Wait a minute, Kate thought, amused and a little puzzled, when did I start noticing what other women were wearing? The answer was quick in coming. Since I walked into the room in an outfit that would look better on Tina Turner, is when. Good God, did wearing an outfit like this automatically put a woman into competition with all other women in the matter of dress? Amusement gave way to alarm. What if the effect was permanent? What if she spent the rest of her life comparing the way she was dressed to every woman who walked into the room?
"Uh, ouch?" her dance partner said, when her hand tightened on his.
"Oh," she said, loosening her grip. "Sorry."
"Don't worry." He smiled down at her and his arm pulled her in closer.
"I liked it. Do it again."
Her left heel came down hard on his right toe. He winced. Space appeared again between them, and Kate took a deep breath and calmed herself with the reminder that she would be back in jeans and T-shirt by morning.
Cold turkey, that was the only way to treat something like this before it got out of hand. The next step down that road was ordering from Victoria's Secret, a catalogue that came unsolicited in her mail which she had never opened but which, rolled and tied, made a great fire starter for the wood stove. She peered again over her partner's shoulder at the reunion taking place at the edge of the dance floor.
Edgar P. Dischner had noticed the ladies' attire. He bowed low over the trophy brunette's hand. She was tall enough and he was short enough that when he bent over her hand his forehead was very nearly in her cleavage.
Neither of them seemed unhappy about it. John King was scowling, but that was his natural expression. Kate's partner turned them so that his shoulders blocked her view, and she shifted her weight to keep him turning so she could go up on tiptoe and look over his other shoulder, which wasn't quite what he had in mind when he'd started whispering sweet nothings in her ear halfway through
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." "Hey," her partner said--Will? Bill? something to do with the land department at Amerex--"who's leading here, anyway?" He smiled to show there were no hard feelings and snuggled in for the kill, only to find himself with an armful of air as she pulled free with a muttered excuse and headed toward the group at the edge of the floor. Jack waltzed by clasped in the torrid embrace of a redhead wearing a multicolored dress that fluttered in fragments from shoulder, bosom, waist and knee with every movement, kind of like the line of flags over a car dealer's lot fluttered in the breeze, only the flags were considerably more substantial. Kate caught his eye and jerked her head. With difficulty, Jack extricated himself from the redhead, who was half in the bag anyway and who teetered off on very high heels in search of someone else tall enough to lean up against. She and Kate's former dance partner were made for each other.
"What's up?" Jack said. She jerked her head, and he followed her gaze.
"Well, well, well. Edger P. Dischner, as I live and breathe, and Lew Mathisen. And isn't that--"
"Harvey Meganack," Kate said with grim relish. "And Billy Mike. And John King again, who is proving to be downright ubiquitous."
"And Axenia." Jack looked down at her, one corner of his mouth quirking up. "Want to go over and say hi?"
Her smile matched his. "Why not?"
He crooked his arm. She fluttered her eyelashes and slid her hand inside. By the time the two of them reached the little group the grins and Billy's and Harvey's wives had disappeared and the handshakes and back slaps had deteriorated into a furiously whispered argument.
"You'll never get emaa to--" Axenia looked up and saw Kate and Jack bearing down on them. She elbowed Billy, who paled visibly when he saw Kate.
"Billy," she greeted him like her longest, los test friend, "long time no see." "Hello, Kate," he said with a weak smile. "You look great."
"Why, thank you, Billy," she beamed at him, and impartially around the circle.
"Shugak." John King was inclined to be curt, but his eyes widened a bit as he looked her over. The trophy brunette was clamped to his side, her smooth face showing no expression and her eyes as opaque and impenetrable as ever. Again, King didn't bother to introduce her.
Lew Mathisen was positively effusive. "Kate, I've never seen you dressed up before, you look fantastic, you ought to do it more often, ha HAH!"
The brunette blinked once, like a lizard lying in the sun. Kate wondered if there was any there there.
"And this of course is Edgar Dischner. Kate Shugak, Jack Morgan."
"We've met," Jack said, unsmiling. Like most of the Alaska law enforcement community, he'd been around the edges of enough Dischner cases to know the man was dirty, and to be bitterly resentful that he couldn't touch him.
Dischner was smooth and expansive, as he could well afford to be.
"Hello, Jack." His smile was full of calculated charm and no warmth.
"It's been a while."
"Not long enough," Jack drawled.
Lew looked scandalized and plucked at Dischner's elbow. "Edgar, we've got that meeting."
No one ever shortened Edgar P. Dischner's name to plain old Ed, Kate noticed.
Dischner said, still looking at Jack, "Relax, Lew. It's a party. Have a drink. Ask Kate to dance."
"Ha HAH!"
Kate looked at Dischner from beneath her lashes. "Ask me yourself."
