* * *
When Jake took them back to the taxi office to collect their Bronco, Savannah and Dirk got out of the cab, and Dirk pressed some money into his palm.
“Thanks, buddy,” Dirk told him. “As it turns out, you’re not as completely useless as I thought you were gonna be.”
“Gee, thanks. I guess.”
“There’s just one thing,” Savannah said, as she leaned inside the driver’s open window and slapped him a wee bit too hard on his forearm. “The next time some of those old lady tourists get into your cab, I want you to think about something. A lot of those old ladies were majorly hot back in their day—the kind who would’ve caused your head to spin and would’ve set your undershorts afire if you’d been lucky enough to get your hands on one of them. Think about that the next time one of them climbs into your cab. You might treat her a little differently, and she might not be so cranky. Just try it on for size, huh?”
Jake gave her a wide-eyed, vacant stare.
Okay, by admonishing him, she hadn’t changed his basic character, elevated social mores, or improved the planet. But what the heck? It was about time that somebody stood up for the Former Hotties and Still Pretty Damned Awesome Gals of the world.
Chapter 18
Just before Savannah and Dirk arrived at the Tongass Glacier Visitor Center, they passed the spot where the Van Cleefs had met their demise. As always, Savannah was struck by the strange difference in a locale once the debris of the traffic accident had been cleared away.
What had once been a scene of horror now looked mostly like any other stretch of road, any other curve, any other bit of forest.
Only the one tree they had struck bore signs of the event. Its bark was scuffed, its lower limbs burned. The needles and cones on the ground beneath it had been turned to ash, but the fire had spread no further.
“It’s a good thing this isn’t the middle of their hot season,” Dirk said, as though thinking the same thing she was.
“True. The whole forest could’ve been set on fire.”
“That was a lucky break.” Dirk’s cheerful tone sounded pathetically false.
She gave him a look. “Here I thought that I was the family-appointed Pollyanna.”
“You are. But lately, ever since you started this change-of-life business, you’ve been almost as grumpy as me. If you’re not fulfilling your duties, being annoyingly cheerful and all that crap, somebody’s got to do it.”
She smiled and fluttered her eyelashes. “Do you mind?”
“Of course I mind. Who wants to act like they’re happy when they’re in a bad mood? It sucks.” He reached over and tweaked one of her dark curls. “But what the hell, somebody has to do it. I guess it’s only fair to take turns.”
“It does have to be done, no doubt about it. Both of us can’t be wallowing around in the abyss of depression. Not at the same time.”
“That’s for sure. It’d be war.”
She noticed that he slowed the Bronco down a bit as they passed the actual crash site. She also noticed that his eyes, along with hers, were scanning the road on either side. It wasn’t necessary to ask him what he was looking for.
A gas can.
Just as she was.
She wasn’t surprised when she didn’t spot one. Even Olive didn’t seem foolish enough to set a car on fire with two people inside and then leave the gas tank in clear sight.
But then, while still a cop, Savannah had caught a guy robbing a convenience store that was right next door to the service station where he worked. He had been semi-cunning enough to wear a paper sack with eye holes cut out over his head. But since he was robbing the store on his lunch break, he was wearing his mechanics uniform with the name of the station and his own embroidered on the front.
As he often did, Dirk spoke her very thoughts, “Even she’s not stupid enough to leave that can out here in plain sight. But then, you never know. Remember when that guy who wore his service station uniform to rob the—”
“Stop it! You’re doing it again!”
“Reading your thoughts?”
“Yes, and it’s creepy.”
He laughed. “We’re getting more alike every day, me and you. Two shall be one and all that.”
“God forbid.”
* * *
When they reached the Visitor Center, Savannah was surprised to see only one tour bus and a couple of taxis in the parking lot.
“Wow,” she said, as they climbed out of the Bronco and headed up the path to the center. “You’d think a place like this would be more crowded.”
“Remember, the trooper at the accident said that it’s still early in the season. Not a lot of traffic up yet.”
“True—unfortunately, for us. Otherwise a tour bus might have been passing by when the Van Cleefs crashed. That would’ve been nice.”
She caught him giving her an odd look. “You know what I mean,” she said. “It would’ve been bad for the people on the bus, obviously. Instead of having a nice, peaceful, Alaska vacation, they’d be waking up in their beds screaming from the memory. But at least we’d have a boatload of witnesses.”
He gave her another, even odder, look.
She threw up her hands. “Okay! I’m an ex-cop, for heaven’s sake. Not a humanist philosopher.”
As they continued across the parking lot, he said, “I know what you meant, babe. You’re just being practical.”
“Yes, and I want to do a couple of things very badly. One: prove that this was a murder. Two: find out who did it.”
“Me too, darlin’. At least we know that Fluff-Head Olive had something to do with it.”
“Of course she did. What are the odds that some random somebody would leave a cruise ship, buy a can of gas, hire a cab to bring it up here within walking distance of the crash scene? A crash scene that reeked of gasoline.”
“I find it hard to believe that she could have planned a murder on her own. But I agree that she is in on it, right up to those perky bosoms of hers that she’s so proud of.”
She looked up at him with a smirk and said, “They were perky? Really? I can’t recall.”
