Though Not Dead (53 page)

“You don’t usually make a habit of stating the obvious,” he said.

Her lips tightened. “When will you be back?”

He looked around the hall, so exquisitely decorated and so expensively furnished. So utterly lacking in joy and life. He couldn’t think of one good memory he’d had beneath this roof.

He thought of Kate’s house, the jumble of books weighing down the shelves, the quilts and pillows scattered all over the floor, the plain wooden dining table heaped with bills and homework and that one lone glove of Johnny’s whose mate could never be found. The Beatles and the Black Eyed Peas rocking out of the speakers, the dueling aromas of fresh-baked bread and moose stroganoff, the hum of an approaching snowgo announcing Chick and Mandy for dinner. The near view of shop and cache and spruce trees, the distant view of the Quilaks, that line of ragged giants against the eastern sky.

Kate.

“I’m thinking never,” he said.

Her expression didn’t change. She was a tough old bird.

“You used your sister to give your husband a son,” he said. “And you haven’t even asked how she is.”

She said nothing, but he could see the hatred and, yes, the fear, too, in her eyes.

“She’s retired,” he said, “and remarried, and living in Medford, Oregon.”

The cab honked out front. “Again, you don’t ask, but she was an obstetrician. She earned a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology and infertility.” He looked at her for what he knew would be the last time. “She’s one of the people credited with inventing and perfecting the in vitro fertilization process.” He hefted his bag. “I don’t think I have to tell you what her motivation was.”

He went to the door, knowing, too, that this would be the last time he passed through it, and feeling only a tremendous relief.

As he climbed into the cab, a copper Hummer with the sale sticker still on it drove up and pulled into the driveway as the cab pulled away from the curb. Through the cab’s rear window he saw Methuselah from the reception climb out, dressed in his best come courting suit, with a gaily patterned ascot tied round his throat and a red rose pinned to his lapel.

Jim faced forward again. “Twenty bucks extra if you make LAX in thirty minutes.”

“Fifty and I’ll get you there in twenty.”

“Done.”

Jim was pressed back into his seat as the carefully manicured lawns accelerated into a blur of fast-fading memories and no regrets.

He was going home.

Thirty-two

Ben Gunn had hobbled forward to crouch in the doorway, watching as Kate used more zip ties to immobilize her new visitors. Not very much to Kate’s surprise, one turned out to be Sabine, the lady pilot George had hired last summer. “All for love, huh?” Kate said to her.

Sabine’s reply was not very ladylike. She lashed out with a foot aimed at Kate’s left knee, which Kate nimbly dodged. Before her leg was fully extended Mutt had both paws on Sabine’s chest and her muzzle thrust in Sabine’s face. Sabine froze, and Kate had her wrists and ankles in zip ties before she exhaled.

“Off,” Kate said. Mutt gave a contemptuous bark two inches from Sabine’s nose, and jumped to the side. “Guard,” Kate said, pointing to Sabine’s companion. Mutt trotted around to stand next to him.

Kate picked up the pilot’s ankles by the zip tie and hauled her bodily into the cabin. Sabine’s head hit the side of the door pretty hard on the way in, and she cursed Kate again.

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Kate said.

“Hey! Hey, goddammit, get her away from me!”

Kate went back outside to find Mutt squatting over their third uninvited guest, a stream of urine splashing on his face.

“Running water is such a cheerful sound,” Kate said. “Don’t you think so, Pete?”

Wolf urine being one of the rankest smelling substances in the known universe, Peter Pilz Wheeler, BA (University of Alaska Anchorage), MA (University of Washington), JD (University of Oregon), made no reply, as he was fully occupied with barfing up what had been a pretty substantial breakfast.

Mutt curled a lip at this display of unmanliness. “I know,” Kate said, shaking her head. “We’re just not up to our usual standard of villain on this case, are we?”

Kate dragged Pete into the cabin by zip tie with the same tender care she had demonstrated on his companion. Mutt padded in behind them and Kate shut the door. “So,” she said, beaming around the room. “Welcome to Canyon Hot Springs, all. Generally my guests don’t drop in uninvited, but since the springs have been public property for years, I’ll let that slide this once. Let me just build up the fire and put the kettle on so we can all get comfortable.”

She busied herself with poking up the coals in the stove and shoving in more wood. There was another curse from Sabine. There was a responding snarl. Sabine shut up. “Good girl,” Kate said without looking around.

