Huckleberry Finished

by Livia J. Washburn

  He shook his head. “Not a blasted thing. Actually, all they wanted to talk about was Ben Webster’s murder.”

  “They have any ideas about that?”

  “I’m afraid not. Henry, the guy who found the body, is still pretty shaken up about it.”

  “That corridor where the storage locker is…it doesn’t have a security camera covering it, does it?”

  Mark laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “The cops can’t be that lucky. There’s no camera. The killer wasn’t caught on tape stuffing Webster’s body into the locker.”

  “Is that corridor used very much?”

  “Actually, no. It’s not the main access to the engine room. Nothing’s down there but the little closet where Webster’s body was found and some hatches that give access to the pipes running between the boilers and the engine room.”

  “You think whoever hid Webster’s body there knew that?” I asked. “Seems to me that if they did, they must know a lot about the boat and how it operates.”

  He nodded slowly. “That’s a good thought. Somebody could have carried the body down there on the spur of the moment and stashed it the first place they came to—”

  “But it’s more likely they went down there with Webster and killed him right then and there,” I said, even as the conclusion formed in my mind.

  “Yeah,” Mark said. “That would be a lot less risky than hauling a corpse down from one of the upper decks.”

  “That would mean it’s pretty likely Webster knew his killer, and maybe even trusted him,” I pointed out.

  Mark shrugged. “Or had some other good reason to go with him, like a gun in his back.”

  “Forcing Webster below decks at gunpoint seems almost as risky to me as killing him up above and then carryin’ him down.”

  “That’s true,” Mark admitted. “This is interesting speculation, Delilah, but that’s all it is. And it doesn’t have anything to do with Hannah Kramer’s murder, at least as far as we know now.”

  “Maybe,” I said with a note of stubbornness in my voice. “I know coincidences exist in this world, but it seems like a real stretch to me to think that two people could be killed on the same riverboat, almost exactly a year apart, and the two cases not have some connection.”

  He grinned. “Maybe you should be a private detective.”

  I snorted again. “No, thank you. I’m perfectly happy doin’ what I’m doin’…. At least I am when nobody gets themselves murdered on one of my tours!”

  CHAPTER 18

  Mark had told me all he knew, or at least he claimed he had. All I could do was take his word for it. But I didn’t think he was lying, so I knew it was time for me to keep my part of the bargain.

  “Even though we don’t know for sure that Ben Webster’s murder is connected to Hannah’s,” I said, “I found out something about Webster that might interest you.”

  “I’m all ears,” he said.

  Actually, his ears weren’t abnormally big. They were just the right size for his head. But I pushed that distracting thought out of my brain and went on, “My daughter, Melissa, did some diggin’ around on the computer about Webster, and she discovered that he was usin’ a phony name.”

  Mark frowned in surprise and asked, “He wasn’t really Ben Webster?”

  “Nope. The credit card he used to pay for this trip was legit, but the billing address on it doesn’t exist. The info he gave us doesn’t match up with any of the Ben Websters in the Social Security database, either. It was a false identity, or a stolen one.”

  Mark rubbed his jaw again as he thought over what I’d just told him. “Then he must have been some sort of criminal,” he said slowly.

  “You’d think so.” Another possibility occurred to me. “Either that, or he was hiding out from somebody.”

  “And they caught up to him and killed him?”

  I shrugged. “That would explain the murder. That murder, anyway. I don’t see how it ties in with Hannah’s.”

  Mark smiled. “After you think about all the possibilities for a while, it makes you want to tear your hair out, doesn’t it?”

  “My head already hurts bad enough without tearin’ any hair out.”

  We likely would have hashed things out some more—and probably not reached any conclusions—but right then Mark’s cell phone rang. He took it out of his pocket, looked at the display, and frowned.

  “Winston, Pine, and Blevins,” he said. “That’s a law firm in St. Louis I do most of my work for. I guess I’d better take this.”

