Restless in the Grave (20 page)

They sat in silence for a few moments. Tina looked at Kate. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I barely know you.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers,” Kate said.

“I guess.” Tina let her head fall back against the couch again. “God, I’m tired.”

“I can see why,” Kate said. She made a show of standing up and brushing crumbs from her jeans. “You have to be busy. I should get going anyway, I don’t want to be late for work.” She smiled. “I’m a little afraid of Bill.”

Tina stood up, too. “She’s good people.”

“I got that,” Kate said. She followed Tina out into the lobby. Tina paused and said, “You’re Native, aren’t you?”

Alarm bells went off, but Kate nodded. “Aleut.” It was always best when undercover to stick to the truth as much as possible.

“But not from the village.”

“Alaska’s largest Native village,” Kate said, by which she meant Anchorage.

Tina nodded. “I thought so. What brought you to Newenham?”

Kate grimaced. “It’s a long story. There was this guy.” Also true.

“When isn’t there,” Tina said. Her gaze lingered on the scar on Kate’s throat.

Sometimes the scar had its uses.

Kate fussed with the zipper of her jacket until she saw Tina go through a door behind Tasha’s desk. There was a brief glimpse of filing cabinets and a paper-covered desk before it closed.

Bingo.

She spent the journey back to Newenham with the pleasant taste of crème brûlée cheesecake on her tongue and an even stronger itch to know why Tina had been so glad to get five hundred in cash for the apartment over the garage.

And if getting tossed into a chest freezer had anything to do with it.

Fourteen

JANUARY 19

Newenham

Kate walked into Bill’s Bar and Grill at 3:59
P.M
., doffed her coat, and waded in. It had been a long time since she’d worked regular hours. It had the charm of novelty.

Bill’s was much more crowded this evening, with people standing around with their drinks in their hands waiting for an empty chair or booth. The music was loud and nonstop, and people were dancing anywhere they could find a vacant square foot of linoleum. Kate remarked on it during a refill run to the bar and Bill, unloading and reloading Kate’s tray with practiced speed, said, “Yeah, looks like the dividend was pretty good this year.”

Meaning, Kate soon learned, the annual dividend from the local Native association. The Roadhouse was always crowded after NNA issued a dividend, too, although theirs went out quarterly.

“Still don’t know why it took them so long to get it to us,” one man muttered into his beer, one of many, it would seem.

“Sure you do!” Another man slapped him on the back and guffawed. “They have to take their cut first!”

Kate delivered empties to the bar. “Local Native corporation dividend come out today?”

Bill nodded. “They made a killing on an 8(a) contract. Some three-way deal with a cell phone provider and the federal government to provide rural access for mobile phones, and then AT&T bought them out.”

Kate nodded. She was familiar with 8(a) contracts from her time on the Niniltna Native Association board. They’d always seemed to be something of a swindle to her, but it offered a legal advantage to Native-owned corporations in bidding on federal contracts and Alaska Native corporations and associations and tribes had not turned up their noses at the opportunity. “How big was the payout?”

“About thirty thousand. Per shareholder.”

Kate pursed her lips in a soundless whistle as Bill loaded her tray. “That ain’t chump change.”

Bill’s expression was sour. “Yeah, and it’s burning a hole in their pockets. They’re snow-machining and four-wheeling and flying in from Togiak and Manokotak and loading up on groceries and spare parts and new trucks.” She nodded at the room. “And booze.”

Kate hoisted the tray. “You don’t seem very happy about it. Money in the bank for you.”

“I can see three TRO violations in the making without turning my head.” Bill gave a gloomy nod. “It’ll be a late night tonight at the bar, and an early morning tomorrow in court.”

In spite of the larger crowd, Kate was hitting her stride as Bill’s new barmaid. She got fewer drinks mixed up, she lost Bill less money making change, she didn’t drop any glasses, and when Mac McCormick and John Kvichak, who had tried to make time with her the night before and who, born optimists, renewed their suit this evening, instead of calling up Mutt she laughed at them. This made everyone else at their table laugh, too, and her tips went up accordingly.

