Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote)

by Jessica Fletcher

  “Could we sit down and discuss this?” I asked, trying to inject calm into my voice. “Without the knife?”

  “You won’t get away with it,” was his nonresponsive reply.

  “Please,” I said. “I think we can work this out if only—”

  The sound of sirens caused both of us to look out the window. Two marked police cars came to a screeching, haphazard halt in front of the shop, and uniformed officers jumped out and dashed to the front door. Thank heavens someone in the shop had called for help. The crazed man grabbed my arm across the table and pressed the weapon against my neck. I closed my eyes and waited for the thrust that would end my life. When it didn’t happen, I opened my eyes and saw that everyone else in the shop was on their way out the door, Kathy, who’d been hiding in one of the aisles, emerged and took a few steps toward me.

  “Go, Kathy, go,” I said.

  Her face reflected her conflict, but after a few moments she joined the others, leaving me and the man alone in the shop.

  An amplified male voice said from just outside the door, “Let the lady go. The building is surrounded. Put down your weapon and come out with your hands up.”

  I suppose it was the appropriate thing for the officer with the bullhorn to say under the circumstances, but his words of warning seemed only to further agitate my captor. He lowered the knife from my neck and took a few steps away.

  “We can talk about this,” I said. “Your idea to set a book in California was a good one, but nothing will be accomplished this way. Please—I have no reason to want to hurt you, or to steal your ideas. I would never do that. This is just a misunderstanding that we can rectify—but only if you give me the knife.”

  I was pleased at how rational I was able to sound. My voice was steady. Inside, I was a mass of jangled nerves. I’d never encountered a situation like this in all my professional writing life. Yes, there had been a few fans who’d expressed their displeasure over the years at something I’d written, or took me to task for what they considered a lapse on my part. Some of my science-fiction-writer friends have told me about an occasional irate fan who threatened bodily harm for something they’d published, especially if they’d written a tie-in novel using familiar characters from a TV show or motion picture. Science-fiction fans are especially zealous and proprietary about beloved characters from those media. But I wasn’t aware that it had ever happened to writers of murder mysteries. If I survived this, I’d have quite a tale to tell my fellow mystery writers.

  The police continued to send amplified messages through the open door. At one point, I was afraid they were about to burst in, guns blazing, which was the last thing I wanted to have happen. My assailant seemed to have calmed down some; perhaps he’d become fatigued. He sat in the chair that Kathy had occupied and lowered the hand holding the knife to the table, the blade still pointed in my direction. I, too, sat, and continued to try to talk sense to him. His eyes were wet, and I wondered whether he would soon break into tears. Along with the abject fear I was experiencing, I also felt a parallel sense of pity for him. I wondered what his daily life was like. Was he delusional, hearing voices that told him to act irrationally? As best I could remember, his e-mail to me had been rational. I assumed he had a computer since he’d e-mailed me, but I also realized that he might be homeless and could have used a library computer.

  I looked through the window to where a large crowd had gathered across the street and saw Bill Farley standing with others from the store. Kathy was with them.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Walter.”

  “Well, Walter, you know who I am,” I said. “Are you a writer?”

  He nodded.

  “What kind of things do you write?”

  “Poems, mostly, but I want to write murder mysteries like you.”

  “Then I think you should. Do you have a story in mind?”

  “I had one. You stole it.”

  “A story set in California,” I said. “It’s a wonderful setting for a murder mystery.”

  “Why did you do it?” he asked in a voice without energy.

  “I don’t think I did,” I said. I didn’t want to upset him any further by debating whether I’d set my most recent book in California because of his e-mail.

  “Everybody always steals my ideas,” he said flatly. “I have lots of them, but somebody takes them and makes all the money.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “Maybe we can figure out a way together to keep that from happening again.”

  My thoughts went back to when I was an English teacher before launching my writing career, and I felt as though I was sitting after school with a troubled student in need of guidance. The atmosphere in the bookshop was now calm. The police had obviously sensed that their best approach was to lay back and allow the scene inside to play out. They could see that we were simply talking and that the knife was no longer being bandied about in a threatening manner. All I hoped was that it would stay that way and that Walter would eventually succumb to reason.

