Legends Can Be Murder

by Shelton, Connie

  So Maddie Farmer had remarried at some point after Joshua failed to return home and she had a son with the second husband. I wondered if the laws were the same then, a years-long waiting period before a person could be legally declared dead. Surely, women of that time who had no careers or money of their own would need financial support right away. I skimmed through the pink book, knowing that Isabelle did indeed eventually marry a Ratcliff. The entries spoke of her wedding and her sorrow at leaving her family in San Francisco when, during her pregnancy, David’s work required a move to Seattle.

  A son! David Junior has my complexion and hair color, I am pleased to note. I imagine—from the one photograph Mother saved—that he will look very much like my father. I think of him often now, my father who probably died in the search for gold. A tiny part of me holds hope, though, a hope that he might someday come back, to find me and meet his grandson. Perhaps when finances permit, one day I shall undertake to locate him.

  Meanwhile, a baby is such a joy and requires such a commitment of time. I often allow my housework to accumulate while I sit and rock my little one and sing to him. David is, at times, not happy about this. I have come to learn that we take our happiness where we can find it—little Davey is my delight now.

  The entries continued in this vein, revealing cracks in the marriage without overtly saying so, the words of a young mother who doted completely on her son. As far as I could tell, this baby was their only child. I skimmed to the end and picked up the other book, this one bound in brown—the neat handwriting now had a jagged edge to it. The entries began in 1939. As with the first one, this seemed more a journal of her life’s important times, rather than a daily diary. Scanning quickly through, I got the news that little Davey grew up and married (a grasping, clutching war bride from England) and shortly after his return from combat they had a son, Michael. At last, a name I knew.

  Setting that one aside, I looked more closely at the spiral notebook.

  It didn’t have a “This book belongs to:” label or anything, but after reading the first few lines, I felt fairly certain these were Michael Ratcliff’s notes and that it might very well contain the clues as to what had happened to him, with whom he met.

  Being a bottom-line sort of gal, I’m surprised I didn’t choose to read it first.

  Chapter 24

  The masculine hand revealed sketchy notes, written as a linear recitation of facts he had learned, more so than the journal-style entries his grandmother had made.

  Isabelle Ratcliff – Father, Joshua Farmer

  Manifest from USS Portland – Joshua Farmer, passenger arrival in Skagway, Alaska on May 12, 1898

  * * *

  Michael Ratcliff slammed down the phone receiver and stared out his second-story window toward the park across the street, paying no attention to the lush spring greenery outside. Dammit, Candy, I’m not proposing to you just because my thirtieth birthday is coming up. Why was it that a girl would be all hot and fun, up to a point? Then she’s starting with the little hints about marriage, and pretty soon she’s withholding her favors until she sees a damn ring. He stared at the phone; he could call her back, give in and make the reservation at that place she wanted to go. He reached for the instrument but yanked his hand back when it rang.

  She’d given in first, called him. It had to mean that she regretted her tearful ultimatum; that’s the way it always went with her. Okay, sweetie, let’s see what you have to say. He picked it up with a gruff hello that masked the smile on his lips.

  “Vince wants the money by Friday, Mikey-boy, and if he don’t get it ... well, you don’t want to know.”

  The male voice threw him for a split second. Then his gut went watery. No way he, or anyone he knew, could come up with the thirty grand. He held his breath.

  “Just remember this, kid. Vince don’t make loans to dead-beats.” A dial tone buzzed in his ear.

  The unsubtle emphasis shot a bolt of fear through his body. He dropped the phone and ran for the bathroom. His bowels emptied—twice—before he had a coherent thought. Were the goons calling from Vegas, or were they somewhere here in Seattle? They could be right outside his building. He ventured from the bathroom and edged the bedroom curtain aside enough to see the street below. A black car sat at the curb, a wisp of exhaust coming from its tailpipe.

  He had to get out of here.

