A Grave Denied Part 17

11.

Enid Elliot Koslowski was a Park rat, and a daughter and a granddaughter of more Park rats who were all now either working on the TransAlaska Pipeline or in Prudhoe Bay, or in the Pioneer Home in Anchorage, eating Doritos and watching Jerry Springer on cable. She was as white as you could get without bleach, her forebears having determined early on to retain racial purity insofar as that did not preclude amicable trading relations with the Alaska Natives who made up the majority of the customers who came into the general store.

The general store had been built by her grandfather, a Canathan of Scots descent whose ancestors had emigrated to America fleeing from the heavy hand of British tyranny. Her grandfather emigrated to Alaska fleeing what he perceived to be the Frenchizization (his word) of the Canathan nation. "At least in Alaska," he opined famously, or infamously depending on the race of the listener, "a white man can be white."

He brought his wife with him, who quietly expired giving him his second son, who died shortly thereafter. He sent his one remaining son Outside to school, who returned eventually with a degree in history and an acceptably white wife. They had one child, Enid.

The store provided the Elliotts with a reasonably good living until it burned down one spring day in 1970. Enid's father, who had never cared much for living in the Bush, put the property up for sale and moved to Anchorage. There were no takers until Bernie Koslowski, fleeing the repercussions of burning his draft card on the steps of the U.S. Capitol that same year, came to the Park with a fistful of cash (the provenance of which no sensible Park rat inquired after) looking for a place to build a bar.

Enid flew into the Park to close the deal for her father. She didn't like living in Anchorage, and Bernie, if a draft-dodger, was white, thereby gaining her father's approval, so she married him. They had three children and appeared reasonably content.

Kate, however, knew a little about what went on beneath that placid Koslowski surface. Bernie wasn't a Ca.s.sanova on the order of Jim or Dandy but he did have an eye for the ladies, and there had been the occasional foray over the fence. He blithely imagined Enid knew nothing of these extramarital activities, but Kate had good cause to know that Enid was not as clueless as she made herself appear. Bernie was a good provider and a good father, though, and Enid had no wish to tend bar herself. She wasn't the first wife Kate had met who had decided to turn a blind eye to her husband's extracurricular activities. Didn't mean she liked it, though.

Enid made coffee, a welcome reprieve from the designer water Kate had been swilling in the bar. It was good coffee, too, dark and rich, and familiar. "I get it from Homer," Enid said.

"Captain's Roast," Kate said, and for an instant remembered the small bunkhouse in Bering, and rifling through Jim's duffle for clues as to why he was there, too.

"Yeah," Enid said, surprised. "How'd you know?"

"Lucky guess. Need to ask you some questions, Enid, if it's okay?"

Having Kate Shugak show up on your doorstep wasn't as bad as Dan Rather showing up with a camera crew, but it was a close second, and Enid had been nervous from the get-go. "Sure," she said apprehensively. "What about?"

"Len Dreyer." Kate watched as color receded from Enid's face. In a voice carefully devoid of any emotion, she said, "I imagine you've heard that his body was discovered in Grant Glacier."

Enid spoke through stiff lips. "I had heard."

Kate waited, and when Enid said nothing more, prodded her on. "He was shot at point-blank range."

If possible, Enid went even whiter. "Oh."

"With a shotgun. Messy."

"How... how awful," Enid said. Her eyes were fixed and staring right at Kate, as if she was afraid to look at anything else. "I don't know what I can tell you about him, Kate. I didn't know him that well."

Kate watched her from beneath lowered eyelids, and saw Enid look up and to her right. She snapped her gaze back immediately. Kate said, "Bernie says you had him do some work around the place last summer."

"Oh. Yes, I... I suppose we did."

"What did he do?"

"I don't know, I -oh, of course. He laid down some new gravel for the paths."

"I see." Kate lapsed into that time-honored investigator's trick, silence.

