“I just had a brilliant idea! I think I’ll leave this recorder in the drawer where I found the maps. You know me, sis. I’m likely to drop it in the water, and that’d be that. I’ll retrieve it when I get back and bring it with me to Cabot Cove along with the gold.
“I’d better wrap this up now. According to what I’d learned, Dolly was afraid to leave the gold in Ketchikan once her boyfriend, Lefty, never returned from a trip, so she took it to a cabin way out in the wilderness. I read that the state of Alaska built cabins in remote areas that hunters and fishermen can use, or people who get caught in a storm can use to survive. According to Aunt Dolly’s map, the cabin she chose is in the Misty Fjords. I read about it in a guidebook. It’s a national monument. It’s really huge, Kathy, more than two million acres. From the pictures I’ve seen, it looks cold, even in summer. I’m sitting here shivering just thinking about it. At any rate, I’m about to fly there. Can you believe it? You know how much I hate to fly, even in a big jet plane. But I’m going in one of these little puddle-jumper planes with one propeller. I just hope I can trust the pilot. He’s a sour old guy named Harold, but the price is right. I went to some of the big companies here in Ketchikan who rent out floatplanes, but they charge a fortune. You know me and what a cheapskate I can be.” Giggle. “I know what you’re thinking, Sis, that I live as though I were rich. I also know you don’t approve of all the men I’ve had in my life. I guess I do take advantage of them. I can’t think of the last time I paid for a meal. Men are always so willing to pick up the tab. But please don’t think poorly of me, Kathy. Once we have Aunt Dolly’s gold, I won’t have to pretend I’m rich. I will be! And so will you!
“Well, big sister, I’m off. Harold looks like the kind of guy who doesn’t like to be kept waiting. I’m not sure how I’ll get back after I find the gold. I don’t really trust this guy Harold. Funny, huh, me becoming paranoid? A couple of people I talked to here in Ketchikan say there’s always a lot of fishermen coming in and out of Misty Fjords, so I figure I’ll catch a ride with one of them, use my feminine charms. Ha! I don’t know how long it’ll take to actually find the gold once I’m there, but I’m hoping it won’t be long. At any rate, sis, you’ll be listening to this recording back in Cabot Cove in front of a warm fire, and with gold dust at our feet, as the song goes. As Momma used to say, ‘If the good Lord’s willing and the creeks don’t rise,’ I’ll show up on your doorstep in Cabot Cove toting a great big bag of gold nuggets. What a party we’ll have. Ciao! Adios! Lots of love!”
We sat there in the ensuing silence, deep in our respective thoughts. Kathy started to cry, and Bill put his arm around her shoulder.
I stood. “Let’s go,” I said. “At least we now know the name of the pilot who took her.”
“What about the police?” Kathy said. “Shouldn’t we go to them with what we’ve learned?”
“Not yet,” Bill said. “Let’s make sure what we have before bothering them.”
We agreed, although I was not as enthusiastic as Kathy.
We returned to the Dolly Arthur Museum, where Pearl and Princess stood in front, batting their false eyelashes at passing tourists and touting the virtues of a tour.
“We’re leaving,” I said. “Thank you so much for all your help.”
“What was on that recorder?” Princess asked.
“Oh, nothing much,” Kathy said.
Pearl and Princess—I wondered what their real names were and what they did when they weren’t acting as guides to Dolly’s brothel—looked at each other.
“I guess it’s okay for you to take it,” Pearl said, “as long as you bring it back.”
“That’s a promise,” Bill said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, and handed it to Princess. “For being so understanding,” he said.
Princess stuffed the bill into her cleavage, and they wished us a pleasant day in Ketchikan.
“That was so sweet,” Kathy said to him as we walked to where we’d parked the car.
He smiled and said, “The least I could do.”
Once in the car, I checked the names of independent floatplane operators given us by Mr. Gilroy. “No Harold,” I said, “but there is a Hal. Hal Fitzgibbons. Could be him.”
We consulted our map of Ketchikan and headed for his address, a small, well-cared-for house on a canal near Totem Bight State Historical Park. Ketchikan has, according to guidebooks, the world’s largest collection of totem poles. I would have enjoyed visiting the various centers where they’re displayed, but that wasn’t in the cards.