That surprised a real laugh out of Dischner, and Jack watched him lead her out with an impassive expression it cost a lot to maintain. He was afraid the bugle beads had gone straight to Kate's brain.
On the floor Dischner was short enough for her to look in the eye, which gave her neck muscles a rest, and her an excellent opportunity to observe his every expression. She smiled at him, after an evening of being pursued from one end of the very large, very crowded room to the other not unaware of the effect of that smile. "Nice party."
He smiled back, the expression not reaching the cold gray eyes. His arm did not tighten around her waist. "Very nice."
"Lots of people here."
"Lots," he agreed, nodding to another couple, flashing a smile at someone else. Like Ekaterina, he was an expert at working the house. He could probably work an empty room if the spirit moved him. Over his shoulder she saw Harvey and Billy and Axenia deep in conversation with Lew Math isen hovering around the perimeter. John King had been shanghaied by Jack's tipsy redhead and was currently holding her up two couples away. Jack was dancing with the trophy brunette, who was leaning languidly back in his arms and gazing up at him through her lashes, the large knot of dark hair pulling her head back and displaying the long stemmed neck to distinct advantage. Jack's expression was wary but appreciative.
Turning to her own partner Kate took a chance, and said, "I understand you're something of an expert in Alaskan real estate, Mr. Dischner."
The smile was modest. "I don't know that I'd go so far as to call myself an expert, Ms. Shugak."
"No? Funny, I'd heard otherwise. They say you're one of Alaska's biggest property owners."
"Do they?" He threw in a fancy step and turned them to head off in the opposite direction, and by the grace of God she managed to keep up.
"They do," she said. "I was wondering--"
The smile again. "Yes?"
"Well, if perhaps you had heard anything of a firm called Arctic Investors."
His feet didn't miss a step but something flickered at the back of his eyes. "Arctic Investments?" "No, Arctic Investors," Kate said. "Have you heard of them?" "Arctic Investors," he said. A tiny line appeared between his eyebrows, to indicate how hard he was thinking. "No, I'm afraid I've never heard of it. Is it a local concern?"
"I believe so," she said, eyes wide and guileless. "It's a real estate and management firm, I think. They own various condominiums in Anchorage and the Valley and rent them out."
He raised his brows. "Were you thinking of investing?" "Perhaps," she said. "If I could find the right property." She'd been on the Slope long enough, surrounded by enough wannabe entrepreneurs, that she could talk the t
alk if she had to. "I'd want a garage, of course, as well as good security. A woman alone can't be too careful these days."
Kate Shugak was not notorious for a timorous lifestyle but Dischner took this without a blink. "She certainly can't."
"But Arctic Investors doesn't ring a bell?"
"I'm afraid not." "Pity." She smiled.
"Isn't it." He smiled back.
When the music ended Dischner bent his elegant gray head over her hand, expressed his gratitude and pleasure at their dance, his desolation at its premature ending, and looked forward with great anticipation to the next time before ushering her off the floor with all the panache of a courtier escorting a member of the royal family. It made a good impression on nearly everyone watching, the dignified, distinguished older man escorting the bright, beautiful young woman. Nearly everyone, that is, except Ekaterina, whose face was stony with a disapproval Kate could feel from fifty feet away.
"Really," Dischner said when they returned to the little group, "that has to be the top of the evening for me." He turned to Lew. "A few words before I head for the barn, Lew?" "Of course, Edgar," Lew said. "You don't mind, do you, honey? Ha HAH!" He pressed a hasty kiss on Axenia's cheek.
They left. Axenia, a little forlorn, drifted off. Harvey and Billy hit the buffet. John King reclaimed his brunette and disappeared. Kate turned and met Ekaterina's condemning gaze with a cool, steady, unapologetic one of her own. To the surprise of them both, her grandmother's gaze was the first to fall.
The party began to break up at one o'clock, when the open bars stopped serving. Jack and Kate gave Ekaterina a ride back to her hotel, Ekaterina's attempt to take a cab thwarted by Kate's insistence that she come with them. By now Ekaterina was too tired to hide it anymore, and when they pulled into the Sheraton's driveway, Kate hopped out to open her door and escort her up to her room. Ekaterina leaned heavily on her granddaughter's arm all the way, and sat down on the edge of her bed to rub her left arm, her face weary.
"What's the matter with that arm, emaa?" Kate said. "You've been rubbing at it for days now." Ekaterina's hand dropped. "I told you, Katya. A little rheumatism in the elbow. Don't fuss." She looked across at her granddaughter, brave in bright red jacket and black silk pants. "You do look beautiful, Katya. I was proud of you tonight."
In thirty-three years, it was the first time Ekaterina had ever admitted to being proud of Kate. Not when she had graduated from high school, not when she had graduated from college, certainly not when she had become the star of the Anchorage D. A."s investigators' staff. Her voice huskier than usual, Kate said, "No more beautiful than you, emaa."