The coals were still hot. The wood caught and the fire began to crackle. Kate took the bucket outside to fill with snow, taking her time. When she came back inside Sabine was whimpering, crouched over a well of blood from one hand, that hand’s mitten having been torn free and tossed in a corner.

“Yeah, she is kinda quick,” Kate said, pausing to give Mutt a rough caress in passing.

Mutt raised a paw and began to clean the snow from between her toes.

By the time the snow melted the cabin was warm and filled with the aromatic scent of coffee, mixed unfortunately with the faint smell of Mutt’s pee, which lingered about the head and shoulders of Lawyer Wheeler.

“Coffee all around?” Kate said. “I know, the sun won’t be up for hours, but like they say, the early bird catches the worm.” She smiled at Pete and Sabine. They didn’t smile back, but they didn’t turn down the coffee, either, holding their mugs clumsily in bound hands.

It had been a very early and an unusually active morning and a long time since dinner, and Kate was hungry. She put bacon on to cook and mixed up a batch of biscuit dough. “Here’s what I think is going on,” she said to the bacon as it began to sizzle.

It went very still in the room behind her.

“My uncle Sam died. He’d lived a long time, and not to quite everyone’s surprise, it turns out he left a lot behind.” She gave an airy wave with the fork. “Like this homestead.” She looked over at Ben, who looked surprised, and nodded. “Oh yeah, he homesteaded Canyon Hot Springs back when he was barely out of school. He was thinking of getting married and settling down.”

“Out here?” Ben said.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “But he was a good son. He did what his mother told him, and she told him to stake up here.”

“What’s here besides the hot springs?” Ben said.

She bestowed an approving smile on him. “Good question.” She spread a dish towel on the floor, dusted it liberally with flour, and patted the dough into a rough circle half an inch thick. She finished her coffee, rinsed out the mug, and used it to cut out the biscuits. She let the bacon drain on a paper towel and put the biscuits in the Dutch oven. She put the lid on and resumed her tale. “Without boring you with a lot of unnecessary detail, it turns out his father was a small-time scam artist and a part-time thief.”

She opened the lid and peeked. The biscuits were puffing up nicely. She put the lid back on. “Some of the stuff he walked away with, turns out, was pretty valuable. Again, to make a long story short, he left it all to his son. My uncle Sam. Old Sam Dementieff.”

She wiped her mug clean and refilled it with coffee. “My uncle was a pretty tough old bastard, and anyone who tried to take what was his was going to wind up bear bait.”

“Your father served with Old Sam and Mac McCullough in Castner’s Cutthroats,” she said to Ben. “He brought back a lot of stories about Gore Vidal and Dashiell Hammett in the Aleutians. I’m guessing Old Sam wasn’t the only buddy to have visited Mac McCullough in the hospital on Adak, or the only buddy he might have introduced to his other good buddy, Pop Hammett.” She sat back on her heels, considering. “Meanwhile, back in Ahtna, Old Sam told Jane about the manuscript.”

Ben met her eyes, a trace of defiance in his own, and didn’t reply.

Kate nodded as if he’d confirmed it. “And Jane let something slip one of those times when you were interviewing her about the old days, something about Hammett writing a story about one of the Cutthroats. Somehow, maybe from something she said or maybe because you learned that Old Sam was one of Jane’s regulars at Mrs. Beaton’s, you figured out it was Old Sam. Now, Old Sam is too big a dog for you, but he can’t live forever. You’ve got time. So you wait.”

She meditated a little. “Shift to the present day. Old Sam dies, and before you can get to the Park, I show up in Ahtna. You panic. You’re afraid I’ll get to the manuscript before you do. So after she goes to work, you break into Jane’s house. And she comes home and catches you at it.”

She thought of that tough old Alaskan broad, the life leaching out of her on the floor of her own living room.

Ben said, as if the words were forced out of him, “Where is it? The manuscript?”

“Safe,” Kate said.

“It’s real, then?” he said in a wondering voice. “It exists?”

“It does,” she said. “I’ve read it. Not a bad yarn.”

“ ‘Not a bad yarn’?” Ben said, his voice rising. “You’ve had an original manuscript by Dashiell Hammett in your hands, and you think it isn’t a bad yarn? The guy invented one of the few original American literary genres!”

