Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 08 - Killing Grounds

by Killing Grounds(lit)

  "And when did you leave?"

  "She invited me to dinner, and we talked for hours. Oh yes, and played Monopoly with the girls afterwards. I didn't get back here until, oh, I don't know, one-thirty? Two o'clock?" He smiled briefly. "It's hard to keep track of time during an Alaskan summer. Too much light."

  Kate looked at Marian, who shrugged. "I was asleep."

  "Dani?"

  "Hm? Oh, I was sacked out, too. I didn't hear him come home." There was something in the airy dismissal that made both her mother and Kate look at her sharply, but Dani was holding a cherry-red T-shirt beneath her chin and twisting into a pretzel to regard the effect in the very inadequate mirror hanging from a nail over the sink.

  "And Marian and Dani were in bed when you came home?" Kate asked Neil.

  "Yes." Again, he hesitated. "I guess so. When it isn't raining I sleep in a hammock out back."

  Great, Kate thought. "And Frank we've already heard from." The boy looked up from contemplation of folded hands. He had green eyes like his sister, like his mother, with the same wary look in them. Inwardly Kate cursed that wariness. None of them were telling her all that they could, and some of them were lying in their teeth, but then she was getting the distinct impression that life with Meany had not rewarded telling the truth. Like anything else, telling the truth was a habit: The more you did it, the better at it you became. The reverse was equally true.

  Besides, there was nothing like murder to start off someone on a career of prevarication that Baron Munchausen would envy. What she needed now was more information, the better with which to poke holes in their stories.

  She looked at the silent, fox-faced young man who was leaning against the counter, arms folded. "And where were you last night, Mr. McCafferty?"

  "Mac, please."

  "Where were you last night, Mr. McCafferty?"

  "On board the Priscilla. Dewey Dineen invited me to go water-skiing."

  "And you returned here when?"

  His narrow shoulders moved in a shrug. "I'm not sure." He tried the smile again, with as much success as before, and it faded again. "What with all the celebrating, I wasn't any too steady on my feet, you know? Check with Dewey, he might remember. It was late, I'm pretty sure of that."

  "Anybody hear him come in?" Kate asked the question with all the hope it deserved, none, and was not disappointed. Neil had been sacked out in back in the hammock, Frank was in town, Dani and Marian were asleep. Or so they said. "You have any problems with Meany as an employer?"

  Again the narrow-shouldered shrug. "His checks cleared the bank."

  Her own view of life in the fishing industry, and clearly McCafferty's last word on the subject. None of them had any more to add, at least for the moment, and Kate decided it was time to collect more information from outside sources before she put what the people here had said to the test. She rose to her feet. "I think that's all for now. Due to the nature of the crime, I'm sure Chopper Jim would want me to tell you that he would prefer you remain here at present, at least until the matter is resolved to everyone's satisfaction."

  With which fine words she decamped, Old Sam at her heels. Halfway down the beach, he said, "Nobody's got an alibi, do they? Except maybe the boy?"

  "Nope," Kate said glumly.

  He gave her a shrewd look. "You were pretty tough on him."

  "I don't want it to be him," she said wearily.

  He gave a satisfied nod, as if she'd confirmed something he already knew. "What about the girl? The way these things work out, you know she come in for her share." He added, his voice gruff, "And then some, probably, being how she's a girl and all."

  "I know," Kate said. "I know." She paused, one hand on the bow line, and looked over at him. "You built that stove, didn't you?" She jerked her head. "The one in the cabin. I recognized the doorknob. You've got a boxful just like it in the Freyas focsle."

  He tugged unnecessarily at the bill of his cap. "They were good people. I might have helped them out a bit."

  Not for a moment did Kate imagine that Old Sam was referring to the Meanys.

  As they were about to shove off, Marian Meany came flying out of the cabin, stumbling through the gravel, sending rocks skittering down the beach. She fetched up against the boat, hands gripping the bow, panting, her face flushed. "Did you see him?" she said urgently.

  "See who?" Kate said.

  "My husband. Did you see the body?"

  "Well, yes," Kate said, brows puckering. "I found him."

