Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote) (14 page)

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Authors: Jessica Fletcher

BOOK: Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote)
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I pulled open the door and called, “Kathy, quick, come here!”
 
 
“What?”
 
 
I motioned for her to join me. She tossed on her jacket and came to where I stood.
 
 
“Look,” I said, pointing down.
 
 
“What am I looking for?” she asked.
 
 
“There,” I said. “On that piece of ice.”
 
 
She followed my finger. “It looks like—”
 
 
“It is,” I said.
 
 
“Is that the—?”
 
 
I nodded.
 
 
Although it was in the distance, there was no mistaking its form. It was a man lying facedown on a sizable piece of ice that had calved from the giant glacier.
 
 
Nor was there any mistaking who he was.
 
 
He wore blue shorts and a yellow T-shirt.
 
 
Chapter Five
 
 
I dialed the number that Officer Kale, the ship’s security officer, had given Kathy but received a busy signal. No surprise. Surely others had spotted the body, too, and had called to report it.
 
 
We returned to the balcony and looked down to the deck where we’d received our emergency instructions during the predeparture drill. Large, covered, orange motorized lifeboats were suspended from formidable winches. Members of the
Glacial Queen
’s crew, most wearing coveralls, scurried about, and it was obvious that they were in the process of getting ready to lower one of the boats into the bay. It was a complicated procedure, and I was impressed at how expertly and smoothly they seemed to be going about the task.
 
 
“He must have fallen overboard,” Kathy said, stating the obvious.
 
 
“No debate about that,” I said.
 
 
“What a horrible way to die,” she said.
 
 
“It certainly is.”
 
 
“Are you sure he’s the man who’s been following you, Jess?”
 
 
“Yes, I’m sure, unless another passenger decided to wear blue shorts and a yellow shirt. That’s possible, but—”
 
 
“What will they do?”
 
 
“I suppose they’ll bring him aboard and secure him in the morgue until we reach Juneau.”
 
 
“There’s a morgue on the ship?”
 
 
“All cruise ships have morgues,” I replied. “I learned that when I was researching one of my novels,
Murder on the
QE2. The cruise lines don’t like to advertise it, but every ship has a place in which to store bodies. Cruise passengers tend to be older, and there are bound to be deaths.” I paused. “From natural causes,” I added. “Heart attacks, strokes.”
 
 
“Or people falling overboard.”
 
 
“I doubt whether most people who fall overboard are ever found, at least by the ship they were on. They probably aren’t even missed until the ship is many miles away. But in this case we’re at anchor. It’s fortunate that he ended up on that slab of ice. Otherwise, we might have left Glacier Bay and never known that he’d gone overboard.”
 
 
There was a banging on my door. Kathy went to answer it, and I watched her greet Bill Henderson.
 
 
“You’ve heard, of course,” he said.
 
 
“Yes.”
 
 
“That’s all anyone is talking about. Can you see him from here?”
 
 
I pointed.
 
 
“Oh, boy,” he said. “How could something like that have happened?”
 
 
“Hopefully,” I said, “they’ll figure it out once an autopsy is done.”
 
 
“Autopsy?” Bill said.
 
 
“To see whether he was drunk, or using drugs. I have a suspicion that alcohol is involved in most cases of passengers’ falling off ships.”
 
 
“He’d have to be pretty drunk to do that,” Bill said. He put his arm around Kathy. “You okay?” he asked.
 
 
“I’m fine. Jessica says it’s the same man who’s been following her.”
 
 
Wide-eyed, Henderson looked back at me. “Is that true?”
 
 
I nodded. “At least it appears to be,” I said.
 
 
The three of us stood at the railing and observed the process taking place a few decks below. Half a dozen crew members entered the lifeboat, and the winch slowly lowered it to the water, inch by inch, foot by foot, the wind causing it to sway back and forth, until it reached the bay and bobbed up and down on swells emanating from the calving of ice from the glacier. The roar of the engine reached us as the boat pushed through the water and the ice floe in the direction of the dead man. The piece of ice that he was on also moved in the current, necessitating skillful piloting of the lifeboat to intercept it. The boat finally moved into position, and a member of the crew scrambled up through a hatch, crawled across the covered bow, and extended a long pole attached to a hook of some sort. I noted that he was careful to keep the hook from touching the body itself. Instead, he grabbed hold of a jagged edge of the ice and maneuvered it around to the side of the boat, where two men leaned through the open doorway and used similar devices to bring it closer. Once it was alongside, hands replaced the hooks, and the body was pulled into the lifeboat.
 
 
“You have no idea who he is?” Bill asked me.
 
 
“None whatsoever,” I responded. “But I have a feeling that I’ll know soon enough.”
 
