Nothing Gold Can Stay

FIFTEEN

Sunshine Valley, September 4

He rose with the sun and built up the fire in the stove. There was a pump handle on the edge of the sink. He saw her looking down from the loft as he filled the kettle. “The well’s right under the house,” he said. “Long as we’ve got a fire in the stove, the pipes won’t freeze in winter. Fresh water all year round, and you don’t have to go down to the creek to get it.”

She murmured something, something humble, acquiescent, admiring. It seemed to be enough; he nodded, satisfied, and put the kettle on the stove. He smiled up at her. “Elaine the fair,” he said softly.

She had already learned to be afraid of that tone of his voice, and her body went very still beneath the covers.

“You’ll make us some breakfast, won’t you, Elaine? You’re such a good cook, I can hardly wait to taste those pancakes of yours again.” He went to the door. “I’ll be back shortly,” he said, and went out the door, closing it behind him.

She rose, scrambling into her clothes, buttoning her shirt up to the last button beneath her chin, cinching her belt in to the last possible notch. She could barely stand to look at the bed they had shared, but she knew enough to make it.

She climbed down the ladder and went to the little kitchen, all hardwood cabinets and counter, the same wood from which the furniture and the cabin itself was made. There was a Coleman stove on the counter, very similar to the one she had cooked on for Mark, and the sight of it should have moved her to tears.

The door, the only door into the cabin, a meticulously finished slab of wood allowed to retain its natural color, remained shut and mute.

She located the ingredients and the frying pan, and mixed pancake dough. There was no syrup, but there was brown sugar and maple flavoring and water, so she made some. She found a cone filter and a carafe and filters and coffee. All she had to do was wait for the kettle to boil.

The minutes ticked by, one by one, and still he hadn’t come back. She looked at the door, looked away.

She found stoneware plates in a pretty Delft pattern and set the table. There was a full set of stainless steel flatware in a drawer, pristine and polished. She used paper towels for napkins, folded into perfect little triangles.

Something tapped at the window, and she looked up to see a spruce bough scrape at the glass. It was a tiny window, with four panes, barely big enough for a dog to climb through. Bears, she thought numbly.

The shadow of the bough shifted on the glass and she saw a faint smear of something. She found a bottle of Windex and washed it off. She washed the other window in the opposite wall, too.

The door had no window.

She swept the floor, depositing the dirt carefully in the plastic trash can. She dusted the shelf. It held three books, a collection of Shakespeare, the Bible, andIdylls of the King.

A small wooden box stood next to the Tennyson, a light layer of dust covering its hand-carved lid. She was clumsy and knocked the box to the floor, scattering its contents. A shaft of pure terror speared through her. She waited for the footsteps to sound. For the door to push open.

After a moment the racing of her heart slowed and she managed to kneel down and collect the items and put them back in the box. A cheap Claddagh ring, a wide silver bracelet that looked Southwestern, a plain gold wedding band. Five pairs of earrings. Two crosses on chains, one gold, one silver. A choker of crystals strung between tiny silver spacers.

Carefully she put them back into the box. Her hands were trembling. It took her three tries to get the lid back on, and she nearly dropped the box again when she tried to put it back on the shelf.

The shelf stood against the wall next to the door.

Taking up Windex and cloth again, she dusted the door handle, a handle shaped like a vine with leaves, with a latch beneath. She pressed down on it a little too hard. There was a click. The door opened.

A light breeze fanned her face. Sunlight dappled the floor. A bird called. Leaves rustled.

She reached out a hand, touched the door. Like everything else in the cabin, it was very well crafted. It swung silently outward.

She took a step forward, another, and the next thing she knew she was outside. No one shouted at her. No one grabbed her. No one hit her. No one forced her down, tore at her jeans, spread her legs and pushed painfully inside her. No one smiled his crazy smile at her afterward, patted her cheek in a travesty of affection and concern and said, “There, there. You’ll learn. It’ll take time, but you’ll learn. You’ve been gone so long, I understand, it’s like a new place to you. You used to love it. You’ll love it again.”

Her heart beat rapidly high up in her throat. She took another step forward, another and then another.

A branch caught her cheek, the sore spot high up where he’d hit her the night before when she’d tried to pull away from him, and only then did she realize how quickly she was moving, walking, shifting into a kind of stumbling run. She had no idea where she was going, which direction was best, the trees and the cliffs behind them were so close, so overwhelming. There might be bears, but she kept going.

