by Sue Henry
“We passed a grocery back there on the corner. I could go and get us—well, something.”
“Let’s find a place to get out of sight first.”
They continued until they were standing at the edge of the harbor next to the busy processing plant. There, along a dock piled high with wooden pallets, crab traps, and large blue seafood containers, they came to an empty space sheltered from sight that both agreed might be suitable, at least for the moment.
Karen abruptly sat down, folded her arms across her raised knees, and laid her forehead on them with a sigh.
“What?” Jessie asked.
“Nothing,” she told Jessie in a muffled voice. “I am just so damn tired of running from the bastard.”
“Stay here. I’ll walk up and find us something to eat, okay?”
“Sure. Thanks.” She lifted her head to gaze dispiritedly out into the harbor, where another commercial fishing boat was moving slowly toward the open water to the east.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Jessie hesitated, and then made a commitment that had been steadily growing in her mind since the night before when Alex had asked if Karen was part of the renovation crew. “While I’m gone why don’t you consider coming with me to Five Finger Lighthouse. You could help, be part of the work crew, and I think it’s a place you could be safe and forget about this guy for the time being. Think about it, okay?”
“Really?” Brightening, Karen looked up at her. “You don’t think they’d mind?”
“Yes, really. And no, I don’t think they would,” Jessie said, turning to go back to the grocery she had spotted on Nordic Drive, wondering if, once again, she had done something she might later regret.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE TRADING UNION, A GROCERY AND DEPARTMENT store, was on the northeast corner of the intersection they had crossed coming down, its front door facing the main street. As Jessie approached from the harbor, a forklift made a quick turn off Nordic and came rolling toward her. A stack of round galvanized steel tubs, along with some other unidentifiable odds and ends of the fish processing business, were balanced on a wooden pallet that covered its forks. As she stepped out of the way to give it plenty of room, it slowed, then stopped, and, taking a close look, she recognized the driver as her hungover seatmate from the previous day’s flight from Juneau. Though he still wore his billed cap, the jeans and jacket had been replaced with a black sweatshirt, well-worn and stained waterproof overalls, and a pair of grubby rubber boots.
“Hey,” he said with a grin. “I know you from yesterday’s plane ride. If you hadn’t waked me up I might have been wondering what I was doing in Seattle and how to get back.”
“Hi. Feeling better?” Jessie asked him, with a smile of her own.
“Yeah—amazing what a night’s sleep and carb-heavy breakfast will do.” He stripped off a glove and offered a hand. “I’m Tim Christiansen.”
Even from Ketchikan he’s another Scandinavian, Jessie thought with amusement as she shook hands and told him her name. “I thought you were going fishing.”
“Boat engine got cranky. Captain’s waiting on a part for the transmission that’ll take the rest of the week to get here from the supplier in Portland. So I’m stuck ashore for the time being and filling time moving stuff from one place to another on this thing. Say, if you’re in town for a while, I’m awake now and would be glad to buy you a beer later.”
Jessie thanked him for the offer, but explained that she was waiting for a friend to ferry her to Five Finger Lighthouse, and told him why.
“Hey, that’s cool. Knew there was somebody fixing up the lighthouse. Heard they were going to turn it into a bed and breakfast.”
“And a whale-watching station, I think,” Jessie told him.
“That’s cool. Lot of whales in Frederick Sound this time of year.”
They chatted for a few moments about the migration of the humpback whales on their way to southern waters, before Jessie turned back toward the grocery. As she walked away, he called out behind her.
“You think they could use more help? We won’t go out fishing again until Sunday or Monday. But I’ve got a powerboat and could come out for a day or two, maybe tomorrow or the next day—sleep on the boat. Might even be able to scare up a friend to help.”
“I’m sure they could,” Jessie told him. “There’s evidently a lot to be done and winter’s just around the corner. Jim Beal will be here sometime around noon to pick me up, along with material to repair a shed roof, if you want to ask.”
“I gotta run this thing around till sometime this afternoon,” he said. “Why don’t you tell him that I—or we—will just show up if we can?”
