Дана Стейбнау - Spoils of the Dead

“She’s my admin assistant at the post. A very capable young woman.”

“Yes.”

Okay. “So you’ve heard about Erik Berglund.”

“I imagine everyone has by now,” Alexei said. “No secrets on the Bay.”

Kimberley turned her head to look out the window.

“It was not an accidental death,” Liam said. “It appears that the people at Gabe McGuire’s party were the last to see him alive. I’m talking to everyone who attended to try to get a sense of how he spent his last hours.”

Kimberley stood up. “I forgot the cream and sugar. I’ll be right back.”

Wy stood up and put her mug on the table. “May I help?” She followed Kimberley without waiting for an answer.

“Gabe invited us to see his new movie,” Alexei said. “Food first, then a showing in his private theater. Dessert after, and then we went down to the boat and came home.”

“It was pretty late when the party ended, after ten. Dark by then.”

“It’s only an hour trip.” Alexei shrugged. “It was a clear night, and calm. Stars from horizon to horizon.” First gleam of humanity.

“Did anyone see you come home?”

“Sergei Pete was on the slip when we pulled in. He caught my line, helped snug us down.” He gave Liam Sergei’s phone number.

“Did you talk to Erik Berglund that night?”

Alexei shrugged again. “Said hi, how you doing.”

“Nothing about his work?”

“No.”

A murmur of feminine voices, the words indistinguishable. “Erik Berglund showed me around his dig that day. He said he was trying to prove the existence of a traditional trail that led from the dig site to Soldotna and Kenai. He seemed to think it would affect exploratory drilling in the Bay.”

Alexei snorted. “A broken snare and a couple of arrowheads is not going to make any difference to the oil companies or to the state.”

“He used to work for UNESCO. He seemed to think that they might step in.”

Alexei rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, we all heard how he wanted to turn the Bay into a World Heritage Site. Chungasqak Bay is not Mesa Verde. Besides, we don’t need UNESCO coming in and telling us what our history is. We know what our history is.”

He stopped when Kimberley reappeared. She set a creamer and a sugar bowl down on the tray and sat down, again on the very edge of her seat, eyes fixed on her clasped hands. Wy followed and sat down next to Liam.

“Forgive me, Ms. Petroff,” Liam said, “but another guest said that he saw you in conversation with Mr. Berglund.”

She clasped her hands again, but before she did he could see that they were in fact trembling. Her face was pale and she would not meet his eyes. “We went to high school in Blewestown together. We were just catching up.”

“But the person who saw you said that your conversation looked intense. What were you—”

Alexei stood up. “That’s enough. I’ll see you out.”

“Mr. Petroff—”

“We have nothing further to say to you, Sergeant. We’re sorry Erik’s dead but we don’t know what happened to him. You’ve seen that so-called trail down to his so-called dig. Have you considered that he might have just fallen down it?” Alexei stepped around the coffee table and perforce they stood up. By sheer force of presence Alexei shepherded them inexorably out of the living room, down the hall, and out the door.

As they came down the steps, two young men in their late teens pulled up in a pickup and hopped out. They were carbon copies of Alexei. “Hey, Mom.” They looked curiously at Liam and Wy as they passed into the house. “You okay?”

Liam waited until they were on Traversie again before he spoke. “Kimberley say anything to you?”

“No, but she was trying very hard not to cry.”

“I wish I’d been able to talk to her alone.”

She looked at him. “You can make that happen.”

“I know I can. And I may have to. I don’t think Len Needham was lying when he said he saw them in conversation at the party. Or that they were arguing.”

“Alexei didn’t seem too pleased.”

“No.”

They walked in silence for a few moments. “You say everyone is telling you that Erik was quite the player. You think him and Kimberley—?”

“It would give Alexei quite the motive, wouldn’t it?”

They walked down Traversie to where it intersected with Castner and kept going down Kiska toward the airport. They passed several more street signs, Buck, Kerdook, Pletnikoff. “Oh,” Wy said. “That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

She was smiling. “I told you about Kapilat, right? It got wiped out by the tidal wave in the ’64 quake and the high tides after the land dropped?”

“Yes?”

“They bulldozed what was left and rebuilt the town the way we see it here today. That’s why the houses look so new. The Petroffs’ house is probably the oldest one in town because it was so high up it didn’t get hit.”

“Okay?”

“The two main streets are named Attu and Kiska.” She pointed at the nearest sign. “And the cross streets are named from the roster of the Alaska Scouts. One of them must have lived here, or, I don’t know, been a child of.”

“Oh. Oh yeah. Okay, all right, pretty cool spotting there, Ms. Chouinard.”

“Pretty cool doing,” she said. “I like this town.”

When they walked past the cell tower sitting off Kerdook he called Sergei Pete, who was pleased to pick up on the first ring and confirm Alexei and Kimberley Petroff’s alibi in every detail. “So much for that possibility,” Liam said. “Motive, maybe, but no opportunity.”

“The good news is your list is shrinking.”

“It wasn’t that big to begin with.” And he had to get back on the plane.

Wy’s phone rang as they arrived at the airstrip, Prince all over it with “Sexy MF.” Wy looked up to see Liam smirking at her. She rolled her eyes and showed him the screen. It was Tim. “Hey,” she said. “How’s my guy?”

“Is that Liam I hear laughing?” Tim said.

His voice sounded deeper and more confident than the last time she’d spoken to him, although that might be her imagination. The boy hiding from his birth mother under the porch of their shack in Ualik was a distant memory. Or so she hoped. “Ignore him. How are you?”

“Are you in Blewestown yet?”

“Got here Monday. Gorgeous weather, I could have been here in time for lunch, but I took the scenic route.”

“The new house okay?”

“Yeah. Unbelievably it’s as nice as advertised, and we’ve already had our first house guest.”

“I bet that’d be the one, the only Jo Dunaway.”

“You’d win that bet.”

“So annoying,” he said. “I wanted to be your first guest.”

“You can be our second,” she said, trying not to sound too needy.

“She stopped by to say hi on her way down.”

“She said. Said you looked like you were doing good.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was thinking of driving down next weekend. Or, no, the weekend after that, I’ve got a big ass test coming up the Monday after next weekend.” He hesitated. “Okay if I bring someone with me?”

Liam saw Wy come to attention. “A guest would be fine,” she said, elaborately casual. “Anybody we know?” He mumbled something. “I’m sorry, what?”

“It’s a friend,” he said at better volume, and this time she could clearly hear the embarrassment.

“What’s her name?” Liam’s eyes widened and he made a jerk-off motion with his hand. She pretended she didn’t see.

“I didn’t say she was a girl.”

“You just did.”

He grumbled. “You think you’re so smart.”

“What’s her name and where is she from?”

“Anna Barnes. She’s from Cordova. She’s studying for an A&P certificate, too.”