A grave denied (16 page)

But the best full-time, year-round job in Niniltna was that of postmaster. It had more pay and better benefits than any other job within a hundred miles, and the competition for it was fierce. There were families still living in the Park who weren’t speaking because a son of one had beat out the daughter of another for the position, and there were always dark mutterings of nepotism and influence whenever it went to one person over the other.

Bonnie Jeppsen, the current officeholder, had won the job over next-door neighbor Kay Kreuger, from which tiny seed a memorable breakup had grown like chickweed, leading to not one but two shootouts at the Roadhouse involving live ammunition. Kate had been instrumental in the altercation’s resolution, commandeering a D-6 Caterpillar tractor in the process, and she was never quite sure of her welcome when she darkened the post office’s doorstep. Bonnie was unfailingly civil and so far as Kate knew she got all her mail, so she approached the post office now in the hope that enough time had passed that Bonnie would be willing to talk to her about something other than postage.

The post office was a brand-new building prefabricated at a shop in Anchorage and freighted in on a flatbed the summer before, yet another new addition to the scenery to which Kate had to accustom herself. It was small, brown-sided, and roofed with what might have been corrugated metal but was probably some kind of plastic. It had two windows in front, a small loading dock in back, and a handicapped-accessible ramp leading to the door. The ramp was probably great for wheelchairs but it was going to be one hell of a slippery slide for feet come winter.

Inside, the building was divided by a counter and mailboxes. Kate heard the faint thuds of mail being slid into mailboxes. “Bonnie?”

Bonnie was a tall, plump blonde, with silky, flyaway hair and pale skin in a constant state of flush. She wore glasses in large bright red frames that framed her sometimes brown eyes like stoplights. She dressed oddly for the Park, in neither jeans nor Carhartts but in loose, flowing dresses with pin-tucked bodices, dropped waists, and tiny flowered prints, draped about with long multicolored scarves made sometimes of silk and sometimes of wool, all fabric she dyed and wove herself, much of it painted with brightly colored flowers. She sold the scarves out of a corner of the post office, probably in defiance of every rule and regulation of the United States Postal Service, and she was eager to explain that all the flowers were indigenous to the area, from the Sitka rose to the forget-me-not and including the wild geranium, the lupine, and the Western columbine, all of which grew in profuse and undisciplined splendor in back of the post office. Kate had a vague notion that Bonnie might make her own dyes from roots and berries of various and also indigenous plants, but that was going far beyond her own ken and she wasn’t interested enough to get it right anyway.

In addition to the painted scarves, Bonnie also sold jewelry and sculpture made from beads, most of it free-form, very little of it representational, and none of it traditional. It was original and striking, looking more like it had grown into existence as opposed to having been created, and even Kate had caught herself spending time in front of the shelf, looking at pieces that didn’t look at all like a wave-washed beach caught midtide, a tidal pool full of finned, clawed, webbed creatures, a driftwood fire mimicking the sunset behind it, a smoking volcano. The rumor was that Bonnie’s pieces were on display in the museum in Anchorage, and Kate, viewing a piece made mostly of what looked like freshwater pearls and a matte beige bead so tiny it looked like a grain of sand, could well believe it.

The aroma of sandalwood incense drifted into the room. “I’m sorry, Kate,” Bonnie said from behind her. “I didn’t hear the bell.”

Kate turned and saw Bonnie with her hands clasped on the counter in front of her. Both arms were braceleted up to the elbow in silver, never repeating the same pattern twice, and large triangular earrings cut from mother of pearl and embellished with tiny leaves made from tinier beads swung from her ears.

Kate shrugged and smiled. “I just got here.” She nodded her head at the earrings. “That’s really nice work.”

Bonnie inclined her head, accepting her due. “Thank you.”

“I don’t know anything about beadwork, traditional or otherwise. But I like your stuff.”

“Thanks. I heard about your cabin. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how you must feel. It must be horrible.”

“It sucks green donkey dicks big-time,” Kate agreed.

