He came walking out of the forest and the first thing I noticed was blood, trickling down the side of his face.
“Hey, you,” he said, pulling me to his chest.
“We were so scared!”
He held me at arm’s length and I realized that I had mumbled into his chest and he hadn’t heard a word of it. I babbled a lot more incoherent stuff and dabbed at the blood, most of which seemed to be coming from an inch-long gash on his temple.
Chuey, bless him, gave us a minute alone before he got out and walked over.
“Wow, man. What happened?”
He touched his face and looked at the blood on his fingers. “I got that from my travel mug. It kind of flew around a little when I had to make a sudden move. The aircraft—I’m going to let you check that out. I got an oil pressure warning. I know—weird—it was fine when I started out. After that, there was no choice but to do a forced landing.”
“Let’s go,” said Chuey, heading toward the downed craft.
“I better see if I can get through to the FBO,” I said. “They’re about ready to call out everyone from Search and Rescue to the dog teams.”
“Use your satellite phone,” Drake said. “My radio crapped out and something’s wrong with the phone I had on board.”
I took a couple of steps and stopped dead in my tracks. What were the odds of that being a coincidence?
Chapter 28
Michael walked down the quiet residential street, a hazy afterglow still running through his body. Wow. He couldn’t believe such a babe seduced him. It really was true, what they said about women reaching their sexual prime in their thirties. Maybe this recent birthday of his shouldn’t have him freaked out at all.
At the corner of Seventh and State he paused and looked both ways, trying to remember which way he’d turned when he went to Geegee’s house. Hell, no surprise he couldn’t remember where he was staying; she’d made him forget all the other questions on his list, and that was his whole purpose in being here. Okay, so now it was one of his purposes.
The place where he’d rented the room was a block down, on the left. The roommate was gone now so Mike helped himself to an apple from the fridge and went into his bedroom where he tossed his backpack into the corner and fell onto the too-soft bed. At some point he kicked off his shoes, pulled the chenille spread over himself and slept. He didn’t come fully awake until a shaft of sunlight hit him in the face. He groaned and rolled over.
A glance at his digital watch showed that it was four o’clock. That couldn’t be right; he’d arrived in Skagway at three-thirty. And a lot had happened since then, he remembered with a smile.
Disoriented, he sat up and looked out the window toward the house next door. A big flowering tree stood between the two houses and birds perched all over it, chirping loudly enough to give any guy a headache. His stomach growled and he decided that hunger might be the cause of the headache. He’d eaten, what, a sandwich on the plane and an apple before he went to sleep. It must be four in the fricking morning. God, this place was just too weird.
He fell back onto the pillows but there was no way Jose that he would fall asleep again. Rubbing at his eyes he got up and pulled the backpack onto his lap, searching for his toothbrush.
In the bathroom he ran a long, hot shower, listening to this odd thumping sound the pipes made. The roommate pounded on the wall from the other bedroom.
“Hey, keep it quiet in the middle of the night!”
Hard to believe that argument when the rooms on this side of the house were bright with sunshine. Mike turned the hot water handle down a little and the noise went away. The shower refreshed him and he fluffed his hair—maybe this curly style would be cool after all—and padded naked and barefoot into the kitchen.
Taking care not to wake the other guy, Mike snitched a spoonful of his instant coffee and some sugar to make it drinkable, then carried his steaming mug back to the bedroom. Clothing spilled out of the backpack and he decided maybe he better hang up a few things. Didn’t want Geegee to see him as a total slob, and he did plan to see her again. He had one ready excuse for calling. Fine as the sex had been, he reminded himself that his true mission was to find the family gold, and for that he needed information.
The pack contained two shirts—the dorky white one he’d worn to escape Vince’s watchdogs and his favorite, a bright polyester with bold diagonals of orange and pink. He shook them out. Too wrinkled to impress Geegee. He draped them over hangers and put them in the closet. The blue and green flower print shirt from yesterday would have to work for awhile yet. He’d worn gray cords with it but had a pair of denims in the pack. Otherwise, there was his toiletry kit, two pair of boxers and the stack of letters and diaries he’d taken from the brass trunk at Katherine’s.
He dressed, realizing that half the clothing he’d brought along had now been worn. Laundry never being high on his list of things to do, he decided he would think about that stuff later. He picked up one of the diaries, his notebook and his coffee mug and walked into the kitchen to top it off before the roommate caught him with a spoon in the coffee jar. He could hear the guy moving around in the other bedroom.
The living room had a couch and a chair and one lamp. No TV, no stereo. How lame was that? Mike didn’t care; this would suit his immediate needs. He set his coffee on the table beside the lamp and opened the diary, flipping to the last of the entries and working his way backward through the pages.
The roommate emerged from his bedroom, sniffed the air and gave Mike the eye.
“Today’s coffee, okay, I’ll share. But by tomorrow you get your own.”
Mike shrugged and gave the guy one of his charmer smiles. “Sure, absolutely.” When the guy disappeared into the kitchen Mike aimed a finger his direction.
He turned his attention to the notebook and looked at the list of names he’d written down: Mrs. McIlhaney, Harry Weaver, Soapy Smith ... Mike had only made it as far as talking to McIlhaney and Manicot yesterday before he became distracted.
