Breakup. Part 13

"Morning, Dinah." The trooper doffed his hat, and raised an eyebrow as he took in the crowd. "What's this? A sleepover and I wasn't invited?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Baker, this is Sergeant Jim Chopin, of the Alaska State Troopers. Mandy's parents," she told Jim. "And Mr. and Mrs. Baker, you met Mr. Stewart yesterday."

Mr. and Mrs. Baker blinked up from the couch. Probably they had been expecting the maid with coffee, croissants and the Boston Globe. Mandy and Chick were rolling up their sleeping bags. Bobby was glowering at Jim from the kitchen table, but whatever pithy comment he had been about to make was forestalled by the sound of an approaching four-wheeler with the throttle all the way open.

"Jesus Christ," Kate said beneath her breath. Grand Central Station had followed her to Bobby's. She yanked open the door, this time to see Dan O'Brian roar up. He must have flown into Niniltna even before Jim was in the air to get to Bobby's this early.

"Hey, K!ate!" he said, bounding up the steps. A morning person, obviously. So was Kate, but then usually she'd had more sleep.

"How'd you know I was here?"

"Why are you so sure I'm looking for you?" he said indignantly, and added, at the same time she did, "Heard you on the radio last night." He caught sight of Mark Stewart and his chin dropped. "Mr. Stewart?"

128 "Ranger O'Brian." Stewart's expression didn't change, but Kate received the distinct impression that he did not welcome Dan's appearance on the scene. For reasons she s.h.i.+ed away from examining, she didn't want to be able to read Stewart that well, and deliberately stood where he would be out of her line of vision.

Jim was finis.h.i.+ng up the introductions with a placid air. "And this is Bobby Clark, Mr. Stewart. This is his house."

Bobby shot the trooper a malevolent look. Bobby was not a morning person. Dinah stepped into the apprehensive silence that followed his nongreeting with mugs of coffee all around. Mr. and Mrs. Baker accepted theirs in a manner strongly reminiscent of the Chosen seeing their first water after forty years of staggering around the desert. Mandy looked less ticked off than at lights-out the night before, but not much. Chick was still restraining a belly laugh.

Always at ease, Chopper Jim sat down across from Bobby and added milk and sugar, surveying them all with a glint of amus.e.m.e.nt in the back of his blue eyes, and something else Kate couldn't quite identify. "Thank you," Stewart said, and smiled at Dinah. Dinah returned the smile with equanimity, a certain curiosity and a purely female appreciation, which changed as Kate watched to a surprised understanding. She turned her head and looked at Kate. Kate nodded. Bobby sat up straight in his chair.

Dan O'Brian virtually s.n.a.t.c.hed his mug from Dinah's outstretched hand and stepped out of range of Mark Stewart's vision. In a series of facial twitches, winks and head jerks reminiscent of an epileptic with Tourette's syndrome he managed to convey that he wanted to speak to Kate privately. Unless they went into the bathroom together, which might occasion some comment, there was only the porch. Resigned, Kate followed him outside, cradling the warmth of her coffee mug in her hands against the chilly dawn. Breakup was not known for its subtropical range of temperatures.

There were no clouds in the sky, revealing the sun as a dull gold disk low on the eastern horizon, outlining the jagged peaks of the Quilaks in the thin light of an Arctic spring morning. There was a 129 steady drip of melting ice from the eaves, and the sound of a winter's worth of snow rus.h.i.+ng between the narrow banks of the creek at the edge of the front yard. A mile downstream, the creek would merge with the silted gray expanse of the Kanuyaq, and from there the two would travel together to Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska.

Before long, the first king salmon would be beating its way upriver.

Kate's mouth watered at the thought.

Dan was almost beside himself with impatience. "All right, all right, what?" she said.

He looked over her shoulder at the closed door, decided it didn't provide enough privacy and lowered his voice to a whisper that could probably have been heard on the next homestead. Subtle was not exactly Dan's middle name. "I called Anchorage last night and got a buddy to log on to Motznik for me. You know, the data base that accesses all state records?"

