15

 

Freja

 

I curled beneath the table quietly fuming. How dare he? And apparently, I wasn’t the only one who should be upset. All those hilarious individuals whom I had grown to love as they sat in full color on my coffee table, were they all like me? Real people, gifted with an apocalyptic experience by a conniving artist. They must be. The briefcase trolley guy, the woman who lost her toddler’s teddy bear to a marauding peregrine falcon, even my personal favorite, the “Free Elephant Ride At The Zoo” octogenarians. If I’d been a rabid fox, I would have been frothing from the mouth and snarling. As it was, I was awfully close, even without the aid of a saliva-borne illness.

I turned away from the clapping art lovers and Axel Rasmussen’s putrescent canvases. OK, so the art show was a bust. My favorite artist was a charlatan.

But that was not why I had come to Denmark. I had family who had lived and loved and died in this country. I had a cousin who couldn’t wait to meet me, but was terribly late. I had a grandmother who had sought me out posthumously. A loving kinswoman who had sent me on a foreign vacation with a key that fit into an elephant’s nostril, given a similar key to some jerk with a big dog, and brought us both to this beautiful hotel simultaneously. Wow, this didn’t look suspicious at all.

August’s grandfather had been obsessed with the beautiful Cinderella Bandit, jewel thief and shoe fashionista. August gets a key. I get a key and instructions to visit the jewels. We both get a fancy brunch with a precise table specified.

Surely, my grandmother wouldn’t send an innocent relation on a jewel hunt, in a foreign country, with an ill-mannered stranger? That wasn’t safe at all. I thought grandmothers were supposed to buy their granddaughters pepper spray every year for Christmas and become fraught with worry if they were thirty seconds late from getting the mail?

I peered out from under my table at my most favorite artist ever. Hmmm. Not everyone was as nice or as naive as Bret. My artist hero was a fraud, what exactly had my grandmother been?

But it didn’t matter anymore. The key had been stolen, my fancy brunch was ruined, Freja had never shown up. All I could do now was eat as many authentic Danish pastries as possible and survive until my flight departed on Thursday.

Unless Maks the alley thug hadn’t taken the key…why would he? He’d stolen my purse as part of my great and marvelous Axel Rasmussen worthy day. My purse was probably in a dumpster somewhere or maybe right here in the hotel. Of course, Maks stole it for Axel Rasmussen, he would have handed it over to Axel Rasmussen. And Mr. Rasmussen was staying here in the Nimb Hotel.

I crept out from under the table and shot a look at the fabulous Axel Rasmussen that I would just like to see him try to paint. My purse was here somewhere. I wasn’t going to slink out of Denmark shamed by marvelously talented artists and gigantic purse-snatching actors alike. Oh no, I would do everything in my power to find that stupid key. Then, I would find August’s stupid key.

And then, by all that was holy, we would cram them up that elephant’s snout and discover what exactly my grandmother had meant with all these mysterious packages.

I took all of ten steps before I spotted him.

Maks stood at the back of the room talking to my least favorite coffee table artist.

Axel had left his beloved sketches to hold a hushed argument with the massive man in a suspiciously dark corner of the lounge.

Looking at Maks with his awesome height and broad, meaty shoulders, a cold unsettling thought touched my mind. What if Maks had done something to Freja? What if she had gotten all mixed up in this purse fiasco and Maks had hurt her or taken her somewhere?

I slipped off my shoes and crept toward them. Clacking girly shoes were not going to keep me from finding my possibly injured cousin and most certainly pilfered purse.

Maks nodded at something Axel was hissing in his ear. Then he turned and lumbered off down the hall. I waited for the artist to return to his adoring fans and followed Maks on silent feet. I lost him after five turns. But after visiting the beautifully furnished restroom and swinging back by the buffet table for one more croissant, I heard his deep growling voice coming from a narrow door back behind the kitchens.

“I tell you, the girl didn’t have the key,” said Maks.

“She must have hidden it in her room or somewhere in her clothes.” The second voice belonged to a young woman with a faint Danish accent. “I’ll deal with Morgan. You concentrate on August. He’s here somewhere. Just follow the destruction. That dog will be nearby.”

What did they want with August? I peeked around the corner and caught a glimpse of Maks’s massive back in the doorway.

A petite blonde stood behind him. She wore a delicate yellow scarf clasped to her throat with a cameo. The scarf was identical to mine.

My scarf had come in the mail from my cousin, Freja. She’d also sent baby pictures of our mothers playing on a grassy lawn in pale flowered gowns and floppy little hats. The scarves were supposed to be worn to the brunch to help us locate each other. How could the girl who had mailed me those beautiful photos, be standing there talking to Maks? But of course, she was. Everything else had gone wrong. Why not my touching family reunion as well?

Freja was apparently not quite as passionate to connect with long-lost relatives as she was to get her grubby paws on my antique key. My grandmother’s key. Maks wasn’t stealing my purse for a great candid photo. He wanted the key. And that meant Axel Rasmussen wanted the key. What in the world had my grandmother gotten me into?