Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

“You were underage,” Kate couldn’t help saying.

Wanda nodded. “When we first met, yes. I was a year older than William, you see. My parents held me back a grade when I was in second grade because I had a problem with reading. Dyslexia,” she added.

She sipped coffee. “I wanted to see Eugene, but I stopped going out with William because it just seemed too creepy to use him to get to his father. I could see, in the brief time that I was at their house, that Victoria and Eugene’s marriage was falling apart. I had an after-school job at PME, and one day we bumped into each other at a union meeting, and then we met again, outside the office.” She paused and gave a twisted smile. “And then all of sudden, I did do that kind of thing.”

“How long?”

“Almost a year before the divorce.”

Kate thought about how to ask the next question without giving offense, decided there was no way, and asked it straight out. “Did he say he was going to leave his wife for you?”

“Oh no,” Wanda said calmly. “He told me from the beginning that however bad it got with Victoria, he would never leave his children. I believed him.”

Frowning, Kate said, “But he did.”

“Yes, he did,” Wanda said, “but it wasn’t his choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“His father-in-law pulled all the strings in that family.”

“The old man, Jasper Bannister?”

Wanda nodded.

“Why would the old man want to split up his daughter and her husband?”

“He never liked Eugene. Eugene was a Native, and Eugene had always wanted to do serious work for PME. They gave him a job, but it was a make-work, glad-handing kind of job. He wanted to go into management. They stonewalled him. It took a while, but he got mad, and he decided if he couldn’t get into the business one way, he would another.”

“Which was?” Kate said.

“He joined the union that represented the PME workers and ran for business representative.”

“Did he win?”

“Oh, yes. The Bannisters may have had little use for Eugene, but the workers liked him. They were renegotiating their contract with PME, and they figured that Eugene, being a part of the owner’s family by marriage, had pull on the other side. They were wrong, but they didn’t know that.”

It was right about then that Jasper would have been finalizing plans to switch from union employees to contract hires.

“You know,” Wanda said pensively, “the older I get and the more I read, the more I think that most things that happen are personal.” She looked at Kate. “I remember reading something that somebody wrote one time that World War Two happened because Hitler’s mother didn’t spank him enough, or at all, and as odd as it sounds, I think there is some kind of truth to that. Lyndon Johnson said he didn’t want to be the first American president to lose a war, so instead of cutting our losses and walking away, it’s ‘One, two, three, what are we fightin’ for…‘ Benjamin Franklin is personally insulted on the floor of the house of Parliament and he goes home to start the American Revolution. It’s all personal,” Wanda repeated, “and this was personal, too. On both sides.”

Thinking out loud, Kate said, “So Eugene couldn’t get in the front door, and he decided to use the union to get in the back door.”

There was a brief silence. “I felt horribly guilty when he moved out,” Wanda said. “I’ve never thought of myself as a home-wrecker. I certainly wasn’t raised to be one. You know that Woody Allen quote- The heart wants what it wants,” something like that? I’ve always hated it. Eugene married Victoria, and they had three children together. He had no business sleeping around on them. I knew it, and I did it anyway.“

“Were you still together when his son died?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t subpoenaed to testify at the trial.”

“No.”

“Were you deposed?”

“Yes.” Wanda said, and took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. On the face of it, I think I was deposed to establish that Eugene had been with me that night.”

“An alibi.” Which would focus attention on Victoria as the prime suspect.

“Yes,” Wanda said. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Someone in the district attorney’s office leaked my statement, and it was all over the news the next day, and of course they had to do a little digging, and they found out that Eugene and I had had a relationship before the divorce. My parents were… very upset.”

Kate, in her extensive search through the library’s microfiche files, had somehow managed to miss this particular Bannister scandal. That would teach her to go without the help of a reference librarian in the future. “So Eugene was with you the night of the fire, the night his son was killed.”

“Yes.”

“All night.”

“Yes.”

So Eugene hadn’t altogether disappeared after the divorce. Well. Perhaps if the Bannisters considered you a non-person, you did. Kate hesitated before asking her next question. “Had there been other women?”

Wanda didn’t flinch. “He said not.”

“So you were it.”

“Yes.”

“You had a brother named Ernie.”

Wanda’s eyes widened a little. “Yes. He died very young.”

“Eugene’s set-net permit was sold to an Ernie Gajewski.”

Wanda nodded. “Yes.”

“Your brother was dead by then.”

“Yes. Eugene needed to keep his set-net site so he could fish, but he couldn’t keep it in his name. So I used Ernie’s Social Security number to help Eugene make it look like he’d sold his permit.”

“Why couldn’t he keep it in his name?”

There was a short pause. “He had his reasons.”

Kate put down her coffee. “There’s something I have to tell you. I’m sorry as hell to have to tell you this, but Eugene Muravieff is dead.”

“I know,” Wanda said. “I had his body picked up from the morgue this morning.”

Kate stared at her. “Did your relationship continue?”

“Yes.”

“For the past thirty years?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you live together?”

Wanda hesitated. “He wanted a place his children felt free to come to. Charlotte and Oliver were very upset about their father and me, particularly Oliver. And Eugene couldn’t stomach the thought of living off my money. He was never going to make a lot of money, not when he couldn’t even own up to his own identity.”

It just wasn’t good enough, Kate thought. Two people were dead and a third in the hospital because Charlotte had hired her to get Charlotte’s mother out of jail. Someone was willing to commit murder to make her go away. Wanda had to know more. She had been too close to the Muravieffs for too long not to.

She opened her mouth and a new and a very unwelcome voice intruded upon their conversation. “Kate Shugak, I thought I recognized you.” She looked up and found Erland Bannister beaming down at her.

Without knowing how she got there, Kate found herself on her feet. She registered the fact that Mutt was standing, too, her shoulder pressed to Kate’s knee, not growling but hackles raised, and ready to launch on command. Mutt’s character analyses, with the possible exception of Jim Chopin, were nearly infallible, but in this case, they weren’t necessary. Kate knew they had both reacted instinctively to the appearance of a predator.

Erland looked at Wanda. “And you are?”

“Wanda Gajewski,” Wanda said through stiff lips.

“Wanda Gajewski, of course,” Erland said almost fondly. “Judge Berlin’s clerk, aren’t you? And how is rascally old Randy these days? Still keeping the streets safe for the rest of us?”