"Five feet one," Kate lied.
"Including the Nikes," Jack said, and she damned him with a glare.
"And what is your favorite color?" The question was accompanied by a smile of what appeared to be genuine interest.
Kate looked Alana--what kind of a name was that for a grown woman, anyway?--Kate looked Alana straight in the eye and said firmly, "Khaki."
Nordstrom's didn't hire its employees off the back of a turnip truck.
The smile didn't waver. The immaculately coiffed head even gave an approving nod. "A good, solid neutral that goes with everything." The breathy but perfectly modulated voice dropped to a confidential murmur.
Jack sighed a dizzy appreciation of the artistry involved, careful it wasn't loud enough for Kate to hear. "May I ask, have you had your palette done?" Whereupon Jack Morgan had the rare and glorious experience of seeing Kate Shugak totally at sea. "My what?"
Jack bit his lip and stared hard at the opposite wall.
"Your palette," Alana said, irritatingly patient. "Your colors. Are you winter, summer, spring or fall? Khaki is a good color for you, yes, I can see it setting off your skin and hair, but I think a warm peach, or even a red, yes, a red might just bring out even more highlights. In fact, there's a little dress on this rack--"
"I don't wear dresses," Kate stated.
One impeccably penciled eyebrow raised ever so slightly. "Tuxedo pants it is then," Alana said without missing a beat. "This way." She wove her way through the racks and around a shopper scrutinizing the inside seam of something covered in gold sequins that Kate tried not to look at too closely.
"Here we are." Alana held the pants up for inspection. They were made of a heavy, dull black silk, with a thin strip of a lighter weight, shinier silk running down the outside seams. Kate took the hanger. The best that could be said was that they had pockets and a front fly. She held them up to her waist, and didn't even try to keep the triumph out of her voice when she observed, "I'm terribly sorry, but these seem to be about six inches too long." "We can hem them for you," Alana said.
This time the triumph reached Kate's eyes. "I need them by seven o'clock tonight," she said gently.
Alana took the hanger from her and replied, even more gently, "We'll have them ready by five."
Jack started to laugh, caught Kate's eye and turned the laugh into a cough.
It went like that for the next hour, the longest hour of Kate's life.
Alana was pleasant, knowledgeable and terrifyingly efficient. Kate loathed her. She loathed the first three tops Alana presented for her inspection, too. The first was covered with gold and black sequins. "I don't do sequins," Kate said. The second was peach and had ruffles.
"Ruffles," Kate said, aghast. "Rufflesi Who do I look like, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm?" "You can see through it!" she said of the third top, and of the fourth she said, a little desperately, that the neckline of the beaded red jacket was too low, her bra would show. Whereupon Alana whisked them off to the lingerie department and produced a variety of skimpy brassieres that didn't look as if they would hold up a sneeze, let alone Kate's breasts. Jack, under the influence of the sight of so much silk and lace, lost his head and suggested underwear to match, since Kate's sensible, comfortable white briefs might produce a line beneath the silk of the tuxedo pants. It was immediately evident by the quickly suppressed horror in Alana's eyes that underwear lines beneath tuxedo pants were unthinkable, and a lacy pile of nylon bikini briefs appeared next to the skimpy brassieres.
Kate hated nylon briefs. The nylon felt clammy when you first put it on and then after it warmed up it felt as if there was nothing there. She hated bikini briefs, too, which had an inconvenient tendency to ride up into your crotch every time you bent over to pick reds out of a net. She did her best to explain this to both Jack and Alana, who selected bra and briefs and added them to the pile, unheeding. Kate caught Jack looking at a rack of those bra-panty combination things she'd found behind Enakenty's bedroom door and in Jane's lingerie drawer, and snarled, "Don't even think about it." Jack tested the level of resistance in her expression and wisely moved on.
Shoes were next, and after five minutes Kate decided hell was a foot, and the devil a shoe salesman. The devil in this case took the form of a young man named Garth with a lot of stiff brown hair, more teeth than John Kennedy, Jr." and a double-breasted, pin-striped suit so sharp you could cut yourself on it. Garth went into raptures over Kate's tiny feet and produced a pair of black spike heels carved from the carcass of some unidentified reptile, with toes that might have had enough room for the point of a pencil and an instep designed by the Marquis de Sade. "A pair of our finest heels," said Garth, beaming.
"To give you that little extra advantage in height," Alana said. She'd become remarkably adept at reading Kate's expression by that time and added, "But then, perhaps some of us are happy with our height the way it is." "I don't know about us," Kate said through her teeth, "but I certainly am."
Not one to give up without a fight, Alana said to Jack in the tone one used to confer with equals, "You know, this pair would make the line of the pants."
"The line of the pants will have to make it on its own," Kate said, still through her teeth. "I have never worn high heels in my life, and I am not about to learn how tonight."
