A grave denied by Dana Stabenow

proffered a rough but recognizable chair, with back, sliced out of a round section of tree trunk with what had probably been her chain saw.
     
    Kate’s sense of humor got the better of her at this point. “Thank you, Mr. Crusoe,” she said. She sat down. Her butt overlapped both sides but it got the job done. She waited while the water boiled in a saucepan, and didn’t offer to help measure coffee into the filter. The resulting brew threatened to remove the enamel from her teeth, but that was okay because that was how she liked it. She added some evaporated milk from a can and sipped. He did, too.
     
    She wondered when he’d moved on from cocoa to coffee. “Nice camp,” she said.
     
    “Thanks,” Johnny said.
     
    “You’ve been planning this for a while.”
     
    He nodded. “Ever since she showed up in the Park last fall.”
     
    “That long? I’m impressed. But then your father was quite a planner, too.”
     
    “He told me patience was the most important thing when you wanted something. He told me not to rush, that rushing just got you nowhere faster.”
     
    Kate thought of Jack Morgan, of all the time he’d served for her after she’d left Anchorage, and him. Eighteen months he had waited, until exactly the right event had drawn her back into his orbit, by the time when she’d been willing to allow herself to be drawn. It had worked, too. “Smart man, your father.”
     
    “I think so.”
     
    Mutt came padding back up the hill and flopped down next to Kate with a sigh of satisfaction. Kate let her hand drop down into the thick gray coat. As always, the warm, solid bulk pressed against her side was comfort and consolation, reassurance and support. Mutt was her alter ego, her backup man, her sister, her friend. Her savior, on more than one occasion.
     
    Kate wished Mutt could save her now. She felt as if she were walking through a mine field, that wherever she put a foot down there was the possibility of an explosion that would destroy forever what fragile relationship she had managed to build with Johnny Morgan. She didn’t mind making him mad, but she didn’t want to alienate him. “I’ve been talking to some people today,” she said.
     
    “Yeah? Who?”
     
    “People who knew Len Dreyer.”
     
    He’d all but forgotten the body in the glacier under the pressure of more important affairs. “Len Dreyer?” He caught himself. “Oh. Yeah. The dead guy.”
     
    Kate nodded, and took a sip of coffee.
     
    “So,” Johnny said, curious in spite of himself. “What did they say?”
     
    “Not much,” she said. “It’s weird. Everybody knew him but nobody really knew him. Near as I can figure, he worked at one time or another for pretty much every Park rat with a building or a boat. They all paid him in cash. All of them were referred to him by either Bernie or Bonnie.”
     
    “Who’s Bonnie?”
     
    “The postmistress.”
     
    “Oh. Mrs. Jeppsen.”
     
    “Yeah. Nobody can remember him having a girlfriend. Nobody remembers him having a friend-friend. Nobody can remember him mentioning family. Nobody knows where he came from. Every single person I’ve talked to so far says he showed up when he said he would and he did the work well. Nobody’s complained about him overcharging, so I’m guessing he worked for a reasonable rate.”
     
    “What about where he lives? Have you checked that out? There might be papers and stuff.”
     
    “There might have been, if his cabin hadn’t burned down.”
     
    “Oh. Ohhhhh,” Johnny said, and his eyes brightened, so that he looked more like fourteen calendar years old and less like a wary fourteen going on forty. “You mean someone burned it down so you wouldn’t find out anything about him?”
     
    “Maybe,” Kate said. “I don’t like coincidences. I find someone shooting Len Dreyer and his cabin burning down coincidental in the extreme.”
     
    “Yeah,” Johnny said, his brows knit. “When did the cabin burn down?”

 
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