“Yes. After Dad died, I wanted her to move in with us but she wouldn’t. Said she’d lived here for fifty-eight years and if she had another fifty-eight in her she wanted to live them in the same place.”
All four siblings gave the same involuntary smile as Betsy called up the memory.
“Now let me ask you something, Mr. Campbell,” Betsy said, drawing herself up to a height that allowed her to meet Liam’s eyes straight-on. “Who did this to my mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ll find out.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I’ll need to ask you all a lot more questions. I need to know what she did with her days, who her friends were-”
“A friend wouldn’t do this!”
Liam looked at Jerry, red-faced and teary-eyed. “Can you all come down to the post this afternoon? The sooner we interview you, the sooner we can move the investigation forward.”
He waited for their nods. “Who were your mother’s neighbors?”
“There weren’t any close by,” Stan said. “One of the reasons we wanted her to move in with Becky. Jim Earl bought out old Eric the Red six years ago when Eric had to put his wife in the Pioneer Home. That’s the place north of here. The next house down belongs to the Isaacsons.” He gave a dismissive wave. “Outsiders, haven’t been in the country long. Mom barely knew them.”
“We’ll talk to them all,” Liam said. “In the meantime, please leave the house as it is so we can have a chance to go through it.”
“Why?” Betsy said.
Liam, suddenly very tired, pulled off his cap and ran his hand through his hair. His scalp felt tight. “We might find something that will lead us to who did this thing.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, Ms. Amakuk.”
“You’ll leave everything as you found it?”
Liam’s lips tightened. “Alaska state troopers are not thieves, Ms. Amakuk.”
She had the grace to look uncomfortable. “No,” she said quickly. “Of course not.”
“If you have a key, I’ll make sure we lock up behind ourselves.”
“Of course.” She went into the kitchen and they heard drawers and cupboards opening and closing. In Newenham, house keys were not normally ready to hand. Eventually Becky returned with a brass house key on a ring bearing a Last Frontier Bank fob and handed it over. She gathered what remained of her family together with a glance and they followed her out, Karen hanging behind to cast a languishing glance Liam’s way.
“You sure are tall,” she said. “I like tall men a lot.” She stepped in close to him and her voice dropped to a purr. “They make me feel all little and feminine.”
Liam slapped his cap back on and said to Prince, “Let’s start in the kitchen.”
“Yes, sir,” Prince said woodenly, and followed him from the room.
December 6, 1941
We lost one the other side of the Canadian border. The weather was shitty and it sounds like they might have flown into a mountain. Probably another one of those mountains thats ten thousand feet higher than the map says it is. Didn’t know anyone on board.
Peter invited me to dinner. It was great to get off base. He lives in this little dugout kind of a place down on this creek that is so muddy that the mud soaks through the snow and ice. He says its full of salmon in the summertime. I dont see any self-respecting fish swimming up that but thats what he says. He says the salmon get really big, forty, fifty pounds but I reckon thats just one of his storys. He fried some moose steaks and boiled potatos from his garden. There was even butter I dont know where he got it. Pretty good better than what were eating on base. He showed me some gold nuggets one was the size of a radish I never see such a thing. I asked how does one go about finding more of those and he says you dont stroll out and pick them up off the ground its hard work. He says he might have a proposition for me later on if I can find him a flight to Russia.
A letter from Mom today saying that Aunt Victoria saw Helen down to the Powder House dancing. Im glad shes feeling better. I wonder who she was dancing with. Ira said hed look after her for me.
SEVEN
Kagati Lake was covered with a foot of crusty snow, but someone had plowed enough of the strip for Wy to put the Cessna down. Leonard Nunapitchuk was there to help her unload the supplies for the little sundries store his wife, Opal, had started in their living room when she got the bid for postmistress.
“Good to see you, Leonard. How you been?”
