The Mountains Bow Down (9 page)

“Did Mrs. Carpenter ever wear this?”

He drew the bag close to his face, getting a good look at the jewelry. “This is nice. Where did you get this thing?”

“Did you ever see her wearing it?”

He handed it back to me, shaking his head. “She could probably even afford it. But I never saw it on her.”

Behind me, I heard the patio door slide open. Larrah Sparks had donned a white terry cloth robe, draped around her shoulders. In one hand she held the cabin phone, in the other was the receiver.

“It's for you,” she told her husband.

“You can't bring it to me?”

With cold nobility, the terry cloth like a royal robe, she bore the phone across the patio.

“You're sweet,” he said sarcastically.

Dropping the robe on the decking, she climbed the stairs and lowered herself inch by inch into the hot water.

“Sandy Sparks . . .” he said into the phone. “Yeah, that's my dad . . .”

Suddenly Sparks shot up from the water. “She did
what
?”

“Oh great,” Larrah mumbled.

“I'll be right there.” He slammed the phone into the receiver and churned toward the tub stairs.

“What happened?” his wife asked in a bland voice.

“Shopping for souvenirs. He turned around for one second and she was gone. They can't find her.”

He padded quickly across the patio, swimsuit dripping, then into the penthouse. He didn't close the door.

I looked at Larrah. “What's all that about?”

“His parents are on the cruise with us.” She sighed. “His dad got some convention going on, something to do with his matchsticks.”

“The phillumenists?”

She looked up, surprised. “Yeah, them phillum-a-whatevers. But Sandy wanted his mom to see Alaska before she loses all her marbles.” Larrah pointed to her head. “She's got that old-timer's thing, where she can't remember anything? I told him she'd be trouble. Sure enough she locked them out of their room and lost his dad's wallet on our first day. The first day! We hadn't even left Seattle. I told him to leave her there with somebody, but does he listen to me? No. All I hear is, ‘Laurrie this and Laurrie that.'” Wiggling back against the hot tub jets, she stretched out her long neck. “I want to play an FBI agent. It seems exciting.”

I turned, staring into the penthouse. A half-dressed Sandy Sparks was racing across the cabin carrying his shoes and socks. Within seconds he was out the cabin door, into the hallway.

“See what I mean?” his wife said. “He didn't even tell me good-bye.”

Chapter Seven

T
hat afternoon, as the tourists came streaming back to the cruise ship, I swam against the current like a spawning salmon, walking along Front Street, where the road literally ended at the water. Abandoned crab pots dotted the rocky beach, the scent of rust rising in the warm sun. Farther out, fishing vessels chugged for the marina and seagulls circled, calling out for dinner. On one prow, a burly man in hip waders threw a line to a man on the dock. He kneeled, knotting the rope to a steel cleat.

I thought of Judy Carpenter's rope.

Whoever killed her picked an ideal location. Far from the captain's bridge at the other end of the ship. No cabin windows. No security cameras. And that bracelet. I wasn't sure what those gems were, except that they looked valuable—but valuable enough to cost Judy Carpenter her life? And I wondered why it was left behind.

Lifting a hand, I shielded my eyes from the sun that refused to fade. No planes crossed the sky. I checked my watch. Thirty-five minutes. If he wasn't here in thirty-five minutes, the ship would leave without him.

Please
.

I climbed down from the pier and walked the coarse sand beach. Afternoon high tide was creeping up the shoreline, darkening the green sand until it looked black. Geologists have a term for the places where certain rocks or rock formations are initially discovered. It's called “type locality,” and Ketchikan's was a relatively recent volcanic basalt called the Gravina Belt. With heavy deposits of chlorite and epidote, two green minerals, the basalt produced beaches of dark sand. I pulled away the ribbons of rubbery sea kelp and dug my bare hands through the coarse sand. My hike was gone but there was still time to find some type locality samples for my rock collection. I rinsed the best candidates in the tide, the ocean so cold my fingers went numb. Later I couldn't say where the time went, but my daydreams were shattered by a sound like a faraway buzz saw.

I looked up. The wind blew my hair across my eyes, but I saw the plane turning sharply within the steep and narrow channel, then dropping through the air until the pontoons splashed on the glittery water.

The window behind the rotating front blade was dark.

The man who caught the rope earlier walked to the outer birth, waving in the plane and directing it to the outer bumpers. The plane taxied for the dock, where the man tied it. I held my breath as the cab door opened.

Looking like an aviator sent from central casting, Jack Stephanson stepped out wearing a brown bomber jacket, Ray-Ban sunglasses, two days' scruff of beard, and a smile that competed with the sun. He tossed a canvas duffel bag on the dock.

And everything seemed to hurt. Even my feet. I looked down.

The water had risen over my toes, cold and aching.

Dropping the Gravina Belt samples in my pocket, I walked up the beach to the pier. My shoes made hideous squishy sounds, wet and flatulent. Across the water Jack was handing the harbormaster a piece of paper, then pointing to the cub plane before clasping the man's shoulder like an old friend. He picked up his duffel and strolled down the dock, glancing around. Mr. Casual.

I didn't move.

When he didn't see me, he stopped. Searching the street above, he moved slowly, scanning the area with evident concern.

