Under the Alaskan Ice

by Karen Harper

  He looked at his dive watch—he was late to meet his team out front. “More later,” he whispered and kissed her quickly.

  Still, it got to her, made her feel weak in the knees. She had the almost overpowering urge to hold him there.

  But he headed out the door. Even though he was leaving, these moments had been so—so cozy and familiar and normal, as if they were more to each other than they were.

  Even at the hint of the dangers he faced, at the terrible thought of possibly losing him, she felt ready for the risk, ready for him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The online search Meg did for “stolen antique jewelry” and “thefts of Victorian mourning jewelry” yielded only sites selling such items. Sighing, she looked at some. A few similar pieces but nothing that would hint at a robbery, not in recent years, not even in Europe.

  Because she would love to be able to help Bryce more than she had, she looked at a few of the big commercial websites offering pieces for sale. She was amazed at how the prices had inflated since she’d had Grandma’s jewelry appraised. Not that she and Suze meant to sell those family heirlooms, but just so they knew what they were worth. She supposed they really should get them insured.

  Then it hit her: despite Bryce’s penchant for secrecy in all this, which Meg wished he could explain, maybe Melissa McKee, who had helped her before, could be of help now, at least to price or evaluate the pieces.

  She went to Melissa’s Olden Jewelry Store website, which she hadn’t looked at for ages. It was tastefully done with an old-fashioned flavor. But unlike before, Melissa was now offering both Victorian and Alaskan Native jewelry, the latter mostly intricately beaded or carved from sea treasures like sperm whale bones or teeth. She admired ornate scrimshaw pieces carved by whalers and contemporary Native artists too.

  On that same page, another surprise. The website was advertising and selling a beautiful coffee table–type book called In Death Lamented: The Tradition of Anglo-American Mourning Jewelry. It was expensive but looked intriguing. Maybe she should buy it, because it could take too long to get it through the Anchorage Library system, and it might help Bryce. But, undecided and always watching her money, she clicked on the FOR SALE page of jewelry items instead.

  She concentrated on the mourning jewelry. Wait until she told Bryce even the few pieces he’d found tumbled onto the lakebed were worth a small fortune. And he’d gone to search for more today. Of course, without his permission she would not mention those pieces to anyone—especially Melissa—but maybe she could yet be of help if Bryce agreed.

  She also wondered whether there would have been enough buyer interest in Anchorage so Melissa could keep her shop going with just old Victorian-era jewelry. Was that why she was now offering the beautiful and intricate tribal heritage pieces? No doubt the cruise ship trade could help because her shop was near the docks where tourists disembarked to explore Anchorage, and surely wealthy travelers would prefer a heritage memento from their Alaskan cruise.

  She closed the laptop, sighed and wilted against it on her crossed wrists, putting her head down. She wasn’t sleeping well, hadn’t since the plane crash and Bryce came on the scene. But the excitement—and he—were worth it.

  * * *

  Bryce was tense about today’s dive. He knew something about what they were searching for now. And he was dying to know what was in those two belted metal strongboxes to discover what answers lay inside. ID for the pilot and plane? Orders for dispersing the goods? Prices for the jewelry and lots more of it, or of some other valuable commodity? But the Big Man wanted the boxes shipped untouched, so that was that.

  But he wasn’t handing those few pieces of jewelry over until he got more answers. He was sticking his neck out here, more than he had on most recoveries and investigations.

  The most he was going to let Meg get involved in all this was checking out things on her laptop, inside the safety of the lodge. When he could, he meant to keep a good eye on that Getz guy who’d suddenly showed up for a few days.

  He hoped his and Meg’s bantering about going to Anchorage together to have a real date would work out. It would be good, too, to check in to the regional NTSB office in Anchorage, where he had a supervisor, though since joining the special task force, he primarily answered to the Big Man in DC who was directly overseeing this case now. But could he let Meg know even that much?

