“Nolan said all that, did he?” I was so angry I could have smacked him. “So where is he?”
“That’s just it,” Lula Faye said. “I don’t know. We were supposed to go wedding ring shopping together when we got to New Orleans. He said there was a jeweler there that would make me something unique and beautiful. We were going to be married here on the ship at the end of the cruise and fly out to England the next day.”
“And when was the last time you saw him?”
“Yesterday,” she said. “Right after I gave him the money for the ring.”
It weren’t him taking the money that was making me so mad. A hundred thousand dollars is a drop in the bucket considering how much Lula Faye had won. I admit that Lula Faye sometimes gets so bossy I don’t like her all that much, but no one had the right to break my cousin’s heart. Especially not a fancy-talking foreigner.
I’d read once about how the lottery had destroyed a lot of people’s lives who’d won. There are some folks who just can’t deal with massive amounts of riches dumped on them all of a sudden. It messes with their brain and their relationships with other people. Even I felt a little ashamed. I’d let Lula Faye talk me into going on the luxury cruise that two old river rats like us had no business being on. It was obvious we were in over our heads. If me and Lula Faye wanted to take a trip on the river it would have made a whole lot more sense for us to find us an old row boat and pack us a picnic lunch. That would fit who we were a whole lot better. Instead, here we were in this mess.
“Well,” I said. “I guess you’ve learned your lesson. Maybe it was a cheap one if it keeps you from giving away your money to every man who acts like he’s in love with you.”
“You really think he just up and left? That he didn’t care about me at all?”
“I don’t know what he cared about,” I said. “All I know is his accent sounded a mite fishy to me.”
Lula Faye’s shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I never thought I’d admit it, but I’ve turned into one of them sad old women who get taken in by some man pretending to be in love with me.”
My mind immediately flew to Evan. He knew I didn’t hardly have two dimes to rub together and never would. There was no need for him to act like he enjoyed being in my company if he didn’t.
It occurred to me that not having much was a blessing I’d never realized before. At least I knew that the friends I got are really my friends. No one has any need to pay attention to me thinking they’re gonna get something from me. Even my little house weren’t worth much. Property values in South Shore ain’t real high.
“I think what we need to do is put this whole thing behind us and try to enjoy what’s left of this cruise,” I said.
It was good advice, but Lula Faye was never one to listen to someone else’s advice.
“No,” she said. “I want to find him. I don’t appreciate him lying to me like that. I thought we were in love. I thought I was going to move to England and live in a mansion and have tea in the afternoon. I thought Nolan Withersham was my soul mate.”
“You only knew him for a few days!” It sounded to me like my cousin had been watching a little too much Downton Abbey on the television set. I wondered if that Nolan Withersham might have realized that an expensive cruise would be a good place to pick up rich women and fill their heads with pretty pictures about what life with him would be like.
“I know what I felt.” Lula Faye said. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you,” I said. “I’m just saying you only knew him a few days.”
“No one makes a fool out of me!” Lula Faye said. “I’m going to find him—one way or another.”
Having made up her mind to go after him for revenge, Lula Faye took off to see the captain about getting Nolan found. Lula Faye on a mission was usually like watching a pro football player running down the middle of the football field knocking down everyone in his way. I decided I did not want to be around when she talked to the captain.
I finished my omelet because it was tasty, but the whole time I ate I was imagining Lula Faye getting up in Evan’s face. I wished I’d never come on this trip with her.
This would be the last journey I ever took with Lula Faye and if I had my way—the last trip I took ever.
Well, after Lula Faye told Evan what Nolan had done, Evan went to Nolan’s room himself. Didn’t even send a crew person to do it. I guess he thought Nolan might be holed up there avoiding Lula Faye until they docked and he could get away. Of course Lula Faye had already been there a’knocking and trying to get him to come out but with no luck.
The captain, however, could get inside any room he wanted to and he did. What he found out was that Nolan weren’t in his room, but everything else about Nolan was. Including his suitcases and a wallet with a driver’s license in it that let them know he weren’t no Nolan Withersham.
His name was Howard Shelstein and he weren’t from any estate in England, he was from New Jersey. Lula Faye had been taken in by a real, honest-to-goodness scam artist.
Like I said—it just don’t pay to travel.
So, now we knew who Nolan really was but we still didn’t know where he was. The last time Lula Faye had seen him, they were parting ways to get ready for dinner the night before and then he just didn’t show up.
It was most definitely a mystery, but since it didn’t involve any dead bodies I intended to stay out of it. At least I thought I would. That was before I factored in Lula Faye’s natural flair for bossiness.
There was what they called a Riverlorian who was lecturing on Mark Twain in the ship’s library the next day. He was good and knew his stuff. I’m not a big reader, but I had enjoyed Twain’s books when I was in school. I was enjoying getting to hear all about the Mississippi River and the steamboats that used to blow up on it on a semi-regular basis. We only had a few days left on the ship and I was trying to enjoy what was left. Then Lula Faye found me.
