Huckleberry Finished

by Livia J. Washburn

  “Yeah.” I shook my head and tried not to look toward the little closet where Ben Webster’s body was. “Boy, I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?”

  “Tell me about Mr. Webster. Did you know him before he signed up to come on this tour?”

  “No. I never even talked to him before lunch today, back in St. Louis. He booked the trip using our Web page.”

  “You have all his information, I suppose? Credit card number, address, phone, all that?”

  I nodded. “It’s on my computer. Well, his credit card info isn’t. It’s on the office computer. But I can network with it and get the info if you want.”

  “Maybe later. Isn’t it sort of unusual for a young man like Mr. Webster to be traveling alone, especially on a literary tour like this one?”

  “Not really. I get clients like that pretty often. Anyway, the Mark Twain angle isn’t the only draw on the boat. I’m sure a lot of people just come for the gambling.”

  “Oh, yes,” Travis said. “The gambling. Any trouble there?”

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t have any reason to withhold the truth from her. And for all I knew, both Rafferty and Captain Williams had already told her all about it. If I didn’t mention the incident that had occurred that afternoon, Travis was bound to wonder why.

  Of course, if Williams and Rafferty hadn’t said anything about what happened, then Travis might be suspicious of them once I brought it up.

  But that was their lookout, not mine, so I said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, there was some trouble,” and proceeded to tell her about it in as much detail as I could remember.

  I couldn’t read her face, couldn’t tell if this was the first time she had heard the story or the third. She made some notes as I talked. When I was finished she asked, “Do you know the name of the man at the roulette wheel whom Mr. Webster accused of cheating?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m afraid not. But I’m sure the captain or Mr. Rafferty can tell you.” If they haven’t already, I thought.

  “So after the meeting in Mr. Rafferty’s office, you escorted Mr. Webster back to his cabin?”

  Now I had to make up my mind. I didn’t want to keep the truth from the police, even if it made me look a little foolish, so I said, “Not exactly.”

  For the first time, I saw a spark of real interest in Travis’s eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean the rascal pulled a trick on me.” I felt bad about calling him a rascal as soon as I said it, so I hurried on, “I mean, Mr. Webster led me to believe that the cabin he went to was the one assigned to him, but it really wasn’t.”

  “All right, that’s not clear to me. He went into someone else’s cabin?”

  “No,” I said. “He stopped outside the door of Cabin Seventeen and told me it was his cabin, but he didn’t go in just then, and I didn’t wait to watch him go in. I left him there, just outside the door.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t his cabin?”

  “Because I went back there later looking for him, and I ran into the man who really has the cabin.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I hated to get Vince Mallory mixed up in this, but I didn’t see that I had any choice. Besides, Detective Travis could get the information in a matter of minutes by asking the captain or Rafferty.

  “Vince Mallory,” I said.

  “Is he one of your clients as well?”

  “Yes, he booked the tour through my agency.”

  “Were you acquainted with him before the cruise?”

  “Nope. I mean, no.”

  “Another man traveling alone?”

  “Yes, but in this case, I know why. He’s a history and literature buff. Most of the clients who go on my tours are. In this case, Mr. Mallory is very interested in Mark Twain. He’s going to write his doctoral dissertation on Twain.”

  At least, he was if he decided to go back to grad school, I thought. It seemed like a reasonable enough assumption.

  Detective Travis said, “Do you have any idea why Mr. Webster would pretend that was his cabin when it really wasn’t?”

  “No. The only thing I can figure out was that he did it so I wouldn’t be able to find him when I came looking for him.”

  “Why would he think you’d be looking for him later?”

  “Well…he wouldn’t. Unless he was already planning not to get off the boat when it docked at Hannibal.”

  That was pure speculation on my part, of course, but Detective Travis didn’t seem bothered by it. She wrote some more in her notebook, then said, “You think he wasn’t really going to take the deal Mr. Rafferty offered him. He planned to cause some sort of trouble instead.”