The memory of Geegee’s soft thighs began to distract him again, and he decided he would have to touch base—hopefully home base—with her at least one more time. It wasn’t even six a.m. yet. Should he tap on her door and hope that she greeted him wearing something filmy and with a sleepy look in her eyes? Or would she chew him out and slam the door on him for showing up when she didn’t have her makeup on and her hair done? Women could be so hard to figure out.
Attention back on the diary, he reread the last few entries. Isabelle had apparently contacted someone other than Gertrude Manicot, a Wilbur Thespen. Mike added that name to his list. He chewed the tip of his pen and stared at the notebook. Okay, he had a couple more names to check out and could probably get more from Geegee. It was as much a plan as he’d ever made and he found his thoughts wandering again to the look of that long, dark ponytail that had brushed across his chest yesterday afternoon.
Movement at the kitchen door caught his attention as the roommate emerged, dressed and jacketed and obviously on his way out the door. The guy pointed an index finger, flicking it playfully like a pistol.
“Coffee. Food. Today,” he said with what he probably thought was a joking tone. “Market opens in a half hour.”
With that, he walked out and Mike saw him walk down the street.
Yeah, well, up yours. Mike decided he had to find another place to stay after this week. Of course, once he found the gold he had all the choices in the world open to him. He could stay in Alaska—could probably buy the biggest house in this little burg if he wanted. Or he might just go live in Europe awhile. Something about the Riviera had always appealed to him. Monte Carlo had that fancy casino where the men wore tuxes and the women were wealthy and glamorous.
Still, no point in getting into a battle here. He put on his new jacket and walked the four blocks to the grocery store where he very pointedly bought the smallest jar of instant coffee, along with some potato chips and a big bag of Oreos. Back at the house he put the co
ffee in the kitchen and the rest of his stuff in his bedroom. He closed his door and used the kitchen phone to call Geegee.
“Hey there,” he said, starting off with compliments about how amazing she’d been yesterday and leading into his line about how he still wanted to follow up on the genealogy he had come here to work on.
“Come on over,” she said. “I just got up so I’m afraid I’m not really dressed yet.”
Oh, god. He rushed out the door so quickly he didn’t remember whether he’d actually replaced the phone on the hook.
This time there was no pretense for what the visit was all about. She greeted him at the door and pulled him inside by the lapel of his jacket. She wore some kind of kimono thing made of such slippery material that one tug of the sash and the garment just sort of fell off her. They were in her bedroom in less than thirty seconds.
She made some excuse for going into the bathroom and he scrambled out of his clothes and met her on top of the purple satin sheets, completely ready for action.
An hour later—what an hour!—she offered him coffee, which he accepted although he was already wired enough to be awake for a month. As she stood at her kitchen counter, elbows resting on its surface, hands cupping a warm mug, he remembered his official reason for being here.
“Families that have been in Skagway since the gold rush ...” she said, pursing her mouth in a way that made him want to nibble at it. “Yeah, there are some. Let me think.”
“Wilbur Thespen—guy’s older than dirt and lives in a retirement home now. Personally, I think it’s a loony bin for people too far gone to know why they’re there. Rumor has it the old man’s father struck it rich in ’98, started a bank and did enough things right that the family fortune kept on growing. Wilbur got voted to a few terms in the state legislature. But his son is around too. He’d be more our age.”
Mike felt a secret thrill that she thought of him as her own age, not some kid.
“Let’s see. McIlhaneys got into the hotel business.”
He nodded. He’d already checked that one.
“Some Smiths claim to be related to Soapy Smith. I don’t know if that’s true, but if you haven’t heard the legend of old Soapy, it’s worth a read at the library or in almost any tourist brochure.”
He smiled, although he couldn’t see himself spending any time in a library.
“Not everyone got rich,” she said, turning to add more coffee to her cup. “The Connells were supposedly here way back in the day but they sure don’t live like anybody with money. Got this ramshackle cabin out in the hills, with a pack of snot-nosed kids running around. The father runs guided hunts in the fall—far as I know that’s their only source of income. Guess he feeds the bunch of them with whatever he can poach and whatever vegetables the wife grows out behind the place. I doubt they even have running water out there.”
Sounded like a hard life. Mike couldn’t imagine getting himself into a hole that deep, but then he remembered the thirty grand Vince wanted from him. He swallowed some coffee too fast and choked.
“Hey, baby, you okay?” Geegee asked, stepping around the end of the counter to pat him on the back.
He reached for the front of her kimono and there went that slippery sash again.
It was close to noon before they emerged from her bedroom the second time and he sensed that Geegee was a little impatient.
“I’ve got other things to do today,” she said.
“Tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure. Call me in the morning if you want.” She stubbed out her fourth cigarette of the day and handed him his jacket.
Mike wanted to be miffed at the brush-off but, man, the sex was so incredible. Geegee knew things Candy didn’t know had been invented yet. If he played his cards right he could probably spend a little time with her every day he was in town. He placed a cool kiss on her cheek and slung the jacket over his shoulder before he sauntered away.
