Huckleberry Finished (17 page)

“The one where Hannah worked for a couple of weeks as a temp before she got the job on this boat.”

Mark looked at Louise. “You didn't say anything about her working at a law firm.”

“I didn't think it was important,” she said. “Like Eddie told you, it was just a temp job.”

“Which firm was it?”

“Let me think…. There were three names, three partners, I suppose…,” Louise said.

Eddie said, “One of 'em was Pine, like the tree. I remember that.”

“Winston, Pine, and Blevins,” Mark said, his voice harsh with surprise.

“Yeah, that's it,” Eddie said. “You've heard of the firm?”

Mark had done a lot more than hear of it, I thought. He had done a lot of work for Winston, Pine, and Blevins.

And not much more than an hour ago, someone from that firm had done his best to convince him to drop this case.

M
ark looked just as shocked as I felt. “You're sure about that?” he said. “Hannah worked for Winston, Pine, and Blevins?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “And it wouldn't surprise me if it was one of those damn lawyers who got her pregnant. I never have liked lawyers, even my own.”

Mark shook his head. “It wouldn't have been one of the partners,” he said without a bit of doubt in his voice. “Leonard Winston is at least eighty years old and comes into the office only once or twice a year. Gerald Pine is the managing partner, but he's gay.”

“What about Blevins?” I asked.

“John Blevins is dead. His wife still shares in the firm's profits, but no one from his family practices there. None of his kids are even lawyers.”

“What about associates?” Eddie asked. “Don't most big law firms like that have a lot of associates working for them?”

Mark nodded. “Yes, there are about a dozen associates. I don't even know all of them.”

“And
you
seem to know a lot about the place,” Eddie said as he frowned in a vaguely accusing manner at Mark.

“Eddie!” Louise said. “You can't be serious. I've known Mark since I was a girl. I hired him to help us, for gosh sake.”

Eddie didn't pay any attention to her. He continued glaring at Mark and demanded, “How about it? What's your connection with those lawyers?”

“I do investigative work for them.” Mark amended, “Or rather, I
did
investigative work for them. I think I got fired a little while ago.”

“Why?”

“Because I refused to stop working on your daughter's case and run back to St. Louis to take on a job for them.”

Eddie snorted. “Don't make it sound so blasted noble. You couldn't have gone anyway, as long as the cops have us stuck here.”

That comment made a couple of things click together in my head. I put a hand on Mark's arm and said, “They called you out of the blue with that other case?”

He turned to look at me. “Yeah, Mr. Pine said the client asked for me.”

“Has that ever happened before?”

Mark thought about it for a second, then said, “No, not that I recall. Most clients wouldn't know who I was. They just come to the firm for results and don't really care how they go about getting them.”

“So it would have to be a regular client, somebody who knew who you were. Somebody who might recognize you if they saw you.”

“Well, once you think about it like that, what you're saying makes sense,” Mark admitted.

“Let me make a wild guess,” I said. “The biggest client the firm has is Charles Gallister.”

Mark's mouth tightened into a hard line. “Yeah, that's probably right,” he said.

“Would Gallister know you by sight?”

“Maybe. I've been introduced to him once or twice, but it's been a while.”

“And this fella Pine would want to give Gallister whatever he asked for, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mark said. “There are a lot of billable hours at stake in giving Charles Gallister whatever he wants.”

I lifted a finger and poked at the air as I put my thoughts into words. “So Gallister sees you when he comes on board the
Southern Belle
earlier today and recognizes you as a private detective. He was already going to call his lawyers—Winston, Pine, and Blevins—and raise holy Ned about the riverboat being stuck here in Hannibal, and oh, by the way, while he's talking to them he also tells them he needs you, you in particular, to work on some unspecified case for him. He's anticipating that they're gonna be able to get a court order releasing the boat and the passengers, so you can hotfoot it back to St. Louis and forget all about the case that brought you up here. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” Mark said as he nodded. “Some of it is pure speculation, but it hangs together all right.”

