by Sue Henry
“What a beautiful place to live,” she said. “With a scene like that, how could anyone leave?”
“Many don’t. The last few years we’ve had an influx of people moving here. Most come as tourists and decide they want to stay—or at least have a place to come back to for the summer months, as many are snowbirds that go south for the winter. They buy or build houses with views of Kachemak Bay from the bluff above town and property values have soared because of it.
“I’m lucky though. This property was outside the city limits when my fir st husband, Joe, bought it and built this house. Now it’s worth what seems like a small fortune to me.”
We went back to the table, soon finished breakfast, and were drinking our second mugs of coffee.
“You know,” Amy said thoughtfully, setting hers down. “Last night I told you about my search for John across the country. But I don’t know how and when you came to know him here in Alaska. Would you tell me about it?”
I realized that she was right. I had done a lot of listening and almost no talking about my short acquaintance with and limited knowledge of John.
“There isn’t much to tell,” I assured her. “But I’ll tell you what I know.”
“How did you meet him?”
“Completely by accident,” I told her.
“Stretch and I had gone for a walk on the spit,” I began, remembering back to that day of wind and weather coming in from the west. “It looked like rain, so we headed for my car, but Stretch’s attention was caught by a man who was sitting at a picnic table, warming his hands on a paper cup of coffee from a restaurant across the street that was still open out of season.
“I got talking with him, introduced myself and Stretch, and he said his name was John Walker, that he had come from Anchorage on the Homer Stage Line, a shuttle that goes back and forth between there and here a couple of times a week, and that he had walked out from town to take a look at the spit.
“In a few minutes it did start to rain, so I offered him a ride back to town and dropped him off at the Driftwood Inn.”
“But you saw him again,” Amy said.
“Yes. I asked how long he planned to be in town and he said he had planned to go back to Anchorage on the Monday shuttle, but as he thanked me for the ride he said a thing I can’t get out of my mind, especially now that he’s gone. He told me he liked it here so much that, as he put it—and I quote, Who knows? I like it here so far—interesting place—friendly people. Maybe I’ll decide to spend what’s left of my life at the end of the road.”
She stared at me, eyes wide.
“He actually said: what’s left of my life and the end of the road ?” she asked. “What an odd way of putting it.”
“Yes, he did. And I thought that, too—even more after I was told that he had killed himself. But I think that’s what he meant all along—part of why he came here—as far from anywhere he came from and could get in this country.”
“When did you see him again?”
“My son, Joe, had flown up from Seattle for one of his short visits and I had asked a few friends of mine and his to come for dinner that Saturday evening. So, on impulse, I called and invited John to join us and he did. We all enjoyed his quiet company and there was nothing to indicate what he had in mind.”
“Was that the last time you saw him?”
“It was, but not his last contact. Sometime in the night before he died, he brought two books he had picked up at one of our local bookstores and left them on my front step, wrapped in plastic, with a note asking me to either keep them or return them to where he had bought them. I thought he had probably caught the early shuttle and was already gone, but that it was a little odd that he didn’t leave them at the Driftwood Inn, or the bookstore itself that’s just a couple of blocks away. As I told you, this picture of Marty”—I picked it up from where I had left it on the table as I went on—“the woman you say is . . . was . . . his wife, was tucked into one of them like a bookmark.”
Amy frowned, leaned forward, and looked thoughtfully down into the coffee mug that she was holding between her two hands.
“And he never told you where he was from?” she asked, looking up again.
“No. My son, Joe, asked him and was told he was from the South. But, aside from that, he never really talked about himself in any detail at all.”
“He had changed a lot,” she said slowly. “I wonder—”
“You know,” I interrupted, “I’m forgetting that I should call the state troopers’ office in Anchor Point and see if I can get ahold of Alan Nelson, so you can talk to him. He needs to know the things you’ve told me. And he can tell us if they know anything new at the crime lab in Anchorage, where they took his body.”
I got up from the table and went to the phone, but there was no dial tone when I picked it up to make the call. I put a finger on the hang-up button and jiggled it a couple of times, but the line remained dead.
“Damn,” I swore in frustration. “Must have something to do with heavy new snow on the lines.” It was a thing I didn’t remember ever happening before, but figured that there’s always a first time for just about everything.
I fished my cell phone out of the purse that I had left sitting on the kitchen counter the evening before. But I got no success there, either. Evidently I had inadvertently left it turned on the day before, or not noticed the battery was getting low, because it was also dead.
Hooking it up to the charger I keep handy at the back of the kitchen counter, I left it to absorb new strength and turned to Amy with a question.
“Do you have . . .”
But she was already shaking her head.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been using disposables and need to get a new one.”
I thought for a moment. I could do one of two things. Either I could wait for the cell to charge, or I could drive down to the police station in the middle of town and contact Trooper Nelson through them.
I decided on the latter and told Amy what I intended to do.
“Will you mind staying here while I’m gone?” I questioned. “I’ll be back in less than half an hour.”
