Legends Can Be Murder

by Shelton, Connie

  “Maybe I’ll walk farther on up the hill, stretch my legs a little,” I told him. I glanced at my watch so I wouldn’t lose track of time.

  I found a game trail that switch-backed upward and began to follow it, but as soon as I was out of sight of the cabin and Chief Branson I began to get a little uneasy. Heavy forest blocked the view beyond twenty feet in any direction. It would be incredibly easy to get lost out here where there were no marked trails, no other hikers. And without GPS, extra gear or knowledge of the area I could see that I was just asking for trouble. I turned back and followed my own tracks back downhill.

  The stream that ran through the meadow near the cabin entertained me for another twenty minutes, as I watched small fish dart among the rocks. The water was so clear that the bottom looked about a half-inch away, although I suspected from the depth of the banks that it must be at least two feet deep. And icy cold, as verified by a quick dip of my fingertips. I stood up to return to the helicopter, thinking I might reread the operations manual to occupy my time, or perhaps I would attempt a little breaking and entering on the cabin—it did have those shelves of books ... but then I noticed the deck chairs out on the cabin’s front porch. One of them showed up in a shaft of sunlight and all at once that looked like a good spot to be. I plopped myself into it and stretched my legs out into the warmth. In a moment I felt my eyelids droop.

  A shout caught my attention and I jumped, unsure how long I had dozed. By my watch, it couldn’t have been more than five glorious minutes.

  A second shout and male voices in discussion pulled me to the edge of the porch. They came from the forest in the direction of the cave. I hopped off the porch and headed that direction, only belatedly thinking that this would be a very stupid move if the men had encountered a bear.

  “I don’t know what made me go that far in ...” the forensic man was saying, a guy Branson had addressed as Reed.

  I edged closer, noticing that no one sported teeth marks or gushing blood.

  “… probably thirty yards farther in than the first one,” Reed said. “I didn’t touch it, wanted you to take a look.”

  “So two of them wandered in there?” Branson asked.

  Jerry shrugged.

  “Okay, let’s see what we got.” Branson tugged his belt a little higher around his gut. He looked over and saw me standing there. “Come along if you want.”

  “What’s—?”

  “Reed says we have another skeleton.” He turned toward the cave entrance where Jerry waited for him to lead the way.

  I debated for a long moment. At least there wouldn’t be blood and guts—I’m not big on that stuff. And this situation was getting, as they say, curiouser all the time. Clearly, Branson thought the two dead men might have been together, which added a whole other dimension to his case. It might be a lot easier to find old missing-person reports if two men had disappeared at once.

  Reed led the way, followed by Chief Branson, and Jerry had now ducked his head to get through the opening. It was now or never if I wanted the benefit of their flashlights. I hurried ahead and followed them in.

  Chapter 6

  With all three men and their flashlights ahead of me, I stumbled almost immediately. Jerry was at the rear so he stayed back and let me catch up, shining his light for me and falling in behind. It made the pathway much easier, but there was no way out of this now.

  We passed the place where the first body had lain, the dirt floor now scuffed with boot prints from all the people who’d been in and out since yesterday. Ahead by twenty feet or so, Reed aimed his light around a slight bend in the path; he and Branson both halted. Since Jerry was behind me I had no choice but to catch up and stand beside them at the wide spot that formed a small chamber. With morbid fascination, I looked. This skeleton sat with its back against the wall, its gruesome grin facing us.

  As far as I could tell, a stiff coat of some kind was the only thing holding it in this semi-upright position. Not that I’m much up on skeleton behavior—it just seemed logical.

  The chief sat on his haunches next to the remains. When he reached out to touch the coat, Reed spoke up: “Maybe we should get a few photos before we do anything else.”

  Branson stood up, looking a little chagrined because he hadn’t made the suggestion himself.

  Reed handed his flashlight off to me and proceeded to snap pictures of the skeleton, its position, and the surrounding area—from every angle. Seriously? It wasn’t as if they could pinpoint a time of death or line up some ready suspects. By the accumulated dust on that coat, this one had been here a very long time too.

  “So, what on earth prompted these two guys to come in here?” Branson was muttering to himself more than looking for an actual answer. He looked at Reed. “We can’t tell much here. Do we have another body bag?”

  Jerry said he would go get one he’d left in their larger kit in the helicopter. Without his flashlight the cavern dimmed considerably. I tried not to make it obvious that I was edging closer to the others.

  Reed shined his light directly into the face of the skeleton, in close for a good look. “These bones seem quite a bit further deteriorated than the other one,” he said. “The lab would have to verify that, but I’m guessing they didn’t arrive at the same time.”

  For the first time I noticed that the skinny bone-legs ended inside a pair of boots, high ones that laced up with metal grommets and leather laces that seemed hand made. The coat, too. It was a lot older style than the ’70s-era clothing on the other man. This one had dressed for warmth and the rugged outdoors and the clothing was now mostly in tatters. The first guy’s clothing was in better condition but a lot more insubstantial, more like someone would wear on a day hike in summer. I voiced all this, a rambling narrative as I noticed each thing.

  Branson nodded, his jaw shifting side-to-side as he considered my observations. Reed seemed to notice me for the first time.

