Though Not Dead (11 page)

“Me, too,” Kate said. “But thanks.”

“We shall not look upon his like again,” Judge Singh said.

Kate smiled. “No. We shall not.”

Singh nodded at the courthouse. “You’re here to begin settling his affairs?”

“Yes, I’m his heir. I’m hoping Jane Silver can help me straighten it all out.”

“I’m sure she can. Well, if there’s anything I can do…”

A smile, a handshake, and Judge Singh swept down the steps, the reporter pattering behind. “Judge, I just need to know if—”

“Mr. Gunn, you know very well I may not discuss—”

Whatever it was Judge Singh couldn’t say on the record was cut off by the closing of the door.

Not by so much as the raising of an eyebrow had the judge remarked on Kate’s shiners. A class act, the judge.

The local lands office was tucked into a corner of the first floor and consisted of a single, very small room containing a desk with a bank of gray filing cabinets crammed behind it.

At the desk sat Jane Silver, who looked like she ought to be hunched over a steaming cauldron chanting in chorus with the other two weird sisters. A large head lowered between humped shoulders, scalp shining pink through thin flyaway gray hair cut short in no perceptible style, a nose that could have been used to hook halibut, long, yellow teeth—she even had warts. Her faded polyester plaid two-piece suit was missing a button and her orthopedic shoes squeaked even while she was sitting down.

She looked up when the door opened and fixed Kate with a piercing stare. “Kate Shugak,” she said, in a mellow soprano voice that sounded nothing at all like the cackle it should have been. “That is you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Kate said, stepping inside, followed by her four-footed shadow.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Kate had been asking that same question just the night before. “Somebody walloped me with a piece of firewood.”

Jane inspected her. “Well, they were sincere about it, I’ll give them that.”

Kate grinned. “Keep the women and children off the streets when they see me coming, for sure.”

Mutt went around the counter to rest her chin on the top of Jane’s desk. “No mistaking who you are,” Jane told her, and fished around in a bottom drawer, producing a pepperoni stick. She stripped it of shrink-wrap and held it out. Mutt took it delicately between her teeth and it vanished in two bites. She retired to the door, the office being so small and its occupant so decrepit (and so willing to pay homage to Mutt’s Muttness) that she could be reasonably certain no one was going to bash her human over the head again, at least not in here. She kept one yellow eye peeled for anyone coming down the hall with fell intent, though, and frightened Bobby Singh’s law clerk into dropping a document box on the floor, where it burst open with a splat and scattered files from there to the back door. Mutt, watching with no more than casual interest, sent the clerk scuttling upstairs for the public defender, a musher in his off time who might be expected to have the sangfroid to face down an indoor wolf.

Jane Silver was older than god and had been the lands clerk for the Park since before Kate was born. She was a tough old bird with a sharp tongue and an encyclopedic memory, and held the record at the Alaska State Fair for the most blue ribbons won in a row for jam making. Her specialty was rhubarb butter, just the memory of which made Kate’s tongue prickle and her mouth fill with anticipatory saliva.

“I was sorry to hear about Old Sam,” Jane said.

“Thanks,” Kate said, “me, too.” Had it really only been five days? “Me, too,” she said again, and cleared her throat to speak in a stronger voice. “He’s why I’m here. I’m the executor of his will, as well as his main beneficiary.”

“I had an idea. What’s up?”

Kate pulled out the will. “Turns out the old fart had some property nobody knew about.”

“The Canyon Hot Springs homestead?”

Kate picked up her jaw and put it back into working position. “Well, yeah, now that you mention it. Nobody knew he’d staked a homestead up there.”

Jane reeled off the numbers and Kate looked down at the paper she held to see that Jane had them down pat. “Jesus, Jane, is there a tax ID or a property ID in the Park that you haven’t memorized?”

“No,” Jane said, like it was the simple truth, which it probably was. She typed something into the keyboard sitting in front of her and watched the monitor. Something beeped and the reflected light from the monitor changed on her face. She got to her feet, shoes creaking, and went to a filing cabinet, opened a drawer, and extracted a file. “Hmm, yes,” she said. “Nothing unusual here. Homestead requirements met and applicant’s eligibility sworn to by reputable members of the community.”

“He was underage,” Kate said, “and he wasn’t married. He wasn’t a father, either.”