Mr. Fitzgibbons’s vintage floatplane sat at a crude dock, bobbing up and down in the water in the wake caused by small pleasure craft that passed by. We exited the car and approached the front door. Before we reached the porch that spanned the front of the house, the door opened and a woman faced us. “Can I help you?” she asked. She was dressed simply and nicely— a neatly pressed, clean housedress in a flowered pattern and white sneakers. She had a long, angular face and wore large, square glasses.
“We’re looking for a Mr. Fitzgibbons,” I said.
“That’s my husband,” she said.
“Harold Fitzgibbons?”
“That’s what his mother named him. His friends call him Hal.” She had a pleasant smile.
“My name is Jessica Fletcher,” I said, “and these are my friends Kathy Copeland and Bill Henderson.”
“Yes?”
“You see, my sister is missing,” Kathy said, “and—”
“What does that have to do with us?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons asked.
Bill replied, “We’ve learned that she took a floatplane from Ketchikan to someplace in the Misty Fjords, and that her pilot was someone named Harold.”
“I’m afraid that Hal isn’t here at the moment,” his wife said. “He’s down in the Lower Forty-eight visiting a brother who’s dying. Cancer. Two years younger than Hal.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Quite a blow for Hal. He and his brother are very close.”
Kathy asked whether the woman in the doorway might know anything about her husband having had a passenger named Wilimena a few weeks earlier. She pulled Willie’s photograph from her pocket and started up onto the porch to show it to her. But Mrs. Fitzgibbons stopped her with, “I think I know who you’re talking about. Please come in. I just put on a pot of coffee. I make it the way Hal taught me. I add an egg to the grounds.”
Chapter Fourteen
The inside of the Fitzgibbons house was as pristine as its exterior. Nothing was out of place. The windows sparkled, and the floor looked as though you could safely eat off it. An old black Lab that had been sleeping in a fancy dog bed when we entered struggled to its feet, gave us a cursory sniff, and went back to bed.
“That’s Beaver,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons said.
“Looks more like a dog to me,” Bill said jokingly.
The woman of the house smiled and said, “Hal’s floatplane is a DeHavilland Beaver. He named the dog after the plane. The plane is his pride and joy. So’s the dog.”
She invited us to join her at the kitchen table, where she placed empty coffee mugs in front of us, along with a pitcher of cream and a sugar bowl.
“Is this your first trip to Alaska?” she asked. “By the way, my name is Flo.”
“My second visit, Flo,” I said, “although I didn’t see very much of it the first time. I was only here for a day.”
“Jessica is a writer,” Kathy said.
Flo scrutinized me through narrowed eyes. “Yes, of course. Murder mysteries. Jessica Fletcher. I get your books from the library.”
“I’m pleased that you read them,” I said, looking up at a wall clock. As much as I enjoyed being in this woman’s company and sharing a cup of coffee with her, I knew that we were pressed for time. “You indicated you knew the woman we’re looking for.”
“Yes, I do,” Flo replied. “Hal flew her into Misty Fjords.”
“When was that?” I asked.
; “I can get you the exact date.”
She left the table and returned with a printed form with handwriting filling in the blanks. “Here’s the trip ticket,” she said. “We keep very good records.”
I didn’t doubt that for a moment. But as I quickly scanned the form, I saw that the passenger’s name was listed as Wanda Walters.
“According to this,” I said, “the passenger isn’t the person we’re looking for.”
“I can’t account for that,” she said. “But the picture you showed me is certainly the woman who booked Hal. Considering her reason for making the flight, I’m not surprised that she used an alias.”
We looked at each other before Kathy asked, “Why is that?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t have much patience with spouses who cheat on each other.”
“Willie—Willie was cheating on a husband?” Kathy asked incredulously.
“Willie?”
“That’s her real name,” Kathy explained. “Her nickname. Short for Wilimena.”
“Let me explain,” said Flo. “When she originally came here, she said she was meeting some friends in a cabin in Misty Fjords. They were going to spend time ‘roughing it,’ as she put it. I have to admit that I wasn’t especially keen on Hal flying her. She was an attractive woman, even beautiful, and Hal is a handsome man. But he’s flown beautiful women before.” She laughed ruefully. “Jealous me.”
