by Sue Henry
He nodded. “Like Rozetta, you mean.”
“Yes. Like that, too.”
Dallas had only one additional request, a return to the shop where Rozetta had admired the silver Haida bracelets. There she inspected several and settled on one that featured stylized eagles on its graceful crescent—one she said she hoped would remind Rozie of the eagles they had noticed in the harbor and a pleasant trip. Alex couldn’t resist a pair of silver earrings for Jessie, and they left, gratified with their purchases and the anticipation of gift giving.
At the other end of the street, Jessie and Rozetta were admiring prints by Alaskan artists, as they drifted through a small art gallery.
“Oh, I love that one,” Rozie pointed to the sketch of a sea otter on its back in the water, a clam in its paws. “How much is it?” she asked the clerk.
Jessie turned toward the door, catching a glimpse of a person she had noticed twice before in the last half hour: a man in a short dark blue jacket with an elasticized waist, tan pants, dark glasses, and a cap with a bill that hid most of his face. From across the narrow street, he seemed to be staring into the shop, straight at her. When she stopped moving, trying to get a good look at him, he froze, then swung away, and hurried off up the street.
Instantly, without a word to Rozie, Jess darted for the door, stepped out, and, raising her camera, fired off a quick shot in his direction. But he was already turning a corner, and she knew she had missed him. Who the hell was he? Why was he following them? She was now almost sure it was not coincidence that she had seen him for the third time, but it didn’t make sense. Who would want to know where they were and what they were doing?
Opening the gallery door, she called to Rozetta. “Rozie, I’ll be right back. Wait for me.”
“Okay, I’m buying this print. It’ll be a few minutes.”
Jessie took off in the direction the man had disappeared. Nearing the corner, she walked close to the buildings, then quickly stepped around into the small side street. Nothing moved but a dog, trotting away from her, tail swinging from side to side. She waited, but no one appeared.
Damn. Who, and where, was he?
She went back to the gallery, watching for him every step of the way, but he had vanished. She said nothing to Rozetta, seeing no reason to upset the younger woman, who already had problems of her own. Pleased with her purchase, Rozie chattered away as they walked back toward the place they had agreed to have lunch, never noticing the thoroughness with which her companion was assessing other people on the street.
Almost there, Jessie once more caught a glimpse of a blue jacket at the edge of her peripheral vision to the left, across the street. This time she went on answering Rozie, pretending not to have noticed him. Then, between one step and the next, she abruptly stopped, swung up the camera, and took another picture.
He was quick. Before Rozie could turn to see what Jess was recording on film, he had ducked into a doorway and was gone again. But, this time, she thought she might have caught him in profile, if not better.
A minute later, he was back. Grabbing at Rozie’s arm, Jess steered her into a needlework shop they were passing and, just as they were going in the door, tried for another picture. He was ready again and stepped behind a passerby.
When Alex and Dallas reached the cafe, the younger women were already waiting, arms full of the shopping they had done, including Dallas’s bourbon. At the door, Jessie let Rozetta enter first with her aunt’s chair, took Jensen’s arm, and held him for a moment outside. He looked at her, puzzled, as she glanced up and down the street, frowning.
“Someone’s been following us, Alex,” she told him. “I don’t like it.”
“Who?”
“I’m not sure. He didn’t get close enough to identify—if I could identify him. He’s got a dark blue jacket, tan pants, and a baseball cap that sort of hides his face, wears dark glasses. He’s been there, off and on, for at least an hour, and I don’t know how long before. Everywhere we went, he went too, but never came close. I tried to get a picture, but he was too quick for me. May have caught him once, though.”
“Do you see him now?”
“No. But he was there not ten minutes ago—up there by that T-shirt shop.”
“Rozie see him too?”
“I didn’t mention it. Seemed better to leave her out of it.”
“Good thinking. Are you sure it’s a man?”
“Yes … well, I guess it could be a woman. Hard to tell. Moves like a man. I tried to fake him out, turned Rozie around to go into a needlework shop once, and ran after him out of an art gallery, but he disappeared.”
