He laughed out loud this time, and she was forced into a chuckle herself. "I didn't mean it that way," she said. "Or mostly not. I'd just rather he spent some time under the hood before he started driving himself. He should know how to change the oil and a flat and the points and plugs. You know."
"No," he said.
She looked at him, amazed and a little scornful. "You don't know how to change a flat?"
"In theory, I do," he said. "Never had to, though. And I would rather I never had to."
"You will," Kate said with certainty and perhaps with some smugness mixed in. "Probably in winter. Probably January. The middle of the night. You'll be barreling down the road and one of your tires will pick up an old railroad spike and that'll be it, you'll have to stop and get your hands dirty."
"Or I could call you for help," he said. "You do know how to change a tire."
"That I do," she said.
"I'd expect there to be a price," he said.
"You'd expect correctly," she said.
"And I'd expect to pay it," he said, "in full," and he grinned at her.
The combination of wide grin, crinkled blue eyes, and rumpled dark blond hair was enough to make a grown woman sigh, but if Kate did sigh she kept it to herself. No point in giving Chopper Jim any leverage. Six-foot-four to her five feet, he outweighed her by seventy pounds and was as white as she was Native. Not to mention that he was a serial womanizer and she was strictly a one-man woman. He'd never expressed any interest in having children and here she was, a foster mother, and the kid was the son of Jim's ex-rival for Kate's affections, no less. Plus Jim was a cop and she was a PI.
By any sane standard of measurement, they shouldn't be here. Wherever here was. It's not like either one of them knew.
He ate the last bite of cake and washed it down with the rest of his coffee. "So, where is the kid?"
"At Annie's, splitting wood for her winter supply."
He snorted. "Sure he is."
Annie Mike was the guardian of one Vanessa Cox, Johnny's best bud ever since he'd arrived in the Park. Vanessa had been a gawky and awkward child who was growing into a very attractive young woman. Neither Jim nor Kate held out much hope that Johnny hadn't noticed. "That's my story and I'm sticking to it," Kate said.
"You two have the talk?"
"About seventeen times. I even gave him a box of condoms." She smiled at the memory. "He nearly died."
He laughed. "I bet." He stood up and pulled her to her feet, stepping in close. "Did we have the talk?"
His teeth nibbled at her ear. Her eyes drooped, her nipples hardened, her thighs loosened. 'Twas ever thus with Jim, and it would have annoyed her if she hadn't seen the pulse beating frantically at the base of his throat. "We did," she said, her voice the merest thread of sound.
"Thank god for that," he said, and led her upstairs.
Mutt returned from an extended lope around the homestead, her daily constitutional, nosed the lever handle on the door open, and bounded inside. She had been alerted to the presence of her favorite trooper by his truck in the clearing outside and was impatient to demonstrate her affection upon his person.
Instead, she paused just inside the door to cock a sapient ear at the ceiling. She listened for a moment, and then, displaying a tact it was a shame no one was there to see, quietly let herself out again.
TWO
The following weekend Kate and Johnny were under the hood of a 1981 Ford F-150 short-bed pickup truck, acquired from the son of one of Auntie Balasha's childhood friends, who had died in Ahtna at the age of ninety-seven after a life spent smoking like a chimney, drinking like a fish, and marrying seven times, which, as the son told Kate, "should be a lesson to us all." The truck had less than 75,000 miles on it and the son had sold it to Johnny for $2,500. It was dark blue, the bed offered up only a few rust spots after the most minute inspection, and Kate had thought on the day of purchase and thought now that it was a steal. She had even made a half-hearted attempt to offer the seller more money, an offer the son, an affable man in spite of being named Zebulon Porkryfki, had waved off. "I think Gramps'd like to see it go to a young man all full of juice and go. No, $2,500'll do."
Kate shrugged. "Okay," she said, and Johnny had whooped for joy. He passed his driving test at the Ahtna DMV that afternoon and she let him drive the whole way home. It was his first time behind the wheel over the Lost Chance Creek Bridge, seven hundred feet long, three hundred feet high, the width of one vehicle-barely-and no railings. He made it across, very slowly and very carefully, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. His father had been afraid of heights, too. "He puked on me once when we were at the top of a mine shaft," she told Johnny when they were safely on the other side, and Johnny had laughed so hard he stalled out the truck.
Today they were looking at the engine, a superfluous activity because in operation the pickup sounded like a contented tiger. Kate had had Rachel in Anchorage send up a Chilton's manual for Ford pickups from 1965 to 1986, which had immediately replaced Jim Butcher as Johnny's preferred recreational reading.
Mutt was pacing the perimeter, nose to the ground, picking up a scent for lunch. She was first to hear the vehicle coming down the track from the road. She raised her head and gave Kate a heads-up by way of an advisory yip.
Kate recognized the sound of it almost immediately, and swore beneath her breath. Next to her Johnny went still, frowning at the distributor cap. He said tentatively, "Auntie Vi?"
"Sounds like." She ducked out from under the hood of the pickup and beheld the powder blue Ford Explorer as it emerged from the trees. It drew to an impatient halt, and Auntie Vi, a round, brown little woman of indeterminate age and defiantly black hair, bounced out and stormed in their direction. "Katya!"
Kate recognized the signs. "Have I screwed up anything lately?" she said out of the corner of her mouth.
"Not that I've noticed," Johnny said. "Hi, Auntie Vi!"
"Hi, Johnny! Almost tall like your father now. Stop that."
Johnny grinned. "Yes, ma'am."
Mutt trotted over and paid her respects. Other than Kate, females of any species were usually beneath the notice of the 140-pound wolf/husky mix but Auntie Vi was accorded the respect of a sister sovereign, coequal in power and authority. "This the new truck then?" Auntie Vi said, patting Mutt's head absently as she looked it over with a critical eye. "Those tires need rotate, Katya."
"We'll get right on that, Auntie," Kate said, while Johnny dived cravenly back beneath the hood.
The tires were, in fact, new-bought, mounted, and balanced the day of purchase.
Auntie Vi dismissed the subject of the truck. "You hear, Katya?"
"Hear what, Auntie?"
"About dock."
"What dock?"
"That Katalla dock."
"What Katalla dock?" Kate said. "There's barely a dozen pilings left of the old dock there, and they're rotting and covered with barnacles."
Auntie Vi clicked her tongue, looking impatient. "The state say they starting survey to build new dock."
"What for?" Kate said, and then she said, "Oh. What kind of a dock? Deepwater?"
Auntie Vi was thrown off her stride. "How you know?" she said, suspicion darkening her face.
"If it's a deepwater dock, they're doing it for the bulk carriers that will be coming in to ship the ore out from the Suulutaq Mine."
"There," Auntie Vi said, pointing at Kate. "That! What they do!"
Kate, skewered by the finger, perceived that she was at fault, and found herself at something of a loss. "It only makes sense, Auntie," she said placatingly. "They have to ship the ore to market once they pull it out of the ground. That is the object of the exercise." She stripped the gloves from her hands and started toward the house. "Come inside. It's about time for lunch anyway."
"Grilled cheese!"
Kate grinned without turning around. "In your dreams, kid. Moose liver pate if you're lucky."