Jack and his new best friend gave her a long, thoughtful look, exchanged a commiserative glance and compromised on a pair of black leather flats with a heel no higher than the soles of Kate's Nikes. "The soles are too slick," Kate said, by then without much hope. Garth produced rubber heel and toe protectors and had them on the shoes before they went into the box.
Kate fought her way out of Nordstrom's finally and Mutt bounced to her feet with a joyous bark. Kate glared at her. "Where the hell were you when I needed you?" "Now the hair," Jack said, bags hanging from both hands, "Alana gave me the address of her stylist."
"What's wrong with my hair?" Kate said, voice rising as they stepped into the street.
"Just a light trim," Jack said reassuringly, "nothing major. Alana says your hairstyle is perfect for you."
Kate stopped in the middle of Sixth Avenue. "Jack." He stopped, too, eyebrows up in a mildly inquiring expression, thoughts focused on a vision of Kate future. "Jack," she said, this time with more force.
He blinked at her. "What, Kate?"
She spaced out her words, enunciating each syllable with great care. "I
Cut My Own Hair. I Just Did, Two Weeks Ago. It Doesn't Need Cutting Again This Soon."
His brow cleared. "Oh, we're just talking about a trim, Kate," he said reassuringly, "even it up a little, maybe some conditioning, you know, to make it shinier, softer, more manageable."
"Dammit, Jack!"
At that moment the light changed and three horns went off, one for each lane of traffic. Jack, surprised, looked around. "For heaven's sake, Kate, what are we doing out here in the middle of the street? Come on, anybody'd think you were fresh out of the bush."
And the son-of-a-bitch had the gall to grin at her.
Twenty minutes later Kate found herself ensconced in a high chair at Winterbrooke Hair, immobilized in a plastic cape while Jack conferred with his second new best friend of the day, a trim woman with an artfully tousled mop of auburn hair and an assessing eye. They inspected Kate with the air of a pair of genetic scientists altering the latest in designer genes. Some mention was made of bangs. Kate caught Jack's eye with a glance that vowed castration. "Maybe not bangs," he said.
"An off-center part, perhaps," Jeri suggested, "to soften the effect?"
He brightened, whereupon the two of them plunged into a discussion of cosmetics. "What's wrong with Lubriderm?" Kate said, almost wailing. "It comes two bottles for twelve bucks at Costco, it lasts a year, why can't I just use that?"
They were relentless. Kate was shampooed, conditioned, trimmed and moussed within an inch of her life. When Jeri came at her with a can that hissed when she pressed down on the knob Kate panicked, snatched off h
er cape and stumbled out of the chair, her back to the wall. "What in the hell is that?"
"Hairspray. To fix the style."
"Hairspray my ass! Sounded like a frigging blowtorch you were fixing to light!" Kate headed for the door. "I am out of here."
Jeri, like Alana, was made of stern stuff. "Wait! I wanted to try this new highlighter I just got in from Paul Mitchell--"
Outside, Mutt looked her over with some alarm. "One word," Kate told her, "just one word and I'll turn you loose in front of a Fish and Game helicopter next fall." The Blazer was locked and Jack had the key. He was still inside, probably conferring with Jeri over the right way and the wrong way to pluck an eyebrow.
She took a grateful gulp of fresh air, the first in hours, or so it felt. Still no smell of snow. She'd bet her last dime there was some on the homestead, which was where she should be at this moment, not in this modern Gomorrah where the termination dust had crept barely halfway down the Chugach Mountains and no more. In the full light of day they looked half-dressed, their white robes up around their knees, and faintly embarrassed about it.
"You think you feel bad," Kate told them, "look at what they've done to me."
They didn't answer and she leaned back against the Blazer's bumper and shoved her hands in her pockets, watching the traffic and wondering how anyone could stand to drive in it every day of their lives. Winterbrooke Hair was a door off Northern Lights Boulevard, and four lanes of studded tires with no snow to grip buzzed down the pavement like angry wasps.
The sound was hypnotic and she lapsed into a partial trance, staring unblinkingly at the Sears Mall and the people going in and out. A lot of them were Alaska Natives in rental cars and trucks, and she wondered if there was anyone left at the convention center for the afternoon panels.
The panel on sovereignty, the one with Olga and Cindy on it, ought to prove lively, to say the least.
Sarah Kompkoff had been big on sovereignty, she remembered. "Our own laws for our own people," she had said once, just about the time the state attorney-general had gone into orbit at the thought of ceding so much as one degree of prosecutorial power, no matter how far out in the bush.
How had Lew Mathisen known that Enakenty Barnes had been in Hawaii with his girlfriend? Had Lew been in Hawaii, too? He and Harvey Meganack were acquainted, the dinner at Mama Nicco's had made that clear, but Betty hadn't been present that evening. She supposed Harvey could have told him, but it seemed awfully pat. Lew Mathisen was a lobbyist always available to the highest bidder; he was undoubtedly on some lumber or paper company's payroll, probably why he was bud dying up to the one member of the Niniltna Native Association board who favored logging in Iqaluk. The North Pacific Fisherman's League could easily be another client.