“Go on,” I said.
“She didn’t appear to me to be the sort of woman who would enjoy roughing it,” Flo said. “But who am I to judge? More coffee?”
We all declined the offer.
“Well,” she continued, “Hal agreed to take her. She didn’t have much with her, just a small suitcase. At least she wore a flannel shirt and sensible footwear. They left in the early afternoon—you can see the flight log on the bottom of that form—and Hal returned just before sunset. He was, to put it mildly, not happy.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She told him during the flight that she’d lied about why she was going to Misty Fjords. It wasn’t to spend a week with friends in a cabin. It was to have a rendezvous with her lover. She’s a married woman.”
Kathy gulped. “She told your husband that?” she said.
“Yes. She confided in Hal the real reason for her trip, and swore him to secrecy.”
“But he told you,” Bill said.
“Telling your wife is different,” she said, slightly defensive.
“Of course,” Bill said.
“What else did your husband tell you?” I asked.
“He said she appeared to be very nervous. I suppose that can be explained, considering why she was going there. Hal said she seemed to be a distrustful person. She kept asking him to promise he wouldn’t tell anyone that he took her into Misty Fjords.”
“Did your husband plan to pick her up after her— well, I guess you could call it her tryst—after it was over?” Bill asked.
“No, and that was what was really strange about the whole thing,” Flo replied. “Hal asked whether she wanted to arrange a date and time for him to bring her back to Ketchikan.”
“And?” I said.
“She said no, she didn’t want to do that. Naturally, he asked how she planned to return. She told him that the man she was seeing had arranged for them to return by boat. That didn’t make any sense to me. After all, if she was so concerned about people not knowing about her trip there, why would she be willing to arrive back here in a boat with her lover?”
“A good point,” I said.
Kathy sat mum at the table, obviously trying to make sense out of what Mrs. Fitzgibbons was saying. I couldn’t blame her. Why, after being so willing to tell the world about her quest for gold, would Wilimena suddenly turn secretive and paranoid, making up a name and weaving a tale about being married and meeting a lover? The distrust she’d expressed on the recorder about Maurice Quarlé might have had something to do with it. Maybe she got smart and realized that by sharing with others the purpose of her Alaskan trip, she was placing the gold, as well as herself, in jeopardy.
Flo poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, and gave every indication that she would be pleased if we stayed for the day.
Kathy came out of her fugue and asked, “When is your husband due back?”
“Two or three days,” his wife answered.
“We don’t have that much time,” I said.
“Are you saying that she never came back?” Flo asked.
“Exactly,” Bill said.
“Are you sure? Maybe she returned with her lover and they quietly slipped away to somewhere else,” Flo offered.
“I don’t think so,” said Kathy.
“Mrs. Fitzgibbons,” I said, “can you recommend a pilot who could take us to where your husband delivered Wilimena?”
She laughed and blew a stream of air at an imaginary wisp of hair on her forehead. “It’s tourist season,” she said. “Everyone is booked solid. That’s why it’s a difficult time for Hal to be away. We live all year on what he makes these few months. Of course, there are fishing groups and hunters looking to go into the backcountry, but it’s the tourists who provide the most business.”
“I can certainly understand,” I said.
“You might try Bobby Borosky,” Flo said.
Kathy looked at me and grimaced.
“We met him earlier,” I said.
Another laugh from Flo. “I take it you weren’t impressed.”
“You might say that,” Bill said.
“Bobby’s not what you’d call a people person,” Flo said, “but he’s an excellent pilot. He’s been flying the bush since he was a teenager, knows Misty Fjords like the back of his hand. The problem is he seldom takes tourists. He likes flying mail and medicine runs better than flying people.”
“Can you think of anyone else?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not anyone who won’t be tied up. Want me to call Bobby for you? He’s really a big pussycat. I know he doesn’t come off that way at first, but he’s a real decent guy.”
“If you say so,” I said.
Flo took a cordless phone from the wall and dialed a number. “Bobby, it’s Flo Fitzgibbons—just fine, thank you—you?—that’s good to hear—Bobby, I have some very nice people sitting here in my kitchen. Remember that woman Hal told you about, the one heading into Misty Fjords to meet up with her lover?”
Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote) Page 21