Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote) (16 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 hope it helps,” I said.
“The incident is probably good for the spa’s business,” she quipped. “Nervous passengers look for ways to relax.”
“I’m not a nervous passenger,” I said, “but I wouldn’t mind an hour of relaxation.”
I perused the menu of therapies offered and asked for her recommendation.
“How about an Aroma Spa Ocean Wrap? We apply a heated seaweed mask that has pine and rosemary oils in it and then wrap your body in a special foil. Guaranteed to make the world go away. And we follow up with a massage, full or half body.”
“We’ll have to make it a half massage,” I said. “I don’t have that much time.”
Ninety minutes later, I emerged feeling blissfully relaxed yet invigorated at the same time.
“That was heavenly,” I said as I was leaving.
“Glad you’re happy,” the spa manager said. “Do you know which passenger went overboard, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“No,” I said, not about to breach Officer Kale’s confidence in me.
“Someone said it was a man wearing blue shorts and a yellow shirt.”
“I heard that, too. Did you know him?”
“No, but I’d seen him. He was hanging around outside the spa, looking in all the time. Very nervous. I had the feeling he was hoping to catch a look at a half-naked woman. I’m probably wrong about that, but he gave me the creeps.”
“Well,” I said, “it sounds as though it might be the same person, but we can’t be sure. Thanks again for a much-needed respite.”
Is she right, that he was a seaborne Peeping Tom?
Or was he looking for me, assuming I would use the spa at some point?
Was his name really John Smith?
Was he really from New York?
And why was he so interested in me?
Bill Henderson had joked that he might be a demented fan.
I was sure that he wasn’t.
Which left only one logical conclusion.
He had something to do with Wilimena Copeland’s disappearance.
It had to do with the gold!
Chapter Seven
I met up with Kathy again and we went to the Upper Vista dining room. The staff was setting up for dinner when we entered. Kathy pointed to a maître d’ as the one who’d said he remembered Wilimena.
“Excuse me,” I said. “My friend says that you remember her sister from a previous cruise.”
“Oh, yes, of course. Ms. Copeland.” He grinned. “She told me to call her Willie.” The grin turned to laughter. “She was a funny lady. That is a funny name for a lady.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “Would you be able to find a few minutes to speak with us?”
“Of course.”
We sat at a table that was still to be set up for the evening meal.
“You do know,” I said, “that Willie has disappeared.”
“Yes, I have been told that. I pray that she is all right.”
“Did she say anything to you during her cruise that might help us learn what happened to her?”
His brow creased, and he licked his lips as he thought. “I’m afraid that I can think of nothing that would be helpful to you.”
“Did she mention what she planned to do onshore during your regular stops?”
He shook his head. “No, nothing—except to find the gold that was left to her by a family member.”
“She told you about that?” I said.
“Oh, yes. She was such a generous woman, so happy. She took my address and said she would send me a gift when she had her gold. Her waiters, too. Everyone would receive a gift.”
I glanced at Kathy, who sighed.
“Was there someone who was especially friendly with Ms. Copeland? With Willie?”
“Pardon?”
“Someone on the cruise who spent a lot of time with her? A man perhaps?”
He shrugged. “She was a very beautiful lady,” he said. “Many men—how shall I say it?—many men wanted to be with her.”
“What about Maurice?” I asked.
“Monsieur Quarlé? He is a very good customer on this ship.”
“So I’ve heard. Did you see him spending much time with Willie?”
He shook his head, but not convincingly.
“We’ve been told that he and Willie became good friends during the cruise.”
His verbal denial was even less genuine. “I saw nothing like that,” he said. “No, I never see them together. Maybe once, twice, you know, to talk like friends. But you sound like you think that maybe they had romance on their minds. Maybe, maybe not.”
“Thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” I said, having decided that there wasn’t anything to be gained by prolonging the conversation. Maybe one of the waiters who’d served Wilimena would be more helpful. I asked for permission to speak with them, which the maître d’ reluctantly granted, making much of how busy they were getting ready for the dinner crowd.
The two waiters who’d served Willie during her cruise were young and eager to please. They smiled constantly and did a lot of head nodding. But their English wasn’t good enough to deal in the sort of subtleties I was seeking, and Kathy and I left the dining room frustrated.
“They did agree that she promised to send them gifts,” Kathy said, looking for something positive to have come out of our inquiries.
