A deeper sleep (29 page)

The door opened. "Yum," Johnny said.

She looked up, smiling. "Fresh tomatoes at the store today. George Perry spread the word."

Johnny sniffed at them over her shoulder. He'd shot up almost six inches over the past year. It was starting to get alarming. "You're going to be as tall as your father before your next birthday."

He grinned at her. "Eat your heart out, shorty."

"Yeah, up yours, Morgan. I don't know why I keep surrounding myself with all these overgrown white men. I couldn't find a nice Aleut my own height?"

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," he said before he caught himself.

Much to his relief, she laughed. "Shut up and set the table."

Half an hour later they sat down to heaping plates of penne pasta in a tomato sauce Johnny pronounced adequate, which nearly got him hit in the head with a slice of the fisherman's bread, butter-side impact. Things might have degenerated into a fullblown food fight if they hadn't both been so hungry.

He was mopping the juice up with another slice of bread when he said guiltily, "Oh. I guess we aren't waiting for Jim?"

"No."

He ladled up seconds with alacrity and sliced more bread. "Kate, has Jim said anything more to you about Fitz and his mom?"

"No," she said, pushing back her empty plate.

Jim hadn't been out to the house for three days running. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but she missed him when he was gone. And it wasn't only the sex. The sex was great, yeah, but this was more than that. She felt restless, a little cranky, like her day wasn't finished before she saw him in it. When something bad happened, or something funny or something exciting, he was the first call she wanted to make.

And how pathetic was that? There were probably only thirty-two other women out there who could say the same thing.

"Kate?"

"Huh? Oh. Sorry. What?"

"Are you guys still sure that Louis Deem was the one who killed them?"

She hesitated, and then nodded. "Yes."

He nodded. "So it's done."

"Pretty much," Kate said.

He frowned at his plate. "I keep wondering what Dad would have said about him."

"About Louis?"

"Yeah." He looked at her. "How hard would Dad look for Louis Deem's killer, do you think?"

Above all else, Jack Morgan had been a pragmatist. "He was a good cop, Johnny," Kate said. "One of the best I ever knew. Smart, skilled, and tenacious as hell."

"But?"

She smiled a little. "He was also very practical. He would put his effort where he thought it would produce the best result. Least effort, most effect. He wasn't going to waste the taxpayer's dollar and the court's time on a case that wouldn't stand up to a reasonable doubt."

"That's what I figured." He sat back. "I miss Fitz."

"I know," she said gently. "I hope you always do. Fitz should be remembered."

They cleared the table. She washed, he dried. As he was putting away the dishes he said, "Boy, I guess Bernie totally lucked out."

"Why?"

"Didn't Jim tell you? He's Bernie's alibi. Bernie and him were knocking back espresso at the Riverside Cafe at the exact time Louis Deem was shot." He looked over at her. "Kate? What's wrong?"

The need for an answer was interrupted when Auntie Vi's Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer nosed down the track and into the clearing.

"Oh man," Johnny said, and vanished into his bedroom.

THIRTEEN

Hey, Auntie," Kate said, opening the door as Auntie Vi mounted the steps to the deck. Nobody knew how old Auntie Vi was, partly because she jealously guarded the information and partly because no one was issuing birth certificates to Native children in the Bush when Auntie Vi had been born. She had to be in her eighties by now, although her hair was still black and shiny as a raven's wing, which most certainly owed something to the ministrations of Auntie Balasha, her personal hairdresser, and her step was as light as a teenager's, which owed nothing to no one, unless she had a fountain of youth hidden in the back bedroom.

No, unlike Old Sam, she didn't show her age, but they each seemed ageless and indestructible in their own ways. And with a store of wisdom acquired over years of living, and the confidence that wisdom brought, they both shared an unshakable belief in the Tightness of their opinions.

One of which was unleashed when Kate closed the door behind her. "So, Katya," Auntie Vi said without preamble, "you thinking about what I say?"

"I thinking plenty about what you say, Auntie."

"You don't mock, Katya," Auntie Vi said sharply. "This too important for making fun."

"I'm sorry, Auntie," Kate said. She put on hot water for tea and got out the cookies and her self-control.

Auntie Vi sat down at the table, very erect. It took an inordinately long time for the water to boil. Kate was sure there was a metaphor in there somewhere. She brought the tea and cookies to the table and sat down, grateful for silence. It gave her a brief space of time to gather her composure, on the ragged edge after Johnny's startling news.

Jim was Bernie's alibi? How convenient was that?

Auntie Vi took a sip of tea and a bite of a cookie and pushed both away. "There is board meeting next week, Katya. You should go."

"I got thrown out of the last board meeting I went to, Auntie."

A finger poked her shoulder, hard. "This time you be quiet. Listen. Learn." She gave a sharp nod.

"Auntie, I've never been an officer of a group. I've never joined a group I could be an officer of. I wasn't even on the student council in high school."

Auntie Vi was unyielding. "You learn."

Swish, two points, Auntie Vi.

They sipped more tea, munched more cookie. Johnny poked a cautious head out the door of his room, smelled the tension in the air, retreated noiselessly back behind his moat and pulled up the drawbridge. Mutt, after trotting over to greet Auntie Vi, had returned to the rag rug in front of the fireplace, and to all appearances was soundly asleep with her nose beneath her tail.

