Legends Can Be Murder

by Shelton, Connie

  “Oh. Yes, I came in on the Portland, Monday. Joshua Farmer.”

  “I’m Harry Weaver. Pleased to meet you.” They shook hands. “Got your kit organized yet?”

  Joshua had seen the enormous list of equipment required before he could start the trek along the Chilkoot Trail into the Klondike. Over a thousand pounds of clothing, food and gear for each man. He had a dozen questions about how one would physically manage such a load, but at this moment it seemed more prudent to act as if he had already figured that out. He nodded.

  “Have you been there and returned?” he asked Harry.

  “Partway,” the man said, enigmatically.

  Before Joshua could inquire further, a disturbance erupted near the head of the line. Oaths flew, fists were raised.

  “Happens every time the mail comes in,” Harry said. “They don’t have enough help in there, so they’ll sort part of it, hand it out, close up to sort some more. We could be out here three or four hours.”

  Joshua had never heard of such an inefficient system and his surprise must have showed.

  “They hire four men but pay only enough for one. No one stays long and it’s a thankless job because the patrons are always angry over something.”

  Such as being locked out in the cold while the mail was sorted. He sighed, debating whether to ask Harry to save his spot in line while he went back to the rooming house for his warmer coat. He again touched the pocket with the letter.

  His companion must have sensed Joshua’s discomfort. “If you have the money for your stamp, I’d be happy to mail that letter for you when I get inside.”

  Joshua felt his brows rise.

  “Just figured. You been here four days, you want to get word back home to somebody. You won’t have mail waiting for you, like the rest of these fellows because there’s been no time for her letter to reach Skagway.”

  Joshua smiled. “You know what, Harry? You could be a detective.”

  The man smiled and Joshua instantly trusted him. He pulled out the letter to Maddie and placed it, along with two pennies, into Harry’s hand.

  “Thank you so much, sir.” He tipped his hat. “I’m sure I will be seeing you around.”

  Joshua took a shortcut through a field behind a large building, where even at nine in the morning rowdy music from a piano could be heard through the walls. Dirty snow, melted now to clumps of ice, lay in sad piles on the north sides of nearly every structure. He wondered at what point the days would warm enough to melt the last of it.

  A woman emerged from the doorway of a tiny shack that had been appended to the back of the dance hall. Strands of yellow hair fell from the knot at the top of her head and the strap of her cotton chemise had slid off one shoulder. She started to hike it back into place but when she spotted Joshua she sent him a coy smile and left the strap hanging.

  He stared at the ground and quickened his pace. Bachelors, and probably some of the married men who’d been in the gold fields a long time, undoubtedly visited these women in their cribs but Joshua was determined to get quickly to the Klondike, make his fortune, and send for Maddie and Isabelle as soon as possible. He would not have them living at her parents’ home forever.

  Mrs. McIlhaney’s house with its sign, Rooms For Rent, appeared on the next block and Joshua hurried inside. In the parlor, the early morning fire in the woodstove was dying. Mrs. McIlhaney had been one of the first women to join her husband (God rest his soul) here in Skagway, and she was probably in the kitchen starting dinner preparations as she schooled her two children in reading and writing at the kitchen table. She’d bragged to him when he rented the room that theirs was one of the early families to arrive after the initial influx of men, a bit less than two years ago. She recalled that Skagway had consisted of Captain William Moore’s log house, a couple of other wooden buildings, and a few hundred tents when she disembarked. Now there were close to ten thousand people, mostly men; virtually all of them were on their way up the White Pass Trail, or they would be as the snow melted and the summer days grew long. Including Joshua himself.

  He stood in front of the woodstove, stretching his hands toward it, nearly touching the black iron surface in an effort to draw any warmth he could manage. When his fingers would flex again he climbed the stairs to the tiny room he’d rented in the attic, a place he was thankful to have although he couldn’t fully stand up except in the very center of the room and his neck got a severe crick in it if he walked around in there for more than a few minutes. On the plus side, most of the heat from the ground floor came up here; despite the uninsulated walls and spaces where daylight showed, at least the sleeping quarters were tolerable. Besides, he would soon be on the trail.

