“He didn't say.”

“Was Mr. Bayless angry at Mr. Malone for firing him?”

Larsgaard shrugged. “He shot off his mouth some. I didn't take any of it seriously.”

“What did he say?” Their eyes met and Liam added, “ Specifically?”

Larsgaard's lips tightened in what was becoming a familiar expression. “He said Malone was a jealous old fool.”

Interesting. “Mrs. Malone was a member of the crew, wasn't she?”

“Yes, but…”

“Yes, but what?”

There was a long pause. “Yes,” Larsgaard said finally, “she was a member of the crew.”

Liam remembered the fifty feet of theMarybethia,damaged now by smoke and flame and salt water. She'd been a big boat in her time, but not big enough to hide the kind of activities Liam was thinking of from other members of the crew. Still, love will find a way. This, not unnaturally, made him think of Wy, and he cleared his throat. “Did you find Mr. Bayless to be a satisfactory employee, Mr. Larsgaard?”

“Yes.”

“He got to work on time, knew what he was doing, did his share?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hire him again this summer?”

“No.”

“Did he go back to work for the Malones?”

“No.”

“Did he get a job on another boat?”

“I don't know.”

Andrew and Ekwok exchanged sideways glances.

Fine, Liam thought. He looked at the rest of the council for a thoughtful minute. None of them met his eyes, none had offered any additional information. Old Walter sipped his coffee and continued to look at and say nothing.

All right. Let them think Liam was done with his questions. He would return, perhaps tomorrow morning, when they had become used to his absence, when they had let down their guard a little, and ask more. “Could I see the Malones' house now, please?”

The Malone house was a sprawling affair that had its origins in a one-room log cabin. The logs still formed part of the exterior wall, the southeast corner facing the dirt road that ran north of Kulukak and dead-ended fifty feet beyond the house. Over the years it had acquired a second story and a cedar deck built over a dry dock that looked big enough to accommodate a boat the size of a state ferry. The front half of the house was built on pilings set into the ebb and flow of the tide, the back half rested its haunches on the steep, rocky shore, as if preparing to spring into the water at the first dangle of bait. The unpainted wooden clapboards had faded to gray and the roof needed new shingles, but otherwise it was a house that proclaimed the affluence of its owner in no uncertain terms.

“Mr. Malone was a successful fisherman, I take it,” Liam said, one hand on the doorknob.

“Yes,” Larsgaard Junior replied.

There was something even in that single, flat syllable that made Liam look around. “Beat you out for high boat a couple of times, did he?”

There was no answering smile on Larsgaard's face. “A couple of times,” he agreed in a level voice.

Liam turned the knob. The door opened. “Not locked,” he said.

“Nobody locks their doors in Kulukak,” Larsgaard said. “It's why most of us live here.”

“Nice to know your neighbors,” Liam agreed, and stepped inside.

There were four bedrooms, furnished well but not luxuriously, three bathrooms, an office with a computer, a printer, filing cabinets, a fax and a copy machine, a living room with a rock fireplace that had an unfinished jade hearth, a family room with a large-screen television and a bookcase full of videotapes, a Jenn-Air grill in the kitchen that Liam immediately coveted-hell, he thought with a pang, remembering his sloshy awakening that morning, he coveted the whole house- a breakfast nook and a dining room. The artwork was Alaskan, bought with an eye more toward investment than aesthetic value. Each painting, suitably framed, hung directly in the center of each wall-a Machetanz oil of a polar bear in the living room, a Birdsall triptych of Denali in the dining room, a Stonington watercolor of Child's Glacier in the family room. Even the family pictures had been winnowed down and confined to a couple of picture ledges, one in the office, one in the master bedroom.

It was all very neat, very clean. The spice cupboard had no dried parsley spilled on its shelves, all the clothes in the four bedrooms were hung neatly in closets, the washer and dryer in the downstairs half bath stood empty, waiting expectantly for the next load.

“She was a good housekeeper, that Mrs. Malone,” Ekwok said.

Larsgaard Junior turned abruptly and walked out of the house.

David Malone had been as orderly in business as his wife had been in keeping house; Liam found the names and address of this summer's deckhands in a file marked “Personnel.” Jason Knudson, eighteen, of Bellingham, Washington. Wayne Cullen, nineteen, also of Bellingham. He made a note of their names and addresses. Malone had gone so far as to note down next of kin, a sensible precaution in a business where life expectancy was so problematic that the people who wrote actuarial tables for insurance companies couldn't find a place low enough on their graphs for Alaskan fishermen.

Liam closed the top drawer of the filing cabinet and opened the bottom one, where he found retired files of previous employees, including Max Bayless. Max Bayless was twenty-seven, from Anacortes, Washington. Home address, telephone number and next of kin were noted, along with wages paid and taxes deducted. No reason was given for his termination, but Liam noted that his final check had been drawn on June 20 of the previous year, well before the red season got into full swing on the Bay.

He switched on Malone's computer. The screen requested a password. Without hesitation, Liam typed in “Molly” and with a beep, a click and a whirr, Windows 98 loaded and icons filled the screen. It looked like the kids had spent a lot of time on Dad's computer, playing Sim City, Tetris and Solitaire.

One of the few nongame icons to pop up was Quicken. He clicked on it and a list of accounts appeared, including a checking account with sixty-five hundred dollars in it, two credit card accounts, both zeroed out by the most recent monthly payment, a self-employment retirement account in both David's and Molly's names worth a quarter of million after taxes and a savings account holding over one hundred thousand dollars in cash.

David Malone has been a very successful fisherman indeed.

There was an email icon; Liam clicked on it and was requested to provide a password. “Kerry” didn't work; “Michael” did. Liam shook his head, and clicked on inbox. Wasn't much in it, or in the outbox, or in the trashbox. Kerry had a pen pal in Las Vegas, New Mexico, David had written the Social Security Administration to ask for an updated Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement, probably to ensure a hard copy of his earnings before the Y2K bug ate their hard drive, Michael had ordered new sneakers from Nike Town, and Molly wasn't represented.

IRS paperwork going back ten years filled a second two-drawer filing cabinet. So far as Liam could tell, Malone had never been audited. There was a copy of a will that divided everything into thirds, with the children's portions held in trust with Molly and Jonathan as trustees. No provision had been made for the simultaneous death of everyone named in the will. Molly Malone's given name had been Marybethia. Liam made a note of the lawyer's name and Anchorage address. It was a considerable estate. It would be interesting to discover who benefited.

He sat for a moment, thinking. On an impulse he pushed back the chair to go upstairs and into the master bedroom.

The picture ledges on the wall opposite the bed held fourteen three-by-five prints, their wooden frames painted in bright primary colors and arranged like a prism in two rows of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. There were two baby pictures, newborns with red, squinched-up faces and no hair, and the only way Liam could tell them apart was by the color of the blankets they were wrapped in. He remembered his first sight of Charlie, rosy and wrinkled and irate at being thrust from a warm, safe world into the glaring lights of the delivery room at Providence Hospital in Anchorage.