Old Sam put his mug down and frowned at Kate. She ignored him. Neil Meany had said that he'd gotten home at one-thirty or two o'clock. "Did you watch Neil Meany go back to his cabin?"

One eyebrow went up, and this time there was nothing of polite inquiry in it. "No. Neil Meany is a grown man. I was sure he was capable of making it home without my supervision."

"Did Neil Meany talk to you about his relationship with his brother?"

The other woman hesitated, and Kate said, "What, he tell you under the seal of the confessional?"

Anne Flanagan stiffened in her chair. "I don't hear confessions, Ms. Shugak," she said coldly. "I am not a Catholic priest."

"Then what's the problem?" Kate was aware of Old Sam sitting very still next to her. She could feel the weight of his gaze boring into her but, again, she ignored it.

"Merely, I was organizing my thoughts. I am aware that, by virtue of my firsthand experience of the Meany family, I may have valuable insight into the situation."

"Read a lot of mysteries, do you?" Kate said unkindly.

Anne Flanagan sat up straight in her chair and, fixing her gaze at a point above Kate's right shoulder, reeled off a staccato recitation of events that Chopper Jim would have admired for its brevity, clarity and wholly impersonal tone. "I first met Neil the first of June, when school let out and we moved out to the site. His family was already here." She paused. "I was not impressed with his brother. Calvin Meany seemed to me to be a businessman of dubious ethics as well as a domestic tyrant. Marian" She shook her head, as if to say, There is no there there. Kate was inclined to agree, but she didn't say so. "His children" She shook her head again.

"His brother I did like. Do like. He has visited me and the girls perhaps eight, ten times over the past five weeks. Sometimes he stays for dinner, sometimes he doesn't. We've shared meals, played board games, talked about books we've read. He's quite a scholar. I gather he was studying for a doctorate in English literature before his brother brought him to Alaska. He is planning to return to school after next year's season." She took a drink of coffee. "How doesdid he feel about his brother? He didn't like him, but then that was a trait shared by the entire family. Frankly, I have yet to meet anyone who did like Calvin Meany, in the family or out of it."

So had Kate. "If he disliked his brother so much, why follow him all the way to Alaska from Ohio and go to work for him?"

The other woman frowned. "I don't know, exactly." She hesitated, her eyes troubled. "He misses school. He really wants that Ph.D."

"Now there's a motive for murder," Kate said admiringly. "Academic frustration. I'll try that out on Chopper Jim when he gets back."