“This is an old shipmate of mine, Aisling, Captain Torkel Fiske. He arranged for me to get the material and for Diego to be here today.”
“Oh, that was real nice of you, Captain,” Aisling said, sticking out a long-fingered hand for him to shake. Torkel, typically, raised it to his lips instead.
“Hey, Yana.” Sinead appeared behind her partner and stuck her hand out to Torkel, too. “Tell this guy for me that Aisling and I share everything,” she said.
Again, the tone was friendly but the undercurrents were guarded and, in this case, more markedly hostile-but not because Torkel was kissing Aisling’s hand. Yana thought perhaps Sinead might be being possessive of her on Scan’s behalf.
“Torkel, Sinead Shongili.”
The two regarded each other like fencers assessing each other’s strengths; then he kissed Sinead’s hand, after which she surprised him by kissing his, then licking her lips.
“Um, hairy knuckles. My dad had hairy knuckles.”
“I like her,” Torkel said, turning to Yana and pointing to Sinead.
“Me, too,” Aisling said, putting her arm around Sinead’s shoulders.
“Listen,” Torkel said confidingly, taking in not only Yana but Aisling and Sinead, “maybe you women can help me with something I’ve got to do which is going to be real hard. Maybe you’d even know if I ought to do it now or wait until this party is over.”
“Sure, Torkel,” Aisling said.
“What’s the matter, man?” Sinead asked.
“I need to find out who is next of kin to a woman named Lavelle Maloney.”
“Lavelle!” Sinead said. “Has something happened to her? Where is she?”
Torkel gritted his teeth and patted the open air with his hand in a calming gesture. “I really think I should tell the next of kin before I tell anybody else, don’t you? But, well, I think they’ll need your support when I’ve finished talking to them.”
“Oh, no …” Aisling said.
Sinead touched her partner’s forearm gently. “Why don’t you go tell Clodagh and Scan they’re needed and I’ll take Torkel and Yana to get Liam.” To Torkel she said, “Lavelle’s husband has been sick a long time. He didn’t come today. We’ll get her boy Liam to come with us back to her house to tell his da. Her daughter lives at Tanana Bay, and her other son is in the Space Corps, stationed on Mukerjee Three.”
Yana saw Scan then, one arm around Bunny and the other around Diego, hording the kids toward her, speaking earnestly to Diego. Close behind him came Clodagh, and Sinead stopped as she met them.
Clodagh held up her hand and twiddled her fingers impatiently, as if staving off Sinead’s news. Then she, too, headed toward Yana and Torkel.
She knows, Yana thought as Clodagh sailed toward them like a liner through an asteroid belt. She already knows. But how?
Torkel was intercepting Sean and the kids. “Diego, son, you have great talent,” he said.
Torkel looked so handsome and fatherly congratulating Diego, Yana thought. He had wisely chosen not to wear a uniform, despite the apparently official nature of his visit. He wore instead a heavy sweater patterned with moss green, rust, and cream that set off his hair and eyes to good advantage, and a pair of rust-colored woolen trousers. He was bigger than Sean, she saw, and more stockily built, and of course their coloring was very different; one russet, the other silver, like fire and ice. Except, she remembered with an inward blush, there had been nothing icy about Sean Shongili thus far in their acquaintance.
“Sean,” Sinead was saying, “this man is here because something has happened to Lavelle.”
Sean squeezed his eyes shut and his lips thinned with pain, but that was nothing compared to Diego’s reaction.
“What? What’s happened to her?” the boy demanded of Torkel, his eyes blazing and his fists clenched. “What did you dorks do to her?”
Torkel looked genuinely pained. “Nothing, son. We’re not sure what happened, and won’t know until we get the autopsy report.”
Sean’s head snapped up. “Autopsy?”
“I take it she is dead then?” Sinead drawled with a contemptuous roll of her eyes.
Torkel blew a deep and frustrated sigh. “Please. Let’s tell the relatives first.”