  “Go ahead,” I told him.

  He opened the phone, said, “Hello.” With a frown of concentration on his face, he listened for a minute, then said, “That’s a very appealing offer, Mr. Pine, but I’m already involved in a case right now…How much?…And the client asked for me in particular?…How did they know?…I see. When do you need an answer?” His mouth tightened. “I don’t see how I can…Yes, sir, I understand…I’m sorry. I just can’t do it.” He took a deep breath. “Of course. Good-bye.”

  Then he looked at me as he closed the phone and added, “Well, that sucks.”

  “What happened?”

  “One of the firm’s biggest clients wanted them to hire me to do some investigative work. And the job would start immediately, as in today, as soon as I could get back to St. Louis.”

  “How come you didn’t tell them you’re stuck in Hannibal until Detective Travis decides to let us go?”

  Mark shook his head. “It wouldn’t matter. Even if we weren’t being held here, I gave Louise my word. I can’t just drop one case to take on another one, no matter how lucrative it might be…or how detrimental it’s going to be to turn down the job.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Mr. Pine—the partner I was talking to—made it clear that if I didn’t accept the offer, I wouldn’t be getting any more assignments from Winston, Pine, and Blevins in the future.” He shrugged. “And like I said, I did more work for them than any other law firm.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “And not fair at all.”

  He shrugged. “Nobody ever said life was fair, now did they?”

  “If they did, they were dead wrong,” I agreed. “Still, this just isn’t right.”

  More than that, I found it odd. Something stirred in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t drag it far enough into the light to make out what it was. All I could sense was a connection I wasn’t quite seeing.

  “Right or not,” Mark said, “I’ll stick with Louise’s case. If she doesn’t find out what happened to Hannah, it’s going to haunt her for the rest of her life. And that really wouldn’t be fair.”

  “You’re right. What do we do now?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “We?”

  “Consider me your assistant,” I said. “Watson to your Holmes.”

  Mark laughed. “You’re giving me way too much credit for my deductive abilities. I’m a plodder, not an eccentric genius. Besides, I play Mark Twain, not Sherlock Holmes, remember?”

  “Well, Twain wrote a book called Tom Sawyer, Detective, didn’t he?”

  “He did,” Mark admitted with a shrug.

  “If it’s good enough for Tom Sawyer, it’s good enough for us. I’ll be Becky Thatcher.”

  He laughed again. “I’m not sure she’s in that book, but all right. I can see you’re not going to give up. What do we do next?”

  “I can’t shake the feeling that there might be a connection between Hannah’s murder and what happened to the fella callin’ himself Ben Webster. Have you been on board long enough to know who runs the roulette wheel in the casino?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have.”

  “Let’s go see if we can find him and have a talk with him,” I said.

  With the casino closed, all the people who normally worked there didn’t have anything to do. And with the salon being used by Detective Travis to conduct her questioning of everybody on the Southern Belle, the crew members couldn’t go there
to drink. Mark had heard rumors, though, that there was a party going on below decks for the duration of the riverboat’s enforced stay in Hannibal.

  We headed down the four flights of stairs that took us to the boat’s lower level. There was a mess hall for the crew down there, Mark explained, so the people who worked on the Southern Belle didn’t have to eat in the same dining room as the passengers. We heard the sound of talk and laughter before we even got there.

  When we reached the mess hall, we found it crowded. Even though the sun wasn’t anywhere near the yardarm, to use a nautical term that didn’t have anything to do with riverboats, I saw quite a bit of drinking going on, as well as a poker game where a couple of tables had been pushed together. I wondered what poker was like for a bunch of professional dealers. Sort of a busman’s holiday, I expected, but what else did they have to do while they were stuck here?

  Several people greeted Mark with reserved smiles. He was the new guy on board, after all. They glanced somewhat suspiciously at me. I was a passenger. To their way of thinking, I didn’t belong down here.

