Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  “Sure. Pick any you want.”

  Carolyn had volunteered to make everyone breakfast, and by the time Jessie and Tank had rejoined them, she was helping Dave lay platters of bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, and toast on the table, accompanied by slices of her famous rhubarb pie, which Webster attacked with gusto. “My mother used to make rhubarb pie,” he said around a forkful. “Haven’t had any in years.”

  “Glad you like it,” Carolyn said, pulling up a chair beside Dave to join them.

  “She wins ribbons at the fair with this pie,” he bragged, cutting into a slice of his own.

  When they had finished eating, everyone helped clear the table and carry dishes back to the kitchen. Webster donned an apron and insisted on turning chief bottle-washer, while Maxie and Loomis dried and Carolyn returned clean items to their proper places.

  Jessie, taking the two dogs outside for a walk, found Patrick alone on the deck staring out at the lake, which was now bright with sunshine and watery colors. He glanced back at the sound of the door she closed behind her, then quickly turned his face south again. But she had seen the tears on his face.

  “Patrick?” she questioned softly, stepping up to the place where he leaned on the rail. “You sorry about him?”

  “God, no!” The words exploded from him. “I’m glad he’s dead.”

  She waited.

  “He killed my mother,” he told her through stiff lips. “All of a sudden I just really missed her again. That’s all.”

  “That’s a lot.” There was little she could say and nothing she could do to ease the pain of that loss. It made her feel ineffectual, but all anyone could do was be there for him and share when they could. “It hurts to miss somebody. I know.”

  He wiped at his face with his fists and turned to her with a worried look.

  “Will they make me go back, Jessie? I don’t want to go back—I want to go on to Fairbanks. But he said he told them that I killed her.”

  “Oh, Patrick—no-o. The inspector said that Loomis came looking for you because they didn’t believe him.”

  He was silent for a minute. “I thought Loomis was a pal of my stepfather’s.”

  “No. He was sent after you because he knew there was something wrong with the story your stepfather was telling and they wanted to hear your side. They knew he was the one who’d been hurting your mother—not you. The idea of your killing her didn’t make any sense—ever.”

  He nodded, relieved.

  “You may have to go back, but maybe not right now. Would you like me to ask him if you can go later?”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course.”

  When they both turned back to look down on the lake, she saw that the swan had been joined by a half-dozen ducks, all paddling along the shore between the two boats, now beached in their usual places.

  Jessie thought about McMurdock’s body slowly falling and coming to rest somewhere on the deep bottom of Teslin Lake.

  Everyone who dies joins everyone else who ever died, through water, she mused, watching a breeze make small waves dance on the lake. Somehow, wherever they fall or are buried, water connects them; rain falls on their quiet resting places and runs off to join other water. It’s the melding agent of wars, for the blood of soldiers from all the battles of history has been washed away by the rain and eventually found its way down rivers and streams to some ocean, becoming one with its salt and the blood of others. It was fitting, she thought, that human blood had the same salt content as sea water.

  In a few minutes she left Patrick and went to ask Webster what she had promised, only to find that Maxie had already plowed that particular ground. She had arranged with Webster and Loomis for Patrick to ride with her to Fairbanks, where the police would contact him for any information they needed. He might even be able to give a deposition to the local police there, since his stepfather would no longer be making accusations.

  Loomis had wandered off to the lake, where he could be seen skipping rocks across the water, to the displeasure of the swan and ducks, but Jessie told Webster all that had happened since the last time they had spoken, at Summit Lake. He listened attentively, asked a few clarifying questions, and took notes of it all.

  “How is Patrick’s friend doing?” she asked, when they had finished. “Kim, the one I found in the pool at the hot springs.”

  “He’s doing fine. Kids that age recuperate pretty fast, but he was very lucky you got him out when you did.”

