Murder at five finger light

by Sue Henry

  “Jessie?” Laurie called from the door of the lighthouse.

  “Here.”

  Her hostess came across and up to join her on the helipad.

  “It’s a great night, isn’t it?”

  “Hm-m,” Jessie agreed.

  “Looks like we might have a sunny day tomorrow, from the weather report. The guys can get started on the boathouse roof. That’ll make Jim happy. He worried about it all last winter.”

  “I’m glad you invited me,” Jessie told Laurie. “I’ve never been on an island this small in the middle of so much water. It’s a fine place to be—sort of magical and otherworldly—peaceful.”

  “It is, isn’t it? We’re glad you could come. Too bad Alex had to work.”

  “He was disappointed, but—maybe another time. He got home from Dawson tonight and said to tell you all hello.” Then, recalling Laurie’s invitation by phone, “You had something you wanted to talk to him about, didn’t you?”

  There was a long moment of thoughtful silence and Laurie dropped her head to stare at the wooden pad beneath her feet. She crossed her arms, hugging herself, and when she raised her face Jessie was close enough to see that she was frowning.

  “Yes,” she said, “there was, but . . . oh, it’s probably silly and just our—well, mostly my—imagination. But several times since we got the place we’ve had the feeling that someone else had been here when we weren’t—things a little out of place, a door unlocked—and we always lock up before leaving—the coffeepot used and left unwashed—just small stuff. You know—things you could be mistaken about. So the first time or two we told ourselves that’s what it was. But last time we found a wrench on the table that Jim knew he’d put away downstairs.”

  “Anything missing?”

  Laurie shook her head, still frowning. “Not that we could tell.”

  “Jim said the Coast Guard comes to maintain the light. Could it be them?”

  “Two guys came by last month when we were here for a week and we asked, but they said not and I believe them. They were concerned that someone might mess with the light, or the solar panel. Said they’d keep a lookout, but they’re here less often than we are. I thought Alex might have some suggestions if he came.”

  “He might anyway. I’ll ask him the next time we talk.”

  “Thanks, Jessie. It’s probably not that important, but I hate the invaded feeling. It makes me uneasy all the time I’m here—and worried when I’m not. Kind of spoils the magic, you know.”

  “It could be someone local who just likes lighthouses and can’t resist. This place could be a temptation for almost anyone passing.”

  “We thought about that, and someone local makes sense because a tourist on the way up or down the passage wouldn’t come back several times, would they?”

  “Let me see what Alex thinks.”

  “I’d appreciate that—a lot.”

  They stood together for a few more quiet moments, absorbing the gifts of the night from that particular island in the middle of such a wide piece of ocean. Then, in unspoken agreement, they went back to join the others in finding places for sleeping.

  Though much was held in promise in terms of satisfying restoration work and the relaxation of a good company of friends, they hadn’t a notion just how decidedly things could—and would—change in the next few hours.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  JESSIE WAS INTERESTED IN THE WAY FIVE FINGER LIGHTHOUSE stood high above the sea, its foundation fastened securely onto the living stone that formed the island. According to the proud new owners, a station had been established there in 1902, but it was a wooden building that burned and was replaced in 1935 with the current concrete structure. Though the lighthouse was built to last and was solid, it was, after all, seventy years old, had been exposed for decades to the destructive forces of waves and weather in a broad expanse of saltwater, and required constant maintenance, which had been minimal since it was automated and lost its keepers. So there was much to do for the renovation crew that had gathered to effect what repairs were possible in a week’s time.

  A quick tour before dinner had shown Jessie that the lighthouse was quite simple in layout. Coming in the door from the north one walked immediately into the large kitchen, where a hallway branched off to the right and passed a bathroom on its way to two small bedrooms in the northwest corner of the square building. If one went on through the kitchen one arrived in the common room, which took up the whole of the southeast corner. What had been a small radio room opened from it to the right and, beyond that, another hallway branched off, passed a fourth small bedroom that was now used for storage, and wound up in the largest bedroom in the rear southwest corner.