“I like to read, but I wouldn’t set a life against a book, no matter who wrote it,” Kate said, her voice deceptively mild.

Ben shut up.

“Backing up a little,” Kate said, “a month ago, Old Sam wrote a will.” She looked at Pete. “To do this, he went to the only attorney in Ahtna. And it was just the executor and chief heir’s bad luck that this same attorney is a scion of the Pilz family.”

“What?” Ben said.

She looked at him with amused contempt. “You really aren’t much of a journalist, are you, Ben? You can’t walk two feet in any direction in Ahtna without tripping over a great story, and you missed out on two of the biggest.” She looked back at Pete. The coffee had revived him to the point that he could concentrate on her story, although he looked as if he wished he didn’t have to. “Pete is a descendent of Alaskan royalty, on the white side, anyway. He’s a grandnephew of Herman Pilz, a Klondike stampeder who stayed on to found a shipping firm and stick a finger in the same Alaskan pies as Heiman and Bannister and all the rest of the members of the Spit and Argue Club.”

“How did you find out?” Pete sounded tired, and no wonder. He’d had a long night, which hadn’t ended as planned. And he smelled like wolf pee. Anybody’d be tired after all that.

“P and H donated one of their original coaches to the Bell Museum in Anchorage. There’s a photograph of Herman Pilz, Pete Heiman Sr., and P and H’s executive director at the ceremony on the coach. The executive director’s name was Fritz Wheeler.” Kate shrugged and glanced at Ben. “Not that hard to figure out. Every up-and-comer likes to marry into the boss’s family. It facilitates promotion.” She grinned. “Plus I saw your middle name on all those diplomas hanging on the wall in back of your desk.”

The biscuits were a lovely golden brown. She used the spatula to remove them from the Dutch oven, added a little oil to the remaining bacon grease, and waited for it to heat before cracking four eggs into the bottom of the pan. They sizzled pleasantly.

“Pete, I’m guessing you’ve studied up a little on Park history. I’d even bet you’ve spent time with the
Ahtna Adit
archives.” She looked at Ben, who hesitated, and then gave a reluctant nod.

“Thought so. At some point, you became aware of the theft of the Sainted Mary, and—”

“The what?” Pete said.

Kate rolled her eyes. “Come on, Pete, we’re way past that. The Sainted Mary, also known as the Lady of Kodiak, an icon brought to Alaska by a Russian Orthodox missionary named Juvenaly back when Baranov was king.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pete said.

“What’s an icon?” Sabine said.

Kate looked from one to the other for so long she almost forgot the eggs. She moved the Dutch oven from the stove to an upturned pot on the floor. She split the biscuits, buttered them, and layered on the crisp bacon and the eggs, fried a little too hard. She shared them out. “Egg McShugak,” she said. “I’d like you all to appreciate how hospitably I’m behaving, considering how hard each and every one of you has tried to kill me over the past two weeks.”

Ben gave an inarticulate protest and Pete said, “I did no such thing.”

Kate took a bite, and her time in replying. “You,” she said to Pete. “I figure you for ambushing me the first time. Since Old Sam came to you to write his will, you were way ahead of the rest of us. The minute you heard he was dead, you were on your way to Niniltna to shake down his cabin.

“You stole the book I was reading, a journal written by the first presiding judge in Ahtna, back in the day. Old Sam stole two of them from the state, before the rest of them were donated to the Bell Museum.”

“Two of them?” Pete said, unable to hide his dismay.

“The second was here, in this cabin. Old Sam hid it here for me to find, and I did.” She did nothing to stop the grin from spreading across her face. “You know. The one with the map in it.”

With one voice, Ben, Sabine, and Pete said, “What map?”

Wheeler dropped his breakfast. Mutt got up and trotted over to clean up his mess. Since most of it was in his lap, Pete sat very, very still until she had nosed out every scrap and returned to her prone position in front of the stove.

Wheeler let loose of the breath he had been holding. “You found a map?”

“Yes.” Kate did not allow her eyes to stray to the hiding place Old Sam had so cunningly constructed not five feet above Pete’s head. She might need it herself one day. “By the way, I figure there was something in the first journal I didn’t get a chance to see. Something Old Sam put there that would have sent me here. What was it?”

“An old black-and-white picture of this cabin, sitting in front of the hot springs,” Pete said. “I showed it around, and somebody told me what it was, and where.”