Though Not Dead (32 page)

Kate stared at him. “No,” she said slowly. “He didn’t, did he.”

Bobby meditated for a moment. “If Virginia did pass on your whereabouts to every Park rat she stumbled across that day—”

“As is her invariable wont,” Dinah said.

“—then the field’s wide open.” He bent a sapient eye in Kate’s direction. “Let’s face it, it’s not like you’re a member in good standing of the How to Win Friends and Influence People Club. By the way, when all of this was going on, where the hell was Mutt?”

In front of the fireplace Mutt looked up at the sound of her name, and then went back to her whale vertebrate. “Dancing with wolves,” Kate said. “She showed up when it counted.”

“Too bad she didn’t go for his throat.”

“He was pretty well-padded,” Kate said. “She ripped the sleeve off his parka when she pulled him off me, and she did bite him in the ass, twice, once in the cabin, and again as she was chasing him out of the canyon. She had blood on her muzzle when she came back.”

Bobby’s look at Mutt this time was much more approving. “My kind of girl.” Mutt’s tail thumped the floor. “So now we’re looking for a Park rat who has a parka with one arm and who can’t sit down.”

“Why didn’t Old Sam just tell me?” Kate said, irritated all over again. “Why send me on a wild goose chase?”

“If that old fart sent you on a wild goose chase,” Bobby said, “he must have thought you needed one.”

Before Kate could formulate an answer to the unanswerable Dinah said, “I’d been taping him.”

Kate looked at her, startled. “You’re kidding.”

Dinah shook her head. “No. I’ve got about three hours’ worth of uncut footage.” She grinned. “He’s hard to edit.”

Dinah Clark had come to Alaska originally with the intent of honing her skills as a videographer. Life, in the shape of the Park, Bobby Clark, and a daughter, had only put that ambition into temporary abeyance. Dinah was seldom seen without a video camera in hand, fully half the center console of the A-frame was taken up with her editing equipment, and no one within a fifty-mile radius of Squaw Candy Creek had escaped the red on-air light.

Three hours of moving pictures of Old Sam in spate. Kate had only one still photo of him, taken unawares on the
Freya
the third summer she had deckhanded for him. He was standing on the starboardside gunnel, hanging off a guy wire with one hand to chew out a sheepish Ansel Totemoff, standing below on the deck of the
Tiffany T.,
for a rough docking. It was a sunny day, and Old Sam’s face was outlined against a blue sky, the dark skin, the broad brow, the deep-set eyes, the beaky nose, the jutting chin, every fold and wrinkle faithfully recorded. And his mouth was open. She had been thinking that she should get the picture blown up and framed, and have copies made to give out at the potlatch along with the obituary.

But three whole hours of Old Sam off the chain, talking straight at a camera … it seemed that he was not done sending her messages from beyond the grave. Yet again, the old son of a bitch had her blinking back tears.

Dinah didn’t notice, or pretended not to. “I’ve been trying to get as many of the old farts on tape as I can before they’re gone. It’s an incredible oral history, and since it’s the only Park history there is, it will be invaluable in future.”

“You going to make a documentary?” Kate said. Dinah was always going to make a documentary on this or that subject, before being sidetracked, usually by another topic uncovered in the investigation of the current one.

In response, as always, Dinah sounded as certain as she was enthusiastic. “Old Sam was like a—a prism for Alaskan history, Kate. He and his immediate family were part of or on the periphery of every big event in Alaska for the past eighty years. His grandparents died in the flu pandemic, he homesteaded, he fought in the Aleutians, he was in Juneau for the vote on the constitution—”

“What?”

“Yeah, he’d been herring fishing in Southeast and he delivered a load to a buyer in Juneau so his crew could vote. He was working on the Kenai Peninsula when the Swanson River oil field was discovered—”

“He was?” Kate said. “I didn’t know that.” It was a continuing shock to learn that Old Sam had had another life.

Possibly more than one.

“He was a supervoter,” Dinah said. “He never missed an election, I checked the voting records. He was on a first-name basis with every governor we’ve ever had, and a couple of the territorial ones.”

“I know he knew Ernest Gruening,” Kate said.

“And boy was he pissed when Gruening failed reelection as senator,” Dinah said, grinning. “He said—you want to see the footage for yourself?”

