Lying in Wait (9780061747168) by Judith A. Jance

you two met?” I asked.
    Else nodded. “I didn’t know it then, but I think it was a put-up deal. My father wanted a son, you see—someone to fish with, someone to leave his business to. And since his only child was a girl—me—the best Daddy could hope for was a suitable son-in-law. As far as that was concerned, Gunter was perfect. He was a hard worker. He didn’t smoke or drink.”
    Unlike a certain hell-raising boyfriend named Champagne Al Torvoldsen, I thought. I said, “Gunter didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink, and he needed a father.”
    â€œThat, too,” Else Gebhardt said with a wistfullittle half-smile that made me wonder if she, too, was comparing those two very different young men as they must have been back then—the wild-haired, happy-go-lucky Alan and the straight-arrow, serious Gunter.
    She gave me a searching look. “I suppose you knew we had to get married?”
    I shook my head. What must have seemed like the central tragedy of her teenage years had been invisible to me and probably to most of the other kids at Ballard High as well.
    â€œI mean, I had to marry someone,” she added, “and Alan was long gone. My father saw to that. Fortunately for me, Gunter stepped in, but then I lost the baby anyway, when I was five months along. Our own daughter—Gunter’s and mine—wasn’t born until much later, when we were both beginning to believe we would never have a child.”
    Else shook her head sadly. “It’s funny, isn’t it, the things you think about at a time like this. Gunter and I had a good life together. He was a difficult person to understand at times, but we got along all right. I wasn’t in love with him when we got married, but I came to love him eventually.”
    She was silent for a moment, looking across the room at the shelves filled with handmade soldiers. It seemed to me that she welcomed the chance to talk, to unburden herself of the secrets she had kept bottled up for years.
    â€œIt’s strange. My father adored the ground Gunter walked on. My mother liked him all right at first, but later, especially these last few years, it seemed as though she resented every breath hetook. Then there’s my daughter, Kari. Not just my daughter, she’s Gunter’s daughter, too. Kari hasn’t spoken to him or to me for almost four years now. And that boyfriend of hers wouldn’t let me talk to her today, wouldn’t even let me give her the news that her father is dead. I don’t know if she’ll bother to come to his funeral.”
    Else Gebhardt stopped speaking and looked bleakly from Sue Danielson to me. “I’m sorry to go blithering like this. You probably hear these kinds of sordid little tales time and again, don’t you? And I don’t suppose you stopped by expecting to hear all this ancient history.”
    â€œIt helps,” Sue Danielson put in quickly. “It allows us to form a more complete picture of who-all is involved. Besides you, who can tell us about your husband’s associates, his working relationships?”
    â€œIf you ask around Fishermen’s Terminal or the Norwegian Commercial Club, I’d imagine most people would tell you that Gunter drove a hard bargain, and that’s true. He wasn’t easy to get along with, but he was a man of his word. And there was no one in the world he was harder on than on Gunter Gebhardt himself.”
    â€œHe took over your father’s fishing business?” I asked. “Or did Gunter buy your father out?”
    A pained shadow crossed Else’s face. “My father had a heart attack at age fifty-seven. He was totally disabled for five years before he died. If it hadn’t been for Gunter, Daddy and Mother would have lost everything—the house, the boat, the cabin on Whidbey Island.”
    She shook her head. “Nobody ever handedGunter anything on a silver platter. He