Legends Can Be Murder

by Shelton, Connie

  “That’s nice,” she said. “I’m glad.”

  “I figure I can keep working at the aircraft factory and work on family history in my spare time. For instance, with my vacation days now I could starting tracking information on the grandparents and great-grandparents mentioned in those letters.”

  Careful, he reminded himself. He couldn’t afford to let out any clues that Alaska was the destination.

  “That sounds like fun, actually,” she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “I have a little time too.”

  Uh-oh. Cannot let her invite herself along.

  “The price of a couple plane tickets would do it,” he said. “I could set it all up.”

  Her expression drooped. “I can’t afford that right now. My tuition is due before the weekend and until I get used to what my monthly expenses will be, I better back away from doing any travel.”

  He forced himself to look sad about this news. “Well, one thing about history—it’ll always be there.”

  They walked back to the apartment, Michael keeping an eye on every car that passed. Katherine handed him a sheet, blanket and pillow and he accepted the couch as his accommodation, but he hardly slept. He dreamt of gold bars and gold nuggets; he tossed on the narrow sofa and pictured himself in plush hotels from now on, living it up. When Katherine got up in the morning he accepted coffee and fretted silently as he kept an eye on the clock. He had two hours to find enough cash to cover his ticket and get himself to the airport.

  Chapter 25

  I rubbed my face and flinched as the grime from my fingers transferred. The names were becoming a blur, and as I washed up at the kitchen sink I seriously began to question whether there was any benefit to thoroughly reading and piecing together the life stories of these people from the past. Was I becoming so bogged down in their actions in their own day that I was missing the bigger picture?

  I brewed a strong cup of tea and stood at the kitchen counter, sipping it and reviewing what facts I knew.

  Joshua Farmer came to Skagway during the gold rush. He wrote that he found gold but never made it home.

  More than seventy years later, Michael Ratcliff came here, ostensibly on a genealogy search. He had made a list of people to talk to but he, too, never went home. His bones were identified as those found in the cave.

  The two sets of bones were related.

  Ergo, it made sense that Joshua was the other dead man in the cave.

  Okay. That was half the mystery. The rest of it was to learn who had killed each of them. I had to believe there were two killers. If the person who bashed Joshua over the head were a child when he did it, he would be aged eighty or more when he killed Michael. Neither scenario seemed the least bit likely.

  So, the two murders were separated by a couple of generations. But there’s no way they seemed entirely coincidental. What was the connection?

  It wouldn’t immediately come to me, and I tried to put myself in Joshua Farmer’s position. His letters gave off a certain desperation. Although he didn’t spell it out to his wife, I gathered that he was out of money, wanted to be home, couldn’t even afford the steamship passage. His friend the detective had offered to help him financially at times—why didn’t Joshua accept the help?

  Perhaps he’d made Harry Weaver angry over something and the other man struck out. It would have been simple for the detective to cover his own tracks and report no sign of the missing man.

  There was also the possibility that, in his desperation, Joshua had stolen someone else’s gold. But that didn’t quite jell; it would be the other man lying dead in the cave while Joshua took off. As Ron had once told me on another case, the dead guy isn’t always the innocent guy.

  Then there was the second murder, Michael Ratcliff. Was he an innocent guy who happened into the wrong place? I had been going on that assumption all along.

  My phone rang before I could piece together a string of facts about him.

  “Finally!” Mina said. “I don’t know why paste-up day seems so long. It’s always a crazy-house at the paper. Anyway, I’m free now. Want to grab a drink?”

  I glanced at my watch and saw that the afternoon had pretty much slipped away.

  “Come by here,” I suggested. “I’ve got some wine and there are a bunch of new documents I can show you.”

  While I pulled out a couple of wine glasses, it hit me that Drake never had checked in with me after his second flight. I felt a tremor of uneasiness go through me. I dialed his phone.

  Luckily, he answered on the first ring. “Kerby and I are just shooting the bull,” he said.