  But as the leader of a tour group, I wasn’t a regular passenger. It could be argued that I worked on the Southern Belle, the same as the rest of the folks gathered in this mess hall did.

  As we crossed the room, I could tell that there was a considerable amount of flirting going on among the crew, too. You throw a bunch of men and women together in a work environment and there are bound to be some romances, no matter how many rules there are against them. Some things you just can’t legislate or regulate, and the effect of hormones is one of ’em. Don’t let anybody tell you it only happens among younger folks, either. Listen to the gossip in retirement homes, if you don’t believe me.

  That might have something to do with Hannah Kramer’s murder, I told myself. She could have gotten involved with someone who worked on the riverboat, and her death could have been the result of a lover’s quarrel.

  But that wasn’t true of Ben Webster. He had been on board for only a few hours before he was killed. He hadn’t had time to start any sort of romance with either another passenger or a member of the crew. And we were here to poke into Webster’s murder right now, in hopes that investigating it might lead to something that would have a bearing on Hannah’s death, too.

  Mark led me to a table in the corner where a man sat alone. “Hello, Garvey,” he said. “You know Delilah Dickinson, don’t you?”

  The man wore a sullen expression on his face as he shook his head. He had a half-empty beer bottle on the table in front of him, the fingers of one hand wrapped loosely around it.

  “Can’t say as I do,” he said. “One of the passengers, isn’t she?”

  I thought that was sort of rude, talking about me like I wasn’t even there. So I said, “No, not exactly. I’m the leader of one of the tour groups.”

  The man called Garvey grunted. “Same thing.”

  I felt a surge of anger but didn’t show it. “No, this is my job,” I said with a smile. “I work on the boat, just like you do. Mind if we sit down?”

  He nodded toward the empty chairs at the table. “Help yourselves.”

  We sat down, and Mark said, “This is a pretty rotten deal, isn’t it, being stuck here like this? I don’t know about you, but I need to get back to St. Louis.”

  Garvey shrugged. “It doesn’t matter all that much to me. I don’t have any family there. And I get paid either way, whether we’re steaming back down the river or not.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like the way the cops are questioning everybody, like we’re suspects or something,” Mark said.

  “Huh,” Garvey said. “You don’t have anything to worry about. I’m the one who had trouble yesterday with that son of a bitch who got killed.” He glanced at me. “No offense. I know he was one of your clients.”

  I leaned forward over the table and said, “Did that lady cop question you already? She was all over me earlier, just because Webster was a member of my tour. I never even saw the guy before lunch yesterday! Why would I have any reason to kill him?”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Garvey agreed. “He didn’t take a swing at you.” He drank from his beer and added hastily, “Don’t take that to mean I had anything to do with what happened to him. I was working in the casino all afternoon yesterday and never left it. I’ve got witnesses to prove that, and that’s what I told that cop.” A humorless chuckle came from him. “Anyway, it’s not like that was the first time anybody ever accused me of running a crooked wheel. Hell, I ought to be used to it by now. I’ve had customers threaten me before.”

  “Really?” Mark said.

  “You’ve always got sore losers to deal with. That’s just part of the job.” A cynical grin appeared on Garvey’s narrow face. “Of course, there might be a few more than usual on the Southern Belle.”

  Before either of us could ask him what he meant by that, a large presence loomed up beside us. I turned my head to see Logan Rafferty standing there. “What are you going on about now, Clyde?” he asked Garvey.

  “Nothing, Mr. Rafferty, nothing,” Garvey said. He almost tripped over the words, and I could tell he was nervous. Rafferty had that effect on people, especially when he was towering over them like a mountain about to come crashing down on them.

  Rafferty looked at me and frowned. “What are you doing here, Ms. Dickinson? Not that you’re not welcome, but this is a crew area. It’s normally off limits to passengers.”

  “I brought her with me,” Mark said. “I figured Delilah’s not exactly the same as a regular passenger, since being on the boat is part of her job, just like it is with ours.”

