Whisper to the Blood (38 page)

The door opened and Laurel Meganack walked in. Her eye lit upon Jim first
and a smile spread across her face. "Jim, hey. What're you doing
here?" She fluttered her eyelashes. "Asking Dad for my hand in
marriage?"

She saw Kate. Her smile faded. "Oh. Hey, Kate."

"Hey, Laurel."

Laurel
looked from Kate to Jim and to her parents as realization dawned. "Dad.
What's going on here?"

"None of your business,
Laurel
,"
her mother said sharply. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to pick up some more of my stuff,"
Laurel
said, still looking at
Harvey
.
"Dad, is everything all right?"

"Of course everything's all right," Iris said. "Go get your
stuff."

"Go ahead, honey,"
Harvey
said, passing his sleeve across his forehead and managing a smile. "Everything's
fine."

Laurel
looked at Kate, no trace of smile present now, and her thoughts were
transparent.
If you think you're going to hurt my dad, think again.
It
made Kate think better of both of them.

Laurel
left
the room. Kate waited until she heard a door open and close, and said in a
lowered voice, "You see how it looks,
Harvey
. Talia Macleod has stock in Global
Harvest that reverts to the chunk of stock held by the other shareholders in
her particular group. It bumps up everyone's portion, increases everyone's
income. You're one of the shareholders, so far as we know the only one who is
also a Park rat. So you have motive."

"I was at the Roadhouse the night she was killed,"
Harvey
said. "Ask
Bernie if you don't believe Iris. Ask Old Sam."

"You know how to drive a snow machine," Kate said as if she didn't
hear him. "You know the way to Double Eagle. I'm sure you must have a few
spools of monofilament lying around here somewhere."

"Ask the aunties," he said, "they were there. There's no way
I could have left the Roadhouse and killed her and gotten back in time to come
home with Iris."

"And he didn't leave," Iris said fiercely. "Instead of
wasting your time harassing us why don't you go find the real killer?"

Kate looked at Jim and raised an eyebrow. Jim got to his feet. "All
right,
Harvey
.
We'll check your alibi. Don't leave the Park until you hear from me,
okay?"

"How dare you—," Iris started to say, and
Harvey
grabbed her knee. "Don't,
Iris." He looked up at Jim and nodded. "Okay."

Kate stood up and looked at
Harvey
's
bent head until he felt it and looked up. "I want to know what Global
Harvest hired you for,
Harvey
.
The board's going to want to know, too. And when they hear about it, so are the
shareholders."

"We can own stock in them if we want to!" Iris said shrilly.
"It's none of your business! Who are you, Kate Shugak, to be asking? You
live halfway to Ahtna in a house you didn't even pay for! You get a job you
don't even know how to do, and instead of learning how you run around poking
your nose into other people's business! Poking and prying, that's all you know
how to do!"

"Nice seeing you again, Iris," Kate said, and followed Jim to the
door. "
Harvey
,
could you step outside for a minute? Board business, Iris. You
understand."

Kate pulled the door shut firmly in the face of Iris's spluttering, and said
bluntly, "You and Macleod were awful friendly at the board meeting in
October,
Harvey
.
Anything you want to tell us about that?"

He tried to bluster his way out of it. "I don't know what you're
talking about, Kate. I'm a married man."

She looked at him. Jim stayed quiet.

Harvey
's
face reddened, and he cast an apprehensive look over his shoulder at the closed
door. "Okay, maybe, once. It was just- It just happened one time when I
was in Ahtna meeting with—" Too late he caught himself.

"Meeting with Macleod?" Kate said. "And maybe somebody else
from Global Harvest?"

He stared at her, trapped.

She looked at Jim, who shrugged. "Think Iris is going to change her
story?"

"She might if she knew
Harvey
'd
been screwing Macleod. Iris can get a little proprietary."

Jim didn't doubt it for a moment.

