A Taint in the Blood

15

Kate left Hiland Mountain ready to wash her hands of the whole damn Bannister clan. Instead, she went to the Pioneer Home to talk to Max.

He was getting beaten at checkers by a wizened old man who cackled like a hen every time he made a double jump, and he was cackling pretty much nonstop when Kate marched up. Max greeted her with evident relief. “Shugak!” he said. “My girlfriend,” he explained to his opponent.

“I need to talk to you,” Kate said.

“I thought I might be seeing you.”

“You catch the news last night?”

“Don’t sleep much anymore,” he said. Max noted the militant gleam in her eye, the stubborn set of her jaw, and the way her shoulders somehow resembled a battering ram. “About time for lunch, ain’t it?” he said.

She took him back to Club Paris. The staff recognized him (and Kate, who had left a very nice tip behind last time) and upon request, the maitre d‘ seated them in the very last booth. They’d get a lot of action from the kitchen but wouldn’t be seen by the other diners.

“Is this a three-martini luncheon?” Max said, settling in for the duration with a look of anticipation on his wrinkled face.

“If I drank, it would be a five-martini lunch,” Kate said, “but I’m in kind of a hurry, Max.”

“Like that, eh?” he said, and ordered a double, “and keep a watch, darlin‘, ”cause when the glass is empty, I’d like another ready to go at my elbow, okay?“

The waitress, smiling, promised to keep an eye, and when they were served, she vanished discreetly. Max took a long, continuous swallow and put the glass down with a loud smack of his lips. “That’s the stuff,” he said, and gave her a long, considering look. “You don’t drink?”

Kate shook her head.

“Recovering?”

She shook her head again.

He nodded. “Opposed to firewater on general principles, then. You’re missing out.”

Kate, who would have made all the alcohol in the world disappear with the snap of her fingers if it were in her power, said, “I don’t think so. I need your help, Max. I’ve got two people dead and one person wounded and I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

He settled into his seat like a race car driver waiting for the flag. “Tell me all about it, Kate my girl.”

She took a deep breath and then laid it all out, in order-the sequence of events that had begun when she drove into the clearing in front of her house and found Charlotte Muravieff waiting for her.

Max grunted. “Who’s the guy in the hospital again?”

“Kurt Pletnikoff. I hired him to look for Eugene Muravieff and Henry Cowell.”

“Did he find them?”

“He called me and told me to meet him at this cabin at Jewel Lake. I went there and two men started shooting at me. They’d already shot Kurt in the chest, and another man in the head, probably earlier that morning. I found this in the dead man’s bedroom.” She produced the photo of the three kids.

Max got out a pair of reading glasses and perched them on the tip of his beaky nose. “That would be William, Oliver, and Charlotte Bannister when they were kids, be my guess.”

She produced the head shot of the dead man.

“Eugene Muravieff,” Max said immediately.

“Victoria says she doesn’t know him.”

Max’s eyebrows went up. “Doesn’t know the father of her three children, does she? Interesting.”

“And now Charlotte’s dead, too.”

“Yeah.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’re off the case?”

Kate’s jaw became very much in evidence.

“I didn’t think so,” he said, without his usual sparkle.

“What?” she said.

He sighed. “Ah hell, maybe I’m getting old. I’m thinking they’ve already killed twice, attempted to kill twice more. Pursuing this could be hazardous to your health.”

“Not to mention the people working for me.”

“He over twenty-one?”

“What?”

“This Kurt guy. He over twenty-one?”

“He’s in his thirties, what’s that got to do with anything?”

She snapped out the words, and Max didn’t bother hiding a grin. “It’s got to do with him being a grown man, and you not being his mom.”

She shrugged, uncomfortable.

“You didn’t kill Charlotte, either,” he added, “just in case you were feeling all-omnipotent over there. Any identification in the cabin with the dead guy?”

“There was a wallet with twenty bucks and change in it, along with a driver’s license that identified him as Gene Salamantoff.”

“Salamantoff are shirttail relatives of the Muravieffs, as I recall. Be easy to get one of them to share his social security number for a fake license.” The waitress twitched by, and since she was a kind young woman, she put a little extra into it when she saw Max watching. He gave a sigh of pure appreciation. “Nowadays, legs on a woman are just basic transportation, you know? Used to be a pleasure watching them walk. Used to be they took care of their butts and walking was an art form. Now it’s just a butt in a bag and they could care less how they sling it around. But that girl, I’m happy to say, is an exception.”

