Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote)

by Jessica Fletcher

  We chose mine. I ordered up tea and cookies—my shoulder, although less painful, still ached, and I know of no better salve than freshly baked cookies. We slipped into jackets and hats and stepped outside. The ship had now reached its anchoring position, maybe five hundred feet from the largest of the glaciers, and was turned so that we could feast our eyes on it. I looked down the length of the ship and saw that there were people on every balcony. I could hear them, too, laughing and expressing wonder at the scene. I’d left the door to the balcony slightly open in order to hear when room service arrived. When it did, we poured tea and took our cups and the cookie platter back outside.

  “I feel so at peace,” Kathy said as the majesty of the glacier dominated everything.

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “Just imagine, that incredible mountain of ice is nothing but ages of snowfall that never melted. I read that the annual snowfall here every winter would cover a six-story building.”

  “But the glaciers are getting smaller, aren’t they?” Kathy said. “Global warming.”

  “They are getting smaller. No debate about that. But they’re still huge.”

  The bay in which we were anchored had once been covered by the glaciers. Today, due to the receding of the ice masses, the bay was now more than sixty miles long, and growing longer each year. Scientists predicted that as much as another fifty cubic miles of ice-bergs could disappear over the next half century.

  Below us, the floe of ice that had calved from the face of the iceberg was considerably thicker than when we’d entered the mouth of Glacier Bay. Huge hunks of it floated by, and I wondered aloud whether there was a chance that one of the larger ones might damage the ship’s hull. I knew the answer: We wouldn’t be there in this multimillion-dollar ship if that were a possibility.

  The sparkling blue-white face of the glacier was like an enormous gem shimmering in the diffused light of the ashen sky above. Kathy and I stood silently and allowed the majesty of the sight to sweep over us and render speech unnecessary. It was one of those moments when one’s place on the planet was put into perspective. Two humpback whales surfaced a few hundred feet away and disappeared again beneath the water. Dozens of harbor seals resting on bergs at the base of the glacier seemed oblivious to the hunks of ice that occasionally fell from the two-hundred-foot front wall and crashed into the bay, creating waves that reached the Glacial Queen and gently rocked the huge ship. There was one particularly large hunk of ice that broke loose, preceded by a loud crackling sound as thousands of air bubbles, trapped in the glacier during the high pressure that helped in its formation, were released. Then the chunk let loose and came crashing into the water, sending spray a hundred feet into the air and even gaining the attention of the otherwise blasé seals.

  I’m not big on taking photographs when I travel, but Kathy was snapping pictures throughout this dazzling show of nature. Our tea had gotten cold, but I sipped some anyway and nibbled on a few cookies. Eventually, the captain came on the PA system and announced that he was now turning the ship to give passengers on the other side a good view.

  “I’m freezing,” Kathy said, slapping her upper arms.

  “Go inside. The show is over.”

  She paused at the door. “You?”

  “I’m going to stay out a bit longer. Actually, I’m relatively comfortable.”

  I remained on the balcony and observed as the ship made a slow, deliberate turn in the water. The bow pointed directly at the glacier, and then the mass of ice went out of my sight line. Losing visual contact with it snapped me out of my contented reverie, and I started to feel the cold. I thought of my tumble on the stairs, and of the slight, pinched-face man in shorts and a T-shirt.

  I looked through the glass doors. Kathy was sprawled on the bed; the TV was on.

  I took what I intended to be one final look at Glacier Bay before calling it quits, directing my attention to the solid chunks of ice in the water below. I almost missed it at first. I’d turned away and started to go inside, but returned to the railing and peered down again. “Can it be?” I asked myself, a brisk breeze carrying my words up into the air. “Oh, no!”

  I pulled open the door and called, “Kathy, quick, come here!”

  “What?”

  I motioned for her to join me. She tossed on her jacket and came to where I stood.

  “Look,” I said, pointing down.

  “What am I looking for?” she asked.

  “There,” I said. “On that piece of ice.”

  She followed my finger. “It looks like—”

  “It is,” I said.

  “Is that the—?”

  I nodded.

