KS17.5 - Cherchez la Femme Read Free

tornado, covers slid to the floor, bottom sheet holding on by one corner, mattress cattywumpus on the box springs. Dulcey’s clothes were stacked neatly on more brick-and-board shelves under the eaves, though. He couldn’t tell if any were missing. He took more photographs, bagged the sheets from the bed, some samples from couch and coffee table and sink, and returned to the post, where he spent some time writing a timeline of events, and some more time in thought.
    Then he sent for Kate.
    Kate Shugak was a lifetime Park rat and a private investigator who took on the occasional job for the state at his behest. Five feet, a hundred and twenty pounds, hazel eyes tilted at the corners, short cap of black hair, she had a presence that reminded him of that line somebody, maybe Shakespeare had written, ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce.’ Her size was indeed deceptive, for she was strong as an ox, quick as a snake and smarter than the average bear. She was also related to most of the Park either by blood or by marriage, which made her a walking, talking repository of Park history going back generations. Whoever was voted most likely to, odds were Kate knew them, knew where they lived, and could bring them in without mess or bother. She was sort of like shorthand for the Alaska state trooper presence in the Park. The Park covered twenty million square acres and he was its only trooper, so she was the perfect resource, in more ways than one.
    She listened without comment as he ran down the story of Dulcey’s disappearance, said, “I’ll be back,” and left without speaking to Boris and Nathan.
    · · ·
     
    “You unbelievable morons,” Kate said two days later, Jim thought pretty dispassionately under the circumstances. Kate’s tolerance for idiots was very low and well-known. “She’s not dead.”
    Both brothers sat up at this. “What do you mean?” Nathan said.
    “I saw the blood!” Boris said.
    “It was all over you!” Nathan said.
    “Shut up,” Kate said.
    They shut up.
    “She and Albert eloped,” Kate said.
    “What?”
    “What!”
    “They took the
Mary B
. to Cordova. Dulcey was hiding below when Boris and Auntie Edna saw Albert heading down river.” She looked at Jim. “Whatever you said to him that day convinced him to talk to Dulcey.”
    He waited. Nathan waited. Boris waited. Finally Jim said, “And?”
    “Jim,” she said. “It’s Dulcey.”
    “Oh,” he said, and then repeated, “Oh.”
    “It turned into a very long talk. It lasted all night.” Her expression dared him to laugh which, recalling the disturbed state of Dulcey’s sleeping loft, he was hard put to it not to do. “The next morning Albert, uh, tripped and hit his head on the corner of the coffee table in front of the couch.”
    Jim remembered the goo solidified on the corner of the coffee table.
    “Albert’s got a shiner on him the color of an eggplant and he still can’t see out of that eye. Dulcey mopped him up as best she could and they got on the
Mary B
. and went downriver and to Cordova, where they were married that afternoon.” She sat back and watched their various reactions, not without a certain satisfaction. “Boris, when you found all that blood, you said it was Nathan just for meanness. You knew he was working up at the lodge, didn’t you?”
    Boris wouldn’t look at her. He wouldn’t look at anyone.
    “Nathan, Jim tells me you jumped Boris here at the post and he had to pepper spray you to pull you off him.”
    Nathan wasn’t making eye contact, either.
    “One way or another, you boys have made a spectacle of yourselves and caused a great deal of annoyance for the whole Park for the last six months. There will be consequences.”
    Everybody wondered what that meant. They were not held in suspense for long.
    “I talked to a few people on my way back here, and we’ve come up with something that looks a little like justice.” Kate looked at Nathan. “Nathan, you’re going to caretake