“A long time. Many years.”
“I don’t think I could stand all that rain,” Kimberly Johansen said.
“Yeah, that is a problem,” Bill said. “You never really do get used to it raining every other day.”
“We had a wonderful dinner there before we left on the cruise,” Kathy said. “A restaurant called Chanlis. It was beautiful.”
“One of my favorite places,” Bill said. “Chanlis is sort of like—well, like an event restaurant, you know, for special occasions.”
“Every town and city has one of those,” David Johansen said, and went on to describe his favorite restaurant in their hometown in Illinois.
The subject of the world’s greatest restaurants dominated the remainder of the meal. Everyone had a list of favorites, and we took turns extolling the virtues of those places we particularly liked. The Johansens’ taste favored seafood restaurants, while Gladys Montgomery’s leaned toward French cuisine. My tastes were a little more eclectic; I realized I had so many favorite restaurants around the world that it was impossible for me to limit myself to a select list. Bill Henderson claimed to have a pedestrian palate, and admitted being partial to good steak houses, naming a couple of his favorites in New York City. We all agreed at the end of the discussion that an appreciation of good restaurants was an integral part of the joy of traveling. But Kathy ended the conversation with, “I enjoy eating out, but for me there is nothing like a home-cooked meal.”
“Amen,” Henderson said.
Following dinner, we again went our separate ways. I intended to join Gladys at the classical music concert, but Bill and Kathy persuaded me to go with them to the amateur talent show. They were right; it was funny and highly entertaining.
Once the show was over, and we joined hundreds of other passengers leaving the theater, Kathy and Bill tried to persuade me to extend the evening, but I demurred. “Thanks anyway,” I said, “but I think I’ll enjoy some quiet time in my cabin, maybe get a little reading done. I’d like to bone up on Sitka before we arrive there in the morning.”
Henderson laughed. “You can be our tour guide tomorrow,” he said.
“Fair enough,” I said. “You two go on and enjoy yourselves. See you at breakfast.”
I’d intended to go directly to my cabin, but found myself meandering around the ship. I went down one deck to the lower promenade and spent a few minutes in the art gallery perusing works of art that would be auctioned off the following day. From there, I continued past the coffee bar, the Windstar Café, and the Queen’s Lounge until coming to the sports bar, adjacent to the casino. Despite the racket coming from the casino, and the chatter from multiple television sets in the sports bar, the more pleasant sound of a piano being played reached my ears. I followed it into the piano bar, where the rotund pianist I had briefly seen earlier in the trip sat at a piano built into a bar surrounded by a half dozen stools. He gave me a big smile as I entered and said, without missing a beat of the song he was playing, “Good evening. Come, sit, and join me. I’m just getting warmed up.”
I debated for a moment, but decided to spend a few minutes listening to him play. When my deceased husband, Frank, and I traveled, we spent more than one enjoyable evening sitting in a piano bar and singing along with the performer.
“Anything special you would like to hear?” he asked.
“Do you know ‘Laura’?” I asked. I always especially enjoyed that theme from one of my favorite movies.
The pianist laughed. “Of course I do,” he said, segueing immediately from the song he’d been playing into my request. “I know every song ever written.”
I laughed along with him. “Do people enjoy challenging that claim?” I asked.
“All the time,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “I assure you I won’t be one of them.”
I ordered an orange juice, closed my eyes, and let the beautiful melody wash over me. My eyes became misty as I thought of those lovely evenings spent with Frank, so pleasant and carefree, blending our voices with those of other amateurs and sounding a lot better to ourselves than to anyone else who might have been listening.
He finished playing. I opened my eyes and clapped. I looked around and saw that others who had been at the piano bar when I arrived were no longer there. I was alone.
“What’s next?” he asked.
“You choose the next one,” I said. “You play beautifully. Do you also sing?”
He responded by immediately starting “Hello, Dolly!” adding a rich baritone voice to his playing. It was a wonderfully spirited rendition, which attracted passersby, who filled the remaining stools around the piano bar.
