Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 06 - Blood Will Tell

by Blood Will Tell(lit)

  "The Sheraton," Ekaterina said.

  "Your place," Kate said at the same time.

  Jack's blue eyes held Kate's.

  "I'll be staying at Jack's, emaa," Kate said to her grandmother's bun.

  Ekaterina didn't turn or speak. "Next stop, the Sheraton," Jack said brightly, and started the Blazer.

  The Sheraton was ten blocks from the airport and the trip was accomplished in silence. Kate carried Ekaterina's bags up to her room and set them on the bed. There was a pad and pencil next to the phone; she scribbled down Jack's number. Ekaterina watched her, impassive. "So.

  I'll be going."

  Ekaterina said nothing.

  Grandmothers are better at guilt than anyone, even mothers. With subtle guile, Kate said, "Maybe we should make Jack buy us dinner. How about Mama Nicco's?"

  Ekaterina's face didn't move a muscle. She wasn't going to be easy or cheap. "Lasagna?"

  Kate hid a smile. Everyone had their weak spot, and her grandmother was a closet Italian. "And garlic bread, and maybe even tiramisu."

  "Tiramisu? What's that?"

  "Something Jack introduced me to last time I was in town. You'll love it. So. We'll pick you up downstairs at six?"

  The phone rang before Ekaterina could answer. "Aha," Kate said, "you can run, but you can't hide. How much you want to bet that's Billy Mike?"

  Ekaterina answered the phone. "Hello. Yes. Hello, Billy. Yes, we just got in. Kate. Yes, she is here, too. No. No, not yet." She covered the mouthpiece and looked at Kate.

  Kate understood. "See you at seven. Downstairs, at the front door?"

  Ekaterina nodded and Kate let herself out of the room.

  In the elevator, she wondered what Ekaterina was now discussing with Billy Mike that she did not want her granddaughter to overhear.

  Jack's townhouse stood on the edge of Westchester Lagoon, facing south.

  The garage was in the basement, the kitchen, living room, dining room, den and half bath on the second floor, and three bedrooms and two full bathrooms on the third floor. Upon arrival on previous visits to Anchorage, Kate rarely caught more than a passing glimpse of the first two floors before it was instantly and invariably replaced by a view of the ceiling in the master bedroom on the third. Contrary to standard operating procedure, this afternoon Jack seemed to be loitering with intent over the hang of her jacket from the hook by the door. "What's wrong?" she said, truth to tell a little disappointed. She had been looking forward to rewarding Jack for his care package since she'd made the decision to come to Anchorage. They'd been in the house five whole minutes without him making a move, and she was starting to feel like a woman scorned.

  He turned. "Why should anything be wrong?"

  She folded her arms, one eyebrow raised in polite incredulity, looking, did she but know it, the spitting image of her grandmother in that moment.

  He sighed. "Want a Diet 7Up?"

  The eyebrow went down and the corners of the mouth curved up. "Why, Jack. You shopped for me. This must be love."

  Embarrassed to be caught out in a display of sentiment, Jack said,

  "Yeah, yeah, you want one or not?"

  He got her the 7-Up, himself a beer and Mutt a bowl of water and they adjourned the discussion to the living room. She sat on the couch, he on a chair. She gave a pointed look at the acre of empty couch surrounding her, he refused to be baited. She pouted a little. Not proof against a pout of that wattage, he told her to cut it out. They compromised on him moving to the couch and her promising to keep her hands to herself. He palliated the severity of the sentence by draping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer. When she slid over, she felt the tension in the line of his body. She tipped her head back to study his face. "What's going on, Jack? You're wound up tighter than a clock spring."

  He tilted the bottle of Full Sail Golden Ale and drank deep. "We go to court tomorrow."

  It was such a non of a sequitur that she was confused. "Who do? You mean the office? You're testifying? What, a case?"

  The rigidity she'd attributed to the near miss with the student pilot was back in his jawline. Come to think of it, he hadn't said much more than hello since Niniltna. "I'm testifying, yes, but it's not in a case for the office." He looked at her and she recoiled inwardly from what she saw there. "Jane's coming after Johnny."

  "What?"

  "She wants full custody." Kate sat up. "Wait a minute. You told me last month she'd agreed to an interim settlement. You told me Johnny told Judge Reese he wanted to live with you, and that Jane had agreed, and so had the judge."

  "She changed her mind."

  He was angry, a steady, bone-deep rage. It radiated off him in waves, like heat. "I see," Kate said.

  "No," he said, very precisely, "you do not see."

  "You're right, I don't," she said at once.

  "Don't be so goddam soothing," he barked.

  "Sorry."

  "And don't be so goddam apologetic when I yell at you."

  "Okay."

  "And don't be so goddam agreeable when I'm correcting your behavior!"

