Coffee, Tea, or Murder?

by Jessica Fletcher

  “No matter what happens, Betsy, I’ll never let you go to jail. I swear I won’t. I’d rather go down in the Atlantic than see that happen.”

  “No one has to go to jail, Carl. For God’s sake, stop this!”

  “I know why you killed Wayne, Betsy. He deserved it, damn it! You did what you had to do to get him off your back. He was scum!”

  She was heard crying.

  “Please don’t kill us all,” she pleaded.

  A long period transpired during which no words were spoken. There were the sounds of Betsy’s sobbing, and at one point we heard her say, “I love you.”

  Eventually, the tape reached the point when Scherer agreed to allow me to come to the flight deck, and I replaced Betsy.

  “You can turn it off now,” I said. “We know the rest.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The mood was somber during the trip from Boston to Cabot Cove. The events of the past few days had settled in on all of us, and the realization that we came close to meeting a cold, violent death in the Atlantic Ocean wasn’t far from anyone’s thoughts.

  I’d convinced George to spend a few days in Cabot Cove, and he’d received permission from his superiors in London to do just that.

  “It was heartbreaking to see that lovely young flight attendant led away in handcuffs,” Susan Shevlin said as our stretch limo brought us closer to home.

  “Husband and wife hauled off that way,” Seth added, sadly. “They sold their souls to the devil, who in this case turned out to be Wayne Silverton.”

  “They’ll both spend the majority of their lives behind bars,” said Mort, “her for murdering Wayne, him for—all sorts of charges will be leveled at him.”

  “Captain Caine was almost another victim,” I said.

  “I checked with the hospital just before we left,” Seth said. “He’ll pull through fine.”

  “Thanks to you, Doc,” Mort said.

  “Thanks to Jessica, we all pulled through,” Maureen Metzger said, her voice breaking.

  “Let’s not forget Jed,” Jim Shevlin said.

  “Amen!”

  Jed and Barbara Richardson had flown to Boston in one of his two-seater Cessna 172s, and had left Logan Airport in it for the return trip to Cabot Cove. Jed’s final words to us were, “If we don’t make it, it’s because we’re overweight from all the stuff Barbara bought.”

  “How did you know that it was the first officer’s wife who’d stabbed Wayne Silverton,” George asked, “and not him?”

  “I didn’t know,” I said. “I just had this gut feeling. If he’d wanted to kill Wayne, he would have used the handgun he carried with him, not stolen Caine’s knife for the task. Besides, it was Betsy who’d been directly on the receiving end of his advances. If it weren’t for the cockpit voice recorder, we’d never have known. I’m sure Mr. Scherer would have maintained that he’d killed Wayne in order to save her.”

  “At least there was some honor to the whole sordid mess,” was Seth’s comment.

  Talk naturally turned to Christine Silverton. “What do you think will happen with her?” Maureen asked.

  “That’s up to the lawyers and the courts,” I said. I managed a laugh. “As we were leaving, I heard Mr. Casale say to Mr. Vicks that he was selling his share of SilverAir to the first sucker that came along. That’s exactly the way he put it. But I think that if whoever ends up owning it can get past this rocky start, it has a good chance of succeeding. All the drama aside, it was a good flight. Wayne was right. People will be willing to pay a little extra for some comfort and decent service.”

  “Sounds like you’re getting ready to apply to SilverAir for a job as a stewardess, Jessica,” Seth quipped.

  “The last thing I’d want to do,” I said. “I’m too old. And they’re not called stewardesses anymore, not with so many men holding those jobs.”

  “There’s no age restriction on being a flight attendant anymore,” Jim Shevlin said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” I said. “Besides, I’m not about to be asking, ‘Coffee, tea, or me?’ of anyone.” I turned and looked at George, who’d said little during the long drive. He smiled and patted my knee.