He finished the tune, looked at me, and asked for another request. I hesitated. Frank and I had always had a favorite song, the beautiful Fischer/Laine tune, “We’ll Be Together Again.” I hesitated because every time I hear that song, I’m flooded with memories. But I requested it anyway, and this talented man who made his living entertaining passengers on steamships performed an especially poignant rendition. I kept my head lowered to avoid having others at the bar see that I’d welled up. When the pianist had finished, I quickly got up, thanked him, and said I’d be back another night.
The bittersweet mood that the song had engendered in me lasted after I’d returned to my cabin and had gotten ready for bed. Initially, it was a profound sadness that I felt. But that heaviness soon lifted, and I found myself smiling at the memory of Frank and me seated at other piano bars around the world, belting out lyrics to familiar tunes. As I often reminded myself, it was better to have those memories, happy or sad, than never to have experienced them at all.
Chapter Eleven
I was wide awake the next morning as the ship eased into the Eastern Channel for its stop at Sitka, Alaska’s first capital. I’d read about some of Sitka’s history after having showered and dressed for the day.
It had been the ancestral home to the Tlingit Indian nation until the Russians arrived at the end of the eighteenth century. These new arrivals and the original inhabitants didn’t get along, to the extent that the Russian settlers attacked the Indians in 1804 and drove them out (shades of the American experience). Russia eventually sold Alaska to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million in gold, and the transfer of ownership was formalized in Sitka on October 18 of that year, with the American flag raised over Alaska for the first time. Sitka remained the capital until 1912, when the seat of government was transferred to Juneau. The Russian influence, according to what I’d read, was still pervasive in Sitka, and I looked forward to seeing what impact that culture had had on the town.
Unlike Juneau, Sitka’s harbor wasn’t sizable enough to handle the docking of the Glacial Queen; we would anchor in the channel and be shuttled to shore by the ship’s tender boats, which also served as powered life rafts in the event of an emergency.
I was getting ready to go to the dining room when Kathy knocked on the door.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning, Jess. Mind if I come in for a minute?”
The serious expression on her face made it clear that she had something weighty to discuss.
“Not at all,” I said. “Problem?”
She plopped down on the sofa and exhaled, as though to rid herself of thorny thoughts. “It’s Bill,” she said.
I joined her on the couch. “What happened?” I asked. “Did you two have an argument?”
“Sort of. No, I hate that kind of no-answer. We didn’t have an argument.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“He—he wanted to spend the night with me.”
“Oh.”
“I said no.”
“Uh-huh. Was he angry?”
“Oh, no, no. He was a perfect gentleman. It’s just that—”
“Yes?”
“I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I almost did.”
“Almost doesn’t count,” I said.
“
I think—”
“You think what, Kathy?”
“I think I’m in love with him.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“You’re not?”
I laughed and patted her arm. “It’s been obvious, not only to me but to Gladys Montgomery, too, that a pretty strong infatuation has developed between you two.”
“Oh, God. It’s been that evident?”
“Obvious—interesting—and pleasant. Have you told him how you feel?”
She shook her head emphatically.
“What about him? Has he said anything to indicate that he feels the same way about you?”
This time, her head went up and down rather than side to side.
“What did he say?” The moment I asked it, I held up my hand. “If you’d rather not share that, Kathy, I understand.”
“Of course I want to share it with you, Jess. That’s why I brought it up in the first place.”
I waited.
“We went dancing again last night,” she said. “They were giving dance instruction, and Bill insisted we join the group. Do you know what he said?”
“No.”
“He said that he intended to dance with me for the rest of his life and didn’t want it to be a lifetime of stepping on my toes.”
“He said that out of the blue? No hint that it was coming?”
“No. He just said it. Like that.”
“What did you say?”
“I was speechless. I don’t think I said anything. We started the lesson—it was for jitterbugging, swing dancing—and we just—we just did that for the next hour.”
“What happened after the lesson was finished?”
“We sat talking to some of the other passengers in the class. Bill is so comfortable talking with people he doesn’t know. He listens to everything everyone says as though it’s the most important thing in the world.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that he’s a good listener. Too bad there aren’t more of them in this world, including politicians.”
My political comment brought a smile to her face. “Especially politicians,” she added. “Anyway, Bill suggested we have a nightcap. We went to the main deck, that little circular bar down there.”