Kate looked at him.

With some asperity, Max said “Well, pardon me all to hell for expressing an appreciation for one of the finer things in life.”

Kate rubbed her forehead. “Could we just concentrate for a minute here, Max? I’ve two dead and one injured, and it all seems to be related to an arson murder that happened thirty-one years ago.”

“Victoria did it,” Max said.

“She might have killed her son,” Kate said, “but her alibi for her daughter and her ex is kind of solid. Look, could we-”

“What?”

“For the sake of argument, could we imagine for a moment that Victoria didn’t do it? And that if she didn’t, who had the next best motive?”

She watched him take a mouthful of martini and swirl it around. The man had to have a cast-iron stomach, not to mention a worm in his gut that sucked up all the alcohol he downed and got drunk for him. She waited, patient and not entirely without hope.

In her experience, retired cops were less cynical than cops on the job because people hadn’t been lying to them on a daily basis lately and they were once again willing to allow doubt into their lives. If she could get Max to speculate, maybe it would open up a line or two she could follow.

In the meantime, Max had made a decision. “Okay,” Max said, “maybe it wasn’t meant to be murder. Maybe it was only meant to be a warning.”

“To Victoria?”

“Maybe. Maybe to Erland, or the old man. Did you see the old man at that party you went to?”

“The old man? You mean Jasper, Erland’s and Victoria’s father? I thought he was dead.”

“Not yet, although he must be even older than me by now.”

“No, I didn’t see him. Why?”

The stubble on Max’s chin rasped beneath his fingers. “Jasper had him a reputation. You ever hear the story about Richie Constantine?”

Kate shook her head.

“Before your time. You know about Jasper’s wife, Erland’s and Victoria’s mother.” Kate shook her head, and Max snorted. “They teaching you newbies anything these days? Jasper had a mistress. Her name was Ruby Jo, Ruby Jo Lawson. Rumor had it she was working the back rooms at the Mustang Club when they met, and he took her out of there and set her up in her own little house in Spenard, where he visited regularly. About that same time, another local businessman, Calvin Esterhaus, was going up against Jasper in some financial deal or other, had to do with oil leases somewheres, or that was the rumor. He told Jasper to back off, Jasper wouldn’t, and Calvin hired Richie Constantine to make Jasper see the light.

“Richie Constantine was a small-time thug who had the single virtue of loyalty. Some people say he had some kind of a thing with Calvin.” Max shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t know. Alls I know is that Calvin was one of the sicker sons a bitches to walk the streets of any town, anywhere, and Anchorage was unlucky enough for him to call it home. Richie was his button man, his bag man, his enforcer, you name it. Calvin said jump and Richie said how high.

“Calvin told him to put a scare into Jasper, and Richie watched and waited until Jasper was away from home, and he went inside and raped and killed Ruby Jo.”

Max brooded for a bit. “We knew right away, of course. We arrested Richie within twenty-four hours. We even had ourselves something of a case-physical evidence linking him to the scene, not a half-bad description from an eyewitness, who even picked his photo out of a book of head shots.” He looked at Kate. “So we let him go.”

Kate stared at him. “What?”

“We let him go,” Max repeated, and waved over another martini. When it came and Max had appreciated the waitress’s walk enough, he said, “It was a different time, Kate. The word came down to turn Richie loose.” He smiled, and it wasn’t a nice smile. “He didn’t want to go. At one point, we had to pry his hands loose of the bars. But we tossed him out on his ear.”

Kate was beginning to understand. “When did you find him?”

“We didn’t.” He paused, enjoying Kate’s expression for a moment. “We found Calvin, though. Next morning, floating facedown in McHugh Creek. His dick was cut off and stuffed in his mouth.”

“Jesus,” she said.

Max nodded. “Yeah.”

“And Richie?”

“Richie?” Max’s mouth twisted up at one corner. “Richie was next found on the payroll of Jasper Bannister.”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

Max shook his head. “Oh no. Jasper appreciated loyalty and efficiency in an employee, especially when he needed somebody to get at those hard-to-reach areas.” Max paused, clearly enjoying the expression on Kate’s face, and added, “Of course, there was that whole disappearing thing Richie did during the pipeline days-oh, say a year before oil in. Richie just flat disappeared. You know that rumor that kept floating around, about somebody finding a body in the pipeline when they walked the first pig in front of the oil from Prudhoe to Valdez? I always thought that must have been Richie.”

