Blood Will Tell Dana Stabenow

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.What time?""Seven o'clock." Ekaterina smiled, this time a real one."There will be food." He grinned."I'll be there."Ekaterina looked at Kate, who knew there was something else going on here, she just hadn't figured out what.The food arrived and she left the problem for another time.Ekaterina exclaimed over the lasagna, Jack went into raptures over the veal, Johnny was up to his eyebrows in fettucine and the lure of basil and pine nuts proved irresistible for Kate.Everyone was on their best behavior, there was much talk and more laughter and the evening looked as if it were going to be a social occasion of the first water.Until the arrival of the people who had reserved the table next to them.One of them was John King.The other two men made Ekaterina stiffen in her chair and Kate swear beneath her breath.Jack observed both reactions with a sense of impending doom and began cutting his remaining veal into very large pieces."Dad," Johnny said, shocked, "slow down, you're being a pig." Jack said around a mouthful of veal, "Eat fast, kid, or you might not get to eat at all."Harvey Meganack saw Ekaterina at the same time she saw him and paused in the act of pulling out a chair for the trophy blonde who was definitely not his wife.A sheepish smile spread across his broad, brown face, a look not to be confused with the fierce expressions on the two solid gold rams' heads on either side of the gold nugget watch weighing down his wrist."Ekaterina.Hello."Ekaterina inclined her head in a frigid, infinitesimal bow."Harvey."The third man looked up and said ebulliently, "Ekaterina!" He was thin and fiftyish, with sparse fair hair standing straight up from the crown of his head.He bustled around the table and grabbed Ekaterina's reluctant hand in both of his, pumping it up and down with enthusiasm."How the hell are you! Ha HAH!" His laugh was automatic, like a spasm or a tic, used to punctuate.He sounded like Woody Woodpecker.Kate held her breath but Ekaterina only recovered her hand and nodded again, twice as frostily this time."Mr.--" She hesitated for so long that he rushed to supply the rest."Mathisen, Lew Mathisen," he said,"ha HAH!"A third thin smile, as frosty as the first two."Of course.Mr.Samithen."It was a Force 10 Arctic gale, impossible to mistake.Johnny's eyes widened.Jack ate faster.Kate waited, fatalistic, for Mathisen to dig himself in even deeper.He was smart enough not to correct Ekaterina.Instead, he assumed an expression of deep concern, and said, "Say, it's a damn shame about Sarah, isn't it? Harvey just told me, and I can't say how sorry I am.I know how much you're going to miss her." He smiled again, showing off six thousand dollars' worth of dental work in the upper incisors alone, and managed to restrain the laugh this time.At that Kate thought Ekaterina would say something and she braced for it, but just then John King looked over and saw Jack."Morgan," he growled.His eyes traveled past Jack to Kate."Shugak." He was square-headed, thickset and blond, wearing the same mustard-yellow, silver-toed cowboy boots Kate had seen in March.He looked exactly what he was, a roughneck who had started out throwing the chain on a rig floor in Louisiana and ended up, to his own and everyone else's bewilderment, not to say consternation, at the head of the board room of Royal Petroleum Company, throwing his weight around."Hello, King," Kate said, leaping into Ekaterina's frozen silence with foolhardy abandon."You get that wellhead off Tode Point yet?"Johnny looked puzzled.Jack choked on his veal and had recourse to his Chianti.Ekaterina looked on Kate with what might actually have been approval.King's scowl deepened.Without answering he seated his date, a brunette with a face so artificially smooth you could skate on it and eyes so opaque it was hard to tell their color.There was a wide gold band on her left hand, the only thing about her that surprised Kate.The oil man sat down next to the brunette without introducing her, folded thick arms across his chest and glowered at Lew Mathisen beneath lowered brows."And Kate, too, by God," Lew Mathisen said, "how'd we get so lucky, ha HAH!" He reached out and Kate gave him a bright smile across a full fork, thereby occupying both hand and mouth so she would have to neither shake his hand nor reply."Hello, emaa," Axenia said from behind him, her smile containing only a trifle less wattage."Sorry we're late.Hi, Kate." "Axenia," Kate said,"hi.I didn't know you were coming." "I called her this afternoon,"Ekaterina said."Hey, babe," Lew said, and gave Axenia an exuberant kiss."What are you doing here?""I'm meeting my grandmother for dinner." She put her arm around his neck and kissed him back with interest, when she was done looking a clear challenge first at her grandmother, then at her cousin.Kate thought if Ekaterina stiffened any more she might snap in half where she sat.A short, stout man with a moon face and shiny black hair beamed over Axenia's shoulder."It's my fault, Ekaterina.Axenia said I'd get a free meal if I tagged along, so I made her wait for me.Hi, Kate.""Hello, Billy." Billy Mike had succeeded Ekaterina in the position of tribal chief of the Niniltna Native Association only because Ekaterina had refused to run for a fourth five year term.He was also one of the four surviving Niniltna board members.Ekaterina, then Harvey, now Billy.Kate wondered when Enakenty was going to show up."And Billy, too, great to see you again!" Mathisen smacked his hands together."Well, isn't this great, ha HAH! Can we buy you nice folks a drink? Honey, bring my good friends here a bottle of whatever they're drinking.And another one for us while you're at it." As if the idea had just occurred to him, he said, "Say, why don't we push our tables together? Make a party of it, ha HAH!""No, thank you," Ekaterina said clearly.Johnny, who had inherited his brains from his father, began shovelling in pasta in a manner reminiscent of a steam shovel excavating a gravel pit."Oh, hey, Lew," Jack said, "ah, we're already halfway through our dinners here, let's save it for another time, okay?""Well, hell, you can drink, can't you, ha HAH? Honey, can we slide these tables together, what do you think? Ha HAH!"Kate leaned over to whisper in Ekaterina's ear."Would you like to leave?"Ekaterina, straight-backed in her chair, looking neither to the left nor to the right, conveyed a healthy portion of lasagna to her mouth without replying."Since they're almost done," Axenia said, "maybe Billy and I should join you instead.""Well, if you're sure," Mathisen said, disappointed."Honey? Honey?Could we have a couple more chairs and place settings here? Fine! Well, great to see you, Ekaterina, we'll be seeing you all at the convention, ha HAH!" He waved a hand at Ekaterina's table and went back to his own [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Pokrewne