Deliah Dickenson Mystery 01-Frankly My Dear, I''m Dead

by Livia J. Washburn

  In the garden, of course.

  That had to be the answer. I’d been on the verge of figuring that out earlier, I realized now, but then I’d gotten distracted by some other uproar. There had been plenty of distractions during the evening. But Riley’s answer about why he had been in the garden hadn’t satisfied me. It made a lot more sense that he had gone out there to stash his loot. If not for Kelley’s murder, Riley could have returned to the garden later, after everyone had settled down for the night, and retrieved the stolen items. He could have brought them back to his room, hidden them in his bags, and then walked out the next day with no one being the wiser. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that the theory was plausible.

  More than plausible. Heck, I was convinced I was right.

  The only thing wrong with Riley’s plan was that he had practically tripped over Steven Kelley’s body. Once that happened, all bets were off. The plantation was crawling with sheriff’s deputies, and he couldn’t get back to the garden to get his loot. The smart thing would be to write off the loss of his ill-gotten gains, keep a low profile, and get the heck out of here so he could move on to his next job. I didn’t know if Riley was smart enough to do that, but I suspected that self-preservation was more important to him than anything else, even his loot.

  Still, I wondered if I should share my ideas with Farraday.

  He could have his deputies conduct a thorough search of the garden, and if the stolen items were found, I would know I was right about Riley’s plan.

  Of course, it was still just an assumption that Riley was the thief. But he’d been out there in the garden for no good reason. Maybe it was time the lieutenant questioned him some more about that.

  And maybe, I thought suddenly, maybe Riley had been hiding the loot when Steven Kelley discovered him at his dirty work. Then Riley could have reacted without thinking and plunged that knife into Kelley’s chest.

  What was Riley doing with a kitchen knife, though? I didn’t have an answer for that question, and as I thought about it, my pulse, which had started to race, slowed down again. For a second there I’d had visions of being able to present Lieutenant Farraday with the solution to the whole thing, so that the rest of us could get the heck out of here.

  Still, I didn’t think it would hurt to tell Farraday my idea about the thief hiding the stuff in the garden, so I slipped out of bed and stood up in the darkened room. By now exhaustion had caught up with Augusta and Amelia. Two sets of soft snores came from the other bed. I felt around on mine and found the robe I had tossed on the foot of it. I put it on, tied the belt around my waist, and went to the door, figuring that I would step out into the hall and tell one of the deputies standing guard there that I wanted to talk to the lieutenant.

  When I opened the door I saw that the lights in the hallway had been dimmed. They were set in wall sconces and most of the bulbs were turned off. The only lights burning were at the ends of the hall and the landing.

  And there wasn’t a deputy in sight.

  That surprised me. I turned my head back and forth, checking in both directions. The corridor was empty of deputies and everybody else. All the doors were closed, and everything was quiet.

  Farraday didn’t have unlimited manpower. I wondered if he had pulled the deputies who had been up here back downstairs to help search the garden or some other chore. Farraday wanted everybody to stay in the house, but he could post a few men outside to make sure that nobody left. People were tired and scared and angry, and it made sense that once they were settled down, they would stay in their rooms until morning … especially if they thought that a deputy might be right outside their door.

  The lack of guards in the hall surprised me, but it didn’t really change anything. I still wanted to talk to Farraday again, and I figured he was probably still down in the ballroom. I started to open the door wider so that I could step out into the hall.

  That was when another door, somewhere down the hall, opened with a faint click. As soon as I heard it I froze for a second, then eased my door up so that it was almost closed.

  I left enough of a gap that I could put my eye to it and have a narrow view of the hallway. I wasn’t sure I could see what was happening from this angle, but I intended to try.

  Don’t ask me why I reacted like that. I guess by now I was so caught up in the whole thing that the natural-born snoop in me was coming out more than ever before. But if somebody else was about to slip out into the hall, I wanted to see who it was.

  Sure enough, I caught a glimpse in the dim light of a woman leaving one of the rooms and slipping along the corridor. She wore a long gray T-shirt that came down over the tops of her thighs, and apparently not much else. Blond hair fell around her shoulders and down her back. It took a moment for me to recognize Lindsey Hoffman without her Southern belle outfit and with her hair loose and down instead of swept up and pinned in an elaborate arrangement of curls.

  Lindsey must have peeked out and discovered that there were no deputies in the hall, just as I had. I had a suspicion why she had taken this opportunity to sneak out of her room, but I wasn’t sure. Since she had her back turned toward me, I risked opening the door of my room a little more and leaning out to watch her as she moved stealthily along the corridor.

  She went to a room near the other end and tapped on the door, so lightly that even though I could see what she was doing, I couldn’t hear her knuckles striking against the panel.

  The door opened a moment later. From where I was, I couldn’t see who was inside, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to tell for sure whose room Lindsey was visiting, even though I had a pretty good idea.

  A second later, though, my hunch was confirmed as Perry Newton came out into the hall just enough for me to recognize him. He wasn’t dressed as Ashley Wilkes anymore, of course, any more than Lindsey was wearing her costume. He was in a T-shirt and a pair of boxers. Most of the actors hadn’t come prepared to spend the night, so they had to sleep in their underwear or whatever else they could scrounge.

