Blood Will Tell by Dana Stabenow

her grandmother and in her grandmother's determination to make things right. She was a solid presence in a world that crumbled around the edges a little more every day, like a rock on the beach, something to hold on to when The Woman Who Keeps the Tides tried to pull you out to sea, something to hold on to while you waited for Calm Water's Daughter to succeed the storm.
    The waiter came with a third cup for Martha. "No, just coffee," she said. "Thank you." She added two spoons of sugar to the mug, set the spoon down carefully on her napkin, and said without looking up, "He wasn't alone in Hawaii. He had a woman with him." A tear slid down her cheek and she ducked her head and swiped at her face. "Sorry," she said, trying to laugh. "Didn't mean to get all sloppy on you." Ekaterina squeezed her shoulder and Martha sent her a grateful smile. "I'm okay.
    Really. I knew he had a girlfriend. When he told me he was going to Hawaii for this North Pacific Fisherman's conference and I wanted me and the kids to come, he said the board was paying his way--" Ekaterina's brows drew together in a frown "-and that we couldn't afford me and the kids to go, too." She sipped some coffee. "So I wondered."
    "How did you find out for sure?"
    "Harvey Meganack's wife Betty called me this morning. Harvey was at the same conference." Martha's lips twisted. "Betty was with him. She saw them together all over the place."
    Bitch, Kate thought. Not only did Betty call Martha to commiserate over her husband's death, she had to make sure Martha knew he was screwing around on her at the time. Betty was such a miserable person she had to make everyone around her miserable, too. She reminded Kate of Jane.
    "Martha, I know this is tough," she said, "but did Betty tell you what the girlfriend looked like?" Martha shrugged. "White, brown hair down to her butt, perfect figure for a bikini, was all Betty said. Enakenty never introduced her, and she didn't talk much."
    Kate nodded. There was a brief pause. "I identified Enakenty," she said.
    "You don't have to go down to the morgue."
    "Thanks, Kate," Martha said. "I want to see him. I have to." She stirred more sugar into her coffee. "I don't think I'll really believe he's dead until I do."
    The waiter brought Ekaterina's breakfast. She jellied a piece of toast and handed it to Martha. "You have to eat something." Nobody said no to Ekaterina Moonin Shugak when she spoke in that tone of voice. Martha accepted the toast. Every bite took an obviously concentrated effort.
    She washed down the last of it with coffee and said, "There is the one thing I can't figure out."
    "What?"
    "What he was doing out on that balcony in the first place."
    "Why?"
    "Enakenty was afraid of heights." At Kate's look she nodded. "Yeah. He got dizzy looking over the edge of the dock in Cordova during fishing season. He could barely make himself go down the ladder to the boat at low tide." She shook her head and rose to her feet. "You couldn't have forced him out on a balcony at gunpoint."
    But he might have been led there, Kate thought. It all depended on the incentive, and to what part of his anatomy it had been offered.
    Martha refused a ride to the Egan Convention Center--"I just can't face all of those people yet"--and Kate and Ekaterina joined Mutt in the Blazer.
    "The board didn't pay Enakenty's way to Hawaii," her grandmother said.
    Kate waited for a break in the traffic to pull out onto Fifth Avenue.
    The light at Cordova was red and she stopped in the right-hand lane.
    "Are you sure, emaa? I've heard how the board gets with the discretionary fund sometimes. And as a board member Enakenty would have had access."
    "I am sure." Ekaterina was definite. "He would have needed a second signature on the check, and Quinto Boone would have had to make it out."
    Quinto Boone was the Association accountant. "He would have told you?"
    Ekaterina nodded.
    "You're keeping a pretty close eye on Association finances," Kate observed. If she'd been hoping