Any Taint of Vice: A Kate Shugak Story (Kate Shugak Novels) Read online

  They got him inside and on a couch, where he passed out. Vic watched the drool slide down his brother’s cheek and looked up at Kate. “Maybe it’s time you told me what the hell is going on.”

  “No time,” Kate said. “Tell the General I’ll call later.”

  She drove back to Gohegan’s house, parking some distance away. Broken clouds moved swiftly across the face of a sun just now rising over the edge of the Chugach Mountains. Kate rummaged in the trunk of the car, where Kurt kept a stash of props useful to a private investigator, and came up with a red paisley bandanna and a length of polypro. She knotted her T-shirt beneath her breasts and left her jacket in the car. Five minutes later she was jogging down Maritime Loop behind Mutt, who now wore a bandanna collar attached to a polypro leash. They came up on Gohegan’s house, in front of which stood two blue-and-whites, two uniformed officers out of their cars taking statements from pajama-clad neighbors.

  Kate slowed her pace long enough to assure herself she knew neither officer and went trotting up to a man wearing an Aces sweatshirt over polka-dotted flannel pants held up by a drawstring. “Gosh,” she said, wide-eyed, “what’s all this?”

  He looked at her and she threw in a glance admiring of his physique. It wasn’t difficult. He smiled back at her, eyes lingering on her bare midriff. “There was a shooting,” he said, sounding proprietary, as if living on the block gave him ownership of the event.

  “Wow!” Kate said, “really!” and drew a little closer to him, as if for protection, and also to hang on his every word.

  He preened, and then was momentarily sidetracked by the sight of Mutt. “That’s a beautiful dog.”

  “Isn’t she?” Kate said with a fond look. “Say hello to the nice man, Maggie.”

  Mutt’s sideways glance gave Kate to understand that she’d pay for the alias, and soon, but she lavished a warm welcome on Polka Dots. Kate waited for the full effect to set in before she nudged him along. “A shooting, you said?”

  “Yes,” Polka Dots said, “but—” He gave the police officers a covert look. “—it was evidently a false alarm. Nobody’s home, and they haven’t found a body.”

  “What?” Kate saw his eyebrows go up at her sharp tone and gave out with a breathless giggle. “Maybe it was just kids playing with firecrackers.”

  “Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “I know gunshots when I hear them.”

  “Well,” Kate said, making a show of consulting a nonexistent watch, “I’d better be getting on.” She made play with her eyelashes. “See you round the neighborhood.”

  “Wait, what’s your name?” he said.

  She waved without replying, moving into a smooth jog as she rounded the corner. They got back to the car and disrobed themselves of their various costumery. The drive home was given to speculation.

  Where was Gohegan’s body? Who had moved it, and why? Not to mention the comforter and the mattress, stained with Gohegan’s blood? And how had that been managed in the time between Kate leaving the scene with Cal and the police arriving?

  And who had shot Gohegan in the first place? And why?

  3

  Four hours later, her cell phone rang. It was Vic Boatwright. “Let me buy you lunch.”

  She yawned and sat up, shoving the covers back. “If I buy, I can declare it on my expenses.”

  He surprised her by his choice of restaurant. She ordered a Mom All Dark and settled into the booth that Heidi had managed to get them at rush hour, and this with the mayor and two flunkies waiting in line behind the police chief and two of his. Going to the Bone was what Alaskans did.

  Vic surprised her again by waiting for her to speak first. “No rack, no thumbscrews?” she said.

  He smiled. It was an attractive smile, white teeth in a tanned face creased into interesting lines. The hair was going gray, but it was a messy mop that had never suffered the attention of a professional stylist. His jeans looked like they’d been worn more than once, and the plaid shirt could have come right out of a Blazo box shelf in the Park. “You’ll tell me or you won’t,” he said. “Either way, I get a good meal.”

  Heidi arrived with their orders and a cheerful “Enjoy!” and for a few moments their attention was necessarily diverted. When the last thighbone gave a satisfying crunch between her teeth, she looked up to see him watching her. “What?”