  Perry also wore a big grin on his face as he reached for Lindsey and took her into his arms. As they kissed, Perry tugged up the hem of Lindsey’s T-shirt in the back and revealed that I’d been wrong.

  She wasn’t wearing anything under it.

  Feeling my face start to get warm, I looked away and was glad when Perry pulled Lindsey on into his room and closed the door behind them. Obviously he wasn’t sharing the room with anybody. I couldn’t remember if he was supposed to be doubling up with one of the other actors or not, but I supposed he wasn’t—because he was doubling up with Lindsey now, so to speak.

  I sighed to myself and shook my head. For a second there, as I’d seen the door of the other room opening, I had thought that I might witness the murderer skulking out to kill again, like in one of those movies where there’s an old dark house and secret passages and hidden dumbwaiters and stuff like that.

  Instead it was just a couple of horny college kids taking advantage of the opportunity to get together. So much for sinister.

  Augusta and Amelia were still sleeping soundly, so I returned to my original plan. I’d go downstairs, find Lieutenant Farraday, and tell him to look in the garden for the stolen loot, just in case he hadn’t already thought of that himself. Now that some of my initial enthusiasm had had a chance to wear off, I wondered if I was wasting my time. Farraday wasn’t an idiot. Surely he had realized by now that the missing items might be hidden in the garden. Maybe what I ought to do, I told myself, was go back to bed and try to get some sleep.

  At the moment, though, I wasn’t sure I’d ever sleep again.

  And I can be stubborn, too, as anybody who knows me very well will tell you.

  So I stepped into the hall, closed the door quietly behind me, and started toward the staircase.

  I hadn’t yet reached it when somebody came up behind me, grabbed my shoulder with one hand, and reached around me to clamp the other hand over my mouth.

  CHAPTE
R 19

  Okay, so I’ve exaggerated a little bit. He didn’t exactly grab my shoulder. But he definitely put his hand on it to stop me. And the hand over my mouth was too gentle and careful to say that it clamped. My nerves were stretched so tight, though, that both of those things felt like that, and I would have let out a holler they could have heard back in Atlanta if I hadn’t had a hand over my mouth. I jerked free and whirled around, ready to fight.

  “Don’t, Delilah,” Will Burke said in an urgent whisper. “It’s just me.”

  My heart was hammering like John Henry on steroids. I stared at Will and opened and closed my mouth without saying anything several times until I realized that I probably looked like a fish. With an effort, I got my breathing under control and managed to stop staring bug-eyed at him. That whole fight-or-flight thing was right; when I spun around I’d been ready to either start throwing punches or run for my life.

  When I was able to talk again I leaned closer to him and hissed, “What in the Sam Hill are you doin’ out here?”

  Will smiled, which made me want to smack him all over again. “I could ask you the same question. We’re fellow skulkers.”

  “Yeah, well, I was about to go talk to Lieutenant Farraday.”

  “What happened to the deputies?”

  “I figure he’s got them all downstairs, searching for clues.

  Telling us that they were going to stand guard up here all night was just a bluff so folks would stay put in their rooms.”

  He thought it over and then nodded, evidently agreeing with my logic. “Yeah, that’s probably right.” He paused. “Or maybe the lieutenant’s trying to lure the killer back out into the open.”

  I frowned. “Are you sayin’—”

  “No, of course not. I don’t think you’re the killer. I’m just not sure it’s a good idea for either of us to be out wandering around in the hall, under the circumstances.”

  “You haven’t told me yet what you’re doing here,” I pointed out.

  He chuckled. “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you I was looking for a midnight snack.”

  The look I gave him was all the answer he needed.

  “This is an old house,” Will whispered. “No matter how quiet you try to be, the floor makes some noises now and then.

  I thought I heard someone go by in the hall, and something about it seemed more … stealthy, I guess you’d say … than if it was just one of the deputies. So I decided to take a look, and sure enough, I saw that red hair of yours.”

  “I didn’t hear you come out of your room.”

  He shrugged. “I’m light on my feet.”

  I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but one of the nearby doors stood open, which seemed to back up his story. I supposed I was willing to accept it.

  Like me, Will was wearing pajamas and a robe. His weren’t silk and didn’t have any lace around the collar, of course, but still, the nightclothes and the fact that we were standing out in the hall whispering in the middle of the night gave the whole situation a definite feeling of intimacy. I liked that in a way—

  it had been a while since I’d had any sort of middle-of-the-night conversation with a man—but it made me nervous, too.

  I had met Will Burke less than twelve hours earlier; we sure as heck shouldn’t have been to the pajama buddies stage yet.

  “Well, now that you know what’s going on, you can go back to bed,” I told him, “and I’ll go find the lieutenant.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Will suggested.

  “There’s no need for that.”

  “Don’t forget there was a murder here tonight. Even with all the cops nearby, I’d feel better if you weren’t walking around by yourself.”

  “I appreciate the concern, but I don’t need you to protect me. I can take care of myself just fine.”

  “I’m sure you can, but there’s such a thing as being too stubbornly independent.”

