A taint in the blood (22 page)

"Your plastic surgeon, who is he? Never mind. Whoever he is, he ought to be shot. Here." Alvin produced a business card. "Give me a call. We'll set up an appointment." He took her chin in cool, impersonal hands and turned her face from side to side, and Kate was so dumbfounded at the uninvited familiarity that she let him. "How old are you?"

"Thirty-five," Kate said.

"Hmm," he said again. "Not much else to be done there, at least not yet. In another twenty years, we'll probably have to do some work on those eyes."

"What's wrong with my eyes?" Kate said, and then she pulled herself together. "There's nothing wrong with my eyes. Who the hell are you anyway?"

Alvin produced a wide smile of practiced charm. "I'm sorry. I'm Alvin Bishop. I'm a plastic surgeon." The mirthless smile widened. "Beautiful faces are us."

"I've already got one, thanks," Kate said smartly, and looked down at Alice. She understood the face now, although she would never understand the impetus behind the edifice. She had to work at keeping the pity out of her own (already beautiful) face.

"And how do you know my niece?" Alice said brightly.

Before Kate could reply, a booming male voice said, "And who do we have here?"

Kate peered up through the steadily thickening haze at what appeared to be quite the tallest man she'd ever met in her life.

The man stooped to kiss the cheek Alice presented. "Have I told you tonight how lovely you look, dear?" He dismissed the plastic surgeon with a look that stopped just short of insult. Dr. Alvin Bishop faded into the crowd, Kate catching a look of relief on his face as he went.

"Just fine, dear," she replied. "This is Kate Shugak, a friend of Charlotte's."

He straightened. "Is it. Well now." His eyes ran over Kate assessingly, and Kate got that instant vibe that every woman gets when a man is interested. Her own eyes narrowed a little.

He was a big man, long-limbed, rangy. She knew him to be in his late sixties or early seventies, but he looked twenty years younger. His face was long, the nose and chin very strong, his eyes blue and intent. His smile was more charming than Alvin's, but there was power in it, and the arrogance that comes with power. Erland Bannister would be a man whose every move, from the wink and the slap on the back to the unfriendly takeover of a rival corporation, would be calculated for a specific effect. He looked like a man who got what he wanted when he wanted it and not a second later.

He was dressed more casually than anyone in the room, in slacks and a well-worn gray tweed sport jacket over an oxford shirt open at the neck. Kate was reminded of a story about Napoleon's coronation, when he made all his generals wear gold braid while he wore a simple soldier's uniform. Make everyone dress up and then dress down yourself. Yet another example of his power, a small one, but telling.

An arm snaked through Erland's and a voice purred, "Erland, darling, who's your little friend?"

The blonde in the green-stained leggings was back, looking at Kate as if she'd crawled out from under a rock. Next to Kate, Charlotte stiffened. Alice's smile looked even more rigid, and it wasn't just her latest face-lift. Suddenly, Kate understood the subtext of the little scene a few minutes before. She looked at Alice. Fitzgerald was right: The rich really were different. But Hemingway was righter; the only difference was they had more money, which they could spend on more dumb things. It occurred to Kate for the first time that there were advantages to being broke for most of your life.

She looked back at the blonde and examined her face with interest. "You must be a patient of Alvin's, too," she said, putting as much innocence into her wide eyes as she could muster.

The blonde went a dull red. She opened her mouth, but whatever bile had been about to spew out was forestalled when Erland patted her hand. "Why, you've met."

"Not formally," Kate said with her biggest smile.

"Well, then, allow me to introduce you. Sondra Blair, this is Kate Shugak. Sondra, you know my wife, Alice, and my niece, Charlotte, already."

There was something in Erland's voice that alerted Sondra. Her hostility vanished, to be replaced by an oozing enchantment, which fooled no one it was aimed at. "Of course. How do you do? Alice, Charlotte, lovely to see you again."

"And Emily," Charlotte said in a tight voice.

"And Emily, of course," Erland said with no less charm.

"So nice to meet you, Emily," Sondra said, stifling a yawn. "And you, too, uh, Kaley, wasn't it?"

Kate laughed in her face.

There was a startled silence. Charlotte couldn't repress a smile. Emily chuckled. Alice woke up from cryosleep and looked at Kate as if Kate were her last hope of heaven.

Erland grinned down at Kate. "Feisty little thing, aren't you?

Let me buy you a drink." He let Sondra's arm fall and slipped a firm hand beneath Kate's elbow.

Sondra looked livid.

"Uncle Erland-" Charlotte said.

"Now, Charlotte, you just relax. I won't eat her." He smiled down at Kate. "Unless she asks me to. Nicely."

Again, Kate felt that jolt. She didn't think any woman under the age of eighty wouldn't have. It put her even more on her guard. Men like Erland Bannister didn't come on to a woman without an ulterior motive, and it wasn't just because he was bowled over by her manifest charms.

The dull look was back on Alice's face as they left. Charlotte opened her mouth as if to say something, then shut it again, worried eyes meeting Kate's, as if trying to impart a message of some urgency. Whatever it was, Kate didn't get it.