Eddie and Louise had been listening and frowning as they tried to follow what I was saying, and now Eddie spoke up. “Yeah, but what does it
mean
?”

“When Gallister saw Mark and remembered that he's a private eye, he probably figured that he was here workin' on a case,” I said. “Ben Webster's murder happened after the cruise started. There's only one unsolved case involving the
Southern Belle
that could have brought Mark up here.”

“Hannah's murder,” Louise breathed.

I nodded. “Gallister decided you must be working on Hannah's case,” I said to Mark, “and he didn't want you here. So he tried to get his lawyers to call you off and decoy you away on something else.”

“Why would he do that?” Louise asked.

Mark didn't have time to answer before Eddie said, “That son of a bitch.” His voice rose in a roar. “
That son of a bitch!
”

He stomped toward the stairs.

Mark caught hold of his arm and stopped him. Eddie turned fast, swinging a punch at Mark with his other arm. That Marine training of Eddie's was probably pretty good, but it had been a long time ago. He had spent the years since then as a businessman while Mark had been working as a private eye, which was probably a lot more strenuous. And Mark was just in better shape to start with. He blocked the punch, swung Eddie around, and twisted his arm behind his back.

“Take it easy,” Mark said. “I don't want to hurt you, Eddie.”

“Let me go,” Eddie panted. “Lemme go, dammit! I'll kill the son of a bitch!”

Louise got in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders. “Calm down, Eddie,” she said. “You've got to calm down. It's not going to do any good for you to go flying off the handle like you always do.”

Her words seemed to get through to him. He took a couple of deep, ragged breaths, then jerked his head in a nod. “All right, Lansing, you can let go of me,” he said. “I won't do anything.”

“You'd better not be lying to me,” Mark said as he released Eddie's arm. Eddie brought it back around in front of him and rubbed it where the muscles must have been pulled.

Louise turned to Mark. “Do you really think Charles Gallister could have had something to do with Hannah's death? A rich man like that?”

“Rich men break the law, too, all the time,” he said. He looked at me. “But Delilah's the one who came up with this theory. Let's give her a chance to talk it out.”

“Thanks,” I said. “What do you know about Gallister? Is he the sort of man who'd take up with a young woman like Hannah?”

Mark grunted. “Gallister's the sort of man who'd take up with anybody if she was female and reasonably attractive.”

“Hannah was a beautiful young woman,” Louise said quietly.

“She certainly was,” Mark agreed. “From the gossip I heard about Gallister around the firm, all the secretaries knew not to let themselves get caught alone in an elevator with him. The female associates were the same way, although I think some of them probably played up to him to try to advance their careers. He has a reputation as a lecher, though.”

“So a pretty girl from a small town, living on her own in the city for the first time, working as a temp…she'd be a prime target for a man like Gallister?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Mark said. “I never knew that there was a connection between Hannah and the law firm, or I might have thought of Gallister. He was there in the offices a lot, consulting with Gerald Pine. He could have seen Hannah and set his sights on her—”

Eddie growled. Literally growled. Louise put a hand on his arm to calm him.

“He wouldn't have been able to resist the challenge,” Mark went on. “He's the sort of man who thinks he can charm any woman he wants to.”

I recalled him trying that charm on Detective Travis. When it hadn't worked, Gallister had gotten angry. Hannah's condition when she was murdered, though, seemed to indicate that Gallister's efforts had been successful where she was concerned—
if
there was anything to this except blue sky.

“Let's say he meets her at the law firm, he goes after her, and she falls for his line,” I said. “He gets her the job on this boat. Easy enough for him to do, since he owns the
Southern Belle
. Then she turns up pregnant. What would she do then?”

“If you're thinking that she would try to blackmail him, you're wrong,” Louise said. “Hannah would never do such a thing.”

As gently as he could, Mark said, “You can't be sure about that, Louise—”

“But I am,” she insisted. “I knew my daughter, Mark. She wasn't a blackmailer.”