  Although it was in the distance, there was no mistaking its form. It was a man lying facedown on a sizable piece of ice that had calved from the giant glacier.

  Nor was there any mistaking who he was.

  He wore blue shorts and a yellow T-shirt.

  Chapter Five

  I dialed the number that Officer Kale, the ship’s security officer, had given Kathy but received a busy signal. No surprise. Surely others had spotted the body, too, and had called to report it.

  We returned to the balcony and looked down to the deck where we’d received our emergency instructions during the predeparture drill. Large, covered, orange motorized lifeboats were suspended from formidable winches. Members of the Glacial Queen’s crew, most wearing coveralls, scurried about, and it was obvious that they were in the process of getting ready to lower one of the boats into the bay. It was a complicated procedure, and I was impressed at how expertly and smoothly they seemed to be going about the task.

  “He must have fallen overboard,” Kathy said, stating the obvious.

  “No debate about that,” I said.

  “What a horrible way to die,” she said.

  “It certainly is.”

  “Are you sure he’s the man who’s been following you, Jess?”

  “Yes, I’m sure, unless another passenger decided to wear blue shorts and a yellow shirt. That’s possible, but—”

  “What will they do?”

  “I suppose they’ll bring him aboard and secure him in the morgue until we reach Juneau.”

  “There’s a morgue on the ship?”

  “All cruise ships have morgues,” I replied. “I learned that when I was researching one of my novels, Murder on the QE2. The cruise lines don’t like to advertise it, but every ship has a place in which to store bodies. Cruise passengers tend to be older, and there are bound to be deaths.” I paused. “From natural causes,” I added. “Heart attacks, strokes.”

  “Or people falling overboard.”

  “I doubt whether most people who fall overboard are ever found, at least by the ship they were on. They probably aren’t even missed until the ship is many miles away. But in this case we’re at anchor. It’s fortunate that he ended up on that slab of ice. Otherwise, we might have left Glacier Bay and never known that he’d gone overboard.”

  There was a banging on my door. Kathy went to answer it, and I watched her greet Bill Henderson.

  “You’ve heard, of course,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all anyone is talking about. Can you see him from here?”

  I pointed.

  “Oh, boy,” he said. “How could something like that have happened?”

  “Hopefully,” I said, “they’ll figure it out once an autopsy is done.”

  “Autopsy?” Bill said.

  “To see whether he was drunk, or using drugs. I have a suspicion that alcohol is involved in most cases of passengers’ falling off ships.”

  “He’d have to be pretty drunk to do that,” Bill said. He put his arm around Kathy. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. Jessica says it’s the same man who’s been following her.”

  Wide-eyed, Henderson looked back at me. “Is that true?”

  I nodded. “At least it appears to be,” I said.

  The three of us stood at the rail
ing and observed the process taking place a few decks below. Half a dozen crew members entered the lifeboat, and the winch slowly lowered it to the water, inch by inch, foot by foot, the wind causing it to sway back and forth, until it reached the bay and bobbed up and down on swells emanating from the calving of ice from the glacier. The roar of the engine reached us as the boat pushed through the water and the ice floe in the direction of the dead man. The piece of ice that he was on also moved in the current, necessitating skillful piloting of the lifeboat to intercept it. The boat finally moved into position, and a member of the crew scrambled up through a hatch, crawled across the covered bow, and extended a long pole attached to a hook of some sort. I noted that he was careful to keep the hook from touching the body itself. Instead, he grabbed hold of a jagged edge of the ice and maneuvered it around to the side of the boat, where two men leaned through the open doorway and used similar devices to bring it closer. Once it was alongside, hands replaced the hooks, and the body was pulled into the lifeboat.

  “You have no idea who he is?” Bill asked me.

  “None whatsoever,” I responded. “But I have a feeling that I’ll know soon enough.”

  “What can I do?” Bill asked.

  “Just having you here is comforting,” Kathy said. “Let’s go inside. Looks like there’s nothing more to see out here.”

  We sat around my cabin for a few minutes before our collective curiosity got the better of us.

  “Maybe we should go to one of the public rooms and see what others know about it,” Kathy suggested. “We’ll never learn anything staying here.”

  I agreed.

