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

by Jessica Fletcher

  “We’ve been told that he and Willie became good friends during the cruise.”

  His verbal denial was even less genuine. “I saw nothing like that,” he said. “No, I never see them together. Maybe once, twice, you know, to talk like friends. But you sound like you think that maybe they had romance on their minds. Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” I said, having decided that there wasn’t anything to be gained by prolonging the conversation. Maybe one of the waiters who’d served Wilimena would be more helpful. I asked for permission to speak with them, which the maître d’ reluctantly granted, making much of how busy they were getting ready for the dinner crowd.

  The two waiters who’d served Willie during her cruise were young and eager to please. They smiled constantly and did a lot of head nodding. But their English wasn’t good enough to deal in the sort of subtleties I was seeking, and Kathy and I left the dining room frustrated.

  “They did agree that she promised to send them gifts,” Kathy said, looking for something positive to have come out of our inquiries.

  “It sounds like she promised gifts to everyone she met,” I said. “Willie must have an insatiable need to be loved.”

  “She’s always been that way,” Kathy said. “Even as a little girl. She was always playing the princess. She knew that she was the pretty one in the family, and everyone reinforced that.”

  She said it with an unmistakable hint of regret in her voice, and I felt for her. Obviously, her sister had used her good looks and outgoing personality throughout her life to capture the limelight. It’s been my experience that people like that, particularly women, seldom find lasting happiness, as they are always seeking someone or something new to feed their need for approval. But Kathy, who is one of the most grounded and inwardly contented people I’ve ever known, had undoubtedly envied her sister growing up, and obviously still did to some extent. Amazing how siblings coming from the same parentage and household can be so different.

  At dinner, the conversation at each table was, of course, about the death of John Smith. I’d kept Officer Kale’s confidence about the dead man’s identity, but everyone seemed to know it by the time we gathered in the Vista dining room. Rumor mills are powerful engines, especially within the confines of a cruise ship. Of course, I received many compliments on my PA announcement, but whether it did any good in minimizing speculation that a murder had taken place was pure conjecture. Some passengers said it had, but judging from the buzz at the table next to us, I had my doubts.

  “How can someone just fall off a ship like this?” a man asked his tablemates. “He had to have been pushed.”

  “Mrs. Fletcher says we should wait until all the facts are in,” replied his wife.

  A couple from a nearby table came to where I sat with Kathy, Gladys Montgomery, the Johansens, and Bill Henderson. “I have a theory about what happened today,” the man said, leaning close to my ear.

  I listened patiently. His thesis was that John Smith had insulted a married woman and the husband had taken his revenge.

  “Interesting,” I said, “but what do you base it on?”

  “Common sense,” he replied haughtily, and recountedfor us just such a situation that he’d read about years ago. I didn’t bother to suggest that what had happened on a ship years ago didn’t have any bearing on today’s unfortunate event. He and his wife eventually left us, he with a satisfied expression on his broad, craggy face.

  As had become our habit, we left the dining room together but then went our separate ways. Kathy and Bill said they were going to catch the second night of the passenger talent show, which the Johansens said at dinner had been hysterically funny. David Johansen had asked Kathy if she would sit down at some point the following day for an interview. She readily agreed, although she pointed out that we’d be arriving in Juneau at seven in the morning and she and I planned to spend the day in Alaska’s capital. They arranged to meet at six the next evening in the Crow’s Nest, where a cocktail hour would be under way. According to the daily program delivered to each cabin in the morning, the gangway would be raised at seven thirty and we would be on our way overnight to Sitka.

  I elected to join Gladys Montgomery in the Explorers’ Lounge for the classical music concert, which featured harp and flute in a lovely rendition of Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp, followed by a Beethoven piece I’d not heard before. The music was soothing, and I noticed that Gladys almost nodded off a few times, although she never allowed her eyes to fully close. There weren’t many people in the audience, perhaps two dozen, but they were obviously lovers of classical music. Their attention to the musicians and their immersion in the music were total.

  Following the concert, Gladys announced that she was heading for bed. I wished her a good night’s sleep and went up one level to the promenade deck, where the library was located. I found the book about the gold rush that I’d started perusing the previous day and settled in a quiet corner to continue reading. I hadn’t noticed the first time that there was an entire chapter dedicated to Kathy’s aunt, Thelma Copeland, better known as the infamous Dolly Arthur.