“And you're probably right about that,” I told her. “But Gallister didn't know her that well. If he found out she was pregnant, he could have been afraid that she'd try to shake him down, whether she actually would have or not.”

Eddie said, “Does this guy Gallister already have a wife?”

Mark nodded. “He does. She comes from old money, too. That's how Gallister got his start in business. He charmed the right woman.”

“Does she know he plays around?”

“I'm not privy to their private life,” Mark said, “but again, going by gossip, she knows. That's why she hasn't been completely sober for a lot of years now. But they're still married, and I'll bet Gallister would take quite a financial hit if they weren't together anymore.”

Eddie started toward the stairs. “Where's that lady cop? We've got to tell her all this before Gallister has a chance to get away.”

“Wait a minute,” I told him. “We can't prove any of it. We're just talking about what might have happened.”

Eddie glared at Mark. “You're a detective.
Get
proof.”

“A year after the crime, I'm not sure how we're going to do that,” Mark said. “Anyway, if Gallister wanted to get rid of Hannah, he wouldn't do it himself. He'd hire it done, and he'd use a professional. If we're right about this, whoever actually killed her is probably long gone. They could be halfway around the world by now.”

“I don't care about that. Gallister would be the one who's really responsible for what happened. He's got to pay,” Eddie replied.

“If he's guilty,” Mark said. He frowned in thought for a moment and then grimaced. “There's one thing I can think of that we can do….”

“Then we should do it,” Louise said.

“It's not pleasant,” Mark warned.

Eddie snapped, “Nothing about your daughter being murdered is pleasant. What's your idea, Lansing?”

“You could have Hannah's body exhumed and have DNA testing done on the baby she was carrying. Then, if you could get a DNA sample from Gallister, you could see if there was a match. You couldn't actually prove he was the father that way—DNA's not as exact as most people like to think it is—but you
could
determine whether the father was either Gallister or a close male relative of his. And since, as far as I know, he doesn't have any male relatives that close”—Mark shrugged—“that would be enough proof for a jury, if it turned out the DNA matched. There's only one problem.”

“What's that?” Louise asked.

“Getting Gallister to give you a DNA sample. If he knows that he was the father of Hannah's baby, he's going to guess right away why you want it, and he'll balk.”

“Make him cooperate,” Eddie said. “Get a court order.”

Mark shook his head. “He's got one of the biggest and best law firms in the Midwest working for him. Actually, it's one of the best in the whole country. If you file a civil action against him and try to force him to give you a DNA sample that way, he'll fight it as long as his money holds out…and that's going to be a lot longer than yours does.”

I saw Eddie's shoulders slump and said, “Wouldn't that be the same as him admitting it, if he wouldn't cooperate?”

“Not legally. You can't force a man to give you his DNA if he doesn't want to, not without a judge on your side.”

“What about the cops?” I asked. “If they went after him—”

“First you'd have to convince them to investigate him,” Mark said, “and based on the evidence we have, which is pretty much nothing, I don't think you'd have any luck with that. Even if you did manage to interest the police, Gallister would fight just as hard to prevent the DNA test, and he'd drag it out for years, maybe.”

“What if you—”

He held up a hand to stop me. “Got a DNA sample without him being aware of it? Dug through his trash and found a cup or a napkin or something with his saliva on it?”

Louise made a face. So did I. It was a pretty distasteful idea.

“It wouldn't be admissible as evidence,” Mark went on. “Too much opportunity for the sample to be tainted or manipulated somehow. That's why the cops place so much importance on the chain of evidence.”

“Well, then, what the hell
can
we do?” Eddie burst out.

Mark smiled. “We have to spook Gallister into making a mistake.”

“How do we do that?” Louise asked.

“You say that Hannah wouldn't have blackmailed him,” Mark told her, “and you're probably right about that. But that doesn't mean
I
can't blackmail him.”