A grave denied (7 page)

“Goddamn, woman, you’re letting the kid play with the wolves!” Bobby bellowed at Dinah.

Dinah raised an eyebrow. “Handing over to you, Dad,” she said, and retired behind the central console to her computer, where she was editing a twenty-minute video for the community health representative on the practices of safe sex, to be shown that fall to health classes at Niniltna Public School. She was trying to keep the opportunities for snickering to a minimum but the local high schoolers were a precocious bunch and it was hard going. The Niniltna Native Association was footing the bill, however, so she waded in with a light heart.

Bobby, deprived of a husband’s legitimate prey, shifted his sights. “And you,” he bellowed at Kate, “I keep telling you, no fucking wolves in the house!”

Kate tried not to wince away from the volume. Katya was truly a chip off the old block. She heard a low moan and looked around to see Katya pulling mightily on one of Mutt’s ears.

Hard-heartedly, she turned her back. “So Len Dreyer reshingled your roof?”

“Yeah.”

“Before the first snowfall, you said. When was that?”

“Lemme look.” He wheeled over to the console and pulled down one of a row of daily diaries from a shelf. “Let’s see. October twenty-third. Late last year.” He closed the diary and replaced it. “His cabin’s really burned down?”

“It really is.”

“Anything left?”

She shook head. “No. No papers, nothing. And he didn’t have much ID on him. Any, actually. The only reason we know his name is he worked for everyone.”

Bobby nodded. “Not much need for ID in the Park.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Although, now we’re going to have our own resident trooper, might pay to keep a driver’s license handy.”

She tried to look down her nose but it wasn’t long enough. “It might.” She jerked her head at the radio. “Call Anchorage for me?”

He grinned. “The game’s afoot!” he said. He turned on one wheel and docked into the radio console like a ship nosing into port, flipped switches and turned knobs without looking, and said over his shoulder, “Who’m I calling?”

“Brendan McCord. Got his number?”

“Babe, I got everyone’s number.”

A snort came from the other side of the console, followed by a long, lupine moan from the living room. Both were ignored.

“Brendan? Kate Shugak here.”

“Kate!” Brendan’s rich, full tenor rolled off the airwaves like an aria. “Long time no talk. What’re you up to, girl?”

Kate, mindful of the thousand ears listening in from Tok to Tanana, said, “I’m working a case. I need some information.”

“Oh. Ah. Well,” he boomed cheerfully, “I live to serve. What do you need?”

“Anything you can dig up on a Len Dreyer.”

“Got a Social Security number?”

“Nope.”

“Got a date of birth?”

“Nope.”

“Got a driver’s license number?”

“Nope.”

A brief pause. “Well, if it was easy, everybody^ be doing it.”

“Jim shipped the body to the ME yesterday. It was stuck in a glacier. His prints ought to be fairly well preserved.”

“Freeze-dried,” Brendan said respectfully. “Who do I call?”

Bobby nudged Kate to one side. “Brendan, this is Bobby.”

“No offense, Bobby, but I’d rather be talking to Kate.”

Bobby laughed. “You and me both, bubba. I’m on-line nowadays. When you get what she wants, email it to Bobby at parkair-dot-com. That way I can print it out for you,” he told Kate.

Kate, who liked computers, said, “Just like downtown.” She raised her voice. “Thanks, Brendan.”

His voice sank to a lecherous purr. “Come to town and you can thank me in person.”

Kate laughed. “I’ll be on the next plane.”

“You’re cutting into my action, McCord, I’m cutting you off,” Bobby said, and cleared to the sound of Brendan’s laughter. He cocked an eyebrow at Kate.

“Cut it out,” she said. “You’re starting to sound like Dolly Levi.”

“I didn’t say a word,” he said virtuously. “You working for Jim on this?”

She nodded, careful to keep her expression neutral. “Usual rates.”

She waited grimly for the ragging to start, but all he said was, “Hmmm. Didn’t you owe me some money?”

When the door closed behind her he checked on Katya, who had fallen asleep with her head beneath the coffee table, her little butt stuck up in the air, which inspired him to scoop his wife out of her chair and into his lap. The kiss that followed was long and enthusiastic. She squirmed halfheartedly before giving in.

He pulled back to look down at her flushed and smiling face. “Promise me you’ll never leave me.”

She laughed. “Where’s that coming from?”

He jerked his head at the door.

Her laugh faded. “You mean her and Jim?”

“Who else?”

“Ethan’s totally out of the picture?”

“What I hear, his wife’s got him on a leash so short he hardly ever gets off the homestead anymore.”

She was silent.

“What?”

“I don’t want Kate hurt,” she said.

“Hurt? Kate?” It was his turn to laugh.

She shoved herself off his lap and sat back down in front of the computer. Even the line of her spine looked angry, so he wasn’t surprised when her voice was curt. “You’re such a moron, Clark. You think Kate’s invulnerable?”

He took a chance and rolled over to slide his arms around her waist. He nuzzled her ear and whispered, “I think she can handle herself. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’d like to handle you.”

She tried to shrug him off, and only managed to shrug off her clothes and into their bed. A while later he said, “Got some news.”

“Good or bad?” She raised her head to see if Katya was still out, and was reassured by the mound of little behind beneath the baby quilt
the
four aunties had made.

“Bad.”

She rolled up on an elbow. He was staring at the ceiling, his face set. She let her hand wander to afford some distraction from whatever it was that was making him unhappy.

“Cut that out,” he said without force.

“Tell me or I’ll quit.”

“All right, all right, Jesus! Some women.” He pulled her back down for a fierce kiss.

“Forget it,” she said, grabbing his hair and pulling. “Talk.”