  His sister was the last person in the world he wanted to call—stuffy Katherine, with her tight little conservative haircut, her east coast clothing and her preachy ways—but he had no one else. Candy would take him in, in a minute, but she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. It wouldn’t take a full day before she was blabbing to one of the other beauticians or one of those gossipy old ladies in the shop with their hair in rollers, yakking away under those hideous dome-like dryers, telling them how Michael had moved in with her and how they’d be getting married real soon.

  His boss wouldn’t welcome him. Randy had chewed him out Monday morning when Michael asked for an advance on his paycheck—like a hundred dollars would even begin to satisfy the men from Vegas. Randy was the kind of supervisor who just wanted you to show up for work, put in eight hours riveting bolts into airframe bodies, go away at the end of the day and not get in his face about anything at all.

  And his friends weren’t being all that friendly these days. He’d already tapped everybody he knew, borrowing a little cash here and there to stay just beyond the clutches of those dangerous men. Hiding out at a buddy’s house wasn’t an option.

  He ran his fingers through his curled hair—courtesy of Candy, after hours at her shop—and agonized over what to do. It was going to have to be Katherine’s place. He would have to listen to her woes over the breakup of her marriage to Mr. Snob from Connecticut.

  He stewed over it as he jammed clothes into a backpack. What did she think, anyway? She’d married the guy because he was successful and dressed all classy, then whined when he smacked her around now and then. Just because she had a degree in English something-or-other, did she think a guy from the country club set wouldn’t look down on regular working-class people from the west coast?

  Back in the tiny bathroom he opened the medicine cabinet, grabbing essentials and tossing them into the pack. He couldn’t walk out of here looking like a guy who was traveling. He stared at his face in the mirror for a long minute. The curly hair, being new, might help as a disguise. His sideburns were just the way he liked them, trimmed right at the edge of his jawline, full and fluffy along his narrow cheeks. He chewed at his lip a minute and picked up his razor.

  “Hate to do it, man,” he said to his image as the facial hair went away.

  He flinched at the result. His face looked like a damn cue ball, all round and geeky. Hey, men are out there who want to break your kneecaps, he reminded himself. Buck up and do what it takes.

  He looked around the apartment. The bold-patterned polyester shirt was too noticeable. He took it off and folded it neatly into his pack, choosing a plain white one from the back of the closet. As he buttoned it, he looked around for accessories. Some pens for the pocket, an old pair of dark-rimmed glasses he used to wear in school. Hopelessly out of date now; for sure no one had seen him wear them. He put them on and practiced walking around the room without his usual swagger. Meek and mild, he reminded himself, trying to look like one of those guys you saw around the university, the ones who studied how to build electronic devices they claimed would change the world. Yeah, right.

  Katherine’s new place was probably only four or five bus stops away; he hadn’t actually been there yet but she’d given him the address when she called to say she was moving back to the city. He could easily walk it but that car was still at the curb and he didn’t want to be on the streets in his own neighborhood any more than necessary. He checked the pack to be sure he had what he wanted, then sat down to wait.

  An hour passed before he saw the car pull away. When it made a left turn at the corner, he slipped out and made his way down the set of c
oncrete steps to the street level, then ducked through the breezeway to the back of the building. He’d sold his car six months ago, to pay off his previous trip to Vegas. Too bad. With a tank of gas he could be nearly anywhere now.

  One of Katherine’s warnings flashed through his head. “Michael, you can’t spend every cent you earn. You need to start saving.”

  He brushed it off. Saving for what? So he could marry Candy and buy a stupid suburban house somewhere and afford to drink enough to get angry and start hitting his wife the way his sister’s husband had done? Screw that.

  From the shadow of the breezeway he scanned the parking lot. No black car. Few cars at all; everyone who lived here was at work right now. He should be, too, but what better way to track a guy than when he had predictable movements? He would stay at Katherine’s only long enough to come up with something better, maybe look at getting a job somewhere really far away, like Albuquerque.