  He sat on his bed and picked up the paper he’d been given aboard the steamship, the list of supplies. Too bad he hadn’t checked this before he left San Francisco, where the prices would have been so much lower. He’d assumed that outfitters here would be compassionate toward their fellow stampeders and that there would be ample stock of anything a potential gold miner would want. He was only now learning the sad truth. He stared at the neatly typed list, which had been compiled as the bare minimum for two men:

  4 barrels best flour, at $6..................................................... $24.00

  200 pounds granulated sugar, at 6 cents...............................12.00

  200 pounds navy beans, at 4 cents........................................ 8.00

  100 pounds of corn meal........................................................ 2.75

  250 pounds of breakfast bacon, at 12.5 cents........................31.25

  3 boxes yeast, 25 cents; one-half tin of matches, 50 cents...... 0.75

  That was only the beginning. Then came the items such as candles, a Yukon stove, and of course he must have mining tools. He scanned down the list: dried onions and potatoes, rope, clothing. Nails, pitch and wood to build a boat—he’d had no idea. Files, a coffee pot, shoe thread, twenty-four pounds of raisins, blankets, an ax, rubber hip boots, mosquito netting, goggles and snow glasses, buckets, pans, a tent, and of course a revolver and a rifle, each with its necessary ammunition. The list went on and on, a vast array of items for travel and survival.

  It amounted to nearly four-hundred dollars! Even at half that amount, assuming one man would pass the inspection at the Canadian border with half the goods, it was more money than he’d ever seen in one place. He began scratching off items. Surely he could get by without dried fruit—he didn’t care for it that much anyway—and he didn’t need the “best” coffee. There must be something less expensive that he could get hold of. On the other hand, where two men might share the cost of the guns, one man couldn’t very well take half a rifle.

  He checked off the items he already owned—primarily clothing—and he had already purchased a gold pan from a fellow at the docks in Seattle. Huh—the one item shown on the list at a lesser price than he had paid. A wave of disillusionment threatened, but he shoved it back. He pulled a small pouch from inside his undershirt, dumped the money out on the coverlet and began counting.

  Chapter 5

  Drake’s footsteps caused the wooden porch of our little abode to vibrate and I realized with a start that it was after five o’clock. I set the box of letters aside and dashed to the kitchen to put the casserole into the oven.

  “Kerby’s got his hands full,” Drake said as he poured glasses of wine for both of us. “Rhonda Mikowski threw such a fit—screaming ‘lawyer’ and ‘trauma’—that he ended up having to book a cruise cabin for them, but it was that or reimburse all their money and pay extra for rescheduling their flight home.”

  “Maybe the cruise will be just the therapy little Chandler needs,” I said, unable to keep the mocking tone out of my voice.

  He opened a bag of chips and gave one of his what-will-I-do-with-you smiles. I set the timer on the oven and we settled on the sofa while dinner baked.

  “So, meanwhile, he’s got two flights lined up for me tomorrow. One is
to take Chief Branson and a couple of forensic people back to Cabin One so they can poke around in the cave. Unless you’d like to take that one? You know the way, and it would be some additional mountain flight time for you.”

  Not to mention my insatiable curiosity whenever there’s something mysterious to puzzle over. I told him I’d love to do it.

  I woke up at 4:37 the next morning, partly because we still hadn’t done anything to darken our windows and partly because I couldn’t help feeling anticipation over talking to the police chief about that skeleton from the cave. I slipped my clothes on and brushed my teeth as quietly as possible, letting Drake take advantage of the fact that he can actually sleep with a blanket pulled over his head.

