Read Blood Will Tell for Free Online Page B

fought to a draw and a truce was declared.
    Johnny mopped his face and saw her. He grinned, his softer, smoother face a youthful echo of the craggier one opposite. He had his father's blue eyes and his mother's tow-colored hair. "Hi, Kate."
    "Hi, Johnny."
    He hooked a thumb at his father. "You still hanging with this guy?"
    She shrugged. "Looks like."
    He shook his head. "I guess love really is blind." Kate laughed, and Jack cleared his throat and changed the subject before things got any more out of hand. "How's your mother?"
    "Still nutty as a fruitcake, how do you think?" Johnny's reply was cheerful and not ridden with any angst that Kate could detect. By the expression in Jack's eyes, he couldn't either, and the tense set of the big shoulders relaxed. "How was basketball practice?"
    "Good," Johnny said. He finished mopping up a puddle and tossed the dishtowel into the sink where it fell with a sodden splat. He got another Coke out of the refrigerator, drank half of it down in a single gulp and burped. "Excuse me. Coach says I need to work on my free throw." "Free throws win ball games," Kate said.
    "That's what Coach Stewman says. How'd you know?"
    "All coaches say that."
    "Oh." Johnny assembled bread, mayonnaise, bologna and cheese slices and paused, giving the result a critical frown. He went back to the refrigerator and found an onion. A thick slab went into the sandwich, followed by a sliced dill pickle, half a tomato, most of a head of lettuce and the remainder of a round of caribou sausage he dug out of the meat drawer. At that point the refrigerator ran out of ingredients, and he picked up the sandwich and actually managed to squeeze one corner of it into his mouth. "Urn." It was a grunt of pure ecstasy. He opened his eyes and saw the two of them watching. "What?" he said thickly.
    "Oh, nothing," Jack said.
    "Nothing at all," Kate said. "Don't nil up, we're going out for dinner."
    Johnny brightened. "Just a snack," he assured her.
    Mama Nicco's was a restaurant in Huffman Business Park, a collection of flat-roofed buildings at the intersection of Huffman and the New Seward Highway that were much of a much ness in architecture, and if they had been connected would have been called a mall. The restaurant was a long, rectangular room filled with tables, presided over by a tall, strong-featured man with a full head of iron-gray hair and a rare, charming smile. Tall-hatted chefs cooked on an open grill behind a counter, their waitress was friendly and efficient, and after his first sip of the house Chianti Jack pronounced dinner an unqualified success.
    "We haven't even ordered yet, Dad," Johnny said, hunched over the menu.
    "What's cioppino?" "Garlic with seafood," Jack said.
    "Oh. What's pasta alia parma?"
    "Garlic with pasta."
    When the waitress returned Johnny ordered both or tried to, Jack ordered veal scallop ini Kate ordered pasta al pesto, and Ekaterina ordered lasagna. The waitress brought out two more bowls of bread, setting one in front of Johnny, who had accounted for most of the first bowl, another glass of Chianti for Jack and one for Ekaterina, a Coke for Johnny, and a Perrier with a twist of lemon for Kate. Johnny looked at her from the corner of one eye and said softly, "Yubbie." Kate looked at him and said, just as softly, "Yubbie." Suspicious but unable to refrain from asking, he said, "Yubbie? What's that?"
    "The real thing. A young urban brat." Jack laughed. Even Ekaterina smiled, which made Johnny, who was a little afraid of her, relax. The old woman unbent even further, enough to say, "Jack, the Raven Corporation is having a party Wednesday night at the Captain Cook. Will you come?"
    "A party?" Kate said. "What party?" Ekaterina smiled down upon her, very benign, and every self-protective hair on the back of Kate's neck stood straight up in alarm. "Just a little get-together for the friends of Raven. All the Niniltna and other tribal corporation shareholders will be there. It'll be fun."
    Kate