Murder at five finger light (14 page)
Expecting a dock, Jessie was surprised to find they would unload directly onto a rough-looking ramp of rock. It looked like a risky task, but Laurie came carefully clambering down with three other people. Jim tossed a pair of bumpers over the side and hurled a line to a slim young man with tousled hair and a wide grin who stepped out to catch it and draw the boat close enough for passengers to off-load cargo and climb ashore.
“Hey there,” he called. “Thought you’d be back earlier.”
“And I thought you couldn’t make it until tomorrow, Aaron,” Jim replied. “I see you brought Whitney along with you. Where’s Linda?”
“I took an extra day, but Linda couldn’t make it. They called her in for some emergency case at the hospital. Said to tell you she’s sorry.”
“Where’s your boat?”
“Came down with a friend on his way to Wrangell. So we’re hoping to hitch a ride back to Juneau with you. Brad said to tell you he’d try to make it down tomorrow.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Jim told him with a chuckle. “He’s always got a dozen irons in the fire.”
Collecting her gear to leave the boat and listening to their conversation, Jessie hadn’t paid much attention to Laurie and the others, but as she stepped carefully out and caught her balance she took a second look at the man who gave her a hand and smiled in pleased recognition of another acquaintance from the Klondike Centennial voyage. “Don Sawyer! How’s Skagway and the Red Onion Saloon these days? Still haunted? You still bartending?”
“We assume it is and, yes, I am. We had a profitable summer with hordes of the usual tourists from those humongous cruise ships, who couldn’t be convinced not to throw their money at us, as usual. Now I’m resting up by volunteering for some physical labor that’s heavier than serving up beers.”
“Hey Jessie. Glad you could make it,” Laurie said, reaching to give her a quick hug of greeting. “Welcome to Five Finger Light. Let’s get your stuff up top and we’ll sort out introductions there. The guys will unload the building supplies.”
“This is Karen,” Jessie told her, waving a hand in the redhead’s direction.
“Hi Karen.” Laurie nodded, reaching for a box of supplies. “We’ll do the formalities when we get this stuff up top.”
It seemed to be shaping up as a good crew for the next four days of lighthouse restoration, Jessie decided with approval, as they helped carry bags and boxes of gear and food carefully up the sharp rocks to a wide cement platform between the boat and the lighthouse. She noticed, however, that Karen was being very quiet, saying little, watching much, as she helped. That made sense considering that she was acquainted with none of the people there.
She hoped it wouldn’t take long for Karen to relax and enjoy the pleasant, easygoing company. But would it? She seemed to find some kind of threat in almost everything and to view everyone she met with suspicion.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JOE COOPER HAD STOOD PANTING BESIDE A LARGE TREE in a small picnic area just east of the seafood processing plant and watched in frustration and anger as the woman he had come so close to catching heaved herself aboard the Seawolf. Even from that distance there had been no way of mistaking her red hair as she stripped off the scarf she had been wearing and waved it frantically to attract the attention of the people in the boat. Scowling in aggravation, he had berated himself as he turned to walk back the way he had come, contemplating his next step in this game of cat and mouse.
In a town as small as Petersburg, how could he have managed to miss her?
Because she was watching for you and you were following the other woman,
he told himself. But had that other woman been just a distraction that had attracted his attention, or a purposeful decoy? There was no way of knowing. The thing he needed to know now was
where
they were going in that boat.
Because she was watching for you and you were following the other woman,
he told himself. But had that other woman been just a distraction that had attracted his attention, or a purposeful decoy? There was no way of knowing. The thing he needed to know now was
where
they were going in that boat.
Heading down the hill on Nordic Drive beside the processing plant, he considered the previous two hours.
He had left his duffel at the hotel and gone out, intending to find somewhere to have breakfast. Turning the corner from the hotel office, he had spotted the honey-blond woman he had seen the night before in the Harbor Bar as she came off one of the docks near the processing plant. Stepping back to avoid being seen, he had watched her move away from the harbor. Halfway to the main street, she had been intercepted by a man driving a forklift and they talked for a few minutes before he drove on and she went into the grocery on the corner.