In spite of herself, Kate couldn’t repress a shiver. Seeing it, Max nodded. “Calvin was an amateur compared to Jasper.” He saw her expression. “What?”

“I had a case this summer. A guy got killed in the Park. Turned out he was a baby raper, on the run from the law. We had the hell of time identifying him. He didn’t have a driver’s license or a pilot’s license or a fishing license or a hunting license. He didn’t have a social security number. There was a screwup with the fingerprints, and we didn’t know until way late in the game that he’d done time, let alone been in the army. Hell, he never even applied for a permanent fund dividend check. By then, I knew we had a vie who didn’t want to be found. I never did know who he didn’t want to be found by.”

“So?”

She met his eyes and said softly, “One of his victims was a Bannister girl.”

Max pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. “Yeah,” he said finally, “I’d have run, too.”

Kate digested all this new information for a moment. “Like father like son, you think?”

“Erland?” It was Max’s turn to think. “I don’t know. I never heard so, but I never heard different, either.”

“He could be riding on his father’s reputation.”

“It would be enough for a while,” Max said, “but not forever. Sooner or later, he’d have to make his own bones.” He drained his glass. “You said Victoria was fighting with him and her father back then, in public, something to do with the family business.”

“They were laying off union employees and replacing them with contract hires. Victoria thought that sucked and said so, right out in front of God and everybody.”

“Reason enough to get you killed, in Jasper’s book,” Max said.

“But his own grandson?”

Max looked exasperated. “Are you deaf, girl? Have you been listening at all to what I been telling you?” He fixed Kate with a stern look. “Two things. One, Victoria could have threatened to expose whatever shenanigans was going on over to the family firm, and her house could have been burned down as a warning, and the boy’s death would’ve been collateral damage. After all, Victoria and Charlotte were gone, the arsonist could have thought the house was empty.”

Kate nodded.

“Two, the arson could have been either an attempt on or a warning to Eugene, not Victoria. He might have been gone, but his kids were still living there, weren’t they?”

Kate’s mouth opened and closed once or twice. Max regarded her, not without satisfaction. “Didn’t think of that, did you now, missie?”

Kate rubbed her forehead. “Fuck,” she said, and saw Max wince. Like he said, he came from another time, when women didn’t use those words. “Sorry, Max,” she said, and then she swore again. “Sorry, Max, I almost forgot,” she said, pulling out the photograph of the young woman she’d found in Eugene Muravieff’s cabin. “Do you know who this is?”

Max picked up the photo and smacked his lips. “Oh my yes,” he said, “I surely do. There wasn’t a red-blooded all-American boy in Anchorage at that time who didn’t. Talk about a honey pot. Mmmm, mmmm.”

“Does the honey pot have a name?” Kate said.

“Sure,” Max said. “Wanda Gajewski.”

“Wanda Gajewski,” Kate said. She took the picture back and looked at it. “Wanda Gajewski, Ernie Gajewski’s sister?”

“That’s the one. She went to high school with Victoria’s kids. Was a classmate of William’s, I think.”

“Okay,” Kate said, “what we have here in policespeak is a clue. Ernie Gajewski is the guy who bought Eugene Muravieff’s set-net permit.”

“Really,” Max said. “That’s interesting.”

“Why?”

“Because Ernie Gajewski drowned off Augustine Island when he was just a boy, swimming from the shore to his dad’s seiner.”

Kate stared at him. After a moment, she said, “And this case just keeps on getting more and more fun. Why would Eugene have a picture of Wanda, his oldest son’s teenage classmate?”

Max drained his martini with the air of a man who knew that was all he was going to get, and grinned his evil grin at the woman sitting across from him. “Because Wanda Gajewski was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She was the reason Victoria divorced Eugene.”

Kate called Brendan and in five minutes had an address to go with Wanda’s name. “She’s got a phone number,” Brendan told her, “but it’s unlisted.” He gave her that, too. “Anything you want to tell me, Kate?”

“I’m wading through a pit of snakes and they all bite.”

“Okay, not loving the visual,” Brendan said.

“Not loving the reality, either,” Kate said, and hung up.