"Jesus!"
Harvey
said in a whisper, casting another agonized glance over his shoulder. "You
can't do that, Kate! Besides, I keep telling you, I didn't do it! And
besides," he said, a sudden flash of intelligence piercing his panic,
"why would I kill her if I was sleeping with her?"

G
ood question," Kate said back at
the post.

"It's too good an alibi not to be true," Jim said. "But
you'll check anyway."

He nodded. "I'll check. In the meantime, you've got work to do."
"Really. Work for which I will be paid?"

She went directly to the airstrip, where she commandeered George and his
Cessna, and flew to Cordova, where she tracked the mayor down at a Chamber of
Commerce luncheon at the Elks Club. He paled when he saw her but he didn't
object when she beckoned him out of the room. Lacking a better option, she
barred them in the men's room and said point-blank, "Were you sleeping with
Talia Macleod?"

He gulped and lost color but said baldly, "Yes."

She appreciated the no-frills reply. She appreciated further that he made no
apologies and no explanations, and dealt with him more gently than she might
have otherwise.

The affair had been short-lived, beginning the day of Talia's first visit to
Cordova as the local rep for Global Harvest. The mayor, a tall fair man with
blue eyes and a pink complexion, attractive but not overwhelmingly so, said
that it amounted to half a dozen encounters over a couple of months, and faded
out mostly from lack of opportunity and, Kate suspected, his own fear of
discovery.

He'd been in Cordova at a basketball game the night Talia was killed in
Double Eagle, accompanied by his wife and two youngest children. His oldest
child, a son, was the star point guard for the Wolverines' varsity team.

"Thank you, Mr. Mayor," Kate said, and opened the door to the very
irritated man who had been thumping on it for the past five minutes.

She went directly to the high school and spoke to a large, fair woman with
flyaway blond hair and china blue eyes with the thickest, longest lashes Kate
had ever seen. Chris confirmed that there had indeed been a varsity home game
that night and that the mayor-and his wife-had been in the audience. Indeed
she, Chris, had been in the same section of the bleachers, one row up, and had
said hello to the mayor's family as they had come in.

Kate went to the Club Bar, where she found George simultaneously wolfing
down a serving of fish and chips and hitting on the waitress. She interrupted
this budding romance without compunction, and heard about it all the way to
Ahtna, landing there as the last light leached from the sky.

They spent the night at the Lodge-any excuse for one of Stan's steak
sandwiches-and were at the door of Costco when it opened the next morning. They
sought out the manager, a short, square man with a twinkle in his brown eyes
that complemented a broad smile, and a bushy crop of wayward hair that was
graying at the temples.

Yes, he had heard of Talia's death, a shame, a young woman of so much talent
and promise. Yes, he said, they had had a relationship, brief, mutually
enjoyable, nothing serious. He'd been in Ahtna at work the night she had died.
Kate checked with the staff at the store, who corroborated his statement. He
was unmarried, he told her three or four times, and let her go with regret and
a complimentary wedge of Cambozola cheese and a box of Bosc pears, enjoining
her to drop by when she was next in town.

"I like the way you interrogate a suspect," George said when she
loaded the loot in the back of the Cessna, but then he'd been doing some
shopping of his own and the back of the Cessna was full.

They touched down on the airstrip in Niniltna at two o'clock that afternoon.
Kate drove directly to the post, where Mutt, who hated being left behind, got
up from her spot on the floor next to Jim's chair just so she could flounce
around in a circle and thump down again with her back pointedly to Kate. And
then she farted.

Jim reached behind him and opened a window. It must have been ten degrees
outside, but it was necessary. "Anything?"

"Nothing," Kate said. "Mayor and manager both had affairs
with Macleod. Mayor and wife have the same rock-solid alibi, son's basketball
game, confirmed. Manager, single, was working that night, also confirmed."

Jim nodded. "It figures. They know if she was sleeping with anyone
else?"

