Page 53 of Untamed Coast

Marco locked the back door. He wasn’t sure why he locked the door in a remote anchorage with nobody around. One of those habits he had brought with him from the city.

“That makes the gold hidden in Joe’s radio all the more curious,” Marco said.

Bill doodled on his legal pad. “Think maybe they paid him in gold or something? Maybe he hid it there in case someone broke in while he was gone?”

Marco knew the Gold Reserve Act had made it illegal for U.S. citizens to own gold from the early thirties until the mid-seventies. Perhaps Baxter was up to something shady?

“Yeah, dunno.” Marco tried to fight back another yawn and failed again. He turned off all the salon lights except the one over Bill’s table.

Bill wasn’t taking the hint and didn’t budge from his seat. “Hah! Yeah. I really appreciate you asking me along on this trip, Marco. This is an adventure of a lifetime—antique radios, code breaking, hidden gold, glaciers, bears, rapids—what else have you got in store for me?”

“Ideally, sleep.” Marco went up to the pilothouse to make sure everything was in order for the night. Anchor holding well. Winds calm.

He turned off the chartplotter screens and checked that the anchor light was on.

He fast-forwarded through the last hours of recording from the SSB radio. Nothing but static. It was useless anyway. They were over a hundred miles from where the woman had gone missing.

Outside was pitch black. Overcast skies with no stars or moonlight. No hint of other humans anywhere near. “Tomorrow morning early we start back toward Juneau. I figure we’ll overnight in Tracy Arm Cove or Taku Harbor again on the way back—or maybe both, depending on weather. All that assumes we can get out tomorrow. One time I tried to leave here and the entrance was completely blocked with ice.”

Bill shouted from below. “Well, good to know we’re keeping with our theme of Imminent Peril.”

Marco walked back down to the salon. “It’s not that bad, Bill. You’re probably in more danger in the bunco parlor back home, it’s just harder to see it coming.”

Bill raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

Marco chuckled at himself. “Just kidding. But we won’t make it back to Juneau alive if I don’t get some sleep.”

Bill looked back down at the books. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

Marco went to the galley and dried the last few dinner dishes, stacking them back into the cupboards. “Good luck there, Mr. Turing. I’m sure the safety of the modern world hinges on you cracking Joe Baxter’s code.” He turned off the galley lights. “That radio station log is pretty cool, though. It hadn’t really dawned on me that all this was during the height of the Great Depression. Some of those messages between the miners and families are heartbreaking.”

Chapter 41

-.-. --- -- .--. .-.. .. -.-. .. - -.--

Radioville, AK

1938—Sam Worlson

The taste of death hit Sam Worlson before he even reached the small house.

He left the front door open, popped a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum into his mouth, and held his handkerchief over his nose. He chewed the gum into a tight ball and swished it back and forth, letting the bright mint flavor mix with his saliva and light up the middle of his tongue as he studied the room.

Sam’s father had been the sheriff in Lawton, Oklahoma, for over thirty years. He himself worked as a deputy for a stint before moving to Alaska to look for gold. Sam knew how to read a room and piece together the potential plausible scenarios. Your average person would see this and think it was an accident—that Joe Baxter had fallen from a chair and brought the storage shelves down on top of himself in the process, but Sam was smarter than that.

Sam Worlson knew a crime scene when he saw one.

Joe’d been a drunk, and most folks would easily accept that he’d gotten sloshed, fallen while getting something off a shelf, and got his head bashed in the process. But Sam noticed a couple extra things the average person might miss. First, Joe lived here alone, never had visitors as far as Sam knew, yet there were two whiskey glasses on the table—one of them still full. The chair from the empty-glass side of the table was the one smashed on the floor, so Mr. Full Glass was likely here when Joe fell. The blood on the floor was dried, but it looked like someone must have smeared the edge around some when it was wet. There was also something else…vomit. Several feet from the body. Someone had vomited, and it wasn’t Joe.

Mr. Full Glass was sloppy, and that turned this from the scene of an accident into the scene of a crime.

Sam knew another thing as well. He knew Joe was supposed to meet with their mysterious third partner to collect their money. That meant we had motive. Someone else had been here, lots of money was at stake, and Joe was dead. The timing of all that was just a little too convenient.

Sam pushed the ball of gum into one cheek, checked all the cupboards, lifted the mattress, pulled out all the drawers and looked under and behind them. No sign of any money.

This was a crime scene all right, and Sam knew that he was also part of the crime. Not directly. He hadn’t killed Joe himself, of course. But whoever had done this—and he was pretty sure he knew vaguely who that person was—whoever had done this to Joe had all the money.

Joe’s money and my money.