The big question was if Sarah and Enakenty's deaths factored into the puzzle. Kate hoped like hell they didn't. She was greatly afraid they did.
Yes. She was going to be very interested in who brought whom to the party this evening. If new clothes and a new hairstyle was what it took to get her in the door, she would just have to suffer through it.
Which is not to say she wouldn't rather have been back on the deck of the Avilda in the middle of the Bering Sea in a twenty-foot swell, facing down three murderers.
"Kate!" Jack trotted down the steps. "Stop leaning up against that fender, you'll ruin your hair!"
That evening she stamped downstairs trussed up like a gift wrapped ham.
Jack was waiting at the door, his burly frame barely contained in his court suit, cleaned and pressed for the occasion. A white shirt and a brand-new bright red tie with no discernible food stains on it completed the picture. At the best of times his hair could only be described as unruly and tonight it stood up in dark curls all over his head, but he was clean-shaven and his shoes were shined. He looked comfortable. Kate was bitterly envious, so much so that she failed to notice the expression on his face when he looked up and saw her, fully assembled, so to speak, for the first time.
She couldn't miss Johnny, standing stock still between them in the middle of the hall, his mouth open. "Wow, Kate," he breathed.
The red bugle beads on the short, draped jacket glittered in the light, the tuxedo pants broke across the instep of the shoes at exactly the right length, her hair fell from the rhinestone barrette in soft, shining waves around her shoulders, no bra straps or panty lines disgraced her by their appearance, the leather of her new shoes gleamed and altogether she was a stunning sight. The scar across her neck was barely noticeable.
"Wow, Kate," Johnny said again, "you look--you look--" Words failed him.
At twelve years old you haven't had a lot of time to work up a good line.
By forty-six you have, but at this point all Jack could do was hope that his tongue wasn't hanging as far out as his son's. His voice squeaked when he first tried to speak. He suppressed a blush by sheer effort of will and cleared his throat. "Where're the earrings?" "They hurt my ears," Kate said, daring him to pursue it.
She didn't need them, he thought, it would only be gilding the lily. He cleared his throat again and didn't quite have the guts to offer his arm. "Well? Shall we?"
Mutt barked at her, a sharp, short, warning sound that startled all of them. "What?" Kate said.
In the living room doorway, Mutt lowered her head and growled. "Mutt?"
Kate said. "What's the matter, girl?"
Mutt actually flattened her ears. "Mutt! It's me! It's just me! Jack! My own dog doesn't know me! Mutt, it's just me, it's Kate!" Kate held out a hand.
Mutt's lips curled back from her teeth, exposing a very large set of canines that Kate had never seen at quite that angle before. Others had, not her. She didn't move. Mutt gave her hand a wary sniff, looked at the vision standing before her, sniffed again. The lip came back down, and Mutt looked her over one last time, shining head to gleaming leather toes, gave a contemptuous and comprehensive snort, tossed her tail up in disgust and stalked into the living room to plump down in the middle of the rug with her back turned pointedly to Kate.
There was a short, charged silence.
"That does it," Kate said. Her hand went to the hidden fastening of the jacket.
Jack intercepted it just in time and Johnny scooted around them to yank open the door. As the babysitter, who had not the benefit of the before picture, watched in puzzlement, Kate was tucked securely into the Blazer and hied on her way to the Discovery Room of the Captain Cook before the first button was undone.
As has been said before, Jack Morgan was adept at reading Kate Shugak sign. His son bid fair to becoming a useful back-trailer, too.
SIX.
THE CAPTAIN COOK HAD BEEN BUILT BY AN EX-BOXING champion who had come to Alaska after World War II to make his fortune in real estate. He lost the fortune and a good portion of the real estate itself in the 1964
Alaska Earthquake, and struck the right note with the citizens of the new state newly devastated by a 9.2 temblor by digging the foundations of a new hotel before the year of the quake was out. From the new hotel he went on to the governor's mansion, and from the governor's mansion to the position of Secretary of the Interior, where he lasted two years before President Nixon fired him for publicly opposing the conduct of the Vietnam War. He returned to Alaska and ran again for governor. It took him twenty years to get reelected, a great shock to the citizens of Alaska, who had voted in larger numbers to retain the decriminalization of marijuana than they had for him, a candidate who made Newt Gingrich look liberal. His second term was highlighted by a plan to build a water pipeline to California, another to ship chunks of Alaskan glacier ice to Saudi Arabia, and by an indictment for granting a state lease with very favorable terms to a building owned by his chief campaign contributor.
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 06 - Blood Will Tell Page 13
