Dana Stabenow - A Grave Denied

“Sorry,” Kate said. “I forgot myself there for a moment. I’m all better now. About Dreyer.”

“Basketball is never over, Kate,” he said. “Basketball is the one true thing. Basketball is the only game where brains and brawn are equal. Basketball-”

“Bernie-”

“Not to mention which, basketball is the only sport where the ball is big enough you can actually keep your eye on it. I mean to say, have you ever watched a football game? Or baseball? Now there’s a ball you could shove up a-”

“Yes, yes,” Kate said hastily. “You’re absolutely right. Couldn’t be righter if you were the governor. But about Len Dreyer-”

Bernie, deciding he’d ridden that horse long enough, capitulated. “Like I said, last time I saw him was August, shoveling pea gravel. I think I paid him off around Labor Day.”

There was a note in his voice she couldn’t identify. “Check or cash?”

He gave her a look.

“Right,” Kate said, “of course cash, what was I thinking.” She was thinking a check was traceable and that cash was not, and that she’d like to have just one piece of paper with Dreyer’s prints on it. “Probably didn’t make him sign a W-2, either,” she said with no hope at all.

“What, you’re working for the IRS nowadays?” Bernie inspected an imaginary spot on the glass he was polishing. “Is it true he caught a shotgun blast to the chest?”

“That news already out, is it?”

“Well, hell, Kate, there were a few kids around when the body was found.”

“And some of them play for you,” Kate said. “Yeah, I get it. Anyway, yes. Front and center.”

“Ouch.”

She frowned. “You know him well?”

He shrugged. “Well as anybody, I guess.”

He met her eyes with a look of such studied indifference that she stiffened. “He hang with any particular Park rats?”

“Didn’t have many friends that I noticed.” Somebody yelled for a refill, and as he moved down the bar Kate thought she heard him say, “Not a big surprise.”

She watched him pull a tray full of beers and amble over to the table in front of the television, where sat the four Grosdidier brothers and Old Sam Dementieff, taking turns calling the play-by-play and not hesitating to revile the ancestry of the referees every time a whistle blew.

She heard a song she liked, a woman singing about sweet misery, and she wandered over to the jukebox to see who it was.

“Play a song for you, Kate?” George Perry appeared next to her, smoothing out a bill in preparation for feeding it into the slot.

“I like this one,” she said.

“Yeah, Michelle Branch, great album. Want me to pick up one for you next time I’m in Ahtna?”

“Sure. George, did you know Len Dreyer?”

“Len? Yeah, sure. Well.” He shrugged. “He did some work on the hangar for me last August, after that idiot from Anchorage tried to taxi through the wall.” He fixed her with an appraising eye. “This an official interrogation?”

She made a face. “I’m asking some questions for the trooper.”

“Working for Jim, huh?”

“Yes.”

The flatness of the syllable warned him to go no further down that road, and unlike Bobby, George Perry was a man who liked a quiet life.

“Did Dreyer ever talk to you about friends, his birthday, his parents’ names, his hometown, anything? Maybe you needed his Social Security number to make his payroll deductions?”

He grinned at the hopeful note in her voice. “Nope, sorry. Len worked on a strictly cash basis. For me, anyway.”

“For everybody, is what I’m hearing,” Kate said glumly.

At that moment Brenda Souders walked in, all tits and ass and big hair, and George deserted Kate without a backward glance.

“Hey, girl,” someone said. “Looking for a job?”

“I’ve got one, damn it,” Kate said, and turned to face Old Sam. He wasn’t any taller than she was and he probably weighed less, but in this case size didn’t matter. Old Sam Dementieff had a personal authority that sprang directly from the unshakeable conviction that he was right. All the time. The annoying thing was that he usually was.

“You hear about Len Dreyer?” she asked him.

“Who hasn’t?”

“The trooper wants me to ask around.”

Old Sam raised an eyebrow, which made him look even more like a demented leprechaun. “Len Dreyer, huh? Hear he got it point-blank with a shotgun.”

The Bush telegraph, contrary to form, was keeping it right. Usually by now the weapon should have been metamorphosed into a Federation phaser. “Yeah.”

“I didn’t know him much. Him and Dandy came to Cordova to help me tear down the mast and boom on the Freya when I put her in dry dock last September. I was wanting to get the job done before the first snow. Good worker.”

“You didn’t like him?” Kate said, replying more to the feeling behind the words than the words themselves.

Old Sam drained his beer and looked sadly at the empty bottle.

“Come on, Uncle, I’ll buy you another.” She led the way back to the bar and got him a refill. “Tell me about Dreyer.”

“Not much to tell,” Old Sam said. “Showed up on time, knew enough about hydraulics so’s I could trust him with the winch, kept showing up until the job was done. Smiled a lot.”

“That’s it?” Kate said.

“He smiled a lot,” Old Sam repeated, “and he didn’t seem interested in women.”

“He was gay?”

“Didn’t say that,” Old Sam said. “Just I remember one day young Luba Hardt came sashaying by, you know like she does.”

“Young” Luba Hardt was fifty-five if she was a day, but then Old Sam was about a thousand. Everyone looked young to him.

“It was July, and hot,” Old Sam said with relish. “She had her jeans cut up to there and T-shirt cut down to there.” He smacked his lips, and shook his head. “Dreyer barely looked up to say hi.”

It was an exercise in self-control to keep her face straight. “I suppose he could have been playing hard to get.”

Old Sam shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

“Just because he didn’t look at women doesn’t mean he didn’t like them.”

“Didn’t say he didn’t like them,” Sam said. “Just wasn’t interested. Saw it happen a couple of other times, although I admit I mighta been looking for it after that. Can’t be too careful these days, Kate. Guy was gay, he mighta made a pass at me.”

This time Kate resorted to prayer to maintain control. “Thanks, Uncle,” she managed to say, and he took his beer back to the game just in time.

Dandy Mike was in one corner, nuzzling at the neck of a pretty girl, Sally Osterlund, if Kate was not mistaken, Auntie Balasha’s granddaughter. She looked around for a calendar. It was Monday. Quilting night at the Roadhouse was Wednesday. Sally was safe from her grandmother, if not from Dandy.

Well, Sally was of age or Bernie wouldn’t have allowed her to set foot inside the Roadhouse door. Still, Kate wasn’t averse to throwing a monkey wrench into the situation. Dandy Mike spread it around a little too generously for safety’s sake. She walked over to the table. “Hey, Dandy.”

Dandy’s right hand, caught in the act of sliding up the back of Sally’s T-shirt, descended again to a more discreet level. He didn’t dump Sally out of his lap onto the floor, though. “Hey, Kate. You know Sally.”

“Hey, Sally.”

“Hey, Kate.” Sally sprawled back in Dandy’s lap and gave Kate a companionable grin.

So much for the monkey wrench. “Dandy, did you know Len Dreyer?”

“Sure,” Dandy said. “Everybody knew Len.” He caught on. “You checking into his death?”

“I’m asking a few questions is all.”