No Fixed Line (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 22)

by Dana Stabenow

  It rang once, and Jane answered.

  Kate recognized the voice at once. “Jane Morgan?”

  “Yes.” A pause. “Kate Shugak?”

  “Yes.”

  Another pause. “I’ve been expecting your call.”

  “Have you.”

  “Erland named you his trustee.”

  “So I hear.”

  Another, much longer pause. Jane cleared her throat. “Perhaps you’d like to come into the office.”

  The offices of the Bannister Foundation were in a building still under construction in a business park in midtown. The building consisted of five connected cubes of two to five floors each collected around a half-moon of what Kate presumed would be grass come spring, no doubt with an appropriately tasteless lump of alleged art holding down the middle of it. Scaffolding climbed one side of the farthest right cube and a power tool was making a statement from somewhere inside the visqueen wrapping the scaffolding. A workman in a pair of disintegrating Carhartt’s bibs ducked out from under the plastic to rummage in a toolbox. Builders wore paint stains and nail holes on their bibs like badges of honor. It conferred even more cachet if they hadn’t been washed since the Truman administration. Call it the Carhartt swagger.

  She parked in what would be a parking lot one day, and looked at Mutt. “Stay or go?” She opened her door and Mutt answered with a graceful leap that took her over Kate and through the opening into a neat four-point landing next to the Subaru. “Okay then,” Kate said, and climbed down after her.

  The main lobby occupied the first floor of the central and tallest building and brought the steel-and-glass ambience of the exterior inside in a palette of grays and, well, more grays. The walls were a light slate, the ceiling a pale taupe, the fixtures including the door handles were brushed nickel and the tiles of the floor were eighteen-inch squares of granite that looked like it had been cut out of the surface of the Knik Glacier. There were two conversation areas with club chairs and love seats in shades of gray around coffee tables painted, for a change, black. It was the ne plus ultra in interior design, no doubt, but it reminded Kate irresistibly of a phrase from a Tennyson poem—“dead perfection,” that was it. The place felt like a columbarium.

  A large counter stood at the back of the lobby, behind which sat a man dressed in a suit with an earbud in his right ear. He looked up, saw Mutt, and said, “No dogs allowed here, ma’am.”

  She smiled. “We’re here to see Jane Morgan at the Bannister Foundation.”

  “There is no one by that name.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Sanderson. I’ll take it from here.”

  Kate looked around to see Jane Morgan. “It’s not Morgan anymore,” Jane said. “I went back to Wardwell.”

  Jane was Jack’s ex and Johnny’s mother and possibly the original Kate-hater, even before that time when Kate burgled her apartment, made off with the password to her bank account and credit card, both subsequently used to great effect on a shopping spree. Which had accomplished its goal to divert Jane from fighting Jack for custody of Johnny, but which also, Kate was willing to admit now, might have been a little extreme. Not that she would ever say that out loud, or apologize for it, either.

  “This way,” Jane said, and led the way to an elevator containing nickel-framed mirrors that showed their reflections studiously avoiding each other’s gaze. Jane looked good, if a little strained. Kate wondered if Jane mourned Erland. She wondered what Erland had left Jane in his will, if anything.

  They were whisked to the top floor and the door opened onto a reception desk and half a dozen office doors behind it. They were all closed, and the reception desk was vacant.

  “Where is everyone?” Kate said. “Surely you don’t run this place alone?”

  “Staff are on holiday,” Jane said dismissively. “This way, please, Ms. Shugak.”

  Kate nearly looked around to see who she was talking to. Jane wasn’t one to waste politesse on Kate, especially when her son had joined Team Kate at his earliest opportunity.

  The office was in the corner with two walls glassed in that had a lovely view of Knik Arm and Mt. Susitna to the south. It was a distinct relief from the undertaker vibe that had continued up from the lobby. “This was Erland’s office,” Jane said.

  A large black desk took up one corner, a suite of club chairs (gray, of course) occupied another, and a set of filing cabinets a third. Everything looked bare and unlived in. The desk didn’t even have a phone on it, much less a computer. “Did you clean it out after Erland died?” Kate said.