The crowd parted for Erland as it never would for Pete, and if people had been curious about Kate on Pete's arm, they were doubly interested to see her on Erland's. A brief electric silence would fall at their approach, succeeded by a buzz of comment and speculation after they had passed. "It's like a fishbowl in here," Kate said.

Erland smiled down at her. "I know. People will gossip about their superiors."

"Why are they here, if you hold them in such contempt?"

He didn't bother denying it. "I find them useful."

"All of them?"

He shrugged. "Most of them. Some come with their very own Kato Kaelins, and they have to be fed and watered along with the rest of the cattle, but it's the price I pay to get their masters in the door." He didn't bother lowering his voice, she noticed. He paused next to the bar and smiled down at her. "What can I get you?"

"Club soda, with a twist of lime."

He didn't try to talk her into anything stronger, which she appreciated. He got a scotch and water for himself and led her to a plush love seat tucked into a bow window. A couple seated there were dismissed with the same ease and finesse with which Erland had dismissed Alvin, had cut through the crowd, and had gone to the head of the line at the bar. Kate took the corner with the view; Erland took the corner with the view of Kate and crossed his legs so that a richly polished loafer touched one of hers. She let it stay there, for the moment.

"You're not quite what I expected," he said, watching her over the rim of his glass.

"What did you expect?" she said, sipping her club soda.

He smiled. "A little less city, a little more Bush?"

She smiled back. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"I'm not disappointed." He let his eyes wander over her. "No, indeed."

"Why am I here?" she said. Kate didn't do subtle.

"I knew your grandmother," Erland said.

"Everyone did," Kate said. "How did you know I was in town?"

He swallowed scotch. "Word gets around."

"What word?"

He smiled again. It came easily to him, and it lent him charisma. He would have found that out early on. He would have put it to work for him, the way he was putting it to work for him now. "A friend called. Said you'd been making inquiries about my sister's case."

The man she had called from Brendan's list who had refused to talk to her. "Charlotte didn't tell you," Kate said in a neutral voice.

His smile faded. "No," he said, a hint of sadness in his voice. "We're not as close as I'd like."

"Have you talked to Victoria?"

He shook his head. "Not in thirty years."

"Not since she went inside?"

"No."

"Why?" Kate said baldly. "She's right up the road, twenty minutes door-to-door."

He shrugged helplessly, which Kate didn't buy for a New York minute. "She refuses to speak to any of us."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Guilt, I suppose."

"So you think she's guilty."

His eyes were very blue and very intent. "She didn't deny it. She didn't even take the stand in her own defense."

Kate nodded. "I know. I've read the trial transcript."

Someone approached the couch. Kate looked up to see Oliver Muravieff leaning on his cane.

"Oliver," Erland said, getting to his feet and extending a hand.

It was grasped warmly. "Uncle Erland," Oliver Muravieff said. He looked down at Kate. "Ms. Shugak."

"You're late, boy." Erland clapped him on the shoulder. "Let me get you a drink."

Kate watched him go thoughtfully. She didn't expect Erland Bannister fetched drinks for just anybody. She looked at Oliver. What did Erland want from his nephew that he would wait on him?

He took his uncle's place. "What do you think of the party?"

"Interesting," Kate said.

Oliver gave a short laugh. "That's what you say when you see a painting you hate. 'Interesting.'"

She didn't contradict him. "Why are you here?"

He shrugged. "Uncle Erland asked me."

"And you come when he calls."

She was being deliberately offensive, but he smiled. It was an oddly grim expression, having little to do with amusement. "Yes," he said, "I do, and so does everyone else here."

"Oliver," a voice said, and Kate looked up, to behold a man with more and bigger teeth than JFK, all of them switched on. Looking into that smile was like staring through a dark night into headlights turned on bright.

"How the hell are you?" Smiley Face said, beaming down at both of them, and without waiting for a reply, he added "Who's your friend?"

Oliver's face took on an even more dour cast. "Kate Shugak, Bruce Abbott."

"Ah," Bruce Abbott said, nodding wisely. "Ekaterina Shugak's granddaughter. I heard your speech at AFN a couple of years back. Rousing, I thought."

"You didn't think I went over the top on the fish farming," Kate said, sitting up and looking anxious.

He extended a hand and she put hers into it, which allowed him to pat it reassuringly. "Certainly not. We must protect our wild stock at all cost if we are to maintain the reputation for quality Alaska salmon enjoys. Not to mention a healthful subsistence lifestyle for the Native peoples." He affected a shudder. "Nasty stuff anyway, farmed salmon. Dry, they have to dye it pink, diseased, tasteless. Your points were well taken."

Interesting, Kate thought, especially since her impromptu speech had begun with a story about a moose kill and she hadn't said a word about farmed fish. She beamed a smile at him that rivaled the brilliance of his own. Oliver made a sound in the back of his throat and stood up. "Take my seat, Bruce. I need a drink."