"Yes, Dan, I know what Motznik is."

"Okay, guess what?"

Kate took a deep breath and let it out. All she wanted to do at this point was go home and start rea.s.sembling the pieces of her life. There were supplies to be laid in, dip nets to be mended, caches to be repaired, snow-machine tanks to be patched, was.h.i.+ng machines to be fixed.

Taxes to be filed.

On the other hand, it wouldn't hurt to drink Dinah's excellent coffee, enjoy the glorious dawn and listen to Dan carry on. He could be fun when he took up a cause, and his current mood had all the signs. "I don't know," she said. "What?"

"MarkStewart has had a license for hunting everything on four legs in the state of Alaska for the last twenty years." He paused impressively.

Kate, in the act of swallowing coffee, did not choke in surprise.

That was all right, because Dan had more than enough enthusiasm for the both of them. "He applies for the moose lottery every year, Kate. He's got himself a tag six times and a moose five."

130 Since he so clearly expected a reaction, Kate said obediently, "So you're saying he is an experienced hunter."

Dan, losing patience, thumped the railing. "That's where I've seen him before, Kate! He was up last fall hunting sheep. He flew in with someone else and they stopped up on the Step for maps. I talked mostly to the pilot, guy name of, h.e.l.l, what was it, Hooligan or something like that.

That's why I couldn't remember Stewart at first, I didn't talk to him."

There was a crunch of twig and Kate looked across Bobby's yard to see a moose cow with a yearling calf browsing contentedly through a stand of diamond willow.

Dan demanded, "Don't you see? When I said I'd seen him before, he said he couldn't remember. He lied."

Kate sighed and turned to look at him. "Dan, it was five minutes six months ago. Maybe he's one of those people who just doesn't remember a face. And what does it matter anyway?"

"What does it matter!" At his shout the low murmur of voices from inside the house stilled momentarily. Dan whispered furiously, "It matters because that whole story about his wife and the bear attack is as phony as a three-dollar bill, and you know it, and it's even phonier if he's an experienced hunter, and you know that, too. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

Her lips compressed. "Et to, Dan?"

Dan, bewildered, said, "What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"

"It means you and every other mother's son in this friggin' Park thinks I'm in charge. In the meantime, I've got half a 747 scattered across my front forty, my cupboards are bare, my truck's been flattened and my dog probably thinks I'm dead. I'm going home." And she still had yet to talk to Harvey Meganack, a ch.o.r.e she was convinced was futile anyway, whatever Auntie Vi thought. "The situation's a little odd, I grant you, but-"

"A little!"

"Dan." She said his name with enough force to shut him up, at least for the moment. "Okay, so Stewart ran off on his wife. He 131 panicked. It happens. So he outran a grizzly. Grizzlies aren't stupid, she probably stayed behind to feed on the wife." Kate controlled a s.h.i.+ver. "So Stewart doesn't look as frazzled as anyone else we've seen who survived a bear attack. Shock takes people different ways. None of it proves anything."

"He lied to me," Dan said stubbornly. "I don't like him."

"I don't, either," she surprised both of them by saying. "It still doesn't prove anything." She drained her mug. "If you want action, talk to the man. I've got my own problems."

The man chose that moment to open up the door and step outside.

"Somebody call my name?"

"Ranger O'Brian, aka Sherlock Holmes, will be happy to fill you in." She waved a hand at Dan. "The game's afoot. Have at it."

Too excited to take offense, Ranger O'Brian did, promptly and thoroughly. In a minute, Dan was going to find a way to work the Trilateral Commission into the scenario. Kate turned to go inside.

Jim caught her elbow. "Kate."

"What?" Kate snapped, yanking free.

"Wondered if you'd do me a favor?"

"Ef to, Jim?" she snarled.

He blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

Kate took a deep breath and counted to ten. "What favor?"

"Come up to the mine with Stewart and me." He saw the answer in her face and said quickly, "You were first on the scene, you've spent a lot of time in the area and you know bears. I want you to listen to his story and pick all the holes you can. Dan's right. It's phony as h.e.l.l."