She stumbled out into a tiny, circular clearing. Late flowers were blooming, fireweed, wild roses, even a few poppies, orange and red and yellow. They grew up around the stumps of trees cut off at knee level.

Except they weren’t trees, or stumps. She took a step closer to the nearest one. One side had been planed smooth for an inscription.

“Elaine,” she read. “Elaine the Fair, Elaine the Lovable, Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat.” The letters were carved into the wood with the same care and craftsmanship demonstrated in the construction of the cabin and all its contents.

She didn’t want to, she didn’t think she could force herself to move, but her feet stepped forward on their own. The next stump was also planed smooth, also carved, also read “Elaine the Fair, Elaine the Lovable, Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat.”

One stump after another, all planed, all carved. “Elaine the Fair.” “Elaine the Lovable.” “Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat.” “Elaine.”

Elaine. Elaine. Elaine.

You’ll make us some breakfast, won’t you, Elaine?

But her name wasn’t Elaine.

She counted slowly, lips forming soundless numbers. One, two, three. Four. Five, six, seven, eight.

You’re such a good cook, I can hardly wait to taste those pancakes of yours again.

But she’d never cooked for him before.

There, at the edge of the clearing, so faded it was almost invisible, nine. Ten, eleven.

Twelve. A gleaming new piece of wood with the dirt tamped around it still fresh and free from moss and lichen.

“Elaine.”

I’ll be back shortly.

She spun around.

He stood at the opposite edge of the clearing, fifty feet away.

He shook his head sorrowfully. “I told you not to go outside. Didn’t I tell you that?”

She couldn’t speak.

“I told you you could do anything you wanted, anything at all, so long as you kept on the inside of the door.”

Her tongue felt swollen in her mouth.

He sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”

He sounded for all the world like an overindulgent parent faced with the dilemma of a spoiled child.

“Come here,” he said.

He had almost reached her when she realized she was still holding the bottle of Windex. She raised it and squirted him in the face. He yelled and clawed at his eyes.

She turned and ran.

Nenevok Creek, September 4

The Cessna touched down smoothly, jolting only a very little on the gravel surface of the airstrip, and rolled to a halt just short of the Cub parked at the end. Liam was standing to one side. Prince cut the engine and opened the door. “Good to see you’re all right.”

“Good to be all right.”

“What happened?” This as Wy came down the path.

“Throttle cable broke on approach.”

“Jesus,” Prince said. “That’s a new one on me.”

“Me, too.”

Trooper poise was quickly replaced by pilot curiosity. “What’d you do?”

“Pulled the carb heat, trimmed the nose. Cut the engine on final.”

“A deadstick landing.”

“Yeah.” Wy said it laconically, like she did deadstick landings every day and twice on Sundays.

“Impressive,” Prince said, trying not to sound grudging. Nothing that exciting had ever happened to her in the air. “So, you spent the night up at the cabin.”

Something fizzled in the air between Liam and Wy, some emotion to which Prince was not privy. It seemed there had been trouble in paradise the night before. It wasn’t anything she was going to get into if she could help it. “I can take you both out in the Cessna.”

“I’ll stay with my plane,” Wy said.

“Like hell,” Liam said.

“You can’t,” Prince said.

“Why not?” Wy said to Prince.

“You’ve got a problem back in Newenham.”

“What?”

“You know that boy you adopted?”

Wy’s eyes widened and she came the rest of the way down the path in four quick strides. “Is Tim all right? Has something happened to him?”

“Far as I know he’s fine. His mother isn’t.”

Wy’s lips tightened. “I’m his mother.”

“His birth mother, then,” Prince said. “She’s got a court order allowing her to see him. Limited, supervised visitation. She can’t be alone with him, but she can see him.” She looked at Liam. He met her eyes without expression. She looked back at Wy. “For the moment, the boy is out of town. Up at a fish camp on the Nushagak, I hear tell from the friends you’ve got staying at your house.”

Wy nodded. “Yes,” she said through suddenly stiff lips.

Prince looked at Liam. “You find anything more out here?”

Liam shook his head. “I don’t know.” He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a Ziploc bag.

Prince took it and held it up to the light. It held half a dozen round green beads. “So?”

“They’re jade, I think,” he said.

“So?” she repeated.

“So a bunch of jade was stolen from the post office on Kagati Lake. A clock, animal carvings, bookends.”

“A necklace?”

“They didn’t say, and I didn’t know enough to ask.”

Prince thought it over. “There were a bunch of beads inside the cabin, weren’t there?”

“Yeah.”

“And some stuff, some bracelets, barrettes, like that, made out of beads.”