  George stayed in one of Seth’s spare rooms, and we all met for breakfast at Mara’s the following morning. Everyone looked rested and moods were considerably lighter than the night before. Other people in the dockside eatery knew of our adventure through television reports from Boston. Naturally, there were many questions, including a flurry of them by two reporters from Cabot Cove’s daily newspaper who’d tracked us down that morning. We decided to elect one spokesman to speak for us all, and that person was Mayor Jim Shevlin, who promised the reporters he’d meet with them later that morning.

  “What’s on your agenda today?” Maureen Metzger asked after we’d consumed stacks of Mara’s famed blueberry pancakes, and plenty of her strong coffee.

  “I thought I’d go flying for an hour.”

  “How could you possibly even think of doing that after what we went through yesterday?” Maureen asked.

  “It’s the most relaxing thing I can think of,” I said.

  “Mind a passenger?” George asked.

  “I’d love one.”

  “You’re brave to fly with me,” I said to George, who sat in the right-hand seat of the Cessna 172 aircraft I’d rented for an hour from Jed Richardson’s flight service. “I don’t have much experience.”

  “Knowing how capable and responsible you are with everything else you tackle, Jessica, I’m sure flying isn’t an exception.”

  We took a leisurely flight over the area surrounding the town, and I pointed out landmarks that I’d become familiar with during my flight training with Jed. I ended up flying over Cabot Cove itself so he could see it from the air.

  “As lovely as from the ground,” he commented after I announced it was time to return the plane. I made a slow turn in the direction of the airport.

  “Well, Jessica, you seem to be supremely relaxed up here in control of your airplane.”

  “I am,” I agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a feeling of freedom and relaxation before. Everyone kids me, of course. I fly a plane but don’t drive a car.”

  “From the statistics you’ve cited to me, we’re considerably safer up here than down there on a highway.”

  “It’s more than that,” I said as the airport came into sight. It takes time for novice pilots to be able to pick out runways from a few thousand feet above the earth, but you eventually become skilled at it. “The world disappears when I’m flying. My biggest regret is not having more time to enjoy it.”

  “You’re a busy woman, Jessica Fletcher,” he said, a hint of sadness in his voice. “You fly. You write bestselling novels. You tend your garden and cook elaborate meals and travel the world and—”

  “I can’t ever imagine not being busy,” I said while trimming up the plane with the small trim tab wheel on the floor between our seats.

  “Would you ever consider slowing down a bit and moving to London?”

  “I’ve thought of that many times, George. It’s one of my favorite cities in the world, and knowing you’re there only enhances the concept.”

  “Well?”

  I shook my head and added a little more throttle to maintain altitude. “It’s just not in the cards for me, I’m afraid, at least not at this juncture.”

  He laughed. “Recently, I’ve wondered whether I could be happy living in—oh, let’s say, the States. I’m coming up on retirememt age and—”

  “You? Retired? I can’t imagine it. You’d be bored silly.”

  “You’re probably right, although the notion has a certain appeal. I wonder how good friends living an ocean apart managed to see each other now and then before the aircraft was invented, or fast steamships.”

  “I’m sure they managed,” I said.

  “Just as we manage.”

  “Yes,” I agreed with a smile. “Just as we manage.” We fell silent and focu
sed on the sights two thousand feet below.

  “I feel sorry for the flight attendant, Ms. Molnari,” he said as I banked the plane into a shallow turn. “She had her nasty little fling with Silverton but fell madly in love with Captain Caine. She told me when I interviewed her during the flight to Boston that Caine was insanely jealous of Silverton and of her affair with him, as brief as it might have been. Caine threatened to break off their relationship. That’s why she feigned her suicide attempt, an ill-advised grand-stand play to get his attention.”

  “With Christine Silverton’s sleeping pills.”

  “Yes. Unknown to Mrs. Silverton, Caine had announced to Ms. Molnari that he was ending their relationship. He was in the enviable—or perhaps unenviable—position of having two attractive women in love with him. Ms. Molnari and Mrs. Silverton. Shortly after being told by Caine that he was breaking it off, Molnari was berated by Mrs. Silverton in her hotel room for having stolen Caine from her. This twin assault was too much for Ms. Molnari. She grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills from Mrs. Silverton’s bathroom, returned to Caine’s room, and swallowed some of the pills in his presence. Foolish woman.”