Moving quickly down the hill, Cooper had stationed himself in a recessed doorway and waited to see her come out with something in a plastic grocery bag and two cups of coffee—
two!
This had been promising; that second cup had not been for the forklift operator, for she had walked straight back to the dock he had seen her leave and disappeared behind a pile of large fish boxes.
two!
This had been promising; that second cup had not been for the forklift operator, for she had walked straight back to the dock he had seen her leave and disappeared behind a pile of large fish boxes.
Crossing to the processing plant, he had plucked two empty plastic buckets from a stack of them and walked out along the dock at the side of the building far enough to see her sitting on a pile of pallets, leaning back on one of the large boxes. She had been talking on a cell phone and sipping coffee from one of the paper cups. The second cup of coffee had stood beside her on the pallet, but there was no one else to drink it. She had been alone.
Attempting to look as if he fit into the dockside scene, Cooper had crossed to a hose connected to a faucet on the side of the processing building and carefully rinsed out both perfectly clean buckets, dumping the water off the dock into the waters of the harbor below, one at a time, still covertly watching to see if anyone would show up to drink that second cup of coffee. No one had.
Seemingly finished with phone calls, the woman had shrugged out of her green slicker, sat back, and helping herself to a donut and a banana from the plastic grocery bag, had begun to eat them.
With no excuse to linger, Cooper had walked back toward the street swinging the buckets until he was out of sight and had repositioned himself in the doorway.
When she didn’t reappear in fifteen minutes, he had repeated the cleaning charade. As he mimed his job this time, however, she had been busily writing something on a piece of paper, which she had secured under the edge of a pallet like a small white flag. Then she had collected her things, including that second cup of coffee, and left the dock for Nordic Drive, where she turned right and headed off down the street, pausing to examine the contents of a shop window or two.
The note Cooper had hurried to retrieve as soon as she was out of sight had been valuable. It had told him where she was headed and that she wanted to meet “K.” The initial couldn’t be coincidental, he had told himself. It
must
stand for the woman he was hunting. Reference to the Harbor Master’s office had let him know that the ride she mentioned must be a boat and the “ASAP,” that she expected it soon. He had stuffed the note into a jacket pocket and jogged off toward the office indicated in the note.
must
stand for the woman he was hunting. Reference to the Harbor Master’s office had let him know that the ride she mentioned must be a boat and the “ASAP,” that she expected it soon. He had stuffed the note into a jacket pocket and jogged off toward the office indicated in the note.
There he had watched for Karen to show up, to no avail. Then, when the boat was loaded and it became clear that they were leaving without her, he had jogged up Nordic to the picnic area as they motored slowly eastward, constrained by the speed limit. So he had been there in time to swear as he saw them pass, hesitate, and turn shoreward to pick up the woman who had wildly signaled with the scarf she had used to cover her telltale red hair and waded out from shore to hand them a suitcase and be helped over the stern of the boat.
As he walked back into town, having once again watched his quarry evade him, and passed the grocery, he was startled when the forklift he had seen earlier swung back around the corner and stopped abruptly in front of him.
“Joe Cooper!” the driver called out as he stopped and climbed off, leaving the forklift idling. “What the hell are you doing in Petersburg, you old reprobate? Thought you’d left for the Lower Forty-eight.”
“Ho, Tim,” Cooper responded, recognizing a friend from Ketchikan, but avoiding the question. “Thought I saw you earlier, talking to some woman, but figured it was a mistake—that you would be out fishing. Who’s your girlfriend?”
“Not mine—met her on a plane from Juneau yesterday. Besides, she’s headed for a lighthouse in Frederick Sound. I’ll be fishing again next week. Bart’s waiting on parts for
Bertha’
s engine, so I’m just killing time in town.”
Bertha’
s engine, so I’m just killing time in town.”
“A lighthouse? Interesting.”
“Yeah—a renovation crew. Hey, I’m going out there tomorrow. You might like to come along if you haven’t got anything better to do.”
