Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 06 - Blood Will Tell

by Blood Will Tell(lit)

  Kate stood at the living room window with her first cup of coffee, wondering if the snow had yet to fall even up on Hillside, south Anchorage's four-wheel-drive suburb.

  There was a pressure against her knee and a furry snout pushed against her palm. Mutt looked up at her with wise yellow eyes that told her to relax, that winter was not so far away. "You're right," Kate told her,

  "but then you usually are." Mutt gave a deprecating sneeze. Kate ran a bowl of fresh water and found her a bone in the freezer.

  An hour later Jack came down, his eyes bloodshot, what she could see of them because he wouldn't look at her. He poured himself a cup of coffee, the spout of the carafe rattling against the rim of the mug, and sat down at the kitchen table. She brought him a plate of sausage and eggs.

  He sat still, looking down at the plate, the eggs over easy, the sausage perfectly browned, the toast whole-wheat and dripping with butter. He almost gagged, but there was something more important he had to tend to than his hangover. She reached for a mug and he snagged her wrist.

  "Kate. I'm sorry."

  She tugged against his grip and he released her at once. Johnny wasn't up yet so she turned off the burner beneath the frying pan and brought her mug to the table. "Can I drop you off at court today, take the Blazer?"

  "We're not going to court today."

  "What?" She looked at him. "Why?"

  He looked at the toast and closed his eyes against the sight. "I don't know, the judge has to rule on a motion or sentence somebody or something. We're continued until tomorrow at eleven."

  "So you're going to work?"

  He nodded, and winced, one hand going to his head. Well, now, Kate thought. If Jack had to go to work, Jane probably did, too. A possibility presented itself, neatly wrapped and shining with potential.

  "So I'll drive you to work instead."

  He nodded, more gingerly this time, eyes on his mug. She reached across for his chin and pulled his face up by main force. "Cut it out, Jack.

  You said you were sorry. I accept your apology. Let's leave it at that."

  "I'm ashamed of myself," he muttered. "I lost my temper, and I lost it with you, the last person in the world I want to hurt."

  "And I'm mad at you for doing it," she agreed, "but it's over now. Let it go." He opened his mouth as if to say more and she repeated, "Let it go."

  She sat back and reached for the cream and sugar, her face serene. He watched her for a moment before transferring his gaze to his plate. The eggs didn't look quite as revolting as they had sixty seconds before.

  His head didn't hurt as bad, either. He reached for his fork.

  Ten minutes later he sat back and patted his belly and burped. "Good stuff." He looked across the table at her. "Aren't you eating?"

  She shook her head, a ghost of a twinkle in the back of her eyes.

  "You made this huge breakfast all for me, knowing I would probably be too hung over to eat it?" he said, just to be sure.

  She smiled.

  He leaned over and grabbed a handful of hair. "Bitch," he said, and kissed her.

  "Prick," she said, when he turned her loose.

  "I resemble that remark." He put his dishes in the dishwasher and went back upstairs to shower and shave. Johnny still wasn't down, so with a mental shrug Kate put the carton of eggs back in the refrigerator. He would eat cold cereal and like it if he couldn't be bothered to get up on time.

  She slipped up the stairs. Jack was still in the shower and the door to Johnny's room was closed. She tiptoed past it into the third bedroom, Jack's office at home, and tossed the desk for Jane's address. She found it on an old bill. She paused a moment, reading through it and then going through the pile she had found it in. Not only had Jack let Jane stay, rent-free, in their side of the duplex after the divorce, he had evidently been paying the utilities as well. She sighed and shook her head. Magnanimity hadn't worked. Poor Jack. There was something in bitches that just naturally zeroed in on the nice guys of the world and took them to the cleaners, every time. Of course the sons-of-bitches took more than their share of prisoners, too. It probably all evened out on the cosmic scale, but in Kate's view it was time for someone to shift the weights a little more in Johnny's favor.

  She returned the desk to its previous condition and slipped downstairs again. Jack kept all his more expensive toys, the ones he bought, used once and forgot, in a closet next to the front door. In a very short time she found what was needed. A trip to the garage and she was ready.

  She might even be armed and dangerous. She hoped so.

  Jack came briskly down the stairs, buttoning one of his favorite Pendleton shirts.

  "Ready to go?" she said.

  "You'll have to take Johnny to school, too. He's missed the bus."

  "I'm not going," Johnny said from behind him.

  Jack looked around. "Yes, you are. Get dressed and get your books."

  Something in the tone of his father's voice told Johnny not to push his luck. He stamped back up the stairs and wreaked his disapproval on the bathroom door. Kate smiled to herself, glad and, she admitted, a little relieved. But then, no son of Jack Morgan was about to have his spirit broken by a little matter of parental malice.

  Jack looked at her, a smile in his eyes. "Convention starts today?" She nodded. "So you'll be downtown. Lunch?"

