A Grave Denied

She had to get a move on. Summer days were long but the season was short, and she and Joh

She pushed the list to one side and took up another. It seemed the more she investigated the events leading up to Len Dreyer’s death, the more suspects she had. Detection was usually a process of elimination, not accretion, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was spi

On the floor Mutt stirred.

“Listen up,” Kate told her. “Maybe you’ll catch something I missed.” She drew a fresh sheet toward her and began a timeline, starting at the bottom with Dreyer’s death and working up, on the theory that if she looked at the facts upside down they might reveal something new. “Means we’ve got. Dreyer was killed by a single blast from a shotgun fired at point-blank range. Ballistics thinks it might have been an older shotgun, which is just peachy, since every shotgun I’ve ever seen in the Park dates back to the gold rush.”

Mutt made a valiant attempt at interest.

“Don’t try so hard,” Kate told her. “We know from the ME that Dreyer’s been dead since fall, best guess late September, although there is leeway in both directions because he wintered under a glacier and that tends to affect the preservation-slash-deterioration of human tissue. He could have been left outside a night or two before he got stashed, or he could have been stuffed under the glacier the day he was shot. With me so far?”

Mutt cocked an ear.

“That, of course, is going to be the main problem in narrowing down opportunity. If we don’t know exactly when Dreyer was killed, it doesn’t matter who was doing what where and when in the Park last fall.”

Mutt cocked an eyebrow.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Kate told her, “you’re thinking all we have to do is find a good, convincing motive strong enough to push someone into murder. Well, let me tell you, missy, there’s motive so thick on the ground I’m needing to get out my shovel.” She began to list names.

“In May, Dreyer did some remodeling on Gary Drussell’s house so Gary could sell his homestead and move to Anchorage. While he was there, Dreyer molested Gary’s youngest daughter. Gary knows it. So does Fran. I don’t know about the other two daughters, but sisters tend to talk to each other, and even if these sisters didn’t, I’m betting the first thing Gary did when he found out was ask the other two if Dreyer had molested them, too. All five Drussells have motive.” She tapped the pencil on the table. “I wonder when Gary found out. Right away, do you think? Or after they moved to Anchorage? Or sometime in between?”

She looked at Mutt. “I ask because I can see Gary catching Dreyer in the act and blasting him with a shotgun. Hell, I can see myself doing that. But what if he found out after the fact, like maybe not until fall, oh, say, September. Would he take his shotgun and get on a plane and come to the Park, kill Dreyer, hide his body beneath Grant Glacier, and leave? It argues a certain amount of cold-bloodedness that I’m not sure Gary Drussell is capable of.”

Mutt bared her teeth ever so slightly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kate told her. “He could have hired you.”

Mutt yawned.

“But he didn’t.” She thought. “I’m not a father, but if Dreyer had gone for boys, and if he’d even looked at Joh

Mutt sneezed.

“Let’s not quibble,” Kate told her. “She seduced him on the floor of the cafe kitchen, all right? My question is, is that enough to drive Bernie to murder? Of course not. But then along about-surprise! -September, Bernie hires Dreyer to regravel the paths between the cabins and the Roadhouse, at which time Enid, Bernie’s wife, seduces Dreyer, not once but twice.”

Mutt wore an expression of worldly wisdom.

“You’re right, of course,” Kate said. “Enid probably only slept with him the second time because Bernie didn’t catch them at it the first time. Not to be crude, but I wonder that Dreyer, with a record in very young things, could even get it up for Enid. Enid is tubby, gray-haired, and wrinkled. She looks sixty-five if she looks a day.” More tapping of the pencil. “Okay, Bernie catches him in the act, and the only surprise there is that Enid is more upset that Bernie isn’t upset than she is that Bernie caught her cheating.”

She bent a stern look upon her four-footed friend. “My question to you is this: Was Bernie’s lack of emotion when he caught Enid a put-on? Was he hiding how he really felt just to hurt back, and was he even then plotting a revenge involving the business end of a shotgun? Or” -Kate raised an admonitory finger-“was he still angry that his ex-girlfriend, one Ms. Laurel Meganack, slept with Len Dreyer? Did he perhaps feel a tad more proprietary toward the new cafe wench than he did his own wife? Did that feeling surpass any feeling he had about catching Enid in the act with Len, thus explaining his non-reaction reaction? Perhaps finding Enid with Len put the finishing touch on what he knew about Len and Laurel; perhaps finding Enid and Len together brought it all back and moved him finally to act. He knew all about the glacier from the bar talk every night, it would have been an obvious place to hide a body. Especially in the late fall, when you can’t count on the bears to clean up after you.”

Bernie was the source of many good, shrink-wrapped things to eat and Mutt wasn’t about to rat him out. She pretended to fall asleep.

“My feelings exactly,” Kate said. “Still. Have to keep him on the list.” She considered. “How about Enid? No. There’s no motive there. Dreyer had served his purpose when Bernie caught them, she was done with him, and it wasn’t like killing Dreyer would hide their, what, affair is too strong a word. Two-night stand.”

Mutt’s ear twitched.

Kate considered her notes. “And lest we forget,” she said, “there are the two strangers in our midst, Mr. Keith Gette and Mr. Oscar Jimenez, who urgently needed their greenhouse repaired first thing last spring. We have been to the old Gette homestead, Mutt. I think we both know what they’re growing in that greenhouse.”

Mutt looked up and wrinkled her nose.

“Exactly.” Kate brooded. “Here this slob inherits a perfectly good homestead from his deceased cousins and the first thing he and his buddy do is start a commercial dope farm. I mean, really. He might have done a little market research first, there’s no way he’s going to move that much weed in the Park, and if he decides to wholesale it in Alaska, it’s not like he can sell it out of the back of a pickup truck. I mean you can do that with Avon’s Skin-So-Soft, but there’s a market for Skin-So-Soft in mosquito season.”

Mutt looked patient.

Kate held up a hand, palm out. “I know, I know, I’m getting off the subject. My point is that if Dreyer saw what they were planting in that greenhouse, he could have blackmailed them to keep quiet about it. He probably wouldn’t have called it blackmail, of course, maybe just a small loan from time to time to keep him in beer. But they could have gotten tired of it.”

Mutt emitted a noise somewhere between a snort and a yip.

“You think it would have taken more than a summer’s worth of floating him loans for them to get tired enough of it to shoot him? May I remind you who held a shotgun on whom when we went up to the Gette place?”

Mutt lifted her lip in a sneer.