Enid was a good subject to practice it on: Innocent people usually are. She rushed to fill the silence with words. "He was only here a few days, I think. He did a good job, the paths are in great shape, even after the winter. Nice and level. I think he dug some of them out so they'd have a nice edge to them, so the gravel wouldn't scatter." Kate watched her realize she was babbling, watched her catch herself, and stop.

"When was he here?" Kate said. "What days?"

"I don't know, Kate, last summer sometime." Kate's unthreatening manner gave Enid courage. "Why do you need to know?"

Kate shrugged. "I'm helping Jim figure out what happened. Dreyer was probably killed last year, since no one reports seeing him after the end of October. I'm putting together a timeline of his activities, where he worked, who he talked to, like that, in case someone knows something that might help us finger the killer."

"Oh. Would you like some more coffee?"

Kate looked down at her mug, tJiree-quarters full. "Sure." She waited until Enid was on her feet with her back turned before she looked around.

Through the doorway she could see the gun rack mounted on the wall. It had cradles for four weapons, all full. Two of the four were shotguns, a double and a single.

She faced forward just in time to hold out her mug for Enid to top off.

They were in the kitchen, a magnificent room of bleached wood and granite countertops and gleaming copper pots. Selling liquor had always been a profitable business. There was a corner bookcase filled with cookbooks, and a long table that seated twelve to serve dishes made from recipes in those books. Enid was the closest thing the Park had to a full-blown chef. Kate herself had sat down at this table to a chicken stew that Enid had called Sicilian and everyone else divine. Lots of garlic. Anything with a lot of garlic in it worked for Kate, who sometimes imagined she had something Mediterranean going on in her background. It was possible; there was everything else in there, including a Russian commissar and a Jewish tailor. There was also Uncle Dieter, whom everyone thought had been a n.a.z.i in Germany sixty years before, but he was drooling away the rest of his life in the Sunset Apartments in Ahtna and n.o.body'd called Simon Wiesenthal, so they let it go.

Kate looked at Enid, who was fidgeting nicely. Blunt or oblique, she thought. Blunt. "You had an affair with Len Dreyer," she said.

Enid, taken totally off guard first by the long silence and then by the direct attack, burst into tears. Kate looked around, found a box of Kleenex on the counter, and fetched it over. It took a while, but Enid eventually sobbed her way through the entire box and the whole story. "It wasn't an affair," she said, hiccupping.

"What was it then, a one-night stand?"

"No! No. It wasn't anything like that. I just wanted-I just..." The words, backed up for a long time, flooded forth like a creek after breakup. "There's always someone. There's always been someone. It never lasts long but I know all the signs, I always know, and I always pretend I don't, and I just got tired of it, you know?" Her eyes, red and swollen, appealed to Kate for understanding.

Kate looked at her gravely.

There was a tense moment, broken only by the sound of broken breathing. "And then," Enid said, almost inaudibly, "and then there was Laurel."

"Laurel Meganack?" Kate said.

"Yes." Enid reached for more tissue. "I thought-he was more serious about her. It lasted a long time, longer than usual. I -I thought he might leave me for her." Enid blew her nose. "I didn't know what to do. I was afraid to talk to Bernie about it. I don't know. I think I thought if I said something I might make it happen."

If you don't look straight at it, Kate thought, it doesn't exist. "So along came Len."

"G.o.d, it wasn't like he was even that interested, I practically had to rape him. But he was right here, day after day. He had a nice body," she said wistfully. "Nice shoulders when he took his shirt off. Strong arms. I went out one day, took him a cold can of pop, and I, well, I guess you could say I propositioned him. We went into one of the cabins, and well, we did it. The next day he came back and I took him into a cabin again. Only..."

Kate, keeping to herself her opinion of someone who chose to sleep around on her husband in her husband's place of business, said, "Bernie walked in?"