“Yes.”

“So this could have been part of Rebecca Hanover’s supply.”

“Could have been.”

“Something to tell you, too,” she said.

“What?”

“The Crime Lab called. The splatter pattern on Kvichak’s Winchester matches the splatter pattern on Mark Hanover’s chest.”

She handed back the plastic bag, and he pocketed it. “That’s that, then.”

“Looks like.”

“No shell casings, though, no other real physical evidence.”

“No. No sign of the wife?”

“No.” He sighed. “We followed everything that even remotely resembles a trail for at least a mile this time. We yelled every hour for her all night. No answer. Nothing.”

“Did you look for a grave?”

Wy looked at Liam, away.

“Yeah,” he said. “We looked for a grave.”

Prince thought. “How about the creek?”

He pulled his cap from his head and whacked it against his leg. “I followed it downstream as far as I could. It’s too low this time of year for anything the size of a body to float down it.”

“Pretty big lake it ends in.”

“Yeah. We should do a flyover on the way back, just in case SAR missed her.”

“Always supposing she’s a floater. She could have got wedged in a downed tree, something like that.”

“Yeah.” He put his cap back on. “We’re going to need confessions if we want to clear this case.”

“Yes. And we’d better get a move on if we want to get back to Newenham today. Storm coming in. Big low moving up out of the Bering. The Weather Service has small-craft advisories out. They’re talking an early freeze, maybe even snow.”

Liam looked at the sky. The morning had started out sunny, but a bank of clouds, thick and low, was creeping up on the sun. There was a bite in the stiff little breeze whipping across the airstrip, too. Still, “Snow before Labor Day?”

She shrugged. “Hey. It’s Alaska. Worse, it’s Bristol Bay.”

Wy nosed the Cub into the prevailing wind and tied it down against her return with a new throttle cable. The Cessna was in the air ten minutes later, and Prince got on the radio to let the world know that Liam and Wy were found and well. Neither of the rescuees looked especially happy about it, but their friends took up the slack. “So, home again, home again, jiggety-jig,” she said, hanging up the mike.

“Just step on it,” Liam said. From the backseat Wy said nothing.

“Stepping on it,” Prince said, and did.

Newenham, September 4

Jim, who like most ham operators knew somebody everywhere he went, had rustled up a truck, a Chevy Scottsdale, brown and tan but mostly rust, with brand-new outside rearview mirrors and tires, and a Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish glued to the tailgate.

Jo pointed at the decal. “Do you suppose the Christians know that that decal only shows Darwin in action? Bigger fish eats littler fish?”

“I don’t think Christians waste much time thinking,” Jim said, climbing in behind the wheel.

“I beg to differ,” Bridget said tartly. “We Christians are thinking all the time. Mostly we’re thinking sad thoughts about our non-Christian brothers and sisters who are going straight to hell when they die.”

Luke laughed.

So did Jim. “My mistake.”

Honors about even, the journey to Bill’s was accomplished in dignified silence. “Little nip in the air,” Jim said, holding the door for Bridget. He looked toward the southwest. “Storm coming in, looks like.”

Bridget tucked her arm in his. “Good day for a hot toddy next to a roaring fireplace.”

The south and west horizon were filling up with a rapidly advancing wall of dark clouds. “Hope they don’t get caught out in that,” Jo said.

“Looks nasty,” Luke agreed. His hand was warm on her shoulder. She saw Jim looking at it and the hand became somehow heavier.

One-thirty on a Saturday afternoon, and it was after fishing season and before hunting season really began. Just enough reason for the party to get started early, and it had. Kelly McCormick and Larry Jacobson had drawn up chairs next to a booth filled with three giggling young women. Jim Earl, the mayor of Newenham, and four of the five sitting members of the town council were deciding city business at another. The jukebox was playing “Fruitcakes,” and although no one was skating naked through the crosswalk-yet-Jimmy Buffet would have felt right at home.

They grabbed the last booth and settled in, only to have Dottie bellow from behind the bar, “You want something, get your butts up here and get it! Not you,” she said to Molly Shuravaloff.

“But Dottie-”

“Don’t you ‘but Dottie’ me, girl, you’re lucky I let you step inside the door. You ought to be home being a comfort to your mother in her old age.”

“She’s forty-seven, Dottie!”

“Whatever.”

Molly sulked back to her booth, where Mac McCormick put an arm around her waist and offered her a surreptitious sip from his beer.