“Needlework? You going domestic on me?”
She grinned. “I haven’t done any in a long time, but there was a great needlepoint kit of a killer whale that caught my eye. Thought I might get it started between here and Seattle.”
Serious again, Alex thought for a minute. “Let’s go in and sit by the window. You watch, and, if you see this guy again, point him out to me. Okay? He may feel safe enough to come closer with us inside.”
He put an arm around her shoulders to give her a half-hug along with his smile. It was good to have her along, within reach, and be able to give her the reassurance of touch.
They went in to find Dallas and Rozetta conveniently seated at a window table.
Though both Jessie and Alex cast suspicious glances at the street outside as they drank their coffee, there was no sign of the man she had described.
“Maybe I was just imagining it,” she told him in a low voice, as they left the cafe. “There’s a lot of people on the street, in a relatively small area. It could have been coincidence.”
Nevertheless, the incident made Jensen uneasy, his thoughts turning to the large amount of gold in the lower section of the Spirit of ‘98. It was time to take a look at just how it was situated and guarded. Foremost in his mind, however, was a concern for Jessie’s safety. Why would someone follow her … or Rozie?
For the next hour, they watched the New Archangel Dancers, an all-woman troop, entertain a large audience with authentic Russian folk dances; whirling, stamping, leaping about on the stage of Centennial Hall. Their last stop was Jessie’s suggestion, a rehabilitation center for raptors, where volunteers treated injured bald eagles, rehabilitating them for release back to the wild, if possible. Those birds that were unable to survive freedom would have homes found for them in zoos. The group of four moved quietly between large cages, enjoying the chance to take a close look at the birds they had previously seen only from a distance.
“They seem much larger up close, don’t they?” Rozie said. “Aren’t they beautiful? Look how that one watches us, but never ruffles a feather.”
The bird she referred to clung with razor talons to the broken limb of a dead tree trunk close to their side of its cage. It stared at them with attentive yellow eyes, the only thing about it that moved. Never for an instant did its concentration break.
Disdain, Alex thought, staring back. It watches as if we were insignificant, but possibly threatening, creatures. Maybe we are. There can’t be much to kill eagles besides man.
“Well,” Dallas said, when they were on their way back to the ship in another taxi, “they may be scavengers, but seeing the one that woman had perched on her heavy leather glove was certainly impressive. Fiercesome critters, aren’t they—all sharp talons and scimitar beaks?”
Jensen noticed that Jessie was still closely examining people as they drove past, searching the crowd of shoppers for her mysterious stalker. She seemed glad to reach what was becoming the familiar home-away-from-home of the Spirit, though he was less certain of its security. Jessie and Rozetta went on ahead in the crowd of returning passengers, carrying everyone’s packages to their staterooms. He was considering his next step in the investigation of the thefts when Dallas spoke from her wheelchair, which he was guiding down the ramp.
“Jessie’s worried about something, Alex. I’m no idiot. Something happened this afternoon, whi
le she and Rozie were gone, didn’t it? What?”
She stood up to step carefully across the gangway onto the ship, as he followed with the chair. Once on board, she turned to face him, waiting for an answer.
“Not much gets by you, does it, Dallas?”
“Well, I do more watching than participating these days. What is it?”
“Probably nothing, but I tend to trust Jessie’s instincts. She says someone followed them, but not close enough to identify. Could have been a coincidence. Lots of people around.”
“But you don’t think so.” She sat down in the chair.
“I don’t know. So I tend to err on the side of caution.”
“Connected to the robbery?”
Jensen shrugged. “Who knows? Could have been someone who recognized Jessie from a picture of the Iditarod.”
The elevator opened, he wheeled Dallas in, and they rode up the two decks in thoughtful silence. At the door to her stateroom Alex left her. “See you at dinner?”
“Drink before?”
“I think we’ll pass tonight, thanks. I’ve got a couple of things to do.”
“Rain check,” she smiled, and he went off to find Jessie, with the pair of silver earrings in mind and pocket, already envisioning them against the gold of her hair.
