Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead
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and took a moment to collect her thoughts.
A Styrofoam cup full of coffee, heavily creamed, appeared at her elbow.
She looked up, surprised. "Thanks, Jim."
He served Billy, too; Anne, pale and tight-lipped, waved him aside.
"Darlene Shelikof hired Paula Pawlowski to do research for Anne
Gordaoff's campaign." She sipped the coffee; it went down hot and strong
and sweet. "What she didn't know was that Paula Pawlowski was a writer
as well as a researcher. Darlene told her to look up things about Peter
Heiman that Anne Gordaoff could use in her campaign for Pete's office.
Moreover, she told Paula to research Anne's family history, too, in case
Pete had somebody doing the same thing, so the Gordaoff campaign
wouldn't be blindsided by any dirt the other side dug up."
Anne looked at Darlene, who looked at no one.
"I had dinner with Paula Pawlowski in Ahtna before she died. She loved
research. She said it was addictive; you couldn't stop once you'd
started. Plus she was writing a novel about Alaska, part of which took
place during the Gold Rush, and both Anne's and Peter's families have
roots in the Gold Rush."
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She looked at Jim. "Along the way she found out other stuff, too, like
Jeff Hosford was working for a law firm connected to Pete Heiman's
campaign, and on instruction from Anne Seese, a partner in that firm who
has been sleeping with Pete Heiman since before statehood, he had wooed
Erin Gordaoff with a view toward getting a toehold with Anne. That
succeeded beyond everyone's wildest dreams; he took up the post of
fund-raiser." She looked at Anne. "How'd he do, Anne?"
Anne, looking sick and angry, said, "My daughter's fiance was good
enough for me."
Kate shook her head. "So okay, at first we didn't know who the hell
killed Jeff Hosford. We knew anyone working with Eddie P. had to be
bent, but there was no evidence and no witnesses.
"His murder probably would never have been solved if Paula Pawlowski
hadn't been killed, with the same caliber bullet as Hosford. Although
the ME didn't recover enough bullet to make a solid match, I was pretty
sure the same gun had done both killings. What I couldn't figure out
was, why the hell would anyone want to kill Paula? Jeff Hosford worked
for Eddie P. and by definition anyone who works for Eddie P. is bent
like a paper clip, but Paula Pawlowski?"
Kate drank coffee. "Paula was a researcher, for crying out loud. And a
grant writer. She dated a history teacher, who was heartbroken to hear
of her death. She didn't have any money or any possessions worth
stealing, other than a laptop and some notebooks." She looked at
Darlene. "It was an accident, wasn't it, Darlene? When she came in from
Fairbanks, she told you what she'd found when you saw her at the dinner.
You didn't let on how dangerous you thought it was until you went out
there in the middle of the night and tried to take the evidence from her
at gunpoint. She fought you, though, didn't she? And the gun went off
and either you got scared and ran, or the bear Gordy Boothe
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heard when he brought Paula home showed up and ran you off, and you
didn't have enough presence of mind to grab up the laptop on the way."
Kate looked at Jim. "The jails aren't filled with smart people, are
they, Jim?"
"We found the laptop hidden on a shelf behind some books," Jim said.
"Looked like that was where she always put it when she wasn't working on
it. The notes were one shelf down."
Kate looked back at Darlene. "So the following day I go out to Paula's
trailer looking for something that could have got her killed. You came,
too, still looking for that laptop, and you coldcocked me."
She dared Jim with a glare to add anything to her story. Mutt was
sitting next to him, head on his knee, and she whined a little when his
hand tightened in her ruff, but he kept his mouth shut.
"So what could be so important that someone would be willing to kill
for, not once but twice?" Kate looked back at Anne. "Paula was working
for you, Anne. She told me she didn't have any family, and her life was
mostly her work. It had to be either the book, or you." She drank
coffee. "It turned out to be both."
Anne cast another anxious glance at Darlene, who had curled into as near
a fetal position as she could get in her chair. "Look, Kate, I know you
want to help, and I appreciate the work you've done, but-"
Kate sliced her right hand in a sideways gesture, and there was
something in it that made Anne shut up.
