Dana Stabenow - Better To Rest

First on the list of Lydia’s book club members was Bill Billington. As Newenham’s one and only magistrate, she was a walking, talking database on the community and its citizens. She knew who was sleeping with whom, where all the bodies were buried, and if the check really was in the mail or likely to be anytime in the near future.

Besides, Diana Prince had skipped breakfast, and the best lunch going was at Bill’s. She bellied up to the bar a little past one o’clock and grabbed a stool at the end. The lunch crowd was already thinning out, although she didn’t know where everyone was going. Over to the Breeze Inn to play pool, probably. Winter in southwestern Alaska, particularly for the unemployed, could be just one long, cold, dark stretch of boredom and inertia, and after the last two pitiful fishing seasons, there wasn’t a lot of incentive to work on boats or hang gear for the next one.

She wondered where Col. Charles Bradley Campbell was sleeping that night. She wondered if he would find a way to let her know.

“What can I do you for?” Bill said, running the bar rag in Diana’s direction.

“How about a steak sandwich, fries, green salad with bleu cheese on the side? And a diet Coke with a wedge of lime, if you’ve got it. Lemon if you don’t.”

“Coming right up.”

“And talk, when you have a few minutes.”

Bill raised an eyebrow, and went into the kitchen to slap a slab of meat down on the grill. The air was filled with the satisfying sound of charring beef. She made Smokey Pete another vodka martini on the rocks, blended four margaritas for a group of giggling young women who were celebrating the twenty-first birthday of the last of them to become legal, and stuck her head into the office. Moses was dozing on the couch. She pulled a throw over him and closed the door silently behind her. She assembled the steak sandwich, loaded the plate with fries, and delivered it just as Prince was forking up the last of her salad. “What’s up?” she said, pulling her stool opposite Prince’s.

“Liam wants me to ask you about Lydia Tompkins’ book club. Says you were a member.” Prince wiped her hands on a napkin and got out a notebook. “Says you, Lydia, Alta Peterson, Mamie Hagemeister, Charlene Taylor, Sharon Ilutsik and Lola Gamechuck were all members.”

“That’s right.”

“How often did you meet?”

“Once a month.”

“All of you pretty close?”

“Pretty close.”

“Did she mention that she was having trouble with anyone lately, her children, business acquaintances, friends?”

Bill blew out a sigh. “I still can’t believe she’s dead. I would have bet my last dime she would have outlived the youngest of us.”

“Bill?”

“Sorry. Children. Stanley Tompkins left Lydia very well-off. One or the other of them had money before they married; some said it was Lydia, but I don’t buy that. Her father was a local fisherman who never made it very big, who drank a little too much, and who fathered a few too many children ever to be seriously in the chips. Stanley, now, I think she married Stanley because he was her father’s exact opposite. A very hard worker, and from the stories I hear tell from the old farts had an absolute genius for finding fish. Clarence knew Stanley pretty well.”

“Clarence Saguyuk?”

“Yeah. Anyway, when Stanley died, he left Lydia well dowered and all the children well provided for. None of them have to work unless they want to.” She indulged in a snort. “And most of them don’t.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Stan Jr. is the only one of them with a real job, but even he plays at it. You ought to take a look at that boat of his sometime, the Arctic Belle . It’s got all the bells and whistles on it, thousands of dollars of electronic equipment; I think he bought the first GPS in the Newenham boat harbor. He gets a new reel practically every year, he’s always upgrading his skiff, he gets one hole in his gear and that’s it, got to hang some new and right now, too. He’s the nicest one of the kids, certainly the easiest one to talk to, but he’s fifty-five going on twelve. Or fifty-six,” she added. “I don’t keep track of my own age, let alone anyone else’s.”

“Does he live beyond his means?”

“I don’t think so. I’d bet Karen does, though. She’s a shopper, that girl; she never walks in here in the same outfit twice running and she’s always got some new piece of gold-nugget jewelry hanging off her.”

“Is he married? Stan Jr.?”

Bill shook her head. “No. He’s had a thing going off and on with Carol Anawrok for years, ever since high school. It stopped while she was married to Melvin Delgado, and then started up again after Melvin died. It stopped again while she was married to Keith West, and then started up again after Keith died.” Bill shook her head. “Both cancer of the lungs. Carol keeps marrying smokers.”

“And the rest of the kids?”

“Betsy’s the oldest, about fifty-six or -seven, I think. Her husband is David Amakuk, whose family moved down from New Stoyahuk. He’s a foot shorter and two feet wider than she is. They met in high school, married the week after they graduated. He runs the Daisy Rose, a drifter I think Betsy financed. He does pretty well out of it, generally comes in just under high boat. They have two daughters, Daisy and Rose, both living in Anchorage now. Jerry’s the other son.” She paused.

“What’s wrong with Jerry?”

“Everything.”

“That sounds pretty comprehensive.”

“He’s one of those lost souls, no ambition, no direction. He’s been up before me on possession I don’t know how many times, and DWIs, too. I took away his driver’s licence and I threatened to suspend the rest of the family’s, too, if they didn’t keep him away from a steering wheel. Stan Sr. tied up Jerry’s inheritance so that he’d get an allowance from Lydia, so he wouldn’t blow it all on one toot at the Great Alaskan Bush Company in Anchorage. Which Jerry is capable of doing, if nothing else. His apartment is in Lydia’s name; she pays all the bills. Paid.”

“Did Jerry resent having his money tied up that way? Would he threaten Lydia to get more?”

Bill reflected. “He was more along the lines of pathetically grateful, would be my guess. The most wretched thing about Jerry is that he knows just how worthless he is. He knows he’d be homeless in a heartbeat if he had control of his own money.” She shook her head. “I remember one time, during one of the possession busts or whatever it was, he told me he had a home and a fixed income, and that he wasn’t a vagrant. He was proud of it.”

“Great.”

Bill regarded Prince not without sympathy. “Yeah, I know, you’d like a motive. Sorry about that.”

“There was no forced entry. It’s likely she let whoever it was in.”

“Who in Newenham locks their doors?”

“Yeah, well, okay, never mind. There’s a fourth child, isn’t there?”

“There would have been, if Karen had ever been a child.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That kid was sprung full-grown from the head of Zeus, and when she landed she was hot to trot and ready to go. She’s very pretty, which doesn’t help. During her high school years alone, there were three accusations of statutory rape brought against three different boys, all dropped for lack of evidence. She moved into one of the Harborview Town Houses the week after she graduated from high school, I think the better to see which boats are in and which crews are available for plucking. She doesn’t have any other vices of which I’m aware, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink much, doesn’t do drugs-does the local provider, though; she and Evan Gray were an item a while back, but I think she wore even him out. She surely likes her men.”