"Oh for heaven's sake, girl." Ekaterina looked exasperated. "Just say thank you, do you think you can do that much for me?" "Fine," Kate said, annoyed. "Thank you." She raised her eyebrows in exaggerated inquiry, as if to say, Are you happy now?
Not quite through gritted teeth Ekaterina said, "You're welcome."
"Fine."
"Good."
They glared at each other. Ekaterina smiled first, a sudden, reluctant smile that broke the tension, and waved a hand. "Go on. Go home. I'm tired. I want my bed."
Kate hesitated with one hand on the door. "Emaa?"
"What?"
She turned her head to meet her grandmother's eyes. "This job I'm doing for you--"
The amusement on Ekaterina's face vanished. "Yes?"
"We may find out some things we don't want to know, about people close to us." Ekaterina said nothing. Kate held her gaze for as long as she could. "Well. Goodnight, emaa."
"Goodnight, Katya."
Back at the townhouse, Jack paid off the babysitter, who thank God had her own car, and followed Kate upstairs, bent on seduction. Early in the evening he'd promised himself a long, slow removal of Kate's personally selected gift wrapping, one scrap of silk at a time, his reward for the longest evening of his life. He took the steps two by two, only to skid to a halt in the doorway, his face falling. Kate was down to her black lace skivvies already and was in the act of covering them up again with blue jeans and T-shirt. "What the hell?"
"Come on, shuck out of that suit." He didn't move, and she said impatiently, "Come on, Jack!" "Why?" he said, trying and failing not to sound petulant. She stamped her feet into her Nikes and went to stand in front of the dresser mirror to pull off the barrette and bind her hair back in its usual braid.
Disappointment gave way to foreboding. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, and with some trepidation said, "Where are we going?"
She rummaged through a drawer for one of his sweaters, a long-sleeved, navy blue turtleneck that hid the white of her T-shirt completely. Her voice was muffled as she pulled it over her head. "Dischner's office, where else?" Her head emerged and she pulled her braid free. She looked at him, rolling up the cuffs. "Well?" she said impatiently. "What are you standing around for? Go get the babysitter back!"
SEVEN.
"KATE," JACK WHISPERED, "THIS IS NUTS."
"Like hell it is," she whispered back. "Old Eddie P's been behind or involved in every crooked deal since statehood. Mathisen's the biggest influence peddler in the state. Those two alone in a room together make me nervous. Those two in a room together with Axenia, Harvey and Billy flat scare me to death."
"Not to mention John King."
She shook her head. "He'd never get his hands really dirty, as RPetco's CEO he's got way too much to lose."
He paused, considering. "It wouldn't be the first time a CEO overreached himself and wound up on the end of a criminal indictment."
She shook her head again. "King is a major pain in the ass but he's a straight shooter."
"Dischner's probably on retainer for RPetco."
She snorted. "So what? RPetco spends half their waking hours in court with the state. It takes slime to beat slime. Keeping Dischner on retainer is only good business."
He gave it one last shot. "Nothing we find in there will be admissible."
She grinned. "Remember Morgan's Second Law."
He sighed. "Evidence First, Admissibility Second?" She nodded, still grinning, and he sighed again. "Sometimes I think you were too damn good a student."
"Besides, we're not trying to make a case here, we're just trying to find out what the hell's going on. Now quit stalling and pick that lock."
Two-thirty on a mid-October morning, even with no snow on the ground, wasn't Jack's favorite time to be hunched over the lock of a door of a Fourth Avenue office building. The bars had closed half an hour before but that didn't mean the odd drunk wouldn't lose himself on the way to the bus station and start trying other doors in search of a warm office lobby. At least Dischner's two stories of glass and brass wasn't big enough to rate a permanent security guard, although the sign on the window warned that the building was on Guardian Security System's evening patrol. He'd already by-passed the alarm system with a couple of alligator clips. At least he hoped he had. He wasn't as young as he used to be. "Kate, you don't seriously think Axenia ... " They were at the back entrance and out of sight of the street but both jumped when a car started some blocks away.
"I don't know," Kate said, after the car had driven out of earshot. "All I know for sure at this moment is Sarah Kompkoff and Enakenty Barnes were on emaa's side on Iqaluk, and now both of them are dead. Axenia's hanging out with Lew Mathisen, and Lew Mathisen, the greasiest hand this side of Washington, D. C." is hanging out with one Edgar P. Dischner, who is on retainer with half the businesses in the state, and who contributes time and money to pro-development legislators the way some people tithe to a church. If there's something going on with Dischner and Iqaluk, I want to know what it is."
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 06 - Blood Will Tell Page 15