“Yeah,” Kate said, and looked at the clock. “Can you make me a copy?”

“Sure, I can burn you a DVD. But you can watch it here right now if you want.”

“I can’t. I’m grabbing George’s last flight to Anchorage this afternoon.”

“Aha,” Bobby said. “Kurt Pletnikof, PI?”

“Library?” Dinah said. “Museum? Archives?”

“My friends are smarter than the average bear,” Kate said. “I don’t know enough to figure out what the hell is going on here. I can sic Kurt on some of it, and I can look up some myself.”

Bobby, watching Kate’s face, said, “Yeah, bullshit, Shugak.”

“What do you mean?” Dinah said.

Bobby with the finger again. He was as bad as Auntie Joy. “She’s hoping they’ll follow her to town.”

“What?” Dinah said, looking from one to the other. “Kate, are you nuts? At least here you’ve got friends who’ll watch your back. Anchorage…” She shook her head. “Lots of dark alleys in Anchorage, and too many people who don’t know you.”

Kate remembered how easy it was to take down the guy in the cabin. “These people aren’t professionals, whatever else they are.”

“Even Dortmunder gets lucky once in a while,” Bobby said.

“And they can always hire somebody for a pint of Windsor Canadian,” Dinah said.

“Dinah,” Kate said, getting to her feet, “welcome to my world.”

Twenty-one

Still protesting, Dinah dropped Kate and Mutt at the airport, where George bundled them into the single Otter turbo and took off. Ninety minutes afterward they touched down at Merrill. A cab ride later, Kate was letting them into the town house on Westchester Lagoon, a three-story dwelling with a barn-shaped roof and common walls with identical homes on either side. It had belonged to Jack Morgan, Johnny’s father, and was now part of Johnny’s college fund. In the meantime they used it when they were in Anchorage, and the first thing Kate did was deliver half a dozen cans of last season’s smoked salmon to the neighbors on either side. It was understood by both that they’d keep an eye on the place when it sat empty, as the mortgage was paid off and Kate didn’t want the hassle of being an absentee landlord.

She let herself in the front door, turned up the heat, and turned on the refrigerator. The first floor was the garage, the second the living rooms, and the third the bedrooms. In the garage was a Subaru Forester. Kate made a quick run to City Market for essentials like coffee and half-and-half. An overheard conversation led her to the rebirth of Wings ’n Things on Arctic and Thirty-sixth, and while it lacked the ambiance of the converted wood-frame house of its original location, when you ordered your wings nuclear they still came in a dark, crisp golden brown, swimming in burnt orange grease and spicy enough to melt your esophagus. She missed all the religious tracts tacked to the walls, though, not to mention the life-size poster of the bleeding heart Jesus Christ.

Back at the condo she checked upstairs to see that she still had sufficient spare clothes in the dresser to keep her in clean underwear for at least a couple of days, since she hadn’t allowed herself the time to go home and pack. Despite what she had told Bobby and Dinah, she didn’t know quite what she was doing in Anchorage, other than responding to an instinctive feeling that the next piece of the puzzle Old Sam had left her as his main legacy was to be found there.

And of course Bobby was right. She hoped whoever else was chasing Old Sam’s legacy would follow her here. She’d spent five and a half years in Anchorage, working sex crimes for the Anchorage DA, and there wasn’t one seedy little corner of it she didn’t know, whether said seediness was to be found on the top floor of a corporate office building on Eighth Avenue, or a dank little kitchenette off North Flower Street, or a five-thousand-square-foot home with six bedrooms and six bathrooms down Discovery Bay Drive. She could hold her own in Anchorage. If Bobby was right and her pursuers were Park rats themselves, they might not be able to.

If they weren’t, if they were street-smart city dwellers, well, she’d deal with that when it happened.

She’d checked her cell phone before they landed and there were no messages waiting. She put the bags on the kitchen table and checked again. There still weren’t any. She cursed herself for checking, she cussed out Jim for not calling, and she threw the phone in a drawer and slammed it shut so she wouldn’t hear it if it went off.