“Ouch! Damn it! Jeez, you’re always beating up on me. You think you’d take it easier on a poor, helpless cripple with—”

She pulled harder. “Tell me.”

He sighed. “My brother’s coming.”

“Your brother?”

He nodded.

“You have a brother?”

He winced. “Yeah.”

“We’ve been married, what, going on two years, we have a child, and this is the first time you tell me you have a brother?” A murmur from Katya in the living room made her lower her voice. “Older or younger?”

“Older.”

“Does he have a name, this older brother?”

“Jeffrey.”

“Any other siblings I need to know about?”

“No.”

“This is like pulling teeth,” she said. “Talk to me, Clark. Why is it bad news that your older brother Jeffrey is coming to visit?”

“He’s not coming to visit. We don’t visit.”

“Then why is he coming?”

“He didn’t say, he just said he was coming.”

“Did he write, call, what?”

“I got a letter yesterday when I went into town to check the mail.”

She digested this. “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

She took a deep breath. “I appreciate all the advance notice there, Clark.”

“I didn’t get much either, Cookman, like I said, I just got the letter yesterday. I don’t even know how the hell he found me. I haven’t spoken to anyone there since before I joined up.”

Mistaking her silence, he added, “Don’t worry, he’s not staying here. I got him a room at Auntie Vi’s. With luck, you won’t even have to meet him.”

“I don’t mind if he stays with us, Bobby. Half the Park’s on the couch every other night as it is. Besides which, you’re his brother. Why wouldn’t he stay with us?”

“Because I wouldn’t invite him to.” When she would have said more, he said, “Let it alone, okay, Dinah? He has nothing to do with me.”

“He’s your family.”

There was a moment of silence so fraught that Dinah could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand straight up. “Jeffrey Clark is not my family,” Bobby said, enunciating each word with exaggerated care. “That he is my brother is strictly an accident of birth. You are my family. Katya is my family. And Kate. Nobody else, and in particular no one from inside the city limits of Nutbush, Tennessee!”

She flinched a little at the volume of his response. He saw it and took a deep breath. When he spoke again his voice was lower and more controlled. “If I could have gotten away with it I never would have told you he was coming at all, but the way the Bush telegraph works, you’d have heard about the only other black man in the Park two seconds after he got off George.”

Dinah was the only child of two only children and her parents had died young, and the most family she’d known was beneath the roof she was living right now. To whistle family of any kind down the wind seemed to her the height of foolishness.

On the other hand, she knew something of the circumstances surrounding Bobby’s departure from Nutbush, Tennessee, which had resulted in him lying about his age to get into the army. It had also led, indirectly, to his residence in the Park, which was where she had found him, and she was inclined to regard whoever had helped make that happen with a benevolent eye.

On the whole, however, she thought that this might be one of those times when a smart wife stayed quiet.

He’d rolled to one side, his body so tense she could hear him glaring. She leaned over and kissed his spine. “Were you thinking you wanted dinner anytime soon?”

He looked at her over his shoulder and must have been reassured by what he saw on her face. “Hell, yes, I want dinner!” he said, the familiar bray back in full force. “You just worked ten pounds off me, woman, I need fuel!”

“Then get your butt into the kitchen and peel me some spuds.”

She took her time getting back into her clothes, knowing he was watching, and knowing too that Bobby was never so ready as when he just had. She was rewarded when a hand grabbed her elbow and tumbled her back into bed.

The last thing she thought before giving herself up to his single-minded possession was, “I’ll ask Kate to check this brother out. Then we’ll see.” And then she stopped thinking, because only a fool would not pay attention when Bobby got her horizontal, and Dinah Cookman was no fool.

₅

I don’t think I’ve seen Dreyer since last fall,“ Bernie said. ”September, maybe? Maybe later.“ ”He stop in for a drink?“

“He was working for me. Hauled and laid gravel on the paths between the cabins and the outhouses, and the Roadhouse and my house. They were starting to get a little boggy.”

The Roadhouse was one big square room with exposed beams, a bar down one side, tables around two others, and a small dance floor covered with Sorel scuff marks. A thirty-two-inch television hung from the ceiling, blaring a basketball game.

“Isn’t basketball season ever over?” Kate said unwisely.

There was a sign behind the bar that proclaimed free throws win ball games, and Bernie, in his spare time the coach of the Kanuyaq Kings, swore to the precept with a fervor only previously matched by medieval saints. “Basketball?” he said, politely incredulous. “Over?”

“Sorry,” Kate said. “I forgot myself there for a moment. I’m all better now. About Dreyer.”

“Basketball is never over, Kate,” he said. “Basketball is the one true thing. Basketball is the only game where brains and brawn are equal. Basketball—”

“Bernie-”

“Not to mention which, basketball is the only sport where the ball is big enough you can actually keep your eye on it. I mean to say, have you ever watched a football game? Or baseball? Now there’s a ball you could shove up a—”

“Yes, yes,” Kate said hastily. “You’re absolutely right. Couldn’t be righter if you were the governor. But about Len Dreyer—”

Bernie, deciding he’d ridden that horse long enough, capitulated. “Like I said, last time I saw him was August, shoveling pea gravel. I think I paid him off around Labor Day.”

There was a note in his voice she couldn’t identify. “Check or cash?”

He gave her a look.

“Right,” Kate said, “of course cash, what was I thinking.” She was thinking a check was traceable and that cash was not, and that she’d like to have just one piece of paper with Dreyer’s prints on it. “Probably didn’t make him sign a W-2, either,” she said with no hope at all.

“What, you’re working for the IRS nowadays?” Bernie inspected an imaginary spot on the glass he was polishing. “Is it true he caught a shotgun blast to the chest?”