  Jane shook her head. “It was always like this.”

  “And Erland ran the foundation out of here?”

  “He was rarely here,” Jane said. She remained standing as Kate walked around to the other side of the desk. It didn’t even have drawers; it was basically a lower-case Helvetica “n” in bold.

  She looked up at Jane. “He had to have a laptop.”

  “I believe he kept everything on his phone.”

  “Do you have his phone?”

  “I put all of his personal items in his safety deposit box at Last Frontier Bank.”

  “Of course.” Kate came out from behind the desk and pulled open a drawer in one of the filing cabinets. Empty. She pulled another open at random. Also empty. She turned. “Do you have a laptop?”

  “I do.”

  “Show me.”

  They walked to the opposite corner of the floor, furnished in exactly the same fashion as Erland’s office. Instead of Knik Arm and Susitna the view was of the mountains. The star was nearer and perforce a little brighter from this distance. “What is your position here?” Kate said.

  “I’m Erland’s executive assistant.”

  “Who is the foundation’s executive director?”

  “Erland was its executive director,” Jane said.

  Kate’s eyebrows went up. “He was the ED of his own charitable foundation?”

  “Yes.”

  Not unlawful so far as Kate knew, but the optics were not the best. “Did he name someone to take over when he died?”

  “You’re the trustee,” Jane said. She sat down at her desk, which held an actual laptop, and tapped a key. “Did you want to—”

  “Hold it,” Kate said. “If I’m the trustee, I’m now de facto the executive director of the Bannister Foundation?”

  Jane sat back in her chair. “There is no one else.” In a rare moment, she allowed a wrinkle to crease her forehead and almost immediately remembered to smooth it out again. “Have you not read the will?”

  “The only representative of Erland’s I’ve spoken to thus far is Eugene Hutchinson,” Kate said with perfect if incomplete truth. “Have you seen it?”

  “No, but I’ve been privy to Erland’s business dealings since…” Jane hesitated, “since he was free once again to pursue said interests, and—”

  “He hired you right after he got out of prison?”

  “Yes.”

  “What, he put out an ad and you applied?”

  Jane’s expression became even more wooden. “He approached me.”

  “How, exactly?”

  “How is that relevant? Or any of your business?”

  “It’s part of the Bannister Foundation’s history,” Kate said in her blandest voice.

  Jane was six inches taller than Kate and slender, with milk-pale skin and pale blue eyes a little too small and too near together, which made her look ever so slightly cross-eyed. Her hair was so blond it was almost colorless and she was dressed in a gray (naturally) two-piece suit over a silk shirt with a bow neatly tied at the neck. The look was completed by gray pumps with two-inch heels and pearl button earrings. She couldn’t have been more self-effacing if she’d gone over herself with an eraser before she’d left for work that morning.

  Kate’s silence was more powerful than her own so Jane said, reluctantly, “I was working at the BLM. He called and offered to triple my salary and benefits.”

  “Irresistible,” Kate said.
“Completely understandable. Tell me, were you aware of his history, and did you think the job offer might have something to do with me?”

  Anger flashed briefly in the other woman’s eyes but at least she didn’t pretend not to know what Kate meant. Mutt, standing next to Kate and attending all this with wide eyes that seemed eerily to understand every word that was said, might have had something to do with that. “I knew it did. He told me when I came in for the interview.” She cleared her throat pointedly and indicated her laptop. “Did you want to look at our books?”

  “I’m guessing that my taking the laptop will be frowned upon?”

  Jane took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I—before I allowed you to do that, I’d have to check with Mr. Hutchinson. For one thing, I oversee the grant applications and implement the distribution of the grants with this laptop. It’s the essential tool for my job.”

  Kate nodded agreeably. “Excuse me?” Jane stood up and took a step back from her desk, mostly because Kate had stepped forward into her personal space, and still more when she pulled out Jane’s chair and sat down in it. She pulled out the new thumb drive Kurt had given her the day before and plugged it into the side of the laptop. The screen lit up with the password prompt. “Jane?” she said.