"I didn't find anything, Jim," Kate said, with an awful patience she hoped neither he nor Dan would mistake. "And I told you, we saw the bear right after the attack. She'd been feeding, all right." She remembered the red-stained fur, the shreds of flesh between the claws, and again suffered through a flashback of the moments by the creek. She never wanted to look down the snout of a grizzly bear at that close a range again. What must Carol Stewart have 132 felt her last few seconds, knowing there was no escape? Had she been conscious enough to feel the rip of the claws, the bite of the teeth?

Had she- Kate yanked herself away from that thought and said briskly, "Believe me, that grizzly had been feeding, and recently. And she did come barreling down the hill from the direction of the mine."

Dan O'Brian couldn't resist. "And you took the All-White Enriched East Coast Couple up there anyway?"

Kate's eyes narrowed. "It was in the opposite direction from the way the bear was traveling at the time. It seemed like a good idea." Dan started to speak and she held up both hands, palms out. "Look, guys. If Mark Stewart wanted to kill his wife, it would have been a whole h.e.l.l of a lot easier and a lot less risk to himself just to shove her into the Kanuyaq River and let the glacier calve on her."

"Unless she was already dead and he needed the bear to cover up how she really got that way in case the body was recovered," Dan hissed.

"There's bear attacks and there's bear attacks, Shugak. That grizzly should have either run when she heard more than one voice, or taken both Stewarts out. At the very least, Stewart should have been wounded. And if he was an experienced hunter, he should have had a rifle with him."

"Even experienced hunters get brain cramps."

The door behind them opened and Bobby rolled out. "What's going on?"

With some asperity Kate demanded, "Is there anybody left in the house?"

She was ignored. Ranger O'Brian was more than happy to fill Bobby in.

Bobby, who had taken an instant dislike to the tall dark stranger making eyes over the coffee mugs at his soon-to-be wife, entered into the discussion with enthusiasm, endorsing Dan's a.s.sessment of the situation without hesitation and heaping scorn on Kate for her steadfast dissent.

The third time around, Dan O'Brian had Mark Stewart cutting up his wife with a hunting knife and feeding her to Ursus arctos horribilis one piece at a time.

133 Kate snorted and set her mug down on the railing with a thump.

"Yeah, right. The first thing that bear would have done is take Stewart's knife away from him and jam it up his a.s.s. Bobby, can I borrow your truck? I've got to make a supply run into Ahtna."

"But, Kate-"

"Dammit!" Kate turned on Dan so ferociously that he actually backed up a step. "Dan, there's the cop on this porch." She pointed at Chopper Jim, who had perched on the railing and was listening with a faint smile creasing his face. "You got a problem, take it up with him. Like I said, I've got my own to deal with. Bobby?" She held out her hand.

Meekly for him, Bobby fished keys out of his pocket. Kate fairly s.n.a.t.c.hed them up and stamped down the stairs. Chopper Jim made no attempt to stop her. The trio of men watched as she backed the pickup around and thundered over the little bridge and down the road.

When the truck was safely out of earshot Chopper Jim remarked, "She's awful G.o.ddam cranky today. What's her problem?"

"Jack's in Anchorage and she's here," Dan said, the wisdom of the ages sitting on his leprechaun face.

Bobby, who knew her better than either of the other men, frowned and said nothing at all.

The old railroad roadbed was, if anything, in worse shape than it had been the day before. Driving Bobby's Chevy required relearning all the hand controls he'd had installed. Kate had them more or less mastered by the time she reached her own turnout, pausing just long enough to check on the cabin and fetch Mutt. The jet engine was still in the yard, unchaperoned; the go team was sleeping in this morning. This lack of attention didn't augur well for a quick reimburs.e.m.e.nt of funds, and Kate continued her journey in a gloomy frame of mind. Mutt, annoyed at having been left to her own devices the night before, rode shotgun in unforgiving silence. They were home by one o'clock in the afternoon with a truck 134 full of groceries and a receipt bearing testimony to Kate's good credit with the Alaska Commercial Company, only to find the NTSB once more in possession of the clearing. Or so she a.s.sumed when she had to park fifty feet up the road because her turnout was full of vehicles.

