Blood Will Tell (16 page)

She fluttered her eyelashes at the hand kisser, seemed genuinely to regret her lack of a hotel room for the benefit of the room number asker, and actually giggled at the guy who wanted her for breakfast.

Jack wasn't sure he'd ever heard Kate Shugak giggle before. He stood it as long as he could before growling, "I'm going to get something to eat."

Her hand held in the sweaty clasp of an RPetco executive who was trying earnestly to get her to promise him a dance later in the evening, Kate watched the rigid line of Jack's spine as he stalked off to the buffet with a satisfied smile on her face. The oil man requested her attention.

"Huh? What? Dance? I don't dance. Yeah, yeah, nice to meet you, see you later." She pulled free and threaded through the crowd to her grandmother's table.

Ekaterina looked around from a polite flourish of arms with a state senator and saw Kate. Her eyes widened. Her jaw might even have dropped.

"Katya?" She fumbled at her breast for the chain which held her reading glasses and raised them to her eyes. The eyes, magnified by the reading lenses, blinked. "Katya?"

It was remarkable how an evening she had regarded as nothing more than a disaster in the making was turning into nothing less than joy unconfined. "Emaa," Kate said with a bland smile. "What a nice party."

Just for the hell of it she bent over and kissed Ekaterina on the cheek.

Ekaterina reared back as if Kate had bit her. Her stunned expression indicated that she still wasn't entirely convinced of Kate's identity.

"You look--" Ekaterina hesitated, and said doubtfully, "--beautiful?" It wasn't a word she'd ever used in connection with her granddaughter before.

"Why, thank you, emaa," Kate said, genial to the point of jocularity.

"So do you."

And Ekaterina did, she looked elegant and gracious and dignified. Her dress was made of dull navy blue silk, buttoned up the front with ivory buttons, lace at the neck and wrists, the skirt softly gathered in graceful folds. Her hair knotted smoothly at the nape of her neck, she looked near enough like a queen to explain the reception line. Did Kate but know it, she herself looked near enough like a princess to double the line.

Ekaterina knew it, and pulled herself together. The startled look faded, to be replaced by something more appraising. The next thing Kate knew, she was standing next to her grandmother and bestowing identical gracious smiles and brief handshakes as each new and used mendicant, leech, moocher, parasite and even the occasional genuine friend and/or relative came up to pay their respects. It was the convention all over again, until she was cut neatly out of the receiving line by Mike Lonsdale, in hot competition with Porthos and Aramis. The three men did everything short of balancing a rubber ball on their noses to gain her attention. Not since the Shipwreck Bar in Dutch Harbor a year ago had she been the object of so much determined flirtation, and in the Shipwreck she had been in jeans and sneakers and able to hold her own.

Silk and lace and bugle beads had the most demoralizing affect, but before she had time to identify it music sounded somewhere and Jack reappeared to grab her arm. "Let's dance."

"Are you kidding? You don't dance," she said, hanging back. "And neither do I, or have you forgotten that's the reason you fell in love with me in the first place?" "Time we learned then," he said, halting in the middle of the dance floor to scoop her up into a comprehensive embrace.

He was five foot sixteen, she was barely five feet and in their present position he was hunched over like Quasimodo while her toes barely scraped the floor.

Quasimodo's idea of dancing was an inelegant shuffle that took them back two steps and forward one, with an infrequent quarter turn thrown in at random intervals just for show.

When she managed to un flatten her nose from his breastbone she gave him a smile so sweet he could feel teeth dissolving in his mouth and said in a voice equally saccharine, "The only reason I don't kick you in the balls is because we're the only ones out here and people would see." She smiled again, wider, showing all her teeth, reminding him of nothing so much as Mutt in a bad mood. "But don't worry. It'll keep."

Poor Jack was afraid that it would. The music ended and with fresh misery he realized that staking his claim to the first dance only proclaimed her availability for subsequent dances. Men, hundreds of them, thousands of them, hundreds of thousands of them, skulked at the edge of the dance floor, waiting only for him to turn Kate loose before they attacked. Even in the dim light he could see the gleam of fangs, the shine of saliva, taloned hands extending rapaciously out for his girl' Jesus Christ," he said.