  The older woman caught Kate's wrist. "Are you sure? Are you sure he's dead?"

  Kate kept her arm very still beneath the influence of that desperate, almost painful grip. "I'm sure."

  Marian Meany's eyes stared hard into Kate's, and the struggle over what to believe was plain to see.

  "I saw him, too, Marian," Old Sam said from the stern, one hand on the kicker. "He was dead." He caught her eyes and repeated firmly, "He was dead before we ever hauled him on board the Freya."

  "You're sure? You're absolutely sure?"

  "We're sure," Old Sam said, more gently this time.

  The grasping hand loosened and fell from Kate's wrist. "Thank you," Marian Meany said in a faint voice. "I'm sorry. I was afraid . . ." Her voice trailed off, and she retreated a few steps up the beach, before turning to face them again. "Thank you," she said fervently. "Thank you very much."

  Her face before she turned to head up the beach again shone with a light that was almost beatific, and she walked as if she had shed twenty pounds, her stride long and graceful.

  Old Sam hauled at the starter with unnecessary violence. "Dumb bastard's better off dead, he ain't capable of appreciating the kind of luck that lets him climb into bed next to that every night."

  Old Sam was right about somebody being lucky, but i: wasn't Calvin Meany. It looked as if everyone in his family had just received a gift from God, in the form of his own death

  Except that in this case God had had a lot of help.

  11

  In spite of Old Sam's vow to leave Kate to the Flanagan children's tender mercies, he was ahead of her going up the beach to their cabin. It was one of the flotsam-and-jetsam cabins, built of anything that came to handdriftwood, Blazo boxes, plywood that had obviously been left behind by the tide. The roof had a shallow peak and was layered with canvas. The canvas was weighted down with a dozen lengths of very old, one-inch manila line, also obviously scavenged. The lines had then been tossed over the ridgepole and weighed down at each end by large rocks, dangling beneath the eaves like participles, indicating a thoughtand a roof left unfinished.

  As they approached the cabin the sound of raised voices could be heard.

  "No. No I said, and no I meant. What word in that did you not understand?"

  They rounded the corner of the house and beheld a yard. The bank sloped more gently on this stretch of beach, and the cabin sat in the middle of half an acre of cleared ground. There was a single drying rack, half full of split, boned king salmon. There was a net rack with green netting folded over it. There were various toys, including balls and dolls and a set of children's playground swings that had been painted in bright, primary colors, now faded and rusting, but still working, if the little girl squeaking back and forth in one of them was any indication.

  Her identical twin sister had planted herself in front of her mother, feet apart, hands at her waist. She had fair hair cut Prince Valiant style and from beneath the row of bangs brown eyes stared accusingly. "Always with you it cannot be done."

  The mother didn't miss a beat. "Hear you nothing that I say? On you shame! Temper, disobediencea Jedi knight behaves not this way!"

  The daughter tested the determination in her mother's voice and found it firm. Bloody but unbowed, she stamped off to join her sister, indignation written in flame down the line of her spine, and the two of them vanished like wood elves into the undergrowth at the edge of the yard. The mother turned back. "Sorry about that," she said, and added, when she saw their expressions,
"Star Wars. When they're not speaking to me, they're always speaking in the best Yoda. The only wav to get through is to retaliate in kind."

  Old Sam let out a crack of laughter, and she smiled a: him. "Aren't you Sam Dementieff?"

  "Yes, I am," he said, and doffed his hat. "I'm proud you remember me, Reverend Flanagan."

  "Oh please, out here just call me Anne."

  "Reverend?" Kate said.

  "Sure," Old Sam said, his crooked, callused hand enveloping Anne's smaller, no less callused one. "Anne here's the minister of the Presbyterian church in Cordova. I thought you knew that, girl."

  Kate looked across at the other woman, who was regarding her with a friendly smile and an outstretched hand. "No," she said slowly, reaching out to take the minister's hand in a very brief clasp. "No, I didn't."

  "What did they want to do?" Old Sam said. "Your kids? They are twins, aren't they?"

  "Yes, they are twins, may God have more mercy on me in my next life." Anne Flanagan smiled and set out a plate of chocolate-striped shortbread, Old Sam's favorite cookie on the planet. Old Sam looked like he was in love.