Jane gave a dismissive wave with a hand that more nearly resembled a claw, a similarity enhanced by the long, bloodred nails that tipped each finger. Kate wondered how Jane could type. “The government was in a hurry to get as much land settled as fast as possible, so there was a lot of winking at that particular requirement. The only thing they really stuck at was if you had borne arms against the United States. Sam had a strong back and a reputation for paying his bills.” Jane paused, her ugly face unreadable. “It was assumed he’d marry eventually. Most everyone did back then.”

“You remember all that?” Kate said.

Jane looked up and grinned in an alarming display of long yellow teeth. “Hard to believe, I know, but yes, I am that old.”

“You lived in Ahtna then?”

Jane nodded, eyes back on the file. “I came to town with Mrs. Beaton.”

Again, Kate had difficulty in getting her jaw back in place. “Mrs. Beatrice Beaton? Of Mrs. Beaton’s Boardinghouse?”

Jane gave her a sharp look. “Yes. How do you know that name?”

“I, ah, I saw it in an old ledger Old Sam had. Written by the first judge in Ahtna.”

“That would be Albie Anglebrandt.” It wasn’t quite a question.

Albie? Kate nodded. “He had a list of all the license fees each business paid to the government. Mrs. Beaton’s Boardinghouse was one of the businesses listed there.” She fixed her eyes on a map of the Park tacked to the wall behind Jane’s desk and said, “I would guess a boardinghouse would require a lot of hired help. Cooks and waitresses and maids and suchlike.”

If she hadn’t been watching for it out of the corner of her eye she wouldn’t have seen that infinitesimal relaxation in the muscles around Jane’s mouth. However curious Kate was—and however titillating might be the answers to any questions she might ask—she decided on the spot that this was no time to enquire into what, besides room and board, Mrs. Beatrice Beaton had been selling in Ahtna back in the day. Kate couldn’t help seeing Jane Silver with new eyes, though. Jane Silver, lady of the evening? Of course she would have looked a lot different all those years ago. And there had been even fewer women in Bush Alaska then than there were now, so the customers would have been a lot less picky. She remembered pictures she’d seen of the some of the women on the infamous Fairbanks Line. A younger Jane would not have been out of place. For that matter, neither would an older Jane.

“Is there any question about the title Old Sam held to the hot springs property?”

Jane shook her head. “Nope.”

“Are you sure?” At Jane’s look Kate said, “The reason I ask is because homesteaders were supposed to prove up in five years and he took eight. Dan O’Brian at Park headquarters? He showed me copies of the original paperwork. The application was taken out in 1937. It wasn’t granted until 1945.”

Jane’s eyes narrowed. “There were a lot of rules forgiven an Alaskan homesteader between December 1941 and August 1945. Especially when he came back a war hero.”

She said it in such a way that Kate found herself rushing to assure Jane that she had actually heard of World War II. “And I know he was one of the Cutthroats. It’s just, I think, well, I got the feeling that Dan felt that there might be something wrong with the title, given the, um, irregularities.”

Jane snorted. “Irregularities! I’ll give that fish hawk irregularities right up his rule-ridden, land-thieving keister if he doesn’t watch out. There was nothing irregular in Sam going off to fight for his country. And there was nothing irregular in his government holding his coat while he did.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Kate said.

“Quite a war they fought out there,” Jane said. “He ever talk to you about it?”

Kate shook her head. “He’d change the subject any time the war came up.”

Jane gave a thoughtful nod. “Most vets, the healthy ones, put it behind them and move on. Sam was one of those.”

Kate noticed the omission of the honorific, and began to wonder just how well Jane had known Old Sam. Jane saw the expression on Kate’s face and said with a shrug that Kate saw as unconvincing, “I’d run into him at the Lodge every now and then. One thing I remember he mentioned about that time. Did you know he met Dashiell Hammett?”

Kate knew she was being diverted, but the bait was too good to resist. “You’re kidding! Really?”

“Yeah, he was in the army and stationed on Adak. Sam—Old Sam said he ran the army newspaper there.”

“Geez.” Kate digested this in silence for a moment. She’d never read one of Hammett’s books, but like everyone else she’d seen the movie. “ ‘I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble,’ ” she said.