 
“What can I do?” Bill asked.
 
 
“Just having you here is comforting,” Kathy said. “Let’s go inside. Looks like there’s nothing more to see out here.”
 
 
 
We sat around my cabin for a few minutes before our collective curiosity got the better of us.
 
“Maybe we should go to one of the public rooms and see what others know about it,” Kathy suggested. “We’ll never learn anything staying here.”
 
 
I agreed.
 
 
“I doubt if any of the crew will know anything,” Bill said. “Even if they do, it’s not likely that they’ll talk about it.”
 
 
“True,” I said, “but there’s nothing wrong with trying. Officer Kale proved helpful this morning. Maybe he will be again.”
 
 
We decided to start down on the main deck, where the ship’s offices were located. We weren’t the only ones who’d made that decision. That section of the ship was chockablock with people. A small bar in the center was three-deep with customers, and countless others milled about. The topic of conversation was, of course, the body found floating in Glacier Bay.
 
 
“Mrs. Fletcher,” Kimberly Johansen said as she saw us arrive.
 
 
“Hello,” I said.
 
 
“You’ve heard, of course.”
 
 
“Yes.”
 
 
“Can you believe it?” she said. “A murder right here in our midst.”
 
 
“Whoa,” I said. “A murder? Who said that?”
 
 
“It’s going around the ship,” she replied. “Someone pushed a man to his death.”
 
 
A woman who’d been eavesdropping came closer. “You’re Jessica Fletcher, the mystery writer,” she said. “I knew you were on board.” Before I could respond, she asked, “Who do you think did it?”
 
 
“Who do I think—?”
 
 
“Like a plot from one of your books.”
 
 
“No one can possibly determine so soon how and why he went overboard,” I said.
 
 
“How else could it have happened?” she retorted.
 
 
“Well, yes,” I said, “but—”
 
 
A man and a woman joined us. “Do you think it was one of the crew?” the man asked.
 
 
“Was he with a woman?” asked his wife. “Maybe they had a fight and—”
 
 
“A woman disappears off this ship, and now
this
! Maybe the ship is jinxed.”
 
 
“What woman?” someone asked.
 
 
“On this cruise?”
 
 
“Did she go overboard, too?”
 
 
“Excuse me,” I said, and led Kathy and Bill away to a more secluded corner. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” I told them.
 
 
“No one wants to believe he just fell,” Bill commented. “Everyone loves a good soap opera.”
 
 
“Soap operas are fictitious,” I said. “This is v-e-r-y real. I want to see if Officer Kale is available.”
 
 
“Come with you?” Bill asked.
 
 
“No. He might be more willing to talk to me alone. Why don’t you two go up to one of the lounges? I’ll meet you there.”
 
 
“The Crow’s Nest?” Bill suggested. “On the observation deck? It should be fairly quiet up there.”
 
 
We agreed to meet in that bar on the ship’s uppermost deck.
 
 
I knocked on the door that I’d seen Kale go through when he went to fetch information about Maurice Quarlé. A woman in uniform answered.
 
 
“Is Officer Kale here?” I asked.
 
 
“Yes, he is, but he’s terribly busy.”
 
 
“I imagine he is. Would you be good enough to tell him that Jessica Fletcher would like a word with him?”
 
 
“All right, but I’m sure he won’t be able to.”
 
 
She went through another door and returned a minute later. “He said he can see you, Mrs. Fletcher, but only for a few minutes.”
 
 
“I promise not to take more of his time than that. Thank you.”
 
 
Kale was in shirtsleeves when I was escorted to his office. He was behind his desk, talking on the phone. He waved me in and pointed to a vacant chair. He concluded his conversation, leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and said, “I hope you’re not here to talk about Ms. Copeland’s disappearance, Mrs. Fletcher. You may have heard that we have another problem on our hands.”
 
 
“That’s why I’m here, Officer Kale. I just thought you should know that a rumor that the man found in Glacier Bay was murdered is consuming the passengers.”
 
 
He looked shocked. “Where did they hear
that
?” he asked.
 
 
“I don’t think anyone heard anything,” I said. “But vivid imaginations don’t allow facts to get in the way. My point is, some people are even questioning whether the
Glacial Queen
is jinxed.”
 
 
“Jinxed?”
 
 
“Because other passengers have learned that Kathy Copeland and I are on this cruise because of Kathy’s sister’s disappearance. I assure you we didn’t inform them of that.”
 
 
Kale sat back and slowly shook his head. “A passenger falls overboard, and all of a sudden it’s murder. Sounds like one of your mystery novels.”
 
 
“I won’t take any more of your time,” I said. “I just thought you’d want to know.”
 
 
“And I appreciate you telling me, Mrs. Fletcher. Any suggestions?”
 

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