10
6:30 P.M.
Monday, July 14, 1997
Spirit of ‘98
Leaving Sitka, Inside Passage, Alaska
THE FORWARD LOUNGE, BEFORE DINNER, WAS CROWDED with people hungry after their afternoon of discovering Sitka and anxious to make their way to the dining room for a relaxed evening meal. Slipping in among them, Alex and Jessie stopped for a minute to say hello to Bill and Nella Berry, who insisted on buying them a drink. The enticing aroma of hot hors d’oeuvres floated through the air, drawing Jensen in that direction, as Bill went to the bar for their gin and tonics.
When the men returned, bearing refreshment, Jessie and Nella were comparing notes on their Sitka visit.
“What a great location,” Bill enthused. “I don’t think I ever saw such a spectacular setting for a city. Be a great place for a summer home, don’t you think?”
“Did you get those earrings this afternoon?” Nella asked Jessie. “They’re wonderful.”
Pleased at the compliment, Jessie admitted they were indeed from Sitka. “Alex found them for me. He says they’re a July fourteenth present.”
“Is that an anniversary of some kind?”
“No,” Jensen answered, with a grin. “Just July fourteenth, and the day of the eagles.”
Raising a hand to touch the ornate, stylized silver birds that gleamed on her ears, Jessie smiled at Alex.
“That,” commented Bill, “is a trick we should fire you for, Jensen. I have enough trouble remembering real anniversaries, right, Nella? Jensen will ruin our absentminded male reputation.”
“Would you recognize John Stanley?” Alex asked, changing the subject. “I need to talk to him about the thefts last night.”
“Sure. He’s right over there.” Berry pointed across the room.
“Maybe he’ll know something that will lead you to get my watch back!”
Stanley, who was quietly watching the evening colors on the waters of the strait, turned out to be the bookish, gold-spectacled man they had seen boarding the Spirit in Skagway. Relieved of his bulky prospector’s clothing, his frame was smaller than anticipated. Jensen, long interested in the physical elements that sometimes seemed to shape a person’s character and psychology, wondered if Stanley’s myopia might not have been diagnosed late in his childhood, for, from behind the thick, concave lenses of his glasses, Stanley exhibited a vague, soft-spoken, patient attitude that could easily have been the result of a long period of perceiving the distance as a blur. He greeted them politely, completely willing to answer questions.
The day before, their attention had been so focused on Stanley’s outfit of fur parka and mukluks that they had all but overlooked his daughter, Louise, who had preferred jeans and a sweatshirt to a costume. Lou was an enigma of sorts, a tiny, sylphlike girl with enormous green eyes and carrot red hair permed to an electric halo that floated around her head in a dense cloud of crinkles. Following her father’s lead, she said a quiet, courteous hello, but instead of sitting down she meandered off across the lounge.
Later, with more attention, she would strike Jessie as intentionally ambiguous, appearing and disappearing—seemingly out of nowhere—at odd times and places, drifting about the ship, usually in motion. Looking younger than her fifteen years, she listened constantly to music through the headphones of her CD player, apparently ignoring nearly every adult, including her father.
A conviction grew with Jessie that Lou saw and heard much more than she revealed. Jessie suspected that, as the teen wandered from one end of the ship to the other, she might actually be aware of more of what went on than anyone else aboard, though she might not realize its significance. Passing Lou on one deck or another, it was at times possible to catch a faint rhythmic thread of music, just enough to make one wonder if it was real or imagined. Regardless, Jess began to wonder whether Lou’s music was as uninterrupted as it appeared, or if she sometimes wore the headphones to surreptitiously listen to the conversations of other people.
“My greatgrandfather, William Stanley, brought what, at that time, was a fortune out of the Klondike on the Portland: a hundred and twelve thousand dollars,” John told them.
Her jeans and fuchsia sweatshirt a couple of sizes too large, Lou Stanley was wandering around the room, a Coke in her hand, looking out the windows. Jessie noticed, however, that Lou never moved completely out of earshot.