  “Not often nowadays you see a woman enjoy her food,” he said.

  “Not ever been a problem of mine.” She sat back. “Tell me about your brother.”

  “I thought you knew him.”

  “Met him once in college. Where I did not see him at his best.”

  “I heard, and that probably was his best.”

  “And seventeen years later, your father is still bailing him out.”

  Heidi appeared. “How are you folks? Coffee? Certainly.” Their plates disappeared, replaced by coffee in white porcelain mugs.

  “What do you do?” Kate said.

  “I’m a helo pilot,” he said.

  Kate was a fixed-wing girl herself. “Private or commercial?”

  “Both.”

  Of course, a Boatwright would have his own aircraft. Kate wondered if there was a landing pad out back of the General’s house. “And you still live with your dad.”

  “Yes.” He sounded unembarrassed and unapologetic. “I try to keep an eye on Cal, but—” He raised a hand, palm up, and let it fall. In that one gesture alone, Kate read a lifetime of Cal Boatwright’s fuckups. “If you could give me some idea of just how much trouble he’s in this time, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Why don’t you ask your father?” Kate said, watching him.

  Vic Boatwright grimaced. “There’s plenty my father doesn’t tell me.”

  The scene at Gohegan’s house was still very fresh in Kate’s mind. Someone must have been following either her or Gohegan. Or Cal. If it was Cal, they might have wanted to set him up. But then why take the weapon? If it was Gohegan, blackmailing was never a one-off, and who knew how many other victims she’d pissed off to the point of homicide?

  If it was Kate, then someone at the General’s house had been talking. Possibly the man sitting across from her.

  Her phone rang.

  “Oscar Square is dead,” Kurt said.

  “What?”

  “Somebody shot him and dumped his body in McHugh Creek,” Kurt said. “The General wants to see you.”

  The old man was sitting in the same chair, wearing the same neatly pressed, knife-edge jeans, drinking coffee poured from the same silver pot, but this time it was Vic Boatwright who ushered her into the General’s study. He had not been dismissed, instead seating himself in an upright chair behind his father. He watched Kate with hooded eyes.

  The General handed her an envelope. “I believe this should cover your fee and expenses over and above your usual rate.”

  She gave the contents a desultory look. “Generous,” she said.

  The General inclined his head. It was noblesse oblige to support the little people.

  “Am I to take it that my work here is done?” she said.

  The General looked at her in mild surprise. “I hired you to find my son, and the photographic files. You found him, and them. You tell me his blackmailer is dead. I believe you.”

  “Why should you?” Kate said. “Her body is missing.”

  The General waved that aside as of being no consequence. “You said you saw her body.”

  Kate’s eyes narrowed. “I’m told Oscar Square is dead, too.”

  The General looked sad. “I’m afraid so. Poor Oscar.” He shook his head.

  “He was shot, as I understand it,” Kate said.

  “Yes.”

  “With a thirty-eight.”

  He gave her a sharp look. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I only mention it because Andrea Gohegan was also shot with a thirty-eight.” Other than politely raised eyebrows, the General had no comment. “Any idea on who might want him dead, or why?” Kate
said.

  “I’m afraid not,” the General said. “Oscar was a very private man, Ms. Shugak, with his own life that he took care to keep separate from my own. I’m sure the police will sort it out, and the perpetrator brought to account for his crime. In the meantime, thank you for your assistance in resolving this most unpleasant matter so quickly and so efficiently.”

  In the hall Vic said, “Talk to you for a minute?”

  Kate and Mutt trailed after him into what proved to be a dining room, complete with a walnut dining suite that could seat twenty and a matching hutch loaded to the beveled glass with silver plate and a full set of Waterford crystal. “It’s about my wife.”

  “Rose,” Kate said.

  “Good memory,” he said.

  “It’s what I do,” she said.

  His smile went lopsided. “I’d like to find her.” He took out his phone, fiddled with it, and handed it to her.