Wanda’s house was in Windermere, the split-level four-bedroom, two-bathroom floor plan so dear to the hearts of developers during the sixties and seventies. Kate pulled into the driveway and knocked on the door. No answer.

She went next door, same floor plan, different paint job. No answer. Same thing with the house on the other side. It was a sad day when the women had to go to work outside the home and not be there when Kate needed answers to questions.

She went across the street to a third house, this one with the biggest Winnebago Kate had ever seen parked in the driveway, and struck gold. The door opened at the first knock. A plump woman with thick white hair cut short stood there, dressed in brightly flowered polyester trimmed with plaid braid in rainbow hues. Kate blinked involuntarily, and the woman chuckled. “Pretty, aren’t I? ”Dayglo Diane,“ that’s what my friends call me. But we need something to brighten up these long, dreary arctic winters, don’t you think?”

It was only August, but Dayglo Diane wasn’t really wanting an answer. “Come in, come in,” she said, sweeping Kate irresistibly inside, “you, too, little doggy,” and she patted Mutt on the head. Mutt didn’t quite know how to take that and looked at Kate with a quizzical eye.

“I saw you knocking at Wanda’s house. Are you looking for her? She’s probably at work you know. Would you like some iced tea? I always think there’s nothing like iced tea on a hot day, with lashings of lemon and of course simply packed with ice, don’t you?”

Kate found herself ensconced on a wide couch in front of an entertainment center bristling with electronics. There were four remotes on the coffee table. Where was Bobby Clark when she needed him? Mutt was sitting next to her, one ear cocked toward the kitchen, as if to say, She’s still in there. There’s still time to get out of here.

But then their hostess bustled in, carrying a large and extremely well-laden tray and set it down on the coffee table. “Sugar? No? Not even phony sugar? Imagine that. Here’s a nice biscuit for you, doggy.” Mutt took the treat gingerly in her teeth, lips drawn back as far as they would go so as not to be contaminated. A snack for Mutt meant something with fur or feathers, something usually going in the opposite direction as fast as possible, something requiring pursuit. Except for Bernie’s beef jerky, Mutt didn’t hold with processed pasteurized anything, especially if it contained the hair and bones and hooves of any animal she had not caught and killed herself. She probably wanted Kate’s case solved even more than Kate did, because when it was solved, they could both head back to the Park, where nobody yelled at you for chasing the geese or harassing the moose. She held the biscuit in her teeth, looking pained, until Kate took pity and told her hostess, who had yet to introduce herself by her full name, that Mutt was allergic to dog biscuits.

“Oh my, how simply dreadful, I’ve never heard of such a thing, well, what can I get her, let me just-”

“She’s fine,” Kate said, staying her hostess with one hand on her arm. “I-”

“-get you some cookies, I just got back from driving the Alcan up from Grand Junction, that’s in Colorado you know, and whenever I come through Canada I lay in supplies, you know you can’t get Dare cookies in this country and they are just the absolute best cookies there are, try one of these Maple Leafs, you’re just going to love them-”

“-was wondering-”

“-and then of course I have to lay in a supply of two-two-two’s-you know those marvelous aspirin they have there that that silly old FDA won’t let us have in this country, the Canadians are so much saner about drugs than we are, I’ve thought about immigrating, really I have, did you know that the Yukon is actively soliciting immigrants, I’ve half a mind to fill out an application, the reason I know about this I came back by way of Dawson City and there were advertisements in all the papers asking for qualified people to become Canadians, and I’m sure I’d qualify, after all Mr. Hockness left me quite well off, dear man, and of course I came home by way of the Top of the World Highway, have you ever driven that road my dear, well you ought to. There is nothing between you and the sky-”

“-if you know-”

“-and though you wouldn’t think to look at it my Winnebago can handle some pretty rough road, so we just turned right at the Y and went up to Eagle, what a charming little town, if you’ve never been you should really go, although I couldn’t believe it when I saw the Holland America bus in front of me, my dear, the road, there are places when I swear if you went off it you’d fall five hundred feet before you fell into the Fortymile River-”

“-Wanda Gajewski,” Kate said loudly, because it seemed the only way to be heard.

