The Mountains Bow Down Page 18

  He blew a cloud of smoke. “Why’s that?”

  “Because by then, I’ll know who killed Judy Carpenter.”

  “You must be slow. She killed herself.”

  “Only she didn’t.”

  “What kinda game are you playing?” he asked.

  “No game. It’s life and death.”

  There was a burst of applause as MJ finished her song. She leaned into the mic and announced a quick break.

  Vinnie flicked his cigarette over the rail, not bothering to see if it hit water, and walked away. When he reached the bar, Milo threw a sloppy arm around him.

  Away from everyone else, MJ stared out at the ship’s starboard side, her black hair blowing, the color blending with the mountains across the water. When I walked up beside her, there were tears sliding down her cheeks. She looked over, then pointed to the woods along the water’s edge. In the trees, a tempera of yellow light glowed from a tiny log cabin.

  “That’s where I want to go,” she said. “Somewhere nobody can find me.”

  “It looks lonely.” I watched her tears, wondering whether the wind made them. “Is it Judy’s death that’s bothering you?”

  She cried without contorting her face. She cried the way actresses cry.

  “It’s just all so . . . final. She’s never coming back.”

  I hesitated saying the next thing. It was cruel. But there was no time for sentiment. “The dress you sent down to the laundry. How did it get so dusty?”

  She didn’t turn to look at me. I stared at her profile and she wiped her face almost robotically before walking back to the piano and sitting on the bench. After a moment, she raised her hands. I could see her fingers trembling. She closed her eyes.

  And then I heard something remarkable.

  With her eyes still closed, she reached forward and let her fingertips caress the keys lightly, like someone reading Braille. The first notes that came out were minor keys. They rose so slowly I wasn’t sure it was a song, but she continued to coax the bittersweet tune and the notes stretched into elongated cries of desperation and need. At the small tables, all conversation ceased and the music swam into the gloaming sky, harmonizing with its twilight hues.

  Only one person ignored her: Milo. Keeping his back to the piano, he hugged his drink. I watched Jack swing himself off the bar, staggering toward me. I turned around, facing the ocean, hoping he’d stay away. But he came to the rail, hooking a boot heel on the bottom rung. A cowboy, caught in the wrong century.

  “Harmon, don’t look at me like that.”

  “How many drinks, Jack?”

  “Four.”

  “Terrific. You’ll be a big help tomorrow.”

  “The first two I flushed in the men’s room. I spilled the third.” He lifted his glass in a mock toast. “I’m nursing number four and they’re all too drunk to notice.”

  The wind shifted, blowing hair across my face. I gave a begrudging nod, still not ready to forgive for some reason. “Did your new best friend tell you anything interesting?”

  “His jeans got dirty when he fell on the floor.”

  “Fell where, in a dustbin?”

  “In the Sky Bar. He fell because he was upset about Judy.”

  I looked over at Milo. He was staring at me.

  No, I was wrong. He was staring at Jack.

  “He’s making moony faces at you,” I said. “What’s the deal with you two?”

  “He wants an Oscar.”

  “For playing a drunk?”

  “Harmon, do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you?”

  I repeated my question, “What’s the deal with you two, Jack?”

  “All right, brace yourself. He thinks this movie will be his biggest hit. His most emotional performance ever.”

  “It’s an emotional performance all right.”

  “Don’t ever quit this job, Harmon. You were made for it.”

  “Jack, I read this script. It’s not like it’s Citizen Kane.”

  “Ah, but Sandy Sparks is rewriting the ending.”

  I waited. The movie was about an FBI agent who takes a cruise with his wife. Only she gets kidnapped and he has to rescue her. “Don’t tell me.”

  “You got it. The wife dies. She’s found hanging off the ship.”

  I looked at Sandy Sparks, scribbling on the cocktail napkins.

  “By the way,” Jack said, “Milo says you’re fired.”

  “Do you promise?”

  He laughed. “You’re fired and I’m the new consultant. He asked me to come to Hollywood, work the double.”

