Coffee, Tea, or Murder? (26 page)

“I am,” I agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a feeling of freedom and relaxation before. Everyone kids me, of course. I fly a plane but don’t drive a car.”

“From the statistics you’ve cited to me, we’re considerably safer up here than down there on a highway.”

“It’s more than that,” I said as the airport came into sight. It takes time for novice pilots to be able to pick out runways from a few thousand feet above the earth, but you eventually become skilled at it. “The world disappears when I’m flying. My biggest regret is not having more time to enjoy it.”

“You’re a busy woman, Jessica Fletcher,” he said, a hint of sadness in his voice. “You fly. You write bestselling novels. You tend your garden and cook elaborate meals and travel the world and—”

“I can’t ever imagine not being busy,” I said while trimming up the plane with the small trim tab wheel on the floor between our seats.

“Would you ever consider slowing down a bit and moving to London?”

“I’ve thought of that many times, George. It’s one of my favorite cities in the world, and knowing you’re there only enhances the concept.”

“Well?”

I shook my head and added a little more throttle to maintain altitude. “It’s just not in the cards for me, I’m afraid, at least not at this juncture.”

He laughed. “Recently, I’ve wondered whether I could be happy living in—oh, let’s say, the States. I’m coming up on retirememt age and—”

“You? Retired? I can’t imagine it. You’d be bored silly.”

“You’re probably right, although the notion has a certain appeal. I wonder how good friends living an ocean apart managed to see each other now and then before the aircraft was invented, or fast steamships.”

“I’m sure they managed,” I said.

“Just as we manage.”

“Yes,” I agreed with a smile. “Just as we manage.” We fell silent and focused on the sights two thousand feet below.

“I feel sorry for the flight attendant, Ms. Molnari,” he said as I banked the plane into a shallow turn. “She had her nasty little fling with Silverton but fell madly in love with Captain Caine. She told me when I interviewed her during the flight to Boston that Caine was insanely jealous of Silverton and of her affair with him, as brief as it might have been. Caine threatened to break off their relationship. That’s why she feigned her suicide attempt, an ill-advised grand-stand play to get his attention.”

“With Christine Silverton’s sleeping pills.”

“Yes. Unknown to Mrs. Silverton, Caine had announced to Ms. Molnari that he was ending their relationship. He was in the enviable—or perhaps unenviable—position of having two attractive women in love with him. Ms. Molnari and Mrs. Silverton. Shortly after being told by Caine that he was breaking it off, Molnari was berated by Mrs. Silverton in her hotel room for having stolen Caine from her. This twin assault was too much for Ms. Molnari. She grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills from Mrs. Silverton’s bathroom, returned to Caine’s room, and swallowed some of the pills in his presence. Foolish woman.”

“ ‘Desperate’ is more apt,” I said.

“I suppose you’re right. The reason she didn’t accompany the rest of the crew into London the night you arrived was that she and Caine had a few drinks at Stansted. I don’t believe there ever was an old flying buddy, as he claimed.”

“We both knew that, George, without being told. Time to go back.” I started the process of setting up to enter the traffic pattern at the Cabot Cove airport.

“Yes, time to go back,” he said. “I wish it weren’t the case.”

“I’ve only rented the plane for an hour.”

“I wasn’t talking about going back to the airport, Jessica. I meant having to go back to London tomorrow. I like it here.”

“And I love having you here.”

“Maybe one day we’ll find time to
really
get to know each other, time together without a bloody murder interfering.”

I laughed. “Based upon my track record, George, that’s not very likely. But I share your sentiment. Let’s make a point of it.”

I entered Cabot Cove Airport’s left-hand traffic pattern, the standard for most airports unless otherwise posted, flew the downwind leg with the wind behind me, turned onto what’s called the base leg, and then made another ninety-degree left turn that lined me up with the twenty-one-hundred-foot asphalt runway. Every pilot knows that a perfect landing isn’t possible every time, no matter how skilled and experienced you are, but I wanted this one to be as smooth as possible. It turned out to be just that, a by-the-book touchdown at precisely the point on the runway I’d aimed for. I turned off the runway as soon as the small plane had slowed sufficiently and taxied to the hangar where Jed housed and maintained his fleet of small planes. He waved as I pulled up to the tie-down area and killed the engine.