  The photo was of a woman in her early thirties, blond, blue-eyed, slender, laughing. She was wearing a white, square-necked sundress with a full skirt, and she was sitting in the left seat of a red-and-white. The helicopter was sitting on a gravel runway on a sunny day. Denali was in the background. Talkeetna, probably. Every Anchorage pilot’s preferred day trip, with a room-by-the-hour motel next to the airstrip.

  She handed the phone back. “She’s been gone, what, three weeks?” He nodded. “Have you heard from her in the past three weeks?”

  “No. I’ve called every one of her friends I can think of. I’ve checked her credit cards, no activity. Same with her bank. Her cell doesn’t answer.”

  “She have Find My Phone? She have a laptop?”

  “No.”

  “When did she go missing?”

  “Three weeks ago tomorrow. A Thursday. She went to town early in the morning to meet a friend for breakfast at Cafe Amsterdam and then go shopping.”

  “She meet the friend?”

  He nodded. “And went shopping. They had lunch at Sullivan’s and went their separate ways. Rose didn’t come home that night, and I haven’t seen her since.”

  “How is your relationship?”

  “We’ve been married for seven years,” he said.

  Her eyebrows worked a little at this oblique answer but she didn’t follow up on it, for now. “Children?” He shook his head. “Parents?”

  “Father dead, mother in Virginia. I called. Miriam hasn’t heard from her.”

  “Forgive me, Vic, but you don’t seem all that alarmed that your wife has been missing for three weeks.”

  “Like I said, Ms. Shugak,” Vic Boatwright said, “she wasn’t much of a wife.”

  “Why do you want to find her, then?”

  His eyes skimmed her figure appreciatively, lingering on the thin white scar that bisected her brown throat. “Where’d you get that scar?”

  “None of your business,” she said.

  She sat in the car afterwards, thinking just how good Vic Boatwright was at changing the subject.

  4

  Kurt looked at the check and whistled. “Nice.”

  “Not bad for a bribe,” Kate said.

  “You did what you were paid for, Kate,” he said.

  “Where’s Gohegan’s body?” she said. “And who shot her?”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t Cal Boatwright?”

  “I didn’t find a weapon, and his hands didn’t smell of GSR.”

  “There you are, then,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “In the best tradition of the gumshoe, you did the job and kept the client happy. Go home.”

  Late that night saw Kate parked in a concealing shadow outside The Right Touch Massage watching half a dozen men fill a trailer with desks, files, massage beds, and linens. When the tractor pulled away from the curb, she followed them. Ten minutes later they pulled up in front of a house with a sign on it reading THE VENUS FLY-TRAP. The ramp came down and The Right Touch’s furnishings were moved into their new home. A woman in a three-piece suit with a blond pompadour and an improbable figure paid off the movers from a roll of cash and went back inside.

  Kate dialed Kurt’s phone number. He answered on the third ring, sounding irritated. “What the hell?”

  “I’m nicer than that when you call me in the middle of the night.”

  A female voice protested in the background.

  “Ah, so you weren’t asleep,” Kate said, “no apologies necessary, then. Ever hear of the Venus Fly-Trap Massage Parlour?”

  “The what? No. Wait. Yes. Sorry, honey, I have to take this.” As the female voice protested more. “It’s Edie Venus’s place.”

  “And who is Edie Venus?”

  “Used to run a strip club out in Indian. She’s something of a legend. Everybody’d take their cheechakos out there and pay Edie to wrap her boobs around his head. All the way around. I’ve seen pictures.”

  The figure of the woman in the three-piece suit seemed suddenly less improbable.

  “She moved into town a couple of years ago,” Kurt said.

  “She just cleaned out The Right Touch Massage,” Kate said.

  “Did she,” Kurt said. He sounded admiring.

  A car pulled up in front of the Venus Fly-Trap, a dark Mercedes SUV, and Cal Boatwright climbed out. “Gotta go,” Kate said, and pocketed the phone. “Stay,” she told Mutt.

  Boatwright, none too steady on his feet, approached the house with exaggerated stealth. He went down on his knees in front of the door and was attempting to pick the lock with a Bic lighter when Kate came up behind him. The door opened and he fell forward, flat on his face. “Really?” a voice said, sounding exasperated.