  “So, if they didn’t come in here together,” Branson said, “it seems odd that it’s where they both ended up.”

  No kidding. There wasn’t exactly a host of trail-side signs out here that said “Lost and Cold? Nice Cave Over Here!”

  Jerry came back with the vinyl bag for the body, and I pressed back against the opposite wall to give them room. After a few minutes of watching them struggle, I saw that I was just in the way. Using the flashlight I still held, I scooted on out of there.

  I stood outside the cave, sucking down some more of that fresh air, only then realizing how dank and stale the cave had felt. After a few minutes I heard their voices. Branson emerged and told me they would be ready to fly back to Skagway as soon as they loaded the slack bag into the cargo compartment. I dashed ahead to open the doors, feeling ready to get back to town and people and, hopefully, Drake.

  Once we were in the air I left the intercom channel open so the men could talk. Of course, I listened shamelessly although I had to piece some stuff together because the conversation had apparently started back in the cave.

  “A blunt instrument of some kind,” Reed said. “And anger. It takes a good, hard swing to make a dent that size in a skull.”

  Okay, so now they were talking about a murder.

  “A murder that happened way before any of our time,” Branson said, finishing my thought.

  “Taking bets, I’d say the coat and boots are over a hundred years old. We haven’t seen that kind of gear in the past fifty years for sure. I was on a case my rookie year where some old stampeder was dug out of the ice. These boots look more like his than anything I’ve ever seen.”

  Sam Branson grunted. “I’m not looking forward to this one.” He had slumped in the seat beside me, his shoulders bearing the weight of a task he really didn’t want to perform.

  I kept my mouth shut and concentrated on my controls. Eight minutes later I was setting the JetRanger down on my assigned yellow H on the ground. Kerby Allen’s ship was still out, so telling my story to Drake would have to wait.

  While Jerry
walked to the parking lot to retrieve and bring the police department vehicle around, I made my logbook entries and waited for the turbine engine to cool. Drake would want the blades tied down for the night, but since I’m a little too short to grab the leading blade with the strap, it would be okay to leave that task to him.

  Jerry backed the SUV fairly close and the three men grappled with the bag of bones and got it inside. Reed checked the passenger cabin for their kits and gear, and a few minutes later they were driving away. Interesting morning.

  I closed my flight plan and debated what to do next. In the glass-fronted conference room I spotted Kerby Allen, having an intense-looking conversation with a stocky gray-haired man. He saw me before I got outside so I figured it would be rude not to at least say hello.

  “Charlie, how did it go this morning?” I glanced at the other man, who seemed distracted by whatever Kerby had been saying. “Oh. This is my brother-in-law, Earl Thespen. Earl, Charlie Parker. She and her husband are taking some of our Adventure flight passengers.”

  Earl didn’t seem to give a whit about who I was.

  “Flight went just fine,” I told Kerby.

  “What was that outside, something the police loaded into their vehicle?”

  With a half-dozen people milling around in the lobby, I didn’t think this was the best place to give details. “I suppose you could talk with the chief about that.”

  “Was it to do with, um, what happened yesterday?”

  I dropped my voice to just above a whisper. “Yes and no. You really should ask Sam Branson.”

  The stocky brother-in-law cleared his throat, clearly wanting to get back to their earlier conversation, so I used the moment to scoot on out to the parking lot. In a futile attempt to reach Drake I dialed his cell phone, but it went immediately to voice mail. What had I expected? He couldn’t possibly be getting a signal; Cabin Two was the most remote of the locations Kerby had leased for the season.

  Without any other plan, I decided to take the truck and shore up our grocery supply. The market’s parking lot was nearly empty so I snagged a cart and was perusing the bread choices when a familiar voice called out my name.

  Mina wore a chic sweater with her form-fitting jeans and had a silky scarf with some kind of sparkly threads draped across her shoulders.

  “Wow, you’re certainly dressed up,” I said. “What’s the big occasion?”

  “I have a lunch date.”

  “Ah—he must be somebody special.” It had been so long since I’d prepared for one of those first-date occasions that I really felt old and married at the moment.

  She didn’t take the bait. Instead, she moved in closer and talked in a low tone. “What I wanted to ask you was about this morning. I hear through the grapevine that the police were out at the airport this morning, right beside your helicopter.”

  Again, how much information to divulge? Especially since this little source could easily print anything I said in the newspaper.

  I glanced up and down the aisle but there was no one else in sight. “We went back up to the cave. Beyond that, you’ll have to get your information from Chief Branson.”

  “So there was something found!”

  “Mina, don’t make me say,” I whispered urgently. “I don’t know how much information they want to release, or when. Please, just talk to him.”

  She rested a hand on my forearm. “I already called his office. He told me that I can run the story about the skeleton and put out a call for information to see if anyone knows of a male in his thirties who went missing in the 1970s. Not for publication is the fact that the lab found dark stains on the shirt and they tested positive for blood. They think the man was stabbed.”

  I hoped she was a bit more discreet in all her other conversations and was only telling me this because I’d been there. As if reading my mind, she placed an index finger up to her lips. Her expression changed, and with a smile she flipped the scarf back over her shoulder and headed out.