If Lula Faye was upset and miserable, then she expected me to be upset and miserable, too. I couldn’t figure out if she just wanted revenge or if she was still of the opinion that this Nolan/Howard person was the love of her life and just needed to be found and persuaded of that fact.
Anyway, she pestered me and pestered me until I was about ready to swat her. It was like having a fly buzzing around my head.
“Has Evan found out anything yet?” she whispered while the Riverlorian was speaking. She was acting like a child with that ADHD stuff. Couldn’t sit still.
“Not that I know of,” I answered.
“Will he tell you if he does?” she whispered again so loud that a couple of other people turned their heads to look at her.
“My guess is that he’d tell you if he finds out anything,” I answered. “Now be quiet.”
Lula Faye was just ruining the nice cruise she’d bought me. I was trying to be polite, but I’d already decided that being with an unhappy Lula Faye on an extended trip was a whole lot worse than no trip at all. I found myself almost wishing that Nolan was back here squiring her around.
The woman could buy a castle in England with the kind of money she had now if that was the kind of life she thought she needed. Why focus her entire happiness on one man who’d run away with her engagement ring money?
After she ruined the perfectly nice Riverlorian lecture, I tried getting her to focus on something else. At lunch time I convinced her to try sitting with some other people. We were supposed to mingle and get to know others. I saw a table with several other women sitting together and it had a couple of open chairs. I asked if we could join them. I was desperate for some other company besides Lula Faye.
They said I was welcome. It turned out that all of them were traveling companions from all over the country who had decided to go on this trip together. All looked to be about in their late sixties. Several were still working full-time. Ethel sold real estate and was divorced. Macie ran a clothing shop and was widowed. Jacqueline was a retired college English
professor who had never married. Deborah was married to a man who owned a golf course and she said she had suggested the river cruise because she wanted to get as far away from golf as possible. All of them had been friends since college.
Lula Faye was still so upset that she wanted to tell anyone who’d listen what Nolan Withersham had done to her and how he’d disappeared. Ethel, who seemed to be a sort of no-nonsense person, excused herself to go to the bathroom and never came back. The clothing store owner tried to tell Lula Faye that she was lucky to find out what kind of a man he was before she married him, but Lula Faye didn’t seem to want to hear it. The other two women didn’t say much, just made a lot of sympathetic noises, but they kept glancing at each other like they’d really prefer to go find themselves another table but didn’t want to be impolite and were sticking it out with us just because they were nice people.
I tried to act normal, but after a while I just sat back and watched Lula Faye monopolize the conversation. I’d seen a T-shirt once that said, “Help! I’ve started talking and I can’t stop!” That was Lula Faye that day. She told that table everything about herself except her bra size. They were charming and kind in spite of Lula Faye’s verbal flood. I wished I could hang out with them for the rest of the trip instead of Lula Faye. I was pretty sure that hearing about golf courses, clothing stores, or teaching English would be a whole lot more interesting than hearing every last detail of Nolan’s brief courtship.
The next morning we finally got news, and it weren’t good. Not good at all. It’s hard seeing your first cousin handcuffed and drug off a boat. The police weren’t nearly as careful with Lula Faye as I thought they should be. She’s got a little bit of a heart condition and I thought they were handling her too rough. There was no need for handcuffs neither. Especially when someone is about to hyperventilate from fear. Lula Faye was scared and crying and I was trying to get them to ease up on her and I might have gotten a little too loud and the next thing I knew, I was sitting smack dab in a jail cell with her and wondering how on earth I’d managed to get myself in such a fix.
Turns out someone had found Nolan’s body stashed away beneath a tarp on one of the emergency life boats and it was pretty obvious that he’d been murdered. Evan had called in a report of his talks with Lula Faye and she ended up being the one and only suspect—especially after they found the bloody knife that had killed him beneath Lula Faye’s bedroom bureau.
She said she hadn’t done it and I told her I believed her, but frankly I weren’t all that sure. Remember her mama? Acting all nicey-nice and then running off with that man? And then there was Lula Faye secretly playing the lottery all them years without anyone suspecting a thing. A bloody knife beneath her bureau didn’t surprise me as much as it shoulda. Truth be told, I was a little uncomfortable sharing a cell with her even if she was acting like a scared little girl and kept holding my hand like we were both six-years-old.
A ship like the Mississippi Queen with all them people aboard can’t just sit around and wait on a couple of old ladies to sweat it out in a jail cell. The police went over the ship real good, found Lula Faye’s fingerprints all over Nolan’s room—including the shower—which I didn’t want to think about. I guess she really had been convinced that Nolan was the love of her life.
So there we were. In a strange town where we didn’t know nobody or have any kin, and Lula Faye arrested for murder and me as a maybe accessory to murder.
Evan did come to see us before the boat left. He was apologetic, but that didn’t do us any good. He was the captain of the ship and he had to leave to keep the boat on schedule. He said he’d already have to try to make up the hours the ship had been kept so the police could do their job. People on the ship had airplane schedules to keep to get back home. He was sorry, but he had to go do his job or a whole lot of people would be missing their flights. He said he’d have our things packed up and mailed to our homes. It hurt to see him go. It hurt to have to look at him through prison bars.