  In the center of the one-story building, through a door in the second hallway, a stairway rose up in short flights and landings around the square walls all the way to a room near the top of the sixty-eight-foot tower. At that point the stairway ended and a visitor must climb a metal set of circular steps with a brass rail; the steps led up into the round glass cupola that allowed the high-powered light to shine out into the darkness every night. From there, the wide expanse of Frederick Sound was spread out below, with the two nearest islands, the Brothers, almost directly west.

  Opposite the bathroom in the hallway that led from the kitchen to the small bedrooms, a door opened onto a flight of stairs leading down to a large lower room. There, wide doors opened out onto the platform below and alongside the building to the east. This large room housed not only the huge generator to which Curt had earlier referred and a control console full of dials and switches, but also had storage for everything from all kinds of tools and materials necessary to the maintenance of the lighthouse, water and propane tanks, fire extinguishers, carts, ladders, to a washing machine and dryer, even a small skiff. In a couple of narrow annex rooms just off this lower room was shelving for fresh vegetables and beverages to be kept cool—including Jim’s rather extensive wine collection. Almost anything necessary to living on the island was kept there.

  But most interesting to Jessie was that on one wall of this basement the last full-time crew had left their names (including the dog) and where they were from:

  LAST 365 DAY

  1983 CREW 1984

  BM1 M.L. Harding—Washington

  MK2 J.P. Breneman—Lancaster PA

  FN R.A. Gere—Washington

  SN M.J. Rausch—CO

  Dog Neva

  With only three useful bedrooms in the one-story building that, before the light was automated, had been occupied by a keeper and three or four assistants, the nine members of the current work crew were somewhat creative about sleeping spaces. Jim and Laurie had long ago set up a queen-sized bed for themselves in the largest of the bedrooms. Hoping that Alex would come with Jessie, Laurie had assigned one of the smaller bedrooms to them. Now she gave one of the single beds to Karen instead. It was, they learned, where Anna and Becky, now on their way home to Colorado, had slept.

  “But you didn’t expect me,” Karen protested. “And I don’t want to take someone’s bed. I really don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”

  But Jessie claimed that space, having brought her own sleeping bag and an inflatable mattress, and insisting, truthfully, that she was used to sleeping on all kinds of surfaces when she was out training or racing her dogs. So with Karen in one bed, Whitney, who had been sleeping on the couch in the common room, moved in to occupy the second, and they were three.

  After establishing their sleeping arrangements, they went back to the common room for a few minutes.

  Don Sawyer and Sandra had moved into the other small bedroom in that hallway when they arrived, while both Curt and Aaron had elected to make their beds, like Jessie, on the floor. Curt, however, was sleeping in the lower room with his generator and Aaron had chosen the first wide landing on the way up to the tower, where a door could be opened onto the roof that Sandra had been painting red.

  “That paint better be dry before you step out there and mak
e prints in it,” she called after him, as he and Curt said their goodnights and headed for the stairs, one up, one down, Aaron taking his guitar with him.

  “He likes to sit out on the roof and sing to the whales at bedtime,” Don explained to Karen. “They never answer, but it makes good music for the rest of us to go to sleep by. He’s pretty good.”

  Jessie stood behind a chair looking around the room with interest, in the soft glow of an oil lamp and several candles that had been lighted in preference to running the noisy generator downstairs. A bright plastic tablecloth covered the broad table, now partially occupied with scattered coffee cups, wineglasses, and a single plate empty of all but cookie crumbs. The desk where Aaron had eaten his dinner took up one corner, with an office chair in front of it. A couple of lounge chairs stood under the east-facing windows. In an alcove on the south wall stood the afghan-covered couch that Whitney had used as a bed. Over it on the wall was a dartboard and next to it a shadowbox frame that held a sample of several nautical knots. Pinned up beside a window hung a chart showing various kinds of saltwater fish. Here and there maps, charts, fishing gear, a barometer, and other oddments covered the walls.