  Rafferty’s massive shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “I suppose you could look at it that way,” he said. “I wouldn’t go wandering around by yourself in places you’re not supposed to be, though, Ms. Dickinson.”

  “I don’t intend to,” I told him. “And I can go back up on deck right now if you want.”

  He waved a big hand. “No, no, that’s all right. You’re welcome down here.” He turned back to Garvey. “I need to have a word with you in private, Clyde.”

  A small, nervous tic in Garvey’s jaw increased in its frequency. But he nodded and said, “All right, sure.”

  “Let’s go up to my office,” Rafferty suggested as Garvey stood up.

  Garvey looked a little like a man being marched to the gallows as he left the mess hall with Rafferty. When they were gone, Mark leaned toward me and asked in a quiet voice, “What do you think that was all about?”

  “This is just a guess,” I said, “but I’ll bet Rafferty wants to find out what Detective Travis asked Garvey about that trouble with Ben Webster yesterday…and what Garvey told her.”

  Mark nodded as he thought about it, then said, “You know, from the way Garvey was talking, it’s not unusual for people to complain about the roulette wheel. Do you think that’s because it really is rigged?”

  “You mean Webster was right about bein’ cheated?” I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’d think that the boat makes plenty of money without riggin’ the games, but short of takin’ a look at the books, I don’t know how we’d ever prove that.”

  “For some people, there’s no such thing as plenty of money,” Mark pointed out. “They always want more and more, no matter how much they’ve got.”

  “That’s true.” I thought about it, then said, “And just because the boat makes money, that doesn’t mean everything in the casino is on the up-and-up. The profits from the Southern Belle go in Charles Gallister’s pocket. Maybe if there’s something funny going on in the casino, it’s somebody else’s operation.”

  “Like Logan Rafferty’s?”

  We looked at each other and shook our heads at the same time. “We’re jumping to way too many conclusions,” Mark went on.

  “Maybe, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re wrong,” I pointed out. “It’s something to think about.”

  Instinctively, I had disliked and distrusted Logan Raf
ferty from the moment I met him. I could easily see him setting up some sort of crooked scheme in the casino involving a rigged roulette wheel. Maybe after giving me the slip the day before, Ben Webster had continued poking around until he found the proof he needed to show everybody that he’d been right about being cheated. If Rafferty was behind it, then he’d have had a good reason to break Webster’s neck.

  But it seemed like everywhere I looked, there was somebody with a potential good reason—or more than one—to have broken Webster’s neck. Except across the table, of course. Mark had come on board the Southern Belle with secrets of his own, no doubt about that, but none of them had anything to do with Ben Webster.

  “The casino is closed for the time bein’,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t get in there if you wanted to, does it?”

  “Do I want to?” Mark asked with a grin.

  “I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I’d sort of like to take a look at that roulette wheel of Garvey’s.”

  “Do you know what you’d be looking for? No offense, Delilah, but since when are you an expert on rigged roulette wheels?”

  “I’m not,” I admitted. “I’m just hopin’ that it’s like pornography.”

  That comment brought a puzzled frown to Mark’s face.

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” I said.

  CHAPTER 19

  The casino had two main entrances from the deck, one on the port side, one on the starboard. Detective Travis had posted a uniformed officer at each door to keep everybody out.

  She must not have known about the little passage linking the kitchen adjacent to the dining room with the bar in the casino as well. People went to the casino to gamble, not to eat, but many of them drank while they were there and sometimes passengers in the dining room wanted a beer or a glass of wine or a cocktail with their meals. So it made sense to connect things behind the scenes.

  That’s what Mark and I were trying to do, I thought as we made our way through the kitchen and into the narrow hallway behind the casino, ignoring the curious looks that the kitchen staff gave us as they prepared lunch. If we could connect enough apparently unrelated things, we might come up with a picture that started to make sense.