That 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?
“Mom, are you feeling okay?”
“I’m a little tired.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “She talked the entire time.”
“Who?”
“Claire, on the bus. She sat next to me and talked the entire time.”
Claire, our cross to bear.
“I’m sorry.”
“How was your hike?” she asked.
I almost said nice. “Good. It was good.”
“You better shower,” she said, staring at the green sand under my fingernails, my wet shoes.
In the shower I scrubbed my fingernails and hummed that tune from South Pacific, about washing that man right out of my hair. When I stepped out, I felt renewed and cracked the door to release the steam that turned the mirror opaque with mist. The bathroom was the size of a broom closet.
And I heard the voice.
“I’m not making it up,” Claire was saying. “It’s true.”
“But . . . how . . . ?” My aunt. Her words stalled. “When . . . ?”
“This morning. Remember the fat dude with the body bag? That was Judy. They found her hanging.”
“Hanging!” my mother cried.
“Yep. Hung herself last night.”
My mother gasped. “Oh my lands.”
I grabbed a white towel, pressed it to my mouth, and screamed.
Claire continued, unabated by the panic in my mother’s voice. “Must have planned the whole thing. The trip, our tickets. That’s what suicides do, you know. Plan everything down to the last detail. When people ask me to contact somebody who killed themself, I say—”
“Claire!” I wrapped the towel around my body, kicking open the door. “May I speak with you?”
There was a pause.
I came around the corner. “Claire?” They stood in the middle of the room, aquatic creatures lost at sea. Aunt Charlotte had the startled expression of somebody who just got bad news and was trying not to freak out. I looked at her, holding eye contact, waiting until she got my signal.
“Nadine,” she said to my mother,“I need your opinion.”
“About what?” My mother sounded scared.
“Which jewelry goes with this outfit.” My aunt gently led her through the door between our cabins. “You have such an eye for style.”
I closed the door.
Claire’s curry-yellow Indian sari was three inches too long. She looked like bleached kelp. And for some reason she had a pink stone stuck to the middle of her forehead. It looked so weird I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing.
“My third eye.” Claire tapped it with her finger. “But, boy, does Superglue sting.”
“You Superglued that to your forehead?”
“Be careful. Stare at it too long, you’ll get hypnotized.”
I closed my eyes for different reasons and drew a deep breath. The room smelled of patchouli and my mother’s panic. “How did you hear about Judy Carpenter?”
“Milo told me.”
“Milo. When?”
“When I went up there.”
“Up where?”
“To his room. Judy booked a reading for this afternoon. When she didn’t show up I went to get her, and Milo totally broke down. Just lost it. He told me what happened and I decided she made the appointment so she could talk to him. You know, from the hereafter.”
Concrete wasn’t this dense.
“But I don’t think she’s reached her final destination.”
“Pardon?”
“I told him we should try calling tomorrow.”
It was too much. The voice that sounded like a metal spoon banging an empty pot. The yellow outfit that made her squat body look like an emergency life raft. This whole idea that she could call the hereafter, like AT&T for the dead. I was drawing another deep breath, trying to measure my words, when Claire jumped into the silence.
“It’s those people next door. I haven’t had one good night’s sleep since we got on this boat.”
“Ship.”
“What?”
“This is a ship, Claire. Not a boat.”
“Okay, whatever, but somebody needs to tell them to stop partying. I’m about to lose my mind.”
I let that one go.
“Claire.” I spoke slowly, the way Quantico taught us to talk to belligerent drug addicts. “I need a favor. A really big favor.”
She frowned. Her forehead buckled around the pink rock.
“Don’t talk about Judy’s death, to anyone. But especially not in front of my mom.”
She reached up, massaging the skin around the pink stone. “What’s wrong with your mom anyway? I’m not being nosy. I just want to be prepared in case she’s another suicide waiting to happen.”
“Nothing is wrong with her.”
“Then why’s she so jumpy? And sometimes I can’t understand a word she’s saying.”
My mother was too nice to tell her to shut up. Instead, she was probably showering her with Southern platitudes and blessing her heart all over the place. But those manners came with a price. The strain was all over my mother’s face.
“Claire, don’t you think Judy would be way upset about you talking about her, instead of to her?”
She gave another frown. “You think that’s why she didn’t make contact?”
I released the official smile.
“Because I’m talking too much? Hey, you know, that’s an idea. I need to listen. Okay, now I feel better.”
“And that’s what matters.”
“You know, if you ever want to get in touch with your dad, just say the word.”
Feeling a shiver run up my spine, I opened the door separating our cabins. Claire trundled away. Airy flute music was playing in my aunt’s cabin, some South American woodwinds, and the volume was turned up to block my mother from overhearing my conversation with Claire. I caught Aunt Charlotte’s eye, silently thanking her. My mother sat on one of the twin beds, watching her sister-in-law model jewelry.
I pulled on a sleeveless black velvet tank with black pants and three-inch black heels. Stepping into the bathroom, I combed my wet hair into a sleek ponytail, added mascara and pearl earrings. I was no girlie-girl, but I loved being a girl. I was finishing my lipstick when somebody knocked on the door. “I’m almost done!”
“There’s somebody here for you,” my mother said.
Once again the three women stood in the middle of the cabin. Only now they gaped at the open cabin door.
Turning, I followed their gaze.
The black tux was tailored to his muscular frame. I hated to admit it, but he looked good. No. He looked amazing. He’d even shaved and combed his hair, and I was trying to figure out how he got that tux into his duffel bag without wrinkling it when Aunt Charlotte breathed her own declaration: “Yum.”
My mother simply stared.
Amid the hail of hair spray and evening attire—not to mention Claire—I forgot to deploy my latest fabrication. With a smile plastered on my face, I introduced each of the ladies to Jack. It was discouraging to see that his manners were impeccable.
“How do you know Raleigh?” My mother shook his hand.
“We used to work together,” I interjected. That was true. “We ran into each other this afternoon.”
“On the hike?”
“Right,” I said, before Jack could reply.
“You’re a geologist?” my mother asked.
“Geologist? No, ma’am. I’m a special a—”
“A specialist on glaciers.” I grabbed my purse. “Jack’s specialty is glaciers. He’s a glaciologist. Freezing cold atmospheres. So cold, it’s cruel.” I leaned down, kissing my mother’s soft cheek. Her beautiful eyes were confused and stabbed my heart. “If you need anything, I have my cell.”
“You’re not eating with us?” she asked.
“Jack needs some help with his research on Alaskan glaciers.” I waved good-bye, shoving Jack into the hallway, slamming the door shut.
“What was all that about?” he asked.
I jogged down the hallway. When necessary, it is possible to run fast in three-inch heels.
“Harmon, what’s going on?”
“Just stick to the story, okay?”
“But your mom thinks—”
I picked up the pace.
But he stopped.
When I turned, he was standing in the hallway, looking genuinely shocked.
“She doesn’t know,” he said. “Your mother. She doesn’t know you’re an FBI agent.”
Unable to speak, I headed for the elevators and kept my head down, sending up more desperate prayers for forgiveness, wondering when God would get as tired of me as I was.