That was not a good sign. Mel obviously didn’t approve of having to take a backseat to incoming messages from Todd Hatcher, so now, through no fault of my own, I had managed to land in trouble with two separate women fifteen hundred miles apart.
Back downtown, after turning onto L Street and barely a block away from my hotel, we encountered what has to be an only-in-Alaska traffic jam. Three vehicles ahead of us, a humongous moose was ambling slowly down the middle of the snowplowed traffic lanes, looking for all the world as if he owned the place, and maybe he did. Taking his antlers into consideration, he was taller than the topmost layer of the Travelall’s rooftop luggage. Since he didn’t appear to have a working turn signal, no one wanted to risk trying to pass him, on either side. Suddenly our previously speedy trip turned into a slo-mo, moose-led parade.
“I guess moose . . . whether one or in a herd . . . always have the right of way. It’s not mooses, correct?”
“You’ve got that right, city boy,” Twink said.
“What do you expect?” I asked her. “After all, aren’t I one of those chickadoodles—or whatever it is you called me earlier.”
“Cheechako,” she corrected with the hint of a grin twitching at the corners of her mouth. “And you’ve got that right, too. You’re a cheechako in spades.”
“And moose always have the right of way around here?”
“Indeed they do,” Twink told me.
It turns out that the restaurant was within a stone’s throw of my hotel, the Captain Cook. When we turned into the restaurant parking entrance several minutes later, the moose parade was still moseying on down the street.
Inside the restaurant the lunch crowd was beginning to clear out. Given a choice between being seated immediately or waiting for a window, Twink opted for a window. Clearly now that she had arrived, she was going to take full advantage and enjoy the experience to the fullest. Once we were shown to our table, I have to admit that even for someone who lives with a seaside view, the panorama visible from the restaurant’s windows was well worth the short wait.
When it comes to eating out, I’m not big on fish—I’m more of a meat-and-potatoes sort of guy. Since this was Alaska, I was afraid the menu would be all salmon all the time. When Twink ordered the waitress-recommended meat-loaf sandwich, so did I. You know how that old saying goes—when in Rome, et cetera, and I wasn’t sorry. For beverages Twink and I both chose coffee. Thankfully, coffee at Simon & Seafort’s was far less lethal than the bitter brew served up by Harriet Raines.
“Where to next?” Twink asked.
I scrolled through e-mails from Todd until I found one with a subject line containing John Borman’s name. Yesterday Todd had supplied me with both Danitza’s place of employment as well as her shift, and this time he came through again.
“It says here that John Borman is working at the Anchor Bar and Grill today. What can you tell me about it?”
“Like I said earlier, the Anchor’s not exactly a favorite hangout as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “It’s a bit on the sleazy side. Why?”
“That’s our next stop. How far away?”
“Eight blocks or so,” Twink replied, “but I wouldn’t recommend walking. I also wouldn’t recommend going to the Anchor after dark. It’s one of those places where hard-core drinkers go to get drunk or laid, not necessarily in that order. Who’s John Borman?”
“Someone from Homer who went to school with the guy we’re looking for and who may or may not be a friend of his.”
Twink accepted my answer. Thankfully, she didn’t ask for any further details.
The artichoke-dip appetizer arrived and disappeared in short order. As soon as it was gone, Twink grabbed her purse and went outside for a smoke. Left on my own for a few minutes, I sent Mel a brief text explaining my reasons for dodging her call.
Then, for the first time since leaving Bill Farmdale’s home, I had a chance to think. What he had told me about Chris’s going out late that Sunday night to change someone’s tire resonated with me. A blow from a tool of some kind could easily have left the deep indentation in the back of the skull in Harriet’s banker’s box. It also squared with the idea of the victim’s having been in a kneeling position when the fatal blow was struck. Once she had Jared’s DNA and, presumably, a positive ID on the human remains, investigators from the AST would be summoned en masse, and my presence in the mix would become problematic.