The Mountains Bow Down (39 page)

The bracelet was stuffed deep in my pocket as I walked down Broadway. When I turned into the jewelry store, it was like royalty calling.

Mr. Lister ran toward me, both arms extended for an embrace.

“Thank you, oh, thank you. Last week they robbed the pharmacy. Two days ago they tried to kill the bank clerk.” He must have seen the look on my face and went on, compelled to apologize for his town. “This is a nice place, Skagway. We're nice people. Our biggest problem used to be potheads. And what problem were they? None. Too lethargic to bother anyone. But these people, they're like animals.”

Crack. Meth. Ice, Ecstasy. All the hard-core drugs were seeping into even the smallest communities, and the seep always turned septic. I was a little surprised the epidemic had reached this remote area, but as the Ketchikan mortician pointed out, the Internet was even offering tutorials on the sexual thrills of choking.

“And
you
caught him!” He opened his arms again, still ready for that hug. “For you, anything in the store, twenty percent off.”

I glanced around, not for jewelry. For Vinnie. The girl, Cheyenne, sat in a chair behind the counter, holding an ice bag to her right elbow. She looked impossibly sad. Marcus was wiping down the stolen goods, polishing them with a chamois cloth—and ignoring me.

“May I speak to you in private?” I asked.

“Then thirty percent.” He closed his arms; with that discount, no hug.

“Thank you. Really. But I need to speak with you.”

He led me down the counter, then around the corner where he disappeared earlier. It was a small space, a compact workshop with the tangy smoke scent of soldering metals. The planks on the floor were old and a foot wide, probably logged from the forest just beyond the back door.

“The man in here earlier, when I left—?” I pointed to my forehead.

“Yes, yes.” He nodded. “Here when the thief struck.”

“Right. He gave you something to look at.”

He immediately stiffened. I smiled, trying to keep him open.

“A blue stone, it looked beautiful.”

The merchant quickened. “You're interested in it?”

“It was such a lovely stone. Do you have it?”

He struggled to size me up. “I might be able to get it back.”

“It's gone?”

He waved his small hand, disgusted. “He wanted an astronomical sum, then refused to let me research its background. That large?

It could be synthetic. Though I must say, I didn't see any manufacturing tags.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“Benitoite.” He waved the hand again. “Or so he claimed. But that's another reason I wondered if it was fake.”

“Why?”

“Benitoite, that large . . .” He paused, calculating again. “But if you're interested in something like that, I have a marvelous specimen of alexandrite and with your thirty percent discount, we could possibly work something out. Why don't you come with me, Marcus can show you . . .”

“Where've you been?” Jack stood at the edge of the film set, arms crossed, feet planted. The posture of a security guard.

“I was playing cops and robbers.”

That morning's shoot was in the atrium, which was empty because most passengers had taken the Whitehorse Yukon steam train over the pass. The train ride took most of the day; I knew because my mother and I were supposed to be on it, marveling at the wooden trestles and mountains and scenery we might never see again.

“Did you get the bracelet?” he asked.

I nodded and told him it was in the purser's safe. I wasn't taking chances. “How's Milo—sober?”

“‘Functioning' would be more accurate.”

Sitting in a wingback chair in the middle of the atrium, Milo stared at nothing in particular. Behind him Vinnie guarded the elevator doors and walked around the table where my aunt and Claire had set up their crystals. When he picked up the small white cards, explaining each stone's powers, the mansard brow made Vinnie look like a remedial reader.

“Mr. Bodyguard has a blue stone that looks like the one from the jewelry box.” I told Jack about the morning adventure in law enforcement. “Vinnie told the jeweler the gem was something called benitoite.”

“Hold on,” Jack said. “You took out the back tire?
Nice shot
.”

My eyes stayed on Vinnie. With his bloated sense of menace he was scowling at a passenger coming out of the elevator—in a wheelchair. Vinnie eyed the old guy as a potential terrorist.

“He didn't want the jeweler looking into the purchasing background either.”

“What about our stolen gems records?” Jack asked.

“I just called.” On my way back to the ship, I left a message with the mineralogy lab in DC. Due to the time change, it was Saturday afternoon back East, but I left a message for the forensic geologist, Nettie Labelle. “We might hear back, but I can't count on it.”

“All right, go find the Dutchman,” Jack said. “I'll keep an eye on Vinnie. If your cell phone rings, don't even answer. Just start running.”

A block of Dutch ice escorted me down the hallway of Deck Fourteen, past the steward who lifted stacks of white towels from his housekeeping cart. When Geert paused, pretending to read from the papers in his hand, the steward went inside the open cabin two doors down. Quickly the head of security inserted his master key, opening the cabin at the top of our list.

As a second thought, I reached back, grabbing trash bags from the cart.

But the cabin was spotless. “Has the steward been in here?”