She just had to pick Mutt’s fights, she told herself smugly on her way back to the bar. While she’d been busy at the tables, Oren Grant had come in and taken up residence in a back booth. By the time she brought him his manhattan, he had been joined by a woman a little younger than he was and with enough of a likeness between him and Tina and the photograph in the hall that Kate identified her as Evelyn, the youngest daughter of Finn and Tina Grant. She waved Kate down and ordered a beer. Delivery interrupted a low-voiced argument. Oren’s face was flushed, Evelyn’s like stone. As Kate approached the table, she heard Evelyn say, “There’s nothing we can do about it, Oren. It’s her decision. She’s the wife, she’s the heir, she gets to say.”

“Don’t you get it, Evelyn?” he said. “Jesus, you want to have to earn your own living?”

“At least I can,” she said, her voice rising.

Kate set the beer and the glass down and beamed around the table. “May I get you anything else?”

Oren looked away, red faced. Evelyn shook her head, expression smooth. “No, thanks, we’re fine.”

Kate smiled back, taking a quick, assessing look at the other woman. About Tina’s height, same lean build, same strong jaw. She wore jeans and a dark green sweatshirt advertising
ALASKA SHIP SUPPLY
in Dutch Harbor.

Kate had one of those, too, from another undercover job on a crabber out of Dutch that had nearly gotten her killed, not to mention eaten by king crab. Getting tossed in a chest freezer was an amateur effort, by comparison.

When she got back to the bar, the little demon from this morning’s workout had arrived, and judging by the lip-lock he laid on Bill, they were in something of a relationship. Evidently they hadn’t received the memo on no sex after sixty.

He pulled back and looked down at Bill’s face and growled deep in his throat.

“Jesus, Moses,” the young fisherman sitting on the nearest barstool said, “get a room.”

Moses looked at him and grinned, and it was an evil, dirty, low-down, nasty kind of grin. “When’s the last time you got laid, Teddy?” The kid turned brick red. Moses booted him off his stool and took his place. A beer appeared magically in front of him and he drained it in one long swallow. Another appeared. Same. A third.

Kate, fascinated, paused in loading her tray to watch. He slammed the third empty down on the bar and looked at her. “You know he didn’t do it, right?”

It was the same thing he’d said to her this morning, and she didn’t know what it meant now any more than she had then. “Who didn’t do what?” she said.

He looked disgusted and didn’t answer.

She boosted her laden tray and made for the farther corners of the bar. If she stayed out of reach, maybe Mein Führer wouldn’t force her to do ninja stuff again.

Somehow she knew that was a forlorn hope.

This tray went to a crowd of people in their twenties who were getting louder with every round. Kate spotted Tasha Anayuk in the mix, flushed, heavy eyed, barely able to sit upright. The lout sitting next to her probably wasn’t a lout when he was sober, but he wasn’t sober now and he was all over Tasha, putting his hands in places that, Kate firmly believed, shouldn’t see the light of day unless said places were behind closed doors or on the Playboy channel.

But Tasha was of age, and she didn’t even recognize Kate when Kate set her beer down in front of her. The night went later, more people came in and got louder and drunker, and there were a couple of incipient fights that broke up when Kate called Mutt in to consult. One look from those intent yellow eyes, and the immediate leak of testosterone through the combatants’ pores was almost visible. That look helped close the bar down, too, when Bill called for closing time and nobody wanted to go home. When the door shut behind the last of them, Bill said to Kate, “That dog alone is worth every dime I’m paying you.”

“You’re paying me?” Kate said before she remembered that Moses was still at the bar, not anywhere near as under the weather as he should have been, given his astonishing rate of consumption. He did have his head on the bar, though, cradled in his arms, and his eyes were closed. Maybe he had finally passed out.

“Don’t worry,” Bill said, “he already knows.”

“Did you tell him?” Kate was disapproving.

“No, I didn’t tell him,” Bill said. “He knew anyway.”

Moses raised his head. His eyes were dark and deep and infinitely knowing, and Kate had the feeling that they could see right through her.

“You know he didn’t do it, right?” he said for the third time.

*   *   *

They got back to the apartment over the garage a little after midnight, Kate opening the door and standing back to let Mutt go in first. All clear, and she went inside and stripped down to her skin and took a long, hot shower. Waiting tables was a lot more physical than she had ever guessed. No way was she rubbing that smell off on the sheets, no matter how short a nap she was allowing herself.