  “What double?”

  “A double. I stand in for Milo, when the director wants to block the shot.”

  “Block the shot?”

  “He made a nice offer. He thinks I have a future in movies.”

  “Jack, that’s not a compliment.”

  “Think about it. No more paperwork, no more perps vomiting in my car. No more days sitting at the courthouse waiting for the case that never gets called. I just might take him up on the offer.”

  “Go for it.” Satiated with food, I didn’t want to talk anymore. I wanted sleep and could feel myself fading. “Until you go Hollywood, we have work to do.” I pushed myself off the rail. “See you in the morning.”

  “Harmon, tell the truth.”

  “About what?”

  “If I went to Hollywood, you’d miss me.”

  I told myself it was fatigue. That’s all. I was tired, so tired my mind was playing tricks. Because as I walked away, leaving him standing there, a certain part of me wondered if he wasn’t right.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The sound of the shower woke me Friday morning—woke me suddenly, woke me with a pounding heart. I bolted upright, listening to the water run, fearing this was another episode of “cleaning the air.”

  But the bathroom door was closed. Sighing with relief, I lay back down and stared at my watch. It was 6:23 am and sleep would not come again. I reached for my cell phone, seizing the rare moment of privacy. There was another message from DeMott, but I bypassed voice mail and called the Alaska Medical Examiner’s office, hoping to catch them before the day got busy. A woman answered, put me on hold, and three minutes later when the shower cut off, I grabbed my keycard and stepped into the hallway, figuring nobody else was up at this hour.

  Wrong.

  “Baby sleeping again?” whispered the nice woman from yesterday. Beside her, the man carried a camera, binoculars, and a camcorder. He stared at my pajamas. The woman pointed to the cabin next to Aunt Charlotte’s. “Are they keeping you up too?”

  I nodded, smiling as they passed, listening to the automated recording that gave me directions to the morgue. Follow Northern Lights Boulevard to . . . But the nice couple was just the beginning. More cabin doors were opening, and people were stepping into the hallway dressed in warm jackets and hats, all of them carrying cameras and camcorders.

  Snapping my phone shut, I slid the keycard into the lock.

  But I missed.

  Suddenly the floor shifted and I grabbed the door handle, hanging on to keep from falling over.

  People were lunging for the handrails, crying out. And then a bang went off.

  On the other side of the door, my mother screamed.

  I managed to get the keycard in, throwing the door open.

  She squeezed the curtains, holding them open, and stared out the window. Blocks of pale blue ice floated by.

  “Iceberg!” she cried. “We hit an iceberg.”

  The ocean water no longer looked blue. It was green—electric green—and the mountains no longer had trees. The sharp rock faces sliced the water like knives.

  “We’re okay,” I said, feeling my pulse pound again. We had sailed into Tracy Arm, considered one of the world’s most spectacular fjords. Seeing it was among my top vacation hopes—before murder and grand larceny and pornography altered my focus. “We’re inside a narrow channel and there’s a glacier at the other end. That’s wher
e the icebergs are coming from. We’re fine. It’s just going to be a little bumpy.”

  She did not look convinced; in fact, she looked at me like I was . . . a liar.

  I turned away and knocked on the adjoining door. Aunt Charlotte was snapping a pink scarf like a flag. She nodded before I said a word, then called out, “Nadine, this is not the Titanic. Throw some warm clothes on, let’s go. We’re late.”

  I felt a surge of love for my aunt. We disagreed about so many things, yet here was family: the people who kept dancing with you, even after the music stopped.

  She ran her eyes over my pajamas. “Are you coming?”

  “Yes, but”—I glanced around the cabin—“where’s Claire?”

  “She’s saving us a good spot on the top deck.” Aunt Charlotte picked up her coat, lowering her voice. “I’ll try to keep them apart as much as possible, but this ship’s only so big.” She raised her voice again. “Now g’on, get dressed!”