"What?" Kate leaned her head back to look up.

His face was blank with amazement. "I'm jealous." She grinned, and it was a wide, satisfied grin that took up her whole face. "No shit." "I can't believe it," he said, still amazed. "I'm actually jealous of you.

I don't fucking believe it."

"Me neither," she said cheerfully.

Their eyes met and they burst out laughing, so hard it brought them to a halt in the center of the dance floor. When Jack got his breath back he lifted Kate up off the floor to hold her nose to nose. "Who you going home with, woman?"

"I always dance with the one that brung me," she said, eyes crossed and solemn as a judge.

He let her down. "Good. Keep that in mind the next time that yo-yo shows up asking for your room number."

"I'll try."

"By the way," he said, as the music began again and others finally began to join them on the floor, "I don't believe I mentioned it before, but you look flat-out, drop-dead gorgeous. In fact, you look good enough to eat alive, which I intend to do as soon as I get you home."

She laughed again, and she was still laughing when somebody cut in and whisked her away. Jack, by damn, marched over to Ekaterina's table and said with a grin, "Ekaterina? Would you like to dance?" and she was so flabbergasted at his audacity that she found herself out on the floor before she knew what had happened. When Kate glimpsed them over her partner's shoulder, her grandmother was smiling up at Jack with what in the dim light of the cavernous room, looked like genuine affection. Kate didn't think her reaction to the sight would maim her dance partner for life, although for a while he did.

A deejay hired for the evening waded through a stack of CDs, everything from the Ronettes to Nirvana. The music went on nonstop and Kate barely had time to snatch a few bites of food between songs before another man shanghaied her out on the dance floor again. Somewhat to her own surprise, she discovered she was enjoying herself. Previously, all of Kate's dancing had taken place at pot latches and spirit days and other tribal celebrations. It wasn't that there weren't dances at high school; there were, but she had never joined in because she disliked being pawed and she had quickly discovered that pawing was what teenage boys were best at. The other dancing, the spirit dancing, the motion dancing, that was different. That kind of dance served a cultural and communal purpose, retelling a story, celebrating a birth, giving thanks for a good fishing season, summoning the spirits of the dead for a final farewell. It was danced without partners, or rather with many partners, as one of a group, as part of the whole. There was a reason they called it spirit dancing.

There were similarities between the two, she thought, looking around at the gesticulating, jiving crowd of rambunctious par tiers but there were more differences, not least of which the goal of this kind of dancing seemed to be to persuade participants into another activity, less spiritual in purpose and more horizontal in nature. Nothing wrong with that, Kate decided, and whirled from one partner to the next, laughing as she tried to keep off people's feet, her partner's and whoever else was foolish enough to wander into range.

Around ten o'clock, over the shoulder of her current partner, she saw Axenia swirl by in Lew Mathisen's embrace. Axenia was wearing black velvet cut down to here and up to there, rhinestones glittered from her ears and her hair was swept up into some elaborate superstructure that rivaled the cabins of some boats Kate had worked on. Far from shuffling, Lew and Axenia were dancing smoothly, gracefully, as if they'd taken lessons and had been practicing together. Kate wondered what else he was teaching her.

While she was watching, Lew saw someone, waved, whispered to Axenia and led her off the floor. Kate followed Lew's glance and saw a short, slender man whose three piece attire could only be described as dapper.

He had a mustache and a goatee and a full head of gray hair slicked back into a dramatic pompadour, a heavy gold chain stretched across his vest, and his patent leather wingtips were polished to an even higher gloss than Kate's. She recognized him at once. It was Edgar P. Dischner, an attorney who had ridden into town on the shoulders of the Kenai oil discoveries in the 1950s and had been involved in every shady speculation in Alaskan business and politics since. He had defended Governor Hickfield on his influence-peddling charge and had orchestrated the legislative payback of the governor's legal expenses, most of which he'd pocketed in fees. He was on retainer for a half dozen oil companies, he'd lobbied in Juneau against every oil tax proposed in the legislature and when his lobbying efforts failed he brought suit against the state in federal court, several of which suits were still pending but which pretty much everyone in the know confidently expected to be settled this side of a trial for figures not less than seven in number.

