The Deadly Art of Love and Murder

by Linda Crowder

  Dan was leaning against the railing, looking out at the bay. The lines etched on his face told a story, if only I could read it. Was it laughter around his eyes and mouth or were they scars from what he’d seen on the job? It had horrified me to find Mrs. Nash’s body. What must it have been for Dan to have seen so many? Maybe it was easier if you hadn’t known the person but I didn’t think I could do a job where standing guard over dead bodies was a regular occurrence.

  As if he sensed my eyes on him, he turned, animating the lines with his smile. “Shall we see what this baby can do?”

  I grinned back at him and opened the throttle, leaving Johnny’s island behind and punching through the mouth of the bay into the waters of the Inside Passage. The pilot station was protected by a three-sided canvas cover, open behind us but sheltered from the worst of the wind and weather. The cover kept out the spray, much appreciated considering the chill in the air, but it did nothing to dampen the roar of the engine as I revved up.

  I love driving a boat. Every worry was driven out by the sheer joy of being on open water, harnessing the force of a motor twice as powerful as anything I’d driven before. Movement off our port side caught my eye and I pointed out the pod of dolphins. They were keeping pace easily, leaping in and out of the water, inviting us to play.

  The hours passed in a wink and long before I was ready to throttle down, we arrived at the Gastineau Channel that leads to Juneau. “You know,” I said as I slowed to the required speed, “if I were going to live anyplace but Coho Bay, I think it would be here.”

  “Why is that?” Dan was perched on the seat beside me, tipping up his metal travel mug to drain the last of his coffee. We hadn’t talked much during the trip since the engine noise made conversation a challenge.

  I watched a red tram disappear into the clouds covering Mount Roberts and considered. Juneau is split by the channel, with a bridge between the more commercial mainland and the primarily residential Douglas Island. Cruise ships flock to Juneau all summer, four or more ships a day, disgorging thousands more passengers than Coho Bay would ever see. When Coho Bay won our first cruise ship contract, but before the ships started coming, I worked in a gallery here to learn the trade. It had amazed me that while chaos reigned on Marine Way, two or three blocks away there was peace with nary a tourist in sight. I never understood why, when they had an entire city stretched out before them, most cruisers stuck to a few blocks full of gift shops and galleries.

  “I loved Juneau when I lived here,” I answered as I steered the boat into the public marina. “The mountains are breathtaking, and the black tulips in the medians are gorgeous. I’ve been pestering the merchant association to put in a flower garden in that open space beside the clinic. We could have benches and tables where people could eat a picnic lunch. I seem to be the only one who thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “It would call attention to the fact that we have a clinic with no doctor.”

  “Mom’s planning to recruit Dr. Jordan.” We pulled up to an empty berth and Dan jumped out to tie up the boat. I shut off the engine and joined him on the dock.

  “I wouldn’t count your mother out. She usually gets people to do what she wants.”

  “That is the story of my life, Dan.”

  WE TOOK A CAB TO THE morgue and I waited while Dan spoke with the coroner and signed for the body to be released. The coffin, a plain wooden box like something out of an old Western, was loaded into the corner’s van and we rode with the technician to the dock where Kenny waited. I looked to see what saying he would have chosen for his ball cap. He had a surprisingly large collection and always seemed to have something appropriate. Today his hat was black with gold letters that said, Heaven Bound.

  I stood watching the men load the coffin into the hold. Kenny’s boat started life as a fishing vessel, which was how he’d originally made his living. Over the years, the fishing boats were forced to go further and further out to sea and one Sunday after church, Kenny had announced he was done. He hung up his nets and never fished commercially again. At least, that was the story my father told. I had often wondered if there weren’t more to it.

  Whatever his reason, he’d converted the boat to freight and landed contracts with the postal service and various shipping companies to service the people in and around Coho Bay. He made daily trips during the season and usually made it to Juneau once or twice a week off season. I couldn’t do business without him, since cruisers preferred to have art shipped to them at home.