“It sounds like she promised gifts to everyone she met,” I said. “Willie must have an insatiable need to be loved.”
“She’s always been that way,” Kathy said. “Even as a little girl. She was always playing the princess. She knew that she was the pretty one in the family, and everyone reinforced that.”
She said it with an unmistakable hint of regret in her voice, and I felt for her. Obviously, her sister had used her good looks and outgoing personality throughout her life to capture the limelight. It’s been my experience that people like that, particularly women, seldom find lasting happiness, as they are always seeking someone or something new to feed their need for approval. But Kathy, who is one of the most grounded and inwardly contented people I’ve ever known, had undoubtedly envied her sister growing up, and obviously still did to some extent. Amazing how siblings coming from the same parentage and household can be so different.
“How can someone just fall off a ship like this?” a man asked his tablemates. “He had to have been pushed.”
“Mrs. Fletcher says we should wait until all the facts are in,” replied his wife.
A couple from a nearby table came to where I sat with Kathy, Gladys Montgomery, the Johansens, and Bill Henderson. “I have a theory about what happened today,” the man said, leaning close to my ear.
I listened patiently. His thesis was that John Smith had insulted a married woman and the husband had taken his revenge.
“Interesting,” I said, “but what do you base it on?”
“Common sense,” he replied haughtily, and recountedfor us just such a situation that he’d read about years ago. I didn’t bother to suggest that what had happened on a ship years ago didn’t have any bearing on today’s unfortunate event. He and his wife eventually left us, he with a satisfied expression on his broad, craggy face.
As had become our habit, we left the dining room together but then went our separate ways. Kathy and Bill said they were going to catch the second night of the passenger talent show, which the Johansens said at dinner had been hysterically funny. David Johansen had asked Kathy if she would sit down at some point the following day for an interview. She readily agreed, although she pointed out that we’d be arriving in Juneau at seven in the morning and she and I planned to spend the day in Alaska’s capital. They arranged to meet at six the next evening in the Crow’s Nest, where a cocktail hour would be under way. According to the daily program delivered to each cabin in the morning, the gangway would be raised at seven thirty and we would be on our way overnight to Sitka.
I elected to join Gladys Montgomery in the Explorers’ Lounge for the classical music concert, which featured harp and flute in a lovely rendition of Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp, followed by a Beethoven piece I’d not heard before. The music was soothing, and I noticed that Gladys almost nodded off a few times, although she never allowed her eyes to fully close. There weren’t many people in the audience, perhaps two dozen, but they were obviously lovers of classical music. Their attention to the musicians and their immersion in the music were total.
Following the concert, Gladys announced that she was heading for bed. I wished her a good night’s sleep and went up one level to the promenade deck, where the library was located. I found the book about the gold rush that I’d started perusing the previous day and settled in a quiet corner to continue reading. I hadn’t noticed the first time that there was an entire chapter dedicated to Kathy’s aunt, Thelma Copeland, better known as the infamous Dolly Arthur.
According to the book, Dolly had worked as a waitress in Vancouver, B.C., before heading for Alaska. She realized by the time she was eighteen that there was more money to be made from entertaining men than waiting tables, so she came to Alaska to seek her fortune. I found it interesting that she did not consider herself a prostitute. She preferred to call herself a “sporting woman” and said she had no use for “whores,” describing them as crass and uncouth.
During her first year in Ketchikan, she worked at Black Mary’s Star dance hall. But she soon branched out on her own and opened what quickly became one of the town’s most popular bordellos.
There were three photographs of Dolly in various poses. She appeared to be a big woman with a full figure and a hint of mischief in her smile. Accompanying text claimed that she had a vicious, hair-trigger temper and used four-letter words at the drop of a hat. But she was well liked by everyone in town, her reputation enhanced by a penchant for tipping lavishly.
This brief story of her life read like a novel. I was particularly fascinated with material concerning those men in her life who were more to her than paying customers. One in particular, a longshoreman named Lefty, especially caught my eye. According to the author, Lefty and Dolly enjoyed a relationship that lasted more than twenty years. Not that they were together constantly during that period. Lefty had a reputation as a ladies’ man, and he often left Dolly for long stretches at a time. But he always returned. Dolly was quoted as saying, “Lefty went away sometimes, but he always came back to me.”
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