Mathisen and Axenia came up to Dischner. Everybody seemed awfully glad to see everyone else, and when two more couples joined the little group there was a tremendous amount of hand-shaking and back-slapping. One of the newcomers was Billy Mike, another Harvey Meganack, both with their wives. Betty wore a ruffled number that would have been more appropriate on a sixth-grader going to church and had applied makeup with a trowel, and Darlene, a sedate matron of some fifty-six years of age, sported tight fitting, silver-studded black leather that was no doubt the latest in punk rock. She'd spiked her hair to match, spraying all the gray pink, and the expression on her husband's face whenever he dared look at her was worth all the pain and suffering Kate had incurred during her afternoon of forced shopping.

She wondered where Harvey had stashed the trophy blonde he'd brought to Mama Nicco's, and lo and behold the next man to show was John King, who had not mislaid his trophy brunette, or--Kate craned her neck to see--his mustard-yellow, silver-toed cowboy boots, either, which didn't match his double-breasted, raw silk suit. Tonight the trophy brunette was wearing a white dress with no back and a skirt like a tutu.

Wait a minute, Kate thought, amused and a little puzzled, when did I start noticing what other women were wearing? The answer was quick in coming. Since I walked into the room in an outfit that would look better on Tina Turner, is when. Good God, did wearing an outfit like this automatically put a woman into competition with all other women in the matter of dress? Amusement gave way to alarm. What if the effect was permanent? What if she spent the rest of her life comparing the way she was dressed to every woman who walked into the room?

"Uh, ouch?" her dance partner said, when her hand tightened on his.

"Oh," she said, loosening her grip. "Sorry."

"Don't worry." He smiled down at her and his arm pulled her in closer.

"I liked it. Do it again."

Her left heel came down hard on his right toe. He winced. Space appeared again between them, and Kate took a deep breath and calmed herself with the reminder that she would be back in jeans and T-shirt by morning.

Cold turkey, that was the only way to treat something like this before it got out of hand. The next step down that road was ordering from Victoria's Secret, a catalogue that came unsolicited in her mail which she had never opened but which, rolled and tied, made a great fire starter for the wood stove. She peered again over her partner's shoulder at the reunion taking place at the edge of the dance floor.

Edgar P. Dischner had noticed the ladies' attire. He bowed low over the trophy brunette's hand. She was tall enough and he was short enough that when he bent over her hand his forehead was very nearly in her cleavage.

Neither of them seemed unhappy about it. John King was scowling, but that was his natural expression. Kate's partner turned them so that his shoulders blocked her view, and she shifted her weight to keep him turning so she could go up on tiptoe and look over his other shoulder, which wasn't quite what he had in mind when he'd started whispering sweet nothings in her ear halfway through

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." "Hey," her partner said--Will? Bill? something to do with the land department at Amerex--"who's leading here, anyway?" He smiled to show there were no hard feelings and snuggled in for the kill, only to find himself with an armful of air as she pulled free with a muttered excuse and headed toward the group at the edge of the floor. Jack waltzed by clasped in the torrid embrace of a redhead wearing a multicolored dress that fluttered in fragments from shoulder, bosom, waist and knee with every movement, kind of like the line of flags over a car dealer's lot fluttered in the breeze, only the flags were considerably more substantial. Kate caught his eye and jerked her head. With difficulty, Jack extricated himself from the redhead, who was half in the bag anyway and who teetered off on very high heels in search of someone else tall enough to lean up against. She and Kate's former dance partner were made for each other.

"What's up?" Jack said. She jerked her head, and he followed her gaze.

"Well, well, well. Edger P. Dischner, as I live and breathe, and Lew Mathisen. And isn't that--"

"Harvey Meganack," Kate said with grim relish. "And Billy Mike. And John King again, who is proving to be downright ubiquitous."

"And Axenia." Jack looked down at her, one corner of his mouth quirking up. "Want to go over and say hi?"

Her smile matched his. "Why not?"