  Those weren’t actually questions, but I said, “That’s what it looks like.”

  “But he didn’t confide his plans to you.”

  I shook my head with some emphasis this time. “No, ma’am, he did not. If he had, I would’ve stayed right with him, grabbed him by the ear, and dragged him off the boat when we got here.”

  I would’ve done it, too.

  Again I thought for a second that Detective Travis was going to smile. Instead she said, “You didn’t see him after that?”

  “No, ma’am. I looked for him when I saw he didn’t get off the boat with the rest of the passengers, but I never found him.”

  “Where did you look?”

  “All the areas on all three decks where passengers are allowed. I knocked on the door of his actual cabin, because I’d gotten the number of it from the passenger manifest that was e-mailed to me.”

  “Which cabin is that?”

  I gave her the number. She made a note of it, then asked, “Did you try the door of that cabin to see if it was unlocked?”

  “Uh, yeah, I did,” I admitted. “But I knocked first and called out to him. He didn’t answer. I didn’t figure the door would be unlocked, but I tried the knob anyway.”

  And my fingerprints were all over that knob, I thought, as well as numerous other places in the cabin. It’s a good thing I wasn’t a professional criminal. I don’t reckon I’d last a week.

  I sort of hoped that Travis wouldn’t follow up on that response, but naturally, she did. “Was the door unlocked?”

  “It was.”

  “Did you go inside?”

  “I called out to him, like I said, and when I opened the door and did it again and he still didn’t answer…yeah, I went inside and took a look around. Right then, I was just concerned about him gettin’ off the boat like he’d told Mr. Rafferty that he would.”

  “Did you see anything unusual, any signs of a struggle, anything like that?”

  “No. His bags were gone. The cabin really looked like he’d come in, packed up, and left. That’s what I thought had happened. I figured I must’ve just missed him leaving the boat somehow. I even walked into Hannibal to see if I could find where he’d rented a car to drive back down to St. Louis.”

  She looked at me, and again I couldn’t read a blasted thing on her face. “You were taking a lot of interest in this young man’s whereabouts.”

  “Well, sure I was,” I said without hesitation. “I can tell this tour’s gonna be popular with my clients. I didn’t want any of them causin’ so much trouble for the folks who run the boat that they’d ban Dickinson Literary Tours from future tours.”

  I didn’t see how anybody could argue with the logic of that. Detective Travis nodded like she understood. “Is there anything else you can tell me about Mr. Webster or the things that happened earlier today?”

  I thought about it and then shook my head. “I can’t think of a thing.”

  “You don’t know of anyone who’d want to hurt him?”

  “No.”

  “What about the man he tried to punch in the casino?”

  “From what I understand, he didn’t even land that punch. Seems pretty far-fetched to me that anybody would break his neck hours later over it.”

  I didn’t mention my theory that Webster might’ve been trying
to sabotage the riverboat and Rafferty had caught him in the act. Travis would come up with that on her own, if she was any sort of detective.

  “All right, Ms. Dickinson, thank you. That’ll be all for now.”

  “For now?” I repeated.

  For the first time, she actually smiled. “Until we have a better handle on this case, you won’t be leaving the Southern Belle, Ms. Dickinson, and neither will anyone else. This riverboat is staying right where it is until I know who killed Ben Webster.”

  CHAPTER 8

  I was tempted to argue with her. I had a business to run, and I was sure my clients all had lives they needed to get back to, not to mention all the other passengers on the boat.

  But I didn’t figure it would do any good, and anyway, plenty of other folks would be yelling once they found out they were stuck here while a murder investigation went on. I was sure once people started calling their lawyers, the situation would be resolved pretty quickly.

  Detective Travis just wanted to keep the lid clamped down tight for as long as she could, and I couldn’t blame her for that. Maybe it wouldn’t take her long to discover who the killer was. Maybe he’d left his fingerprints on the storage closet door, or something like that.

