Whisper to the Blood (37 page)

They seemed to have adopted the Park as a fifth sibling since they'd all
four graduated from the EMT class, however. Kate, looking past Matt, saw a
framed copy of the Hippocratic oath hanging crookedly on the wall, surrounded
by a bunch of family pictures.

She sighed. "Did you bait them out? I saw the sled with the supplies
packed into it in the garage. I also noticed that all the boxes were
empty."

"You're a snoop, Kate Shugak," Matt said without heat.

"Yes, I am, Matt Grosdidier," Kate said. "Did one of you bait
them out and the rest of you jump them when they bit?"

He looked at his brothers. "If we did, so what? Boys needed a
whupping." He looked back at her. "And at the time it didn't look
like anyone else was going to give them one."

Kate ignored the unspoken implication. "So you stepped up."

He shrugged. "Even if we did, and I'm not saying that, it didn't do a
whole lot of good, now, did it? They jumped that guy from Anchorage."

"So it doesn't count if it didn't work?" He didn't answer.

"Will you tell me one thing?" she said. "Was it your
idea?"

His eyes shifted. "I don't know what you mean, Kate."

T
he Johansen brothers emphatically,
categorically, and comprehensively deny killing Talia Macleod," Jim said
that evening.

"Of course they do," Kate said.

"They say they didn't kill Mac Devlin, either."

"Of course they do," Kate said again. She was stretched out on the
couch with a copy of Christopher Hitchens's latest polemic against all gods,
all faiths, and all those who sailed in them. Since she agreed with every word
he said, naturally she considered it a work of genius, and she wanted to get
back to it. Besides, she had a feeling that this conversation was going to do
nothing but go around and around, like a snake chasing its own tail and
eventually eating itself. Serene in her ignorance of Jim thinking the same
thing about a previous conversation, she said with as much disinterest as she
could infuse into the words, "What else would you expect them to
say?"

He hung coat and cap and toed off his Sorels. "Nothing," he said,
staring at his feet with dissatisfaction. "They cop to the river
attacks?" "Yes."

"The last guy, whatshisname, too?"

"Gene Daly. Yeah, him, too. All of them, no problem there." Mutt
extricated herself from the quilt in front of the fire and bounded over for
reassurance that she still occupied the first and largest place in his heart.

"I can imagine," Kate said, very dry. All Jim would have had to do
was tell the Johansen brothers they were going down for murder one and they
would have confessed to anything else going on anywhere else in order to get
out from under. "Ick do most of the talking?"

"Ick did all of the talking. Doesn't he always?" Jim gave Mutt a
final scratch between the ears and stood up. "Kid home?"

"Studying in his room."

"Am I cooking tonight?"

She went back to her book. The Old Testament was a scary place, although the
New Testament might be even scarier. "Did you know that hell and damnation
aren't mentioned by any of the Old Testament prophets?"

"Really?"

"Nope. Oh, they'd sell their daughters to angry mobs in exchange for
their own safety and they'd slaughter opposing tribes by the thousand, but
after that they were pretty much done. It's only Jesus who preaches hell and
damnation in the afterlife if you don't believe in him."

By this time Jim had deduced that if he wanted to eat, he was, in fact,
cooking dinner that evening. Unperturbed, he went to the kitchen and as he expected,
found a package of caribou steaks thawing in the sink and bread rising in a
bowl. He opened the refrigerator and with great contentment found a six-pack of
Alaskan Amber. Kate wouldn't bring home beer for just anyone. He uncapped a
bottle and took a long swallow. "I made a bunch of calls the last couple
of days. It turns out, our Talia got around."

Kate peered at him over the top of her book. "Do tell."

He nodded, put down the beer, and started chopping onions. "We all know
there were enough Park rats around who wanted to take her down because of the
mine," he said, pouring olive oil into a cast-iron frying pan and turning
the heat on beneath it. "And let's face it, you didn't help."

That brought her upright, book discarded. "I beg your pardon?"