He crooked his arm. She fluttered her eyelashes and slid her hand inside. By the time the two of them reached the little group the grins and Billy's and Harvey's wives had disappeared and the handshakes and back slaps had deteriorated into a furiously whispered argument.

"You'll never get emaa to--" Axenia looked up and saw Kate and Jack bearing down on them. She elbowed Billy, who paled visibly when he saw Kate.

"Billy," she greeted him like her longest, los test friend, "long time no see." "Hello, Kate," he said with a weak smile. "You look great."

"Why, thank you, Billy," she beamed at him, and impartially around the circle.

"Shugak." John King was inclined to be curt, but his eyes widened a bit as he looked her over. The trophy brunette was clamped to his side, her smooth face showing no expression and her eyes as opaque and impenetrable as ever. Again, King didn't bother to introduce her.

Lew Mathisen was positively effusive. "Kate, I've never seen you dressed up before, you look fantastic, you ought to do it more often, ha HAH!"

The brunette blinked once, like a lizard lying in the sun. Kate wondered if there was any there there.

"And this of course is Edgar Dischner. Kate Shugak, Jack Morgan."

"We've met," Jack said, unsmiling. Like most of the Alaska law enforcement community, he'd been around the edges of enough Dischner cases to know the man was dirty, and to be bitterly resentful that he couldn't touch him.

Dischner was smooth and expansive, as he could well afford to be.

"Hello, Jack." His smile was full of calculated charm and no warmth.

"It's been a while."

"Not long enough," Jack drawled.

Lew looked scandalized and plucked at Dischner's elbow. "Edgar, we've got that meeting."

No one ever shortened Edgar P. Dischner's name to plain old Ed, Kate noticed.

Dischner said, still looking at Jack, "Relax, Lew. It's a party. Have a drink. Ask Kate to dance."

"Ha HAH!"

Kate looked at Dischner from beneath her lashes. "Ask me yourself."

That surprised a real laugh out of Dischner, and Jack watched him lead her out with an impassive expression it cost a lot to maintain. He was afraid the bugle beads had gone straight to Kate's brain.

On the floor Dischner was short enough for her to look in the eye, which gave her neck muscles a rest, and her an excellent opportunity to observe his every expression. She smiled at him, after an evening of being pursued from one end of the very large, very crowded room to the other not unaware of the effect of that smile. "Nice party."

He smiled back, the expression not reaching the cold gray eyes. His arm did not tighten around her waist. "Very nice."

"Lots of people here."

"Lots," he agreed, nodding to another couple, flashing a smile at someone else. Like Ekaterina, he was an expert at working the house. He could probably work an empty room if the spirit moved him. Over his shoulder she saw Harvey and Billy and Axenia deep in conversation with Lew Math isen hovering around the perimeter. John King had been shanghaied by Jack's tipsy redhead and was currently holding her up two couples away. Jack was dancing with the trophy brunette, who was leaning languidly back in his arms and gazing up at him through her lashes, the large knot of dark hair pulling her head back and displaying the long stemmed neck to distinct advantage. Jack's expression was wary but appreciative.

Turning to her own partner Kate took a chance, and said, "I understand you're something of an expert in Alaskan real estate, Mr. Dischner."

The smile was modest. "I don't know that I'd go so far as to call myself an expert, Ms. Shugak."

"No? Funny, I'd heard otherwise. They say you're one of Alaska's biggest property owners."

"Do they?" He threw in a fancy step and turned them to head off in the opposite direction, and by the grace of God she managed to keep up.

"They do," she said. "I was wondering--"

The smile again. "Yes?"

"Well, if perhaps you had heard anything of a firm called Arctic Investors."

His feet didn't miss a step but something flickered at the back of his eyes. "Arctic Investments?" "No, Arctic Investors," Kate said. "Have you heard of them?" "Arctic Investors," he said. A tiny line appeared between his eyebrows, to indicate how hard he was thinking. "No, I'm afraid I've never heard of it. Is it a local concern?"

"I believe so," she said, eyes wide and guileless. "It's a real estate and management firm, I think. They own various condominiums in Anchorage and the Valley and rent them out."