  From his easy tone I gathered that flying was done for the day. I told him that Mina and I were about to have a drink and go over notes I’d been making from the case. I could tell that he was happy to stay out of our way for awhile.

  Mina’s highlighted hair was pulled up in a clip, where a little fountain of brown-gold strands spurted from the top. Her bangs stuck out at odd angles, as if she’d tried to rip them out in frustration at some point in recent hours. She flopped on our couch and blew out a huge breath.

  I’d brought the bottle and glasses to the living room and she eagerly accepted hers the minute I handed it over.

  “It’s always those last few hours,” she said. “If the layout doesn’t hit the printer’s office by four o’clock we miss our deliveries on Thursday. At least it’s better than the old days. We upload the files now. I remember being sent on a race through town to get pasted-up boards to a plane that was revving up to leave for Haines.”

  She took a couple of generous sips of the wine. “Anyway, not your problem. Enough of the news biz for awhile.”

  We leaned back in our seats for a few minutes, Mina unwinding, me thinking over everything I’d read and deciding what to ask her first. Finally, I just started at the beginning, with my trip to the museum this morning and ending with my scribbled list of names I’d pulled from the diaries, letters and notebooks.

  “I found some of the names in the phone book,” I told her. “Several of the families are still here in town.”

  “Oh yeah, there’s a certain pride in declaring how long you’ve been here. Guess it’s that way in places that tend to have a lot of newcomers.”

  “At least we know why Michael Ratcliff came to Skagway,” I said. “His sister said he had developed an interest in family history, so he surely hoped to find out more information about his great-grandfather, Joshua.”

  “He did a good job, I’d say. Ended up only a few dozen feet away. Sorry, I guess that’s not very respectful, being that they were both murdered.”

  She’d picked up my list and was scanning it.

  “You’ve met some of these folks already, Charlie. Thespens, of course—that’s Lillian Allen’s family. Jo McIlhaney was at that art gallery party. Barney Connell works for Kerby.”

  Barney, our customer greeter with the mountain-man appearance? Okay.

  “The Smiths have been around forever. They claim some distant relationship to the infamous con man, Soapy Smith, but I’m not sure if that’s true. My friend, Zack, he’s a Manicot—related to Gertrude that you spoke to. His parents and grandparents and a whole bunch of them have lived here forever.”

  My mind raced ahead. When Michael Ratcliff arrived and began asking questions about the missing Joshua Farmer, it might have put someone on alert, a guilty party with some old crimes to keep hidden.

  I heard Drake’s truck pull up in front of the garage. Mina noticed too and said she needed to get going.

  “Hey, that historical society fundraiser is tomorrow night,” she said. “If you guys don’t mind parting with an exorbitant amount for a halibut dinner, it would be a chance to socialize, meet more folks—maybe view them all as suspects.” Her eyebrows wiggled at that last part.

  I told her I would see if Drake was interested. I wouldn’t mind asking a few questions. Friends of the historical society seemed like the ideal crowd to glean information from in this situation.


  As it turned out, we both had a number of flights that day, but we still managed to gussie up and be there on time. We snagged seats at a table that included the gang from Gold Trail Adventures: Kerby and Lillian, Chuey and Mina, Barney and his wife. Sissy Connell seemed an exact opposite of the exuberant mountain man—petite and quiet, with over-styled blond hair and long acrylic nails that had tiny blue and yellow Alaska flags on them.

  Lillian Allen didn’t sit; she was up and working the room in true political fashion. Kerby, Chuey and Drake managed to find business to talk about, despite the fact that they’d just spent all day together. I tried to engage Sissy in conversation but her shyness was nearly painful and it seemed kinder after awhile not to push it. She kept looking around the room and when she spotted her husband at the bar, she excused herself with a tiny smile and went to join him.

  “Shall we mingle?” Mina asked. “There are a few things on the silent auction table I wanted to check out.”

  That seemed far better than staying at the table with the guys. Part of my goal in coming was to chum up with some of these old-time families and see if I could get an angle on our murder cases. I reminded Mina of the names she’d given me earlier and asked that she introduce me to some of them.

