Part 11 (2/2)
”Did you see anything last night?”
”Like what?”
”Like anything, like any goings-on over at the Meanys'. Do you know what Cal Meany's drifter looks like?”
”The no-namer?” Without hesitation Mary pointed to where it rode at anchor. ”Sure. Saw it come back last night.”
”You did?” Kate sat up straight. ”What time?”
Mary squinted thoughtfully at the horizon. ”Was about the time the girls left, midnight or thereabouts. Well, maybe closer to one.”
”Did the aunts see him, too?”
”They might have. They were in their skiff by then, and I was waving from the porch. We didn't get a chance to comment.”
Gull had seen Meany in Cordova a little before ten-twenty. If Mary saw him at one, there was just enough time for a drifter with that much horsepower to get from point to point. ”Could you see Meany?”
Mary shrugged. ”Sure. He was on the flying bridge.”
”Did you see his boy?”
Mary shook her head. ”There was a light on in the galley, though. He could have been inside.” She frowned.
”What?”
”Come to think of it, Meany had to s.h.i.+nny down off the flying bridge to drop anchor. If the boy had been on board, he would have been in the bow, wouldn't he?”
Kate wished her sympathies were not quite so much with the boy; when she got good news of this kind it made her heart lift, and it was much too early in the investigation for her heart to be doing anything of the kind.
”Clumsy,” Mary added.
”Who?”
”Meany, last night. Stumbling around the boat like it was midnight January instead of midnight July. Course it was the Fourth, he could have been drunk,” Mary added. ”Most of them were. Idiots.”
”Yeah,” Kate said, but absently. Gull had said something like that, something about Meany nearly stripping the gears on the drifter. Clumsy, on deck as well as on the throttle? The stories Mary and Gull told didn't square with what Kate had seen. Meany had moved with a feral grace, quick, nimble, never putting a foot wrong, always reaching for the proper tool and wielding it with a casual competence that elicited, however reluctantly, admiration and even envy.
She sat up with a jerk.
”What?” Mary said.
”Huh? Oh. Nothing.” Kate relaxed again, eyes narrowed in thought. If Meany hadn't been acting like Meany, either at the small boat harbor or in Alaganik, maybe it hadn't been Meany on the boat. Maybe it had been someone else. Maybe even the murderer, trying to extend the span of Meany's life while he, or she, set up an alibi.
Mary said, ”Just what was all that business today with you and Old Sam and the wet clothes?”
”What? Oh.” Kate drained her mug. ”I behaved like a horse's a.s.s, and he pitched me into the bay for it.”
Mary grinned. ”That's my boy.”
Kate wondered when in the last hundred years anyone had called Old Sam Dementieff a boy. Probably only Mary Balashoff could get away with it. She nudged Old Sam with her foot.
He'd been dozing, his head resting on the back of his chair, his mouth open and a gentle, inoffensive little snore rippling out at regular intervals. ”Ggggsnort?” he said, his chair falling forward on its two front legs. ”What?” He knuckled his eyes and yawned, his bones popping audibly. ”Guess I must have dozed off there. Sorry.”
”We're not,” Mary said maliciously. ”Gave us a chance to practice our girl talk.”
Immediately suspicious, Old Sam demanded, ”Girl talk? What? What did I miss?”
”We'll never tell,” Kate said, and got to her feet. ”Want to take a ride up the creek?”
”What, up to the fish camp?” Kate nodded and Old Sam said, ”Been a while since I got a chance to visit with the old girls.”
For ”visit” read ”aggravate,” Kate thought, but was wise enough not to say so out loud. One dunking a day was enough.
By some trick of the slanting rays of the setting sun the water a.s.sumed the color and viscosity of molten gold, seeming to slow their forward motion while at the same time lending a touch of splendor to the journey. Kate dipped a finger over the side and watched tiny eddies appear, looking like the gilt tracings she'd seen in a book once, something elaborate and baroque and ItalianBernini?