  Turning, Jessie ran a finger along a collection of books, fiction and nonfiction, on three shelves of a case recessed in the wall under a map of the lower part of Alaska. Some she recognized; others were new to her, including an interesting-looking volume in a three-hole binder labeled “Historic Lighthouse Preservation Handbook.”

  “That’s got everything you need or want to know about fixing up old lighthouses,” Jim said. “It’s put out by the government and includes all kinds of lighthouses anywhere in the United States.”

  “Interesting. I’d like to take a look at it tomorrow,” Jessie said, yawning again. “Right now, I’m for bed.”

  So was everyone else, and things were soon very quiet at Five Finger Light. Even Aaron had stopped his songs and gone to bed.

  Without the residual light of a town nearby, it was very dark in the small bedroom and Jessie could see nothing at all when something woke her much later in the night. Assuming she had heard someone headed for the bathroom, she rolled over and had started to drift off again when a soft, faraway resonance caught her attention. Almost too faint to be heard, it sounded like an engine, but who would be running an engine in the middle of the night? It couldn’t be Curt’s generator downstairs, for that would have been much louder. Sitting up, she reached for the small pencil flashlight she had tucked under her pillow, a habit she had acquired on the sled dog trail. Switching it on, she shielded the glow with her fingers and pointed it in the direction of one of the two beds in the room.

  Whitney, covered except for the top of her head, made a quilted lump in hers and was snoring gently.

  Jessie swung the narrow beam of light past the door, which was unexpectedly open, to Karen’s.

  It was empty.

  Turning off the light, she lay back down and waited to see if Karen would come back from down the hall.

  But what must have been ten minutes later, she still hadn’t appeared.

  The engine sound Jessie thought she had heard had died away completely and she told herself that it could have been a passing boat in the distance, but somehow felt it was not that far away.

  Knowing she wouldn’t go back to sleep without solving the puzzle of the sound and the missing woman, Jessie got up, slipped on her jeans under the large-sized T-shirt in which she slept, put on her shoes without socks, and went out into the hall with the flashlight once more shielded by her fingers. As she passed Karen’s bed she laid a hand on the sheets and found them cold. How long had the woman been gone anyway?

  The outside door in the kitchen was open a crack.

  What could be going on? Listening carefully, she heard no voices.

  Turning off the light, she walked quietly out onto the porch and stood looking around. As her sight adjusted to the darkness, she could see the solid shapes of objects on the island against the pale light reflected from the sea beyond it—the wall of the lighthouse, shrubs and brush, the roof of a shed on the lower platform, the raised helipad to her left, and a tree or two against the starry sky. A small scraping sound from the helipad attracted her notice. Carefully, she crossed to its steps, on which she and Jim had settled earlier, and went halfway up to be able to see across the top of the wide flat surface. Something moved directly across from where she stood. Climbing on up, she walked to the center and saw that it was the shape of a person sitting on the edge facing west.

  “Karen?”

  “Oh!” The figure swung around, surprised. “Didn’t hear you coming. You startled me.”

  “Don’t fall off of there,” Jessie warned. “There are some big rocks a dozen feet below.”

  Karen had now turned halfway around, but didn’t get up.

  “I couldn’t get to sleep,” she said. “So I came out. It’s a little claustrophobic knowing the weight of that huge tower is above you, don’t you think?”

  Jessie hadn’t considered it and it made no difference to her now. “I think if it’s stood there since the mid-1930s, it’ll probably stand awhile longer,” she said, a little amused.

  Moving to the edge of the platform, she sat down beside Karen and leaned back on her hands to look up at the sky, now almost empty of clouds, but full of stars that were brighter and seemed closer without the conflict of artificial lights.

  “Yes, I guess it’ll stand,” Karen said. “But it’s nicer out here, don’t you think, with the ocean all around and the stars? You can near the waves splash on the rocks down there. Look up. There are millions of stars. I wish there was a moon, don’t you?”