  Jane reached around Kate with one hand and typed the password in, and the desktop popped up. The wallpaper was generic pretty blue sky with a line of folders down the left-hand side. Kate clicked on Finder, hit Command All, and sent all files and folders to the thumb drive.

  Mutt’s eyes popped up over the edge of the desk and sent an inquiring look Kate’s way. “Almost there,” Kate said to her, and shortly thereafter unplugged the thumb drive and put it back in her pocket. She stood up and walked around to the other side of the desk. “I’ll take a day or two to look over the files,” she said, “and then I’ll be back.”

  “In the meantime?”

  Kate smiled at Jane. “Business as usual. After all, you’re doing nothing but good work here, isn’t that right?”

  “That is correct,” Jane said. “We’re funding worthwhile projects all over the state of Alaska, from women’s shelters to libraries to renewable resource companies. You’ll find all of the grants, awarded and pending, in the files. They’re listed on our website as well.”

  “I’ll be looking at both. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” There was a brief flash of feeling in Jane’s eyes, gone too quickly to identify. Defeat? Resentment? Triumph, perhaps?

  Kate and Mutt retired in good order, the outer office as yawningly vacant of personnel as before. “I don’t know how anything gets done around here, do you?” she said to Mutt as they stepped into the elevator.

  Mutt shook her head vigorously and sneezed. They exited the elevator under the professionally suspicious eyes of the guard at the security station and escaped the grim lobby into the fresh, cold air outside. A power tool went BRAT! BRAA-AAAT! BRRRAAA-AAT! above her head and she looked up to see the guy in the Carhartts grinning down at her through a gap in the visqueen. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey yourself,” she said.

  “Nice dog.”

  Mutt obligingly gave an enthusiastic wave of her tail. “Thanks,” Kate said. “You look like you’re about to finish up here.”

  He made a face. “It’s been ready to occupy since October. We’re just replacing some tile that blew off in the last storm.” He shook his head, disgusted. “We told the architect and the builder this would happen, but of course they didn’t listen.”

  A voice from inside the visqueen said, “You’re working, aren’t you, Red?”

  “And getting paid for it, too, yeah, yeah,” Red said, and looked back down at her. “What’s your name?”

  “Kate. And Mutt.”

  “Hello, Kate and Mutt. We’re about to knock off for lunch. Want to join us?”

  “Thanks, Red, it’d be great, but I’m working, too.”

  “Aw.” He had a very nice smile and he was only about fifteen years younger than she was. Nice to know she still had it.

  “Did you say this building is ready to occupy, Red?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Does that mean it isn’t occupied now?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Only ever seen more than a couple people and the security guards going in, is all.”

  “Huh. Well, nice meeting you, Red.”

  “Woof,” Mutt said, which made his smile even brighter.

  “Slut,” Kate said.

  BBRRAAAA-AAT! BRAAAA-AAAAT!

  The louder the tool, the bigger the penis.

  Her phone rang as she was climbing into the Subaru and the caller started talking before she had time to say hello. “Shugak, I know you’re in town. Get your ass over here, I got some questions.” Click.

  Kate looked at Mutt. “What do you think? Did Brillo just get around to autopsying Erland and find out that he was gruesomely murdered as he lay defenseless in his hospital bed?” A happy thought struck her. “And maybe Jane did it?”

  Mutt’s silence reeked of skepticism, and Kate sighed and turned the key in the ignition. “Yeah, you’re right. Too much to hope for.”

  They drove east on Tudor until they reached the massive crime fighting complex where the good guys figured out how to put the bad guys away, or not. She presented herself at the desk and was waved through to the sanctum sanctorum, where awaited a fireplug of an individual whose energy crackled through his body and sparked off the ends of his hair, which resembled a Brillo pad, hence the nickname. He pounced. “Shugak! You took your time getting here.”

  “You called, like, five minutes ago.”

