Dana Stabenow - A Grave Denied

Kate smiled at the other man. “Hi. I’m Kate Shugak.”

He smiled back. “I’m Keith Gette. The Neanderthal with the artillery is Oscar Jimenez.”

“Oh,” she said. “You must be the long-lost heir. Lotte and Lisa Gette’s cousins, am I right?” Lotte and Lisa Gette having been sisters who had inherited this homestead from their parents. Lisa was dead and Lotte long gone. At least Kate hoped she was.

Keith nodded. “That’s us. Or me. Oscar’s my partner.”

“Heard the lawyers had found an heir. We’ve been wondering when you’d show.” If ever. “Where are you from?”

“Seattle.”

She surveyed the cabin behind them. Four years of neglect lay heavily on it, but it had good bones. The greenhouse behind it was twice the size of the cabin and showed signs that it was being restored first. To the right of the greenhouse an area was being cleared of the heavy brush that always moved into cropland in the Arctic when people stopped tending to it. “How long have you been here?”

“Since last summer.”

She smiled. “You made it through your first winter.”

He grinned then. “Sure did. Although we did have a couple of interesting encounters with the wildlife.”

“Bears?”

“One.” He slapped his neck. “Although I’m thinking the mosquitoes are going to be worse than any bear.”

“Yeah,” she said, “you can shoot a bear.”

“And the moose.” He shook his head. “Do they eat everything, or just the stuff on our property?”

Kate laughed. “Whatever you particularly like that’s growing on your land, they’ll eat. They’re kind of perverse that way.”

Keith laughed, too. “Can we offer you some coffee?” he said.

“Sure, but another time. I’m kind of on a mission.” She looked directly at Oscar for the first time. “Could you point that thing somewhere else, please?”

Mutt, ever the diplomat, chose this moment to plump her butt down on the ground and scratch vigorously. Oscar took this as a sign of good faith and swung the double barrel maybe four inches to his left. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m a little spooked. And she sure does look like a wolf.”

“Only half,” Kate repeated. It had little or no effect on Oscar, who continued to regard Mutt with an uneasy eye.

“What can we help you with?” Keith said.

“When you guys came last fall, did you introduce yourself to your neighbors?”

“The one up we did. What’s his name, Carnation, no, Breyer, Dreyer-that’s it, Dreyer.”

“When?”

Keith looked at Oscar. “We got here the middle of July. The greenhouse roof had caved in and about half the glass was broken. When we went down to the post office we asked the postmistress, uh-”

“Bonnie Jeppsen?”

“That’s right, Bonnie. We asked her if she knew of anyone who could repair it.” His smile was rueful. “Neither of us is much good with a hammer. She told us to talk to Mr. Dreyer. He did a good job of it, too.”

“Had to pay him in cash, though, he wouldn’t take a check,” Oscar said. “There isn’t a cash machine in Niniltna, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t,” Kate said.

“I had to write a check and have that pilot guy fly it into Ahtna and cash it for me at the bank and bring the cash back.”

“Imagine,” Kate said gravely. Oscar was oblivious but Keith gave her a sharp look, which she met with an innocent stare. “About Len Dreyer,” she said. “Did he mention any family or friends, or where he came from? Any arguments he might have gotten into with another Park rat?”

The men looked at each other, and gave a simultaneous shrug. “I don’t remember anything like that,” Keith said. “He showed up, and when he did, he worked. I was so grateful, I wasn’t about to ask any questions. We needed that greenhouse up and running.”

“Before winter?”

“Sure. We installed a couple of propane stoves at either end, and grew stuff straight through the year.”

“You must have laid in one hell of a lot of propane,” Kate said.

“Yeah, our biggest expense,” Oscar said gloomily. Gloom seemed to be key to his personality. “We’ll be lucky if we break even this year, even if we don’t draw salaries.”

Kate almost asked them what they were growing, but thought better of it just in time. “So you don’t remember any personal information about Len Dreyer.”

“I didn’t even know his first name was Len,” Oscar said.

“He’s good with corrugated plastic, though,” Keith said. “That roof is watertight.”

“He was good,” Kate said. “He’s dead.”

“What?”

“He was shot. With a shotgun.” She looked at Oscar, still holding what upon closer inspection proved to be a very old side-by-side with some very fancy silver work.

Oscar gulped and paled beneath his dark skin. “Well, I didn’t shoot him.”

“Didn’t say you did,” Kate said.

“Who are you, again?” Keith said.

“I’m Kate Shugak. I’m -assisting Jim Chopin, the state trooper posted to Niniltna, in his inquiries into Dreyer’s murder.”

Keith put a comforting hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Oscar. I don’t think Ms. Shugak-”

“Call me Kate.”

Keith smiled. “I don’t think Kate is going to clap us into irons just yet.”

“Do you remember any shots fired near here last fall?” They shook their heads. She nodded at the shotgun. “Have you fired that lately?”

Oscar proffered it mutely. Kate broke it open. It was unloaded, and dusty with disuse.

“It was my father’s,” Oscar said. “I don’t know what the right shells for it are. I don’t even know if it still shoots.”

Kate handed it back, thanked them for their time, and left.

“Burned down?” Bobby said. “Recently?”

Kate shook her head, earning a thwack from Dinah. She sat on a stool, enveloped in a sheet, while Dinah trimmed her hair. Katya slid from her knee and headed for the open door at flank speed. Her mother downed scissors long enough for an intercept and deposited Katya in a floodplain of toys in the living room. “It’s cold and wet, and I found some ice when I kicked around a little. I’d say somebody torched it last fall.”

“You sure somebody torched it?”

“Absent conclusive forensic evidence, no, I suppose not. However, considering that it was Len’s cabin, and that Len’s body has just been found under Grant Glacier, and that Len underwent a radical lungectomy with a shotgun sometime in the past year, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

Unperturbed, Bobby said, “Where did he live, anyway? When I got him to do the roof, I got him through Bernie.”

“He hung out at the Roadhouse?”

“Who doesn’t? Where was his cabin?”

“Okay, you’re done, thank god,” Dinah said, whipping off the sheet. “Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to let your hair grow out again, Kate?”

The note of quiet desperation in Dinah’s voice was not lost on Kate but it failed to illicit the response Dinah was hoping for. “I’m absolutely sure,” Kate said. She wriggled away the stray hair that had insinuated itself inside the neck of her T-shirt and poured herself a cup of coffee.

Bobby had thwarted another of Katya’s escape attempts, and Kate followed them both into the living room to sprawl on a couch, of which there were two, parallel to each other across the vast expanse of hardwood floor, both wide enough for Kate’s Auntie Balasha and long enough for Chopper Jim. A huge rectangular window overlooked the yard that sloped down to Squaw Candy Creek. The Quilaks jutted up behind, rough-edged peaks still covered in snow. “He had a cabin up the Step road,” she said. “Just past the Gettes‘.”

“Oh yeah?” A broad grin spread across Bobby’s face. “Been up there lately?”