Harmon
, I told myself,
run for your life
.

One half second can feel like an eternity. He glanced over at the pier and his tan face broke into that wide grin.

I knew that grin. I had to look at it every day I was stuck in the Seattle office. Every day that Jack toyed with information, or sent me on some schoolgirl errand, or challenged my procedures based on minor technicalities. Watching him jog up the gangway from the marina to Front Street, every one of my old resentments stormed to the surface.

He was still smiling when he reached me. “Harmon,” he said, “you look as wound up as ever.”

“If you came here thinking you're going to save the day, scrub the idea from your struggling brain.” I headed down Front Street, feeling righteous. But my squishy shoes ruined any sense of superiority.

Jack ran to catch up. “You figured out who killed her?”

“No. But I don't need your help.”

“Excellent, I'll kick back by the pool.” He grinned.

A string of nasty words begged my tongue for a chance to wipe that smug expression off his face. But when I opened my mouth, the ship blew its horn, signaling departure.

“That must be the Love Boat,” he said.

I turned and walked away.

The Ninja who met us at the gangway had a pencil-thin mustache. Without a word, he took our guns, then waited off to the side as we crossed through the security arches.

Jack still triggered the alarm, and a dimple-cheeked young woman brandished the security wand. Jack lifted his bomber jacket, winking at her. “My belt buckle's a deadly weapon.”

She giggled.

I gagged and waited with the Ninja while the girl practically drooled on Jack, taking her time moving the wand over his muscular outstretched arms, then down his legs. When she was finished— mistakenly pronouncing him harmless—the Ninja led us across the atrium. This afternoon the entertainment was a beautiful showgirl in a red leotard twirling a silver baton. Every man on board had gathered to watch her fling the baton through the four-story atrium, cart wheeling before she caught the thing right before it struck the marble floor. Jack applauded as we turned right into the casino. Red-vested dealers glanced up from stacking their poker chips on the felt tables.

“How ya doin'?” Jack asked.

I gritted my teeth as we came out the other side. The Ninja pulled out the remote control, opening the upholstered wall.

“What's this,” Jack said, “the Bat Cave?”

We ignored him.

Geert was sitting behind his desk, perusing some kind of ledger, but when he looked up, his Dutch-blue eyes iced over. Taking our guns from the Ninja, he swiveled toward the safe, once again blocking the view with his back.

“The producer says you asked a lot of questions.” He deposited the guns in the safe, shut the door, spun the dial. “If you think she got murdered, look at the husband. Most of them just push the wife overboard. Maybe this one went to some trouble. If it's not suicide.”

“It's not suicide.” I performed the introductions between the men. Their handshake was so tight their fingers went momentarily white.

Geert sat down and twirled his mustache. He used his left hand, I noticed, the hand that didn't shake Jack's. “What did the husband tell you?” he asked.

“Not much. He got hostile.”

“You think he killed his wife, you want him to thank you?”

“That's not what she's saying,” Jack said.

“Yah. It's your problem. But don't make it my problem.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “What?”

Geert lifted both hands, offering some Netherlandish gesture that managed to combine ennui with existential bleakness. “We got some lady who kills herself. Or maybe he kills her. I don't say no to that. But either one means I don't got no serial killer on my ship. I don't want no panic breaking out because of you and your questions.”

“So you don't care what happened or who did it?” Jack asked.

“I care about other passengers,” he said. “Suicide, it's done. If it is not suicide, the target was her. I'm gonna let you FBI people look into it only because—”

“Hold it.” Jack raised his hand, the palm open to signal
stop
. “You're going to
let us
look into it?”

Geert stared at him with unveiled animosity. “Yah.”

“Let me explain something to you.” Jack pointed at me. “This isn't some Girl Scout. If she says this death looks suspicious, then it's suspicious. Period. And you can either cooperate with her investigation or I will file enough paperwork to stretch from here to Antarctica, all of it alleging this cruise line covered up a murder.” He smiled. An official smile. “I'm making it your problem. Are we clear?”

Geert's bald pate seemed to blister. His ice-eyes shifted to me, but I had nothing to say. The last person I expected to defend me, especially like that, was Jack. I was speechless.

“I want promise,” Geert said. “No passengers disturbed, unless I agree. Nobody but the husband. Him, you can go ahead and bother.”

“Because?” I asked.

“Because the husband always kills the wife. Always.”

I keyed open my cabin, studiously ignoring Jack two doors down the hall, and found a room bustling with perfume and that peculiar electricity produced by women ramping up to full female regalia.

“Hurry up!” exclaimed Aunt Charlotte. “It's formal night!”

Her pleasantly plump figure was layered with diaphanous pink silk, and she floated across the room like an underwater sea creature, drifting through the door that linked our cabins. My mom and I shared this room; Aunt Charlotte and Claire were next door. I wanted to pull my aunt aside and talk about Judy Carpenter, but my mother was here, watching. Another undersea creature, she wore a beaded red sheath that amplified her sultry curves. But her jasper eyes were charged by some neurasthenic current.

“How were the fjords?” I asked.

She nodded. “They were nice.”

Nice?
Misty Fjords, among the world's most spectacular landscapes. And all she could say was
nice
?