That night, me and Lula Faye got a real interesting education. We shared a cell with some interesting ladies, let me tell you. There was lots of toilette water in that holding cell that night. Lots of tattoos and short skirts and pointy high heels. Made my feet hurt just to look at them.
Eventually a man with a fancy hat came and bailed all of them out. I wished someone would come and bail me out but it weren’t happening.
Lula Faye had enough money for bail, of course. The problem was, murder is a serious accusation and a judge had to decide on how much bail and that hadn’t happened yet. Besides, you gotta know how to find a bail bondsman and all that stuff that we’d never dealt with before.
It stood to reason that we needed a good attorney, and fast. Problem was, we were in a strange city and we didn’t know any good lawyers there. Truth be told, we didn’t know any good lawyers back home, neither, but we would’ve had people we could ask if we did.
I have some good friends. I also got a pack of relatives scattered all over the United States, but I learned something that night. If you want to evaluate the depth of your friendship with someone, just consider whether or not they would come bail you out of jail if you called and asked them to. Especially if that jail happened to be in a whole other state. I had a lot of friends, but most all of them were older women about like me. Lots of ‘em had health problems. Some didn’t see all that good or have the ability to drive all that far. I figured my best hope was Bobby Joe, a young cousin who lived next door to me back home. He and his wife, Esther, helped me out from time to time, but he was unemployed right now and last I’d heard his truck wasn’t running all that good.
Lula Faye, for the first time in her life, had no idea what to do. None at all. The bossiness had done all gone out of her. She just kept telling me again and again that she didn’t do it. That she loved Nolan/Howard and would never have hurt him even if he had stole a hundred thousand dollars from her.
I kept asking her if she had anyone who might come bail us out when the judge decided how much we would cost, but she just said she couldn’t bear the humiliation of anyone back home knowing what she’d did.
In other words, we were in a pickle and as ignorant of what to do about it as two old porch dogs.
Lula Faye finally lapsed into a deep sleep, as though needing to escape the reality she was living in. While she was out, I made a decision and got permission to make my phone call. I decided not to bother Bobby Joe. He had enough to worry about.
No, I made a call that if Lula Faye had known about it, she’d have wrestled the phone out of my hand. I was glad she was passed out cold from exhaustion and fear. I’d have hated to fist-fight my cousin. Especially since I weren’t entirely sure but what she’d killed that man.
The person I called was Marva, the secretary back at Lula Faye’s church. Marva was one of the most quietly competent women I’d ever met. I knew if there was a way to figure out what to do in this mess, she’d be able to find it, and then keep her mouth shut about it. She might even be able to make some phone calls herself and find us a lawyer here in town that knew what he was doing.
I never dreamed the first person she’d call would be Preacher Roy. And the last thing I would have expected was for Preacher Roy to jump in his car and drive straight to Mississippi to help us.
One thing I do know—when he came walking up to us in that jail cell, I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life. Even Lula Faye seemed relieved. Turns out that if there was one thing Preacher Roy knew outside of the scriptures it was the inside of a prison.
“What did you do, Lula Faye?” was the first thing that he said.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said. “And neither did Doreen. I don’t know what happened on that ship, but we didn’t kill anyone.”
Preacher Roy nodded. Then he left. Talk about a man of few words! I don’t like people who gabble all the time, but I could have used a sentence or two right then.
Some people make promises and don’t deliver. Others�
�and they are rare—don’t make promises but they make things happen. Preacher Roy was one of them kind of people. Few words, lots of action. Within the hour, a lawyer had shown up. He seemed real competent, too. Between the two of them, Preacher Roy and the lawyer, we managed to get out on bail. The lawyer left after conferring with Roy, and then Lula Faye’s preacher drove us to a Holiday Inn Express and got us two rooms. One for me and Lula Faye to share and one for him. I would’ve been happy with a private room—I’d had just about enough of my cousin by that time, but beggars can’t be choosers.
The room had two queen-sized beds in it. I showered jail off me, put my clothes back on—I didn’t have any choice in clothing this time, it was the clothes on my back or nothing—and then I crawled into them sheets and kinda died for a while. I’d been through a lot and this old lady needed her rest if she was going to face another day.
It really, really don’t pay to travel.
I had no idea what was going to happen to us next, except I didn’t think I’d get the death penalty. I weren’t so sure about Lula Faye. She might. Being so far away from home there was no telling what might happen to us in the state of Mississippi which was kinda like a foreign land to us two. All I wanted was to go back home where I belonged, crawl in bed, and pull the covers over my head until this nightmare went away. Problem was, even though we were free to walk around for now, we weren’t free to leave the state.
Thank goodness for Preacher Roy. He might not be a big talker, but he was good at listening and Lula Faye needed a whole lot of listening to. I guess I did, too. We had big troubles and talking to Roy was easy. Maybe it was because with him having spent so many years in prison, we didn’t feel like he was going to spend much time judging us. He just wanted to help and he did.
Murder On the Mississippi Queen Page 6