  I had to assume that Branson had not told Mina about the second skeleton—surely she would have mentioned that. But it was nice to know that my original observations were validated by the era in which the first man went missing. Now we could only hope that leads would come in and the missing man’s family would have closure after all these years. The other side of it was, unless one man had bashed himself in the head and the other just happened to have stabbed himself, there were now two murders to be solved.

  As the possibility of two accidental deaths didn’t seem too likely, I had the feeling I would be pestering Chief Branson until the answers came out. I’m like a dog with a bone, that way.

  The final few items went onto the checkout conveyor belt and I picked up a local paper while I was at it. What other interesting tidbits could I learn about our adopted town?

  Drake called just as I was signing the credit card slip, so I detoured back to the airport to pick him up before going home to put the groceries away and make ourselves a sandwich for lunch. He entertained me with stories of the trio of lawyers he had delivered to Cabin Three.

  “I thought they were a bunch of rugged outdoorsmen,” I said, spreading mayo on whole wheat bread. I piled on some sliced ham as he continued.

  “You didn’t get a close look. The beards were all started within the past ten days, and the clothing probably came from a massively expensive trip to Cabela’s. One guy kept staring at the screen on his phone with this wistful look on his face. The other two nearly panicked when they learned there was no satellite TV at the cabin.”

  He carried our plates to the table, where Freckles waited with ears cocked toward the food.

  “Lawyers, you said? I thought they were all about billable hours and working crazy-long weeks.”

  “They booked the seven-day package, but I’m betting they don’t even make three.” He chuckled over that and I pictured Kerby with his hands full as the men tried to wangle a partial refund. Hopefully, our boss had written his customer contract in iron-clad terms.

  I quickly filled Drake in on my own morning’s little adventure, giving him far more details that I’d revealed to either Kerby or Mina.

  “She was all decked out when I saw her at the grocery,” I said. “Had some kind of lunch date, and I gathered it must be a new guy.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “Chuey. He finally got up the nerve to ask her out.”

  “Well, she seemed to really be looking forward to it. Maybe they’ll be a match made in heaven.” Who knew?

  “There’s one more flight this afternoon,” Drake said as he cleared the table. “Delivering a second week’s worth of food to a group that’s been at Cabin Two for a week already. I guess that bunch has been having a grand time on their adventure.”

  He turned to me. “Kerby offered the flight to us, so do you want to take it or shall I?”

  Truthfully, I was more than a bit distracted by everything that had already happened today so I begged off. He was happy to go; he delivered a nice kiss and left a few minutes later. I wandered to the living room, debated whether a nap would feel better on the sofa or the bed, then picked up the newspaper I’d just bought.

  Mina’s story about the skeleton did make the front page headline, but the piece itself was skimpy on details. She described the approximate location of the cave, honoring Kerby’s wish not to mention his company. The information from the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in Anchorage, including the part about the stabbing, had come in too late for her deadline, so the rest of the story consisted of the fact that the remains had been in place for ‘an estimated thirty years or more’ and a call for information from anyone who might be able to provide the identity of the body.

  I occupied myself for another whole ten minutes by skimming the ads and community news. My gaze fell to the box of letters I had begun reading yesterday.

  Chapter 7

  The second letter from the bottom of the stack was dated two weeks after the first.

  May 26, 1898

&
nbsp; My dearest Wife,

  The snow has begun to melt in earnest, leaving the streets a mire of mud. But my situation is looking better here in Alaska ...

  * * *

  Joshua stared at the pile of money on the bed and wondered how he would manage. Maddie had made him promise to hold back the cost of a return steamship ticket in case this new venture did not turn out well. Although jobs were not exactly plentiful back in the city, at least his family was there and he could find some type of work. But he refused to think in those terms. He was here to strike it rich. He would not leave Alaska until he could do so wearing a suit of the finest serge and with a pouch of money to make life better for Maddie and Isabelle. Perhaps he would send for them or start a business.

  He counted the money once again—still woefully inadequate for his requirements, despite the rosy picture he painted when he wrote to his wife. He had considered looking for work as a way to earn money to make up the shortfall, but too many others had the same idea. He’d also thought of trying to start the journey with less than the required goods, which would weigh nearly two thousand pounds. But several men had been sent back from the Canadian border checkpoint for that reason. The Mounties did not want to be sent to rescue those who found themselves in trouble. Increasingly, it became apparent that he would have to partner with another man or two in order to afford the supplies. Last week he had seen another provision list, this one even more extensive than the first. Articles in the newspaper were recommending that four men team up; with a four-man tent this plan made the most sense. They could share cooking utensils, as well, and a team wouldn’t need a shovel, a pick, or a gold pan for every man. He looked at the small stack of items he had already acquired and began to feel excited again.

  Harry Weaver had proved to be a good friend after the day they met in line for the post office. Harry kept saying he didn’t plan to join the stampede to the Klondike—he had some means of support here in town, although he never quite said what that was. But Harry had his ear to the pulse of things; he might be able to recommend some traveling partners for Joshua. He hid the money back in his concealed belt, pulled on his wool overcoat and left the rooming house.