They conferred, and Luke and Bridget went up to the bar to order, returning with hot buttered rums all around. Luke sipped and closed his eyes. “God, what’s in this?”

Jo tasted and choked at the resultant wave of heat that seemed to envelop her sinuses. “Besides a fifth of rum?”

“Brown sugar,” Jim said.

“And powdered sugar,” Bridget said.

“Ice cream?” Luke said.

Jo, still gasping for air, croaked, “Butter. And rum. A whole lot of rum.”

The second sip went down better and faster than the first, and when Dottie shouted that their burgers were ready, it was time for a refill. By then everyone had a pleasant glow, marred only somewhat when a burly man came in the door and saw them. He whipped off gold-framed aviator sunglasses to reveal dark, frowning eyes in a blunt-featured face. Tiny blood vessels turned his nose and his cheeks a deep, angry red. His hands were big-knuckled and scarred, dangling at the end of arms too bulky with muscle to hang straight. He shouldered his way across the floor with an impatient, slightly bowlegged stride, taking no notice of the lesser mortals in his path. He looked, on approach, like a cross between George Patton and King Kong, with a luxuriant mustache that sported evidence of past meals.

Jo saw him first. “Finn,” she said.

He looked at Jim from beneath the brim of a cap advertising the Reno Air Show. “Your people still up?”

“And you are?” Jim said.

“Finn Grant,” Jo told him, and to Finn said, “They’re on their way home.”

“Storm coming in,” he said to Jim. “I don’t want to have to run no patrol out after pilots who don’t know how to come in out of the rain.”

“Finn is a member of the Civil Air Patrol,” Jo told Luke and Bridget. “He’s made a career out of not finding people who have gotten themselves lost in the Bush.”

Finn’s face darkened to the color of the clouds in the sky outside. “Fuck you, Dunaway,” he said, and stamped to the bar.

Jim looked at Jo. “My, my, you just endear yourself to everyone who comes down the pike, don’t you? What did you do, break the story that his girlfriend is sleeping with his uncle?”

Jo fluttered her eyelashes. “You do say the sweetest things, Mr. Wiley, suh.”

The aroma wafting up from the cheeseburgers became too much to resist and they tucked in. Plates polished clean down to the shine, a third toddy seemed like something even Jim and Jo could agree on, and Luke went to fetch them. Bridget said, “What was Mr. Finn so upset about, Jo? Is Jim right? Did you write a story about him?”

Jo, in that state of well-being that always follows the ingestion of equal amounts of alcohol, salt and deep-fryer fat, said with an expansive wave, “Finn Grant’s the name, losing clients is his game.”

Jim had to grin. Luke returned with the drinks and Bridget demanded further explanation. Jo fortified herself with a sip, burning her tongue in the process, and launched into what was one of her favorite stories. “Dagfinn Grant is a pilot, the owner and operator of a nice little air taxi service right here in Newenham. He’s quite the businessman: a member of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club, an old hunting buddy of ex-governor Hickfield, and he’s been a guide since Alaska was a territory.

“Anyway, he makes his living flying people in and out of the Bush. He takes them into the Four Lakes for fishing and the foothills of the Alaska Range for hunting. He flies them up to the Togiak Peaks for that roughneck climbing people do, you know, the ones who actually enjoy hanging from a ridge by their fingernails while they dangle over a one-thousand-foot abyss.”

“Or say they do,” Luke said, grinning.

“Or say they do,” Jo agreed, grinning back. Luke’s handsome face had begun to take on a rum-enhanced allure that made her think of the couch in Wy’s living room with increasing anticipation. “In all fairness, it must be said that old Finn makes a pretty good living out of the air taxi business, so much so that he has to buy additional planes and hire on more pilots. Pretty soon he’s running things more from the ground than he is the air. Until one day…”

“What?” Luke said.

“Don’t encourage her,” Jim said.

Bridget looked from Jo to Jim and back again.

“One day,” Jo said, “not long ago, Finn was sitting in his office, all by his lonesome. I just want to point out,” she added parenthetically, “that he was by himself. Nobody else around.”

“Nobody else to blame, we got it,” Jim said.

“Hush up,” Bridget told him. “Go on, Jo.”

“The phone rang. It was one Eric Silverthorne, who was calling on behalf of himself and his brother Rodney, and their wives Stella and Anna, respectively. They had just gotten off the jet from Anchorage and they wanted to go caribou hunting north of the Togiak Peaks. His name had been given them as a recommendation by the ticket agent at the Alaska Airlines terminal; could he oblige?”