However hard she tried to make it sound like a casual question, it wasn’t one and they both knew it. His wife had fallen victim to the serial killer Liam had apprehended the month before. Still, Leonard wasn’t a whiner. “Oh, muddling along.”
“And the kids?”
His expression lightened a little, and he nodded upslope, where his three remaining children had built their homes and brought their spouses. “Fine.” His eyes, nearly hidden in the mass of wrinkles surrounding them, narrowed with what might have been a smile. “I’ll be a grandfather come spring.”
“That’s great news, Leonard.”
“Yeah. If it’s a girl, Sarah says they’re going to call her Opal.”
“Opal would be happy to hear that.”
“Yeah,” he said again. “I just wish-” He stopped himself and said in a bright voice, “It’s too cold to stand around out here jawing.”
Wy followed his lead, emptying out the back of the plane and reinstalling the seats that she had folded and stored. “Dusty and his wife are making a Costco run into town,” she said in answer to Leonard’s inquiring look.
“Who’s minding the kids?”
“They’re bringing them.”
Leonard looked at the plane, which seated six, and back at Wy.
“They’re all under eight. She’ll hold the baby and I’ll buckle the two smallest kids in one seat. I just hope nobody throws up. I hate people puking in my planes.”
“Can’t say I blame you.” He loaded his boxes onto a handcart and waved good-bye. She watched him push it up the trail and disappear into the brush that hid the rambling log house from the airstrip. It was a big house. It had to feel pretty lonely after his wife’s death. She wished she had time to follow him up, accept a cup of coffee, play some cribbage.
But she had to get back to town, and Tim. And Liam.
Before she could go very far down that road the Moore gang arrived. She got them sandwiched in and they were in the air fifteen minutes later. The most she could do was circle Leonard’s house and run up and back on the prop pitch. He’d hear the enginewah-wah and know she was saying good-bye.
On the way back to Newenham she took a short detour to fly low and as slow as the Cessna would allow over Ted Gustafson’s place at Akamanuk. A tall, spare, grizzled Scandinavian bachelor homesteader, Ted was also diabetic and dependent on the regular supply of insulin Wy delivered at three-week intervals. He came outside when he heard the engine and waved a reassuring hand. Everything okay there. She waggled the wings and climbed back to five hundred feet.
They landed in Newenham a little before five, just in time for the Moores to catch the last Anchorage-bound flight of the day. Wy noticed a body bag being loaded into the cargo hold, and wondered who had died, and if it had been a death Liam had had to respond to, and if so, what time he would be home. It was her turn to cook, and Jo and Gary both had been invited. She decided on macaroni and cheese with onions and garlic, her mother’s specialty and a dish that could easily be made larger by the addition of another vegetable on the side. She snugged down the Cessna, checked the Cub’s tie-down lines, and headed for Eagle to lay in supplies.
Jo and Gary were already at her house, engaging Tim in a fierce battle of cutthroat pinochle. “I can’t believe you shot the moon!” he was saying when she walked in.
Jo gathered up cards with a complacent air. “Yes, well, like I always say, cutthroat is not for the faint of heart.”
“Only the hard of head,” Ga
ry chimed in, so opportunely that it could only have been something he had said and she had heard many times before.
Jo aimed a halfhearted cuff at the side of his head and shuffled the cards in an alarmingly professional manner, fanning them, flipping them, and dealing them out again in a blur. Tim was trying hard not to look impressed and failing. “Could you, like, maybe, teach me how to do that?”
“Like, maybe, I could.”
Gary looked up and saw Wy, and flashed a warm, intimate grin. “Hey, girl.”
“Hey, Gary.”
Tim observed this exchange through narrowed eyes.
“Back on the ground, fly girl?” Jo said. “Just in time to pour another round. You have your uses.”
“You’re welcome,” Wy said dryly, and got three Coronas from the refrigerator.
“Did you get any Coke at the store?” Tim said.
“How many have you had already today?”
He looked annoyed. “I don’t know.”