“I know where you mean,” I said. “I spoke with the bartender. He remembers Willie and Maurice Quarlé having late-night drinks there.”
She shuddered. “Just thinking of Willie with that creep gives me the . . .”
“The willies?” I asked.
“Yes, the willies.”
We both laughed.
She paused to gather her thoughts before continuing. “We sat at the bar and said nothing. Bill had fallen into what I suppose you could call a mood, very quiet, somber. I decided to ask about the comment he’d made about dancing together for life.”
“Did you?”
“I did. That’s when he told me he was falling in love with me. He said he’d dated only a few women since his wife died, and none of them interested him. He’d wondered whether he’d spend the rest of his life unmarried, always searching for his soul mate. Until— until he found me.”
She started to cry, and I gave her shoulder a squeeze.
“Sorry,” she said. “Silly of me at my age.”
“Not silly at all. I take it that that’s when he asked to come back to your cabin and spend the night.”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I was flattered at what he’d said and that I’d found myself developing feelings about him, too. But we didn’t know each other. I suggested we go slow and allow things to develop naturally, at their own pace.”
“You were right,” I offered.
“I know. Still . . .”
“No second-guessing,” I said.
I was pleased, although not surprised, at how she’d handled it. On the one hand, I was delighted that Kathy had possibly found a man who loved her, and someone she could love back. On the other hand, shipboard romances were notorious for leaving one party heartbroken at the end of the cruise. I certainly didn’t want to see that happen to this very special friend of mine. They had a lot of getting to know each other to do before any commitments were made.
“Tell you what,” I said. “We have a busy day exploring Sitka. We’re ashore for only a short time. The ship sails for Ketchikan at four. And we have some leads to follow up on while we’re here. Did you bring Willie’s receipts from Sitka?”
She pulled them from the pocket of her blue windbreaker and handed them to me. I flipped through them. As in Juneau, they were mostly from stores where she’d picked up trinkets, probably to bring back home as gifts. There was also a stub from the Alaska Raptor Center, where rescued bald eagles, hawks, and owls are nursed back to health, hopefully to the extent that they can again be released into the wild. I’d learned of the organization a few years ago and started sending an annual donation to help defray the cost of operating this wonderfully worthwhile undertaking. Another slip of paper showed that Wilimena had opted for a three-hour whale-watching trip while in Sitka.
“I think we should take this whale-watching trip, too,” I suggested. “Let’s go down to the shore excursion desk and see if they have any vacancies.”
We were in luck. There were two openings on the whale-watching boat, and we signed up. A bus that would take us to the appropriate dock was scheduled to leave at nine forty-five, which didn’t allow us much time to follow up with the shops Willie had visited.
We joined Gladys for breakfast in the dining room.
“And what do you two ladies have planned for today?” she asked.
I told her about the whale-watching trip, and that we intended to visit the Raptor Center.
“Sounds like a full day,” she said. To Kathy she added, “I see that Mr. Henderson isn’t joining us this morning.”
“I guess he slept in,” Kathy said.
“You look as though you could use some extra sleep yourself,” Gladys said.
She was right. There were dark circles beneath Kathy’s eyes, and she wasn’t as erect in her chair as she usually was. “Burning the candle at both ends,” Kathy said.
“My husband and I used to do that,” said Gladys, a wistful expression crossing her face. “He had insatiable energy and loved nightclubbing. My goodness, what a swath we used to cut in Paris and New York. London, too. But that’s a young person’s game, isn’t it?”
I pictured Gladys as a beautiful young woman, exquisitely dressed and cavorting in posh nightspots around the globe with her wealthy husband, a pair of jet-setters living the high life. That vision brought a smile to my lips.
“A word of advice?” Gladys said to Kathy.
“Sure.”
“Don’t allow your candle to burn too low. It’s difficult to relight once it’s gone out.”
“I’ll remember that,” Kathy said.
After Gladys had left the table, I asked Kathy if she knew why Bill hadn’t come to breakfast. She didn’t. “In fact,” she said, “he said he’d see me here this morning.”
Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote) Page 16