He raised his brows. "Were you thinking of investing?" "Perhaps," she said. "If I could find the right property." She'd been on the Slope long enough, surrounded by enough wannabe entrepreneurs, that she could talk the talk if she had to. "I'd want a garage, of course, as well as good security. A woman alone can't be too careful these days."

Kate Shugak was not notorious for a timorous lifestyle but Dischner took this without a blink. "She certainly can't."

"But Arctic Investors doesn't ring a bell?"

"I'm afraid not." "Pity." She smiled.

"Isn't it." He smiled back.

When the music ended Dischner bent his elegant gray head over her hand, expressed his gratitude and pleasure at their dance, his desolation at its premature ending, and looked forward with great anticipation to the next time before ushering her off the floor with all the panache of a courtier escorting a member of the royal family. It made a good impression on nearly everyone watching, the dignified, distinguished older man escorting the bright, beautiful young woman. Nearly everyone, that is, except Ekaterina, whose face was stony with a disapproval Kate could feel from fifty feet away.

"Really," Dischner said when they returned to the little group, "that has to be the top of the evening for me." He turned to Lew. "A few words before I head for the barn, Lew?" "Of course, Edgar," Lew said. "You don't mind, do you, honey? Ha HAH!" He pressed a hasty kiss on Axenia's cheek.

They left. Axenia, a little forlorn, drifted off. Harvey and Billy hit the buffet. John King reclaimed his brunette and disappeared. Kate turned and met Ekaterina's condemning gaze with a cool, steady, unapologetic one of her own. To the surprise of them both, her grandmother's gaze was the first to fall.

The party began to break up at one o'clock, when the open bars stopped serving. Jack and Kate gave Ekaterina a ride back to her hotel, Ekaterina's attempt to take a cab thwarted by Kate's insistence that she come with them. By now Ekaterina was too tired to hide it anymore, and when they pulled into the Sheraton's driveway, Kate hopped out to open her door and escort her up to her room. Ekaterina leaned heavily on her granddaughter's arm all the way, and sat down on the edge of her bed to rub her left arm, her face weary.

"What's the matter with that arm, emaa?" Kate said. "You've been rubbing at it for days now." Ekaterina's hand dropped. "I told you, Katya. A little rheumatism in the elbow. Don't fuss." She looked across at her granddaughter, brave in bright red jacket and black silk pants. "You do look beautiful, Katya. I was proud of you tonight."

In thirty-three years, it was the first time Ekaterina had ever admitted to being proud of Kate. Not when she had graduated from high school, not when she had graduated from college, certainly not when she had become the star of the Anchorage D. A."s investigators' staff. Her voice huskier than usual, Kate said, "No more beautiful than you, emaa."

"Oh for heaven's sake, girl." Ekaterina looked exasperated. "Just say thank you, do you think you can do that much for me?" "Fine," Kate said, annoyed. "Thank you." She raised her eyebrows in exaggerated inquiry, as if to say, Are you happy now?

Not quite through gritted teeth Ekaterina said, "You're welcome."

"Fine."

"Good."

They glared at each other. Ekaterina smiled first, a sudden, reluctant smile that broke the tension, and waved a hand. "Go on. Go home. I'm tired. I want my bed."

Kate hesitated with one hand on the door. "Emaa?"

"What?"

She turned her head to meet her grandmother's eyes. "This job I'm doing for you--"

The amusement on Ekaterina's face vanished. "Yes?"

"We may find out some things we don't want to know, about people close to us." Ekaterina said nothing. Kate held her gaze for as long as she could. "Well. Goodnight, emaa."

"Goodnight, Katya."

Back at the townhouse, Jack paid off the babysitter, who thank God had her own car, and followed Kate upstairs, bent on seduction. Early in the evening he'd promised himself a long, slow removal of Kate's personally selected gift wrapping, one scrap of silk at a time, his reward for the longest evening of his life. He took the steps two by two, only to skid to a halt in the doorway, his face falling. Kate was down to her black lace skivvies already and was in the act of covering them up again with blue jeans and T-shirt. "What the hell?"