He shrugged. "You straddled the fence on the mine at the last NNA board
meeting. Because you didn't vote to throw the bastards out, some people could
get the impression that Talia was a serious threat to the Park and to their way
of life." He looked up and met her eyes. "You could have helped make
her a target, Kate."

She didn't go immediately on offense, which surprised and relieved him. He
needed her as a sounding board and it wouldn't help the discussion along if she
got too mad to listen.

She sat in frowning silence for a moment. He tilted the cutting board over
the frying pan and used the knife to push the onions into the oil. They
sizzled. He stirred them with a wooden spoon.

"Okay, say that's true," she said. "Let's leave that for the
moment, and you tell me about these calls you made."

He flattened some cloves of garlic, peeled them, and minced them.
"Talia was a busy girl."

"Busy how?" Kate said, alert to the change in his tone.

"Busy between the sheets."

"Takes one to know one."

He looked at her, a steady, unflinching gaze.

She could feel the color rising into her cheeks. She looked down, picking up
her book and smoothing the cover unnecessarily, mumbling something that might
have been "Sorry."

The onions were beginning to brown and he added the garlic, stirring it in
and leaving it over the heat just long enough to perfume the oil.
"Understand that all I've been doing is gathering information," he
said, using a slotted spoon to move them to a saucer. "Can't dignify much
of it as more than gossip." There might have been an added bite to that
last sentence. Mutt, having resumed her position in front of the fire, flicked
her ears.

Kate's lips pressed together but she didn't say anything.

"The word is she was sleeping with both the mayor of Cordova and the manager
of the Costco store in Ahtna. Plus I think she gave Gallagher a tumble,
too."

"The mayor of Cordova is married," Kate said, making an effort to
keep her voice neutral.

"Yeah," Jim said, "I don't think that mattered much to
Talia." He took a deep breath and said, "She hit on me, too. When I
was in Cordova, putting Margaret Kvasnikof and Hally Smith on the plane for
Hiland Mountain."

"Oh," Kate said inadequately.

The hard part out of the way, he took another deep breath and let it out.
"I also got Brendan to find out who was her attorney. I called him, and
after he swore me to secrecy he told me that she had a chunk of nonvoting stock
in Global Harvest."

"Part of the paycheck," Kate said. She felt a little light-headed,
and forced herself to focus.

"Yeah, but. There's a weirdness."

"Which is?"

"These particular shares are held by a limited group of Global Harvest
stockholders. They own their shares for the period of their lifetimes in joint
rights of survivorship, accruing all dividends generated by those shares to
themselves. But they can't sell them or trade them or leave them to anyone
else. Once they die, the shares revert to the other partners."

Kate digested this in silence for a moment. "So her relatives don't
inherit, beyond what she'd already earned?" "Nope."

"Which puts any of them out of the running."

"Normally I'd say not unless they knew, but it turns out they did know.
Part of the deal that employees at that level make when they sign on with
Global Harvest is they also have to sign an affidavit saying they so informed
their nearest and dearest, with registered copies going out to and signed for
by all of same."

Kate said admiringly, "So Global Harvest pays you well—"

Jim put his head back and gave forth with a long, loud wolf whistle.

"—okay, extremely well, so long as you're alive, but they don't
have to worry about the shareholders getting uppity and voting the board out of
office during that time, and they don't have to worry about who the stock goes
to once you're dead, averting an unfriendly takeover. All the shareholders get
is the money, no voice."

"You got it."

"Is that legal?"

"Brendan says it's a contract, and everyone who signed off on it was of
legal age. He says if you had a cranky enough heir it could be tested in court,
but..."

"Man. I wonder how the shareholders of the Niniltna Native Association
would like that. All the money and no voice."

"Everyone in this particular group of shareholders is also doing a job
of work for the company," Jim said. "Talia was drawing a hefty
salary. The shares were just a bonus."

Kate detected a possible hitch. "Do they keep the stock even if they
quit the company?"