  Maybe pigs could fly, too, but I wasn’t counting on it.

  Since Travis was done with me, I asked, “Do I have to go back up to Rafferty’s office?”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think that’s necessary. You can go where you want as long as you don’t leave the boat.” Her voice hardened. “I have an officer posted on the dock to make sure no one leaves. You’re not planning on jumping overboard and trying to swim ashore, are you, Ms. Dickinson?”

  “Not hardly,” I said. “Huck and Jim might’ve jumped off that raft of theirs and swam around in the Mississippi, but it’s not as clean now as it was back then. I’m not much of a swimmer, anyway.”

  “Do you have a cell phone?”

  “Sure.”

  “Give me the number,” she said, “in case I need to talk to you again.”

  Interrogate me again, that was what she meant, I thought. She copied down the number of my phone in her notebook and then turned the page. I took that to mean I was dismissed.

  The uniformed cop who’d fetched me from Rafferty’s office went as far as the main deck with me, then headed on up to the second deck. He was going to get one of the stewards, I thought. Detective Travis would be questioning both of them, even though they hadn’t found the body. Captain Williams had just brought them below decks with him after he got the call from Henry about finding Ben Webster’s corpse. But I supposed one of them might have noticed something that no one else had. It was possible, anyway.

  I started to go to my cabin, then decided against it. Even though it was late, I was too upset by everything that had happened to just go to sleep. Besides, I was still hungry. I wondered if I could find anything to eat in the salon.

  When I went in, the first person I saw was Vince Mallory. He sat on one of the divans sipping a drink and leafing through one of the books about Mark Twain that lay on a table in front of the divan. He looked up at me and smiled. He didn’t look or act like he had heard anything about the murder. Neither did any of the other passengers in the salon, all of whom seemed to be having a good time.

  I might have gone over and talked to Vince, but then I spotted Mark Lansing at the bar. He wasn’t wearing his Mark Twain getup anymore, and I’m not sure any of the passengers other than me knew who he was. I smiled and waved at Vince, then headed for the bar to talk to Mark. Vince seemed like a pretty nice young man, but he was young enough to be, well, my son-in-law.

  Anyway, Mark knew there had been some sort of problem earlier, and I was sure he was curious.

  As I walked over to him, he stood up from the stool where he’d been sitting. “Are you all right, Delilah?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. A little tired and upset, maybe, but more hungry than anything else.”

  He shook his head. “There are some peanuts here on the bar, but I’m afraid that’s all I can offer you.”

  “I’ll take ’em.” We sat down side by side, and he pushed the silver tray of peanuts over to me. I’d never thought that bar peanuts were particularly sanitary, but right then I didn’t care. I picked up a handful and forced myself to eat them slowly.

  “What happened?” Mark asked. “Why did the captain want to see you?”

  I wasn’t sure how much I ought to tell him. Detective Travis probably wanted the facts of the murder kept quiet while she was conducting her investigation. On the other hand, the rumor that somebody had been killed would be all over the boat by morning. I was sort of surprised that it wasn’t already.

  As I hesitated, Mark went on, “This has something to do with the police coming on the boat a little while ago, doesn’t it?”

  “You know about the police being here?”

  “The word went around the crew pretty quickly,” he said with a nod. “You can’t keep trouble quiet.”

  That was true enough. So I said, “One of the passengers was killed.”

  Mark’s eyes widened in surprise. “Really?” he said, then shook his head and went on, “Sorry. Of course you wouldn’t kid about something like that. Do you know what happened? Was it an accident?”

  “The police are looking into that now.” That was sort of skimming past giving him a truthful answer, but it wasn’t an outright lie, either. “Captain Williams notified me because it was one of my clients.”

  “Who?”

  “Ben Webster.”