“Stupid question.” Geert pointed to a dollar bill, pinned to the desk by a drinking glass. A tip.

But the bill told me other things. Vinnie Pinnetta was a compulsive neat freak. Under the dollar, he'd left a note requesting a clean blanket, clean duvet, and a new pillow. “Not pillowcase,” he wrote. “Pillow.” Underlining the word.

“Will he get all new bedding?”

Geert looked offended, the white eyebrows shooting up.

“I'm saying, a new pillow seems extravagant.” I checked the closet and the trash can in both the living area and bathroom. I ran my hands under the mattress and looked beneath the desk. No jewelry box. No jewels.

“What happens to the pillow?” I asked.

“It goes to laundry. Customer says it is dirty, it is dirty.”

I took both pillows off the twin bed and stuffed them into the plastic bags from the steward's cart.

“You said search,” Geert said. “Not take. I have enough worries without you taking our property.”

They were nice pillows. Airy and fluffy, full of down feathers. Maybe small eiderdown feathers, the kind the coroner found inside Judy Carpenter's cheek. “If you want to worry, worry about somebody else dying on this ship.”

He twirled the mustache. “Help yourself.”

Standing on the bed, I ran my hands over the curtains. The sun continued its valiant battle with the clouds, and the water was a pewter stage with bright spotlights flashing, awaiting the performer. The curtain rod had carved wood finials, flourishing classical motifs. When I grabbed the finial, the rod came with it.

Geert looked shocked.

“I take it that's not supposed to happen?”

“They are bolted to the wall, for safety.”

Lifting the rod, I slid the curtains down to the right and unscrewed the finial. It was a metal rod and hollow, another safety consideration, and when I forced my fingers inside the tube, I felt something like pages in a book. I pulled out what I could. It was a wad of bills. The outer hundred tore but there were more of them. Plenty more. When I held up the money, Geert shook his bald head.

“Now you feel vindicated.”

But I didn't. And I couldn't tell him why.

The jewelry box was still missing.

As Geert slipped his master key into the penthouse door, I glanced over my shoulder, checking on the steward. He was five cabins down the hall. When I heard the handle turn, I stepped forward and walked straight into Geert's back.

He didn't budge. I was a fly hitting a bull.

“So good to see you both,” he said, speaking to somebody at the door.

My heart thumped. I pressed myself into the wall.

“Were you looking for my son?” the man asked.

“Yaa-aah . . .” Geert was big, not fast.

“He's not here at the moment.” The elder Sparks, the dad.

“No, no, I wasn't looking for him.”

I wanted to break into a run.
“Yah” then “no
”
?
Geert plundered on.

“You, I was looking for you. Yah. You are expected at the wine tasting.”

“Wine tasting?” Mr. Sparks asked, echoing my own incredulity. “We didn't sign up for a wine tasting.”

“No need to sign up,” Geert said. “And it is free.”

“Free?” The classics teacher applied the Socratic reasoning. “How could it be free?”

“It is only for our best guests. Our loyal passengers. Who stay on board. Who don't take the tours. Yes, they are waiting for you downstairs.”

I began inching away, sensing this whole scheme was about to blow wide-open. The search would be over, forever.

“My wife and I are not inclined to drink these days,” he said. “Alcohol interferes with her medications. But that was quite thoughtful. Thank you.”

He closed the door. Geert turned, looking for me. I was already heading for the exit and checking my watch: 10:22. We would dock in Seattle in less than twenty-four hours. And then a killer would walk free.

“I've got to get inside that cabin,” I told him.

“Neen.” He shook his head. “What do you Americans say? ‘It is how the cookie crumbles.'”

“No,” I said, “The American saying is, ‘It ain't over 'til it's over.' You've got to get me into that cabin, one way or another.”

Chapter Thirty-five

O
n Deck Three, where I could hear the laundry room's massive folding machines
thwhack
ing away, a woman named Viola stood in the maid's changing room and tried to teach me how to knot an apron.

“No bow.” She untied my second attempt. Her brown fingers were dry and chapped from cleaning. Whipping the white tails, she magically produced a Windsor knot.

I offered her the white cap, the last item for the uniform.

“No necesario,” she said.

“Sí necesario.” I handed her bobby pins. “Por favor.”

With a baffled shrug, she placed the cap on my head, then tried to get me to pull back my hair. It hung around my shoulders, draping my face, but I insisted on leaving it. Very necesario. When she had the hat secured, Viola gazed at my appearance and stifled a giggle.

“Gracias,” I said, picking up the vacuum cleaner.

In the hallway, Geert leaned against the riveted steel wall. A granite boulder of hostility, he led me to the service elevator where I slid my mom's reading glasses on my nose. The world rippled like a waterfall.

I let the glasses drift down, peering over the rims. “Does housekeeping get trained in tying knots?”