“Bravo, Jessica,” George said.

He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Next thing I know,” he said, “you’ll be applying to become an astronaut.”

“I’d take you with me to the moon,” I said.

“And I wouldn’t hesitate to go.”

“
Y
ou must be beside yourself with worry,” I said. “I haven’t slept a wink since I received the call from the Alaska State Police.”

“She’s disappeared? I mean,
really
disappeared?”

“Yes. At least that’s what the police said. She left the ship in Ketchikan and never returned. They have a system for tracking people who get off the ship to enjoy shore time in the ports. They scan your passenger card when you leave the ship, and again when you return. Their computers show her leaving at nine-thirty in the morning, but she was never scanned as having returned.”

“Maybe their computers made a mistake,” Seth Hazlitt said. My dear friend, and Cabot Cove’s most popular physician, has an inherent mistrust of computers.

We were gathered in my living room. It had been a particularly cold March, with a series of snowstorms, and many days when the temperature never rose above freezing. I’d made stew, whipped up a salad, and served a red wine recommended to me by my favorite Cabot Cove wine shop. After dinner, we retreated to my living room, where I had the fireplace going, and I served coffee and tea, and a plate of cookies. With me were Seth; Sheriff Mort Metzger and his wife, Maureen; Charlene Sassi, owner of the town’s favorite bakery and the source of the cookies; Michael Cunniff, one of Cabot Cove’s leading attorneys; and Kathy Copeland, a dear friend of many years and the person relating this troublesome tale. She’d received the call about her sister five days earlier, and had immediately flown to Alaska to confer with authorities there. She’d returned to Cabot Cove only yesterday.

“I spoke with that officer in Alaska,” Mort said. “They seem like competent fellas.”

“I’m sure they are,” I agreed.

“Very nice and very professional,” Kathy said. “And I appreciate you taking the time to speak with them, Mort.”

“Least I could do,” our sheriff replied.

“Kathy, I don’t want to make light of your concern,” I said, “but your sister, Wilimena, has been known in the past to—well, to disappear for periods of time.”

Kathy sat back in her chair, rolled her eyes, and sighed. “I know, I know,” she said. “Willie has always been a free spirit. There have been times when I wasn’t able to reach her for months at a stretch, but then she surfaced from wherever she’d gone and regaled me with tales of her adventures. But this feels different.”

She sat up straight and extended her hands as though to elicit our understanding and agreement with what she was about to say. “There was no reason for her to leave the ship and not come back. Sure, Willie would take off at the drop of a hat and follow some whim of the moment, but not this way. I just know something terrible has happened to her.”

We fell silent as we contemplated what she’d said, and avoided further comment by taking much longer than necessary to choose a cookie from the platter. Mort broke the silence.

“You say you brought back some of her things,” he said to Kathy.

“Yes. The cruise authorities sealed off her cabin and secured all of her personal belongings.”

“Did the Alaskan police examine those things?” I asked.

“Some of them, Jessica. Willie always took along a large envelope in which to keep her receipts from a trip. The police photocopied them for me.”

“Those receipts would give some indication of where she went, and what she might have done in the various ports-of-call,” I offered.

“Did you look through them yourself?” Michael Cunniff asked. He had been practicing law in Cabot Cove for as long as I’ve lived there. He was in his late seven-ties but hadn’t lost a step mentally. Physically, however, he was a mass of orthopedic maladies, which necessitated walking with a cane. With long, flowing silver hair and a penchant for colorful bow ties to accompany his many suits, he was an attorney out of central casting—or maybe a United States senator of yesteryear.

“I must have gone over them a dozen times on the flight home,” Kathy replied, referring to her sister’s receipts. “They were all from the ports the ship had visited earlier, Juneau and Sitka. Ketchikan was the last stop in Alaska before returning to Seattle.”