  According to the book, Dolly had worked as a waitress in Vancouver, B.C., before heading for Alaska. She realized by the time she was eighteen that there was more money to be made from entertaining men than waiting tables, so she came to Alaska to seek her fortune. I found it interesting that she did not consider herself a prostitute. She preferred to call herself a “sporting woman” and said she had no use for “whores,” describing them as crass and uncouth.

  During her first year in Ketchikan, she worked at Black Mary’s Star dance hall. But she soon branched out on her own and opened what quickly became one of the town’s most popular bordellos.

  There were three photographs of Dolly in various poses. She appeared to be a big woman with a full figure and a hint of mischief in her smile. Accompanying text claimed that she had a vicious, hair-trigger temper and used four-letter words at the drop of a hat. But she was well liked by everyone in town, her reputation enhanced by a penchant for tipping lavishly.

  This brief story of her life read like a novel. I was particularly fascinated with material concerning those men in her life who were more to her than paying customers. One in particular, a longshoreman named Lefty, especially caught my eye. According to the author, Lefty and Dolly enjoyed a relationship that lasted more than twenty years. Not that they were together constantly during that period. Lefty had a reputation as a ladies’ man, and he often left Dolly for long stretches at a time. But he always returned. Dolly was quoted as saying, “Lefty went away sometimes, but he always came back to me.”

  It was the final paragraph about Dolly’s relationship with Lefty that had special meaning for me. According to legend, Lefty struck it rich in a creek north of town and gave the gold he panned to Dolly for safekeeping. Shortly after that, Lefty left town for a few days, promising that he would be back within a week. He didn’t return. Rumor had it that he’d been killed by another miner in a dispute over the ownership of the stake Lefty had claimed. His body was never discovered. That left Dolly with riches far beyond whatever money she made by running her house of ill repute. The few people who knew of the gold Lefty had given her assumed she would shut down her business and move to a less harsh place in which to live out her final years. But that didn’t happen. She continued to run the brothel until legal prostitution was finally ended in 1954, and she lived there until her death in July 1975.

  I closed the book, sat back, and tried to envision what life must have been like during those rough-and-tumble days in Ketchikan. It was a wide-open town, with its legal red-light district along Creek Street and with an equally thriving industry in rum running to get around Alaska’s Bone Dry Law, which preceded America’s Prohibition act by three years. Dolly Arthur, and other women like her, must have been a special breed to have ventured into the wilds of Alaska, a rugged, lawless frontier.

  I replaced
the book on the shelf and chose another, a history of the various towns and cities we would be visiting on the cruise. I was on my way out of the library when Officer Kale stopped me.

  “Enjoying your evening, Mrs. Fletcher?” he asked.

  “Very much,” I replied. “The classical music concert was lovely. I’ve been doing some reading and thought I would take a book back to my cabin.”

  “I understand you’ve been questioning some of the crew about Ms. Copeland’s disappearance.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Ms. Copeland’s sister and I spoke with some of the staff in the dining room.”

  “So I’ve been told,” he said. “I thought we had an understanding that you wouldn’t interfere in shipboard activities.”

  “I hardly consider the few minutes we spent with them to constitute interfering in anything,” I said.

  “Don’t misunderstand,” he said. “As I told you and Ms. Copeland, I stand ready to help you in any way I can. I’m well aware of how upsetting the disappearance of Ms. Copeland’s sister must be, and I share your desire to come to some conclusion and achieve closure. At the same time, I have an obligation to the other passengers on the ship.”

  “I think we understand each other perfectly,” I said.

  “Yes, I’m sure we do. As long as we’re discussing this, would you mind telling me what the dining room staff had to say?”

  “Not at all. They tried to be helpful but really had little to offer. It does seem that Wilimena Copeland openly discussed the purpose of her trip with everyone, including your dining room staff.”

  “You’re talking about the gold she claimed was hers.”

  “Yes. It wasn’t very prudent of her.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “Well,” I said, “Ms. Copeland and I appreciate your concern, Officer Kale. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Enjoy the rest of your evening, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  As I watched him walk away, I experienced an unexpected negative reaction. While he was certainly pleasant enough, and seemed to carry out his duties professionally, there was something unsettling about him. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and I quietly reminded myself that I was probably reacting to something that had nothing to do with him. Still, I’ve learned over the years to put some credence in such vague feelings and not to summarily dismiss them.