  “ ‘Desperate’ is more apt,” I said.

  “I suppose you’re right. The reason she didn’t accompany the rest of the crew into London the night you arrived was that she and Caine had a few drinks at Stansted. I don’t believe there ever was an old flying buddy, as he claimed.”

  “We both knew that, George, without being told. Time to go back.” I started the process of setting up to enter the traffic pattern at the Cabot Cove airport.

  “Yes, time to go back,” he said. “I wish it weren’t the case.”

  “I’ve only rented the plane for an hour.”

  “I wasn’t talking about going back to the airport, Jessica. I meant having to go back to London tomorrow. I like it here.”

  “And I love having you here.”

  “Maybe one day we’ll find time to really get to know each other, time together without a bloody murder interfering.”

  I laughed. “Based upon my track record, George, that’s not very likely. But I share your sentiment. Let’s make a point of it.”

  I entered Cabot Cove Airport’s left-hand traffic pattern, the standard for most airports unless otherwise posted, flew the downwind leg with the wind behind me, turned onto what’s called the base leg, and then made another ninety-degree left turn that lined me up with the twenty-one-hundred-foot asphalt runway. Every pilot knows that a perfect landing isn’t possible every time, no matter how skilled and experienced you are, but I wanted this one to be as smooth as possible. It turned out to be just that, a by-the-book touchdown at precisely the point on the runway I’d aimed for. I turned off the runway as soon as the small plane had slowed sufficiently and taxied to the hangar where Jed housed and maintained his fleet of small planes. He waved as I pulled up to the tie-down area and killed the engine.

  “Bravo, Jessica,” George said.

  He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Next thing I know,” he said, “you’ll be applying to become an astronaut.”

  “I’d take you with me to the moon,” I said.

  “And I wouldn’t hesitate to go.”

  Read on for a sneak peek

  at the next exciting

  Murder, She Wrote orginal mystery

  Panning for Murder

  Coming from New American Library

  in October 2007

  “You must be beside yourself with worry,” I said. “I haven’t slept a wink since I received the call from the Alaska State Police.”

  “She’s disappeared? I mean, really disappeared?”

  “Yes. At least that’s what the police said. She left the ship in Ketchikan and never returned. They have a system for tracking people who get off the ship to enjoy shore time in the ports. They scan your passenger card when you leave the ship, and again when you return. Their computers show her leaving at nine-thirty in the morning, but she was never scanned as having returned.”

  “Maybe their computers made a mistake,” Seth Hazlitt said. My dear friend, and Cabot Cove’s most popular physician, has an inherent mistrust of computers.

  We were gathered in my living room. It had been a particularly cold March, with a series of snowstorms, and many days when the temperature never rose above freezing. I’d made stew, whipped up a salad, and served a red wine recommended to me by my favorite Cabot Cove wine shop. After dinner, we retreated to my living room, where I had the fireplace going, and I served coffee and tea, and a plate of cookies. With me were Seth; Sheriff Mort Metzger and his wife, Maureen; Charlene Sassi, owner of the town’s favorite bakery and the source of the cookies; Michael Cunniff, one of Cabot Cove’s leading attorneys; and Kathy Copeland, a dear friend of many years and the person relating this troublesome tale. She’d received the call about her sister five days earlier, and had immediately flown to Alaska to confer with authorities there. She’d returned to Cabot Cove only yesterday.

  “I spoke with that officer in Alaska,” Mort said. “They seem like competent fellas.”

  “I’m sure they are,” I agreed.

  “Very nice and very professional,” Kathy said. “And I appreciate you taking the time to speak with them, Mort.”

  “Least I could do,” our sheriff replied.

