A taint in the blood (20 page)

"Is there someone who would?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I want to know if it had a locking gas cap."

"Just a minute, I'll go out in the garage and check."

Charlotte put the phone down before Kate could say anything, which was all right since Kate was speechless. When Charlotte picked up the phone again, Kate said, "You've still got the car your mother was driving before she went to jail?"

"It still runs," Charlotte said, "why wouldn't I? It doesn't have a locking gas cap. I'm not sure they were even making locking gas caps back then."

"Me, either," Kate said. "One more thing, Charlotte. Have you heard from your mother's attorney since the trial?"

"Henry?" Charlotte's voice changed. "No, I certainly have not."

"You didn't like him?"

"If he'd done his job, my mother wouldn't be in jail."

"I see," Kate said. This was not an atypical response from someone whose attorney had failed to earn his client an acquittal. "So you haven't heard from him."

"He would know better than to call me. I told him what I thought of him in court the day the verdict came in."

"And you haven't seen him since?"

"No. And I returned anything I got in the mail with his address on it."

"You got mail from him?"

"Bills," Charlotte said. "Like I would pay them after he got my mother put in jail."

"How do you know they were bills if you didn't open them?"

"What else would they be?" Charlotte said.

"Okay," Kate said, repressing a sigh. "Thanks, Charlotte."

"Wait," Charlotte said, "does this mean you've found something?"

"A few somethings," Kate said, "but nothing to convince a judge that Victoria didn't set that fire."

"Oh," said Charlotte. She rallied. "But you'll keep looking."

"That's what you're paying me for," Kate said.

"Until you find something to get her out."

Kate said nothing.

In a forlorn whisper Charlotte, said, "Because I want her
out
."

The outfit was still hanging in Jack's closet, although Kate had to do a little excavation to find it. Jack had poked a hole in the bottom of the trash bag for the hook of the hanger and tied the bag in a knot at the bottom. She hesitated before untying the knot. It was silly, but Jack had tied that knot with his own hands. She thought about tearing the bag open from the top, but that seemed even sillier. What was she going to do, save the garbage bag so she could save the knot? She could just hear Jack, and the thought made her smile.

The jacket was short, single-breasted, with a V neck that revealed a discreetly sexy cleavage. It was covered with bright red sequins, which glittered in the light. The pants were black silk, with a single stripe of lighter black silk running in a trim line down the outer seam of both legs. She rummaged around the closet and found the shoes tucked into their original box.

Jack had bought her this outfit nearly three years before, in order to infiltrate a party Ekaterina was throwing at the Hotel Captain Cook for the Raven Corporation shareholders during the annual Alaska Federation of Natives convention. They'd been investigating a double homicide at the time. Kate, brutally rebuffed when she had suggested they go as servers in white shirts, black pants, and comfortable shoes, had been coerced into Nordstrom entirely against her will, and then into a glorified barbershop to have her hair done, also entirely against her will.

A grin stole slowly across her face. It had been worth it to see the expression on Jack's face when the first group of men had caught sight of her in all her glory. She'd cleaned up pretty well.

In a drawer of the dresser she found the diaphanous lingerie that Jack had taken such pleasure in selecting, and she slipped into it. The jacket, worn alone, felt heavy against her skin. The tuxedo pants, by comparison, felt barely there.

She looked in the mirror. Her hair, cut short to the nape, was brushed straight back from her forehead. For the hell of it, she wetted it down and parted it high up on the right. She looked like Victor/Victoria. She ruffled it up again. No jewelry, because she didn't own any and wouldn't have worn it if she had. Her feet hadn't changed any in the intervening years and she stood a inch taller in the shoes.

She surveyed herself in the mirror. "Okay," she said.

Mutt whined.

"Yeah, yeah, heard it all before," Kate told her. "You coming?"

They headed for Turnagain.

At Minnesota, she pulled off into the Texaco station and got out her cell phone. She managed to dial the number without yelling out the window for help, but it was a close call.

"Yeah," Brendan said.

"It's Kate, Brendan."

"Yeah," Brendan said, drawing it out, and Kate could imagine him leaning back in his chair and putting his feet up, a grin spreading across his face. "Light of my life, heart of my heart, sexiest thing walking around town on two legs. What can I do for you? Apart from the obvious."

"I got invited to this party," she said.

"Really? Need an escort?"

"No. Especially not you."

He laughed, and she realized how that had sounded. "No, I meant I don't want to use you yet."

He laughed harder.

"Damn it!" she said, half laughing, half exasperated. "I don't want anyone to know I have an in at the DA's, not yet."

"Could be deeper in," he said.

"Down, boy," she said.

"Too late," he said.

"Will you please behave? I'm going to Erland Bannister's for a cocktail party."