He shrugged. “Me either. When it comes to remembering things like boobs and the size of the fish we caught, we guys tend to embellish a bit.”
“Get out. I never would’ve guessed.”
He opened the center’s door and they walked inside to find a state park ranger in the middle of the room giving a lecture to a group of tourists. The pretty female ranger’s face bore the characteristics of her indigenous Tlingit ancestors: exotic dark eyes, prominent cheekbones, and smooth, bronzed skin.
She was comparing two large, framed photos on the wall. One showed a glacier as it had been many years ago. The second, more current picture revealed how much the ice had receded.
Any other time, Savannah might have been tempted to linger and listen, but today she couldn’t afford to play the tourist. She and Dirk walked over to a concession stand where all sorts of souvenirs were sold. An older woman, who also appeared to have native heritage, was arranging hand-carved animals in a glass case.
She smiled when she saw Savannah and Dirk approach. “Good afternoon,” she greeted them. “May I help you?”
“I certainly hope so,” Savannah told her as she walked up to the counter and scrolled through the pictures on her cell phone. Finding the photo of Olive, she showed it to the clerk, at the same time that Dirk showed her his badge.
“Did you happen to see this lady here in the center this morning?” Savannah asked.
The woman didn’t need to study the photo long before replying, “Yes, I did. Early this morning. Not long after we opened.”
“When you saw her, what time was it?” Dirk asked.
“We opened at nine, and I saw her shortly after that. So maybe five after nine.”
“What did she do?” Savannah wanted to know.
The clerk lowered her voice and leaned closer to Savannah. “She used the ladies room, and apparently she really
needed to. She rushed right inside and stayed there for a long time.”
“How long?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe ten minutes. Longer than most people visit the restroom, I’d say.”
Dirk scowled. “Do you have any idea what she was doing in there?”
“Not really,” the woman replied. “But when she came out of the bathroom, she went straight out the front door again. I was a little curious, I have to admit. I’ve worked in this center for over twenty years, and I’ve seen all kinds of things, weird stuff that’s happened in those restrooms.”
“I’ll bet you have,” Savannah said.
The clerk nodded vigorously and lowered her voice even more. “I’ve caught people doing drugs, stealing other people’s belongings, beating each other to a pulp, and, of course, having sex, in more different ways and positions than you’d ever want to know about.” Glancing at Dirk, she added, “Although you being a policeman, you’ve probably seen it all yourself and more.”
He gave her a twisted smile. “Let’s just say that after all I’ve seen, I’m forty-something going on ninety-three.”
“When you went into the restroom after she left,” Savannah said, “did you see anything unusual?”
“No. Everything looked the same.”
Savannah’s mood plummeted. Apparently, she was destined to be disappointed and deeply frustrated for the umpteenth time in one afternoon.
“But there was something very unusual,” the clerk added.
Just as quickly Savannah’s spirits rose to new heights. “What was that?”
“The bathroom absolutely reeked of gasoline. It was awful. I swear it smelled like she had taken a bath in it.”
* * *
“You realize we’re looking for a needle in a haystack,” Dirk told Savannah after they had been searching the area around the crash site for nearly an hour, looking for Olive’s now-infamous gas can.
“I’m still bummed out, so you’re still on Pollyanna duty,” she told him. “That means you have to keep depressing thoughts like those to yourself.”
For the first half hour of their search, Savannah had been positively enchanted by the otherworldly beauty of the ancient woods. The intoxicating, refreshing scent of the evergreens, the crunch of the aromatic forest floor beneath her feet, the rocks and remains of fallen trees covered by soft, damp moss—the natural beauty of the land found a special place deep in her heart.
Savannah knew that if she lived to be older than Granny Reid, it would remain a part of her.
But as their search continued to yield nothing, Savannah tried to put the bewitching beauty of the place aside and concentrate on the business at hand.
“Are you sure that gas can is red?” she called out to Dirk, who was about twenty feet away, deeper into the forest. “What if it’s green? If it’s green we’re never going to find the darn thing.”
She could hear him sigh wearily, even from across the distance. “Van, really? Have you ever in your life seen a green gas can?”
“No. But—”
“No ‘but.’ There is no ‘but.’ It’s like some kind of cosmic law that gas cans are red. Besides, the service station attendant told me he sold her a red one. He even showed me one that was just like it, and it was very red. I refuse to discuss this with you anymore.”
But Savannah hadn’t heard his last few sentences. Because she was looking at something a few feet away, well hidden under a thick fern cluster. A chunk of half-rotted tree bark had also been thrown over it.
“I got it,” she yelled to Dirk.
“What?”
“I said, ‘I got it.’ It’s over here, about six feet from the road.”
She could hear him tromping loudly through the woods, headed in her direction.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, but it’s green. Just like I told you.”
“Huh? What?”
He burst through the bushes and looked where she was pointing. At a red gas can.
He chuckled. “You’re a pistol, gal. One of these days I’m gonna have to take you over my knee and spank you.”
“Yeah. Yeah. You might get the job done, darlin’, but you’d be all bloody and bruised and crippled up somethin’ fierce. It wouldn’t be worth it, I guarantee you.”