Such a windfall seldom fell off the tree straight into Cooper’s lap. Usually he had to climb the tree and go out on a limb to shake opportunities off, sometimes ripe, sometimes green. He kept a lid on his enthusiasm for the suggestion and responded mildly, “Might at that.”
“You be around later? We could have some beers and catch up.”
Cooper nodded. “What time are you off?”
“Five. Meet you at the Harbor Bar?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Gotta go. We’ll talk about it then.”
He fired up the forklift and was off up the street, leaving a bemused Cooper shaking his head at the serendipitous way things sometimes happened.
Later that evening, when the sun was wearily sliding over the tall western hills, throwing a blanket of shadow over Petersburg as it went—the blue hour when the lights along the streets glowed unrealistically bright in contrast to the growing dark—he skillfully finagled Tim Christiansen into agreeing that they need not wait till morning, but might as well head for Frederick Sound without delay.
“We could anchor up somewhere away from town where it’s quiet and peaceful—sleep on that neat little speedboat of yours. It’ll save me a night’s rent at the hotel and we can have time to ourselves—show up at the lighthouse tomorrow morning.”
So sometime later, under a sky strewn with stars between floating clouds, they had made the run across the sound and reached the south end of Five Finger Island, but decided they should wait until morning to motor on around and make themselves known to the work crew. After an hour of drinking beer and renewing acquaintance, Cooper waited until Tim, tired after a day’s work, had drifted off to sleep in his bunk. Then he quietly rose from where he had purposely elected to sleep on the back deck, shrugged on a jacket, and, timing the gentle rocking of the boat carefully, stepped off onto the shore and walked away.
He did not notice that in the dark he had taken Tim’s jacket instead of his own.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN WORK ENDED FOR THE DAY, AFTER A COCKTAIL hour outside to watch the sun go down in a spectacular show of red, purple, and gold, it was an amiable working crew of nine who sat down together for dinner that evening around the large table that took up a considerable amount of space in the common room of Five Finger Lighthouse. A kerosene lamp and several candles provided pleasant light, so they could do without the rumble of the big generator downstairs, which supplied power for lights, water pump, and anything else requiring electricity that did not run on batteries or propane, like the kitchen stove and refrigerator.
Laurie had prepared prodigious amounts of spaghetti, green salad, and garlic bread, on which they made significant inroads, washing it down with a good cabernet. The conversation was spirited as they continued to get acquainted and hear what had been accomplished that day by the six who had remained at Five Finger Light while Jim made his run to Petersburg.
Jessie sat next to Don Sawyer, who had brought along his girlfriend, Sandra Collier, a watercolor artist from Skagway, petite and energetic, with a mop of sandy gold, naturally curly hair that stood out like a corona around her head.
“So wouldn’t you know they’ve got me painting the roof,” she announced, reporting her work in progress.
“Never would have guessed,” he teased, pointing out the streak of bright red on her forehead and up one sleeve of her gray sweatshirt. “I know you tend to get colorfully involved in your work, but—”
“And how much old paint did you get scraped off those windowsills you’re planning to repair?” she interrupted in response.
“Not enough, but a good start,” he told her. “There must be half a dozen coats on there. We may have to replace a couple of them though.”
“Well, we got the generator fixed,” young Coast Guards-man Aaron Rudolph commented from a seat at a nearby desk. Being left-handed, he had been knocking elbows with right-handed Curt Johnson, who turned out to be an electrician acquaintance of Jim’s, and had solved the problem by moving.
“From your mouth to God’s ear,” said Curt, who had slipped off a sweatshirt covered with grime and motor oil and stripped to his cleaner white T-shirt before sitting down. “We’ll check it again tomorrow morning and hope the lighthouse ghost hasn’t been at it again.”
“Is there supposed to be a ghost?” Whitney Mitchell asked with interest, returning from the kitchen with a second bottle of wine. Tall and slim with the fitness of a dancer, she was a friend of Laurie’s and another of the thespians who played in the Perseverance Theatre on Douglas Island across a bridge from Juneau. The way she moved reminded Jessie of a showgirl she had once seen strut a stage in Las Vegas.
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