  Tiptoeing out to the kitchen, I started coffee and it began to brew while I let Freckles out of her crate and turned her loose in the backyard. We really should try to get a long walk done before I had to go off to helicopter work. She raced around the perimeter, nose to the ground, already claiming the property as her own in traditional dog fashion. Within two minutes she was back at the door, tail waving and ears perked in anticipation of breakfast. It doesn’t take a whole lot to keep a dog happy.

  I poured my coffee and stood at the window, watching the clouds, feeling a moment’s trepidation about flying across mountains so vast that a small aircraft is nothing but a speck against the firmament. But wasn’t that what we did all the time? The sky was no more infinite here than anywhere. I let out a calming breath, causing the coffee-steam to ripple in tendrils across the surface of the mug in my hand. Everything would be fine. I clipped the leash on Freckles just to prove it and we set off down Main Street.

  There’s something about being awake early and having full daylight. People were out in their gardens, where flowers were already beginning to bloom even though the days still felt pretty chilly to me. Someone had said that the short growing season was offset by the long hours of daylight, providing just the right conditions for bumper crops of vegetables that made our own desert-climate offerings look puny in comparison. Freckles pulled me along, stopping to touch noses with every other dog we encountered.

  By the time we circled a few blocks and walked back into the house I could hear signs of life from the bedroom. I mixed pancake batter and put a few slices of bacon into a skillet.

  “Wow, look at you, Miss Domesticity,” Drake teased as he walked into the kitchen and planted a kiss on my forehead. “And it’s not even six o’clock yet.”

  “I know, can you believe this?” While I’m a fairly early riser at home, I can’t say that once ever have I been flipping pancakes at this hour.

  He poured coffee for himself and set silverware and plates on the kitchen table. I put the platter in the middle and we got busy with the whole butter-and-syrup routine.

  “So, any words of wisdom for my flight today?” I asked, once we’d satisfied our initial hunger.

  “Trust your instruments.”

  He had told me this before, during my training and on occasions when weather was a factor. But I didn’t mind that he repeated it now. More pilots get in trouble by not believing what those gauges say, thinking they are somewhere they aren’t.

  “And, wear your lucky socks.” One corner of his mouth edged upward. It was an inside joke with us.

  On a job in Scotland a couple years ago I’d had a very close encounter with the North Sea; later, as I was wringing salt water out of my clothes I told him I had known I would be fine—I was wearing my lucky socks. Since then, I’ve never gone on an out-of-town job without them. Now, I pulled up the leg of my jeans to show him that I did, indeed, have them on, even though they were becoming a bit threadbare by now. I should add a heavier pair over them before heading out this morning.

  By nine o’clock I was standing beside the aircraft, eyeing a bank of clouds that hovered at the mountaintops, when Chief Branson and two others in uniform parked and walked toward me. I recognized one of them as Jerry, the officer who’d been on the call yesterday. Branson looked fairly chipper but the third guy barely grumbled a greeting. Definitely not a morning person.

  “I’m just going to finalize the flight plan,” I told him, “and then we’re ready.”

  I watched the clouds again as I walked toward the FBO’s office where Drake was getting the weather report for me. Instruments are great, but a GPS is only going to put you on the right path; it’s not going to improve your visibility. All I had to do was pay attention to the elevations of all these peaks and be sure I cleared them with plenty of room.

  Drake handed me the printed forecast and winds aloft report. “It’s not a storm system,” he said. “Just some localized clouds. You should be able to fly around it.”

  I gave him my bravest smile.

  “I’ll be out with Kerby, taking a group to Cabin Two and delivering more food to some folks at Cabin Three. Thought it would be a good chance for me to get the bigger picture. We should be back by noon and we’ll be on frequency 123.02 while we’re in flight. You’ve got a spare satellite phone in the cargo compartment, there’s the ELT ...”

  “Honey, it’s fine. It’s a very short hop.” Sheesh—surely I wouldn’t be needing the emergency locator.