Out of sight of her house, he thought over the things she had told him about the older residents of Skagway. If he wasn’t careful he would end up like some lovesick puppy, mooning and following her around and forget his true mission—getting his hands on that gold.
He went back to the house, where he had free use of the phone and the place to himself until the grumpy roommate got off work at five o’clock. He looked up retirement homes in the phone book; there was only one so he called it and asked if a Wilbur Thespen was a resident there. When the receptionist started in with questions, he made up a story about being related and said he wanted to come by and visit.
The address in the book showed that the home was about six blocks away—hell, everything in this town was only a few blocks away. No wonder people here weren’t fat; they just walked everywhere they went. He ripped a couple of pages from the spiral notebook and stuffed them into a coat pocket. That way, he could check his notes without toting a lot of spare weight around. As he walked, he cooked up an elaborate set of relationships that would make Wilbur Thespen his great-uncle on his mother’s side, a story he figured no one could easily check. As it turned out, no one even asked about that. A woman in a nursing uniform showed him down a hallway and into a big room with lots of windows.
From Geegee’s description he’d expected Wilbur to be tottering on the edge of the grave, but the man who greeted him in the home’s “day room” was probably not more than seventy.
“Hello, young man, do I know you?” he said when Michael approached him.
“Michael Ratcliff.” He gave the explanation about how he’d come across the old letters and diaries and they sparked an interest in tracing his family history. “I was hoping to meet some people who might have lived here in Skagway at the time of the gold rush.”
“Gold rush? Well, wouldn’t that be something?”
“I meant the gold rush that happened in the eighteen-nineties.” He did a little quick mental math. If this guy had lived here, he’d been a baby at the time. “Maybe your father was one who came up here for it. My great-grandfather did.”
Wilbur’s gaze had strayed around the room and he suddenly focused on Michael again. “Well, hello young man. Do I know you?”
Michael felt his smile freeze. What was with this guy? He repeated his story, watching for something to click. It never did. He itched to get out of the chair and finally made a brusque excuse, figuring the man wouldn’t remember his rudeness thirty seconds from now.
At the reception desk a nurse stopped him. “Did you have a good visit with your uncle?”
“He doesn’t seem to remember a thing. Is he always like that?”
“At this stage, there are still lucid moments. Not often. He remembers his son more than anyone else. I can sometimes get him talking about his days as a state senator but most of it’s gone.”
A shiver went through him. Life really could be worse than having a few mobsters tracking you down.
“I was hoping he might have been here during the gold rush. My great-grandfather came here then.”
She shook her head, a sorrowful look on her face. “Even though he would have been very young then, he never says anything about it. I feel sure even those old, old memories are gone for him now. Even money and power can’t buy some things.”
“He has a son? Maybe he would remember old stories his father told him.”
“A son and a daughter. The son has taken over the family banking business—biggest bank in the region and they’ve started to open branches as far away as Anchorage. The daughter went east to an Ivy League college, I believe. We don’t see much of her.”
Michael jotted down the contact information, including the nurse’s name. It was the kind of personal reference that might get him in to see the man who ran the bank. It, as with everything else around here, was a few streets away, located on the main drag called Broadway.
He walked in and sized up the bank. A security guard greeted him and pointed toward a secretary’s desk when he said he needed to speak with the bank president. The fifty-so
me-year-old woman in sturdy shoes and tight curls was immune to his charm, telling him that Mr. Thespen had no appointments available until the following morning. He chafed at that but let her write his name down for ten o’clock. He could see the guy—maybe forty, slim, with precision-cut hair and a suit that fit like it cost a bundle—right there behind the glass windows of a private office, but this old bat was not letting him through.
Fine, he thought as he walked out to the sidewalk again. He walked up Sixth Avenue a short distance, noticing a small parking lot behind the bank building. The newest car in the lot was a black Lincoln and he stationed himself where he could see it.
Banks closed at three o’clock, right? An hour, hour-and-a-half max. He could wait.
Michael’s butt had a cramp in it from the wooden barrel where’d sat for well over two hours, pretending to soak up some sunshine and read a book. When the well-cut dark suit rounded the corner of the bank building, he stood too fast and had to work out the kinks in his legs. He strolled close to the big Lincoln.
“Mr. Thespen,” he called out, tugging his jacket straight and hoping his jeans weren’t too wrinkled.
The man paused, slightly puzzled.
“I went by to see your father today,” Michael said. He rushed on with his story, fudging a little by adding that he and his grandmother had often talked about the close friendship between Joshua Farmer and a man named Thespen who’d been here during the stampede to the Klondike. He elaborated on how he had traveled all this way to Skagway specifically to meet the family and learn more about his own heritage.
Thespen had relaxed, leaning against the fender of the big car.
“Could I buy you a drink?” Michael offered, holding his breath a little.
The banker tilted his head, thinking. “Sure. What the heck.” He pulled off his suit coat and tie and tossed them into the car. “The Red Onion’s got pretty good happy hour specials. Four blocks, if you’re up for a little walk. Myself, I find the office a bit stuffy by this time of day.”
Legends Can Be Murder Page 22