“I can do that,” Jessie agreed. “Bring your own beer,” she suggested over a shoulder as she headed for the grocery.
“You bet. See you.” He revved up the forklift and was off again.
At the Trading Union she picked up a couple of bananas, a package of donuts, and two large cups of coffee to go. It wasn’t the kind of breakfast she had anticipated, but would do to fill her empty stomach. Balancing the coffee, the rest dangling from a wrist in a plastic bag, she made her way back to the dock and around the piles of crab traps and seafood containers to the place she had left the other woman sitting.
It was empty. Karen was gone.
As Jessie stood openmouthed in surprise, her cell phone rang in the backpack over her shoulder. Scrambling to set down the coffee on the planks of the dock without spilling it, she dug out the phone and answered the summons on the fourth ring.
“Hello.”
“Jessie?” a faraway-sounding male voice questioned.
“Yes. Jim?”
“Yup. I’m headed your way—about an hour out of Petersburg. Does that work for you?”
“Sure. Where should I meet you and have Hammer & Wikan deliver the groceries?”
“You didn’t need to get groceries.”
“Well, it’s mostly just snacks and booze, but they said they’d bring it to wherever you would tie up. And the Tides Inn said they’d bring our luggage down in their van.”
“ ‘Our’? So Alex came too? Terrific!”
“No, not Alex. If it’s all right with you, I’ve invited a new friend to come too. Her name’s Karen and she’s . . .” Jessie hesitated to try to explain about Karen over the phone. “If it’s okay for her to come along, I’ll tell you all about it when I see you, okay?”
“Sure. Bring her. The more the merrier and we can sure use the help.”
“Well, in that case, there’s a temporarily beached Petersburg fisherman who asked if you could use more help if he showed up at the island tomorrow in his own boat.”
“Hey, are you running a lighthouse renovation recruiting office?” Jim asked, and she could hear the grin in his voice. “Any help offered is welcome. What’s his name?”
“Tim Christiansen.”
“Don’t know him, but tell him yes thanks on his offer of help.”
“Probably won’t see him again, but I’ve a hunch he and a friend of his may show up. Now, where shall Karen and I meet you?” If I can locate Karen, she thought, glancing around for any sign of the redhead and seeing none.
“Let’s say at the Harbor Master’s office,” Jim directed. “Anyone can tell you where that is—just a couple of blocks from the Tides Inn. I should be there—let’s see . . .”
His pause gave her a mental picture of him scrutinizing his watch.
“Ah—about eleven thirty. Okay? And while I think about it, be on the lookout for an older guy, name of Curt Johnson. A friend with a boat’s giving him a lift to Petersburg and he’ll meet us for the ride back to Five Fingers.”
A glance at her own watch told Jessie it was almost half past ten already, later than she had thought. “That’s fine. We’ll watch for you on the dock side of the Harbor Master’s office.”
“Fine. See you soon.”
Jessie called both Hammer & Wikan and the Tides Inn to give them directions on where t
o deliver the groceries and luggage, though she could only hope Karen would reappear to claim her black suitcase.
Finished with those chores, she put the cell phone away in her pack and looked around again for Karen, but saw no clue as to where the woman had gone, or why. Confused and a little irritated, she decided to wait where she was—at the place she had last seen her. It would seem natural to assume that if the woman meant to return, she would come back there.
Sitting down on a pile of three pallets and leaning against one of the large blue plastic boxes, Jessie retrieved a donut from the box she had bought, scattering powdered sugar across her knees. It tasted fine, but would, she decided, go better with a banana, so she half-peeled one and took alternate bites, washing them down with the rapidly cooling coffee.
Though clouds still drifted overhead, they were fewer and not so heavy in appearance. The sun came out between them to shine where Jessie sat and, soon finding herself too warm, she slipped off the green slicker. Tipping her head back, she closed her eyes, lulled to patience and relaxation as she waited with nothing else to do for the moment.