“Not at all,” she told me. “I’ll clean up the breakfast dishes while you’re gone.”
Leaving Stretch with company, I put on my coat and boots and was out the door five minutes later, forgetting to lock the door behind me until I remembered on the road into town. Knowing Amy was there and that I wouldn’t be away long, I decided not to go back, and continued on to the police station.
Once there, I told them about my telephone problems and they called the troopers’ office in Anchor Point for me. Trooper Nelson, however, was in Kenai, over ninety miles away, for a meeting of some kind, and wouldn’t be back until sometime late that afternoon. I left a message asking him to contact me on my cell phone, which I knew would be charged by the time he called. After thanking the helpful woman in the offic e at the police station, I went back to my car and headed home.
Pulling into my driveway, I noticed that Amy’s car was no longer next to where I parked mine. That puzzled me.
I walked up to the door and found it closed, but unlocked. That worried me.
I went inside and called Stretch, who, to my relief, trotted out from the fireplace side of the big room and gave me a questioning look that clearly meant Where the heck have you been and why did you leave me here?
Locking the door behind me, I called Amy’s name, but got no answer.
The breakfast dishes were still on the table, the pot still keeping what was left of the coffee warm in the kitchen. But her coat was gone from the hook by the door.
Upstairs in Joe’s bedroom I found her suitcase also gone and the bed left unmade.
Gone! She had simply disappeared! In a hurry, evidently, knowing I would very shortly be back. Why? And where? But mostly . . . why?
After taking the dishes to the kitchen I refilled my mug with coffee and sat down at the table to think it over.
Near the ta
ble was a wastebasket that I kept there for tossing away mail I didn’t want to keep, paper napkins, and other such recyclable stuff that I felt guilty putting in the garbage pail under the sink. I glanced into it casually, thinking it needed emptying.
Then I stopped, leaned and picked out several pieces of a familiar photograph that I knew I had not and would not have thrown into it. It had been torn through several times by someone who clearly wanted it destroyed. That someone must have been Amy.
Like a jigsaw puzzle I laid the small pieces carefully together, searching the wastebasket for a couple of missing ones until I found and added them to make the picture complete.
What lay before me on the table was the photo Andy had found in the O’Brian book and given to me—the woman Amy had said was John’s wife, Marty.
It simply didn’t make sense, unless what Amy had told me the evening before didn’t make sense, either.
Did it?
NINETEEN
AMY DID NOT COME BACK THAT DAY, as I thought she might.
I called the telephone company on my partially charged cell phone and a young repairman showed up just after noon and fixed my phones in five minutes.
“All three were unplugged,” he said, with a glance that told me he thought I had done it myself and was probably suffering from Alzheimer’s at what he considered my advanced age.
I assured him I had not, but was sure that, assuming I had, he chalked that up as proof of his theory.
Trooper Alan Nelson called my cell phone late that afternoon from Kenai before starting back to Anchor Point. Hearing that I had several important things to tell and show him, he asked me to wait until he got there, which would be as soon as possible, and showed up on my doorstep just before seven o’clock.
He came in the door after stomping snow from his boots, hung his coat and hat on a hook by the door, and followed me to the table, taking a long look at the shotgun that I had placed once again on the counter by the door.
“Trouble?” he asked as he sat down and looked down at Stretch, who had come trotting across the room. “Hey there, buddy.”
“Trouble prevention,” I told him. “You’ve had a long day. Can I get you something to eat?”
“Thanks, but I grabbed a burger and ate it in the car on the way down,” he told me. “A cup of coffee would be welcome though.”
I poured him some, added cream when he nodded as I held it up, brought the mug to the table, and sat down facing him.
He directed another nod at the photograph I had carefully taped together while I waited for him to arrive.
“Who is this?” he asked me.
“Supposed to be John’s wife,” I told him.
“How do you know that? And why did you tear it up?”
“I didn’t,” I assured him. “I found it in my wastebasket when I came back from the police station, where I called because neither of my phones were working. But let me go back to just after you were last here. You already know that John left a couple of books for me to return to the bookstore, right?”
He did.
“So, I took them back and didn’t think any more about it.”
“Then what?”
“Well, when the article about his suicide came out in last Wednesday’s paper, my phone practically never stopped ringing. You know how gossip spreads like wildfire in this town. So I decided on the spur of the moment to fly up to Anchorage, then went on to visit friends in Wasilla, just to get away for a couple of days. You probably know Alex Jensen, who’s a trooper based in Palmer. I stayed with him and his lady, Jessie Arnold.”
He nodded that he did.
“I flew back yesterday on Grant’s noon flight, and when I got home I found my front door unlocked and open a crack. Checking inside I could tell that someone had stayed here while I was gone—actually slept in my bed. Made me furious—still does. I immediately washed all the linen, not thinking there might be something to identify whoever had slept there.
“Whoever it was must have found the key I kept in the shed by the driveway, because it’s missing. So a friend came and replaced the lock on the door for me, bless him.”