“And?” I asked.

Kathy shrugged. “They mean nothing to me. Just receipts from shops and restaurants Willie visited in those ports, and a bunch of shipboard receipts, too, from the various lounges and shops.”

“I’d like to see them,” Michael said. He’d been Kathy’s attorney since she moved to Cabot Cove forty years ago.

“Of course,” she said.

“Are the Alaskan police at all confident about finding Wilimena?” Seth asked.

“They said they would do all they could,” Kathy answered, “but they also reminded me that Alaska is a very big place . . . especially—”

“Especially what?” I asked.

“Especially if Willie doesn’t want to be found.”

“Ironic, isn’t it, Jess, that you’ll soon be heading for Alaska?” Maureen said.

It was true. I’d visited our forty-ninth state years ago on a whirlwind book promotion tour. So, although I literally had visited Alaska, I’d never seen it, and had decided to rectify that by booking an Inland Passage cruise—the same one Kathy’s sister, Wilimena, had taken and from which she’d vanished. I’d booked the cruise months in advance, combining it with a long weekend in Seattle prior to the ship’s departure. I have a favorite mystery bookstore there run by a marvelous gentleman, Bill Farley, who always arranges for a book signing whenever I’m within striking distance of his store on Cherry Street.

My reason for choosing an Alaskan cruise, as opposed to visiting other places on the globe, was a nagging need to get closer to nature. It had been building in me all winter, and by the time January rolled around, it had become almost an obsession. True, Maine teems with wildlife, which is one of many reasons I love living there. But Alaska has a very different lure for those of us enamored of nature and the remarkable array of creatures with whom we share our planet. So many of my friends have returned from up north filled with lifelong memories of having sailed into the midst of a pod of orca whales, or having seen majestic bald eagles on virtually every treetop. Witnessing nature up close and personal has always helped me put things, including myself, into perspective, affirming my place in this world.

“Maybe you could ask a few questions while you’re there, Mrs. F.,” Mort suggested. “You know, check in with the local police and see if they’ve made any progress in finding Wilimena.”

“I’d be happy to do that,” I said, “although I’m not sure they’d be anxious to share anything with me.”

“But they would with me,” Kathy said.

“Of course they would,” said Mort. “You’re the missing person’s sister.”

Kathy looked at me and said, “What I meant, Jessica, was . . . um . . . I was wondering whether you’d mind a traveling companion.”

“A traveling companion?”

She nodded. “I don’t mean to impose myself on you and your trip. Believe me, I know how much this trip means to you, and I wouldn’t for a second intrude. But considering what’s happened to Wilimena—and that you’re taking the same cruise as she did—on the same ship—it just seemed to me that—well, that maybe retracing her steps would help me come to grips with her disappearance.”

“I, ah—”

Truth was, I was looking forward to the Alaska cruise as a means of getting away from everything and anything and basking in a week of solitude, with only whales, sea lions, otters, and eagles as traveling companions.

I looked to Seth, who knew exactly what I was thinking, not only because he knows me so well, but also because I’d spoken to him about my need to escape on a solo jaunt.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Mike Cunniff said, running his hands through his hair. “Besides, Jessica, you seem to have a penchant for getting to the bottom of things rather quickly, especially when it involves—”

He’d almost said “murder,” and I was glad he hadn’t.

“What a great idea,” Maureen said to me. “You’d have company and—”

“Mo and I talked about taking that cruise with you, Mrs. F.,” Mort said, “but it’s a bad time of the year for me.”

Startled, I turned to him. “I didn’t know you’d been considering coming,” I said.

“It’s probably not a good idea, me joining you,” Kathy said.

“Oh, no, it’s a—it’s a good idea, Kathy. I just wasn’t planning on traveling with anyone.”

“I’d stay out of your hair, Jess,” she said, “go my own way and try to find out what’s happened to Willie.” She laughed. “Chances are she met up with some handsome Mountie and decided to spend some time with him in Alaska.”