  Across the parking area a van had rolled to a stop and three bearded men emerged. Decked out in full mountain-man regalia they looked like extras from some reality TV show. One of them actually snapped his suspenders. A colorful group for Cabin Two, no doubt.

  “I’ll be fine,” I told Drake. “You be careful too.”

  Chief Branson and his forensic team had buckled themselves into their seats, so I went around and rechecked that their doors were secure before I climbed into my own seat and put on my headset. While I went through the start-up and the turbine engine came up to speed, I gave the standard safety briefing although I doubted any of them would attempt to take pictures outside the windows, fiddle with the door latches, or get out of the helicopter until I’d told them it was all right.

  The flight path to Cabin One was already programmed into our GPS; I gave my surroundings one final check, radioed the office to open my flight plan and lifted the collective.

  Drake was right about the weather. Once airborne, I could see that the imposing cloud bank was really only a layer that didn’t extend beyond the inlet. I found a ragged-looking spot and flew through, coming into clear air on the upwind side of the ridge. The creek was easily visible and in only a few minutes the cabin came into sight. Piece of cake.

  I set the aircraft lightly on the grass outside the cabin, in nearly the same spot we’d occupied yesterday, shut down the engine and waited as the rotor blades spun down. Chief Branson waited for my signal before exiting the helicopter, then he guided his men toward the hillside where the cave awaited their scrutiny. They carried flashlights and kits that looked like toolboxes full of vials and baggies and other assorted mysterious things.

  I pulled on the rotor brake, flipped the last few switches and unbuckled my harness. Outside, it was incredibly quiet. I breathed air so pure it sent a wave of energy into my lungs. With no idea how long the police would be here, I realized I should have brought along a book. But then, I hadn’t purchased one yet. Drat. I could have brought that old box of letters; the reading was proving to be fairly interesting. For the moment I jogged toward the cabin, following the now-trampled path to the cave behind it.

  Branson was standing at the opening, where he’d strung yellow tape the previous day, a gesture that seemed pretty silly out here, but I suppose you just never know who might come along. As I approached, he pulled the tape down and shined his light inside to indicate where the team should look for clues. The other two men ducked through the opening and disappeared from sight.

  “Think they’ll find anything?” I asked.

  “No telling,” the chief said. I noticed he was breathing a little hard from the incline. If he spent less time at a desk, he might lose some of that tummy. “This is mainly a faint hope that we’ll find something that leads us to th
e guy’s next of kin. It’d be great if there was a wallet lying on the ground in there, with a photo ID and the names of his family members.”

  Apparently, yesterday’s discovery had not included any such items.

  “We’ve sent the bones to the crime lab in Anchorage, so maybe we’ll get some useful data there. Meanwhile, nobody in the department remembered any specific missing person cases so I’ve got an officer and my secretary starting to pull old records, seeing if we can come up with any cold cases from way back.” He didn’t give the impression that there was much hope for that. “If we don’t come up with anything locally, I’ll put out statewide alerts. You never know.”

  “Have you been with the Skagway police for a long time?”

  “Nah. I retired from Denver PD six years ago. Thought I’d kick back and do a lot of fishing, but that lasted six months before I got restless. My wife had passed away two years earlier and the kids have got their own lives now. I couldn’t see myself going back into big-city law enforcement, and then I saw the job listing for a police chief here,” he said with a shrug, “so I came.”

  “How is it? Living here year round.”

  “I like it. The town is quiet—real quiet in the winter. There’s a few locals who get unruly when they drink and, believe me, there’s lots of time to drink during those long winter nights. So, we have a couple cells we throw ’em into. Otherwise, it’s a nice little place to be.”

  I had to admit that he did seem like a contented kind of guy. My own antsy nature must have showed.

  “We’ll be at least an hour or so,” he said. “You don’t have to hang around.”

  He probably thought I’d just want to buzz back to town for a cappuccino or something, clearly not understanding what the operating costs of that machine were. It’s hard to justify spending five hundred dollars to dash out for coffee.