  "They wanted to go up to Mary Balashoff's. Mary is kippering salmon today and they want to know how."

  "Well hell, let 'em. Mary's been teaching kids to fish and such for the last thirty years." Old Sam dunked his cookie in coffee and bit into it with a satisfied grunt.

  "Usually I do, but her place is across the creek, and the tide's coming in, and" She paused, and busied herself at the sink, washing out a mug with special care.

  "And they'll have to cross the site between yours and Mary's, and Meany's is that site, and Meany's just been murdered and you don't want your kids anywhere near the place," Old Sam finished for her.

  Anne Flanagan turned from the sink to give the old man a rueful smile. "Silly, isn't it?"

  He snorted into his mug. "No way, lady. You keep them as far away from that bunch as you can. Those folks got problems, and I don't mean just with the killing of their man. They give the word 'dysfunction' a whole new definition."

  "You could go with them," Kate said. "With the twins to Mary's."

  Anne Flanagan's fine blue eyes rested on her face for a moment. "I could," she agreed, "and I probably will, later, but for now I've got bread rising and half a dozen other chores left to do." She smiled again at Old Sam. "You know how it is with kids. They want everything yesterday."

  "You've heard about the murder, then," Kate said, before this turned into Old Home Week at the Y.

  The minister poured out a cup of coffee and sat down across the table from her. "Yes."

  "Who told you?" Old Sam frowned at her abrupt tone, but she ignored him.

  "Wendell Kritchen."

  Wendell had brought Frank back from town, and couldn't wait to spread the bad news. The DEW line of the Bush telegraph, that was Wendell. "He tell you Meany was murdered?"

  Anne Flanagan's mouth pulled down a little at the corners, with distress or distaste, Kate couldn't decide. "Yes."

  "State Trooper Jim Chopin asked me to do a little preliminary investigating while he takes the body to the coroner in Anchorage," Kate said. "We've just come from the Meany place."

  Anne Flanagan's eyebrows raised in a polite question.

  "Neil Meany told us he was here for dinner last night. Reverend Flanagan."

  Kate would have sworn on oath that the slight emphasis on the other woman's title wasn't voluntary. Anne Flanagan's eyes narrowed a little. "Why, yes, he was."

  No invitation to call her by her first name, but then Kate didn't seek the privilege, thanks anyway. "What time did he get here?"

  "Right after the period was over," the minister said readily. "He brought one of those Japanese floats over for the girls. I invited him to stay for supper. Spaghetti and garlic bread, leftovers warmed up from the night before," she added, her first trace of sarcasm, and surprised a snort of laughter out of Old Sam.

  "When did he leave?"

  "He helped with the dishes, and we talked. The girls were outside playing until lateI let them go to bed when they want to, out hereand when they came in, they wanted to play Monopoly. They like Neil, too. I made coffee, and Neil had one cup, and we played one game, and he left."

  "What time?"

  "I don't know."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I don't know," Anne Flanagan repeated, and smiled at Old Sam. "We don't have a clock. The sun was down by the time he left, had been down for a while, so it was late."

  "Past midnight? One o'clock?"

  "I'd guess the girls came in about midnight. Maybe a little before, maybe a little after, I don't know. They're such night owls, the two of them. And then the game, which took a while. Monopoly always takes a while."

  "But you don't know how long a while?"

  "No. Like I said, no clocks. And then we had another cup of coffee, and then he went home." Anne Flanagan paused, turning her mug between her hands. "That's the rule, no watches, no clocks. No sundials, no hourglasses, no ship's bells, no poles in the sand, no chronometers of any kind."

  One corner of Old Sam's mouth curled up and, encouraged, Anne Flanagan added, "This beach has always seemed to me like a place out of time. Our nearest neighbors are at anchor or four miles down. There are no roads, and while what with fish spotting and stream surveys and sport fishermen you can't get away from the planes, the only time one lands on our section is to bring us here or take us home. Time " She shrugged. "It doesn't exist. It does exist, I know that, but"

  "Here you wag it, instead of it wagging you," Old Sam suggested.