  Once the sad task was done and Kenny was on his way home, Dan and I caught a ride with the technician as far as the center of town. We walked to our hotel from there and dropped our overnight bags in the rooms Tammy had reserved for us. The little matchmaker had made sure we had adjoining rooms, so I checked to make sure the door between us was locked before rejoining Dan in the hallway.

  “Do we have time for lunch?” he asked.

  I checked the time on my phone. “Two thirteen, no wonder I’m starving. Where do you want to go?”

  “You’re the expert. What’s good?”

  “There’s a little hole in the wall down the street from the capital. It has the best crab cakes in the world.”

  “Don’t let Bent hear you say that.” He held out his arm for me and we headed into the late afternoon sun, which had burned the clouds off the mountain. Crowds were sparse since the tourist season was over and the legislative session wouldn't begin until January.

  BeBe’s Crab Shack was just as I remembered it, long and narrow, with room for only one table by the window, which was fortunately empty, though so were most of the tables since we were so far past the lunch rush. A waitress waved at us as we came in so we hung our coats on the backs of our chairs and settled into do a little people-watching. Once we had our coffee cups filled and our orders placed, Dan stretched out his legs and gave me a long look. “What?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Nothing. It’s just... Nah, you’ll think I’m nuts.”

  “I already know that.” I teased him. Definitely laugh lines, I thought, at least most of them were. There were a few his smile didn’t reach, especially around his eyes.

  “This just isn’t what I’d pictured for our first date.”

  “This isn’t a date.”

  “You plus me plus food. Sounds like a date.”

  “If you plus me plus food is all it takes to make a date, we’ve been dating for years at Mel’s.” I liked the sound of his laughter.

  “That takes the pressure off then. Here, I’ve been wondering what I could do to impress you.”

  I crossed my arms on the table. “Do you need to impress me?”

  The waitress appeared with two plates heaped with crab cakes and home-cut fries, so Dan waited until she’d gone to answer. “I’m not very good at dating.”

  “You were married.” I inhaled the heavenly aroma of crab and spices, making my head spin and my mouth water.

  “Long time ago.”

  I waited, but he didn’t elaborate. “And?”

  He picked up his fork. “And it didn’t work out.”

  “You must have been young.”

  “Right out of high school.”

  He started eating. Clearly, the past wasn’t high on his list of conversation starters. I suppose I couldn’t blame him. If I had been married and divorced, even if it was amicable, I wasn’t sure I’d want to talk about it on a first date. “So what do you do for fun?”

  He set down his fork and looked out at the sidewalk. “Same as anybody, I guess.”

  “You hunt?”

  “I used to. Now I mostly stick to fishing. Don’t tell Clem, though. I don’t think he’d appreciate me dropping a line while I’m supposed to be on patrol.” He winked at me, explaining one of the wrinkles in the corner of his eyes.

  “You must like to read. Those books you gave me were dog-eared.”

  “They were that way when I bought ‘em. We can stop at the used bookstore after lunch, if you want.”

/>   Reading was probably the only thing I liked better than crab cakes, but it could be an expensive habit. “I’d love to! How’d you know my supply was running low?”

  “The way you read? You might want to get yourself a back-up hobby. Pace yourself.”

  “I have lots of hobbies to keep me busy in the off season.”

  “Like?”

  “Snowmobiling, snow shoeing, hunting. I missed that this year. Fortunately, Bent went out with Dad and filled the freezer.”

  He finished his crab and sat back in his chair. “Other than your first year of college, have you always lived in Alaska?”

  “Born and raised. My folks started out in Anchorage, but they jumped at the chance to move south. I was born in a tent while they were building their log house.”

  “Good thing you’re a June baby.”

  “I know, huh? I’ve only heard the stories but Mel remembers life in the tent.”

  “It would be tough to forget spending an Alaskan winter in a pup tent.”