“I’m proud to represent him for this reenactment,” Stanley went on. “He sold books in Seattle and wasn’t making enough to support his wife and seven children, so he took his son, Samuel, and went north. They were practically destitute, and the trip north to search for gold was a last resort. He had a gimp leg, but he made it down the Yukon and was there, close enough to stake a claim when the Bonanza strike was made.” He’d started his small, unsuccessful business with money from a gold strike in the Rocky Mountains, but lost it during the depression of the mid-1890s.
Jensen had listened with honest interest, but now, with only ten minutes left before dinner, he changed the subject.
“Last night,” he said, “you went to the party in Haines—both of you?”
“Yes, sure. Wouldn’t miss any part of this once-in-a-lifetime celebration.”
“And when you came back you didn’t notice anything unusual, or that your stateroom had been disturbed?”
“No. Not a thing.”
“You knew that three other staterooms next to you had been robbed?”
“Oh, yes. Everybody knows that. There aren’t that many people on this boat—less than a hundred, not counting the crew. Information spreads fast.”
Lou made one of her nomadic, seemingly unintentional trips past where they sat, and Jensen reached out a hand to stop her roaming.
“Did you notice anything at all last night, Miss Stanley?”
She pulled the headphones off.
“Nope. I went to bed early, after I watched the ship leave the dock.”
“So you were on deck for a while before you went to your cabin?”
“Yes.”
“Did you stay on your deck? On the side nearest the dock?”
She frowned. “Not all the time. I walked around some—went up to the top deck, where the chairs and tables are.”
“Talk to anyone?”
“No.” She fidgeted, resistance to his queries plainly growing.
“See anyone suspicious?”
“No.”
Jensen ran out of questions and nodded to the girl that she could go. “Thanks, Ms. Stanley.”
A sudden, brilliant, and beautiful smile spread over her face, transforming her looks completely, allowing the others a glimpse of the lovely woman she was about to become. Then she giggled. “Ms.
Stanley?”
Alex grinned back at her, surprised, but pleased.
Passengers around them were leaving the lounge for the dining room one deck below. Alex and Jessie rose to join the exodus, but the Stanleys were swept ahead in the hungry throng.
“Nobody knows anything,” Jensen said under his breath to Jessie, as they went down the stairs and paused in a narrow hallway leading to the dining room. “That search warrant for Morrison’s cabin will be faxed in this evening, when the judge flies back in from Juneau. The magistrate’s gone to Hawaii on vacation. Maybe there’ll be something there. What’d you think of Lou Stanley?”
“Interesting. Smart. She might be more open with another woman.”
The line started to move as Alex thought about that for a minute.
“You could be right,” he agreed. “Take a shot, if you get a chance.”
“He get to Ketchikan?”
“No message from Walt on the machine.”
“Damn it.”
“Yeah. If they don’t get going soon, they won’t make it on time.”
“Another day’s cutting it pretty close.”
“Right. But we’ll have to wait till tomorrow, after five. I’ll try again later, but can’t go up there too often. Someone will wonder why I’m making so many calls. You keep your act together. Don’t forget what’s at stake here. I didn’t take you on to have you blow it.”
“How the hell would I do that?”
“just don’t. That business last night was real stupid.”
“Wasn’t my fault. That cop go to the office in Sitka?”
“No. We watched them both play tourist all afternoon with that Blake woman in the chair. His girlfriend had a camera, though, and somehow knew we were there. Tried to take a picture and we had to move fast. It’s okay. Now, get out of here.”
The Klondike miner was ragged and unkempt, a full, bushy beard covering the lower half of his face, a fur hat on his head. His coat, homemade out of a gray wool blanket, overlapped in front and was secured around his waist with a piece of rope. Boots, stained and stiff from supposed encounters with the waters of Bonanza Creek, appeared lacking in comfort. He stomped between the tables of the Spirit’s dining room—a grubby contrast to the sparkling clean white of their tablecloths and napkins, waving a piece of firewood, threateningly, in one hand.