“Why do I believe that?”
They both rushed over to the gas can. Savannah found a stick and gingerly lifted one corner of the tree bark, giving them a better look.
“That’s gotta be it,” she said. “Not a speck of mud or even dust on it. Has to be fresh.”
“It is. I can even smell the fumes from it.”
“The lid’s off,” she said. “We should try to find that, too. That and the handle would be the most likely places for fingerprints.”
“We’ll look for it, but first I’m going to call that state trooper, Sergeant Bodin. He’s gotta see this and process it.”
“He’s probably going to want to talk to our Little Miss Olive.”
“If we can find her.”
“Yes, if we can find her.” She reached into her purse, pulled out her phone, and started to call Ryan. “I think we’d better put the rest of the team on that. With any luck she won’t be standing in a forest, wearing a green dress.”
Chapter 19
This time when dealing with Sergeant Bodin, Savannah detected a trace of humility, maybe even a bit of respect in the way he addressed her. Though all he’d said when they showed him the gas can was a simple, “Thanks. Good work.”
His gratitude wasn’t that important to her. What she wanted was his cooperation and willingness to help them figure out what had happened to Natasha and Colin Van Cleef.
Later, after the now-empty gas can had been carefully bagged and placed in the trunk of his cruiser, Bodin turned to her and Dirk and said, “You know, even before you called us, we’d changed our minds about this being an accident.”
Savannah perked up. “Really. Why?”
“When we were helping Dr. Johnson remove the bodies from the car, that smell of gasoline that you noticed earlier . . . let’s just say, it was overpowering. One of the mechanics who works for the towing company said that the two front seats had been soaked with gasoline. He said even after that hot fire, they’re still deeply saturated.”
“I guess that makes that gas can we found all the more important, huh?” Dirk said, practically glowing with self-importance.
Savannah decided not to mention that she had found the can, not “we.” Embarrassing one’s law enforcement husband in front of another law enforcer was a foolproof way of assuring that you were going to have a grumpy husband at least for an hour or two.
When she weighed the cost versus the benefit, she decided it wasn’t worth it.
Bodin slammed his trunk shut and turned back to them. Brushing some dirt from his hands, he said, “I’m definitely going to have to interview that gal you spoke of, the personal assistant. What’s her name?”
“Olive,” Savannah told him. “Olive Kelly. We have our people looking for her right now, both on the ship and in town. We’ll let you know the minute we find her.”
He gave her a challenging little grin. “Unless, of course, I find her first.”
“It doesn’t really matter who finds her, does it, Sergeant?”
“No, I suppose not. But I am looking forward to asking a woman who’s vacationing on a cruise ship what she was doing this morning, running around with a full gas can.”
Savannah told him, “I will be very interested in watching you ask those questions. I can’t wait to see what kind of explanation she’s going to come up with. Especially since she didn’t strike me as a particularly inventive gal.”
Dirk chuckled. “Something tells me it’ll involve a dog eating homework. Or she was holding the gas for a friend.”
* * *
Savannah and Dirk had just arrived back in town, when Savannah’s cell phone rang. She was delighted to see that it was Tammy calling. What a relief, to have her Princes
s of Sleuth-dom back in business.
“Hello there, Miss Tamitha. What’s shakin’, puddin’?”
“I’ve got her! I’ve got her right here!”
“Who?”
“Olive Kelly. Waycross and I just stepped off the ship to walk around and see if we could find her. Boy, did we luck out! It wasn’t five minutes until we saw her get out of an old van there by the pier.”
“Are you following her?”
“No. I’ve got a hold of her arm, and I’m not letting go.”
Savannah caught her breath. “Tammy, listen to me, girl. Let her go. Take your mitts off her right now and be very, very nice to her.”
“But why?”
“Just do it.”
“Okay, I let her go. But now she’s going to get away.”
“So, follow her. But whatever you do, don’t put your hands on her again. Where are you exactly?”
“At the bottom of the gangway. She was trying to go up onto the ship.”
“Then talk to her. See if you can get her to stay there. We’ll be along in less than two minutes.”
Savannah ended the call, turned to Dirk, and said, “Stomp that pedal, boy. We’ve gotta burn the wind and get to the ship as quick as we can.”
“What’s going on?” he asked. “What’s that ding-a-ling done now?”
Savannah shrugged. “Um, nothing much.”
“Come on, Van. Spill it.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s just say that, if she wanted to, I’m pretty sure that Olive Kelly could press charges against Miss Tammy for false arrest, false imprisonment, and kidnapping.”
Dirk did exactly as Savannah suggested. While she made a quick phone call to Sergeant Bodin, he pressed the pedal to the metal and sent the old Bronco bouncing down the pothole-riddled road.
* * *
They arrived at the ship, not in two minutes, but in ninety seconds. Dirk stashed the Bronco in the first available parking space he could find, then they both jumped out of the vehicle and ran to the ship.
As they approached the gangway, they saw Tammy and Wayercross standing, side by side, blocking a very angry Olive Kelly from boarding the ship.
But, as Savannah had instructed her, neither Tammy nor Waycross were touching her.
Every Body on Deck Page 15