  Mutt sent them an annoyed look, rose to her feet and turned three circles, laying down again with her back to them.

  Into the silence Kate said in a soft voice, "I won't let you pick a fight with me, Jack." She added, "Not over this, anyway."

  Half his remaining beer disappeared in a single gulp. He closed his eyes and ran his free hand through a thatch of brown curls that hadn't been very tidy to begin with. When he spoke again, this time she heard the fear underlying the anger. "There's nothing I can do, Kate, except show up tomorrow and pray there's at least one human bone in Reese's body."

  "He won't like it that she backed out of the interim agreement," Kate said. "Judges never do like that."

  "Makes more work for them," Jack agreed. He opened his eyes and looked at Kate. "Will you testify?"

  She was startled. "To what? Everything I know is hearsay."

  "You picked him up at the 7-Eleven last March, when she took his shoes away to keep him from walking over here."

  She was silent, frowning down at the can she held between both hands.

  "For a devout and practicing Catholic, old Jane sure doesn't go in for Christian charity in a big way, does she?"

  "Nope."

  "She still think I'm the whore of Babylon?"

  Jack nodded. "Everybody needs somebody to hate."

  "Glad to be of service," Kate said, an edge to the words.

  "Don't make this about you. It isn't."

  Kate, ashamed of her flare of temper, said, "No, it's not. I'm sorry."

  Jack went for another beer. "Will you? Testify?"

  "To that one incident?

  Yes." She drained the can. "How'd Jane get a court date this soon?"

  "Somebody canceled, the archdiocese pulled strings, her lawyer flew the clerk into Theodore River for some silver fishing, take your pick. You know how it works."

  "Yes." She went to the kitchen to toss the can in the trash and returned to the living room to stand in front of the window, staring out across the lagoon, a thin, fragile sheet of ice slowly creeping across it, as yet no snow. Like the homestead. She wished with all her heart that she was there instead of here.

  Then again, there was one thing available to her in Anchorage she didn't get much of in the Park.

  Jack caught the quirk of her mouth. "What's so awful goddam funny, Shugak?"

  She grinned at the frozen expanse of water. "You are." Turning, she clasped her hands and cast down her eyes, trying for demure. "You didn't want to seduce me under false pretenses."

  "Oh." The anger dissipated, and the scowl eased into a slow smile. "No."

  "I appreciate your honesty," she said gravely.

  "Thank you."

  She strolled over and began unbuttoning his shirt. "Now, when was it you said Johnny gets home?" They were still upstairs when the kitchen door slammed. Kate shot out of bed and into the bathroom. Jack pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt
and went downstairs to find his son and heir juggling a loaf of bread, a package of cheese slices and a jar of mayonnaise under Mutt's interested eye. There was a can of Coke tucked between chin and chest and a package of shrink-wrapped bologna in his teeth. "Hi, Dad," he mumbled around the bologna. "Kate here yet?" Can and sandwich makings tumbled into a heap on the kitchen counter and he caught the Coke just before it hit the floor. He ripped open the package of bologna to toss Mutt a slice.

  "Yeah, she's upstairs, taking a shower. Don't open that Coke!"

  Of course he did, and of course it sprayed all over Jack and the kitchen, and of course mostly Jack since Johnny was holding the can.

  Clearly the only thing to do was retaliate, and Kate arrived on the scene to find Jack blasting Johnny with the sink sprayer, the cold water on full bore and puddles gathering all over the floor. Mutt stalked from the carnage, the expression of disgust on her face somewhat marred by the water dripping from her muzzle. Johnny tried cowering behind the refrigerator door, and when that didn't work charged his father with a chair, legs extended at shoulder arms. The sprayer changed hands, there was a half suppressed yelp of laughter from Jack, an exuberant whoop from Johnny, and the battle raged around the stove, up the trash compactor and down the dishwasher. Kate stood in the doorway, safely out of range, until the battle was fought to a draw and a truce was declared.

  Johnny mopped his face and saw her. He grinned, his softer, smoother face a youthful echo of the craggier one opposite. He had his father's blue eyes and his mother's tow-colored hair. "Hi, Kate."

  "Hi, Johnny."

  He hooked a thumb at his father. "You still hanging with this guy?"

  She shrugged. "Looks like."

  He shook his head. "I guess love really is blind." Kate laughed, and Jack cleared his throat and changed the subject before things got any more out of hand. "How's your mother?"

  "Still nutty as a fruitcake, how do you think?" Johnny's reply was cheerful and not ridden with any angst that Kate could detect. By the expression in Jack's eyes, he couldn't either, and the tense set of the big shoulders relaxed. "How was basketball practice?"

