She watched Victoria, but the woman had herself well in hand. She raised her eyes to look at Kate. “I don’t know who that is,” she said in a voice like flint, but Kate heard the quaver beneath.
“Ms. Muravieff-”
“I don’t know him,” Victoria repeated in a stronger voice. “If that’s all, Ms. Shugak, I have work to do.”
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.