This was what Kate hated most about politicians, the inability to
recognize things as they really were instead of how they wanted them to
be. "Let's start with the book," she said. She sat back and put her feet
up on the shining red-gold surface of the teak table, ignoring Billy's
scowl.
"It's a pretty good book. I've read it, what she got done before she was
murdered, in a file we recovered from
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Paula's computer. Well, the most recent draft anyway. It's all about a
woman bora in France in 1875 who is basically sold into slavery when she
is fourteen because her parents are too poor to feed her. She falls into
the hands of a gambler and a pimp in Paris, and he brings her to Seattle
in 1897 when news of the Klondike strike gets out. There he has the bad
judgment to try to win passage money by cheating at five-card draw, and
is shot dead at the table."
Jim watched her, blue eyes steady and unwavering. Everyone else was
silent, even Darlene, although Kate with a swift glance from beneath her
lashes saw that she was still curled up, staring at nothing.
"Our heroine decides that the only way she can make a living is by
practicing the only trade she was ever taught, and at that time there
was no better place to practice it than the Klondike. So she works the
saloons and the dance halls of Seattle for her passage, sails for Dyea,
hikes the Chilkoot Trail, and winds up in Dawson City, where on
Christmas Eve of 1897 she auctions herself off to the highest-bidding
miner from the stage of the Double Eagle Saloon for thirty thousand
dollars."
Darlene began moaning again. Kate looked at her and said, "Jesus Christ,
Darlene. It was a hundred years ago. She hiked up over the goddamn
Chilkoot Trail, she rode the Bennett Rapids, she could have been killed
half a dozen times over, all in search of a better life for herself.
What is wrong with that? So what if she earned a living on her back.
What else was there available to her? She'd been sold into slavery when
she was barely into adolescence."
"Wait a minute," Jim said. "We talking about a character in a book,
here, or we talking about a real person?"
Kate looked at Anne Gordaoff, and waited.
It was Anne's turn to fold her hands on the table and look fixedly at
them. "I think we're talking about my great- grandmother. Aren't we?"
She glanced at Kate.
"You tell us."
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"I don't know that much about her. She died befo
re I was born."
"She was murdered before you were born, you mean."
Anne nodded.
"Murdered?" Jim said.
"Murdered," Kate said. "Back in April 1915. I've read the inquest, or
that part of it that Paula managed to unearth and scan into her
computer. She used it as a model for the inquest in her book."
"This is all very interesting," Jim said, "but what has any of this got
to do with the murder of Paula Pawlowski?"
"Everything," Kate said, and looked again at Anne. "I thought you did it
at first," she said.
"What!" Anne raised a white face.
"I've heard you talk interminably on the stump about the importance of
family. I've seen you ignore your husband's constant infidelities, even
with your own campaign manager. I watched Hosford with your daughter for
one day. He just wasn't that good an actor, and since he was really
working for Pete Heiman anyway I'm betting he was equally lousy at
raising campaign funds, but you kept him on staff anyway, because he was
Erin's fiance and that made him family. I've heard you say that
discipline was the most important gift we can give our children, and
then I run a make on your boy Tom, and I see he's wrecked a car once a
year for every year he's been driving, and I discover you're still
buying his cars and paying his insurance. Your family's a mess, Anne,
but they are your family, and you've stuck by them no matter what." Kate
paused.
"So when Paula was found murdered, and when I found out that she was
writing a novel loosely based on the life of your great-grandmother, one
of the all-time great good- time girls, I wondered what you would do to
keep that a secret. How far would you go? Would you murder?"
"No!" Anne said, red-faced, angry.
"Sometimes you go too far, Kate," Billy said.
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"No," Kate agreed, "but I had help in thinking so. Didn't I, Darlene?"
Darlene, laying the groundwork for a plea of not guilty by reason of
insanity, remained curled in her chair staring at nothing.
"What do you mean by that, Kate?" Jim said.
"That last threatening letter, pay up or ill tell. And then the
discovery of the ream of paper and the envelopes in Paula Pawlowski's
trailer. Darlene was trying to make it look like Paula was blackmailing
Anne."