  "Where and what time?"

  "Let's make it late. One o'clock? Downtown Deli?"

  "Sounds good."

  Kate dropped Jack at work and Johnny at school and drove to the Sheraton. Ekaterina was waiting for her in a booth at the cafe, a mug of coffee steaming unnoticed in front of her. The lines of her face seemed even more deeply carved this morning, the frown of her brow more strongly marked, as if she had not slept well the night before.

  "Emaa," Kate said.

  Ekaterina looked up quickly, and if Kate hadn't been watching for it she would have missed the expression of relief that came and went so rapidly in her grandmother's eyes. "Katya. Sit down."

  She signaled the waiter and he brought a mug of coffee for Kate. "You take cream?" "Whenever I can get it," Kate said, and he brought some.

  "You ready to order or you need a few?"

  "I'll just stick with coffee," Kate said.

  Ekaterina ordered a cheese omelet with white toast, and the waiter collected the menus and went away. "Have you talked to Martha?"

  "No." Ekaterina's wrinkled hands wrapped around the mug. She sipped, more for comfort than for taste. Her eyes strayed to the door. "She got in late last night. I called her room and told her we'd be--here she comes now."

  Kate turned to see Martha Barnes threading her way through the tables.

  She didn't look quite natural since she had no children attached to her.

  A short woman, thick through the torso, she had beautiful skin the color of old gold and dark eyes dull with grief. Kate's memory had not failed her; that red silk scrap of nothing behind the door of the condo's bedroom would have fit snugly around one of Martha's solid thighs.

  She came to the booth and sat down heavily next to Ekaterina, who put an arm around her. For a brief moment her head rested against the old woman's shoulder, drawing strength from the embrace, before she straightened and managed a smile with so much pain in it that Kate had to look away. "Hello, Kate."

  "Hi, Martha. I'm so sorry about Enakenty."

  The smile again. Kate hoped her flinch didn't show. "I am, too. He was a good provider. A good father. I don't know what we're going to do without him. The home mortgage, the boat payment, insurance--" She gave a helpless shrug.

  "Was he insured?"

  Martha nodded. "Yes, but not for much. And not enough to support us for long."

  Kate thought of Martha's three children, and the anger that had never been very far away since she saw Enakenty's body licked up again.

  Someone would pay for this. She would see to it personally.

  "I'll have to see if I can get a job in the cannery," Martha said, "but what wi
th the bad seasons since the spill--"

  Ekaterina's voice was deep and certain, no age or fatigue detectable now. "You'll manage."

  "Of course." Martha's chin came up a fraction of an inch. "Of course we will." Emaa will make sure of it, Kate thought, and looked across the table at her grandmother. Your children won't go hungry and you won't go homeless. Trust Ekaterina Moonin Shugak to take care of her own. Pride welled up in her. Kate didn't recognize it at first, but that's what it was, pride in her grandmother and in her grandmother's determination to make things right. She was a solid presence in a world that crumbled around the edges a little more every day, like a rock on the beach, something to hold on to when The Woman Who Keeps the Tides tried to pull you out to sea, something to hold on to while you waited for Calm Water's Daughter to succeed the storm.

  The waiter came with a third cup for Martha. "No, just coffee," she said. "Thank you." She added two spoons of sugar to the mug, set the spoon down carefully on her napkin, and said without looking up, "He wasn't alone in Hawaii. He had a woman with him." A tear slid down her cheek and she ducked her head and swiped at her face. "Sorry," she said, trying to laugh. "Didn't mean to get all sloppy on you." Ekaterina squeezed her shoulder and Martha sent her a grateful smile. "I'm okay.

  Really. I knew he had a girlfriend. When he told me he was going to Hawaii for this North Pacific Fisherman's conference and I wanted me and the kids to come, he said the board was paying his way--" Ekaterina's brows drew together in a frown "-and that we couldn't afford me and the kids to go, too." She sipped some coffee. "So I wondered."

  "How did you find out for sure?"

  "Harvey Meganack's wife Betty called me this morning. Harvey was at the same conference." Martha's lips twisted. "Betty was with him. She saw them together all over the place."

  Bitch, Kate thought. Not only did Betty call Martha to commiserate over her husband's death, she had to make sure Martha knew he was screwing around on her at the time. Betty was such a miserable person she had to make everyone around her miserable, too. She reminded Kate of Jane.

  "Martha, I know this is tough," she said, "but did Betty tell you what the girlfriend looked like?" Martha shrugged. "White, brown hair down to her butt, perfect figure for a bikini, was all Betty said. Enakenty never introduced her, and she didn't talk much."

  Kate nodded. There was a brief pause. "I identified Enakenty," she said.

  "You don't have to go down to the morgue."

  "Thanks, Kate," Martha said. "I want to see him. I have to." She stirred more sugar into her coffee. "I don't think I'll really believe he's dead until I do."