  My eyes widened again, but with anger this time, not surprise and fear. “Are you callin’ me stubborn?” I demanded.

  “Well … aren’t you?”

  I jabbed a finger at him. “Yeah, but that’s not the point. You and I barely know each other. But like all the rest of you Southern men, you figure that I’m just a fragile little female who needs lookin’ after by some big strong redneck—”

  “I’m not your ex-husband, Delilah,” he broke in. “I don’t know if that’s the way he treated you or not, but either way, I’m not him.”

  I stood there taking deep breaths, trying to bring my anger under control. “How’d you know I was divorced?” I asked after a moment. “I don’t recall mentioning that.”

  “You didn’t. But you said that Luke is your son-in-law, which means you have a grown daughter. You don’t wear a wedding ring, which you probably still would if you were widowed. I can see the untanned line on your finger where one used to be, though. It was just a guess that you were divorced, but I thought it was a pretty good one.”

  “Who the heck are you, Sherlock Holmes?”

  A smile lurked around the corners of his mouth again. “I’m right, though, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah, yeah, but for your information, Dan didn’t treat me the way I was talkin’ about. Not often, anyway, even though he might’ve liked to.”

  “I can understand why he wouldn’t, with your temper. That red hair—”

  I lifted a finger again. “Don’t you say it. Just don’t you say it.”

  Will held up both hands, palms out in surrender. “Sorry. I’ll make a note of that for future reference. Don’t equate hair color with temper.”

  “I reckon you are smart enough to be a professor. Maybe.”

  “But I still think I ought to go with you. Just in case.”

  With a sigh, I gave up. I didn’t want to stand around in the hall arguing with him all night, not when Elliott Riley was looking better and better to me as the killer, especially if I could figure out why he’d had that knife with him.

  Or maybe Kelley had had the knife, and the murderer had taken it away from him… .

  That would bear some thinking about, too. I whispered to Will, “All right, if you’re gonna insist, then come on.”

  I halfway expected either Lieutenant Farraday or one of the deputies to show up anytime and shoo us back into our rooms, but we reached the stairs without running into anybody. Looking down the grand, curving staircase with its elaborately carved banister and the portraits of previous generations of Ralstons on the wall, I didn’t see anybody.

  Will and I were about to start down when I heard the sound of angry voices somewhere above us. I couldn’t make out the words, but I thought there were two voices and that they belonged to a man and a woman.

  Will must have heard them, too, and realized why I stopped short at the top of the stairs, because he put his mouth close to my ear and asked, “Who’s that?”

  I shook my head to indicate that I didn’t know.

  “Should we find out?”

  He was asking if I thought we should play detective. I had already been leaning in that direction because I wanted this mess cleared up before it did too much damage to my fledg-ling business. And, to be honest, because I was curious. Like I said, I guess I’m just a natural-born snoop. Maybe all mothers are, to a certain extent. When our kids reach a certain age, they make us work like detectives to find out what’s going on in their lives, and some of us never get out of the habit, I suppose.

  So I hesitated only a moment before I nodded in response to Will’s question and inclined my head toward the stairs that led up instead of down.

  As we climbed them, staying close to the wall so that the steps were less likely to squeak under our weight, I felt nervousness tingling along my veins. I didn’t know what we’d find up there on the third floor. Some of the tour guests were staying there, and the Ralston family quarters were on that floor, too. And just because there were no deputies in the hall on the second floor, it didn’t mean there wouldn
’t be any upstairs. If Will and I kept this up, we ran the risk of getting into trouble with Lieutenant Farraday.

  Of course, the man already considered me a murder suspect, and he had the whole lot of us under house arrest, pretty much, so how much more trouble could I get into, I asked myself.

  As we followed the curving staircase and neared the third-floor landing, the voices became more distinct. “I tell you, it’s none of your business,” I heard a woman say. Her voice was just familiar enough so that I knew I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t place whom it belonged to.

  That wasn’t the case with the voice that replied, “And I tell you, it most certainly is my business.” I would have known those plummy, slightly British tones anywhere.

  Recognizing Edmond Ralston’s voice tipped me off that the other one belonged to his daughter Janice. I motioned for Will to stay where he was and went up another step, craning my neck to try to see down the third-floor corridor.

  Ralston’s quarters were on the left at the far end of the hall; his daughter’s were across the hall. Both of them had spacious suites. I had discovered that earlier when I was working with Ralston and Farraday, figuring out the accommodations. Ralston had said nothing about a wife and I hadn’t seen any evidence of one, so I assumed he was either divorced or a widower. And Janice was either an only child or the only one still living here on the plantation, because there were no siblings around.

  The hall was empty except for Ralston, who stood in front of the door to his daughter’s suite. Janice faced him in the open doorway, with one hand on the edge of the door itself.

  She had changed into a nightgown, but Ralston still wore the costume he’d had on earlier, during the ball.

  Even at this distance, I could tell that Janice’s eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying. And I could hear the strain in her voice as she told her father, “Just go away and leave me alone.”

  “It’s just that I hate to see you suffering so over that … that disreputable … weasel!”

  Janice took a step toward him. “Don’t call him that! You have no right to judge him. You don’t know what he was really like.”