  Kate moved into view.

  “And who the hell are you?” Edie Venus said.

  “Need some help?” Kate said.

  The “compare options” program ran behind Edie Venus’s blue eyes. If she blew Kate off, she’d never know who she was or what she was doing there. “Don’t mind if I do,” she said.

  The two of them manhandled Boatwright inside and onto a convenient couch. It sat in a dimly lit room with other couches, a door in the back wall, and thick, floor-length curtains drawn across the windows. “Thanks,” Edie said. “Now, who the hell are you?”

  Close up, the color of her hair was even more improbable than the dimensions of her figure. She had a beak of a nose, long and sharp. Kate had seen that nose, and those blue eyes, before. “My name’s Kate,” she said. She nodded at Boatwright, in conversation with the butterflies flying around his head. “His father hired me to find him.” Which was true, so far as it went.

  Edie Venus’s laugh sounded like a crow cawing. “I can see him doing it, too,” she said, and noticed Kate’s raised eyebrows. “Let’s just say it’s a family affair.” She waved a hand at Cal. “You want him, he’s yours.”

  “The General also wants the photographs,” Kate said.

  Edie went still, faded blue eyes hard and watchful. “What photographs would those be?”

  “The ones of Cal and Andrea Gohegan.”

  Edie Venus seemed to relax a little. “Oh. Those.”

  “I figure that was why you cleaned out The Right Touch,” Kate said.

  Edie Venus’s eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you well informed.”

  “You’d be amazed,” Kate said. “Since one of your businesses appears to be furniture removal, were your guys anywhere near an address on Maritime in Southport early this morning?” Kate let silence gather following the question. Nothing, and she tried another tack. “Since you say it’s a family affair, ever meet Vic Boatwright’s wife, Rose?”

  Edie Venus didn’t change color, but her voice was deadly when she replied. “I think you’d better leave.”

  “Rose Boatwright,” Kate said, not moving. “Been missing three weeks now, although no one seems in a big hurry to find her, including her husband. Never met her?”

  “Never met her, never want to,” Edie Venus said, “since she ran off with my Miles.”

  “Miles?” Kate said, taken aback. />
  “Miles Venus, my husband,” Edie said in a stony voice. “Was there anything else you wanted to know?”

  There was a knock at the door. “We’re closed,” Edie Venus said, raising her voice, eyes never leaving Kate.

  The knock came again, and Edie Venus marched over to the door and yanked it open. “What the—?”

  The sound of the shot filled the room like cannon fire. Edie Venus crumpled where she stood, and in the same moment Kate dived over the back of the couch Cal Boatwright was lying on and pulled it and him over on top of herself.

  Cal, momentarily airborne, gave a whoop. When he landed on Kate, he said, “Rose,” and tried to grope her.

  Outside she heard footsteps running away and Mutt barking from inside the car. She shoved Cal and the couch off her and went to Edie, whose last breath was rattling out of her throat. She looked out the door, still open, and saw taillights receding down the street.

  She went back inside and hoisted Cal to his feet and out to the car. Bench-pressing drunks, and this drunk in particular, was becoming a habit.

  Vic answered the door at the General’s house. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, and helped Kate bring Cal inside to another and far cleaner couch.

  “Your wife still missing?” Kate said when they were done.

  Vic looked confused by the segue. “Yes.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Have you asked your brother if he’s seen her?”

  “I don’t—”

  “He tried it on with her, didn’t he?”

  “I—”

  “He’s an incurable rounder,” she said, “has been since college. If he can’t get what he wants by asking nice, he’ll try other ways. She was a good-looking woman, and just down the hall. I’m guessing Rose turned him down and he killed her.”

  Vic gaped at her.

  “He also killed Oscar Square,” Kate said. “But you killed Edie Venus.”

  His face darkened. “I did no—”

  “I checked the engine on the Lexus,” she said. “It hasn’t been in the garage five minutes. You barely beat me up the hill.”

  The color drained from his face.