"Had to pay him in cash, though, he wouldn"t take a check," Oscar said. "There isn"t a cash machine in Niniltna, did you know that?"
"No, I didn"t," Kate said.
"I had to write a check and have that pilot guy fly it into Ahtna and cash it for me at the bank and bring the cash back."
"Imagine," Kate said gravely. Oscar was oblivious but Keith gave her a sharp look, which she met with an innocent stare. "About Len Dreyer," she said. "Did he mention any family or friends, or where he came from? Any arguments he might have gotten into with another Park rat?"
The men looked at each other, and gave a simultaneous shrug. "I don"t remember anything like that," Keith said. "He showed up, and when he did, he worked. I was so grateful, I wasn"t about to ask any questions. We needed that greenhouse up and running."
"Before winter?"
"Sure. We installed a couple of propane stoves at either end, and grew stuff straight through the year."
"You must have laid in one h.e.l.l of a lot of propane," Kate said.
"Yeah, our biggest expense," Oscar said gloomily. Gloom seemed to be key to his personality. "We"ll be lucky if we break even this year, even if we don"t draw salaries."
Kate almost asked them what they were growing, but thought better of it just in time. "So you don"t remember any personal information about Len Dreyer."
"I didn"t even know his first name was Len," Oscar said.
"He"s good with corrugated plastic, though," Keith said. "That roof is watertight."
"He was good," Kate said. "He"s dead."
"What?"
"He was shot. With a shotgun." She looked at Oscar, still holding what upon closer inspection proved to be a very old side-by-side with some very fancy silver work.
Oscar gulped and paled beneath his dark skin. "Well, I didn"t shoot him."
"Didn"t say you did," Kate said.
"Who are you, again?" Keith said.
"I"m Kate Shugak. I"m -a.s.sisting Jim Chopin, the state trooper posted to Niniltna, in his inquiries into Dreyer"s murder."
Keith put a comforting hand on Oscar"s shoulder. "It"s all right, Oscar. I don"t think Ms. Shugak-"
"Call me Kate."
Keith smiled. "I don"t think Kate is going to clap us into irons just yet."
"Do you remember any shots fired near here last fall?" They shook their heads. She nodded at the shotgun. "Have you fired that lately?"
Oscar proffered it mutely. Kate broke it open. It was unloaded, and dusty with disuse.
"It was my father"s," Oscar said. "I don"t know what the right sh.e.l.ls for it are. I don"t even know if it still shoots."
Kate handed it back, thanked them for their time, and left.
"Burned down?" Bobby said. "Recently?"
Kate shook her head, earning a thwack from Dinah. She sat on a stool, enveloped in a sheet, while Dinah trimmed her hair. Katya slid from her knee and headed for the open door at flank speed. Her mother downed scissors long enough for an intercept and deposited Katya in a floodplain of toys in the living room. "It"s cold and wet, and I found some ice when I kicked around a little. I"d say somebody torched it last fall."
"You sure somebody torched it?"
"Absent conclusive forensic evidence, no, I suppose not. However, considering that it was Len"s cabin, and that Len"s body has just been found under Grant Glacier, and that Len underwent a radical lungectomy with a shotgun sometime in the past year, yeah, I"m pretty sure."
Unperturbed, Bobby said, "Where did he live, anyway? When I got him to do the roof, I got him through Bernie."
"He hung out at the Roadhouse?"
"Who doesn"t? Where was his cabin?"
"Okay, you"re done, thank G.o.d," Dinah said, whipping off the sheet. "Are you absolutely sure you don"t want to let your hair grow out again, Kate?"
The note of quiet desperation in Dinah"s voice was not lost on Kate but it failed to illicit the response Dinah was hoping for. "I"m absolutely sure," Kate said. She wriggled away the stray hair that had insinuated itself inside the neck of her T-shirt and poured herself a cup of coffee.