Enid broke down again. "Yes," she said, sobbing. "He walked in." She raised tear-filled eyes. "He stood there looking at us."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing! He didn't say anything! He stood there, and then he walked out again, like it didn't mean a d.a.m.n to him! He-" She started to sob again. "He even closed the door behind him. He closed it behind him, like he wanted to give us privacy! He wasn't even angry!"

Or, given his predilection for s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around himself, he wasn't prepared to throw any stones, Kate thought. "Did you talk about it later?"

Enid, regaining some control, blew her nose and shook her head. "No. I tried, but he cut me off."

And it had been festering ever since. In both of them, probably.

Well, Kate didn't do therapy. She got to her feet. "Thanks for the coffee."

Enid trailed after her like a lost puppy. "Is that all?"

"Yeah, pretty much. You said Dreyer didn't mention any family or friends, or where he came from before he lived in the Park."

"I don't think Dreyer was his real name."

Kate halted. "Really? Why?"

"A letter fell out of his pocket. You know. That first day. It was addressed to a Leon Duffy."

Len Dreyer. Leon Duffy. Many people who a.s.sumed aliases chose names with the same initials. Easier to remember. "He say how old he was?"

Enid looked uncertain. "Uh, around my age, I think. Late forties, maybe? Maybe older."

That would fit, if Bobby was right about Dreyer serving in Vietnam. Kate wondered where he'd gotten the letter. Not through Bonnie at the local PO, that was sure. Maybe it was an old letter. A keepsake from a loved one, say! The killer could have gotten rid of it so as to delay identification of the body. "Did you happen to notice what he was driving?"

Enid shrugged. "Some beat-up old truck. With a canopy, maybe?" She thought. "Might have been gray."

"Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Enid. I'm sorry I had to ask you about it."

"It's okay." Enid drew a shaky breath. "You know what's the worst, Kate? The worst is it wasn't even that much fun. I made the pa.s.s. I took him to the cabin. I even undressed him, and me."

"Enid-"

"He had his eyes closed the whole time. Like he didn't even want to see what he was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g." She tried to smile with trembling lips. "There's a name for that, isn't there? A mercy f.u.c.k, isn't that what they call it?" A tear slid from the corner of her eye.

"If it's that hard to take, why don't you leave?" Kate said.

Enid looked shocked. "I couldn't do that. There are the children. And besides..." She looked down at her hands, twisted together in a painful knot. Her voice dropped. "He didn't love me when we married. I thought, well, I thought that love, or maybe even just a little affection, would come in time. It didn't. I shouldn't have married him. It's my fault."

She stood in silence for a moment. When she raised her head the old Enid was back, armor in place. "Well," she said brightly, "thanks for stopping by, Kate." She opened the door and Kate, perforce, went through it.

She stood on the deck listening to Enid's footsteps recede.

She was thinking of the witches' coven in the woods she had stumbled onto a few years back, led by Enid and celebrating the death of Lisa Gette, who had slept with the husbands of every attending wicca-for-a-day. Even now, years later, the memory was strong enough to run a chill up her spine. Those women had been united in hatred, united in celebrating death.

It was too much of a cliche, but as Kate knew from long experience with the Anchorage D.A., that didn't make it untrue. Husband screws around, wife has a revenge f.u.c.k with the handyman, husband walks in, husband kills handyman. Certainly the white of Enid's face said that she was terrified that Bernie had in fact done just that. And there was that betraying glance at the gun rack.

The timing was off, though. Len Dreyer had laid gravel and Enid around Labor Day. He'd been seen elsewhere multiple times between Labor Day and the end of October.

Didn't mean Bernie couldn't have bided his time, planned it out. That's what a prosecuting attorney would say. A prosecuting attorney would also say that Bernie, by virtue of an everyone-comes-to-Bernie's Park practice, would be among the first to know about Grant Glacier advancing. According to Millicent and Dan, the glacier's subsequent retreat hadn't gotten the same kind of press. No immediate reason to believe it wouldn't be the perfect grave.