  He was worried about her, Chip too. Someone had watched the plane crash, maybe had seen them, then disappeared. Someone had also hurt Steve during their dive. Maybe the same person lurking around the lodge. Watching his moves? Or because the lurker had seen Meg and Chip and didn’t want any witnesses talking?

  “Let’s dive,” he said to Keith and Nate, then nodded to Bob, who would be guarding things topside. They double-checked the fit of their masks and mouthpieces. Then Bryce went in first.

  Headfirst, he led Nate and Keith down the dive rope, shining his handheld light before him. He saw the fuselage of the plane had tilted a bit more, though it hadn’t moved location. He illumined it, and the others followed. He should have brought an underwater slate with a glow-in-the-dark pencil.

  His hand signals must have been clear enough, though. The new tilt of the plane meant it would be best not to go inside, but to swim around it near the tail and sift the sand and murky bottom for more jewelry. It was the NTSB’s business to be thorough and careful. He had brought a sieve in his gear, so he and Keith lifted careful handfuls of silt and sand onto it from the site of his original finds. Nate searched the outer perimeter.

  The silty glacial melt water had been stirred up recently—strangely, more than he had seen before or expected. Maybe that was just from the slight repositioning of the plane between his last dive and now.

  Their routine, boring practice soon turned exciting. Keith, then Nate, turned up more pieces of jewelry. It all looked old to his still unpracticed eye, but none of it had the elements of mourning jewelry, at least he didn’t think so. Perhaps this really was from a major jewelry theft somewhere, and the pieces were to be hidden in this sparsely settled area of Alaska and sold later, after any investigation had died down. He’d just stumbled on the mourning jewelry first and thought the entire cache would be that.

  They then found some coins and a single gold bar, not big, not like the ingots he’d seen at Fort Knox. But this was a treasure hunt! As soon as they ID’d the pilot’s body, they could trace who stole what and where. And where it was going, here in wild, wooded Alaska.

  * * *

  After helping serve lunch and clean up, Meg delayed making peanut-cream-filled chocolate candy to return again to her laptop. Before she gave up on finding something to help Bryce and his crew, she had another lead to check out.

  She googled the name from the piece of jewelry—Varina Howell. This was probably a long shot, despite the woman’s lovely and unique first name. If she ever had a daughter, she’d consider using it. Ryan had named Chip, a nickname for Charles, after Chip’s grandfather he had never known.

  She stared at the screen and gasped. It was the woman’s maiden name. It came right up with numerous links, even old photographs—tintypes, some were called. She checked out a Wikipedia entry, drinking in the information. She studied a black-and-white picture of a woman with dark hair parted in the middle and pulled back in a tight bun, a woman in a full-skirted, floor-length dress standing next to—the picture was labeled American Civil War Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his wife Varina Howell Davis.

  Wide-eyed, she read on. Second marriage. Four children. Their young son died. When the Confederacy collapsed, she sold many of her household goods and fled Richmond with her family to avoid capture by the victorious Union forces. The escapees had been captured five days later by a Michigan regiment of Union forces and imprisoned. She had long outlived the husband she had dearly loved and supported.

  And when the family fled Richmond, they had a fortu
ne in currency and jewelry with them. When they were arrested they had nearly nothing! It was a long debated mystery where that fortune had gone.

  The hair stood up on the Meg’s arms as if she were suddenly chilled.

  How amazing that one of the pieces of mourning jewelry Bryce had found had belonged to the First Lady of the Confederacy. Meg recalled the name of the book on mourning jewelry—In Death Lamented—as she skimmed the rest of Varina’s biography. Evidently she had never been able to move on from the loss of her husband. With that, Meg could empathize.

  A quick knock on her door jolted her.