  The waiter brought Ekaterina's breakfast. She jellied a piece of toast and handed it to Martha. "You have to eat something." Nobody said no to Ekaterina Moonin Shugak when she spoke in that tone of voice. Martha accepted the toast. Every bite took an obviously concentrated effort.

  She washed down the last of it with coffee and said, "There is the one thing I can't figure out."

  "What?"

  "What he was doing out on that balcony in the first place."

  "Why?"

  "Enakenty was afraid of heights." At Kate's look she nodded. "Yeah. He got dizzy looking over the edge of the dock in Cordova during fishing season. He could barely make himself go down the ladder to the boat at low tide." She shook her head and rose to her feet. "You couldn't have forced him out on a balcony at gunpoint."

  But he might have been led there, Kate thought. It all depended on the incentive, and to what part of his anatomy it had been offered.

  Martha refused a ride to the Egan Convention Center--"I just can't face all of those people yet"--and Kate and Ekaterina joined Mutt in the Blazer.

  "The board didn't pay Enakenty's way to Hawaii," her grandmother said.

  Kate waited for a break in the traffic to pull out onto Fifth Avenue.

  The light at Cordova was red and she stopped in the right-hand lane.

  "Are you sure, emaa? I've heard how the board gets with the discretionary fund sometimes. And as a board member Enakenty would have had access."

  "I am sure." Ekaterina was definite. "He would have needed a second signature on the check, and Quinto Boone would have had to make it out."

  Quinto Boone was the Association accountant. "He would have told you?"

  Ekaterina nodded.

  "You're keeping a pretty close eye on Association finances," Kate observed. If she'd been hoping for a reply she was doomed to disappointment. The light changed to green and they drove in silence, slowed by a city bus with a black and white paint job that made it look like a diesel powered Black Angus. The title

  "THE MOOOOVER" was painted on the side, surprising an involuntary smile out of Ekaterina.

  "You ought to see the one with Bart Simpson on it," Kate told her.

  "Who?"

  "Never mind. It's better you should not know." The bus stopped between E and F, at the Egan Convention Center. Kate pulled up behind it. "I'll drop you off. I've got to run an errand."

  Ekaterina looked at her. Not a muscle moved in her face.

  Kate sighed. "It won't take long, emaa. An hour at most. I promise I'll come right back."

  Ekaterina kept her gaze fixed on her granddaughter's face for a full minute before putting her hand on the door.

  "Emaa," Kate said.

  Ekaterina looked over her shoulder.

  "It might be interesting to find out just who did pay for Enakenty's trip to Hawaii." And for the condo in Anchorage, she thought.

  There was a brief silence. "Yes," Ekaterina said, and opened the door.

  Her legs too short to reach the ground, she slid off the seat and landed on the sidewalk with a solid thump. "It would be very interesting."

  Kate's brows snapped together. "Emaa? Do you know? Emaa! Talk to me, dammit!" Ekaterina's broad back disappeared into the convention center.

  Kate sat back in her seat and fumed in silence for a moment, before slamming the Blazer into gear and peeling out into the traffic.

  The side-by-side duplex was a single-story dwelling with a peaked roof and two carports. The lot was large which meant that it was an old one.

  There weren't that many large lots in Anchorage.

  At one time a habitat fit only for moose and mosquitoes, the Anchorage Bowl was squeezed between Elmendorf Air Force Base on the north, Chugach State Park on the east, Cook Inlet on the west and Turnagain Arm on the south. It was a land-poor community and new housing developments fought Costco, K-Mart, Walmart and a few homegrown strip mall kings for rights to develop what little land remained. The eight-member municipal zoning board, seven of whom were real estate agents and all of whom were nominated by the mayor, himself an insurance salesman, zoned city tracts with gay abandon and no forethought. This resulted in abortions like Arctic Boulevard, where at one point a welding business dispensed acetylene, argon and CO2 in happy proximity to an elementary school, a residential subdivision and several churches, not to mention a pair of busy railroad tracks on which vehicles were regularly hit by trains at four in the morning. But it made for a solid tax base, and that was all that mattered to the zoning board and the mayor.

  The Dickson Street neighborhood had fared better. Dick son was lined with older houses on large yards filled with birch and mountain ash and honeysuckle and lilacs. In Jane's yard there was a choke cherry tree some twenty-five feet high, a veritable giant among Anchorage trees. It was neatly trimmed and the grass, still green in mid-October, had been recently mowed. The coat of paint, she knew from her sneak peek at the bills, had been applied only last fall. She kept going, down the street and around the corner, pulling into a driveway and turning around to drive back again. She stopped the Blazer a half a block away, killed the engine and reached over the back seat for the camera bag she had stowed there that morning. It was an old Canon, an AT-1, with an assortment of lenses. She loaded it with the roll of Tri-X she'd picked up on the way and after a few fumbling attempts managed to attach the telephoto lens.

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