  “I doubt if any of the crew will know anything,” Bill said. “Even if they do, it’s not likely that they’ll talk about it.”

  “True,” I said, “but there’s nothing wrong with trying. Officer Kale proved helpful this morning. Maybe he will be again.”

  We decided to start down on the main deck, where the ship’s offices were located. We weren’t the only ones who’d made that decision. That section of the ship was chockablock with people. A small bar in the center was three-deep with customers, and countless others milled about. The topic of conversation was, of course, the body found floating in Glacier Bay.

  “Mrs. Fletcher,” Kimberly Johansen said as she saw us arrive.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “You’ve heard, of course.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you believe it?” she said. “A murder right here in our midst.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “A murder? Who said that?”

  “It’s going around the ship,” she replied. “Someone pushed a man to his death.”

  A woman who’d been eavesdropping came closer. “You’re Jessica Fletcher, the mystery writer,” she said. “I knew you were on board.” Before I could respond, she asked, “Who do you think did it?”

  “Who do I think—?”

  “Like a plot from one of your books.”

  “No one can possibly determine so soon how and why he went overboard,” I said.

  “How else could it have happened?” she retorted.

  “Well, yes,” I said, “but—”

  A man and a woman joined us. “Do you think it was one of the crew?” the man asked.

  “Was he with a woman?” asked his wife. “Maybe they had a fight and—”

  “A woman disappears off this ship, and now this! Maybe the ship is jinxed.”

  “What woman?” someone asked.

  “On this cruise?”

  “Did she go overboard, too?”

  “Excuse me,” I said, and led Kathy and Bill away to a more secluded corner. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” I told them.

  “No one wants to believe he just fell,” Bill commented. “Everyone loves a good soap opera.”

  “Soap operas are fictitious,” I said. “This is v-e-r-y real. I want to see if Officer Kale is available.”

  “Come with you?” Bill asked.

  “No. He might be more willing to talk to me alone. Why don’t you two go up to one of the lounges? I’ll meet you there.”

  “The Crow’s Nest?” Bill suggested. “On the observation deck? It should be fairly quiet up there.”

  We agreed to meet in that bar on the ship’s uppermost deck.

  I knocked on the door that I’d seen Kale go through when he went to fetch information about Maurice Quarlé. A woman in uniform answered.

  “Is Officer Kale here?” I asked.

  “Yes, he is, but he’s terribly busy.”

  “I imagine he is. Would you be good enough to tell him that Jessica Fletcher would like a word with him?”

  “All right, but I’m sure he won’t be able to.”

  She went through another door and returned a minute later. “He said he can see you, Mrs. Fletcher, but only for a few minutes.”

  “I promise not to take more of his time than that. Thank you.”

  Kale was in shirtsleeves when I was escorted to his office. He was behind his desk, talking on the phone. He waved me in and pointed to a vacant chair. He concluded his conversation, leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and said, “I hope you’re not here to talk about Ms. Copeland’s disappearance, Mrs. Fletcher. You may have heard that we have another problem on our hands.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Officer Kale. I just thought you should know that a rumor that the man found in Glacier Bay was murdered is consuming the passengers.”

  He looked shocked. “Where did they hear that?” he asked.

  “I don’t think anyone heard anything,” I said. “But vivid imaginations don’t allow facts to get in the way. My point is, some people are even questioning whether the Glacial Queen is jinxed.”

  “Jinxed?”

  “Because other passengers have learned that Kathy Copeland and I are on this cruise because of Kathy’s sister’s disappearance. I assure you we didn’t inform them of that.”

  Kale sat back and slowly shook his head. “A passenger falls overboard, and all of a sudden it’s murder. Sounds like one of your mystery novels.”

  “I won’t take any more of your time,” I said. “I just thought you’d want to know.”

  “And I appreciate you telling me, Mrs. Fletcher. Any suggestions?”

  “I think a carefully worded announcement over the PA from Captain Rasmussen might go a long way in calming nerves.”

  “I’ll suggest it.”

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate the suggestion. Before I leave, I’d be interested in knowing the identity of the man who died.”

  “I’m not at liberty to reveal that.”