“At school?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“One at lunch, one every break, did you stop off at Eagle and pick one up after school?”
“I don’t know!”
She kept her voice soft and even. “We talked about this, Tim. There’s too much sugar in those things, more than six teaspoons a can. They’ll rot your teeth, make you fat, give you diabetes like Ted.”
“I don’t care.” At least he wasn’t yelling anymore.
“I do. And what I say goes.” She pulled a can out of one of the bags. “How about a diet Coke?”
“They don’t have the kick. And they’re too sweet.”
“I’ll squeeze a lemon into it.”
“Great.”
“You in?” Jo said, giving his handful of cards a pointed look. “It’s your bid.”
He examined his cards, and eyed the kitty with a suspicious expression. “I guess I’ll open.”
“Pass,” Gary said promptly.
“Pass,” Jo said promptly. “Going, going, gone for the bargain-basement bid of fifteen.”
“Oh, man,” Tim said, “I can’t believe you dumped it on me again. I’m going out the back door for sure.” He reached for the glass Wy had set next to him and took a drink. “Okay, okay, what have we got?” When he overturned the jack of hearts that filled out the run in his hand, he whooped in triumph, to accompanying moans from Jo and Gary.
It proved to be the last hand of the game, as Jo won on points and tonight’s rules said you didn’t have to take the bid to win. Tim vanished into his bedroom and the latest Bon Jovi CD. At least he went in for real rock and roll instead of Ice-T and the Backstreet Boys. Parents, Wy was learning, had by virtue of their job description much cause to be grateful for small favors.
The toilet flushed and Gary came into the kitchen. “You got any tools?”
Wy looked at him and he held up a hand. “Sorry. Stupid question. You got any non-FAA-approved tools?”
“There’s a toolbox in the closet next to the front door. Why?”
“You’ve got a leak in your bathroom.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it; I can fix it. You got any scraps of Sheetrock around?”
“Sheetrock?”
“Never mind, I’ll take a look, see what you’ve got.”
“Gary-”
“Don’t bother,” Jo said, taking a stool at the counter. “You know what he’s like when he gets in fix-it mode. Where’s Liam?”
“He didn’t call?”
Jo pointed at the message machine. The red light wasn’t blinking.
“Oh.” Wy put water on to boil for the macaroni, and got cheddar and parmesan out of the refrigerator. “Jo-”
“You want me to go and you want me to take Gary with me.”
“Well…”
“No.” Jo gave her a sunny smile. “For one thing, I can’t leave; I’m on a story.”
“What story? You said you were here on a family visit yesterday.”
“That was before somebody rolled a severed human arm with a gold coin clenched in its fist out into the middle of Bill’s dance floor.” She gave Wy an expectant look. “Come on, give.”
Wy was reluctant. “I don’t know. I think it’s part of an ongoing investigation.”
Jo made a face. “All right, all right, I promise not to use anything until Liam gives me the okay. What did you find up on that glacier?”
Jo, her green eyes alive with curiosity and her blond hair virtually curling tighter in anticipation, was hard to resist. Wy grated cheese and chopped onions and minced garlic as she told the tale. When she came to the end of it, Jo let out a long, appreciative whistle.
“Wy?” Gary called. “Have you got any spackle?”
“Who cares?” Jo said impatiently. Gary tramped down the hall and out into the garage, muttering beneath his breath. “It’s really an old C-47?”
Wy shrugged. “That’s what it looked like from where we were standing.”
“World War Two?”
“Maybe. It’s pretty busted up, and I’m not that familiar with DC-3s.”
“I thought you said this was a C-47.”
“They’re the same plane. The DC-3 was used for domestic passenger service, the C-47 for the military, freight, troops. It’s a hell of a plane. They’re not making them anymore but they’re sure still flying them. They’re great for freight.” Her eyes lit. “I’d love to get my hands on one for the business.”
“And you got the tail numbers?”
“The last three numbers, all that were left before the break in the fuselage.” She moved her shoulders uneasily.
