A Grave Denied

Kate looked at Enid, who was fidgeting nicely. Blunt or oblique, she thought. Blunt. “You had an affair with Len Dreyer,” she said.

Enid, taken totally off guard first by the long silence and then by the direct attack, burst into tears. Kate looked around, found a box of Kleenex on the counter, and fetched it over. It took a while, but Enid eventually sobbed her way through the entire box and the whole story. “It wasn’t an affair,” she said, hiccupping.

“What was it then, a one-night stand?”

“No! No. It wasn’t anything like that. I just wanted-I just…” The words, backed up for a long time, flooded forth like a creek after breakup. “There’s always someone. There’s always been someone. It never lasts long but I know all the signs, I always know, and I always pretend I don’t, and I just got tired of it, you know?” Her eyes, red and swollen, appealed to Kate for understanding.

Kate looked at her gravely.

There was a tense moment, broken only by the sound of broken breathing. “And then,” Enid said, almost inaudibly, “and then there was Laurel.”

“Laurel Meganack?” Kate said.

“Yes.” Enid reached for more tissue. “I thought-he was more serious about her. It lasted a long time, longer than usual. I -I thought he might leave me for her.” Enid blew her nose. “I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to talk to Bernie about it. I don’t know. I think I thought if I said something I might make it happen.”

If you don’t look straight at it, Kate thought, it doesn’t exist. “So along came Len.”

“God, it wasn’t like he was even that interested, I practically had to rape him. But he was right here, day after day. He had a nice body,” she said wistfully. “Nice shoulders when he took his shirt off. Strong arms. I went out one day, took him a cold can of pop, and I, well, I guess you could say I propositioned him. We went into one of the cabins, and well, we did it. The next day he came back and I took him into a cabin again. Only…”

Kate, keeping to herself her opinion of someone who chose to sleep around on her husband in her husband’s place of business, said, “Bernie walked in?”

Enid broke down again. “Yes,” she said, sobbing. “He walked in.” She raised tear-filled eyes. “He stood there looking at us.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing! He didn’t say anything! He stood there, and then he walked out again, like it didn’t mean a damn to him! He-” She started to sob again. “He even closed the door behind him. He closed it behind him, like he wanted to give us privacy! He wasn’t even angry!”

Or, given his predilection for screwing around himself, he wasn’t prepared to throw any stones, Kate thought. “Did you talk about it later?”

Enid, regaining some control, blew her nose and shook her head. “No. I tried, but he cut me off.”

And it had been festering ever since. In both of them, probably.

Well, Kate didn’t do therapy. She got to her feet. “Thanks for the coffee.”

Enid trailed after her like a lost puppy. “Is that all?”

“Yeah, pretty much. You said Dreyer didn’t mention any family or friends, or where he came from before he lived in the Park.”

“I don’t think Dreyer was his real name.”

Kate halted. “Really? Why?”

“A letter fell out of his pocket. You know. That first day. It was addressed to a Leon Duffy.”

Len Dreyer. Leon Duffy. Many people who assumed aliases chose names with the same initials. Easier to remember. “He say how old he was?”

Enid looked uncertain. “Uh, around my age, I think. Late forties, maybe? Maybe older.”

That would fit, if Bobby was right about Dreyer serving in Vietnam. Kate wondered where he’d gotten the letter. Not through Bo

Enid shrugged. “Some beat-up old truck. With a canopy, maybe?” She thought. “Might have been gray.”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Enid. I’m sorry I had to ask you about it.”

“It’s okay.” Enid drew a shaky breath. “You know what’s the worst, Kate? The worst is it wasn’t even that much fun. I made the pass. I took him to the cabin. I even undressed him, and me.”

“Enid-”

“He had his eyes closed the whole time. Like he didn’t even want to see what he was screwing.” She tried to smile with trembling lips. “There’s a name for that, isn’t there? A mercy fuck, isn’t that what they call it?” A tear slid from the corner of her eye.

“If it’s that hard to take, why don’t you leave?” Kate said.

Enid looked shocked. “I couldn’t do that. There are the children. And besides…” She looked down at her hands, twisted together in a painful knot. Her voice dropped. “He didn’t love me when we married. I thought, well, I thought that love, or maybe even just a little affection, would come in time. It didn’t. I shouldn’t have married him. It’s my fault.”

She stood in silence for a moment. When she raised her head the old Enid was back, armor in place. “Well,” she said brightly, “thanks for stopping by, Kate.” She opened the door and Kate, perforce, went through it.

She stood on the deck listening to Enid’s footsteps recede.

She was thinking of the witches’ coven in the woods she had stumbled onto a few years back, led by Enid and celebrating the death of Lisa Gette, who had slept with the husbands of every attending wicca-for-a-day. Even now, years later, the memory was strong enough to run a chill up her spine. Those women had been united in hatred, united in celebrating death.

It was too much of a cliche, but as Kate knew from long experience with the Anchorage D.A., that didn’t make it untrue. Husband screws around, wife has a revenge fuck with the handyman, husband walks in, husband kills handyman. Certainly the white of Enid’s face said that she was terrified that Bernie had in fact done just that. And there was that betraying glance at the gun rack.

The timing was off, though. Len Dreyer had laid gravel and Enid around Labor Day. He’d been seen elsewhere multiple times between Labor Day and the end of October.

Didn’t mean Bernie couldn’t have bided his time, pla

Enid had said that Bernie didn’t care, but even the most indifferent husband had been known to react adversely to his wife sleeping with another man. And then, Laurel Meganack had slept with Len Dreyer and with Bernie Koslowski both last year, which was a whole other motive Kate didn’t want to consider. Maybe Bernie was in love for the first time in his life. Maybe Dreyer had shouldered him out of Laurel’s bed.

She shook her head. “Damn it,” she said out loud. “Not Bernie. I know him, I’ve known him for years. He’s not a killer.”

Didn’t mean she wasn’t going to have to talk to him about it. She envisioned an unpleasant interrogation, followed by months of cold-shouldering. Great.

She wouldn’t tell Jim, though. At least not yet. She headed down the steps and through the path back to the bar.

She was ambushed before she got to the door, a pair of very muscular arms scooping her off the step. She found herself pressed up against the wall, a knee between her legs and a large pair of firm hands investigating the scene of what was before much longer going to be a crime, if only a misdemeanor.

There was an undercurrent of laughter in Jim’s voice when he left off nibbling on her ear and whispered into it instead. “Come on, Shugak, cuddle up, you know you want to.” He kissed her, and since her feet were dangling a foot off the ground, she couldn’t find enough leverage to fight him off.