"Studying in his room."
"Am I cooking tonight?"
She went back to her book. The Old Testament was a scary place, although the New Testament might be even scarier. "Did you know that hell and damnation aren't mentioned by any of the Old Testament prophets?"
"Really?"
"Nope. Oh, they'd sell their daughters to angry mobs in exchange for their own safety and they'd slaughter opposing tribes by the thousand, but after that they were pretty much done. It's only Jesus who preaches hell and damnation in the afterlife if you don't believe in him."
By this time Jim had deduced that if he wanted to eat, he was, in fact, cooking dinner that evening. Unperturbed, he went to the kitchen and as he expected, found a package of caribou steaks thawing in the sink and bread rising in a bowl. He opened the refrigerator and with great contentment found a six-pack of Alaskan Amber. Kate wouldn't bring home beer for just anyone. He uncapped a bottle and took a long swallow. "I made a bunch of calls the last couple of days. It turns out, our Talia got around."
Kate peered at him over the top of her book. "Do tell."
He nodded, put down the beer, and started chopping onions. "We all know there were enough Park rats around who wanted to take her down because of the mine," he said, pouring olive oil into a cast-iron frying pan and turning the heat on beneath it. "And let's face it, you didn't help."
That brought her upright, book discarded. "I beg your pardon?"
He shrugged. "You straddled the fence on the mine at the last NNA board meeting. Because you didn't vote to throw the bastards out, some people could get the impression that Talia was a serious threat to the Park and to their way of life." He looked up and met her eyes. "You could have helped make her a target, Kate."
She didn't go immediately on offense, which surprised and relieved him. He needed her as a sounding board and it wouldn't help the discussion along if she got too mad to listen.
She sat in frowning silence for a moment. He tilted the cutting board over the frying pan and used the knife to push the onions into the oil. They sizzled. He stirred them with a wooden spoon.
"Okay, say that's true," she said. "Let's leave that for the moment, and you tell me about these calls you made."
He flattened some cloves of garlic, peeled them, and minced them. "Talia was a busy girl."
"Busy how?" Kate said, alert to the change in his tone.
"Busy between the sheets."
"Takes one to know one."
He looked at her, a steady, unflinching gaze.
She could feel the color rising into her cheeks. She looked down, picking up her book and smoothing the cover unnecessarily, mumbling something that might have been "Sorry."
The onions were beginning to brown and he added the garlic, stirring it in and leaving it over the heat just long enough to perfume the oil. "Understand that all I've been doing is gathering information," he said, using a slotted spoon to move them to a saucer. "Can't dignify much of it as more than gossip." There might have been an added bite to that last sentence. Mutt, having resumed her position in front of the fire, flicked her ears.
Kate's lips pressed together but she didn't say anything.
"The word is she was sleeping with both the mayor of Cordova and the manager of the Costco store in Ahtna. Plus I think she gave Gallagher a tumble, too."
"The mayor of Cordova is married," Kate said, making an effort to keep her voice neutral.
"Yeah," Jim said, "I don't think that mattered much to Talia." He took a deep breath and said, "She hit on me, too. When I was in Cordova, putting Margaret Kvasnikof and Hally Smith on the plane for Hiland Mountain."
"Oh," Kate said inadequately.
The hard part out of the way, he took another deep breath and let it out. "I also got Brendan to find out who was her attorney. I called him, and after he swore me to secrecy he told me that she had a chunk of nonvoting stock in Global Harvest."
"Part of the paycheck," Kate said. She felt a little light-headed, and forced herself to focus.
"Yeah, but. There's a weirdness."
"Which is?"
"These particular shares are held by a limited group of Global Harvest stockholders. They own their shares for the period of their lifetimes in joint rights of survivorship, accruing all dividends generated by those shares to themselves. But they can't sell them or trade them or leave them to anyone else. Once they die, the shares revert to the other partners."
Kate digested this in silence for a moment. "So her relatives don't inherit, beyond what she'd already earned?" "Nope."
"Which puts any of them out of the running."
"Normally I'd say not unless they knew, but it turns out they did know. Part of the deal that employees at that level make when they sign on with Global Harvest is they also have to sign an affidavit saying they so informed their nearest and dearest, with registered copies going out to and signed for by all of same."
Kate said admiringly, "So Global Harvest pays you well-"
Jim put his head back and gave forth with a long, loud wolf whistle.
"-okay, extremely well, so long as you're alive, but they don't have to worry about the shareholders getting uppity and voting the board out of office during that time, and they don't have to worry about who the stock goes to once you're dead, averting an unfriendly takeover. All the shareholders get is the money, no voice."
"You got it."
"Is that legal?"
"Brendan says it's a contract, and everyone who signed off on it was of legal age. He says if you had a cranky enough heir it could be tested in court, but…"
"Man. I wonder how the shareholders of the Niniltna Native Association would like that. All the money and no voice."
"Everyone in this particular group of shareholders is also doing a job of work for the company," Jim said. "Talia was drawing a hefty salary. The shares were just a bonus."
Kate detected a possible hitch. "Do they keep the stock even if they quit the company?"
"They keep it and any dividends the stock pays until they die," Jim said, "whether they're working for Global Harvest or not. The stock reverts to the company. The earnings to date then go to their heirs."
Kate stood up, her book sliding to the floor. Her eyes were bright and she had the beginnings of a smile on her face. "It's a tontine."
Jim dredged the steaks in flour and salt and pepper and put them in the frying pan. The smell was instant and intoxicating and his mouth watered. He wrested his attention back from his appetite. "It's a what?"
"I read about it in a novel once." Kate got up and walked over to the kitchen, her nose almost twitching with interest. He hid a grin. Kate the detective in action. It was always fun to watch. Not to mention which, anything that diverted her from his little bombshell was bound to be a good thing.
"A tontine is a kind of contest," she said, "where a bunch of people pay into a kitty and whoever lives longest gets the dough."
"Whoa," he said, browning the steaks for a couple of minutes on either side.
"Yeah," she said, a smile spreading across her face. "Did you get the names of the other shareholders?"
"Why," he said, dragging the word out, "I just might have done that little thing."
He moved the steaks from pan to warming plate with care and deliberation.
"So?" she said. "Anybody we know on it?"
"One name kinda jumped out at me," he said. He poured a cup of chicken broth into the pan. "Is that leftover bottle of white wine still knocking around anywhere?"
TWENTY-FOUR
Like I keep telling you, I was at the Roadhouse that night with my wife," Harvey Meganack said. "You can check. Must have been a hundred other people there. After that, we came right home. Didn't we, honey?"
The four of them were sitting in Harvey 's front room, in the largest and newest house in Niniltna, the first one you saw when you drove in from Ahtna. The frozen surface of the Kanuyaq River was just on the other side of the dock that began down the stairs from the house and extended twenty-five feet out from the bank. It looked nowhere near as well used as the Grosdidiers' dock did, although the Laurel M. was in dry dock next to it, looking very fine in new white paint with blue trim.