“That news already out, is it?”
“Well, hell, Kate, there were a few kids around when the body was found.”
“And some of them play for you,” Kate said. “Yeah, I get it. Anyway, yes. Front and center.”
“Ouch.”
She frowned. “You know him well?”
He shrugged. “Well as anybody, I guess.”
He met her eyes with a look of such studied indifference that she stiffened. “He hang with any particular Park rats?”
“Didn’t have many friends that I noticed.” Somebody yelled for a refill, and as he moved down the bar Kate thought she heard him say, “Not a big surprise.”
She watched him pull a tray full of beers and amble over to the table in front of the television, where sat the four Grosdidier brothers and Old Sam Dementieff, taking turns calling the play-by-play and not hesitating to revile the ancestry of the referees every time a whistle blew.
She heard a song she liked, a woman singing about sweet misery, and she wandered over to the jukebox to see who it was.
“Play a song for you, Kate?” George Perry appeared next to her, smoothing out a bill in preparation for feeding it into the slot.
“I like this one,” she said.
“Yeah, Michelle Branch, great album. Want me to pick up one for you next time I’m in Ahtna?”
“Sure. George, did you know Len Dreyer?”
“Len? Yeah, sure. Well.” He shrugged. “He did some work on the hangar for me last August, after that idiot from Anchorage tried to taxi through the wall.” He fixed her with an appraising eye. “This an official interrogation?”
She made a face. “I’m asking some questions for the trooper.”
“Working for Jim, huh?”
“Yes.”
The flatness of the syllable warned him to go no further down that road, and unlike Bobby, George Perry was a man who liked a quiet life.
“Did Dreyer ever talk to you about friends, his birthday, his parents’ names, his hometown, anything? Maybe you needed his Social Security number to make his payroll deductions?”
He grinned at the hopeful note in her voice. “Nope, sorry. Len worked on a strictly cash basis. For me, anyway.”
“For everybody, is what I’m hearing,” Kate said glumly.
At that moment Brenda Souders walked in, all tits and ass and big hair, and George deserted Kate without a backward glance.
“Hey, girl,” someone said. “Looking for a job?”
“I’ve got one, damn it,” Kate said, and turned to face Old Sam. He wasn’t any taller than she was and he probably weighed less, but in this case size didn’t matter. Old Sam Dementieff had a personal authority that sprang directly from the unshakeable conviction that he was right. All the time. The annoying thing was that he usually was.
“You hear about Len Dreyer?” she asked him.
“Who hasn’t?”
“The trooper wants me to ask around.”
Old Sam raised an eyebrow, which made him look even more like a demented leprechaun. “Len Dreyer, huh? Hear he got it point-blank with a shotgun.”
The Bush telegraph, contrary to form, was keeping it right. Usually by now the weapon should have been metamorphosed into a Federation phaser. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t know him much. Him and Dandy came to Cordova to help me tear down the mast and boom on the Freya when I put her in dry dock last September. I was wanting to get the job done before the first snow. Good worker.”
“You didn’t like him?” Kate said, replying more to the feeling behind the words than the words themselves.
Old Sam drained his beer and looked sadly at the empty bottle.
“Come on, Uncle, I’ll buy you another.” She led the way back to the bar and got him a refill. “Tell me about Dreyer.”
“Not much to tell,” Old Sam said. “Showed up on time, knew enough about hydraulics so’s I could trust him with the winch, kept showing up until the job was done. Smiled a lot.”
“That’s it?” Kate said.
“He smiled a lot,” Old Sam repeated, “and he didn’t seem interested in women.”
“He was gay?”
“Didn’t say that,” Old Sam said. “Just I remember one day young Luba Hardt came sashaying by, you know like she does.”
“Young” Luba Hardt was fifty-five if she was a day, but then Old Sam was about a thousand. Everyone looked young to him.
“It was July, and hot,” Old Sam said with relish. “She had her jeans cut up to there and T-shirt cut down to there.” He smacked his lips, and shook his head. “Dreyer barely looked up to say hi.”
It was an exercise in self-control to keep her face straight. “I suppose he could have been playing hard to get.”
Old Sam shook his head. “Don’t think so.”
“Just because he didn’t look at women doesn’t mean he didn’t like them.”
“Didn’t say he didn’t like them,” Sam said. “Just wasn’t interested. Saw it happen a couple of other times, although I admit I mighta been looking for it after that. Can’t be too careful these days, Kate. Guy was gay, he mighta made a pass at me.”
This time Kate resorted to prayer to maintain control. “Thanks, Uncle,” she managed to say, and he took his beer back to the game just in time.
Dandy Mike was in one corner, nuzzling at the neck of a pretty girl, Sally Osterlund, if Kate was not mistaken, Auntie Balasha’s granddaughter. She looked around for a calendar. It was Monday. Quilting night at the Roadhouse was Wednesday. Sally was safe from her grandmother, if not from Dandy.
Well, Sally was of age or Bernie wouldn’t have allowed her to set foot inside the Roadhouse door. Still, Kate wasn’t averse to throwing a monkey wrench into the situation. Dandy Mike spread it around a little too generously for safety’s sake. She walked over to the table. “Hey, Dandy.”
Dandy’s right hand, caught in the act of sliding up the back of Sally’s T-shirt, descended again to a more discreet level. He didn’t dump Sally out of his lap onto the floor, though. “Hey, Kate. You know Sally.”
“Hey, Sally.”
“Hey, Kate.” Sally sprawled back in Dandy’s lap and gave Kate a companionable grin.
So much for the monkey wrench. “Dandy, did you know Len Dreyer?”
“Sure,” Dandy said. “Everybody knew Len.” He caught on. “You checking into his death?”
“I’m asking a few questions is all.”
“Jim ask you to?”
Since Jim Chopin had moved his base of operations to Niniltna, Dandy’s father Billy had been after Jim to put Dandy to work as his assistant. Billy was Niniltna’s tribal chief and not someone Jim wanted to irrevocably piss off, so he was ducking the issue by saying he wanted a bona fide VPSO, or village public safety officer, one trained in criminal statute and procedure at the state trooper academy in Sitka, to back him up. Not, he didn’t say, a rounder of epic proportions whose penchant for partying was only exceeded by his passion for gossip. Although the latter quality could be considered an asset in the law enforcement line of work, Jim absolutely did not want the details of whatever case he was working made known all over the Park. If he hired Dandy Mike, he might as well get Bobby to broadcast them nightly over Park Air.
Jim had in fact been so circumspect that Billy now regarded the situation as a done deal, with the result that Dandy, used to his father fixing little things like DUIs and unplanned parenthood for him, regarded himself as Jim’s de facto right-hand man. It followed that he did not look kindly upon Kate when she infringed on what he considered to be his territory.
He was in for a serious reality check in the near future, Kate thought, but that was Jim’s job, not hers. “Yes, Jim wants me to find out what I can about Len, who his friends were, the jobs he worked lately. What can you tell me?”
The hand on Sally’s waist regained the ability to move. Sally squirmed. Dandy bent his head and whispered something in her ear, and she giggled.