“What?”
“I didn’t like seeing that wreck.” She thought. “If it comes to that, I don’t think any pilot likes seeing any wreck.”
“This is an old one.”
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t help wondering, why’d they go in? Weather? They get lost? Instrumentation go out on them? Crew fall asleep?”
Jo, caught up in Wy’s imaginings, said, “Think they knew? Or did they just hit and kerflooey, that’s all she wrote?”
“They knew,” Wy said flatly.
“How do you know?”
“The pilot knew, for sure, and probably the copilot as well. They may not have known but for a split second, but they knew they’d fucked the pooch, all right.”
“I found this light fixture on the workbench,” Gary said, coming into the room. “Where’s it supposed to go?”
“My bedroom, but Gary, you don’t have to-” She stopped when he headed down the hall. She turned to his sister. “What’s the other thing?”
“What?”
“You said, when I tried to kick you out of Newenham, that you couldn’t go because ‘for one thing, I’m on a story.’ What’s the other thing?”
“Oh. That.”
“Wy?” Gary’s was a voice crying in the wilderness. “Where do you keep your paint?”
“At the paint store! What’s the other thing?” she repeated to Jo.
“Okay.” Jo fortified herself with a long swallow of beer. “It’s this. Liam doesn’t have anything to be worried about. Does he? With you and…” She jerked her head toward the bathroom.
“No.”
“He doesn’t seem to know that.”
“I don’t follow you.”
Jo’s sigh was heavy and martyred. “If he were sure of himself with you, he wouldn’t give a damn how many ex-boyfriends were hanging around.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Jo, can’t you let this alone? I told you yesterday I-”
“I know.” Jo nodded. “I listened very carefully and I heard every word you said.”
“So?”
“So, what I didn’t hear you say was that you were completely, totally, and irrevocably committed to Liam Campbell, forsaking all others, world without end, amen. If I don’t hear you saying that, I’m pretty sure Liam doesn’t, either.”
Wy was confused. “I still don’t get what this has to do
with your bringing Gary down here to get Liam all riled up.”
“You say you love him.”
“I do.”
“You say you want him.”
“I do.”
“But you won’t say you’ll marry him.”
“I can’t have kids.”
“I know that. And you told him, and so does he, now.”
“He wants kids.”
“Does he want them more than you?”
“He says not.”
“And you don’t believe him.”
Wy was silent.
“And all these years, I thought you were so smart.” Jo gave her head a long, sad shake. “Somebody’s got to hold your feet to the fire, girl.”
“And you think you’re just the person to do that.”
“Who better?”
“Seen anything of Jim Wiley lately?”
Beneath Wy’s amazed gaze, Jo’s fair skin flushed a deep and unexpected red. “Up yours, Chouinard.”
“Up yours times two, Dunaway,” Wy said, delighted to turn the tables. “Come to think of it, I haven’t heard any tales this past month of your latest conquests, and usually I get on average at least one call a week. Not to mention which, you’re traveling with your brother, also a rare event, as you usually use your trips to see me as getaway weekends for you and your latest. You and Jim, hmmm. You wouldn’t be seeing each other socially, by any chance?”
“In his dreams.”
“Or in yours,” Wy retorted, and then had to duck.
After dinner and coffee and still no appearance by Liam, Jo and Gary took their leave with suitable expressions of gratitude. During the time before and after dinner, Gary had found and fixed the leak in the bathroom, recaulked the bathtub, installed the new light fixture in Wy’s bedroom, and put a ground fault interruptor in the outlet next to the kitchen sink.
“Handy, isn’t he?” Jo said.
“Speedy, too,” Wy said.
Gary gave Wy a long look. “With some things. With others, I take my time.”
“Too much information,” Jo said. “We’re out of here.”
Wy closed the door behind them and went back to Tim’s room.
He was sprawled across his bed, head propped up on a pillow, reading.
Better To Rest Page 6