"They keep it and any dividends the stock pays until they die,"
Jim said, "whether they're working for Global Harvest or not. The stock reverts
to the company. The earnings to date then go to their heirs."

Kate stood up, her book sliding to the floor. Her eyes were bright and she
had the beginnings of a smile on her face. "It's a tontine."

Jim dredged the steaks in flour and salt and pepper and put them in the
frying pan. The smell was instant and intoxicating and his mouth watered. He
wrested his attention back from his appetite. "It's a what?"

"I read about it in a novel once." Kate got up and walked over to
the kitchen, her nose almost twitching with interest. He hid a grin. Kate the
detective in action. It was always fun to watch. Not to mention which, anything
that diverted her from his little bombshell was bound to be a good thing.

"A tontine is a kind of contest," she said, "where a bunch of
people pay into a kitty and whoever lives longest gets the dough."

"Whoa," he said, browning the steaks for a couple of minutes on
either side.

"Yeah," she said, a smile spreading across her face. "Did you
get the names of the other shareholders?"

"Why," he said, dragging the word out, "I just might have
done that little thing."

He moved the steaks from pan to warming plate with care and deliberation.

"So?" she said. "Anybody we know on it?"

"One name kinda jumped out at me," he said. He poured a cup of
chicken broth into the pan. "Is that leftover bottle of white wine still
knocking around anywhere?"

TWENTY-FOUR

L
ike I keep telling you, I was at the
Roadhouse that night with my wife," Harvey Meganack said. "You can
check. Must have been a hundred other people there. After that, we came right
home. Didn't we, honey?"

The four of them were sitting in
Harvey
's
front room, in the largest and newest house in Niniltna, the first one you saw
when you drove in from Ahtna. The frozen surface of the
Kanuyaq
River
was just on the other side of the dock that began down the stairs from the
house and extended twenty-five feet out from the bank. It looked nowhere near
as well used as the Grosdidiers' dock did, although the
Laurel M.
was
in dry dock next to it, looking very fine in new white paint with blue trim.

Inside, everything was equally brand spanking new, and it all matched. The
bright floral couch matched the bright floral love seat and the bright floral
easy chair. The faux mahogany coffee table with the identically turned spiral
legs matched the three end tables. Four matching brass lamps with white pleated
shades and swing arms stood on either side of the couch and at exactly the same
distance from the right arm of both the love seat and the easy chair, and
everything in the room was placed at precise angles and a precise distance from
everything else on the twelve-foot-square area rug, with colors that picked up
the flowers on the couch, love seat, and easy chair.

Kate thought about the chaos of her own front room, the lone couch, the
aunties' quilt crumpled on the floor before the fireplace, the mismatched
bookshelves that lined one wall, the throw pillows of various sizes and ages
and colors and patterns that lay where they fell, until someone came along and
pulled them into a pile large enough to flop down on. Mutt didn't shed a lot
but there was definite evidence of dog everywhere.

She wondered if she were suffering from house envy. She looked around the
room again, and then back at
Harvey
,
sitting on the extreme edge of the floral couch, sweating bullets. Next to him
sat Iris, a pillar of rectitude, presently inflamed by Kate and Jim's presence
in her hitherto pristine and perfect home.

Nope.

Everyone looked at her and she realized she'd said it out loud. She looked
at Iris. "You sure you want to back him up on this, Iris?"

"Why wouldn't I? It's the truth." She looked at Kate, not
bothering to hide her resentment. She had wanted
Harvey
to be chair of the Niniltna Native
Association board, primarily so she could be the wife of the chair of the
board. If there could be said to be even one Park rat with a social agenda,
that rat would be Iris Meganack. Kate realized for the first time that it was
far more likely Iris who had spread the stories of Kate's first board meeting,
not Harvey. Iris, motivated by malice and envy, would have no internal editor.
Harvey
, motivated by
greed and ambition, would not want to be shoved out of the loop and therefore
might think twice about pissing off the however temporary current board chair.