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“Uh-huh. She left early, though. Said she was going out to the lake, service her plane.”
“Good.”
“She's pretty young for a trooper.” She let the remark lie there, with a question mark hanging over it.
He shrugged. “Maybe a little. She's certainly new to the area, just got in yesterday.”
She surveyed him. “You haven't been here all that long yourself. How are you liking the posting?”
“I like it a lot.” He remembered jumping out of Wy's plane yesterday afternoon, and a sudden grin spread across his face, surprising both of them and making her blink. “Never a dull moment. Alta, is this your hotel?”
She nodded, a positive movement indicative of pride. “My husband and I built it. He was a fisher from Anacortes, came up on his uncle's boat the summer of 1977, and never left. The kids and I came up that fall, and we've been here ever since.”
“How many kids and what kind?”
Alta had a wallet full of pictures on the counter before the last word was out of his mouth. He admired the two sons and the one daughter-“All in school at the University of Washington,” she mentioned with an elaborate disinterest that fooled neither of them-all three tall, blond, blue-eyed Vikings, all with their mother's firm jawline.
“I suppose the boys went on the boat and the girl helped out around the hotel when they were kids,” he suggested.
“You suppose wrong. We were all on the boat at the start,” she retorted. “We lost the boat, though, in 1980, coming back from Dutch Harbor. Peri-that was my husband-decided to take the insurance and build this hotel. That was the time of the big runs.”
“Yeah,” Liam said. Peri, spoken of in the past tense. “I remember reading about them in the newspaper. You could pull in a quarter of a million dollars in reds in one period, you had a big enough boat and an experienced crew.”
“Those were the days,” she agreed, and they both sighed a little, totally fraudulent expressions of nostalgia for a time gone by. After three summers spent kneeling over the edge of a skiff picking reds out of a net, she was perfectly happy to be permanently shore-based, and after spending three months sleeping on theDawn P,he would have been delirious at the news of an apartment for rent on solid ground.
Liam recovered first. “So this is the only hotel in town, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah. We've heard rumors for years that a Best Western was going to come in, but it hasn't happened yet. Lots of bed and breakfasts, though, since the Wood-Tikchik State Park opened up. And the Togiak Wildlife Refuge,” she added, “long as they can afford to hire a float plane.”
Liam studied the countertop with absorption, presenting all the appearance of a man deeply embarrassed to ask the next question but forced by profession to do so. “I imagine you have a few, ah, local customers.” He risked a look and saw that Alta's unblinking stare was back and fixed unwaveringly on his face.
“If there is something you want to ask me, Corporal Campbell, ask,” she said, gathering up her pictures and putting them back in her wallet.
“I'm afraid there is,” he said, still more apologetically.
She drummed her fingers on the counter. “Stop tap-dancing. What is it?”
“I suppose you've heard about theMarybethia.” Beneath lowered lid he watched her reaction.
Her lips tightened, but that was all. “Yes.”
“Did you know the Malones?”
“Yes.”
“Any one of the Malones in particular? Molly, for example?”
Her smile was frosty around the edges. “If, Liam, you want to know if Molly Malone ever spent the night here with a man not her husband, the answer is yes.”
“Ah.” His breath expelled on a long sigh. “Who?”
“That I don't know. I never saw him.”
His brow creased. “Then how do you know she was with anybody?”
“I make the beds.”
“Oh.”
“He wasn't with her when she checked in. She must have let him in the back door because he never came through the lobby. But that girl definitely wasn't sleeping alone the nights she spent here.”
“Maybe her husband joined her.”
“Then how come I never saw him? She was always alone, coming and going.”
“How often did she stay here?”
“She came into town on shopping trips on average about once a month.”
“For how long?”
“One or two nights, usually. Oh, you mean how long had she been making these trips into town.” Alta thought. “I guess about a year. Since before last fishing season, anyway. Last April, maybe, around tax time?” She shrugged. “I can't say for sure.”
Liam gave Alta his most wi
She barked a laugh. “We don't have a register.” She nodded at the office in back of the counter.
He followed her through the door, and beheld the latest in Dell computers, hooked up to a sca
“Since we bought the place,” she said complacently, and sat down. “What do you want?”
“Can you print out a list of all the dates Molly Malone stayed here?”
“Certainly,” Alta said with a trace of scorn, and did so forthwith. Liam sca
“I had one of the Malone deckhands in here, too,” she said. “Begi
“Max Bayless?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Why, I believe that was it. Scrawny little guy, nose off a fairy tale witch, big brown eyes like a cow's, mouth that wouldn't stop.”
Alta Peterson had a gift for characterization; a vivid picture of Max Bayless materialized before Liam's very eyes. He produced his notebook. “What did he say about the Malones?”
“Said David Malone booted him off theMarybethiafor no good reason, right in the middle of the season.”
“He get paid?”
She nodded. “Oh yes. I made him sign his crew share check over to me before I'd let him register. You can't trust a fisher at settlement. They're liable to drink every dime of their checks the first day they step off the boat, either celebrating a great season or drowning a bad one. I never had that problem with Peri, bless his heart. Anything else you wanted?”
He indicated the computer. “Can you look up the exact date Bayless was here?”
“I don't have to.” She smiled, revealing a set of large, yellowing teeth. “He was in on July fourth, out again on the fifth.”
“Easy dates to remember. Did he get another job?”
“I'd say about an hour after he flew in,” she said, nodding. “I was surprised, since it wasn't that good a year, and it didn't sound to me like he was that good a deckhand. David Malone has-had a good reputation on the Bay. He wouldn't fire someone in the middle of the fishing season for no good reason. It would leave him short-handed, and it would take too much time to find someone to replace him.”
“Maybe his kids were coming along,” Liam suggested.
“Maybe.” Alta didn't sound convinced. “My kids couldn't wait to set foot on dry land, themselves.” Humor gleamed in the blue eyes. “There's not a one of them majoring in fisheries management, either.”
“What are they majoring in?”
The gleam of humor increased to deepen the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes. “Pre-Columbian art, high-altitude botany, and Eastern religions. Respectively.”
Jesus, Liam almost said, but recollected himself in time to snatch the word back. “Well, thank you for all your help, Alta.” He pocketed his notebook and turned to leave.
She waited until he was halfway out the door before she said, “You want a list of the dates David Malone stayed here?”
He halted in his tracks. “What?”
Her smile was wicked. “He didn't sleep alone, either.”