“Of course I know Wanda, dear, I told you, I saw you knocking on Wanda’s door, and then of course I saw you knocking on Genevieve’s door and then Margaret’s door but of course they both work during the day, all three of them do, they’re never home hardly ever at night either, sometimes I wonder why they own houses at all, but Margaret owns her own flower shop and makes a good living from it, too, and you’ll never guess but Genevieve is a police officer, can you imagine, how adventurous of her! And Wanda certainly is old enough to retire why she’s as old as I am, although you’d never know it to look at her, she’s been dyeing her hair for the last thirty years, even if she stopped dating after the trial although I must say she’s kept her figure marvelously well-”

“After the trial,” Kate, desperate and her mouth full of Dare Maple Leaf Cream, said thickly. “After the trial, she stopped dyeing her hair?”

“Oh, you know about the trial, my, what a dreadful thing, Wanda’s parents were good friends of mine and they were so mortified, all those reporters all over the place and people taking your picture-” the sparkle in her hostess’s eye told Kate that she hadn’t minded the attention “-of course they all wanted to know all about Wanda and I couldn’t lie, could I, no, certainly not, I was raised to tell the strict truth or my mother would know the reason why and my father would get out the belt, ours was a very traditional home, my dear, you look Native, are you Native, you must be with that beautiful black hair, it just shines like coal in the sun, it was the first thing I noticed when I looked out the window and saw you on Wanda’s doorstep, but why don’t you let it grow, dearie, her hair is a woman’s crowning glory you know, it used to be we’d keep it up during the day and then let it down at night when only our husbands would see it, that’s the way it should be but you young girls nowadays have your own ideas about things and I suppose-”

“Wanda has a job?” Kate said. It was rude, but there really wasn’t any other choice. She wasn’t eating any more cookies, either, she didn’t care if this woman stocked every one that Dare made.

“Of course she does, and a good one, too, with the state, you know, down at the new courthouse, in fact I think she might be clerking for a judge now, if I understood her-wait, where are you going, but you haven’t finished your tea!”

Wanda Gajewski was sitting behind a large desk in a plush foyer. “Yes?” she said pleasantly when Kate came in.

“Wanda Gajewski?” Kate said.

“Yes. May I help you?”

“My name is Kate Shugak. I’m a private investigator, hired by Charlotte Muravieff to look into the death of her brother William.”

“But he was-”

“Killed thirty-one years ago,” Kate said, “yes, I know.”

“And Charlotte is dead; she was killed by a hit-and-run driver-”

“Day before yesterday, yes, I know that, too.”

“And Charlotte’s mother was convicted of setting the fire that killed her son,” Wanda said, her fine-skinned broad brow wrinkled.

Dayglo Diane was right, Wanda Gajewski had kept her figure marvelously well. Kate now understood completely the reverence in Max’s tone when he’d spoken of her. Her spectacular breasts were displayed to advantage in a blue twin-sweater set, and her equally spectacular long legs in a pencil-slim black calf-length skirt. Their length was enhanced by the three-inch heels she wore. It made Kate’s feet hurt just to look at them.

Her hair was a rich chestnut brown, which set off her pale skin. Her eyes were large and thickly lashed and carefully made up. Pearl studs in her ears matched the string of pearls around her neck. She looked like Coco Chanel must have looked on a very good day. She reminded Kate of every Doris Day movie Kate had ever seen, with or without Rock Hudson, back before everyone knew Hudson was gay.

She was enough of a knockout now. In her teens, she must have been breathtaking.

“Yes,” Kate said, “Victoria was convicted of the crime. But Charlotte didn’t think her mother did it, and she hired me to find out who did. I was doing a little research at the library, and I came across your name.”

“How did you find out where I worked?”

“Your neighbor told me you worked at the state courthouse.”

“Margaret?”

Kate shook her head. “A woman across the street.”

“Dayglo Diane,” Wanda said with a wry smile. “She’s the only one of us home at this time of day.”

“She is colorful,” Kate said, matching Wanda’s smile. “Look, it’s almost five. Could I buy you a cup of coffee, and ask you some questions? I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

Wanda was silent for a moment.

“Please,” Kate said.

Wanda said finally, “I suppose anyone who runs the Dayglo Diane gauntlet and survives deserves a hearing.” There was a smile in her eyes that had Kate revising the “bimbo” label she had had ready to stick on Eugene Muravieff’s mistress’s file.