Jane grinned. “Okay, I’ll play,” she said. “ ‘You always think you know what you’re doing, but you’re too slick for your own good. Someday you’re going to find it out.’ ”

This fell a little flatter than it should have. After an uneasy moment, Kate said, “Um, one other thing, Jane. I don’t seem to be able to find the original documents relating to the hot springs homestead. Is that going to be a problem?”

Jane stood there, fully occupied with looking inscrutable. Moments passed before she stirred and said in a brusque tone, “You’re the heir, didn’t you say? You going to be paying the taxes?”

“For now, yes.”

“Okay, then, fill out this form. We can start the process of getting the title changed over to your name.”

“How long will it take?”

Jane gave her a look. “Overnight.”

“Right,” Kate said. “Forgive me. Forgot who I was talking to for a minute. Good thing I’m overnighting in Ahtna.”

“Come back in the morning, I’ll have it for you then. We can get the tax records changed over to your name, too.”

“Thanks, Jane.” Kate lingered at the door.

“What?” Jane said. “I’m working here.”

Kate would never find a better source about that place and time. “Judge Anglebrandt kept a daily journal.”

The expression on Jane’s face didn’t change, but there was an immediate change in the air temperature. “How would you know about that?”

“Old Sam had it, or one of them, and from what little I saw, the first one. I was reading it when whoever it was clunked me over the head.”

“Really.” Jane brooded over her desk, and it was probably Kate’s imagination that her expression took on a tragic cast, as if Jane was mourning something that had happened long ago and far away, but not too long ago or far away to be forgotten.

“Do you know if Judge Anglebrandt keep that journal the whole time he was here?”

“Yes.” That came out way too definite and Jane knew it. “So far as I know.”

The damage was done, but Kate wasn’t going to brace Jane on any possible relationship with Judge Anglebrandt, at least not yet. “Was the diary all business? It seemed like it from the little I read.”

“So far as I know it was a log of the court’s business,” Jane said.

“What I don’t understand is how Old Sam wound up with it,” Kate said. “Isn’t it part of the official record?”

“Not necessarily. There was a clerk of the court who kept that.” Jane hesitated. Kate waited for her to make up her mind to trust Kate with whatever it was. “Tell you what,” Jane said. “Come back tomorrow morning, pick up your title, get your tax records in order. I might have something else to show you then.”

“What?” Kate said.

Jane grinned. “Youth today, it’s gratification in five minutes or they’re gone. I have to find something, and it’ll take a while. Come back tomorrow morning.”

Kate heaved a martyred sigh, mostly for effect. “Elders today, it’s driving the youth crazy in four minutes or their life isn’t worth living.”

They both laughed, and Kate collected Mutt and went looking for a place to lay her head for the night.

Nine

She went to the Ahtna Lodge for a room and Tony took one look at her and signed her in with a voice trembling with repressed amusement. Stan, Tony’s partner in the lodge as well as in life, didn’t even try to hold back his bellow of laughter when she walked into the dining room. “Jesus, Shugak,” he said, choking, “just tell me the other guy looks worse.”

“I never even saw him,” she said.

“Yeah, well, when you do,” he said. “The usual?”

He seated her at a table next to the window and five minutes later she had a fresh papaya sitting in front of her, halved and seeded. Standing next to her table, Stan squeezed the juice from half a lime over it.

Kate looked at her plate with disfavor. “I didn’t order this.”

“Papaya has an enzyme that helps the body absorb the blood, good for your shiners,” Stan said. “Pineapple does, too, but I don’t have any fresh pineapple in the kitchen. Eat up. You’re getting one for breakfast, too. Oh, and here.”

Kate took the capsule automatically. “What’s this?”

“Vitamin C supplement. It’ll help, too.”

Kate didn’t take vitamins, but under Stan’s watchful eye she washed this one down with a swallow of water and then dutifully if unenthusiastically ate all her papaya. She was rewarded with one of his justly famous steak sandwiches, and one of those same steaks for Mutt, raw and chopped fine with an egg and seasoned just as she liked it with salt and extra pepper. “You,” Kate informed her, “are spoiled beyond belief.”

Mutt, lapping up her steak tartare with the air of one who knows what is her due, gave her a look that said “You should talk.”

Tony slid into the seat opposite. “I stuck up a note at reception so I could come keep you company while you eat. Listen, Kate, Stan and I both want to say how sorry we were to hear about Old Sam.”