Bobby had thwarted another of Katya"s escape attempts, and Kate followed them both into the living room to sprawl on a couch, of which there were two, parallel to each other across the vast expanse of hardwood floor, both wide enough for Kate"s Auntie Balasha and long enough for Chopper Jim. A huge rectangular window overlooked the yard that sloped down to Squaw Candy Creek. The Quilaks jutted up behind, rough-edged peaks still covered in snow. "He had a cabin up the Step road," she said. "Just past the Gettes"."
"Oh yeah?" A broad grin spread across Bobby"s face. "Been up there lately?"
"I told you, I was just there."
"No, not Dreyer"s place, the Gettes". Been there lately?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. Why?"
"The heirs showed up."
"I know, I met them."
"And?"
"And what? They"re babes in the woods, but pretty harmless, I thought. The Hispanic one is upset that there isn"t a cash machine in Niniltna. The Anglo one seems a little more relaxed. How long had Len Dreyer been in the Park, anyway?"
"You don"t know?"
She sighed. "What Abel didn"t teach me to do for myself, he did for me, carpentry, plumbing, mechanics, you name it. I never needed to hire on someone else until after he died, so I don"t have a clue how long Dreyer was here. Auntie Vi might. How about you?"
"Beats me. He nailed one h.e.l.l of a shingle, I"ll say that for him. I hired him to fix the roof last October. He was finished the last day before the first snowfall. It was tight as a drum all last winter, not to mention which, warm as toast." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder and grinned. "Not easy, after I punched that hole in it."
She followed the direction of his thumb to the post running up the center of the large A-frame, almost invisible beneath the lines of black cable linking all the electronic equipment on the circular console with the antennas hanging off the 112-foot tower outside. Bobby was the NOAA observer for the Park, or at least making daily reports to the National Weather Service in Anchorage was his excuse to the IRS every time he bought a new receiver. He also ran a nice little pirate radio station, hosting Park Air every evening, or whenever he felt that Park rats were in need of some gospel according to the Temptations. Or someone bribed him with a package of moose T-bones to air a for-sale ad.
Bobby had appeared in the Park the year Kate had graduated from high school, carrying a worn duffle bag with his name stenciled on it in big black letters, and a deed from the state of Alaska to forty acres on Squaw Candy Creek. He"d built this A-frame, installed enough electronic hardware to run JPL, and had copped the NOAA job right out from under Old Sam Dementieff. To top it off, he was the first black man many of the Park rats had ever seen.
Three things worked in his favor. He"d hired locally to build his A-frame. From the first day of broadcast he had traded want ads on Park Air for moose meat and salmon. And he"d lost both his legs below the knee to a Vietcong land mine.
"I think the men folk thought I wouldn"t be able to run after their women," he"d told Kate years before. They"d been in bed together at the time. He"d grinned and reached out an arm to pull her in tight. "They were wrong about that, but by then it was too late."
They were indeed, and it was, far too late, and when Dinah Cookman showed up in the Park three years earlier he"d taken one look and wedded and bedded her, not necessarily in that order. Dinah was white and twenty-five years younger than Bobby was, but so far as Kate could tell neither one of them had noticed. The result was the going-on-two tornado currently making her proud parents" lives a living h.e.l.l. "Don"t touch that!" Dinah said, leaping forward to catch the end table next to one of the couches from tilting forward and landing on her daughter"s head. Katya"s face puckered up and everyone held their breath. Precious little Katya had a yell that could frighten a bear into the next county.
Katya"s eye fell on Mutt, who knew the signs as well as everyone else and who was poised to rocket through the door as soon as the siren went off. She didn"t move fast enough. "Mutt!" Katya said, pointing.
"Mutt!" Dinah said gladly. "Come play with Katya! Come on, girl!"
Mutt looked at Kate, mute misery on her face, and slunk toward Katya, her tail as close to being between her legs as it ever got. She flopped down and Katya launched, landing on Mutt"s side with a force that caused a "Woof!" of expelled air and a wheezing, pitiful groan.
"G.o.dd.a.m.n, woman, you"re letting the kid play with the wolves!" Bobby bellowed at Dinah.
