Whisper To The Blood Part 28

"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 a.s.sociation 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 appet.i.te. "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 bombsh.e.l.l 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.

Like 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 KanuyaqRiver 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. Laurel M. was in dry dock next to it, looking very fine in new white paint with blue trim. 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 bra.s.s 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 rect.i.tude, 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 a.s.sociation 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 p.i.s.sing off the however temporary current board chair.

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, pa.s.sing 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. If you think you're going to hurt my dad, think again. It made Kate think better of both of them. 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 b.u.mps 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 hara.s.sing 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 bl.u.s.ter 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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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?"

Good 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 h.e.l.lo 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 relations.h.i.+p, 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 G.o.ds 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."