Better To Rest

“Bill?”

“Sorry. Children. Stanley Tompkins left Lydia very well-off. One or the other of them had money before they married; some said it was Lydia, but I don’t buy that. Her father was a local fisherman who never made it very big, who drank a little too much, and who fathered a few too many children ever to be seriously in the chips. Stanley, now, I think she married Stanley because he was her father’s exact opposite. A very hard worker, and from the stories I hear tell from the old farts had an absolute genius for finding fish. Clarence knew Stanley pretty well.”

“Clarence Saguyuk?”

“Yeah. Anyway, when Stanley died, he left Lydia well dowered and all the children well provided for. None of them have to work unless they want to.” She indulged in a snort. “And most of them don’t.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Stan Jr. is the only one of them with a real job, but even he plays at it. You ought to take a look at that boat of his sometime, theArctic Belle. It’s got all the bells and whistles on it, thousands of dollars of electronic equipment; I think he bought the first GPS in the Newenham boat harbor. He gets a new reel practically every year, he’s always upgrading his skiff, he gets one hole in his gear and that’s it, got to hang some new and right now, too. He’s the nicest one of the kids, certainly the easiest one to talk to, but he’s fifty-five going on twelve. Or fifty-six,” she added. “I don’t keep track of my own age, let alone anyone else’s.”

“Does he live beyond his means?”

“I don’t think so. I’d bet Karen does, though. She’s a shopper, that girl; she never walks in here in the same outfit twice ru

“Is he married? Stan Jr.?”

Bill shook her head. “No. He’s had a thing going off and on with Carol Anawrok for years, ever since high school. It stopped while she was married to Melvin Delgado, and then started up again after Melvin died. It stopped again while she was married to Keith West, and then started up again after Keith died.” Bill shook her head. “Both cancer of the lungs. Carol keeps marrying smokers.”

“And the rest of the kids?”

“Betsy’s the oldest, about fifty-six or -seven, I think. Her husband is David Amakuk, whose family moved down from New Stoyahuk. He’s a foot shorter and two feet wider than she is. They met in high school, married the week after they graduated. He runs theDaisy Rose, a drifter I think Betsy financed. He does pretty well out of it, generally comes in just under high boat. They have two daughters, Daisy and Rose, both living in Anchorage now. Jerry’s the other son.” She paused.

“What’s wrong with Jerry?”

“Everything.”

“That sounds pretty comprehensive.”

“He’s one of those lost souls, no ambition, no direction. He’s been up before me on possession I don’t know how many times, and DWIs, too. I took away his driver’s licence and I threatened to suspend the rest of the family’s, too, if they didn’t keep him away from a steering wheel. Stan Sr. tied up Jerry’s inheritance so that he’d get an allowance from Lydia, so he wouldn’t blow it all on one toot at the Great Alaskan Bush Company in Anchorage. Which Jerry is capable of doing, if nothing else. His apartment is in Lydia’s name; she pays all the bills. Paid.”

“Did Jerry resent having his money tied up that way? Would he threaten Lydia to get more?”

Bill reflected. “He was more along the lines of pathetically grateful, would be my guess. The most wretched thing about Jerry is that he knows just how worthless he is. He knows he’d be homeless in a heartbeat if he had control of his own money.” She shook her head. “I remember one time, during one of the possession busts or whatever it was, he told me he had a home and a fixed income, and that he wasn’t a vagrant. He was proud of it.”

“Great.”

Bill regarded Prince not without sympathy. “Yeah, I know, you’d like a motive. Sorry about that.”

“There was no forced entry. It’s likely she let whoever it was in.”

“Who in Newenham locks their doors?”

“Yeah, well, okay, never mind. There’s a fourth child, isn’t there?”

“There would have been, if Karen had ever been a child.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That kid was sprung full-grown from the head of Zeus, and when she landed she was hot to trot and ready to go. She’s very pretty, which doesn’t help. During her high school years alone, there were three accusations of statutory rape brought against three different boys, all dropped for lack of evidence. She moved into one of the Harborview Town Houses the week after she graduated from high school, I think the better to see which boats are in and which crews are available for plucking. She doesn’t have any other vices of which I’m aware, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink much, doesn’t do drugs-does the local provider, though; she and Evan Gray were an item a while back, but I think she wore even him out. She surely likes her men.”

“Anything kinky going on there? Something that might result, say, in blackmail? That she needed money to pay off? That she might go to her mother for? And her mother might refuse her?”

Bill laughed. “Karen would consider it advertising.”

Prince sighed. “Okay. What about her friends? What about the ladies who lunch?”

“The Literary Ladies,” Bill said.

“Sorry. The Literary Ladies. Stand by one.” Bill made a round of the house. The girls in the booth were getting very giggly, and so was their designated driver. Bill served up a round of sodas and forced a jumbo order of nachos on them. She came back and settled in across from Prince.

“The Literary Ladies were formed in 1988, November, I think.” She smiled at a memory. “First book we read was Toni Morrison’sBeloved, because it won the Pulitzer that year. Scared the shit out of everyone, and nearly busted up the group right there. One woman never did come back-what was her name, Margaret, Melody something? Anyway, we never saw her again. I haven’t seen her since, as a matter of fact, so she must have moved away.”

Prince was more interested in the current members, and said so, with emphasis.

“All right, all right. There’s me. There was Lydia, of course. There’s Alta Peterson, who owns and minds the hotel. There’s Mamie Hagemeister, you know her, and there’s Charlene Taylor and you know her, too. They’re all originals, except for Charlene, who joined when she was posted to Newenham, back in, oh, 1992, I guess. Sharon and Lola are newcomers, the youngsters in the group. Sharon joined when she was still in high school, and about two years later brought Lola in. Sharon does hair down at the Prime Cut and Lola works in the ca

“You’re all pretty close?”

“Pretty close,” Bill said cautiously.

“You don’t seem sure.”

“Close for getting together only once a month,” Bill said.

“Any disagreements?”

Bill raised one eyebrow, but Prince refused to back down. “Of course we fight. Lola married the wrong man, we told her so, and she stopped coming for the duration of her marriage, about thirteen months, I think it was. Charlene arrested Sharon’s cousin Richard for fishing inside the markers up Kulukak River, and Sharon stopped speaking to Charlene until I found him guilty, and then she stopped speaking to me instead. Alta was pissed at Sharon because Sharon gave Alta a punk-rock haircut without permission, and she stopped speaking to her until it grew out.”

“Anybody ever get mad at Lydia?”

“Nope. Not that I remember. Well.”

“What?”

“She used to tell raunchy stories that embarrassed the hell out of Sharon and Lola.”

“Raunchy stories?”

“Yeah, I think she liked giving them the needle. Especially the younger ones. Hell, if half the stuff she said about her and Stan Sr. was true, she wasn’t even bragging.”