  At the teak railing, my mother shivered and stared at ice the size of automobiles. As the ship inched forward, Aunt Charlotte stood between my mother and Claire, a human buffer. Though the morning was sunny, the air felt cold and smelled of crystallized water and silted minerals. The deck was crowded with people, but a reverential silence had fallen.

  I stepped back slowly and walked toward the aft, the only person more interested in the small alcove that faced the wrong way for the view. The thin orange rope was now wrapped around the coil of thick gray mooring line, but I gazed around the area, searching for what it was that bothered me so much. Perhaps it was the location, I realized. The door back into the ship was only steps away. The sports court was right there too. And the platform where last night’s so-called “memorial” took place. And beyond that, the Sky Bar perched above the wake.

  And yet this alcove was almost invisible from every one of those locations.

  The perfect spot.

  Opening my cell phone, I hit Redial, and was placed on hold again with the ME’s office. Leaning over the rail, I stared down at the water whose strange color was created by the persistent glaciers scouring the rock beneath the ice, filling the thin channel with silt and sediment. As golden sunlight shone through the blue water, the minerals made it look green.

  “Need any help?”

  I turned around.

  Jack stood there, holding two cups of steaming coffee.

  I took the cup he offered. “I’m on hold with the medical examiner, the office is in Anchorage.”

  The ship hit an iceberg, a light thud. When I glanced over the rail, the berg bobbed, sending ripples through the water.

  Jack stepped into the alcove, looking it over. “I walked Milo back to his cabin last night. He wanted me to have another drink with him.”

  “So you did.”

  “Of course.” He grinned. “I really should be an actor. I managed not to drink six gin-and-tonics last night. It’s not as easy as it looks, even in the company of drunks.”

  “Did you learn anything else?”

  “Yes, I asked him about the piano player, again. He went into an inebriated rant about AA and people who join it getting self-righteous and who do they think they are. It went on and on. But it made me wonder what beef he’s got with her.”

  In the silence, his phone rang. It played a theme song from a spaghetti western. “Jack Stephanson,” he answered. Then mouthed one word to me: McLeod.

  I turned back to the green sea. McLeod, making sure things were still plutonic.

  “Raleigh? She’s right here.”

  I’d already lost my place in line once with the ME’s office and I didn’t want to start over again. But if I refused to talk to McLeod, he would get suspicious again. Handing Jack my phone, I said, “When they pick up, tell them we’re calling about Judy Carpenter’s autopsy. Remind them it’s an expedite.”

  “Got it.”

  I took Jack’s phone. “Yes, sir, this is Raleigh.”

  “We got him,” McLeod said.

  “Who?”

  “Ramadan.”

  “Ramazan?” I said, making a rare correction. “Where?”

  “Sea-Tac airport. Marvin Larsen was told we were searching for a fugitive from Juneau”—Marvin Larsen, a special agent who worked out of Seattle airport—“and when Marvin heard it was for your case, he pulled out the stops. What is it with you, Harmon?”

  I connected with Marvin Larsen last fall, on my missing person’s case, when he gave me a major break. My mother instilled several useful habits in me, and one was sending heartfelt thank-you notes, particularly for people with thankless jobs. Working airport security for the FBI qualified as truly thankless.

  “Marvin’s one of the good guys,” I said. “Where’s Ramazan now?”

  “Larsen stuck him in an interrogation room at the airport.”

  “Did he find the bracelet?”

  “He’s fired off a search warrant for the US attorneys.”

  “Oh no.”

  McLeod sighed. “Yeah, the guy’s already called in a lawyer. And with that Turkish citizenship, we’ve got a tough row to mow.”

  Jack began waving, signaling the call was coming in.

  “Go ahead and take it,” I told him.

  “Take what?” McLeod asked.

  “I was talking to Jack, he’s got my phone.”

  There was a long silence, full of plutonic implications.

  “Sir, when you called I was on hold with the Alaska ME’s office. I’ve been waiting a long time and I didn’t want to lose my connection.” The defensive tone in my voice was making the truth sound like a bad excuse. “We traded phones and—”

  “Raleigh, you know I never jump to conclusions. With me, everything is strictly ipso fatso.”