For the first time since meeting Karen Emerson the day before she was alone with time to think and found herself considering their encounter in the restaurant the previous evening and the story that had resulted in their sharing a room. She wondered if the stalker had somehow followed them from the hotel to the dock unseen, or if Karen had caught sight of him and felt it necessary to find a better hiding place. Worse yet, what if he had found her? She wished she knew what he looked like. The description Karen had given was fairly generic, fitting the dress and look of any number of manual laborers in the casual atmosphere, not only of Petersburg, but the rest of Alaska.
Never having seen him, I wouldn’t know him if he walked right up to me, she thought uneasily, sitting up to glance around her, but seeing nothing but a raven farther out on the dock that was picking at a bit of something it hoped was edible. As the large black bird succeeded in collecting the scrap and taking off with it, two others flew in with piercing cries of harassment, hoping for a share of the prize. With a swoop of avoidance the first bird swung landward and all three quickly vanished from sight, though for a moment or two Jessie continued to hear their shrill demands dying away over the downtown area.
As if they never existed. She grinned. Fractious characters.
Leaning back, she once again closed her eyes. But as a passing cloud came between her and the sun, the warmth she was enjoying departed and she opened them again to stare unseeing at the waters of the harbor with a slight frown.
An idea that had slipped into her mind just before she fell asleep the night before, and which she had drowsily dismissed, had suddenly resurfaced. “. . . as if they never existed,” she said to herself, repeating aloud her thought about the ravens, but hearing it in a different context. What if the man that Karen said was following her didn’t exist? What if she was making him up?
Other questions swiftly followed. Why would she do such a thing? Hadn’t she seemed sincerely frightened? Jessie was convinced that faking her fear was improbable. But not impossible, a small devil advocated. Not impossible then, she agreed, but unlikely.
But, if the man was real and in Petersburg, she had only Karen’s word that he really was stalking her, only her description of him, only her side of the story. It was a tale Jessie had no way of verifying unless it was through this Joe Cooper, a person she’d never met, never even seen for that matter.
Why would she pick me? Jessie wondered. Just because I was obviously on my own and a nonresident of Petersburg?
And maybe I’m sitting here waiting for more sunshine, with nothing to do but imagine all of this, she told herself sternly. Looking at her watch again, she realized that it was after eleven o’clock and in less than half an hour Jim would expect her to be on the dock side of the Harbor Master’s office, a block or so away. Time to get going. But what should she do about Karen, who wouldn’t know where to find her?
Quickly pulling a pen from her daypack and tearing a page out of the memo book she carried, she scribbled a note:
Leaving a corner of it tucked under the edge of a pallet so it could easily be seen, she took a minute to look carefully around again, without success, then walked away toward Nordic Drive. Someone on the street would be able to tell her where to find the Harbor Master’s office, if she couldn’t find it herself.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THERE WAS NO SIGN OF KAREN AS JESSIE MADE HER WAY along Nordic, though she looked carefully along the street and into each shop she passed on the way. She found the office a short block away at the foot of Excel Street, easily identifiable by a HARBOR MASTER sign that hung above a profusion of orange and yellow nasturtiums still in bloom in a wide planter. Walking around the corner, on the harbor side she found a bench where she could wait, sip at the now tepid coffee she had bought for Karen, and watch for Beal to arrive at one of the public docks below.
The rising tide, now close to high, had lifted the floating dock until the access ramps lay at a much shallower angle than those she had seen on the other dock from the window of the Northern Lights Restaurant the night before. A few people could be seen on or around the power- and sailboats that were tied up. One sailboat in a slip at the far end of the dock had evidently arrived recently, for Jessie could see that a man and a woman were still working to furl and put covers on its sails.
The sun had come out again and beyond the docks, public and otherwise, waves and the ripples created by the breeze were sparkling bright reflections around a charter boat that was motoring slowly seaward. Dozens of the ever-present gulls soared in circles overhead or perched on the ridgeline of every building in sight.
“Are you Jessie Arnold?” a voice suddenly asked behind her, jerking her from the half-sleepy, sun-warmed state into which she had drifted.