“Notice anything else?”
“Yes. There were a few things moved from where I keep them—a plant, kitchen things, a book I had left on the sofa was moved to the fireplace hearth, the television had been moved. I think it was a woman, but am not absolutely sure.”
Nelson had taken out a notebook and pen and was taking notes. At that suggestion he paused and held up a hand to stop me.
“What makes you think it was a woman?”
“There was a perfume scent that wasn’t mine in the bed and in the bathroom—where she used my toothpaste, as a matter of fact. I tossed it out. It was the kind of scent that no guy would use as aftershave—very flo ral. It’s gone down the drain now and the sheets and pillowcases are back on my bed. But I think I’d be able to identify it, if I smelled it again.”
“You’re probably right,” he said, and went back to writing. “Then what?”
“Nothing from that direction. Whoever it was didn’t come back, but probably wouldn’t have if she saw my car parked here and knew I was home, would she?”
“Not if she had any sense,” he said with a grin, giving the shotgun a glance. “But I’m glad to hear you had the lock replaced. Go on.”
So I told him about Andy giving me the picture of John’s wife, having found it in one of the books.
“And you say you didn’t tear it up.”
“I didn’t. His sister did that, while I was gone to the police station, calling you. Last night she showed up at my door.”
“Andy’s sister?”
“No. John’s.”
That stopped Nelson’s note taking. He raised his head with a jerk and looked at me, wide-eyed.
“Really! How did you know she was his sister?”
“Amy Fletcher is her name. And she told me she was, but she knew so much about him that I believed her. We talked a long time and she told me how she had been following and searching for him since sometime after the Twin Towers fell in New York. He and his wife, Marty, both worked in the second tower. She evidently died in it, like so many others, when it fell. He, obviously, didn’t.”
“That may explain that belt buckle Stretch found.”
“Yes. But I don’t understand why Amy disappeared while I was gone to give you a call—or why she tore up this picture. It doesn’t make sense to me. She had another picture, one of John when he was younger. There was no mistaking that it was him.”
“Amy Fletcher. Was Fletcher her given or married name?”
“She didn’t say, but I got the feeling that she was single and it was her maiden name because she’s been searching for him by herself for a number of years and didn’t mention leaving a husband or family in order to do it. She was picking up jobs as she traveled when she needed to.”
Nelson frowned. “Interesting,” he said thoughtfully. “Do you know of anything that she may have left prints on? We can now check him out by the name she gave you—Fletcher. But we might find her prints in a search, if we had some.”
“I thought back to what Amy had handled. “The mug she drank coffee from this morning is in the dishwasher, but it’s only half full, so I haven’t run it yet. I’ll get it for you.”
“Let me, so her prints aren’t smudged. You’ve already handled the mug, so I’ll take your prints to eliminate them from the search.”
He did both of those things, carefully wrapping the mug in a paper bag to carry to the crime lab, and taking my prints before he left.
I told him everything I could think of that would be of help and he left, pleased with the progress he felt we had made.
“I’ll be sure you get the mug back when they finish with it and will let you know if we find out anything new. Please call the number on the card I gave you if that woman, Amy, comes back, or if you find out where she is.”
I thanked him and promised I would, then stood in the doo
rway and gave him a wave as he backed out of the drive onto East End Road and was quickly gone.
After feeding Stretch, I ate another bowl of soup and a tuna sandwich for dinner, not wanting to go to the trouble of making anything that required more effort. When I finished, I rinsed out the bowl and spoon I had used and set them in the dish drainer beside the sink.
It had been a stressful couple of days and I could feel a headache coming on, so I took some Tylenol and went to have a lie-down on the sofa, after building a small fire in the fireplace.
Stretch watched from where he was on the hearth rug and laid his head back down when he saw me settle with a light blanket over me. As he grows older he naps more and isn’t as active as he was in the past. But isn’t that true for us all?
As I dozed off, I wondered again fleetingly why Amy had left in such a hurry. It didn’t seem much like what I had learned of and from her, but then how much did I actually know about her anyway?
I was asleep in minutes, refusing to wear myself out with more speculation on the past week’s events and puzzles, good or bad.
I wound up sleeping there all night.
It was still dark when I woke, disoriented and yawning, wondering what time it was.
That time of year, when it gets dark earlier in the afternoon and stays dark until later the following morning, it’s difficult to tell the time by the amount of light and dark, so we Alaskans do a lot of clock-watching. Having spent the last few winters in the southwest ern states, where it gets dark later and light earlier, I was still feeling a bit out of sync and found myself taking naps at odd times.
I got up, took a look at the clock, and, finding it was five thirty in the morning, went straight back to sleep for another couple of hours.
When I finally woke for good at just after seven o’clock, I felt much better. I let Stretch out and back in, then fed him before going upstairs, where I took a long, hot shower, washed my hair, brushed my teeth, and felt ready for whatever the rest of the day might bring, hopefully something good and ordinary.