  He liked that. New Mexico was practically next door to Nevada, wasn’t it? Or maybe not really. Maybe he should just move to Nevada, get a job in a casino. It would be like a kid working in a donut shop. He pictured Vince’s face. Nah, there had to be a better place than Nevada. He would give it some thought, he decided as he walked to the next block and slumped on a bench at the bus stop.

  Katherine’s apartment was sure a lot nicer than his, Michael noticed as he approached the building. A lobby where you had to either have a key to the locked front door or get someone to buzz you in. He found the button for her apartment and pressed it, wishing belatedly that he’d called ahead to be sure she would be here. What if she’d already found work and was gone all day? He glanced warily up and down the street.

  “Yes? Who is it?” came the familiar voice.

  “Hey, sis. Me, Michael.”

  A moment of silence, then the buzzer sounded. He entered a lobby where a row of mailboxes filled the wall on the left and a fake potted plant and striped upholstered bench on the right made it look as if this was where you might leisurely kick back to read your mail. He pressed the elevator button for the fourth floor and stuffed the glasses and pocketful of pens into his backpack.

  Katherine’s greeting seemed stiff. No huge surprise; everything about his older sister had always seemed rigid to him. She eyed his curly hairstyle and one corner of her mouth tilted upward.

  Don’t get judgmental on me. He suppressed the thought with one of his charmer smiles and accepted her compliment on the white shirt and pressed slacks.

  “You look like you’re going out for a job interview,” she said. “What’s up?”

  He immediately resented the hopeful tone in her voice. “No interview. I’ve got vacation days saved up and just thought I’d spend a little time with you, maybe take a quick trip somewhere. We haven’t seen much of each other recently.”

  She accepted it at face value and offered him some tea. He’d rather have a beer but decided not to push his luck until he was sure she would let him stay.

  “Really nice place you got here,” he said, following her to the kitchen where she poured from a tall pitcher and then added ice cubes to glasses.

  “I’ll buy something permanent once the divorce is final,” she said. It was hard to tell whether she was happy or sad about that. “And I’ll finish my teaching certificate and find work. Every city needs teachers.”

  She always thought that way, many steps ahead, in everything she did. He put a bright smile on his face and nodded as if he agreed with everything she said.

  Back in the living room he noticed stacks of boxes against one wall. Among the cardboard was a small trunk with brass fittings and a couple of really old lamps that might be antiques. Maybe even worth something.

  “What’s all this?” he asked.

  “Grandma’s things. I closed up Mother’s house this week and had to do something with all the clutter from her attic. I could rent a storage unit but then it would just be one more place to let things accumulate. I’ll go through it all and probably donate anything usable to charity. I don’t necessarily want to haul it all to my new place and store it there either.”

  “The little trunk is kinda cool,” he said.

  “I glanced into it. It has a bunch of old letters and diaries. Apparently our great-grandfather was one of the men who got gold fever and went up to Alaska during the gold rush. That’s what Mother told me. Grandma, at one point, tried to find him—her father, this was—but Mother never knew how it turned out. I don’t know what I’ll do with it all, not yet.”

  Michael had lifted the lid of the trunk and pulled out the letters. No gold bars under the paperwork. Damn. He looked at the fancy writing on the envelopes. Maybe the old man had written home to say what he’d done with his gold, or the two diaries might reveal what his grandmother had learned. He barely remembered the old woman; when he was a kid they had visited her a time or two in San Francisco but he only remembered riding the cable cars.

  “Look, I’ve got an appointment,” Katherine was saying, “at the university ... I really need to get going. You can take the letters with you if you want.”

  Now-or-never time. “I was kind of thinking of staying with you a day or so. Get the chance to visit and catch up on things. I could do something with these boxes while you’re doing your appointment.”

  Hesitation flickered over her face. “Okay, fine.”