Dinah raised an eyebrow. "Handing over to you, Dad," she said, and retired behind the central console to her computer, where she was editing a twenty-minute video for the community health representative on the practices of safe s.e.x, to be shown that fall to health cla.s.ses at Niniltna Public School. She was trying to keep the opportunities for snickering to a minimum but the local high schoolers were a precocious bunch and it was hard going. The Niniltna Native a.s.sociation was footing the bill, however, so she waded in with a light heart.
Bobby, deprived of a husband"s legitimate prey, shifted his sights. "And you," he bellowed at Kate, "I keep telling you, no f.u.c.king wolves in the house!"
Kate tried not to wince away from the volume. Katya was truly a chip off the old block. She heard a low moan and looked around to see Katya pulling mightily on one of Mutt"s ears.
Hard-heartedly, she turned her back. "So Len Dreyer reshingled your roof?"
"Yeah."
"Before the first snowfall, you said. When was that?"
"Lemme look." He wheeled over to the console and pulled down one of a row of daily diaries from a shelf. "Let"s see. October twenty-third. Late last year." He closed the diary and replaced it. "His cabin"s really burned down?"
"It really is."
"Anything left?"
She shook head. "No. No papers, nothing. And he didn"t have much ID on him. Any, actually. The only reason we know his name is he worked for everyone."
Bobby nodded. "Not much need for ID in the Park." He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. "Although, now we"re going to have our own resident trooper, might pay to keep a driver"s license handy."
She tried to look down her nose but it wasn"t long enough. "It might." She jerked her head at the radio. "Call Anchorage for me?"
He grinned. "The game"s afoot!" he said. He turned on one wheel and docked into the radio console like a ship nosing into port, flipped switches and turned k.n.o.bs without looking, and said over his shoulder, "Who"m I calling?"
"Brendan McCord. Got his number?"
"Babe, I got everyone"s number."
A snort came from the other side of the console, followed by a long, lupine moan from the living room. Both were ignored.
"Brendan? Kate Shugak here."
"Kate!" Brendan"s rich, full tenor rolled off the airwaves like an aria. "Long time no talk. What"re you up to, girl?"
Kate, mindful of the thousand ears listening in from Tok to Tanana, said, "I"m working a case. I need some information."
"Oh. Ah. Well," he boomed cheerfully, "I live to serve. What do you need?"
"Anything you can dig up on a Len Dreyer."
"Got a Social Security number?"
"Nope."
"Got a date of birth?"
"Nope."
"Got a driver"s license number?"
"Nope."
A brief pause. "Well, if it was easy, everybody^ be doing it."
"Jim shipped the body to the ME yesterday. It was stuck in a glacier. His prints ought to be fairly well preserved."
"Freeze-dried," Brendan said respectfully. "Who do I call?"
Bobby nudged Kate to one side. "Brendan, this is Bobby."
"No offense, Bobby, but I"d rather be talking to Kate."
Bobby laughed. "You and me both, bubba. I"m on-line nowadays. When you get what she wants, email it to Bobby at parkair-dot-com. That way I can print it out for you," he told Kate.
Kate, who liked computers, said, "Just like downtown." She raised her voice. "Thanks, Brendan."
His voice sank to a lecherous purr. "Come to town and you can thank me in person."
Kate laughed. "I"ll be on the next plane."
"You"re cutting into my action, McCord, I"m cutting you off," Bobby said, and cleared to the sound of Brendan"s laughter. He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at Kate.
"Cut it out," she said. "You"re starting to sound like Dolly Levi."
"I didn"t say a word," he said virtuously. "You working for Jim on this?"
She nodded, careful to keep her expression neutral. "Usual rates."
She waited grimly for the ragging to start, but all he said was, "Hmmm. Didn"t you owe me some money?"
When the door closed behind her he checked on Katya, who had fallen asleep with her head beneath the coffee table, her little b.u.t.t stuck up in the air, which inspired him to scoop his wife out of her chair and into his lap. The kiss that followed was long and enthusiastic. She squirmed halfheartedly before giving in.
He pulled back to look down at her flushed and smiling face. "Promise me you"ll never leave me."
She laughed. "Where"s that coming from?"