Island Getaway, An Art Crime Team Mystery by Jenna Bennett

there. You
would have heard it if he’d said anything. I guess he just didn’t
want to talk anymore.”
    “Huh,” Curt said.
    “At least I found someone who remembers him.
Maybe there’s someone else, too.”
    She turned around, just as the waitress
pushed her way over to their table. She stopped beside Annika and
folded her arms under her breasts, which pushed the already
impressive cleavage up to epic proportions. “What happened?”
    “Excuse me?”
    The waitress tossed her head in the
direction of the door. “What did you say to Gustav?”
    “Nothing. I mean, nothing that should have
made him run away.”
    The waitress didn’t look convinced. “He’s
not a bad guy, you know. He drinks too much, but other than that
he’s harmless.”
    “I’m sure he is,” Annika said. “I wasn’t
giving him a hard time. I was just telling him about my
father.”
    “Your father?”
    It hadn’t crossed Annika’s mind to talk to
the waitress, who was a decade or more younger than Carl Magnusson
had been. But maybe she should. If she were local, the woman looked
like she might have been in her teens when Annika’s father
left.
    “His name was Carl Magnusson. He grew up
here, and then he left. Thirty-some years ago.”
    The waitress shook her head. “Long before my
time. I’m from the mainland. I haven’t been here that long. Gustav
has.”
    “What’s wrong with him?” Curt asked.
    The waitress bristled. “Nothing’s wrong with
him. He’s a lonely old man who sometimes drinks too much.”
    “Is he married?”
    The woman shook her head. “Never has been,
that I know of. He lives alone in a little cottage outside the
wall, and then he comes into town to get drunk at night.”
    “Does he have a job?”
    “He’s retired,” the waitress said. “Used to
be the janitor for the police department. He’s not that smart,
Gustav. But there’s no harm in him.”
    Annika hadn’t thought there was. “Do you
think he might talk to me more if I go see him tomorrow? When he
hasn’t been drinking?”
    The waitress shrugged, setting shoulders and
breasts into jiggling motion. “If you can catch him. He spends most
of his time walking the dunes, waving a metal detector.”
    “Looking for buried treasure?” Curt
suggested with a grin.
    The waitress spared him a glance. “It
happens all the time. Between 700 and 800 hoards of Viking coins
have been dug up on Gotland. You can’t hardly put a spade in the
ground here without coming up with a coin or two.”
    “Why is that?” Annika asked. If she’d had
access to her eReader and her guide books, she’d probably know this
information by now, but since she didn’t...
    The waitress turned back to her. “Visby was
a big trading center during the middle ages. One of the wealthiest
towns in Europe. People were always afraid of being sacked, so they
hid some of their wealth where no one would find it.”
    “Like when Valdemar IV attacked in
1361?”
    The waitress nodded. “Gustav finds a bit of
loot once in a while. Someone’s wedding ring once, that had been
lost on one of the beaches. There was a small reward for that. And
a few years back, he stumbled over a treasure trove in a field down
on the southern side of the island. A few hundred Viking age coins
and a crucifix.”
    “What happened to it?” Surely you didn’t get
to keep something like that if you found it?
    “It’s in the museum,” the waitress said.
“There are so many old silver coins in that place it’s a wonder it
doesn’t sink into the ground from the weight.” She smiled.
    Annika smiled back, making a mental note to
visit the museum. She would also seek Gustav out again. He’d known
her father, and when he hadn’t been drinking—and when she was
alone—maybe he’d be more inclined to talk to her. Curt was nice,
but he was perhaps a little... direct.
    “Where does Gustav live, did you say?”
    “Cottage,” the waitress said. “Outside the
wall. If you head out through the North gate,