Dead silence.

"Brendan?"

"Why?" he said finally. All humor had left his voice.

"He invited me."

"Erland invited you?"

"Yes."

Another silence. "Again I ask the question. Why?"

"He's my client's uncle."

Another silence, followed by, "I don't think that's a good-enough reason, Kate."

"I don't, either," she said. A big shiny black Ford Explorer pulled into the pumps. It had a bumper sticker that read
I'm too poor to vote republican.
Kate doubted that, given what bumper that sticker was on.

"If you don't need an escort, why did you call?" Brendan said.

"I don't know." She hesitated. It sounded ridiculous, now that she came to put it into words. "I was thinking someone should know where I was."

He didn't laugh. "So noted. Kate?"

"What?"

A brief, taut silence. "Park for a quick exit."

"I always do," she said. "Brendan, at the party, what should I watch out for?"

"Assholes."

She laughed, and started out again for Turnagain with a lighter heart.

The Turnagain neighborhood had been one of the first residential suburbs of Anchorage and one of the hardest hit during the 1964 earthquake, magnitude 9.2 on the Richter scale. Half of it fell into Turnagain Arm and the other half just felt apart. Frantic to keep people in the state following the earthquake, the city traded home owners in the area for property up on what was now Hillside, the west-facing slopes of the Chugach Mountains, where now, if you didn't have five thousand square feet beneath one roof, including the indoor swimming pool and the marijuana grow, you weren't shit. For example, Charlotte Bannister Muravieff lived on Hillside.

Of course, twenty years later waterfront property again began looking good to people with short memories and a greedy turn of mind, and the previous owners of property below the Turnagain Bluff successfully challenged the city for title to that property. Now, the rich and powerful were building mansions on what was essentially in midquake quicksand, and since Alaska sat on the northern edge of the Ring of Fire and experienced literally at least one earthquake per day, the future was ripe with the possibility of violent death, not to mention potential litigation. "Ah, Alaska," Kate said out loud, threading the Subaru down the switchback. "The land of opportunity, and of opportunists."

Mutt yipped agreement. "What do you know about it?" Kate asked her as they emerged from the trees to a vast parking lot in back of a house the size of the Hyatt Regency Maui. The view was superb, though, a gentle slope of green grass down to the coastal trail, after which the land gave way to mud flats and Knik Arm. It was a lovely evening, and the Knik was placid as a pond. On the far side of the water, Susitna, the sleeping lady, lay in peaceful repose, and beyond her Foraker and Denali scratched at the sky.

"Might be worth it," Kate said after a few moments' judicial study, "might just be worth living with the constant prospect of eminent death to have this view."

This from a woman who hated to get her feet wet on a hunt. Mutt gave this observation the credulity it deserved, shoving past Kate when she opened the door. Kate left a window open for her and didn't bother locking the car.

The front door of the mansion was actually two, reached by a wide set of stairs that spilled to either side in graceful arcs around a carefully tended grouping of flowers arranged by hue and height. Sidelights and a fanlight let a gentle interior glow leach through, and Kate could hear the sound of many voices and the tinkling of glasses. She supposed it might sound inviting to some.

She looked down at Mutt. "Want to come in?"

Mutt bared her teeth.

"Okay, try not to get into too much trouble," Kate said, and at a hand signal Mutt was off the porch and into the underbrush like an arrow from a bow.

Someone cleared his throat. Kate looked around and beheld a young man in what looked like a bellhop's uniform, an ingratiating smile on his face. "May I park your car?" he said.

"It's already parked," Kate said, and headed up the steps.

He nipped ahead of her and opened the door. She eyed him suspiciously. His smile stayed in place. The door remained open. "Thanks," she said after a moment.

She went in, and the gates of mercy closed behind her.

The room was large, the biggest private room she'd been in, with floor-to-ceiling windows framing the spectacular view and hardwood floors polished to a shine bright enough to hurt your eyes. Not that Kate could admire either the view or the shine, because the room was jammed with what seemed to her appalled eyes like simply hundreds of people. Most of the men were in suits. Most of the women were in black, with the only variables the depth of the neckline and the height of the hemline. There was a lot of loud jewelry flashing from ears and wrists, and everybody had big hair, even the men. There was an occasional black face and a few more Native ones, but this could not be construed in any way by even the most nearsighted viewer as a multicultural gathering. Kate could feel her skin getting darker by the second.

They were all talking at the tops of their voices. The resulting roar sounded like a 747 on takeoff. It took a few moments for Kate's ears to accustom themselves to the cacophony.

"Excuse me? Mr. Mayor, I'm so glad to have this opportunity to shake your hand and tell you what a fine job I think you're doing for the city. You've got my vote all the way."