She let Mutt into the backyard to use the facilities, loaded a plate with wings, blue cheese dip, and celery sticks, let Mutt back in, and moved operations to the living room, where she inserted Dinah’s DVD of Old Sam into the player. She turned on the television, put her feet on the coffee table and her plate in her lap, and pushed Play on the remote.

*   *   *

His cell phone rang. His heart, that heretofore reliable organ, gave an anticipatory thump. He fished it out and answered.

“Surf’s up, board man,” Sylvia said. “Want to catch a couple of waves?”

Well. Kate had told him to take his father’s board out.

He’d almost forgotten the sting of salt water in his eyes and nose, the stretch down the board, the pull on his shoulders during the paddle, the quick push to his feet. He’d forgotten the triumph of achieving that perfect balance down the centerline. He’d forgotten the thrill of catching that line of white water at exactly the right moment, the sheer ecstasy of all three—man, board, water—moving as one toward the line of golden sand that was always too close too soon.

Sylvia, trim in a black one-piece, rode a board that showed steady use, and was ready with a laugh whenever he wiped out, which since he hadn’t ridden a board in twenty years was often. It came back, though, slowly at first, and then fast in a rush of elation that he also remembered from those long-ago days. Surfing was probably the main reason he’d never bothered with drugs back in the day. He couldn’t imagine, then or now, any high that would be comparable, let alone better, so why bother?

They watched the sun set that evening from their boards, sitting in the water beyond the surf, rising and falling with the gentle swell, legs touching occasionally and companionably beneath the water, and Jim felt more at peace in that moment than he had since he’d landed in LA.

Sylvia was easy to talk to, listening without comment to his account of the past week, of the reading of the will on Monday, the packing up of his father’s clothes, the cleaning out of his father’s office, the forced march of lunches and dinners and drinks at the club with his father’s friends and colleagues.

The continued tension of living in an armed camp, although this he did not share with Sylvia.

“Why did your father want the will read aloud?” she said at one point.

“My question exactly,” he said. “The lawyer said Dad specifically requested him to.”

“But why?”

Jim thought it over. “I think,” he said slowly, “it has something to do with the box.”

“The antique writing box?”

“Yeah. She never sent me a copy of the revised will. I’m wondering if she was hoping I’d never know he wanted me to have the box.”

“Which again begs the question. Why?”

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back. His laugh was unamused. “I have never had the first idea why my mother does anything.”

Sylvia was silent for a moment. “Maybe there’s something in it she doesn’t want you to see.”

“I can’t think what. And I’ve got it now.”

“You haven’t opened it yet?”

“No.”

“Three, no, four days now, and you haven’t opened it?”

“No.”

She was silent for a moment. “It’s the last message you’ll ever get from your dad.”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t be in a hurry to open it, either.”

He turned his head to look at her, at the sun-kissed skin, the wet hair slicked back, the strong throat, the high, firm breasts. There were a lot of pleasant memories built into the package riding next to him, and even more promises, and he was fully alive to all of them.

He wondered how Kate Shugak would fill out that suit.

Sylvia turned her head to meet his eyes, and he knew she had known he was watching her. “Want to get something to eat?”

They went to a diner in Ventura he remembered from his high school days, where the burgers were thick and juicy, the fries salty and greasy, and the shakes too thick to drink through a straw. After that they went to a bar for a nightcap and talked for hours, playing catch-up and do-you-remember. They even danced.

It was after midnight when they went out to the parking lot. She leaned against her car and smiled up at him.

He bent his head to accept the invitation, with no thought but of paying homage with a perfect ending to the glorious day on the water, the good junk food, and time spent with the pretty girl. Inches away he stopped and said, “How did you get my cell number?”

Her eyes opened to blink up at him. “What?”

“How did you get my cell phone number?”

An interrogation was not how Sylvia had been expecting this evening to end, and she frowned. “Your mother gave it to me.”

“Did she,” he said, and took a step back.

*   *   *

He let himself into the darkened, quiet house and went upstairs to find that his room had been searched, probably right around his first wave.

It wasn’t that easy to tell, given that the room bore no resemblance to the one he had left behind the day his father had driven him to the airport for his flight north. Beverly had probably been in here with a sledgehammer before the plane was off the ground. Or no, he wronged her, she would have been in here with a decorator and a contractor. Beverly would never have endangered her manicure with anything as plebian as tools.