  Eyeing a beautiful piece of scrimshaw, made into a pendant necklace, Mina edged near a woman who looked somewhat familiar, with a dark brown pixie haircut and strong jawline.

  “Hi, Jo,” Mina said. After a few seconds of how-are-you chit-chat, she introduced me to Jo McIlhaney.

  “Ah, your name is familiar,” I said. “I’ve been reading a series of historic letters and came across a Mrs. McIlhaney who ran a rooming house here during the gold rush.”

  Jo smiled. “Yes, we’ve heard all about that. Elizabeth was a great-great something on my father’s side. I lose track. My grandparents apparently kept up the tradition—they owned a small hotel here when I was a kid. It’s not one anymore. The building became something else and then something else again, until the Park Service took it over as they’ve done with a lot of the historic buildings here in the borough.”

  “In the letters I’m reading, she rented a room to a man named Joshua Farmer, who had come to make his fortune.”

  “Ah, didn’t they all? Too bad so few succeeded. Well, at finding gold. A lot of those pioneers stayed on and succeeded in other things. Today, it’s a matter of location, location, location, as they say. Having a shop that draws a lot of tourists is the name of the game. Of course, that’s difficult nowadays too. The big stores are owned by the cruise lines and they really push hard to get people in those places. I try to steer folks toward the smaller shops, the ones with locally made items rather than that cookie-cutter jewelry and trinkets they can buy on a Mexican cruise or a Caribbean cruise or ... well, anyplace.”

  As I talked with Jo, Mina was moving along the table of goodies, scribbling bids for the items she wanted. Jo noticed, and wrote a competing bid for the scrimshaw pendant. I edged away, leaving space for the avid ones.

  Jo McIlhaney didn’t seem like a valid lead for our case. There had been no flicker of recognition at Joshua’s name, anyway. I led into the same line of chat with a few others, once Mina introduced me to a Frannie Smith and then to her friend, Zack Manicot. I noticed that Gertrude, who it turned out was his aunt, had stepped outside for a cigarette. None of my nosy questions elicited a flicker of interest until I had circled the room and caught up with Barney and Sissy.

  “Riches from the Klondike?” Barney said. “How about riches from ripping each other off?”

  His voice grew a little loud—I suspected the heavy glass of amber liquid in his hand had something to do with that. Sissy nudged him but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Yeah, my family has stories all right. My great-great grandfather was here then. His story gets told to every kid in our family, how he’d come back from the trail with a big bag of gold. A guy who said he was Alistair’s friend knocked him over the head and stole it! That’s what friends were good for then.”

  Sissy tugged at her husband’s arm and he quieted. This was a far cry from the jovial man who met flights full of tourists and gave them the hearty spiel about panning for gold in the streams near their cabins.

  “I’m going out for a smoke,” Barney muttered, walking away.

  Sissy gave a tiny smile and an even tinier shrug of her narrow shoulders before following him. I looked toward the bar to see Lillian and her brother Earl with their heads together. She was probably trying to decide if some mayoral damage control was needed, but the sounds of the party had picked up again and no one appeared to be giving the little incident much notice.

  “The Connells have always sort of carried a chip,” Mina said in my ear. I hadn’t even realized she was beside me. “They never had much money—Barney’s dad lives out in a really rough cabin where it’s all he can do to keep his snow machines running all winter with duct tape and bailing wire. Barney grew up with that and even though he’s worked in town his whole adult life, I guess some things run pretty deep.”

  “He always seemed like a really happy guy.” We started ambling back toward our table.

  “Basically, I think he is. He and Sissy were high school sweethearts and they seem good together—jolly guy and soft-spoken wife. She’s not usually this quiet—she’s a hairdresser and is really loved by her clients. She just gets a little overwhelmed in crowds that include the important people.”

  I glanced toward the door where they had exited.

  “Alcohol. It changes people, sometimes in a flash.”