  An answering smile spread across Anne Flanagan's face. "Yes. This time of year it's easy. The sun doesn't go down, it just goes around."

  At this latitude that was an exaggeration, but not much of one. Kate was skeptical. "How do you know when you can put your net in the water?"

  The smile faded. "We wait until everyone else has theirs in the water. Sometimes Lamar Rousch goes by in his boat and says it's time."

  Kate barely repressed a snort. "You can miss a lot of fish that way."

  "It's not about making money for us, Ms. Shugak," Anne Flanagan said levelly.

  "No?"

  "No. It's about getting away from town, and all the noisy that comes with it. It's about getting the kids away from the nuts that Anchorage Job Service unloads on Cordova canneries every summer. It's about me taking a break, from my job, from my church and from my parishioners." She shrugged, and drank coffee. "Truth to tell, half of them are gone fishing themselves, so it's not like I'm abandoning my congregation. And it's good to get out here and away from the telephone and the television."

  "Back to nature?" Kate suggested, something not quite a sneer on her face.

  Anne Flanagan's voice remained level. "If you like."

  "The better to commune with God, I suppose."

  A muscle twitched in Anne Flanagan's cheek. "If you like," she repeated.

  Old Sam put his mug down and frowned at Kate. She ignored him. Neil Meany had said that he'd gotten home at one-thirty or two o'clock. "Did you watch Neil Meany go back to his cabin?"

  One eyebrow went up, and this time there was nothing of polite inquiry in it. "No. Neil Meany is a grown man. I was sure he was capable of making it home without my supervision."

  "Did Neil Meany talk to you about his relationship with his brother?"

  The other woman hesitated, and Kate said, "What, he tell you under the seal of the confessional?"

  Anne Flanagan stiffened in her chair. "I don't hear confessions, Ms. Shugak," she said coldly. "I am not a Catholic priest."

  "Then what's the problem?" Kate was aware of Old Sam sitting very still next to her. She could feel the weight of his gaze boring into her but, again, she ignored it.

  "Merely, I was organizing my thoughts. I am aware that, by virtue of my firsthand experience of the Meany family, I may have valuable insight into the situation."

  "Read a lot of mysteries, do you?" Kate said unkindly.

/>   Anne Flanagan sat up straight in her chair and, fixing her gaze at a point above Kate's right shoulder, reeled off a staccato recitation of events that Chopper Jim would have admired for its brevity, clarity and wholly impersonal tone. "I first met Neil the first of June, when school let out and we moved out to the site. His family was already here." She paused. "I was not impressed with his brother. Calvin Meany seemed to me to be a businessman of dubious ethics as well as a domestic tyrant. Marian" She shook her head, as if to say, There is no there there. Kate was inclined to agree, but she didn't say so. "His children" She shook her head again.

  "His brother I did like. Do like. He has visited me and the girls perhaps eight, ten times over the past five weeks. Sometimes he stays for dinner, sometimes he doesn't. We've shared meals, played board games, talked about books we've read. He's quite a scholar. I gather he was studying for a doctorate in English literature before his brother brought him to Alaska. He is planning to return to school after next year's season." She took a drink of coffee. "How doesdid he feel about his brother? He didn't like him, but then that was a trait shared by the entire family. Frankly, I have yet to meet anyone who did like Calvin Meany, in the family or out of it."

  So had Kate. "If he disliked his brother so much, why follow him all the way to Alaska from Ohio and go to work for him?"

  The other woman frowned. "I don't know, exactly." She hesitated, her eyes troubled. "He misses school. He really wants that Ph.D."

  "Now there's a motive for murder," Kate said admiringly. "Academic frustration. I'll try that out on Chopper Jim when he gets back."

  Anne Flanagan's fair skin flushed a deep red right up to the roots of her hair. She looked at Kate and opened her mouth, looked at Old Sam and closed it again. Her chair grated against the floor as she stood up. "I think I've told you all I can," she said. "If you'll excuse me, I have chores to do."

  "Thanks for the coffee, Anne." Old Sam got up, jammed his hat on his head and left without a word. Kate followed.