Read Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote) Online
Authors: Jessica Fletcher
Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote) (27 page)
BOOK: Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote)
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“Yes, I’m sure you do,” I said. I turned to Kathy. “Show him Willie’s picture.”
She did. He shook his head. “Never seen her before.” He broke into a toothy grin. “Wouldn’t mind knowin’ her, though,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “thanks for your time.”
“How about you folks take a ride with me? Take you into the Misty Fjords. Make a good deal for the three of you.”
“Love to take you up on it,” Bill said, “but we’re busy looking for the missing woman. Much obliged, though.”
“Suit yourself. Good luck findin’ her.” He cackled. “You’ll need it.”
We got back in the car and tried to decide where to go next.
“This is a waste of time,” Kathy said. “We don’t know for certain that Willie took a floatplane anywhere. All we’re basing it on is that piece of paper the Frenchman, Maurice, had in his room. If Willie
had
taken a floatplane, she would have chosen one of the bigger operators.” She looked back to where the pilot had resumed work on his aircraft. “I wouldn’t get in that plane with him for any kind of deal.”
had
taken a floatplane, she would have chosen one of the bigger operators.” She looked back to where the pilot had resumed work on his aircraft. “I wouldn’t get in that plane with him for any kind of deal.”
Bill laughed. “He is a little scruffy, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good pilot.”
“Tell you what,” I said. “We can check out these other independent pilots later. Let’s head for Dolly Arthur’s house.”
They agreed, and Bill drove us as close as we could park to Creek Street. I don’t know of many other cities or towns in which a former brothel is a magnet for tourists, but then again Ketchikan isn’t just any town.
They call it Alaska’s “First City” because it’s the first stop for most cruise ships plying the Inner Passage. Before that, in 1900, the U.S. Customs House was moved to Ketchikan from Mary Island, and all northbound vessels of any size were forced by regulation to stop there. Ketchikan boomed. It became a center for the smoking and canning of salmon, which are abundant, and it soon became an important trading community, serving gold miners who’d flocked to the area in search of their fortunes.
While stores proliferated, so did saloons and brothels. It was estimated that at one point, as much as two-thirds of the miners’ money went to Ketchikan’s prostitutes and barkeeps.
Shortly after Ketchikan was incorporated as a city in 1900, the town fathers decided that the girls from the brothels were becoming a public nuisance. Most of them were located in Newtown, and that area’s residents petitioned to have the bawdy houses relocated to Indian Town, on the opposite side of a small creek. The Indians of Indian Town weren’t happy with this arrangement and promptly moved out. That was when Creek Street became established as a legal red-light district, and it remained so until, remarkably, well into the 1950s.
There were ups and downs, of course. The Depression caused a slump in business, and many of the working girls, including Dolly Arthur, headed south for extended vacations. Business picked up again until World War II, when the military closed down the brothels. The girls took it in good humor, even holding a “Going Out of Business” sale, with themselves as the discounted merchandise. But once the war ended, prostitution thrived until the early 1950s, when a federal grand jury held hearings in Ketchikan (part of a sweeping national inquiry into official corruption) and identified the primary reason why prostitution had remained legal there for so long. Elected officials were impossibly corrupt. A married chief of police was in business with one of the bawdy houses. Another top-ranking cop was routinely drunk while on the job, and offered an out-of-town spread that he owned to the prostitutes for vacations. Virtually every elected official was fired or charged with myriad crimes, and the days of “legal” prostitution in Ketchikan, Alaska, were officially over, leaving the houses of ill repute on Creek Street as nothing more than relics of a colorful bygone era.
Although it’s designated as a street, you can’t drive on Creek Street. In reality, it’s nothing more than a rickety wooden boardwalk built on stilts above the creek that runs below. It’s said that when the salmon are coming upstream during spawning season, you can almost walk across the creek on the backs of the fish. That’s how plentiful they are.
We parked in a lot close to Creek Street and went by foot to where it began. The ramshackle old wooden structures that line both sides of the boardwalk were once Ketchikan’s infamous bawdy houses. Now they house an assortment of gift and curio shops. Business was already brisk. Men, women, and children moved from shop to shop, holding up T-shirts with amusing sayings to check their sizes, perusing arts and crafts created by local Native Americans, and chatting with shopkeepers, who were more than willing to share with their visitors the city’s rich, albeit infamous, history.
The recorded music and the chatter coming from the shops as we passed were appealing, almost drawing us in. But we resisted until reaching our destination, number 24 Creek Street, the Dolly Arthur Museum, a small, modest house painted pale green with white trim.
The first thing I noticed was a plaque on the front of the house.
Circa 1905
Presented by
Ketchikan Historical Commission
“Good morning,” she said in a seductive voice, her attention on Bill Henderson. “Care to come in for a party?”