  Suze popped her head in. “Meg, someone here to see you, to buy some candy and say hi.” She lowered her voice. “It’s Melissa McKee, that store owner from Anchorage who told you about Grandma’s jewelry. Maybe she’s going to make another pitch to buy it. The mayor evidently told her about you seeing the plane crash, and she just wondered if you’re all right. She also mentioned wanting to stock your candy in her store, which would be a big boost for your sales with her shop being down by the cruise ship docks.”

  That thought excited Meg, but what a crazy coincidence. Still, the world was filled with those. But the woman was suddenly inspired to have Falls Lake Chocolates in her jewelry store? Maybe the cruise ship business and online sales were not so good. No, this could not be a coincidence. Melissa must be up to something.

  Meg turned off her laptop and went out to meet their guest.

  * * *

  It took Bryce a moment to tamp down his excitement of this turning into a treasure hunt. The other night he’d seen Chip watching reruns of an old TV show called Sea Hunt, one he used to watch in reruns too. It starred Lloyd Bridges, the father of more current stars Jeff and Beau Bridges. That show had turned him on to scuba diving, and there had always been some mystery to solve, some bad guy in it. Now, he and his team were living that.

  He shook his head to clear it. His mind was wandering again. He’d been down here in the cold for too long, but he wanted to complete the search. This site was not only vulnerable but valuable now. In this climate and isolated area, there was no way to leave a guard on the lake surface for hours, especially at night.

  While Keith and Nate kept digging deeper and wider, Bryce circled back toward the plane to be sure no other spillage holes had opened up either in the initial crash or when the plane evidently settled more. He swam along the length of the fuselage, playing his light up, down. When his beam hit the plane’s dark windows, they seemed to follow him like huge blank eyes.

  He saw something that shouldn’t be there, that hadn’t been there during his initial study of the exterior: a six-inch-square, white plastic box almost the same color as the plane. It was the kind of device he’d seen before on another assignment, one for underwater demolition to fragment rock so it could be dredged and removed from blocking a narrow harbor entrance in the waters off Saudi Arabia. For underwater blasting...a naval mine...one operated by a nonelectrical acoustical transmission signal from above the surface...long-distance...

  He jerked around and swam for Keith and Nate. He hit Keith on the shoulder, shined his own light at himself and signaled STOP! SURFACE NOW! Then he used a slash of his hand across his throat motion, because didn’t know how to signal explosive.

  If there was one explosive mine, there could be more.

  Both men grabbed the evidence bags they’d been filling and followed Bryce to the dive rope. Thank God, no one had cut it this time, but why bother if the plane and the divers were all going to be blown to bits?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Just as Meg went out into the common room to greet Melissa McKee, two Alaska State Troopers came in the front door. Bryce had told her and Suze that they were to give the troopers the two boxes he had secured. They were in the lodge’s office near the safe. He had also made Meg promise not to mention the jewelry until he had more time with it to get some answers.

  Suze took care of the troopers while Melissa got up from her chair and walked to greet Meg. Quickly, Meg took her over by the windows so her guest wouldn’t see what the troopers were doing. What was that line Bryce had mentioned that the Big Man had told him over the phone? Trust no one, my friend.

  That reminded her that she’d seen Bill Getz hovering recently, but when she looked, she didn’t see him now, thank heavens.

  Melissa glanced at the troopers as she and Meg sat on the couch facing the back windows. The fiftysomething woman was striking—red-haired, green-eyed, toned and looked to be in her thirties. As Meg had noted several years ago when she’d consulted her on their grandmother’s heirloom jewelry, not many Anchorage women had facial tucks and used Botox, but Melissa must have. She seemed to be always dressed in a beautiful jacket and matching slacks. Today she also wore red boots and a silver coat she draped over the arm of the couch. Meg made sure they had their backs to the main desk, though her guest craned around more than once to glance behind them.

  “Is there some sort of problem here?” Melissa asked.

  “The troopers drop in now and then, especially since the plane crash out on the lake, doing general area security, I guess.”

  Meg hated that she’d lied so easily. It reminded her she was getting in over her head since she’d met Bryce.

