The Heirloom Murders by Kathleen Ernst Page A

structures moved from all over the state and painstakingly restored, were situated within the Kettle Moraine State Forest. Prairies, woods, and kettle ponds provided a natural visual buffer to modern intrusions.
    “You can see the Norwegian and Danish farms another day,” Chloe said finally. “We need to catch the farmer before he’s done for the night.”
    Slapping at mosquitoes, they walked a nature trail to the Ketola Farm, a Finnish homestead restored to its 1915 appearance. Chloe introduced Markus to the historic farmer, a laconic blonde-bearded man named Larry. Markus asked questions about the stump fence, the reproduction root cellar, the DeLaval cream separator, the young steers bellowing for attention in the pasture. In the big dairy barn, he ran an appreciative hand over a Jersey’s rump. “Do you get enough milk to support the site’s food program?”
    “Well, pretty much,” Larry said. “Cheese, butter, milk for cooking … it starts right here.”
    Markus grinned. “You’ve managed the ideal! Most sites have to set things up for show. It’s so much harder to actually make an agricultural system work as it should—to make the farm exhibits self-sufficient.”
    “Oh,” Chloe said softly. Markus shot her a quizzical glance, and she waved a hand to say, No, nothing. But it wasn’t nothing. For just a moment she’d felt a flush of the old affection, the old admiration for Markus’s energy, the old comfort of a shared passion for living history. For just a moment she had forgotten all the ugliness.
    Which was unsettling. “I’ll wait outside,” she announced. She turned her back on the men, left the barn, and walked across the farmyard.
    The interpreters had locked the sauna when they left for the day, but Chloe had a key and she let herself inside. It was her favorite building on the site, and she sank onto one of the benches in front of the fire pit. The building smelled of smoke because the interpreters sometimes built a fire, heating rocks before splashing them with cold water to demonstrate the old Finnish ritual of steam baths. Chloe closed her eyes.
    Most of the historic buildings on the site gave her jumbled impressions, the mix of emotional residue that built up in layers over time. Not this one. She could sense the Finnish women who had once found respite in this tiny room; could feel their calm, their sense of safe respite, the strength they called sisu , emanating from the fibers of wood and stone.
    Perhaps ten minutes later she heard tires crunch on gravel outside, the slam of a car door, then tentative footsteps in the entryway. Dellyn poked her head around the inner door. “Hey,” she said, her eyebrows arching toward the headscarf that covered her hair. She wore her usual on-site garb: long black skirt, faded blouse, dirty apron. “Um … why are you sitting in the sauna?”
    “It’s peaceful in here,” Chloe said. “The Finnish women came in here together, you know? And not just to bathe. They even came in here to give birth. I can picture this building as it was for them, clean and safe and warm.” She shrugged, a little embarrassed. “Sitting in here helps me calm down.”
    Dellyn sank down on the bench beside her. “Do you need to calm down?”
    Chloe reminded herself that Dellyn’s problems were much bigger than her own. “Mostly I’m here because a guy from Ballenberg is talking to Larry in the barn.”
    Dellyn circled one hand in a Keep going gesture. “And …”
    “He’s an old, um, acquaintance.”
    “It’s your ex, isn’t it! The guy you lived with in Switzerland.”
    Chloe sighed. She’d never mentioned her personal past to Dellyn, but the historic sites’ community was like any other. “Yeah.”
    “Are you OK?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Thanks. But how are you? How did things go with Simon?”
    “Oh … all right, I suppose. Bonnie’s letter shook him.”
    Chloe leaned back against the next higher bench. “Bonnie didn’t send