  Fifteen minutes later, it happened. It wasn’t that he’d listened to what I’d said and agreed with me. He fell asleep sitting in the chair, his head lowered to his chest. I gingerly removed his hand from on top of the knife, placed the weapon behind a pile of my books, then silently stood and tiptoed away from the table to the door. Uniformed police rushed past me, yanked the man to a standing position, and cuffed his hands behind his back. Don’t hurt him, I thought.

  Kathy ran to me and wrapped me in a bear hug.

  “Are you all right?” Bill Farley asked.

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “A madman,” one of Bill’s clerks said.

  “A pathetic soul,” I said.

  A photographer from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer snapped a series of photos of me and of the man as he was led from the shop to a waiting squad car. A reporter from that same newspaper asked me a series of rapid-fire questions, none of which I chose to answer.

  “What did you say to him?” Kathy asked as we went back inside the bookshop.

  “I have no idea,” I said, “except that whatever it was, it was boring.”

  “Boring?” she and Bill asked in unison.

  “I never realized how boring I can be,” I said. “I put him to sleep.”

  “And saved your life,” Bill said.

  “That, too,” I said. “Well, let’s finish the signing. There are still some people who never had the chance to have their books autographed.”

  The remainder of our stay in Seattle was without incident, at least of the magnitude of the book signing. I gave a statement to the police and learned from them that Walter—his last name was Munro—was well-known to them as a vagrant who haunted local libraries. He’d been arrested a number of times for minor offenses, mostly of the public-nuisance variety, but had never done anything as serious as threatening someone’s life. My dilemma was whether I wanted to press charges. I felt I had to, although I was not entirely comfortable with that decision. Had I the power to determine Mr. Munro’s fate, I would have seen to it that he was committed to a mental institution where he would receive treatment. But the system had no place for my input. My experience led me to conclude that the man’s mental illness had progressed beyond the “public nuisance” stage. Would his paranoiadrive him to attack someone else? Obviously, that was a chance no one would want to take. I pressed charges after receiving assurance from the detective that he would do what he could to see that Mr. Munro received treatment.

  My unwelcome confrontation made the front page of the Post-Intelligencer the next day, including one of the pictures snapped of me outside the shop. I effectively managed to hide from other members of the press who wanted interviews, and was anxious for Sunday, when our ship would set sail for Alaska, to arrive.

  As for uncovering any further information about Wilimena’s stay in Seattle, we hit a brick wall. Aside from the two shops we visited, none of the remaining receipts gave reason to follow
up. The lack of receipts from restaurants, except for a couple of coffee shops, seemed to indicate that Willie had been successful in enticing others to pay for her meals.

  We left the hotel at noon on Sunday to go to the pier from which the Glacial Queen would leave at four that afternoon.

  “We haven’t gotten very far in finding Willie,” Kathy said as we rode in our hired car.

  “We have a start,” I said. “We now know that she bought a tiny device to record people when they didn’t expect it, and two personal-security items. And, of course, we also know that she seldom, if ever, spent social time alone. I have the feeling that we won’t be lacking men to interview who got to know your sister.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Kathy said.

  “And,” I added, “we also know that gold was the reason for her trip. Up until meeting those two shopkeepers,you only surmised that. Now we know that it was very much on her mind.”

  “I just hope that . . .”

  “Hope what, Kathy?” I asked as the driver pulled up to where the ship’s passengers were arriving.

  “I just hope that what almost happened to you at the book signing isn’t an omen of what’s going to happen on this cruise.”

  My laugh was forced. “That’s behind us, Kathy,” I said. “Besides, I don’t believe in omens.”

  Maybe I should have.

  Chapter Three

  After checking our luggage with a curbside agent, we entered a cavernous building where we joined hundreds of other passengers waiting to go through security and to be issued a photo ID for use on the ship. The Glacial Queen accommodates eighteen hundred passengers and eight hundred crew, which might seem like too many people with whom to spend a week in a confined space. But the ship is huge, and I knew from previous cruises that once aboard, people seem to disappear into a ship’s recesses except when gathering for meals. Joining us in line were men and women of every age and size, sporting a wide array of attire, some looking as though they were ready for a fancy dinner party, some (most) casual in the extreme.

  The line moved surprisingly quickly, and we were soon going up a long, slanted walkway to the ship, which sat majestically at the pier. Enthusiastic, smiling young crew members directed us to our staterooms, which were adjacent, thanks to some last-minute wheeling and dealing by Susan Shevlin, our crackerjack travel agent back in Cabot Cove. Each room was spacious and nicely appointed, and glass doors opened to a balcony with a small white table and two deck chairs.