  Well before noon, Inspector Webster and Detective Loomis had gone, heading back to Dawson Creek, where Loomis would pick up the car he had left and continue on back to Wyoming. It would take weeks and a lot of paperwork to complete what had turned into an international and inter-provincial situation, but at least it seemed that, given McMurdock’s death, there would be no complicating murder charges leveled at anyone alive.

  Jessie moved the Winnebago up the hill and into a space next to the Jayco, which Maxie had parked close to the back door of the lodge. Tank was still hanging close, so she took him with her when she settled for a nap that stretched into midafternoon. Patrick, too, chose a snooze, but in the Jayco. Maxie, after a tour of the resort with Dave, cheerfully assisted Carolyn with dinner preparations in the spacious kitchen, where they shared recipes and anecdotes of the highway and its travelers that they had met over the years.

  Jessie woke to long shafts of afternoon sunlight pouring between the trees and into the windows of the Winnebago, rested and ready for company again. She could hear Patrick stirring next door and, through the open window, invited him over. There was one question still on her mind, and when he was seated with a can of apple juice at the table, she asked it.

  “Last night I went down the hill and was listening outside when your stepfather was shouting at you in here. He asked you what you had done with something. What was he talking about, Patrick?”

  He looked up at her without a word for a long minute, then turned his head to watch a bright-blue whiskey jack hop along a picnic table outside the window.

  “It isn’t important now,” he said quietly, frowning.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” His frown vanished, replaced with acceptance and relief. “It was something he doesn’t need anymore—so it doesn’t matter. I just want to forget it.”

  “Will it cause problems later?”

  “No.”

  “Will it ever hurt anyone?”

  “No.”

  “You?”

  He shook his head.

  They looked at each other in silence, and finally Jessie nodded. “Okay.”

  He had a right to keep his own counsel, she decided. As long as it would do no further damage to him or to anyone else, let it go.

  “Well, hey, let’s go find Maxie.”

  They spent a pleasant and quiet evening, first over drinks on the deck, then over an extended dinner for five. No one else had pulled off the highway and wandered in to make use of the RV parking, cabins, or tents, which gave Jessie and Maxie a peaceful opportunity to nourish their growing friendship with Dave and Carolyn. The two were working hard to make their resort a growing concern, and it was already one of the best Jessie had found along the long highway north.

  Asking them what they did during the winter months, when everything froze into snowy silence and there were few travelers to stop at their door, Jessie was interested to find that they spent part of each winter season in South America. There they collected handmade sweaters to bring back for sale in the small gift and book shop that occupied the front part of the tented half of the lodge. She had noticed the bright colors and patterns, which did not look local, and was pleased to pick one out as a souvenir of her visit. Maxie helped her choose a blue and green one with a bit of yellow in the design that she was assured suited her blond coloring.

  By ten o’clock they were all ready for a good night’s rest. The kitchen was clean and ready for morning, and they were getting up from their chairs when Dave poured the last of the
bottle of wine into their glasses and proposed a toast.

  “To new friendships,” he said, smiling. “May they grow into old ones.”

  27

  IT WAS ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY WHEN JESSIE, MAXIE, and Patrick left Dawson Peaks Resort the next morning, leaving Dave and Carolyn waving from the lodge. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  At the top of the hill, Jessie, who was in the lead, turned left toward Teslin and was surprised and delighted to see two bicyclists pedaling along the side of highway ahead of her—Craig Severson and his friend Leo Taylor from Fort Nelson. She honked as she passed them and pulled over at a turnoff that came up handily in about a half mile.

  “Hey, Jessie,” Severson called with a grin, braking to a stop where she stood by the Winnebago, then raising a hand to greet Maxie in the Jayco. “Thought you’d be long gone by now.”

  She explained their delays briefly, knowing he would be glad to hear that the person who had thrown the boy off the Kiskatinaw Bridge would no longer be a threat to anyone.

  “You’re moving right along, aren’t you? Good weather makes a difference.”

  “Yeah, a lot. We’ve been making over a hundred miles a day. It’s a great trip now that the rain’s gone.”

