Free A grave denied by Dana Stabenow

Ahtna?”
     
    “Sure. George, did you know Len Dreyer?”
     
    “Len? Yeah, sure. Well.” He shrugged. “He did some work on the hangar for me last August, after that idiot from Anchorage tried to taxi through the wall.” He fixed her with an appraising eye. “This an official interrogation?”
     
    She made a face. “I’m asking some questions for the trooper.”
     
    “Working for Jim, huh?”
     
    “Yes.”
     
    The flatness of the syllable warned him to go no further down that road, and unlike Bobby, George Perry was a man who liked a quiet life.
     
    “Did Dreyer ever talk to you about friends, his birthday, his parents’ names, his hometown, anything? Maybe you needed his Social Security number to make his payroll deductions?”
     
    He grinned at the hopeful note in her voice. “Nope, sorry. Len worked on a strictly cash basis. For me, anyway.”
     
    “For everybody, is what I’m hearing,” Kate said glumly.
     
    At that moment Brenda Souders walked in, all tits and ass and big hair, and George deserted Kate without a backward glance.
     
    “Hey, girl,” someone said. “Looking for a job?”
     
    “I’ve got one, damn it,” Kate said, and turned to face Old Sam. He wasn’t any taller than she was and he probably weighed less, but in this case size didn’t matter. Old Sam Dementieff had a personal authority that sprang directly from the unshakeable conviction that he was right. All the time. The annoying thing was that he usually was.
     
    “You hear about Len Dreyer?” she asked him.
     
    “Who hasn’t?”
     
    “The trooper wants me to ask around.”
     
    Old Sam raised an eyebrow, which made him look even more like a demented leprechaun. “Len Dreyer, huh? Hear he got it point-blank with a shotgun.”
     
    The Bush telegraph, contrary to form, was keeping it right. Usually by now the weapon should have been metamorphosed into a Federation phaser. “Yeah.”
     
    “I didn’t know him much. Him and Dandy came to Cordova to help me tear down the mast and boom on the
Freya
when I put her in dry dock last September. I was wanting to get the job done before the first snow. Good worker.”
     
    “You didn’t like him?” Kate said, replying more to the feeling behind the words than the words themselves.
     
    Old Sam drained his beer and looked sadly at the empty bottle.
     
    “Come on, Uncle, I’ll buy you another.” She led the way back to the bar and got him a refill. “Tell me about Dreyer.”
     
    “Not much to tell,” Old Sam said. “Showed up on time, knew enough about hydraulics so’s I could trust him with the winch, kept showing up until the job was done. Smiled a lot.”
     
    “That’s it?” Kate said.
     
    “He smiled a lot,” Old Sam repeated, “and he didn’t seem interested in women.”
     
    “He was gay?”
     
    “Didn’t say that,” Old Sam said. “Just I remember one day young Luba Hardt came sashaying by, you know like she does.”
     
    “Young” Luba Hardt was fifty-five if she was a day, but then Old Sam was about a thousand. Everyone looked young to him.
     
    “It was July, and hot,” Old Sam said with relish. “She had her jeans cut up to there and T-shirt cut down to there.” He smacked his lips, and shook his head. “Dreyer barely looked up to say hi.”
     
    It was an exercise in self-control to keep her face straight. “I suppose he could have been playing hard to get.”
     
    Old Sam shook his head. “Don’t think so.”
     
    “Just because he didn’t look at women doesn’t mean he didn’t like them.”
     
    “Didn’t say he didn’t like them,” Sam said. “Just wasn’t interested. Saw it happen a couple of other times, although I admit I mighta been looking for it after that. Can’t be too careful these days, Kate. Guy was gay, he mighta made a pass at me.”
     
    This time Kate resorted to prayer to maintain control. “Thanks, Uncle,” she managed to say, and he took his beer back to the game just in time.
     
    Dandy