  She shrugged into a jacket that matched her skirt and picked up her purse.

  “I should be back by five. I suppose we could go out, grab some dinner someplace after that.”

  “Sounds good, sis.” He worked on the charmer smile again. “It’s great to see you again.”

  The moment the door clicked shut behind her, Michael emptied the little trunk completely and examined the sides and bottom for hidden compartments that might conceal some gold. At today’s gold prices, it wouldn’t take much to get him out of his current spot. A bit more than that and he could be set for life.

  He realized that no one had exactly said that their great-grandfather had actually found any gold in Alaska. Michael rummaged through his sister’s kitchen cabinets where he found a bottle of cognac and poured himself a decent share of it. Then he settled onto her creamy beige sofa with the drink and the letters.

  It didn’t take long to figure out that most of them were sappy stuff, written in really old-fashioned language, between a husband and wife. God, he could almost hear Candy waxing all poetic over this and wanting to talk to him that way. He skimmed through most of them, noting with some pride as he read between the lines, that his great-grandfather had also been a gambling man. The old man would be proud of Mike for the plan that was taking shape in his head.

  Michael opened the last one that had a Skagway postmark. I’ve found gold! The words jumped off the page at him.

  Oh, man. Oh, man. This was great! Joshua Farmer was clearly brilliant. He’d managed to get hold of a big stash of gold without having to do a whole lot of work and risk his life out there in freezing-ass weather; he’d thrown the wife off the scent by saying he was coming home, then he’d skipped out somewhere. Or maybe he’d just stayed in Alaska and paraded around like a rich guy.

  He came to a letter addressed to a Harry Weaver at the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He’d heard about them in a movie one time. Uh-oh, the wife was tracking Joshua, trying to find him and his gold.

  Other letters, however, revealed that the detective and the wife had never found him. Good going, Gramps!

  Michael let the cognac burn a nice, fiery path down his throat and settle into cozy warmth in his belly as he thought about this new information. Joshua Farmer must have hidden out, possibly even hiding the gold somewhere, just in case the detective found him. It had to be a lot of gold—a lot!—to sustain him the rest of his life. Maybe his grandfather also had some of Katherine’s traits—saving money, building his startup capital into a vast fortune.

  Mike could go there, find it, claim it. He could repay Vince. Hell, men like Vince wouldn’t go to Alaska—
it was too damn cold, compared to Vegas. He could stay there and be free of Vince, once and for all!

  He found a spiral notebook in Katherine’s desk and helped himself to a pen, too. He looked up a travel agent in the phone book and spent an hour discussing ways to get to Skagway. By the time Katherine returned, he had a reservation for tomorrow. A ticket would be waiting for him at the airport ticketing counter.

  “Hey, sis, you look chipper. I take it the appointment went pretty good?”

  “It did. I’m enrolled in some fall semester classes and it shouldn’t take long to get my qualifications updated.” She dropped her purse at the end of the sofa. “Let me freshen up and we’ll head out for dinner.”

  He heard the bathroom door click shut. It took two seconds to get his fingers into the purse and extract her wallet. It contained a hundred dollars cash and one credit card. Too round a number; she would notice if any of it was missing. He snapped the clasp shut again and dropped it back into the purse before she came back.

  “You know, Michael, you should consider going back to school. It would take a couple of years but with a degree you could find a better job, bring in more, start saving for your future.”

  She meant a wife, house and kids. He knew it. With smile in place, he let her precede him out the door. But she brought up the subject again at the restaurant, where they’d decided to order a large pizza. There was only so long he could let her go on, thinking she was convincing him about her way of doing things.

  “You know, sis, I’ve really developed an interest in our family history. I’m thinking of tracing our genealogy.”

  “Really? I didn’t know you ever cared for history.”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s been a long-term interest of mine.” He prayed that she wouldn’t quiz him too closely on that. “Finding that trunk of Grandma’s letters has me real excited.” That much was true.