Bonnie didn’t quite know how to take that, and took refuge in business. “Did you want your mail?”

“Sure.” She accepted a handful of envelopes and a box from FATS Auto Parts in Anchorage, the new plugs she’d ordered for the pickup. Good thing her socket wrench set had survived the fire. Not to mention the pickup.

It occurred to her that she was taking the burning of her two-generations family home awfully well. She wondered how worried she should be about that, but right now her focus was on finding who did it and bringing him to justice. Her justice.

She became aware that her lips had thinned and her eyes had narrowed and that the back of her neck was heating up. Bonnie was regarding her with a puzzled and wary eye, and when Kate’s eyes met hers she took an involuntary step back.

Kate pulled herself together. “Thanks, Bonnie.” She tucked the envelopes into a hip pocket and the box under one arm. “Did you know Len Dreyer?”

Bonnie’s face creased with concern. “Of course. I heard what happened to him. That’s just awful.”

“Yeah. Not a fun way to go. He pick up his mail here?”

Bonnie nodded
. “He didn’t
get much
, though.”

“What did he get?”

Bonnie hesitated. “I’m not really supposed to give out any information about the United States mail, or any of the patrons.”

“I’m helping the trooper investigate the events leading up to Len Dreyer’s death.”

Bonnie brightened. “Jim Chopin?” Her eyes behind their bright-rimmed glasses went dreamy and so did her voice. “Well, in that case, of course, Kate, I’m happy to help. Anything you need.”

Mentally, Kate curled her lip. Some women went weak at the knees over any man to come down the pike. Any six-foot-ten, 240-pound blonde. Smart. Built. With blue eyes. And a deep voice. And a great grin. And a charm of manner Casanova would have envied.

She blew out a breath. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Dreyer?”

“I don’t know, I guess that’d be the last time he came in to check his mail.”

“How often did he come in?”

“I don’t know. Maybe once a month.” She thought. “Maybe not even that often.”

“What kind of mail did he get?”

Again Bonnie was uncertain. “Packages mostly, I think. Tools, and parts. Stuff he needed for the work he did.” She brightened. “And catalogues. Lots of catalogues.”

There were probably more catalogues per Park rat than there were trees to make them from. The Park was an exclusively mail-order community. Kate remembered the session at Dinah’s computer. Or it had been. “Is there anything in his box now?”

“Oh, he didn’t have a box, Kate,” Bonnie said, happy to be able to provide at least one definite answer. “He had his mail sent to General Delivery.”

Of course he did, Kate thought glumly. Renting a post office box would require filling out a form. Filling out a form would require revealing personal information. And if there was one overriding characteristic Len Dreyer was revealing to her in this series of interviews, it was his determination to remain completely anonymous. “Any mail holding for him now?”

Bonnie shook her head. “Jim came and got it. It was only a couple of catalogues, and something from Spenard Builder’s Supply.”

“Almost everyone comes in here,” Kate said. “Do a lot of them ask you where they can get work done?”

“Sure,” Bonnie said.

“And did you send them to Dreyer?”

“Of course. He does —did good work. He put in my new toilet.”

“Did he.” A toilet was awfully uptown for the Park. Although Bobby and Dinah had one. Flushed and everything. “When was that?”

“The third weekend in August,” Bonnie replied promptly.

“You’re sure of the date?”

“Oh, yes. They were sending Brian Loy from Anchorage to talk to local businesses about the new services offered on USPS-dot-com. He always stays in my spare bedroom and I wanted the new toilet in before he got here.”

“We have local businesses?” Kate said, momentarily diverted from her quest.

“The Association and the school, I guess.” Bonnie leaned forward and dropped her voice. “I think Brian just wanted to go fishing.”

Wouldn’t be the first time an Anchorageite had manufactured an excuse to get out of town with a fishing pole in hand. “Do you happen to remember all the people you recommended Dreyer to beginning, oh, say early last summer?”

