothered him—even if Mikkelhadbeen drinking, he wouldn’t have been drunk. Lottie, on the other hand…
He glared at Nils. “When you say they’d been drinking… She wasn’ttoodrunk to leave with him, was she?”
Nils frowned right back. “Do you really think we’d let her do that?”
Eiric rubbed his face with his palms. “No, I suppose not. Sorry.”
