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.
16
“It was an anonymous tip,” Brendan told her, hanging up the phone. “A man called nine-one-one and told the dispatcher he’d heard the driver bragging in a bar about getting away with a hit-and-run. And will you please for sweet Christ’s sake sit down?”
Kate was pacing back and forth with a scowl on her face. Mutt had backed herself into a corner, tucking her paws as much beneath her as she could, but it was a very small office and at every half turn, Kate’s left stride would come perilously close to Mutt’s toes. Mutt and Brendan wore identical wary expressions. They’d both seen Kate in this mood before, and both were experienced in the fallout.
“Who’s the driver?” Kate said. “What do we know about him?”
“Kate,” Brendan said heavily, “do you really think Erland Bannister hired some guy to kill his niece and then take the fall for it? Erland Bannister, scion of a family that has roots in Alaska going back to before the gold rush, a family who married into the Native community”—he held up a hand, palm out—“doesn’t matter how it ended or why, because those ties are there, and you better believe both families realize it. Erland Bannister, CEO and majority stockholder of a corporation whose GNP is bigger than the state of Alaska’s and whose payroll is second only to RPetCo’s, with a seat on the board of the Alaska Red Cross, the Humanities Forum, and the Alaska Council on the Arts—hell, I could go on, but you’re a bright girl. You�
�ve got the picture. Do you really believe that Erland Bannister hired someone to take out his niece? And for crissake, why? For hiring you to look into getting her mother, and, may I point out, his sister, out of the clink?”
“Why would he threaten me if there wasn’t something he didn’t want me to find out?”
Brendan gave this the judicial consideration it deserved. “The way I heard it, it sounded more like a bribe,” he said.
She tossed him a look of such scorn that it was only with a strong exercise of his backbone that he managed not to wilt. “That was two nights ago. This afternoon was a threat.”
Again, Brendan considered. “No, I’d have to say none of what you’ve repeated to me could come under the heading of a threat.” Kate turned on him and he shook his head. “He didn’t say anything that could be followed by an ‘or else,’ now, did he? No. He didn’t even tell you to butt out. Near as I can figure, adjusting for the decibel level, of course, all Erland Bannister told you was good-bye.”
“He sure wasn’t upset over Charlotte’s death,” Kate said fiercely. “Fucker was erring more on the side of overjoyed.”
“I’d have to check the statutes to be sure, but I don’t think that’s a crime, Kate.” Brendan reflected. “Of course, I haven’t seen the latest bulletin from John Ashcroft, either.”
Kate came to a halt, clenching the back of the chair across from Brendan’s desk in both hands, as if she’d like to tear it apart. “This situation is bent, Brendan.”
“What situation?” Brendan said. “Look, Kate, I’m sorry, but it seems to me you’re out of a job. It’s closing time.” He looked at the clock. “For both of us. Go home.”
Instead, Kate tracked down Axenia.
Axenia was her cousin, who had moved to Anchorage, married a lobbyist, and had recently had a child. Relations were cool between them for many reasons, but mostly because Kate had been born first and smarter and prettier. The expression on Axenia’s face when she opened the door to her house told Kate that she would just as soon be closing it again immediately. “Kate,” she said evenly, and shifted the drooling toddler on one hip.
A Taint in the Blood Page 22