  I didn’t see any sign of recognition in Mark’s eyes when I told him the name. There was no reason for him to know who Ben Webster was. I hadn’t told him about the run-in Webster had had in the casino that afternoon.

  “That’s terrible,” Mark said, slowly shaking his head. “You say the police are investigating?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The Hannibal PD?”

  “That’s right. A detective named Travis. And they have people from the State Police there, too.”

  Mark nodded. “Crime scene techs, more than likely. Small-town departments usually aren’t equipped to handle murder investigations without some outside help.”

  “I didn’t say it was murder,” I pointed out.

  “No, but the possibility must exist. The local cops wouldn’t have called in the State Police if it was an obvious case of accidental death or suicide.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “For an actor, you seem to know a lot about police investigations.”

  “I used to be a lawyer, remember?”

  I did recall that, now that he mentioned it. “Criminal law?”

  “Some people say all lawyers are criminals,” he replied with a grin. “But yeah, the firm I worked for handled a lot of criminal cases.”

  “So you were a defense attorney.”

  He shrugged. I could understand why he didn’t want to come right out and admit it. A lot of people didn’t like defense attorneys. Me, I just wished society didn’t have any need for them. Divorce lawyers, too.

  But I didn’t want to start brooding about that. Anyway, I was pretty much over my divorce, and there were plenty of other things going on to occupy my attention. So I pushed those thoughts out of my mind and said, “Well, I don’t care what you used to do. Now you’re Mark Twain.”

  “That’s right. And Twain said everyone is a moon and has a dark side that he never shows to anybody.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, so I ate some more peanuts. “Is there anywhere on this boat a person can get an actual meal at this time of night?”

  “I suppose we could raid the galley. I’d invite you back to my cabin for a late supper, but we just met, and besides, I don’t have any food there anyway.”

  I was sort of glad he didn’t invite me to his cabin. I wasn’t sure what my answer would have been. There was a 99 percent chance I would have declined, but I didn’t quite trust that other 1 percent. />
  Somebody came up to the bar on my other side. I looked around to see Vince Mallory motioning to the bartender for a refill on his drink. He smiled at me and asked, “Did you ever find that fellow you were looking for earlier, Ms. Dickinson?”

  “Yeah, I saw him a while ago.” I didn’t say that I’d talked to Ben Webster.

  Nobody would ever do that again. Even if they did, Webster wouldn’t hear them.

  “Get everything straightened out?”

  I thought about the way Webster’s arms and legs had been bent so that the killer could force him into that cramped space and I made an effort not to shudder. “No, but, uh, I’m sure it will be in time.”

  “I hope so.” He picked up his fresh drink. “Have a good evening.”

  It was too late for that, I thought as he walked back to the divan. Especially if I wasn’t going to Mark Lansing’s cabin.

  “How about that raid on the galley?” Mark asked when Vince was gone.

  I nodded. “Let’s do it,” I said.

  The kitchen—or galley, as I guess it was properly called, since we were on a boat—was deserted at this time of night. The cooks would be there early the next morning to start preparing breakfast, but that was still several hours away.

  “You’re not gonna get in trouble for this, are you?” I asked Mark as he rummaged through the big refrigerators and the pantry.

  “Not if nobody knows who did it,” he answered with a grin.

  “Now, dadgum it, I’m serious. I don’t want you gettin’ fired or anything just because I missed my supper.”

  “Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen to me. How does bacon and toast and scrambled eggs sound to you? I know that’s the sort of thing people eat for breakfast—”

  I checked my watch. “It’s after midnight. Close enough for government work.”

  He fired up the grill and got busy. “When we’re finished I can clean everything up so that nobody will even know we were here.”

  “Let me guess. Before you were a lawyer-turned-actor, you were a short-order cook in a diner.”

  “Actually, I did work in a diner when I was in college. Mostly as a busboy, though. But I got on the grill a few times. Anyway, whipping up a nice, greasy batch of bacon and eggs is like riding a bicycle. You never forget how.”