She shook her head, glad she didn't have to justify her smile to Old Sam. Impossible to explain that a trick of light on water made her think of a sculptor born on the other side of the world four hundred years before. Although if he was going to start quoting Shakespeare at her she might suspect him of taking telecourses from the University of Alaska.
She pa.s.sed half a dozen bears fis.h.i.+ng and eating and roughhousing on a sandbank, three eagles playing tag in the treetops and a couple of white-tail deer drinking out of the creek, which in her opinion paid for the gas before she even got to fish camp. To put the icing on the cake, Mutt was waiting for her when the skiff nudged ash.o.r.e, and greeted Kate with a joyous bark and a generous swipe of the tongue. Kate wiped her face on the sleeve of her s.h.i.+rt and gave Mutt an affectionate cuff up alongside the head. ”Where were you when I needed you?” she said.
”And what's that supposed to mean?”
She looked up and saw Jack at the top of the bank. ”I was attacked by Jedi this afternoon.”
”I beg your pardon?”
”Never mind. It's better you should not know.” She gave Mutt a final pat. ”But you're coming with me when I have to go back there.” Mutt appeared willing.
”Kate!” Johnny's head appeared above the top of the gra.s.s. ”You're back!” He catapulted down the bank and grabbed her hand. ”Come on! Come see what I've been doing!”
What he'd been doing was helping the four old women pick fish out of the fish wheel, head them, gut them, fillet them so that they were split into two halves still attached at the tail and hang them to dry. The rack inside the smokehouse was full, and the little fire beneath was smoking nicely. Some of the strips were already turning a rich, dark red. Kate's mouth watered. When the process was complete, the resulting product, when eaten, would smell up the house for three days afterwards, and your jaws would ache for at least that long, but oh, the taste. There was nothing like Auntie Joy's smoke fish, nothing.
But the rule was you didn't get any if you hadn't helped the process along, and in the waning light Kate pitched in, splitting lengths of alder (like Old Sam, Auntie Joy swore by alder for smoke fish) and taking a turn feeding the fire. Fish smoking was a long process, involving days and, depending on the weather, sometimes a whole week, during which time the fire could not be allowed to go out.
By the time the sun went down they were sitting around a fireplace constructed out of smooth rocks excavated from the stream bed. It wasn't really cold enough for one, but when you have been in and out of an Alaskan creek a dozen times in one day, the warmth of an open flame is a welcome thing. There was something very social about a fire, too, Kate thought, looking at the faces seated around it. Balasha and Edna had their heads bent over a quilt, gnarled fingers deft with needle and thread. It was a forget-me-not pattern, and Kate wished she had the guts to ask for it when it was done. Forget-me-nots were her favorite flower, the first to bud in the spring, the last to lose its blossoms in the fall, a tiny, exquisite, blue-petaled work of natural art. Balasha and Edna had appli-qued a delicate forget-me-not in the center of every square; when finished, the quilt was going to be drop-dead gorgeous. ”You just made a forget-me-not quilt,” Kate said, remembering the quilting bee at Bernie's the previous spring. They hadn't given her that one, either.
Edna bit off a thread. ”We cut out pieces for four, same time all. Then we make.”
Kate tried to sound casual. ”So, who is this one for?”
Edna c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. ”You marrying up soon, Katya?”
Kate had to shake her head, and Edna heaved a mournful sigh and shook her own in response. ”Then I guess this one we make for Dinah.”
”She got the last one,” Kate protested. The wedding was coming up the first week of September, over the Labor Day weekend, after fis.h.i.+ng season and before hunting season. It was going to be a fly-in affair since Bobby had friends from Metlakatla to Nome who had expressed a firm desire to witness the event. While everyone in the Park hoped that the ceremony would precede the birth of Dinah and Bobby's first child, Dinah was already the general size and shape of a Babylonian fertility G.o.ddess. Already on tap as best man and maid of honor, Kate figured she might as well add G.o.dmother to her list of wedding day duties.
But she stuck to the point. ”Dinah already got a quilt, she said, trying not to pout and whining instead.
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