  They soon glided back onto the highway and Jessie headed the motor home to Teslin, where she and Maxie had agreed to pull in for gas. Filling both tanks, they went into the Lakeshore Motel to pay for it, leaving Patrick and Stretch in the Jayco and Tank content to watch from the window of the Winnebago to be sure Jessie did not disappear again without him.

  Waiting for the clerk to finish with a customer, Jessie looked around curiously at the people having their breakfast and noticed a couple she recognized.

  The elderly couple she had seen at Fort Steele, then again at Liard Hot Springs, were sitting together at a small table near the middle of the room, their matching blue windbreakers hung over the backs of their chairs. The woman had a cup of coffee in one hand, almost as if she had forgotten she held it, and was staring blankly out the window at the RV park behind the motel, a slightly bored and forlorn expression on her face. The white-haired man forked pieces of a cinnamon roll into his mouth and did not look up or speak between bites.

  How sad, Jessie thought to herself. There were times she regretted her single state and thought about the possibilities of growing old alone. But there were others when, noticing a couple like this one, she knew exactly what she did not want in a relationship.

  Maxie signed her credit card receipt and went back outside, leaving Jessie at the counter. Handing her card to the clerk, Jessie waited for her to ring up the price of the fuel, but before she could, a waitress came bustling across the room with a question. “What’s the phone number for the restaurant, Jean? It’s not the same as the motel, is it?”

  “Nope. Different: 390-2575.”

  She turned to the cash register.

  Jessie stared at her, confused by what she had just heard.

  “What’s your area code?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Your area code. What is it?”

  “Oh. It’s eight-six-seven.”

  Reaching into the pocket of Loomis’s jacket, Jessie retrieved the scrap of paper she had found earlier: 867-390-2575. The numbers matched.

  Dropping it back in the pocket, she automatically signed the receipt and handed it back with the pen.

  “Do you ever get phone calls for people in the restaurant?” she asked.

  “Yes, sometimes. There’s a pay phone, but it’s only for outgoing calls—doesn’t ring here.”

  “So anyone trying to reach a customer would have to call this number?”

  “Right.”

  Her mind in a whirl of speculation, Jessie went back outside and directly to the Jayco, where Maxie and Patrick were waiting, ready to take off.

  “Maxie,” she asked through the driver’s window, “did Loomis make any phone calls between here and Watson Lake, when he was riding with you?”

  The older woman thought back to the long, sleepy evening ride two nights before, remembering the image of Dan Loomis standing in the small store that was part of the service station at the Rancheria Motel. “Yes,” she said. “He called Inspector Webster. Why?”

  “Did you hear him make the call?”

  “No, I was outside having the gas tank filled.”

  “So you’re not really sure who he called—just who he said he called?”

  “I guess not, but he came back and said he’d talked to Webster.” Then she recalled the information about Dawson Peaks that Webster claimed not to have received when they met him here in Teslin. “What’s wrong, Jessie?”

  “Let’s pull these rigs away from the gas pumps and talk about it.”

  Maxie came to the Winnebago, leaving Patrick with Stretch in the Jayco. “I thought maybe this would be something he didn’t need to be involved in,” she said, climbing in and settling at the table. “What’s going on?”

  Jessie explained about the phone number and what it indicated to her.

  “I keep wondering just how McMurdock found us so easily at Dawson Peaks. He couldn’t possibly have seen the motor home from the highway, or known we were there, unless…Did you tell Loomis where we were supposed to meet, before you got to Rancheria?”

  “Yes,” Maxie said, slowly nodding. “I’m sure I did. We’d been talking about Patrick’s relationship with his stepfather. Then he asked me where you might go for the night. So I told him. When we stopped for gas, he said he should call Webster.”

  They looked at each other in hesitation and perplexity.

  “But Loomis shot McMurdock,” Maxie pointed out.

  Jessie agreed. “And I’d like to know if there was another reason for that killing, wouldn’t you?”