She recognized most of them, from which she deduced the population of Niniltna was exercising their right to a free market by renting their personal vehicles out to the go team at undoubtedly exorbitant hourly rates. Auntie Vi's Toyota Land Cruiser was first in line, which only confirmed her hypothesis.

Nor was the NTSB crew destined to be her last visitors of the day, more's the pity. She was lifting the first box of groceries out of the back of the pickup when the sound of an approaching engine filled her with foreboding. She raised her head to see her worst fears fulfilled: Mandy behind the wheel of her brand-new, newly battered Ford, its c.o.c.keyed front b.u.mper making it look slightly tipsy. Mr. and Mrs. Baker were sitting next to her, erect and composed and looking as if they had suffered no ill effects from the previous day's strenuous activities.

Mandy didn't look happy. Kate had to resist the temptation to cross herself and she wasn't even Catholic. At least Chick wasn't along to t.i.tter in the background.

Mandy got out. The driver's side. She must have fixed the door. From the looks of it, probably with a crowbar. Whatever worked.

"Hi," Kate said warily, holding the box of groceries like a s.h.i.+eld. It covered most of her major organs.

"Kate," Mandy said, voice curt. Great, she'd probably heard about the shoot-out at the Roadhouse.

"Ms. Shugak," Mr. Baker said, handing his wife out. "How nice to see you again."

"Indeed," Mrs. Baker added, unusually warm for her.

"Kate-" Mandy said.

"Mandy," Kate said, beating her to it, "I'm sorry about your truck but it wasn't my fault. That bear charged us, there wasn't a thing I could do about it. George ground-looped 50 Papa practically right on top of us, and there was no chance to get out of the 135 way. And as for the bullet holes-you know what Cindy Bingley's like when she goes after Ben. There was nothing I could do, and n.o.body got hurt, not even Ben. At least the last I saw he was okay. And as for the Jeppsens and the Kreugers, h.e.l.l, there's no way I could have-"

Without doing anything so vulgar as making a face, Mr. Baker wore an expression that nevertheless conveyed a distinct message.

"-no way I could have foreseen that, uh, Cheryl and Kay were going to have such a nasty argument," Kate finished weakly. So Mandy hadn't heard about the shoot-out. Yet. Kate thrust away the thought of what she might say when she did.

"Truck?" Mandy said, fastening on the one word in the flood that meant something to her. "Oh. Kate, don't worry about the truck. Besides, I told you. She's yours."

Kate blinked at her. "What?"

"You know." Mandy gave her head a tiny jerk in the direction of her parents, and winked rea.s.suringly. "For what you did."

"Mandy-"

"That's why I'm here, actually," Mandy said, holding out the keys. "I already signed over the registration. It's in the glove compartment. And Mother and Dad wanted to say thanks for the tour." A faint grin crossed her face. "They enjoyed it, even if it did take them till this morning to dry out. Internally as well as externally."

She stood there holding the keys out, and was evidently prepared to stand there holding them out until Doomsday, so Kate awkwardly s.h.i.+fted the box in her arms and took them. "Well," she said. "Thanks." The one word didn't seem like enough somehow, and she added, "Come on down. I'll make you some coffee. Now that I have some."

Mandy looked at the boxes stacked in the back of the truck.

"Grocery run to Ahtna," Kate said.

"And you had to borrow Bobby's truck?"

"Well." Kate tried not to squirm.

Mandy looked at her, one eyebrow ever so slightly raised, and 136 for just a moment the resemblance to her father was very p.r.o.nounced.

"You didn't believe me about the truck, did you?"

"Well," Kate said again, s.h.i.+fting from foot to foot. "I guess I just didn't know how right Fitzgerald was."

"How so?"

"The rich really are different."

Mandy's mouth turned up at the corners. "Yeah, and you know what Hemingway said in reply?"

"What?"