Restless in the Grave (46 page)

Authors: Dana Stabenow

“Where’d you get them?”

“I got Brendan to sniff them out for me,” he said. “Wasn’t hard. Remember you told me that you told Victoria Muravieff she ought to look into her brother’s parentage? Apparently she also looked into her grandfather’s death.”

“Why?” she said.

“If you’ll recall,” he said, “Erland’s statement was that his father had interrupted a burglary.”

“Yes,” she said. “He said his father had caught the burglar in the act, that the burglar had attacked him.”

“Not a burglar’s style, first of all,” Jim said. “Usually the smart ones aren’t even armed. Erland’s statement, taken at the scene—” He fished a single sheet of onionskin from the envelope. It was covered closely with print from a manual typewriter, faded almost into illegibility. “According to Erland’s statement, “in the struggle one of the exhibit cases was broken and the desk got knocked over. Erland says he got to the room in time to see the desk fall on his father. He ran to his father and the burglar got away.”

“Yes,” Kate said. The burglar, as Jim well knew, had been Old Sam Dementieff, Kate’s teacher, mentor, father figure, éminence grise, and lifelong friend before he had died the previous October. Old Sam had broken into Emil Bannister’s house because Emil Bannister had possession of the Sainted Mary, the Russian Orthodox icon that had been stolen from Kate and Old Sam’s tribe by Old Sam’s father thirty years before the break-in and Emil’s death. “Jim,” she said, “are you saying—?”

“Look at that desk, Kate.”

She looked at the desk, her heart beginning to thump in her ears. “It’s big,” she said.

“It’s very big,” Jim said, “and very heavy. If I had to guess, I say it weighed somewhere between a hundred and fifty and two hundred and fifty pounds. I submit that it is highly unlikely that a desk of that size and weight gets knocked over in a fight, especially when one of the fighters is doing his level best to shag it out the door.”

He watched her face darken slowly, and waited, showing more calm than he felt.

“There is no way,” Kate said, forming the words slowly and distinctly, “that Old Sam deliberately turned that desk over on Emil Bannister. Knocked him down in the struggle, maybe. And maybe Emil did hit his head on his way down. But Old Sam did not turn that desk over on him.”

“Agreed,” Jim said, and handed her the first photo again.

She looked at the photo, scrutinizing it for details she might have missed. There was a sense of wrongness about it, and she said, puzzled, “This was a photograph taken by the Anchorage police, right?”

He turned the photograph over and pointed at the APD stamp and the date scrawled beneath it.

She turned it faceup again. “Why is his body still under the desk? Why didn’t Erland try to…”

Her voice trailed away, and he watched her eyes widen and her face drain of color as she realized what she had just said.

Moses Alakuyak’s voice echoed so loudly in her ears, it was as if the old man were standing next to her, shouting. Which he had done in Newenham, hadn’t he, a time or two?

You know he didn’t do it, right?

Thirty-five

JANUARY 26

Niniltna

Kate walked into the Niniltna Native Association a couple of days later. Phyllis Lestinkoff was pleased to admit her into the inner sanctum.

“Hey, Annie,” Kate said.

Annie waited for the door to close behind Kate. “Was that you in Newenham?”

“How’d you guess?”

Annie raised an eyebrow. “Jim said you were on a job, and once I heard mayhem and murder, I knew it had to be you.”

Unwilling, Kate felt a smile cross her face.

“Plus you didn’t return any of my calls,” Annie said. “So you must have been busy.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “Did you need to talk to me about something?”

“Not today, but I’d like to know I could call you if I really needed to.” Annie gave her a level look. “I wasn’t the one who threw you off the deep end when you got landed with this job. Don’t take it out on me.”

Kate’s jaw dropped. “I wasn’t.”

Was she?

She drew herself up. “By coincidence, that’s sort of why I’m here today.”

“Really?”

“You know that emeritus position you mentioned at the shareholders meeting?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a paid position?”

Acknowledgments

In no particular order, my thanks to:

Retired FBI Agent Bob Baker, who e-galloped to my rescue with some badly needed last-minute information on the M4 carbine.

FBI Agent Eric Gonzalez, for introducing me to Bob and for turning a gratifying shade of white when I ran the plot by him.

Larry DiFrancesco, pilot, who helped with photographs and details of Gabe McGuire’s Gulfstream.

Cathy Rasmuson, for introducing me to Larry.

Jim Eshenower, A&P mechanic and pilot, who conspired with me to murder Finn Grant.

And pilots Wes Head and Stephanie Anderson, for introducing me to Jim.

Any errors that remain are mine.

ALSO BY DANA STABENOW

THE KATE SHUGAK SERIES

Though Not Dead

A Night Too Dark

Whisper to the Blood

A Deeper Sleep

A Taint in the Blood

A Grave Denied

A Fine and Bitter Snow

The Singing of the Dead

Midnight Come Again

Hunter’s Moon

Killing Grounds

Breakup

Blood Will Tell

Play with Fire

A Cold-Blooded Business

Dead in the Water

A Fatal Thaw

A Cold Day for Murder

THRILLERS

Prepared for Rage

Blindfold Game

THE LIAM CAMPBELL SERIES

Better to Rest

Nothing Gold Can Stay

So Sure of Death

Fire and Ice

THE STAR SVENSDOTTER SERIES

Red Planet Run

A Handful of Stars

Second Star

ANTHOLOGIES

Powers of Detection

Wild Crimes

Alaska Women Write

The Mysterious North

At the Scene of the Crime

Unusual Suspects

About the Author

Dana Stabenow,
New York Times
bestseller and Edgar Award winner, is the author of eighteen previous Kate Shugak novels, four Liam Campbell mysteries, three science-fiction novels, and two thrillers. She was born, raised, and lives in Alaska, where she was awarded the Governor’s Award for the Humanities. Visit her online at
www.Stabenow.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

RESTLESS IN THE GRAVE. Copyright © 2012 by Dana Stabenow. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Stabenow, Dana.

Restless in the grave / Dana Stabenow.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-55913-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-5038-1 (e-book)

1. Shugak, Kate (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women private investigators—Alaska—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Alaska—Fiction. I. Title.