  Lillian Allen walked over to us, her smile unnaturally bright. “Ladies, everyone having a good time?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. I held back from posing my questions to Lillian. The blowup from Barney was one skirmish too many for the evening.

  The lights blinked twice and a small gong sounded. Voices quieted.

  “Dinner is served,” Lillian said, loudly enough for most in the room to hear.

  We made our way back to our tables. Sissy and Barney didn’t come back until the salads had been cleared, but when he sat down he seemed the same friendly man. I wondered if the quiet Sissy was, in reality, a pretty solid force for him.

  Kerby and Lillian dominated the dinner conversation, anyway, which gave both Barney and Sissy a chance to keep their thoughts to themselves. I found my own thoughts wandering. It had been one of those weeks with too much input and I was having a hard time sorting through it all.

  Chapter 26

  Michael let out a long sigh as the stewardess closed the door on the plane. What a morning! He’d managed to find an envelope of cash in Katherine’s dresser drawer, scribbled her a note—Gotta go, sis, thanks for everything, I’ll pay you back soon—while she was in the shower. With a quick glance around the living room, he’d jammed his few possessions, the money and the letters into his backpack and literally run down the four flights of stairs. A taxi came along a block from her apartment and he was on his way!

  He buckled his seatbelt on command from the speakers over his head and settled in for the trip to Anchorage. They’d put him in the back of the plane but he didn’t mind. It gave him the chance to watch everyone else who came aboard—an assortment of students, some rugged mountain-man types, and a scattering of businessmen—no one who looked like they were fresh out of Vegas.

  “You heading up to work on the pipeline?” asked a guy in the seat next to him.

  “Huh? No, not really.”

  “Man, check it out. It’s where all the work is these days. Excellent pay.” The guy flipped open a magazine. “I hear everything’s super expensive though. I figure, what the heck, it’s a chance to earn a bundle for a couple years.”

  Michael nodded, as if he really cared. He didn’t intend to get out in some wide-open, windblown tundra, getting dirty and living in a damn camp. He had a family fortune waiting for him; he just had to find it.

  The other guy went back to his magazine and Michael pulled out his spira
l notebook and his grandmother’s diary. With the tray as a work surface he began making notes, paying attention to names—people, hotels, places. It shouldn’t be that hard to trace Joshua Farmer’s movements, once he was on site in the little boomtown.

  A sharp-looking flight attendant came along and offered drinks and sandwiches. He accepted both. Too bad Candy didn’t aspire to a job like that—she’d look hot in that uniform. He thought about her. Maybe he should have brought her along; they could have a pretty good time together staying in a hotel and taking walks in the mountains. Candy grew up in Denver; she loved the mountains and the snow.

  He had almost phoned her from the airport to say goodbye, but held back. He didn’t have enough for a second plane ticket today and who knew how much she might blab about his plans if she knew them. Nah, better to get to Alaska, find the gold, then he could decide whether to stay there or come back to Seattle in style—hell, he really might splurge for a ring if he was in the mood.

  He stuffed his paperwork back into the pack when his food arrived. People griped about airline food but he didn’t think this was so bad. It was free, anyway. Without breakfast this morning, it tasted pretty good to him. He wolfed it down, handed the dishes back and settled against the window for a nap. Next thing he knew they were telling everybody to buckle up and get ready to land.

  Anchorage didn’t give much of an impression—the airport was packed with men, few women, laborers heading for the pipeline, he supposed. Mike found the gate for his commuter flight to Skagway, a little dismayed to see that it was going to be one of those little puddle-jumper planes. What the heck, it was a short flight. Mainly, he was tired from the fits-and-starts of sleep he’d gotten in the past twenty-four hours and hoped he would find a hotel room quickly at the other end of the line.

  Skagway was a pretty close fit with the image he had formed from his great-grandfather’s letters. The muddy streets were gone—thank goodness—paved over now, and there was now electricity. What he was not ready for was the north wind that blasted down the streets and sucked every scrap of warmth through his polyester shirt and pants. He got a shuttle bus to drop him off at the nearest clothing store where he gave far too much for a jacket.