Bill seemed flustered. He looked at Kathy and me before replying, “Too early for a party.”
“Never too early for a party,” she said in the sexiest voice she could muster.
“You work here?” Kathy asked.
“I certainly do,” she said.
With that, a second woman joined her from inside the house. She, too, was dressed in what was probably the style of Dolly’s era, a tight black dress with lots of spangles, gaudy jewelry, and black spike heels.
“This is Pearl,” the first woman said. “I’m Princess.”
“Hello, Princess and Pearl,” I said. “I take it the museum is open.”
Princess batted long, dark eyelashes at Bill, placed a hand on his arm, and cooed, “It’s always open for a handsome fella like you.”
“We’d like to see the museum,” I said.
“Be my guest,” Pearl said. “Only five dollars.”
I started to reach into my purse, but Bill waved me off. He handed her a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Keep the change.”
“Thank you, kind sir. Enter.”
We stepped through the door and immediately were faced with a narrow set of wooden stairs. Princess was our guide; Pearl remained outside to try and drum up business from passersby. We went up to the second floor.
“This is where Dolly lived until she died in 1975,” Princess said. “She was eighty-seven and lived alone. Dolly was a very proud woman, wouldn’t accept hand-outs or help from anyone. Toward the end, she had to climb up and down the stairs on her hands and knees.”
“She left quite a legacy,” I said.
Princess laughed. “She was a real character in Ketchikan—bigger than life, that’s for sure.”
We continued our guided tour of Dolly Arthur’s house. I kept glancing at Kathy to see her reaction. This was, after all, where her aunt Dolly had spent most of her life, dispensing sexual favors to the miners and fishermen of the area and acting as madam for the women who worked for her.
The second-floor bedroom was surprisingly large for homes of that era. I mentioned it, and Princess explained that after the brothel closed and the house became Dolly’s home, she had a wall removed, turning the upstairs into a larger bedroom where she spent most of her time until her death.
Princess opened a closet door and pointed to a nail protruding from the wall. “Behind that nail is a secret compartment where Dolly hid her supply of whiskey,” she said. “The girls who worked for Dolly made more money from serving drinks than they did from serving up sexual favors.”
“Mind if I look?” I asked.
“Sure. Go ahead,” Princess replied.
I pulled on the nail, and a portion of the wall came with it. Inside was a large space with shelves. Did I believe that the secret to Wilimena’s disappearance would be found in that cubbyhole where bottles of liquor were once stashed? No such clue emerged, of course, and I replaced the panel.
“How many visitors do you get every day?” Bill asked as he ran his hand over a pink chenille bedspread that covered a sizable bed. A lamp draped in red velvet was attached to the headboard.
“Depends on the day,” Princess said. “Rainy days are good. People come in to get out of the rain. We get lots of rain here.” She laughed. “Other places measure rain in inches. We measure it in hundreds of inches. But we don’t get much snow. That’s good.”
“Could we see the downstairs?” I asked.
“Sure,” Princess said, leading us from the bedroom and down the staircase.
Like the upstairs floor, the downstairs one was covered in linoleum.
“This was Dolly’s bedroom when she was still in business,” said Princess. “The girls used the upstairs rooms to entertain their male guests. Dolly did a lot of needlework. That’s some of it on the table.”
I examined what Princess had pointed to. Along with other attributes, Dolly had a deft hand with needle and yarn.
The kitchen contained a large stove and not much else. A small room off the kitchen was, Princess explained, another “parlor” where male guests were entertained. “Lots of married men came down to the house over the ‘Married Men’s Trail,’ ” she added, giggling. “Sort of a private way so nobody would see them, especially their wives. You can take a walk on it when you leave here.”
As we prepared to leave, we stood in the entry hall and thanked Princess for the tour. I looked over at a rusted metal tank whose side had been cut away.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A urinal. Dolly always filled it with ice before the men arrived.”
“Oh. And that?” I said, referring to a heavy piece of furniture whose single drawer was secured with a formidable padlock.
“That’s where Dolly kept her money,” Princess explained, “locked up safe and sound.”
“What’s in it now?” Kathy asked.
“Nothing,” Princess said. “Just some things Dolly’s niece left.”
It was as though a bomb had gone off in the small, confined space of the Dolly Arthur Museum.
“Her niece?” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Princess confirmed. “She stopped by here a few weeks ago.”
I didn’t have to suggest to Kathy that she show Willie’s photograph to our guide.
“That’s her,” Princess said.
“She was
here
?” Kathy said.
here
?” Kathy said.
“Right. A nice gal. Kind of funny. Her name is Wilimena, only she calls herself Willie.”
“What did she leave with you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Princess responded. “Pearl spent more time with her. Ask her.”
BOOK: Murder, She Wrote: Panning For Murder: Panning For Murder (Murder She Wrote)
3.43Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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