Kate got Mutt and they walked down past the old federal building, bought coffee from M.A., and sat on the grass. The tourists, mostly retired people bundling up against the sixty-two-degree temperature in jackets, hats, and thick socks, grazed through the carts hawking T-shirts silk-screened with the legend unless you’re the lead dog, the view never changes, tiny seals carved from ivory, and necklaces made of strands of small round garnets so hard-polished, they looked almost black. They mingled with workers from downtown offices dressed in suits and ties, many of them pausing for a moment to turn their faces up to the sun, eyes closed, determined to catch every last ray because they knew the first snow could be less than a month away.

Echoing Kate’s thoughts, Wanda said, “I wonder how many of these we have left?”

“Feels good,” Kate said, closing her own eyes briefly. Mutt, lying on the grass next to her, pulled her head back in an enormous yawn. Kate heard a clicking sound and looked up to see a woman dressed in navy polyester pants with a matching bomber jacket and a white knit cap pulled down over gray hair lowering a camera. “Thanks so much!” the woman trilled, and trotted off toward a man of the same age who was staring yearningly toward F Street Station and the bar visible through its window.

“You’re a tourist attraction,” Wanda said.

Mutt looked bored. Kate shook her head and took a sip of coffee. It was excellent, rich and strong.

Maybe it was Kate’s refusal to get mad at the tourist. Maybe it was her appreciation of the sun and the coffee. Maybe Wanda thought that something that had happened over thirty years before couldn’t hurt her. Whatever it was, without prompting Wanda began to talk. Her voice was low and precise, unfaltering, unembarrassed. She laid things out in chronological order, stating the facts without bias or self-pity.

“I was dating William,” she said, “and then he brought me home, and I met Eugene. We were attracted to each other, but he was married, and I didn’t do that kind of thing.”

“He was also-what-twenty years older than you.”

Wanda didn’t take offense. “It didn’t matter,” she said. “I wanted him, and I knew he wanted me.”

“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?”

Wanda began to rise, and Erland took her hand and helped her to her feet. “I’ve got to get back to work,” Wanda told Kate.

It was past five o’clock. “I’ll walk you back,” Kate said.

“No, that’s all right.” Wanda attempted a smile. “Thanks for the coffee. Mr. Bannister,” she said without looking at him, and was off, giving the impression of running without quite breaking her stride.

Erland Bannister watched her move away with an appreciative eye-Max would have approved of Wanda’s walk-and then looked down at Kate. “And how do you know our Wanda?”

He was still smiling, but Kate could almost hear the big-cat snarl in it. “A business acquaintance,” she said, and moved to a trash container to toss the coffee cups.

He kept pace next to her. “Really? Something to do with the case you were working on for my niece?”

“That would come under the heading of confidential, Erland,” Kate said coolly.

“But why?” Erland said, spreading his hands, the very picture of sweet reason. “My niece is dead, Kate. You no longer have an employer. Therefore you no longer have a case, and there is no longer any need to go around asking questions, particularly of people who would much rather leave the past right where it is.”

“Don’t you want to know who killed your niece?” Kate said.

His smile faded and his eyes widened. “Didn’t you hear? The police have the driver in custody.”

Kate had been working on keeping her face impassive, but she couldn’t help reacting to this.

Erland was watching her like a hawk, and he said, “Oh yes, a short while ago.” He shook his head admiringly. “It’s amazing what these new police technologies can do, how swiftly miscreants can be brought to justice. We can only hope that the man who so wantonly and carelessly killed my niece will come before Judge Berlin. Randy knows what to do with people like him, although I still think it’s a pity that the constitutional convention chose to omit capital punishment.” He checked his watch. “Well, will you look at the time. Best I be getting on home.” He took Kate’s hand and she let it lie limp in his. “I probably won’t be seeing you again, Kate, but let me tell you just what a pleasure it’s been.” He let his eyes run appreciatively over her body and back up to her face. “I hope we see each other again sometime soon, under better circumstances.”

“Erland,” Kate said. She knew it wasn’t smart, knew it was provocative and dangerous and very probably productive of threat to life and limb, but she couldn’t leave things like this, and she certainly couldn’t let him have the last word.

He turned, the smile still on his face, his eyes alert, attentive, even caressing.

“Your niece, Charlotte?”

“Yes?” he said.

“She paid me in full in advance,” Kate said. She didn’t wait to see his expression change, she just turned and walked away.

She didn’t look back to see if he admired her walk. She only hoped the tremor in her knees didn’t show.

Or that it looked like she’d rather be running.