  Melissa twisted around in her seat again. “That whole plane crash and an unknown pilot was very weird, your mayor says.”

  “True, but in Alaska, what’s new about weird? So, how is your shop doing? I appreciated all your helpful information about our jewelry, but we still don’t want to sell it.”

  “You should make a display case for it here,” she said, craning her neck to look around again. “I’ll bet the store—literally—that you two never wear those lovely old pieces.”

  “True. You were in town to see the mayor?”

  Meg realized she’d been asking this woman a spate of questions but she didn’t want to be answering many herself. So, was this visit at this time just because Melissa wondered how Meg was doing? Why was she even here in little Falls Lake? And why had she seen or talked to the mayor about the plane crash everyone—including him—had said they would try to keep under wraps? Bryce was suspicious of Bill Getz’s appearance—infiltration, he’d called it. Should she wonder about this visit?

  “Oh, yes, the mayor,” Melissa went on, turning forward to look at her again. “He mentioned you and your son had witnessed the plane crash, and I was hoping you were doing all right. Amazing the media hasn’t picked up on that story, but I guess nothing is very interesting in Falls Lake except to Falls Lake. Hope the whole thing is settled and doesn’t blow up soon. That murder you had here last summer was bad enough.

  “But about Mayor Purvis,” she went on, though Meg wished she wouldn’t. She’d been hoping to talk to the troopers, to watch them carefully stow the boxes in their cruiser so she could report back to Bryce. She tried to concentrate on Melissa’s words so as not to appear too interested in the troopers as she heard them thank Suze and their voices fade.

  “The mayor and his wife have been married for almost thirty years,” Melissa continued, “and he ordered a fabulous art-deco-inspired 1920s necklace and earrings for her as a surprise, so please don’t tell her or anyone else to ruin the surprise. Lucky lady! He’s bought her some beautiful pieces over the years. Here Jordan and I have been married longer than that, and his Anchorage Real Estate business is doing well, but I’m lucky to get a yearly trip to Vancouver or Seattle.” She laughed, a forced laugh, Meg thought.

  “But, of course, he wouldn’t think to buy you jewelry with all you have and do at your jewelry shop.”

  “I suppose,” she said and heaved a sigh. “My problem is I always want the best for my clients and for myself so—”

  A big boom shook the lodge, rattling things on shelves.

  Melissa gave a little shriek, and Meg jumped to her feet.

  “What was that?” Suze
shouted. “Not another plane crash! A car accident?”

  “I don’t know,” Meg cried, “but I’ll see if the troopers are still outside. Maybe they know and can help. Wait here,” she ordered Melissa and ran outside.

  Bill Getz was hovering around the troopers’ car. The troopers had just secured the two heavy boxes in the trunk of their cruiser and were looking around. Crouched back to back as if they would be attacked, they both had their hands on their guns. No other sounds followed.

  “Is there mining going on around here?” one officer asked Meg as she ran toward them. “Maybe someone blasting stone or even big trees? Lumber mills still do that from time to time.”

  “No, but there is a dive team back by the site of that plane crash. Before you leave, could you drive down the road to see if that boom came from there? I could show you where.”

  “Ma’am, we’re under strict orders to get this evidence to the airport. I’d have to call for permission, then—”

  The radio voice in the cruiser crackled, then in the one strapped to his coat. He turned away to answer it, but holding her breath with her teeth chattering in the cold air, Meg heard every word coming in. Of course, so did Bill Getz.

  “Secure your evidence boxes and guard them. But drive past the tracking camp on the road to the lake to where the road dead-ends. Wait there for a police chopper and reinforcements, but do not leave your vehicle. We are sending med and rescue responders from Wasilla to a disturbance at Falls Lake. 9-1-1 call came in. Do not hike in but stay with your cruiser in case needed,” the voice repeated.

  Meg almost fell to her knees in fear. An emergency call from the lake? What had happened?