  He waved that away and regarded Mutt with disfavor. “So, you’re back from the dead now, too, are you? Because the universe decided I need a four-footed lupine enforcer in my life just this minute.” But he slipped her a Milkbone or three when they both thought Kate wasn’t looking.

  “What’s up, Brillo?” Kate said.

  “What’s up is your bimbo boyfriend’s still sending me bodies from that goddamn Park of yours. He quit, that prick, he’s not supposed to be drumming up business for me anymore.”

  “I’ll pay you twenty bucks, cash money, if you’ll call him ‘bimbo boyfriend’ in person.”

  He walked over to one of the tables and whipped back the plastic sheet.

  “Okay,” Kate said, “first of all: Ew.”

  Mutt showed her teeth and went over to sit by the door in a manner strongly indicating her preference for their immediate next move.

  “Be grateful, he’s still partially frozen, keeps the smell down. Chopin found him at the site of that aircraft that went into your mountains on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Where’s his other half?”

  “Wheeeere’s the reeeeeeest of meeeeeee?” Ronald Reagan Brillo was not. “Unknown and Chopin says the weather window on finding it was closing before they even left the site.”

  “How’d he wind up like this?”

  Brillo shrugged. “The plane hit a mountain and stopped and he kept going. Recognize him?”

  Kate had thus far avoided looking at the dead man’s face, but now she stepped to the head of the table and looked down. Her brow creased. “I don’t—oh.”

  “Yeah,” Brillo said. “Took me a second, too, no surprise.”

  “Gary Curley.”

  “The same.”

  “Well,” Kate said, “I can’t be sorry to see him sliced right across his groin. I just wish I could believe he was awake and aware through every excruciating nanosecond of it.”

  “Hard to work up much sympathy,” Brillo said, nodding. “Or any. But what was he doing in the air in the middle of the Quilak Mountains in the middle of one of the worst storms in living memory?”

  She looked up to meet Brillo’s eyes, which blinked at her from behind lenses so thick she could see her own reflection in them, and thought of the two children in the Grosdidiers’ clinic. “I couldn’t begin to tell you. Why should I care?”

/>   “Because of what else Chopin found at the site.” He walked over to his desk and held up an evidence bag. Inside it was a Ziploc bag crammed to bursting with thousands of small white round pills.

  Kate, did she but know it, channeled her inner Jim in a single, heartfelt, “Shit.”

  Seven

  THURSDAY, JANUARY 3

  Niniltna

  “IT’S A CULTURAL THING, AND I DON’T mean if you belong to a tribe or which one or no tribe at all,” Jim said. “Everything is shipped into Alaska, so it follows that if you own something with moving parts you shipped it in at a tremendous expense you’d rather not repeat, thanks. Therefore you’re going to learn how to make it go and keep it going. Bush Alaskans are a culture of fixers, hoarders, and make-doers.”

  “No argument here,” Bobby said, passing the potatoes.

  Jim ladled a small mountain on his plate and accepted the caribou steaks, spearing half a dozen on his fork. Bobby had done his bread-and-fry-and-finish-in-the-oven-with-wine special, and Jim could feel the drool pooling in his mouth. He’d been hungry since they came down from Canyon Hot Springs. Hard work in cold weather conditions burned more calories than anything else in his experience. Shoveling out his hangar one day, mountain sledding the next, another day shoveling out the hangar—it felt like he’d lost five pounds since last year. He was glad when Bobby called to order his ass into town for dinner. With Kate, Mutt, and the kids all gone the house felt pretty empty.

  “What we need is someone who builds snowmobiles or four-wheelers. They’re for fun on the road system and basic transportation in the Bush. But then of course you’re back where you started because you have to ship in all the crap you need to build them. And that’s before you even start talking about fuel.” He had to stop talking because his mouth was filled with food, glorious food.

  “Good, huh, Jim?”

  He looked up to see six-year-old Katya beaming at him from across the table, her many-braided hair standing up around her face like a dark aureole and her mouth full of potatoes. “No talking with your mouth full,” said her mother for all mothers everywhere.