  “How would we ever find out? Webster wouldn’t know. McMurdock was about to drown Patrick. It seemed so…so…”

  “Yes. It did. And if he had other motives, what a perfect opportunity it offered to stay in the clear. If McMurdock was about to go down for his wife’s murder, couldn’t Loomis have thought it was possible that he might be implicated, too?”

  “The good ole boys club would only go so far, you mean?”

  “Yeah, sort of. I think that maybe we should make a call to Webster. Let him work it out.”

  The rest of the drive home to Knik was not only uneventful, it was the most pleasant part of the trip for Jessie. The weather held, and the country she passed through seemed to be showing off its fresh spring green like a woman with a new dress, proudly and with the grace of knowing she looks good.

  There seemed to be wildlife everywhere. A black bear sat in a field of early sunflowers, hungrily munching on them and ignoring the traffic that passed practically at its back. Moose waded in ponds for the rushes that reach up through the water. Flocks of birds were completing their long migrations to the north, and there were more swans and ducks floating on the lakes and rivers, geese winging their way across the sky with noisy honks.

  Outside Whitehorse Jessie spent a last night with Maxie in the Wolf Creek government campground. They parked their motor homes next to the stream that murmured its way through the tall trees and walked their dogs around the circular road.

  A red fox dashed through an empty campsite near to them and disappeared into the brush on quick, silent feet. Squirrels chattered from the branches and descended, hoping for crumbs, driving Stretch wild with the desire to be after them. Tank watched him with tolerant dignity from his place by Jessie’s feet, knowing from experience that it was foolish to try.

  The two women relaxed in Maxie’s comfortable chairs with the bottle of Jameson’s on the table between them, quietly appreciating good whiskey, the setting, and each other’s company. Patrick had gone off on a walk of his own but would soon be back for dinner.

  “I’m going to miss you, Maxie,” Jessie told her friend.

  “We’ll have to get together this summer. You should come down to Home
r for a few days. I’d like that.”

  “And you could stop with me on your way to the Lower Forty-Eight this fall.”

  “I will definitely plan on it.”

  “What do you think Webster will do about Loomis?” Jessie asked, thinking back to the phone call they had made before leaving Teslin. It had been a long, all-night drive back to Dawson Creek, but they found him in his office, about to go home and to bed for the sleep he had missed.

  “Nothing without more substantial proof. Everything we feel we know is circumstantial. But I think he won’t forget it. Sometimes things like that take time.”

  “Who do you think broke into the Jayco in Prince George? Could that have been Loomis?”

  “It might have been, but it could also have been completely unrelated—just a chance kind of city thing. It doesn’t actually relate in any way that I can see.”

  “You’re probably right and we’ll never know.”

  Patrick came walking back toward them, an open, friendly grin spreading over his face at the sight of them taking their ease.

  “Hey,” Jessie said, taking a closer look. “Your brown hair is turning red again at the roots.”

  It was. He was turning gradually back into the mischievous boy who had stolen her lunch at Fort Steele—but not quite. There was now an older, more experienced expression that never quite left his eyes, and a confidence he had not had before.

  The next morning, after taking a look at Miles Canyon, where stampeders had run the rapids on their way to the Klondike a hundred years earlier, they parted company. Maxie had decided to make a quick two-day swing from Whitehorse to Skagway on the Alaskan coast before going on to Fairbanks by way of Dawson City and the Top of the World Highway. Jessie, eager now to get home, was headed for the border by the fastest route.

  With much waving, they split up at the junction and Jessie went on alone into town for enough groceries to take her the rest of the way. The highway ran along the top of a bluff south of Whitehorse, which lay on the banks of the Yukon River below. A loop route took her through the city. It was familiar, but she knew it best as the start for the Yukon Quest, the distance race she had run in February. Now the streets were bare of snow and ice, and it was bustling with people without heavy boots and down clothing. It was pleasant to drive through, but she only stopped for a few minutes at the market and went on out the other end of town where the loop route rejoined the Alaska Highway.