"Thus presenting us with a motive for murder," Jim said. "Very neat."
"Very."
There was silence in the room.
"But why?" Anne burst out. She got up and went to kneel in front of
Darlene. "Why, Darlene? Did you think my great-grandmother working down
to the Northern Light would kill my chance to win?"
Darlene didn't answer.
"It's not your great-grandmother she was worrying about," Kate said.
"Who then?" Anne demanded.
Kate looked at Darlene. "Her great-grandfather. I think he killed your
great-grandmother."
"What!"
Kate watched Darlene, who had winced and shuddered. "No no no," she
muttered in a constant murmur, "no no no, it's not true, it's not, no no
no."
"Did you know your grandmother was murdered?"
Anne shook her head. "Nobody's ever talked about it one way or the
other. I found out she worked at the Northern Light from some old health
records I found up at the clinic, ones left over from when Kanuyaq
Copper was still in operation. They had a whole ledger keeping records
of the treatments they prescribed to the good-time girls
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down at the Light. My great-grandmother's name was one of them."
"Where is it? The ledger?"
Anne flushed. "I burned it."
"That's a shame," Kate said. "Not a crime, I don't think, but a shame to
burn something so representative of a time and place. Niniltna was the
good-time town for the miners up at the Kanuyaq Copper Mine and Mill.
Four miles down the road, they could spend a few hours a week away from
the noise and the rock dust, with all the booze and broads they could
want. Paula's research turned up records of more than a hundred working
girls in Niniltna at one time."
"Darlene?" Anne said.
Darlene didn't move.
"So yes," Kate said, "your great-grandmother was murdered. I think she
was very, very good at her profession. I think her clientele was varied
and ranged up and down the social scale, to include some of the more
prominent movers and shakers of Niniltna in 1915. Remember, it was a
town of fifteen hundred then, a positive metropolis by Alaskan Bush
standards. They had hot and cold running water, a telephone system,
central heating, all the modern conveniences. And of course a court
system, with a resident judge, and a federal marshal, and a chief of
police. And a district attorney." She looked at Jim. "And they were all
buddies with a banker from Fairbanks named Matthew Turner."
"Turner of the Last Frontier Bank Turners?"
"The same."
"You're kidding," Billy said.
"The very same. According to Paula's notes, Matthew Turner owned a bank
in Dawson for a while, and then followed the stampeders to Nome, where
he opened up a saloon. Angel Beecham worked for him there, so they had
something of a history."
"What makes you think he killed her?"
"Okay, a lot of this is guesswork on my part, pieced
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together from Paula's notes, and I admit filled in with other bits from
her book. But the one really damning piece of evidence Paula dug up was
a marriage certificate. In 1907, Matthew Turner married one Leonie
Angelique Josephine Beauchamp Halvorsen. Angelique Beauchamp. Angel
Beecham."
"He married her?"
"It says so in the Fairbanks city records. Celebrated the twenty-second
of September. Said ceremony performed by Judge Joseph D. Brittain. Two
years before Brittain was transferred to Niniltna, and five years before
Brittain conducted the inquest into Angel Beecham's murder."
"A Turner married a prostitute?" Billy Mike couldn't get over it.
"Those gals married up a lot. And into some of Alaska's finest families,
too, didn't they, Anne?" Her smile was thin, and Billy and Jim, both
listening with varying degrees of reluctant fascination, winced at it.
"Handy, having a judge in your pocket."
"When was she killed?"
"April 1915."
"Why kill her?"
"Wait a minute," Anne said. "Matthew Turner married Cecily Doogan."
Kate nodded. "He sure did. And with Peter Heiman and James Seese he went
on to found a bank, which looks after my money today." Such as it is,
Kate thought. She looked at Billy Mike. Well, she'd probably saved Anne
from getting shot by a neo-Nazi Park rat. Maybe her ten grand wasn't
totally in the toilet after all.
"But he married Cecily Doogan in 1914," Anne said. "January 1914."
Kate sat up. "What? Are you sure about the dates?"
"Yes. Darlene has all the family marriage certificates in an album.
She's very proud of the family, you know."
The irony inherent in Anne's words struck her the same
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