Kate emerged from the post office fifteen minutes later, a list jotted down on the back of one of her envelopes in which she admittedly had little faith. Bonnie’s memory was fragmented at best, frequently interspersed with “I think that’s when I was doing the poppy scarf, do you see over there, the silk one with all the bright orange on it” and “I remember, I was woofing in the blue to the green warp on the wool scarf I was making for my mother.” Or Bonnie might have been warping the green into the blue woof, Kate wasn’t sure.

She needed good coffee and a comfortable chair and someone whose memory was better than Bonnie’s. So she went to Auntie Vi’s.

“What was going on in the Park a year ago?” she said around a mouthful of fry bread. She could have waited until after she swallowed, but since she intended on filling her mouth again immediately, this way saved time. If the fry bread was nectar, then the coffee, rich and dark and strong enough to melt the bowl off a spoon, lightened with Carnation evaporated milk and sweetened with dark brown sugar, was positive ambrosia, and Kate was not silly enough to ignore offerings from the gods.

This particular god was a woman approximately the size of a walnut and much the same color and texture. Her still thick and defiantly black hair was caught in a heavy knot at the base of her neck, her brown eyes were clear and sharp and set in the middle of a sea of wrinkles, and her hands, small but sinewy, were sure and deft as they kneaded an immense mass of bread dough. She paused to sprinkle on a handful of white flour and proceeded to work it in with vigor. “Ayapu,” Auntie Vi said, “you okay, Katya?”

“I’m okay, Auntie,” Kate said. The fry bread and the coffee were soothing in a traditional sort of way. She could almost forget that she was homeless.

“Lucky you not there.”

“Yes,” Kate said. “Very lucky.”

Sharp black eyes examined her shrewdly. “You mad?”

Kate took her time answering. “Yes, Auntie,” she said, proud of how calm she sounded. “I’m mad.”

She made the mistake of looking up. Auntie Vi nodded once, satisfied. “Good. But you be careful.”

“I will.”

“I mean it, Katya,” Auntie Vi said sternly. “You have that boy looking to you now. You keep him safe. You build a cabin with more room, make it his cabin, too.”

“I will.” Although for the life of her she didn’t know where the money was coming from. She’d earmarked last year’s earnings to fight off Jane’s custody suit. She wouldn’t touch it. But the kid had to have a place to sleep.

“Good.” Another sharp nod. “Good. Now. What you want to know?”

“You know I was gone last summer.”

“Humph. I know.” Auntie Vi waited, clearly not going to make it easy for Kate. She didn’t approve of running; she was a stand-and-fight kind of woman, always had been. She had survived three husbands; nine children, two of whom had died of cancer, one in a car wreck on the Glenn, and one of drowning; thirty-two grandchildren; and a home that had changed hands from Native to federal to state and back to Native again, all in the span of her lifetime. She’d fought for the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and had sopped up oil on the beaches of Prince William Sound after the RPetCo oil spill. She served on the board of the Niniltna Native Association and on the board of their regional corporation, as well. She fished subsistence and owned and operated her own business, the bed-and-breakfast whose kitchen they were in now.

In fact, there wasn’t much Auntie Vi couldn’t have survived if she made up her mind to. In spite of every effort to ignore it, Kate felt a sense of shame at her headlong flight from the Park the year before. She remembered the conversation she’d had with Johnny.
I don’t want you to learn that running away is an acceptable response to trouble.
He had shown up on her doorstep the day of her return, and she didn’t know if he’d been told how long she’d been gone.

Well, he could just learn to do as she said and not as she did. She firmed up her jaw and said, “I’m trying to trace Len Dreyer’s movements last year, Auntie. It’s hard because he worked for everyone, all over the Park.”

Auntie Vi grunted. “What you know so far?”

Kate produced her notebook, and Auntie Vi produced some reading glasses that when donned didn’t make her look anything like Millicent Nebeker McClanahan.

An hour later Kate’s head was reeling and she had the frustrated sense of having gone over the same ground for the third time in a row. Auntie Vi never missed a tangent when it presented itself. “You know those Drussells?”