"Come on, shuck out of that suit." He didn't move, and she said impatiently, "Come on, Jack!" "Why?" he said, trying and failing not to sound petulant. She stamped her feet into her Nikes and went to stand in front of the dresser mirror to pull off the barrette and bind her hair back in its usual braid.

Disappointment gave way to foreboding. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, and with some trepidation said, "Where are we going?"

She rummaged through a drawer for one of his sweaters, a long-sleeved, navy blue turtleneck that hid the white of her T-shirt completely. Her voice was muffled as she pulled it over her head. "Dischner's office, where else?" Her head emerged and she pulled her braid free. She looked at him, rolling up the cuffs. "Well?" she said impatiently. "What are you standing around for? Go get the babysitter back!"

"KATE," JACK WHISPERED, "THIS IS NUTS."

"Like hell it is," she whispered back. "Old Eddie P's been behind or involved in every crooked deal since statehood. Mathisen's the biggest influence peddler in the state. Those two alone in a room together make me nervous. Those two in a room together with Axenia, Harvey and Billy flat scare me to death."

"Not to mention John King."

She shook her head. "He'd never get his hands really dirty, as RPetco's CEO he's got way too much to lose."

He paused, considering. "It wouldn't be the first time a CEO overreached himself and wound up on the end of a criminal indictment."

She shook her head again. "King is a major pain in the ass but he's a straight shooter."

"Dischner's probably on retainer for RPetco."

She snorted. "So what? RPetco spends half their waking hours in court with the state. It takes slime to beat slime. Keeping Dischner on retainer is only good business."

He gave it one last shot. "Nothing we find in there will be admissible."

She grinned. "Remember Morgan's Second Law."

He sighed. "Evidence First, Admissibility Second?" She nodded, still grinning, and he sighed again. "Sometimes I think you were too damn good a student."

"Besides, we're not trying to make a case here, we're just trying to find out what the hell's going on. Now quit stalling and pick that lock."

Two-thirty on a mid-October morning, even with no snow on the ground, wasn't Jack's favorite time to be hunched over the lock of a door of a Fourth Avenue office building. The bars had closed half an hour before but that didn't mean the odd drunk wouldn't lose himself on the way to the bus station and start trying other doors in search of a warm office lobby. At least Dischner's two stories of glass and brass wasn't big enough to rate a permanent security guard, although the sign on the window warned that the building was on Guardian Security System's evening patrol. He'd already by-passed the alarm system with a couple of alligator clips. At least he hoped he had. He wasn't as young as he used to be. "Kate, you don't seriously think Axenia ... " They were at the back entrance and out of sight of the street but both jumped when a car started some blocks away.

"I don't know," Kate said, after the car had driven out of earshot. "All I know for sure at this moment is Sarah Kompkoff and Enakenty Barnes were on emaa's side on Iqaluk, and now both of them are dead. Axenia's hanging out with Lew Mathisen, and Lew Mathisen, the greasiest hand this side of Washington, D. C." is hanging out with one Edgar P. Dischner, who is on retainer with half the businesses in the state, and who contributes time and money to pro-development legislators the way some people tithe to a church. If there's something going on with Dischner and Iqaluk, I want to know what it is."

"And do what?"

"Turn it over to emaa," she replied.

Right, he thought, and almost yelped when a cold nose pressed against his backbone. He lost his balance and fell against the door. It opened and he somersaulted through, his butt and legs smacking down on the tiled floor of the lobby.

"Ouch." He sat up, rubbing his shoulder. "Mutt!" he whispered furiously.

"Dammit, don't do that!" Kate was still crouched outside, Mutt standing next to her, both looking across the threshold at him out of preternaturally grave faces. "Oh ha ha, very funny," he said, "get your asses in here before the cops decide to bust them."

"You are a cop," Kate couldn't help but point out, only to emit a muffled shriek when he reached through the door and hauled her inside.

Mutt bounced in behind her just before the door swung shut.

"What?" Kate said to Jack, who hadn't moved and was staring at the door with a puzzled frown.

"That door was unlocked," he said.

She looked from him to the door and back again. "What?"

He nodded. "That's why it took me so long, I was trying to unlock an unlocked door."

"Pretty swift, Morgan," she said. She pointed at a wall directory.