Enid had said that Bernie didn't care, but even the most indifferent husband had been known to react adversely to his wife sleeping with another man. And then, Laurel Meganack had slept with Len Dreyer and with Bernie Koslowski both last year, which was a whole other motive Kate didn't want to consider. Maybe Bernie was in love for the first time in his life. Maybe Dreyer had shouldered him out of Laurel's bed.

She shook her head. "d.a.m.n it," she said out loud. "Not Bernie. I know him, I've known him for years. He's not a killer."

Didn't mean she wasn't going to have to talk to him about it. She envisioned an unpleasant interrogation, followed by months of cold-shouldering. Great.

She wouldn't tell Jim, though. At least not yet. She headed down the steps and through the path back to the bar.

She was ambushed before she got to the door, a pair of very muscular arms scooping her off the step. She found herself pressed up against the wall, a knee between her legs and a large pair of firm hands investigating the scene of what was before much longer going to be a crime, if only a misdemeanor.

There was an undercurrent of laughter in Jim's voice when he left off nibbling on her ear and whispered into it instead. "Come on, Shugak, cuddle up, you know you want to." He kissed her, and since her feet were dangling a foot off the ground, she couldn't find enough leverage to fight him off.

Or that's what she told herself.

It had been a long time since she'd been the target of this much unrelenting male attention, and Jim hadn't had enough to drink to affect his moves. Her eyes went a little out of focus and then closed altogether.

No. There was nothing in the least reverential about Jim Chopin's kiss.

Her conscience was guilty at withholding information relevant to the case they were working together, that was what it was. So she'd let him grope her a little, kiss her a little, touch her a-oh my. The man certainly knew where all the parts were, and needed no instruction in how to get them running. Her arms came up of their own volition to circle his neck. Mostly to help support her weight, seeing as how she was hanging there in midair and all. She might have tilted her head to give him easier access to that spot just below her left ear. She might even have knotted her hand in his hair and brought his head back so she could kiss him for a change, but that wasn't very likely, now was it?

"Excuse me," a very dry voice said.

Jim, wallowing in the middle of what was the very first wholehearted, unconditional response he'd ever had from Kate Shugak, even if he had taken her by surprise, swore ripely and said "What!" in a tone of voice that had all by itself disarmed more than one frisky perp in its day.

Dinah, surveying them with a bleak eye, said, "Bobby's hungry. We were thinking of riding on into town and grabbing a bite at the cafe."

"Sounds good," Kate said brightly, and peeled out of Jim's arms to hotfoot it around the corner and up the stairs into the bar.

Jim moved to follow her and was halted in his tracks by one upraised hand.

"What?" he said, exasperated, frustrated, h.o.r.n.y, edgy, and embarra.s.sed.

"What do you want with her?" Dinah said in a quiet voice.

Like it wasn't obvious. He tried to adjust the bulge behind his fly without her noticing. "What are you talking about?"

"With Kate," Dinah said, and this time her tone got through to him. "What do you want with her, Jim?"

"What?" he said again, this time bewildered.

"You want to lay her?"

This was so unlike Dinah's usual mostly ladylike self that he simply gaped at her.

She regarded him with palpable scorn. "Yeah, well, take a number. Here's the thing." She stepped forward and actually grabbed herself a handful of his shirtfront and pulled him down to an elevation where she could get in his face. "Kate's been a big girl for a long time now, and I don't expect she'd take kindly to my meddling in her business. But I'm her friend, and I don't want to see her hurt."

"Hurt?" Jim said. "Who's talking about hurting her?"

"You'll hurt her, given half the chance," Dinah said. "Kate's not one of your good-time girls, Jim. When there's someone in her life, it's serious, and it's monogamous. If you're not serious, stay the h.e.l.l away from her."

He was angry now. He removed her hand. "You're right," he said, "it's none of your business."

He stalked around the corner.