Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

He stepped back from the table and surveyed it, reaching out to move a glass an inch to the left. He turned and saw Wy watching, and a faint color crept up into his cheeks.

She hugged him, ignoring the momentary stiffening in his body. He had yet to become accustomed to casual physical affection. For that matter, she was just now learning it herself, but she was determined that Tim, by the time he was eighteen and ready to go to college, would know how to give and receive a hug, and mean it.

Jo hung up the phone. “Where does Liam live?”

“The last time I checked, he was still sleeping in his office,” Wy lied with determined unconcern.

“He's bunking on a boat down at the harbor,” Tim volunteered.

Jo pounced. “Which one?”

Tim was startled at the ferocity of Jo's interest. “Uh, er, theDawn P,I think.”

Wy stared. “How do you know that?”

She cursed herself for not moderating her tone of voice, because he was immediately defensive. “I remember because it's named after this girl I go to school with.” As they spoke, he flushed a deep, vivid red.

Wy gaped, and Jo grinned. “Is she pretty?” Jo said.

Tim hunched a shoulder, and shot Wy a sidelong glance. “She's okay, I guess,” he mumbled. The lid on the pot on the stove gave a clatter and with the air of one rescued from the deck of theTitanicjust before the stern went under he leapt gladly around the counter and pulled it off the burner.

The sausage was a little charred, but Wy liked her sausage crisp. They ate in silence for a few moments. “Who was that on the phone, if it wasn't Liam?” Wy said.

Jo took a bite of sausage and washed it down with a long swallow of Killian's. Jo must have brought some with her, because Wy didn't drink beer. She stole a covert look at Tim. A strand of sauerkraut had latched on to the front of his Nike Town T-shirt; other than that, he looked reassuringly substance-free. Girls to booze in one night, she thought gloomily. Somebody was going to have to talk to Tim about birth control, THE TALK every parent dreaded, and she had a pretty good idea who that someone should be. She remembered THE TALK she'd had with her adoptive parents, two schoolteachers only slightly more uptight than Queen Victoria. Certainly she could do better than that, but she surveyed Tim with disfavor on general principles anyway. Whose bright idea had it been to adopt this kid, again?

“Pete,” Jo said, setting the bottle down with a satisfied smack and burping without apology. “My managing editor. He wants me to check out your story. I need to talk to Liam. He didn't answer at the post.” To Tim she said, “You know which slip theDawn Pis tied up at?”

He shook his head. “There's a map at the head of both ramps. It'll show you.”

“You want to walk down with me?”

He brightened. “Sure.” He looked at Wy. “Can I, Mom?”

“Why not?”

“Great,” Jo said, reaching for the Killian's again. She paused with it halfway to her mouth. “You could come with us.”

Wy shook her head. “Not just now. I was going to go down the bluff to the river, see if I could catch us a few late reds or a couple of early silvers. I want to get some in the can before they all get up the river.”

Jo waited until Tim's head was turned before mouthing the word, Coward.

Tim groaned. “Salmon sandwiches for school again.”

“Just for that, you little ingrate, I'm telling Moses I want ten gallons of blueberries, not five, when he brings you back from fish camp, and guess who gets to pick them?”

Tim groaned again.

“Life's tough all over, kid,” Jo said. “Now hurry up and finish, I want to catch up to that trooper.”

“Are you writing a story?”

“Sure am,” Jo said, rising to carry her plate to the sink.

“What about?” Tim said, following her.

Jo dropped her voice to a deep baritone filled with terrible secrets. “Murder and mayhem on the high seas, me boy.”

“Wow!” he said, brightening. “You mean like pirates?”

Jo paused in the act of putting dishes in the dishwasher. “Maybe,” she said slowly. “Maybe, by god. Anything's possible on the Bay.”

Before the door closed behind them, Wy heard Tim ask, “Jo, what's an ingrate?”

Back at the post, Liam assembled two piles of evidence. One pile consisted of Nelson's notebook, the pencil drawings he'd made of the scene of Nelson's death, the notes he'd made after talking to Frank Petla, Wy, Prince and McLynn. The other pile consisted of the notes he'd taken at Kulukak, the picture of the Malone family sailing in Hawaii, the notes of the conversations with the Kulukak elders, Bill, Tanya and Ballard, the tender summary, the two rolls of film he'd taken of theMarybethia.The film would have to go into Anchorage by pouch tomorrow morning for development into trial exhibits. He wouldn't need to see the photographs. The scene was etched on the gray matter of his mind for life.

It was after eight o'clock in the evening. The day was three hours away from sunset. He thought about going over to Wy's. He had this need to see her, to breathe her air, to feel her flesh beneath his hands. It was growing stronger with every day, and half the time when he started going somewhere in the Blazer he'd find himself on the road to her house.

He picked up the local paper and turned to the classifieds. There was an actual house for sale, south of town on the road to Chinook, two bedrooms, one bathroom, a five-acre lot. Neither price nor location was listed. He dialed the number.

The phone rang once. The voice that answered was male and brusque. “Yeah?”

“Hi, my name's Liam Campbell. I was calling about the ad in the paper. The house for sale?”

“What's your driver's license number?”

Liam blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“What, you don't understand English? I asked you what your driver's license number was. And I don't got all day.”

Liam found himself fishing out his wallet. He read the number off, and waited.

“Huh. You born here?”

“Germany.”

“Huh. Army brat, I suppose.”

“Air Force, actually,” Liam said, struggling not to sound apologetic. “We moved to Anchorage that year.”

“Huh.” The syllable was disparaging.

Liam maintained a hopeful silence. Although it was heresy to admit in Alaska, he kind of liked Anchorage, but he wasn't going to say so if liking Anchorage was going to make the man on the other end of the line deem him an unsuitable candidate to purchase the house.

“Well, you can come over and look at it, but I ain't making no promises. Somebody comes along with a lower number, I give them first consideration.”

“Right,” Liam said. “Makes perfect sense. I understand completely.” He paused. “Okay. No, I don't. Mind telling me why?”

“I guess you really don't understand English, do you? The lower your driver's license number, the longer you been in the state. The longer you been in the state, the more likely you are to stay. If you look like a stayer, you get the house. If you don't, forget it. When you coming over?”

“How about tomorrow morning?” Liam said meekly.

“Can't, I'll be out fishing. Next Monday. Nine a.m. And don't be late.”

“Wait! I need directions!”

There was a grunt, and then directions, grudgingly given.

“And what's your name? Sir? Sir?”

The dial tone was his reply. He replaced the receiver, wondered what was going to happen on Monday, remembered waking up on theDawn Pthis morning and decided that if the house had working plumbing and a good roof, he would take it, no matter what kind of price had been hung on it.

There was one other house listed for sale in the paper, in Manokotak, forty miles west by air, which, according to the ad, needed a lot of work, was ineligible for financing and was available for rent for fifteen hundred a month with an additional month's rent for a security deposit, but only until the owner found a buyer. If it had running hot and cold, Liam might have been interested.