SIXTEEN

Karen Tompkins’ town house was on the south end of the complex, looking directly over the small boat harbor. There was a kitchen, a living room, and a dining room downstairs, and two bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs. There was no yard in front, only two parking spaces. It was exactly like the other seven units in the building, with a narrow deck running across the front and five sets of evenly spaced stairs providing access. There was a small wrought-iron table with two matching chairs on the deck in front of Karen’s.

Inside, there was a lot of pink. The sheets on the bed were pink and satin. The towels in the bathroom were pink and fluffy. The china dishes in the kitchen cupboard had pink roses on them. The purple leather couch had pink plush accent pillows. The carpet was maroon, and the walls were hung with watercolor paintings of flowers and hummingbirds and butterflies.

The bed was king-size. So was the tub in the master bath. Two drawers of the dresser were devoted to toys intended to be played with in both, some of which raised eyebrows all around.

There was a calendar hung over the kitchen counter, with a dentist’s appointment coming up on November second, and that was about it. Envelopes were tucked into the calendar’s pocket. Diana shuffled through them. Bills, electric, gas, garbage, telephone, all due at the first of the month. An Alaska Airlines Visa bill, carrying a thirteen-thousand-dollar balance and a two-hundred-dollar periodic finance charge.

In the spare bedroom, which didn’t look as if it had seen much use, there was a plastic box with a handle on top, the size to fit letter-size files. Inside were Karen’s birth certificate, her high school diploma, her bank statements, the deed to the town house. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

There was no clue as to who her most recent bed partner had been, but from what Diana had heard so far, you could pretty much throw a dart anywhere within the Newenham city limits and hit someone who’d spent time between Karen Tompkins’ sheets.

She had interviewed Betsy Amakuk and her husband at Lydia’s house, although Betsy was nearly incoherent with grief. She’d lost a mother and a sister within the space of two days, so Diana didn’t blame her. Her husband said they’d been home that evening, sorting through Lydia’s bills, which they’d fetched from Lydia’s house that morning, and writing Lydia’s obituary for the newspapers. Betsy had made a quick run back to her mother’s house to look for Lydia’s birth certificate to run with the obituary, and had found Karen dead on the kitchen floor. No, they couldn’t think of anyone who wished Karen harm. “She had a lot of boyfriends,” Betsy had said in an exhausted voice. “She liked men, sure. But she wouldn’t have stayed with anyone who threatened her, or hurt her.”

Diana thought of the toys found in Karen’s house and reserved judgment.

She had interviewed Stan Jr. at his house, a ranch-style home with two bedrooms and one bath in the Anipa subdivision, painted forest green with white trim and a corrugated metal roof. Inside there was a lot of overstuffed furniture, a fireplace, a kitchen of near-sanitary cleanliness, a large bathroom with a soaker tub and terra-cotta tiles. It looked very comfortable, and very expensive. Stan Jr. was pale and tightly controlled. He shook his head when she asked him if he knew of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Karen. He’d seen her with a number of different men, most recently with Roger Hayden, who worked for the Newenham Telephone Cooperative.

“When was the last time you saw them together?” Diana asked.

He thought. “About a month ago, I guess. They were having dinner at Bill’s.”

Lastly, Diana had interviewed Jerry at his place, a cramped, barely one-bedroom apartment in a six-plex next door to the Last Frontier Bank. It was painfully neat, partly because it looked like Jerry didn’t own much. He scurried into the bathroom after letting her in, probably flushing his stash down the toilet, and she wandered around, poking her nose into this and that. The kitchenette cupboards held four place settings of flowered melamine and a set of Ecko pots and pans. The glasses and flatware were from Costco, and it all looked brand-new. The refrigerator was almost empty but for half a loaf of cheddar cheese, a carton of eggs with one left, and a quart of two-percent milk with a week-old expiration date. The lesser part of a case of Rainier beer filled up the bottom shelf.

The bedroom held a full-size bed, neatly made with white sheets and a flowered comforter that no man had picked out. The dresser drawers were only half-full of underwear and T-shirts and socks, and a spare change of bed linens. The closet was echoingly empty, a blue suit, two lighter blue shirts, a pair of black oxford shoes, a pair of sneakers. The suit was inexpensive and so new it still sported a tag. Betsy had probably bought it for him for Lydia’s memorial service, scheduled for the following Saturday afternoon.

The baseboard heating clinked as it came on, and the smell of burning dust filled the air. She went back into the living room and sat down gingerly on the nubbed fabric of the hard, narrow couch. On the wall opposite was a velvet painting of the Beatles back when they shaved. Copies ofAlaska Magazine were stacked in two neat piles on the press board coffee table. There was a stereo, in her opinion the only evidence of human habitation, and a collection of CDs, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones. Jerry was a rock-and-roll boy.

There wasn’t a book on a shelf, or a family photo in a frame, or a birthday card or a graduation announcement on the refrigerator. She’d never seen a lonelier or unlovelier five hundred square feet in her life. It depressed her just to look at it.

The sound of the toilet flushing for the third time faded away and Jerry emerged from the bathroom, ostentatiously drying his hands on his jeans, and sat down on the matching nubby chair next to the couch.

“I’m sorry to bother you so late at night,” Diana said, “and I’m sorry to have to ask these questions at a time like this, but can you tell me the last time you saw your sister Karen?”

His thin, anxious face seemed to sink in on itself, but she couldn’t tell if it was from grief for his sister’s death or apprehension at having to deal with a cop. “Last night, I think. Or was it this morning?” He stopped. “I can’t remember, exactly. I can’t believe she’s dead.” He leaned forward. “Are you sure she’s dead, ma’am? I mean, couldn’t you have made a mistake? Could it maybe have been someone else who got killed?”

“I’m sorry, Jerry. It’s Karen. Your sister Betsy found her. There’s no mistake.”

His eyes were shiny with tears. “She was so cute when we were little. I liked her best of all. We used to hide together from Bossy Betsy.”

“Jerry, I really need you to concentrate. When was the last time you saw her?”

“I don’t know,” he said helplessly. “I think- Oh, wait. It was when we went to the lawyer’s.”

“What lawyer?”

“Ed. He wrote Dad’s will. And Mom’s.” A tear rolled down his face. He smeared it with the back of one hand, leaving a shiny track down one stubbled cheek.

Diana made a note. “Did Ed read the will to you this morning?”

“No, but he told us what was in it.” As an afterthought, he added, “Karen was mad.”

Diana sat up straighter on the very uncomfortable couch. “Mad about what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Mom gave away something Karen wanted.”

“Do you remember what it was?”

He screwed up his face. “A picture, maybe? It was old. I didn’t care.”

He was lying; it stuck out all over him. Karen might have been mad about something, but it hadn’t been a picture. “Betsy and Stan Jr. were there, too?”

“Yeah.”

Diana made a note. “Jerry, was anybody mad at Karen, that you know of?”