  "Good," Johnny said. He finished mopping up a puddle and tossed the dishtowel into the sink where it fell with a sodden splat. He got another Coke out of the refrigerator, drank half of it down in a single gulp and burped. "Excuse me. Coach says I need to work on my free throw." "Free throws win ball games," Kate said.

  "That's what Coach Stewman says. How'd you know?"

  "All coaches say that."

  "Oh." Johnny assembled bread, mayonnaise, bologna and cheese slices and paused, giving the result a critical frown. He went back to the refrigerator and found an onion. A thick slab went into the sandwich, followed by a sliced dill pickle, half a tomato, most of a head of lettuce and the remainder of a round of caribou sausage he dug out of the meat drawer. At that point the refrigerator ran out of ingredients, and he picked up the sandwich and actually managed to squeeze one corner of it into his mouth. "Urn." It was a grunt of pure ecstasy. He opened his eyes and saw the two of them watching. "What?" he said thickly.

  "Oh, nothing," Jack said.

  "Nothing at all," Kate said. "Don't nil up, we're going out for dinner."

  Johnny brightened. "Just a snack," he assured her.

  Mama Nicco's was a restaurant in Huffman Business Park, a collection of flat-roofed buildings at the intersection of Huffman and the New Seward Highway that were much of a much ness in architecture, and if they had been connected would have been called a mall. The restaurant was a long, rectangular room filled with tables, presided over by a tall, strong-featured man with a full head of iron-gray hair and a rare, charming smile. Tall-hatted chefs cooked on an open grill behind a counter, their waitress was friendly and efficient, and after his first sip of the house Chianti Jack pronounced dinner an unqualified success.

  "We haven't even ordered yet, Dad," Johnny said, hunched over the menu.

  "What's cioppino?" "Garlic with seafood," Jack said.

  "Oh. What's pasta alia parma?"

  "Garlic with pasta."

  When the waitress returned Johnny ordered both or tried to, Jack ordered veal scallop ini Kate ordered pasta al pesto, and Ekaterina ordered lasagna. The waitress brought out two more bowls of bread, setting one in front of Johnny, who had accounted for most of the first bowl, another glass of Chianti for Jack and one for Ekaterina, a Coke for Johnny, and a Perrier with a twist of lemon for Kate. Johnny looked at her from the corner of one eye and said softly, "Yubbie." Kate looked at him and said, just as softly, "Yubbie." Suspicious but unable to refrain from asking, he said, "Yubbie? What's that?"

  "The real thing. A young urban brat." Jack laughed. Even Ekaterina smiled, which made Johnny, who was a little afraid of her, relax. The old woman unbent even further, enough to say, "Jack, the Raven Corporation is having a party Wednesday night at the Captain Cook. Will you come?"

  "A party?" Kate said. "What party?" Ekaterina smiled down upon her, very benign, and every self-protective hair on the back of Kate's neck stood straight up in alarm. "Just a little get-together for the friends of Raven. All the Niniltna and other tribal corporation shareholders will be there. It'll be fun."

  Kate opened her mouth to decline with thanks but Jack kicked her under the table. She gave him an indignant glare, which slid right off him, and he said to Ekaterina, smooth as silk in spite of the fact that he was a little afraid of her, too, "It sounds like fun, Ekaterina. What time?"

  "Seven o'clock." Ekaterina smiled, this time a real one. "There will be food." He grinned. "I'll be there."

  Ekaterina looked at Kate, who knew there was something else going on here, she just hadn't figured out what. The food arrived and she left the problem for another time. Ekaterina exclaimed over the lasagna, Jack went into raptures over the veal, Johnny was up to his eyebrows in fettucine and the lure of basil and pine nuts proved irresistible for Kate. Everyone was on their best behavior, there was much talk and more laughter and the evening looked as if it were going to be a social occasion of the first water.

  Until the arrival of the people who had reserved the table next to them.

  One of them was John King. The other two men made Ekaterina stiffen in her chair and Kate swear beneath her breath. Jack observed both reactions with a sense of impending doom and began cutting his remaining veal into very large pieces. "Dad," Johnny said, shocked, "slow down, you're being a pig." Jack said around a mouthful of veal, "Eat fast, kid, or you might not get to eat at all."

  Harvey Meganack saw Ekaterina at the same time she saw him and paused in the act of pulling out a chair for the trophy blonde who was definitely not his wife. A sheepish smile spread across his broad, brown face, a look not to be confused with the fierce expressions on the two solid gold rams' heads on either side of the gold nugget watch weighing down his wrist. "Ekaterina. Hello."

  Ekaterina inclined her head in a frigid, infinitesimal bow. "Harvey."

  The third man looked up and said ebulliently, "Ekaterina!" He was thin and fiftyish, with sparse fair hair standing straight up from the crown of his head. He bustled around the table and grabbed Ekaterina's reluctant hand in both of his, pumping it up and down with enthusiasm.