"I asked. The mayor said probably, the manager said maybe. It doesn't
sound to me like anyone in pants was safe from Talia Macleod, married, single,
old, young. Anything here?"

"Nothing new," he said.

He was a little tight-lipped. Kate could choose to believe it was because of
her tone in speaking of Talia Macleod, who'd at least had the good taste to hit
on him, too. She didn't say anything though, because she'd been where he was.
The longer a murder went unsolved, the less likely it was ever to be solved.
Practicing police officers hated mysteries. They especially hated mysteries that
involved public figures.

"I'm for home," she said. "Don't be late, something special
for dinner tonight."

TWENTY-FIVE

When he walked in the door there was a large plate with a wedge of some
gooey blue cheese and a mound of toasted, salted walnuts, accompanied by a bowl
of pears.
 
There were napkins and
paring knives at each place setting.

“No meat?” Jim said.

“Trust me,” Kate said, and raised her voice.
 
“Dinner!”

Johnny ambled down the hall and flopped into his chair.
 
“What’s this?”

“Cheese and fruit and nuts,” Kate said.
 
“Trust me.”

Both of her men behaved as men will do and grumbled and whined and wrinkled
their noses and shuffled their feet and implored the gods to explain why she
was trying to starve them to death, but in the end plate and bowl were both
empty.

“Okay, nice appetizer,” Jim said, “what’s for
dinner?”
 
He ducked out of the
way of the thrown napkin as Johnny snickered.

“Oh well, if you insist,” Kate said, and went into the kitchen
and pulled a moose burger meatloaf and roast potatoes out of the oven, loftily
ignoring the cheering section.

“You know,” Jim said, sitting back from the table after the
second course had likewise been cleared away, “this case is lousy with
motive.
 
What it lacks is evidence.
 
Well, except for the body.”

Johnny watched and listened, his eyes following the conversation from one face
to the other and back again.

Kate nodded.
 
“Talia could
have had other lovers.”
 
He
gave her his patented shark’s grin, and unreasonably reassured, she said,
“And much as I hate to say it, I think our killer is a Park rat.
 
There are no strangers in town
unaccounted for in the witness statements.”

Johnny looked at Kate and opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

“My question is, do we still think the same person killed Mac as
killed Talia?”

“Been thinking about that,” Jim said.
 
“What did they have in
common?
 
Global Harvest.
 
Mac hated Global Harvest for ripping him
off.
 
But Talia was Global Harvest’s
point man in the Park.
 
I don’t
know, Kate, if Talia died before Mac, Mac would have had the hell of a motive
for killing her.”

“I don’t see that,” Kate said, frowning slightly.
 
“Anyone could have told you that
Mac was always a guy with his eye to the main chance.
 
He was hoping to get more money out of
Global Harvest for the Nabesna.
 
Why
would he kill the goose he was hoping would lay him a golden egg?”

“By the way, I heard from the crime lab as I was leaving the post
today.
 
Howie’s rifle didn’t
fire the bullet that killed Mac Devlin.”

“Really.
 
What a shame.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.
 
Or something like it.”
 
He paused.
 
“What I’d
like to do is charge him with the murder of Louis Deem.”

Kate looked at him.
 
“Are
you going to?”

“I said what I’d like to do.
 
Louis was killed with a shotgun, and I
didn’t get enough evidence at the scene even to guess at how tall the
perp was.
 
Let alone who he was.”

"There's the tire print at the scene. You matched it to Howie's
truck."

"Yeah, but as Howie, the little weasel, points out, there isn't a Park
rat who doesn't leave his keys in the truck when he gets out. Doesn't matter if
it's at the store, the post office, the cafe, the Roadhouse, the school,
home."

Kate remembered taking the key of her snow machine with her when she'd
stopped to see Vidar. One time in how many years? Maybe her lifetime?

"Anyone could have driven off in his truck. And the tire track alone
won't make a conviction, as Judge Singh was pleased to tell me."

"She wasn't pleased," Kate said.