Which was two hours. At 3
A.M
. her internal clock kicked in and she woke instantly, her eyes wide open, aware of who and where she was and what happened next. It was a great gift and she knew it, especially after waking up next to Jim Chopin off and on for the last three years. Jim was not a morning person. He still had a hard time remembering who she was at first sight, at least until the first quart of coffee went down. The first six or twelve times she’d taken offense, until she realized that, in the immortal phrase of Robin Williams, Jim just wasn’t in his body yet.

She allowed herself five seconds’ worth of regret that she was alone in her monastic little twin bed, and then she got up and dressed, long johns, lined jeans, and three layers on top with her jacket over all. Chemical warmers went under her toes and inside her gloves, and she broke out the balaclava. If Moses, that cryptic little bastard, was going to make her dance around like a goddamn ninja, she might as well look like one, too. She pulled her headlamp on over the balaclava and adjusted the wide woven elastic band around her head until it felt marginally more comfortable than a bustier.

You know he didn’t do it, right?
His face had twisted every time he said it, as if it was painful to get the words out, and that thousand-mile stare of his made her uneasy every time he turned it on her. She wished she knew what the hell he meant.

No, she didn’t, she told herself firmly. She had a job to do, a pro bono one, true, but a job nonetheless. Time to get on with it. “Ready?”

Mutt danced in place. Ready.

There was a lot more traffic out on the streets of Newenham than there had been that day, or even the night before, everything well lit by the half moon hanging overhead, light reflecting off the snow with enough wattage to read the newspaper by. Evidently the party hadn’t stopped when Bill closed the bar, and now, at three o’clock, things weren’t even beginning to wind down. Pickups, ATVs, snow machines with belts kicking up sparks on patches of intermittent pavement, it was a city-size traffic jam. A ring of vehicles sat on an empty corner, noses pointed at a crowd around a burn barrel, which contained a blazing fire. A boom box was blaring out, if Kate was not mistaken, the last cast album from
Glee
. Well, at least it wasn’t rap. Bottles were being freely passed and Kate caught a whiff of the noxious evil killer weed as she went by.

She might also have caught a glimpse of a white Chevy pickup parked discreetly around a corner, and approved. No point in causing a fuss unless Campbell absolutely had to, but also no point in not being on or near the spot if trouble did break out. There were a lot of people in town with a lot of money to blow and many of them were young people, always a 911 call in the making. She remembered yet another undercover case in the oil fields of the North Slope of Alaska, where she’d watched a game of check poker, the hand of poker the check number, seven players and winner take all. Each check had been about twelve hundred dollars, a week’s work at that time. And the losers had groaned and drunk some more.

She wondered if any of that was going on in Newenham this evening. Not even the most dedicated drinker could put away thirty thousand dollars of alcohol in one evening, but one bet and he could wake up as broke as he’d been the previous morning. Without much conviction, she hoped that the local Native association, having given so freely with one hand, might also be patrolling for abuses in connection with that giving with the other. But she didn’t see any sign of it.

She went through town, repressing her Protector of the Small reflex every time she saw someone too drunk to walk, maintaining a decorous pace so as to attract no undue attention. Bundled up as she was, she doubted she even looked female, which in present circumstances she thought a very good thing. At the stop sign to the river road, another four-wheeler shot out of nowhere, precipitating a drastic swerve that dumped Mutt off the back of Kate’s ATV, and vanished at speed up the street. From the fleeting glimpse she caught, Kate could find it in her heart to forgive the young man’s erratic driving, given the young woman straddling him and all. A young woman who was not wearing an amount of clothing adequate for the ambient temperature, in Kate’s opinion, but it was none of her business. Mutt, ruffled, spoke her mind in their receding direction, and jumped up in back of Kate again.

The hinterlands dividing Newenham and Eagle Air’s operation were also much more lively this morning. There were a couple of bonfires with people gathered around, more couples in clinches in what shadows the half moon allowed, and a couple of sporting events, one a race between an ATV and a snow machine. The snow machine won, but only because the ATV disappeared into the ice of a small pond that was part of the course. Kate slowed down, but rescuers appeared and hauled him out, stripped off his soaking pants and parka then and there, and repackaged him in various volunteered articles of clothing. After which they all returned to the bonfire for another round.