Dana Stabenow - A Grave Denied

Virgil and Telma Hagberg were in their fifties now, although Kate thought they looked older, especially Virgil, with his stooped shoulders and his thinning strands of ash gray hair. He didn’t talk much. Telma spoke even less than Virgil. She smiled a lot, though, which held within it the memory of a once-startling beauty, now faded, almost overgrown, as if the weeds had overtaken the rose too soon.

Virgil was known for the wooden toys he carved from birch and spruce, models of airplanes and trucks and bulldozers and the like, finely crafted with moving parts, sanded to a deep, satiny finish, and sold to Park rats at the school’s Christmas bazaar for next to nothing. Telma, so far as Kate could remember, sat in the background and never sold anything.

Situated on a south-facing slope on the opposite side of the road from Kate’s homestead, it was about halfway between Kate’s place and Niniltna and the sun was still up, so it seemed efficient to stop there on her way home. Kate knew the Hag-bergs to say hi to at the post office, but that was about it. It was one of the Park’s greatest attractions, the ability to disappear into the undergrowth if you wanted to. It was also, Kate reflected on the doorstep of the Hagberg home, one of the greatest disadvantages to the practicing detective.

“Kate,” Virgil said when he opened the door to Kate’s knock.

“Hi, Virgil. How you been?”

He was surprised to see her but his manners were too good to ask her what she wanted. He invited her in. She told Mutt to wait on the porch, and followed Virgil inside. They passed a room with two workbenches and a set of shelves filled with hand-carved objects. “Still working at the carving, I see,” she said.

He stopped and smiled. “Oh, yes. I make the toys for the children. They like them, and it makes a little money for Telma.”

He led the way into the kitchen and Kate took the chair offered at the kitchen table. “Telma,” he said, raising his voice. “We have company.”

Telma came in and smiled at Kate. “Hello, Kate.”

“Hi, Telma.”

“Would you like some coffee and cookies?” Telma’s voice was perfectly normal but her eyes were off, just a little, exactly how Kate couldn’t quite figure. They were a washed-out blue and placid as a pond, but unlike the pond they were all surface and no depth.

“Sure, Telma, I’d love some,” Kate said, and cringed to hear the note of false heartiness in her voice. Just so did one speak to the simpleminded.

Virgil seemed not to notice. He kissed Telma’s cheek, a quiet salutation in the manner of one making willing, worshipful obeisance to a god. It might not have grated so much if Kate hadn’t just come from Bobby and Dinah’s, where the kisses were loud and lusty and generally led to something horizontal, or looked like they would as soon as the kissers got rid of their company. Virgil’s kiss was just too damn reverential for Kate’s taste.

She thought back to the last time Jim Chopin had kissed her. Nothing reverential about Jim’s kisses, nosireebob. But best not to think of it, or of what happened after, and who was she to dictate how people kissed one another, anyway? She shook her mind free and settled herself to being as pleasant as she could possibly be.

While Telma brewed the coffee and got down mugs, Kate and Virgil talked about the coming fishing season, and how the dip netters and the sports fishermen and the subsistence fishers were cutting into the commercial fishing action. From there they moved on to hunting, and the gay abandon with which the rangers opened and closed the moose, deer, and caribou seasons. “I was talking to a man in Ahtna,” Virgil said, traces of Norway still present in his slow, deliberate speech. “He tells me there are more deer on the Kanuyaq delta than he has ever seen. What happens if there is no managed harvest, if they are allowed to eat up all their food supply?” He gave his head a solemn, mournful shake. “I am glad that I can afford to buy beef in Ahtna, Kate, because I do not believe I can support us any longer with my rifle and my shotgun.”

They agreed that hunting to eat in Alaska as it had been traditionally practiced was very probably doomed. Telma relieved their mutual despondency with coffee and peanut butter cookies produced from a large ceramic jar cast in the shape of Sylvester the Cat’s head.

Kate swallowed and said, “Great cookies, Telma.”

Telma smiled her thanks.

“I was wondering if the two of you could help me with something.”

“If we can, sure, Kate,” Virgil said.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard about Len Dreyer.”

“Dreyer?” Virgil said slowly.

“The guy who used to fix things. Houses, trucks, snow machines, boat engines.” Virgil still looked blank. “I understood that he and Dandy Mike did some work for you last summer.”

Virgil’s brow cleared. “Oh. The handyman.”

“Yes.”

“He helped me build our new greenhouse.” Virgil nodded several times. “What about him?”

“Well.” Kate fortified herself with a sip of coffee, which was dark and rich and laced with just the right amount of evaporated milk. “To start with, he’s dead.”

“Oh.” Virgil looked at Telma, putting a hand over hers, as if she needed comforting after the shock of Kate’s announcement. “I did not know that. I am sorry to hear it.”

Telma smiled her sympathy.

Clearly trying for politeness, Virgil said, “Were you friends?”

“No. I was like you, he did some work for me, and beyond that I didn’t know much about him personally. The thing is, the trooper has asked me to ask around about him.”

“The trooper? What for?”

“Well.” There was something so civilized about the Hagbergs’ house, a neat log cabin, exterior logs freshly oiled, interior Sheet-rock freshly painted, floors freshly scrubbed, that made it difficult to utter the word “murder” within its walls. “It appears that Mr. Dreyer was a victim of homicide.”

Virgil stared at her. “Well, for gosh sakes.” The expression would have sounded quaint coming from anyone except Virgil Hagberg. It also added ten years to his age.

“Yes.”

“What a terrible thing to have happen to someone.”

“Yes,” Kate said.

Virgil cast around looking for something else to say. “Who did it?”

“That’s just it. We don’t know. His body was discovered inside the mouth of Grant Glacier.”

“Well, for gosh sakes,” Virgil said again.

“So the trooper has asked me to trace Mr. Dreyer’s last movements. And Dandy Mike said he and Dreyer had done some work for you last summer.”

“Of course, of course,” Virgil said. He made an obvious effort to gather his thoughts. “It was in July, around the middle of the month, I think. Mr. Dreyer and Dandy Mike came out and put in the foundation and did the framing and the roof. I wanted to put in some tomatoes.” His chest puffed out a little. “We got ourselves a daughter to feed now, you know.”

At that moment a thin girl with a pale, solemn face came into the kitchen. “Have you met Vanessa? Vanessa Cox, this is Kate Shugak.”

Woman and girl exchanged nods.

“Our cousin’s only child,” Virgil added in a hushed voice, as if Vanessa wasn’t standing at the counter directly behind him. “There was a tragedy, you know. Both her parents were killed.”

He raised his voice. “Did you want something, Vanessa?”

“One of Aunt Telma’s cookies,” Vanessa said.

“Sure, go on, help yourself.” Virgil turned back to Kate. “Her grandparents were dead, and she was all alone in the world. It looked like she was going to have to go into foster care until we said we would take her. I would not put a dog into foster care.”