  I didn’t even bother with substitutions. I was staring at Jack and the odd expression on his face.

  “But if I didn’t know better . . . ” McLeod was saying.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say something was wrong with Jack. I couldn’t hear his exact words because he was over by the shuffleboard court, but I suddenly wondered if Larsen had called. Jack didn’t like Larsen. Or was Jack arguing with the morgue? Either way, it was trouble and I started to walk over, vaguely hearing McLeod say something about fraternization.

  “My name’s Jack,” he was saying into my phone. “That’s right, Jack. You need me to spell it? . . . Raleigh? She’s busy . . . She can’t come to the phone. . . . Why? She doesn’t want to, that’s why.”

  Oh. No.

  Oh no!

  I threw Jack’s phone at him, McLeod’s voice going out into the air, and grabbed my phone out of Jack’s hand. Closing my eyes, I put the phone to my ear and prayed.

  “This is Raleigh.”

  “Who was that?” DeMott asked.

  “Nobody.” My heart was racing so fast it hurt.

  “Why is he answering your phone?”

  I walked across the empty shuffleboard court. My feet felt numb. “He’s a colleague. Another agent.”

  “From Richmond?”

  “No, Seattle.”

  “But he’s on that cruise?”

  “They sent him up. Tuesday. To help out.”

  “Help—with what?”

  “DeMott, I really can’t get into it.”

  “You’re working?” He sounded incredulous.

  I dropped my head.

  “Raleigh, you said this was a vacation. You needed time away. You didn’t say anything about working.”

  “It is a vacation.”

  “But you’re working?”

  I held my tongue.

  “Is this why you’re not returning my calls? Because of this Jack person?”

  “No, DeMott, listen. I haven’t had a chance to call you because something happened—”

  “I’m sure it did.”

  I opened my mouth, but instead of speaking, I drew a long slow breath. Slow down, back up. In the silence I could hear the blood beating in my ears like a war drum. Staring at the mountains and
the ocean, I tried to put everything else aside. My mother. Work. Jack. This was DeMott on the phone. DeMott. My fiancé. “I’m sorry I haven’t called you back. Really, I’m sorry.”

  He was silent.

  “I’m standing on the ship’s top deck and I’m looking at icebergs. Real icebergs. They’re the size of your truck. It’s unbelievable. You would love it.”

  “Maybe we can go back,” he said, sounding somewhat mollified. “We can go there for our honeymoon. Pick the date and I’ll book the tickets.”

  I closed my eyes. Wedding, honeymoon. Plans, plans. DeMott always needed plans, and a heavy and familiar weight fell on my shoulders. When I opened my eyes, the glaciated landscape seemed merciless.

  “Raleigh, do you miss me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you, really?”

  The ship was moving forward even more slowly now. When the hull bumped an iceberg, the sound was as soft as a distant car door closing. I watched the block of ice rolling through the water, tumbling away from us, then bobbing up and down. Each time the iceberg rose, it exposed some of the enormous blue underbelly hidden by the water. That’s what made icebergs so dangerous; the greater mass was hidden beneath the surface. What we could see was a mere fraction of the thing’s true size, and as I held the phone, trying to think of something to say, I realized how much my relationship resembled these blocks of pale blue ice.

  “DeMott,” I said, “we need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  The line beeped. Call waiting.

  “Raleigh, what do we need to talk about?”

  It beeped again.

  “I’ll have to call you back.”

  “You can’t do this—all this silence is killing me.”

  “I have to go, DeMott. I’ll call you this afternoon, promise, bye.” I switched lines. “Raleigh Harmon.”

  “This is the medical examiner’s office.”

  I introduced myself in more detail and explained that I was checking on a body shipped from Ketchikan. She told me to wait, putting me on hold again. When I turned around, Jack was walking toward me, the sun at his back so I couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.

  The woman came back on the line. “Yes, we received a deceased female from Ketchikan. But we haven’t processed.”