Jo drank some more of that lovely toddy. She had a full stomach from the burger, a warm glow from the rum, Wy was safe and on her way home, the threat of Jim Wiley’s disclosures were on hold, Luke’s face was becoming increasingly beautiful across the table, and she was truly on vacation for the first time in three years, no story to research and write, no crime scenes to inspect, no politicians pulling in illegal campaign contributions, nothing at all to do, in fact, except enjoy herself. She was practically dizzy with delight, and she was definitely off the chain.

“As I said, Mr. Dagfinn Grant was all by his lonesome when his phone rang because all of his planes were in the air and all of his pilots were with them. He didn’t have a plane available to transport a hunting party of four and all their luggage. He scurried around and managed to rustle up an old Cessna Skywagon belonging to a friend, which always surprised me because it is my understanding that Finn Grant has no friends. The Silverthornes arrive and aren’t kept waiting more than two, three hours before Finn is ready to launch.

“So he takes them up to the Togiak Peaks, and manages to wedge the Skywagon into that little gravel strip west of Weary River, unloads passengers and crew, and leaves them, with the understanding that he’s supposed to pick them up in ten days.”

The toddy had developed a fine, heady bouquet and she inhaled it with abandon.

“What happened?”

She opened her eyes and smiled across at Luke. “He forgot them,” she said simply.

He stared at her.

“What are you meaning, he forgot them?” Bridget said.

“I mean just that, the tenth day rolled around and he forgot to go get them.”

Luke and Bridget stared at her, mouths open. Jim, having read this story on the front page of theNews, stared into his mug. Better than looking at Jo, whose green eyes were bright with unabashed glee, whose dark blond hair seemed to be curling into tighter knots, whose face was glowing with the joy of storytelling. That’s who she was, really, he thought, just somebody sitting around a fire late at night, hoping to get a few coins in her bowl before everyone fell asleep.

And, he had to admit, albeit reluctantly, that she was damn good at it.

“Well?” Luke demanded. “When did he remember?”

“He didn’t,” Jo said, and the glow faded a little. “Eight days after he was supposed to pick them up, old Julie Baldessario, a homesteader on Weary River, looked up from salting his silver catch to see Eric, Rodney and Anna stagger out from the brush. He almost shot them, until they managed to convince him all they wanted was a ride out. They were filthy, Anna had a broken arm, Rodney had a broken leg, and a grizzly had bit Eric’s ear clean off.”

“Wait a minute,” Bridget said. “What about-what was her name? The other woman?”

“Stella?” Jo drained her mug. “They waited three days, they said, until their food ran out, and then they started hiking out. Three days into the hike, they woke up and Stella was gone. The troopers went back in, the Civil Air Patrol, Search and Rescue. They quartered the area, back and forth, up and down. They never found her.”

“Anybody suspect the husband?”

Jo shook her head. “They asked, of course, but Eric and Stella Silverthorne, to all outward appearances, had a solid marriage. Good reputation in the community, financially stable, two kids, twelve and fourteen. No reason to suspect the husband. It looks like she just wandered off.”

“Uuiliriq,” a voice said, and everyone looked up to see Molly Shuravaloff peering over the top of the booth. “Little Hairy Man,” she added, blinking bleary eyes. Mac had been sharing more of his beer.

“Who’s he?” Jim said.

“Nobody knows,” she said. “He lives up in the mountains. He comes down to steal people, little kids mostly. Parents say never to play outside after dark, or Uuiliriq will get you.”

Another head popped up next to hers, round-faced, dark hair and eyes, smooth olive skin, so like Molly she could have been her sister. “Don’t talk about the Hairy Man, you know it only scares you. Come on, Darrell wants to dance.”

The heads disappeared.

Luke looked over his shoulder at Finn. The big man was still standing at the bar, surrounded by a group that was mostly men. As they watched, he bought another round. “When was this?”

“Five years ago this month.”

“And he’s already back in business?”

Jo snorted a laugh and shook her head. “He was never out.”

“What!”

“He’s best buddies with Walter William Hickfield, former governor of the great state of Alaska. Hickfield pulled some strings. Plus he’s known to be the softest touch around for a free fly-in fishing trip. Long as you’re a judge, state court or higher, of course.” She drank. “You know how it works.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

Jo managed a smile, a shrug. “It’s just a story. I write them, the paper prints them, and I move on to the next.”

Luke stared at her.

“She got it on the front page of theNews for five days running,” Jim said.

Jo looked at him, surprised.

“Let’s have another toddy,” he said.