  While I waited for my luggage to be delivered, a voice came through a speaker informing all passengers that an emergency drill would be conducted within a half hour, with each block of cabins assigned to a specific deck. As instructed, in preparation for the drill, I pulled down an orange life preserver from a shelf in one of the closets, slipped into it, and was about to step out onto the balcony when there was a knock at my door.

  I expected it to be Kathy. Instead, it was a young Asian man dressed in a starched white jacket and carrying a tray on which sat a metal champagne bucket holding a bottle of the bubbly and a bowl of fruit.

  “Mrs. Fletcher, I’m Raymond, your cabin steward.”

  “Hello,” I said.

  “May I come in?”

  “Of course.”

  “Compliments of the captain,” he said, setting the tray on a coffee table in front of a small couch. He handed me an envelope.

  “Thank you, Raymond.”

  “Please call on me if there’s anything you need,” he said, smiling. He gave me a direct number to dial. “Your luggage should be up shortly. Have a very pleasant cruise.”

  He left, and I opened the envelope. In it was an invitation to a five o’clock cocktail party hosted by Captain Rasmussen.

  How nice, I thought, hoping that Kathy had received one, too. I made sure I had my key before stepping into the narrow hallway and knocking on her door.

  “Hi, Jessica,” she said. “The room is lovely.”

  “It certainly is. Did you receive an invitation to a cocktail party this afternoon?”

  “Yes, the room steward delivered it, along with fruit and champagne. I got this, too.”

  I read the typewritten note she handed me. It was from the ship’s head of security, First Officer Kale.

  Dear Ms. Copeland—

  I see from the passenger manifest that you will be joining us on this Alaskan cruise. Naturally, I was interested in why you’d chosen to be on the cruise after having been with us just a short time ago. As I promised you during your previous visit, we will keep you fully informed of any developments in the search for your sister. I assume that you’ve chosen to take this cruise to further investigate her unfortunate disappearance. I would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to offer any continuing help, although as I’ve pointed out, it is now a police matter. But we stand ready to assist you in any way.

  “I’m impressed that he picked up your name from the passenger manifest,” I said. “You’ll meet with him, of course.”

  “We’ll meet with him,” she said. “I’m afraid I wasn’t very good at asking questions the last time I was with him.”

  “If you’d like,” I said. “Ready for the emergency drill?”

  “I suppose so. I’ve never been to one before.”

  “It’s easy,” I said. “We gather together in our assigned meeting spots near our lifeboats and are told what to do in case of an emergency.”

  “I hope we don’t have to use that information.”

  I laughed. “I’m sure we won’t, Kathy. Come on, put on your life vest. We don’t want to be late.”

  After the emergency drill had been completed, and our luggage had been delivered to our rooms, the Glacial Queen left the Seattle pier and we were on our way to Alaska. I stood on my balcony and watched the busy waterfront slip by slowly and silently.

  Kathy called First Officer Kale. He arrived at her cabin a few minutes later, and I joined them. Kale was a nice-looking young man in a nondescript sort of way. His blue uniform was tailored and pressed, his hair, carrot red, was close-cropped in true military style. At first, he was somewhat uncomfortable having me there, but Kathy explained who I was and why we were traveling together. While that seemed to mollify him, I had the impression from the outset that he would have been happier had neither of us been on the cruise.

  “As I’ve told Ms. Copeland,” he said to me after we’d taken seats around the coffee table, “there’s really nothing further we can offer in the way of help regarding her sister’s disappearance.”

  “I understand that,” Kathy said, “but I couldn’t just sit back at home without trying to do something to find her. I thought that by retracing Willie’s steps, especially with Mrs. Fletcher, I might learn something that’s helpful.”

  “Of course,” Kale said, shifting in his chair. “It’s just that—”

  “It’s just that having us onboard looking for someone who ended up missing from your ship might be unsettling to other passengers,” I said.

  He smiled at me and nodded.

  “I assure you,” I said, “that we’ll be as discreet as possible.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a minute,” Kale responded, “and please don’t misunderstand. We’re delighted to have you as passengers. But, as you say, Mrs. Fletcher, we want to do everything possible to ensure that our other passengers are not inconvenienced.”