  “Kathy, I don’t want to make light of your concern,” I said, “but your sister, Wilimena, has been known in the past to—well, to disappear for periods of time.”

  Kathy sat back in her chair, rolled her eyes, and sighed. “I know, I know,” she said. “Willie has always been a free spirit. There have been times when I wasn’t able to reach her for months at a stretch, but then she surfaced from wherever she’d gone and regaled me with tales of her adventures. But this feels different.”

  She sat up straight and extended her hands as though to elicit our understanding and agreement with what she was about to say. “There was no reason for her to leave the ship and not come back. Sure, Willie would take off at the drop of a hat and follow some whim of the moment, but not this way. I just know something terrible has happened to her.”

  We fell silent as we contemplated what she’d said, and avoided further comment by taking much longer than necessary to choose a cookie from the platter. Mort broke the silence.

  “You say you brought back some of her things,” he said to Kathy.

  “Yes. The cruise authorities sealed off her cabin and secured all of her personal belongings.”

  “Did the Alaskan police examine those things?” I asked.

  “Some of them, Jessica. Willie always took along a large envelope in which to keep her receipts from a trip. The police photocopied them for me.”

  “Those receipts would give some indication of where she went, and what she might have done in the various ports-of-call,” I offered.

  “Did you look through them yourself?” Michael Cunniff asked. He had been practicing law in Cabot Cove for as long as I’ve lived there. He was in his late seven-ties but hadn’t lost a step mentally. Physically, however, he was a mass of orthopedic maladies, which necessitated walking with a cane. With long, flowing silver hair and a penchant for colorful bow ties to accompany his many suits, he was an attorney out of central casting—or maybe a United States senator of yesteryear.

  “I must have gone over them a dozen times on the flight home,” Kathy replied, referring to her sister’s receipts. “They were all from the ports the ship had visited earlier, Juneau and Sitka. Ketchikan was the last stop in Alaska before returning to Seattle.”

  “And?” I asked.

  Kathy shrugged. “They mean nothing to me. Just receipts from shops and restaurants Willie visited in those ports, and a bunch of shipboard receipts, too, from the various lounges and shops.”

  “I’d like to see them,” Michael said. He’d been Kathy’s attorney since she moved to Cabot Cove forty years ago.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Are the Alaskan police at all c
onfident about finding Wilimena?” Seth asked.

  “They said they would do all they could,” Kathy answered, “but they also reminded me that Alaska is a very big place . . . especially—”

  “Especially what?” I asked.

  “Especially if Willie doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it, Jess, that you’ll soon be heading for Alaska?” Maureen said.

  It was true. I’d visited our forty-ninth state years ago on a whirlwind book promotion tour. So, although I literally had visited Alaska, I’d never seen it, and had decided to rectify that by booking an Inland Passage cruise—the same one Kathy’s sister, Wilimena, had taken and from which she’d vanished. I’d booked the cruise months in advance, combining it with a long weekend in Seattle prior to the ship’s departure. I have a favorite mystery bookstore there run by a marvelous gentleman, Bill Farley, who always arranges for a book signing whenever I’m within striking distance of his store on Cherry Street.

  My reason for choosing an Alaskan cruise, as opposed to visiting other places on the globe, was a nagging need to get closer to nature. It had been building in me all winter, and by the time January rolled around, it had become almost an obsession. True, Maine teems with wildlife, which is one of many reasons I love living there. But Alaska has a very different lure for those of us enamored of nature and the remarkable array of creatures with whom we share our planet. So many of my friends have returned from up north filled with lifelong memories of having sailed into the midst of a pod of orca whales, or having seen majestic bald eagles on virtually every treetop. Witnessing nature up close and personal has always helped me put things, including myself, into perspective, affirming my place in this world.

  “Maybe you could ask a few questions while you’re there, Mrs. F.,” Mort suggested. “You know, check in with the local police and see if they’ve made any progress in finding Wilimena.”

  “I’d be happy to do that,” I said, “although I’m not sure they’d be anxious to share anything with me.”