Kate cast about for a topic to divert Auntie Vi. "I was thinking about Emaa today, Auntie. I was wondering what she would think about Louis Deem."

"I tell you exactly what Ekaterina would say," Auntie Vi said, in the manner of one bringing the sermon down from the mount. "That Louis a bad boy, very bad, bad for his wives, bad for their families, bad for the village, for the tribe, for the Park. You think it bad that he dead? No! Good! Good for girl children! Good for families! Good for village!"

"I know, Auntie. But I was wondering if she would think the way he died was right."

Auntie Vi's face darkened. "You like this always, even little girl Katya poking her nose in everywhere, nobody's business is theirs it isn't hers, too. Good that you became police detective. Good, I say to Ekaterina, good all the aunties and uncles say. Nosy girl grow up into nosy woman, go to work at nosy job. Good. Maybe help peoples. That good, too. Maybe, Ekaterina say, maybe she come home and help her peoples. We all say, that be very good!"

Kate dropped her forehead into her hand.

Auntie Vi didn't notice. "But then you don't come home. No. You stay in Anchorage."

"I'm here now, Auntie," Kate said tiredly to the surface of the table. "I've been here for almost seven years. Don't you think you could maybe, oh, I don't know, let that go?"

"Anchorage!" Auntie Vi said, curling her lip. "Your people here, but you stay there. And then you come home!" Auntie Vi waved her mug in emphasis. Some of the tea splashed on the table. Auntie Vi took no notice. "Finally you come home. Because you hurt." An indignant forefinger stabbed in the direction of the scar on Kate's throat. "You hurt, almost you die, so you come home. You want healing. Good, we say. But you don't come home, you stay out here. Twenty-five miles from your family, your peoples, you stay. Alone, no one to help, no way we know if you well or if you die."

Auntie Vi seized another cookie. "So. We get you puppy." The finger stabbed at Mutt, who didn't so much as twitch an ear. Kate envied her deeply, and hoped Auntie Vi didn't notice that Mutt's bedding consisted of a quilt painstakingly handmade stitch by excruciatingly small stitch for their Katya by her aunties. "You get better. All right. We forgive. You work for your peoples. You do good for them. Mostly. Partly. Some of the time. Little bits anyway. But respected, you are. Honored, you are." Auntie Vi glared. "Loved, you are!"

When Auntie Vi got really wound up she started sounding like Yoda. Kate wondered if Willard, the
Star Wars
fanatic, had ever heard Auntie Vi on a roll. Probably not. He was such an aunties' pet. They'd never yell at him. She hid a sigh and stirred more sugar into her tea.

"When I ask you to do more for your peoples, Katya, this is what you do, this craziness, what is this, Katya. Louis bad man. Bad! He hurt many peoples. He would have hurt many more. Johnny, he threaten. You! That puppy! Good that he is dead. We all know this." Auntie Vi finished her cookie in one angry bite. "Except you!"

"I didn't say that, Auntie," Kate said, startled, but her words were swept under by the flood. "It's not like I'm going after his killer."

It's not like anyone is, she thought.

There was a brief silence. Auntie Vi studied the tea in her mug and seemed to come to a decision. "This Louis Deem a very bad man, Katya." Her voice had become very soft.

"I know that, Auntie. None better."

"A very bad man," Auntie Vi repeated. "The Smith girl. She come to me."

"Abigail? When? Oh God, don't tell me she's changing her story again?"

"Not Abigail. Chloe. At the potlatch for Bernie's boy." She added, as an afterthought, "And wife."

"Chloe?"

"You know how the girls always talk to me. If I know them, if I don't, they always talk to me."

"Yes." Kate thought back to the potluck, and vaguely remembered seeing Auntie Vi with Chloe. "Why would she need to—?" Kate stopped.

The silence hung heavy in the room. At last Kate said, almost imploringly, "No. No, Auntie."

Inexorable, Auntie Vi nodded once, up and down. "Yes. I see Chloe at potlatch for Enid and Fitz. She looking like she lost her last friend, so I bring her fry bread. She look at my fry bread and she start to cry. I take her out back. She tell me."

Kate remembered the Smiths turning out in force at the pot-latch. She remembered how annoyed she had been that they had pushed themselves into the Park's social life without invitation.

"Not only Chloe," Auntie Vi said in a hard voice. "The little girl, Hannah, too."

Without knowing how she got there, Kate found herself on her feet, shouting. "What did this guy think he was doing, marrying into a fucking harem?"

Mutt scrambled up and shot like an arrow to Kate's side. She stood, four feet planted squarely, barking and growling in every direction. She even snapped at Auntie Vi.

"Shame on you, Mutt," Auntie Vi said sharply. "You don't know who are your friends?"

Mutt barked at her, ears flattened against her head. She had heard the pain and outrage in Kate's voice, and Auntie Vi was the only other person in the room.

Auntie Vi sat very still.

Kate looked up to see Johnny standing in the door of his bedroom, his face white. He swallowed, and said, his voice very small, "Is everything all right?"