  “Oh, come on. It was a wall tent, built to withstand the cold, complete with wood stove. We still use it as a base camp for long hunts.”

  Dan grinned and I tossed a napkin at him. He checked his watch and reached for his billfold. “We’d better get moving if we’re gonna get your title search done before the records office closes.”

  I followed him out to the sidewalk. “What did the coroner have to say?”

  “Gunshot wound from undetermined source.”

  “I could have told you that. Was it murder or suicide?”

  “It means that it could have been either. There was some gunshot residue on her hand. Not as much as you’d expect, though it might have come off in the snow. She was shot at very close range but she didn’t hold the gun against her head as most suicides do.”

  “She might have changed her mind, or started to, maybe the gun had a smoother trigger pull than she expected. I doubt she would have fired it very often before... that day.”

  “Possibly.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  We’d reached the building that housed the state records office. Dan pulled the door open for me. “What do you think?”

  “Whatever it is cops do to figure these things out. Investigate.”

  “I won’t get very far with nothing to go on. Don’t look at me like that. When the lab boys get me their report, I’ll see whether they think anyone else was in the house. Until then, there’s not much I can do.”

  We found the Office of Land Registry and waited for the clerk to finish her phone call. The room smelled like dust with an undertone of tobacco. The source of the latter hung up the phone and sidled over to us. I wondered how many packs she’d gone through at lunch for the scent to make my eyes water three hours later. She ignored me and looked at Dan expectantly, strike two for cigarette lady.

  “I’m doing a title search on a property in Coho Bay,” I started.

  Cigarette lady frowned, lengthening the tendrils of lipstick that were bleeding up her tell-tale smoker’s wrinkles, still keeping her eyes on Dan. “Address?”

  “We don’t use addresses.” Cigarette lady had over-plucked her brows to the point she couldn’t raise them at me, though from the lines that emerged on her forehead, I was sure she was trying. “I’m sure there’s a parcel number, but I don’t have it. If you’ve got a map, we can look it up.”

  She stood rooted to the floor until Dan leaned onto the counter and flashed her a smile. “We’re sorry to be so much trouble, miss, but we’d sure appreciate if you could help us out.”

  Miss? Cigarette lady was fifty if she was a day. Strike three for her, because she actually blushed. Then she shuffled through a cabinet and found a surveyor’s map of the town, pointedly unrolling it in front of Dan. He pointed out the Tilamu property and she jotted down the parcel number, re-rolling the map before I could see it and disappearing into the adjoining room.

  I glared at Dan. “Do you want to know or do you want to be right?”

  Cigarette lady shuffled back, file in hand. She put the file on the counter, again pointedly addressing only Dan, and told him to let her know if she could do anything else for him. There were things I wanted to say, but I knew I would need a copy of the file so I couldn’t afford to antagonize her any more than my existence already had. Dan thanked her and slid the folder to me.

  It wasn’t very thick. Doc Tilamu had claimed the land when he came back from med school in the late 1950’s, before Alaska became a state. Back then, property ownership had been on a handshake basis. People picked out a pretty piece of land, built a house on it and as long as the feds didn’t own it, everybody agreed you did. Eventually, the tax assessor would come around, draw up some paperwork and tell you what you owed. Homesteading, long gone in the lower forty-eight, wasn’t repealed in Alaska until 1986. By the time the town incorporated and the state’s surveyor came around, Doc had lived in the little house for more than ten years.

  The state had issued the original deed to the land. There was a copy of Mrs. Tilamu’s death certificate in the file and a revised deed removing her name and listing Doc as the sole owner. It was the next piece of paper in the file that floored me. Two years after the death of his wife and a year after the death of her husband, Doc Tilamu had transferred ownership of his property to Angela K. Nash, widow.