  Why, she asked herself, did she have the uneasy feeling that Karen was talking more than usual to cover something?

  “Well, it’s nice. Did you hear an engine a little while ago?”

  “An engine? No.”

  “You must have heard it. I could hear it from inside the building.”

  “Oh. Well—there was some kind of a boat that went past a little while ago, but it was a long ways away.”

  There were no lights from a boat to be seen now, Jessie noticed.

  “Which direction did it go?”

  “That way.” Karen swung an arm imprecisely toward the south. “Its lights went out of sight behind the trees at that end of the island.”

  Must have been going faster than she thought. The engine had not sounded up to speed, but almost at an idle. “What kind of a boat?”

  “I don’t know. All I could see was its lights. Fishing boat, I guess.”

  Jessie wished she could see Karen’s face to read her expression, but it was too dark.

  All kinds of vessels—ferries, freighters, oil tankers, fishing boats, private pleasure boats, cruise ships, and others—went up and down the Inside Passage at all hours of the day or night, and she knew they were required to have running lights after dark. The larger ones, however, at this point did not make their way through Frederick Sound, for there was no passageway large enough to accommodate them. They took the outside route, or ran up through Chatham Strait on their way to Sitka, Juneau, or points farther north. The only boats that took the route through Frederick Sound must pass through the Wrangell Narrows, which were much too shallow and constricted for anything larger than fishing boats, power- or sailing craft. She remembered that the Spirit of ’98, 192 feet long and 40 feet wide, had had a shallow enough draft to pass through the Narrows—one of the characteristics that made traveling on it such a pleasure, because it could carry its passengers to places those on huge cruise ships would never experience or even know they had missed.

  Karen shifted her weight from hip to hip, as if she was uncomfortable sitting on the hard wooden surface of the helipad with her knees hanging over the low, six-inch rail at the edge of it.

  But, Jessie wondered, was that the real reason for her discomfort?

  “Think I’ll go back to bed,” Karen said, standing up. “You coming?”


  “In a minute,” Jessie told her. “You go ahead.”

  She thought about loaning Karen her flashlight, but didn’t.

  If she found her way out here in the dark, she can find her way back, she told herself, and realized she was annoyed and somewhat disturbed by Karen’s middle-of-the-night skulking. If it had been anyone else—Jim, or Laurie, or Don—I wouldn’t feel that way, would I? But she lied, didn’t she?

  By herself in the dark, she wondered why Karen would lie about hearing a boat, for she was nearly convinced that it had been an attempt at a falsehood the woman hoped to get away with. A shred of doubt lingered, however, for it could, as she had claimed, have been a passing fishing boat—seen and dismissed. Some worked late. Some didn’t return to port until they had a good catch, but anchored up at night, or motored to a new and, hopefully, better location to be ready to drop their nets in the morning. There was nothing to be proved, or gained, by accusation—or speculation, for that matter.

  Tired of conjecture, Jessie lay back on the helipad platform and looked up at the sky. On the island, with the mountains so far away, it was full of stars almost to the horizon. There was a cool breeze coming off the always-icy waters of the sound, but watching so many stars was almost as pleasant as lying on her sled bag during a race to see them through the northern lights that swirled slowly across overhead—and warmer. Picking out the Big Dipper, so closely associated with Alaska’s identity that it was portrayed on the state flag, she mentally extended the line of the two pointer stars on the front of its bowl and, approximately six times that distance across the sky, found Polaris, the North Star, at the tip of the Little Dipper’s handle. In the Far North the two constellations are circumpolar and always visible in the sky, so they were old familiar friends to Jessie.

  Time to go back to bed, she decided, turned on her flashlight to make sure she didn’t fall going down the steps of the platform, and went back to the lighthouse.

  Sometime later the distant sound of an engine occurred again as part of a dream, but she had forgotten it by morning.