  I was filled with a torrent of thoughts as I slowly made my way in the direction of my cabin. Naturally, I thought of the man—allegedly John Smith—who’d met such a cold, cruel death in the icy waters of Glacier Bay. Where on the ship had he gone over the side? Had he slipped? Had he deliberately flung himself over the rail? Or had someone helped him end his life?

  I thought of Kathy, too, who was off enjoying the evening with Bill Henderson. It was good that she was finding some happiness during the cruise. Traveling all this way in search of a missing sister, and anticipating an unhappy ending, must be weighing heavily on her. The one hope for optimism had to do with Willie’s personality and past behavior. Disappearing for months at a time was not unusual for her, according to Kathy, and the hope was that this was simply another one of those whimsical flights from reality.

  I took a detour and went down to the main deck, where Officer Kale had said John Smith’s cabin was located. I passed by the front office and shore excursion areas and proceeded toward the stern of the ship. There was no doubt which cabin had been his. Crime scene tape, red instead of the usual yellow, was draped across the door, and a young man in uniform stood watch.

  “Good evening,” I said.

  “Good evening, ma’am.”

  “There must be something unusually interesting in that cabin,” I said, adding a large smile to mitigate my obvious curiosity.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, the stern expression never leaving his youthful face.

  “Mind if I ask what’s in there?” I said.

  “I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am,” he said, maintaining his erect posture.

  “Now you really have me wondering,” I said pleasantly.

  He said nothing.

  “Well,” I said, “I was just passing by and was curious. Have a nice evening.”

  No one was at the small circular bar in the atrium portion of the deck, and I sat at one of the stools. “I’d like just a taste of brandy,” I told the bartender. After I’d been served, I looked down into the snifter and had the fanciful notion that the answer to Wilimena’s disappearance might be seen in the shimmering amber liquid, like a fortune-teller seeking wisdom and insight in tea leaves. I smiled at the thought. All I saw in the brandy was the reflection of the overhead lights.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the bartender. “I was wondering whether you remember a woman who was on a previous Alaskan cruise.”

  “I don’t know,” he responded. “Who was she?”

  “Her name was Wilimena Copeland.”

  I started to describe her, but the bartender’s easy laugh made that unnecessary. “Willie, you mean,” he said, his laugh louder now. “Everyone remembers her. She was—”

  “A bit of a character,” I provided.

  “If you say so, ma’am.”

  “Did you serve her at this bar?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. I believe this was her favorite spot to end each evening.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said, tasting the brandy. “Did she usually come here with the same people?”

  “Not really,” he said, polishing glassware as he spoke to me. “Well, she and Mr. Quarlé showed up together a few times.”

  “I’m sure they did,” I said. “I know that Maurice was quite fond of her.”

  “You know Maurice?”

  “Oh, yes, I certainly do. Did Willie and Maurice say what they planned to do when they went ashore?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I remember,” he said, laughing again. “Maybe look for the gold together.”

  “Ah, yes, the gold,” I said.

  “She said she would send me a gift after she found it,” the bartender said.

  “I’m sure she did,” I said, taking a last sip of brandy. “I think I’ll call it a night. Thank you.”

  I signed the check using my cabin number and got up to leave.

  “Do you know what happened to her?” the bartender asked, not laughing this time. Word of her disappearance had obviously gotten around.

  “No, I don’t, but if I find out I’ll let you know.”

  I had a sinking feeling as I walked away that if I did find out what happened to Wilimena Copeland, any news that I might convey to this bartender would not be happy.

  Chapter Eight

  I realized something was different the moment I opened my eyes the following morning. It took me a few seconds to figure out exactly what it was. We were no longer moving.

  I opened the drapes and looked down over the town of Juneau. I checked the small travel alarm I always bring with me on trips; it was a few minutes past seven. We must have just arrived.

  I quickly showered and dressed for the day. I didn’t know what the weather would be like in Juneau, or how changeable it might be, so I chose clothing that could be layered and put on my most comfortable walking shoes. I was going to call Kathy’s cabin, but her knock on my door beat me to it. We decided to have breakfast at the Lido buffet instead of the dining room because it would be faster. I was anxious to get ashore and start the process of tracing Willie Copeland’s movements in Juneau.

  After leaving the buffet line with our breakfast trays, we found a vacant table by a window.

  “Did you bring Willie’s receipts from Juneau?” I asked.

  “I have them right here,” she said and handed them to me.