  “WHY WOULD HE DO IT, Dan?” We were sitting at a table in the hotel’s deserted breakfast area. We’d tried sitting on the bed in my room but that had proven uncomfortable so we’d retreated downstairs to the “always hot” coffee pot. “Why would Doc give his house to Mrs. Nash?”

  “We don’t know that he gave it to her. Maybe he sold it.”

  “Fine, why would he do that?”

  “Maybe he needed money and was too proud to take out a loan.”

  “Doc was certainly proud, but I can’t imagine why he’d need money. Besides, whether he gave it to her or she bought it, why wouldn’t she say something after he died?”

  “For that matter, why do his children think the house is theirs?” Dan countered. “Wouldn’t it have gone through probate after their dad died, just like it’s going through probate now?”

  “You’d think so. All I know is they asked me to rent it out until they decided what to do about it. Every year, Mrs. Nash asked to rent it and no matter how bad it got, she told me she didn’t want to stay anywhere else.”

  “That’s another crazy thing. She obviously knew the house was hers so why would she pay rent to live there?” We’d gone from the land office to the tax office and verified that Mrs. Nash had faithfully paid the property taxes on the little house every year since the land transfer.

  “I have no idea.” I stared at my cup. The coffee tasted like it had been on the burner all day and there wasn’t enough cream in the dispenser to cut through the mud. “Maybe she felt that by paying rent to his kids, she was... I don’t know, taking care of them for him.”

  “What about her own kids?”

  “I guess we’ll have to wait and hear what Olivia Jordan has to say.”

  Chapter 5

  We were up early the next morning and I was thankful to find the coffee much improved over the previous day’s brew. Dr. Jordan was due in at ten-thirty so we ate a quick breakfast and hit the used bookstore. Dan picked out a few books, then stood by the register watching me clean out the mystery section. “Clean out” was perhaps a tad strong. There were books I didn’t buy because I’d already read them and, of course, there were those I already had on my e-reader at home but I did leave the section looking a little more bare than I’d found it.

  “There is more than one genre to choose from, you know,” Dan said as I piled my treasures onto the counter.

  “I got a few comedies.”

  “And a handful of romantic suspense,” the shop keeper added as she sorted through the pile, writing prices on a yellow pad.

  “There, you see? I’m a multi-faceted connoisseur.”

  “$26.
50,” said the woman, looking up from her calculator.

  “Let me get that for you.”

  “I don’t wanna share.” I handed the woman most of the cash I had with me and said a mental thank you to my father, who’d had the foresight to open a charge account at the marina so we’d never be without gas for the boat on the way home. “You can carry the bags though.” I threw my backpack over my shoulder and grabbed Dan’s overnight bag, confident his load was quite a bit heavier than mine.

  “Let’s drop all this at the boat before we head out to the airport.” Since cabs are never where you want them when you want them, we walked back to the hotel and had the concierge call one. I waited in the cab while Dan took our things to the boat. When he got back, he was breathing hard and the cab set off for the airport north of town.

  “You run pretty well for an old man,” I teased. “Don’t have a heart attack though, my CPR card expired.”

  If he’d had any air in his lungs, he might have said something. Instead, he caught my hand and tucked my arm under his. “How are we going to know her?” he asked when he could speak.

  “I hadn’t thought about it. There can’t be that many people on the plane.”

  “So your plan is to stand at the baggage claim looking for someone who seems to be looking for us?”

  “It sounds bad when you say it like that.”

  “Make it sound better.”

  “She’s supposed to call me when she lands.”

  “Now that sounds like a plan.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we were standing in the baggage claim, looking for someone but no one seemed to be looking for us. “Do you see her?” asked Dan.

  “Nope.”

  “Are you sure her plane landed?”

  “That’s what the sign says.”

  “Why hasn’t she called you?”

  I was pacing up and down the baggage area, scanning the faces of the passengers who were straggling by to claim their luggage. Dan was leaning against a post, hands in his jeans pockets, annoyingly calm. I walked up to him. “I have no idea.”