Turning, she found a young man in dark glasses waiting for her answer.
“Yes, I am. And you’re . . .”
“Hammer & Wikan delivery,” he filled in with a grin. “Got a couple of boxes of groceries. You want ’em here?”
“Yes—please,” Jessie told him, jumping up to help, but he had already vanished around the corner of the building. Quickly reappearing with her two boxes on a hand truck, he unloaded them, waved off the tip she offered, and vanished, a cheerful whistle fading behind him.
She was still standing, amused at the speed of the delivery service, when a familiar face came around the same corner—Connie, from the previous day’s taxi, already commenting on the delivery driver.
“That,” she said, “was Jerry from the market. He brought your groceries—yes? I’ve got your luggage. You want it here too?”
“Hey, Connie. I thought the hotel was going to bring it.”
“Well, they were. But I was there with a passenger, so I volunteered. Thought I’d send you off to your island with a friendly Petersburg goodbye and good luck.”
This time Jessie helped carry her personal items around to a spot beside the groceries, along with a small box into which the hotel had packed the whiskey and beer.
Jessie was surprised to find that Connie had not delivered Karen’s bag. “Was there a small black suitcase?” she asked.
“Oh, sorry. Almost forgot. They said to tell you the owner came to pick it up just a few minutes before I got there—jeans jacket, green shirt, green scarf over her hair?”
Jessie nodded, knowing it was Karen. But, again, why would she leave without any kind of explanation?
Well, she thought, at least I don’t have to worry about what to do with her bag.
“Something wrong?” Connie asked at her frown.
“No. Not wrong,” Jessie told her. “It’s fine. I didn’t expect it, but it solves a problem. I really appreciate you bringing this stuff.”
Again she reached for her wallet in the daypack, but again the tip was turned down.
Connie bounced back around the car and into the driver’s seat, slamming the door behind
her.
“Have a great time at Five Finger Light,” she called through the open window, shifting the still-protesting gears and taking off with a wave.
Feeling that everything was happening at once, Jessie walked back around the building to her growing collection of groceries and luggage just in time to spot the long-legged figure of Jim Beal practically loping up the ramp from the dock with a wide smile on his face, two women coming along behind him.
“Hey Jessie,” he called. “Thought that pile of stuff must be yours.”
Though she hadn’t seen him in several years, there was no mistaking slender, six-foot Beal, who had assumed the character, costume, and thin mustache of a riverboat gambler for the Ton of Gold Reenactment celebrating the Klondike Gold Rush Centennial. With an enthusiastic group of crew and passengers, some descendants of the original Klondike miners, she and Alex had sailed from Skagway on the Spirit of ’98, Alaska Sightseeing/Cruise West’s flagship, which resembled an antique coastal steamer. An old-time melodrama had been part of the entertainment, with both Jim and Laurie as players. What had not been entertaining was a gang of killers and thieves they had helped to thwart on the way down the Inside Passage to Seattle.
Amused that Beal had retained the gambler’s mustache, Jessie teased as she stepped back from his affectionate hug, “Thought you’d be sporting a lighthouse keeper’s scrub brush on your upper lip by now.”
“Naw—this suits me. How the hell are you?”
“Great, but taking a break from running my mutts this winter, due to a bad knee. So I’m all yours as work crew, as long as I don’t have to crawl.”
“Ouch! What happened?”
“Fell down a mountain and twisted it enough to keep me off a sled.”
“Bad luck,” he sympathized, then turned to introduce the two women who had followed him up the dock, both carrying travel bags.
“This is Anna Neumeyer and Becky Galvin, friends of Laurie’s and mine who’ve been visiting from Colorado. They’re a law enforcement duo, so watch your step and don’t say I didn’t warn you. Becky’s a secretary for the FBI and Anna’s married to a Denver policeman. Ladies, this is Jessie Arnold, famous Iditarod sled dog racer who lives with an Alaska State Trooper. So I guess you’re about even-steven with the law thing.”