Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

Max went into a paroxysm of choking laughter, which Kate was afraid was going to carry him off before she could get him back to the Pioneer Home and life support. “Where were you thirty years ago, woman?” he gasped out finally.

“Right here, just in kindergarten,” Kate said, and that set him off again. She waited, and when he had recovered himself by getting on the outside of some more of his martini, she said, “You were talking about race, and what it had to do with Victoria and Eugene Muravieff’s marriage.”

“Yeah,” he said, setting the martini glass down with a satisfied smack of his lips. “Basically, Eugene wanted a job with Pilz Mining and Exploration, and they wouldn’t have him.”

“Why not?”

“They said it was because he didn’t have a mining degree.”

“Did he?”

“Nope.” Max shook his head. “Erland, Victoria’s brother, didn’t, either, but his father handpicked him to run the company. He started as gofer to the manager of the Skyscraper Mine and worked his way up. All Eugene wanted was the same chance.”

“And they wouldn’t give it to him.”

“Nope.”

“Because he was Native.”

“Yup. Course they didn’t say that.” Max reflected. “Or maybe they did. Wasn’t a lot of call for PC back then.”

“So Eugene bailed on the marriage.”

“Yeah. Dumb.”

“Why dumb?” Kate said. Her sympathy was, not unnaturally, all with Eugene.

“Dumb because he had a good thing there, by all accounts. Up till then, he had a good wife, three kids, a paying job with the Bannisters. Man was a bona fide war hero in Korea, came home with a couple of medals. You’d think he would have had more grit than to fall down a bottle.”

“Is that what happened?”

Max nodded. “Yeah. He started screwing around on her, and they fought.”

“It got physical?”

Max nodded again. “One night, he came home drunk and started another fight. Victoria had had enough, and she shoved him into a radiator. He was unconscious when the ambulance arrived. He moved out after that and after the trial he disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Kate said.

“Of course,” Max said, “nobody was looking that hard for him.”

Kate wondered about that. The Muravieffs didn’t sound like a family that gave up on its kids, no matter how badly they behaved. In particular, they would want to keep the bad ones around to remind them to repent of their sins and as an object lesson for any other offspring who threatened to get out of line. And what about Eugene’s own children? “The defense attorney has vanished, too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Right after the trial.”

“Really,” Max said thoughtfully. “Well, maybe he went hunting and a bear ate him.”

“Maybe.”

“Been known to happen.”

Kate nodded. “A time or two.”

“Or he could have just got a wild hair and hit the Alcan with a blonde and a case of beer.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s been known to happen, too.”

“More than once,” Kate said.

“But still,” Max said. “Interesting.”

“Mmmm.”

“They could both have taken off with the same blonde,” Max said.

Kate smiled. “And shared the beer?”

“Does seem a little unlikely, doesn’t it?”

Kate signaled for the bill. “One more thing. What happened to Victoria after Eugene split?”

“She took a job with her brother, Erland, at Pilz Mining and Exploration, which by then had mining concerns all over the state and had moved their base of operations from Homer to Anchorage.”

“What did she do?”

“She was a bookkeeper,” Max said. “It was that or wait tables down at the Lucky Wishbone. What else could a woman with no schooling and no experience but marriage do back then?”

After Kate dropped Max off, she spent ten sweaty minutes figuring out how to dial out on her new cell phone. She was not helped in this by Mutt, who was intrigued by the sounds it made when the keys were pressed, which sounded a lit-de like ptarmigan talking among themselves. Eventually, woman triumphed over machine and Charlotte answered on the second ring. “Do you remember the make and model of the car your mother was driving the year your brother died?”

There was a brief silence. “No,” Charlotte said.

“Is there someone who would?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I want to know if it had a locking gas cap.”

“Just a minute, I’ll go out in the garage and check.”

Charlotte put the phone down before Kate could say anything, which was all right since Kate was speechless. When Charlotte picked up the phone again, Kate said, “You’ve still got the car your mother was driving before she went to jail?”

“It still runs,” Charlotte said, “why wouldn’t I? It doesn’t have a locking gas cap. I’m not sure they were even making locking gas caps back then.”

“Me, either,” Kate said. “One more thing, Charlotte. Have you heard from your mother’s attorney since the trial?”

“Henry?” Charlotte’s voice changed. “No, I certainly have not.”

“You didn’t like him?”

“If he’d done his job, my mother wouldn’t be in jail.”

“I see,” Kate said. This was not an atypical response from someone whose attorney had failed to earn his client an acquittal. “So you haven’t heard from him.”

“He would know better than to call me. I told him what I thought of him in court the day the verdict came in.”

“And you haven’t seen him since?”

“No. And I returned anything I got in the mail with his address on it.”

“You got mail from him?”

“Bills,” Charlotte said. “Like I would pay them after he got my mother put in jail.”

“How do you know they were bills if you didn’t open them?”

“What else would they be?” Charlotte said.

“Okay,” Kate said, repressing a sigh. “Thanks, Charlotte.”

“Wait,” Charlotte said, “does this mean you’ve found something?”

“A few somethings,” Kate said, “but nothing to convince a judge that Victoria didn’t set that fire.”

“Oh,” said Charlotte. She rallied. “But you’ll keep looking.”

“That’s what you’re paying me for,” Kate said.

“Until you find something to get her out.”

Kate said nothing.

In a forlorn whisper Charlotte, said, “Because I want her out .”

The outfit was still hanging in Jack’s closet, although Kate had to do a little excavation to find it. Jack had poked a hole in the bottom of the trash bag for the hook of the hanger and tied the bag in a knot at the bottom. She hesitated before untying the knot. It was silly, but Jack had tied that knot with his own hands. She thought about tearing the bag open from the top, but that seemed even sillier. What was she going to do, save the garbage bag so she could save the knot? She could just hear Jack, and the thought made her smile.

The jacket was short, single-breasted, with a V neck that revealed a discreetly sexy cleavage. It was covered with bright red sequins, which glittered in the light. The pants were black silk, with a single stripe of lighter black silk running in a trim line down the outer seam of both legs. She rummaged around the closet and found the shoes tucked into their original box.

Jack had bought her this outfit nearly three years before, in order to infiltrate a party Ekaterina was throwing at the Hotel Captain Cook for the Raven Corporation shareholders during the annual Alaska Federation of Natives convention. They’d been investigating a double homicide at the time. Kate, brutally rebuffed when she had suggested they go as servers in white shirts, black pants, and comfortable shoes, had been coerced into Nordstrom entirely against her will, and then into a glorified barbershop to have her hair done, also entirely against her will.