Huckleberry Finished (4 page)

I went on to tell him about my daughter, Melissa, and her husband, Luke, and my twin teenage nieces, Augusta and Amelia. I didn't tell him anything about what had happened during the first
Gone With the Wind
tour the year before. I didn't want to scare him off.

Both of us lost track of the time for a while, a sign that we were enjoying the conversation. Eventually Mark glanced at his watch and said, “I've got to go get ready for the performance. Maybe we can talk some more afterward.”

“I'd like that,” I told him.

He left the salon. I checked the time myself and saw that I was almost too late for dinner. I had forgotten all about it while I was talking to Mark. With a wave to the bartender, I left the salon.

Most of my clients who planned to have dinner on the boat had probably eaten already, I thought as I headed down the stairs to the main deck. But a few of them might still be in the dining room, so I headed that way, figuring I could at least put in an appearance and maybe get something to eat. Just something to tide me over, though, because I was already thinking about suggesting a late supper to Mark….

The sobs coming from a dark area along the rail caught my attention and made me freeze. I didn't know who was there. All I could see was a shadowy figure bending over the railing. I thought about going to find a steward, but that seemed a little cowardly. Instead I said, “Hello? Is there something I can do for you?”

The figure jerked around from the rail and came at me.

I
started to jump back and raise my arms to defend myself, but then I recognized Louise Kramer. I couldn't bring myself to believe that the meek little woman was attacking me, so I stayed where I was. Sure enough, Louise didn't do anything except hug me and get the shoulder of my dress wet where her tears were falling.

“Why, honey,” I managed to say, “what in the world is wrong?”

She shook her head and didn't answer. I patted her on the back and made the sort of vaguely comforting noises that people always do in situations like that.

Then a possible explanation occurred to me. I said, “Did that big ol' husband of yours do something? Did he hurt you, Louise?” My blood started to boil at the thought.

That finally jolted her out of her teary silence. “What? You mean Eddie? Oh, no! Eddie would…would never hurt me.”

I wasn't so sure about that. I hadn't liked the look of Eddie Kramer earlier in the day. He was nearly twice the size of his wife, and from the sound of the way he'd talked to whoever was on the phone, he liked to bully people. Size and meanness were a bad combination.

“Are you sure? I can call somebody, or go find a security officer—”

She jerked away from me. “No! I told you, Eddie didn't do anything to me. I…I'm just upset. It's personal. There's nothing you can do to help.”

One thing I've learned in the travel business is your clients' personal lives really aren't any of your business. As long as they don't disrupt the tour or break any laws, you're better off giving them their privacy.

That's what I did then, backing off and holding up my hands. “I'm sorry,” I told Louise. “Whatever's wrong, I didn't mean to intrude. But I meant it when I said that if there's anything I can do, I'd like to help.”

She took a handkerchief or a tissue from her purse. In the dim light, I couldn't tell which. She used it to dab at her eyes and then took a deep breath, composing herself with a visible effort.

“Thank you, Ms. Dickinson.”

“Delilah.”

She summoned up a smile. “Delilah. I promise you, there's nothing you can do. I'll be all right in a little while.”

“Well…okay. If you're sure.”

“I'm certain.”

My eyes were more used to the dim light now. I could see that she didn't have any bruises or black eyes or anything like that. Nothing visible, anyway. And she had sounded like she was telling the truth when she said that her husband hadn't hurt her. I knew I should have been ashamed of myself for jumping to that conclusion, but I wasn't. Not after I'd seen the way some women were treated in their marriages.

“I was just on my way to the dining room to see if there's anything left to eat,” I told her. “If you haven't had dinner yet, why don't you join me?”

“Oh, I…I couldn't eat anything right now. But thank you for asking. I…I think I'll go back to my cabin and lie down for a little while.”

“You're comin' to the salon for the Mark Twain performance, aren't you?”

“I'll try,” she said with a weak smile, but I didn't honestly believe that I'd see her there.

She walked toward her cabin—or toward what I hoped was really her cabin, after the trick Ben Webster had pulled on me earlier. I didn't think Louise Kramer had any reason to try to fool me. I watched, anyway, as she took a key from her purse, unlocked a cabin door, went inside, and shut the door softly behind her. She struck me as the sort of woman who had never slammed a door in her life.

That was an odd little incident, I thought as I started toward the dining room again, but it wasn't that uncommon for somebody to get emotional and lose control momentarily while on a vacation. Traveling was really stressful for some people, after all.

More of my clients than I expected were still in the dining room when I got there. I helped myself to some appetizers at the buffet table and then circulated among the guests, asking them how they were enjoying the trip so far and things like that. Just pleasant chitchat.

I mentioned the Mark Twain performance in the salon to everyone, too, urging them to attend. I wanted Mark Lansing to have a good crowd for his first performance, although, when I stopped to think about it, he might have preferred not to have so many people looking at him. I knew that if I were an actor or a singer or something like that, the bigger the crowd, the more butterflies I'd have fluttering around in my stomach.

But it was too late to do anything about that now. Quite a few people expressed an interest in watching the performance, so as the time approached eight o'clock, I led a good-sized group out of the dining room and up the stairs to the second deck. We went into the salon and found places to sit at the bar and at the tables, and there were comfortable chairs and divans scattered around the sumptuously furnished room.

I didn't see Eddie or Louise Kramer anywhere in the salon, but that didn't surprise me, even though I was a little disappointed. I'd been hoping that Louise would feel better and would want to take in the show.

A few minutes later, the double doors from the deck opened, and Mark Twain ambled in, cigar in hand. He went to the bar, rested an elbow on it, and looked around the room at the passengers, who had quieted down as he made his way across the salon. Once everyone was quiet, he said, “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”

That got a nice laugh. Mark acknowledged it with a wave of the unlit cigar. “I want to welcome all of you to the
Southern Belle.
As some of you may be aware, I worked on riverboats much like this one, back in my early days. I was an apprentice pilot to Captain Horace Bixby, whose task it was to teach me the river. But the face of the water itself, in time, became a wonderful book…a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”

I guessed that most of that must have been a passage from
Life on the Mississippi
that Mark Lansing had memorized. He continued talking in Twain's words about the river, about how the slightest ripple might indicate a snag under the water that could tear the bottom right out of a riverboat. Despite its peaceful, placid appearance, the river hid many dangers under its slow-moving surface, and a good pilot had to be able to recognize all of them instinctively.

Mark was good; I had to give him that. He spoke Twain's words with precision and conviction. After a while, listening to him was like being back there roughly a hundred and fifty years earlier, when the country was still young and brawling and vibrant.

Gradually the focus shifted from the river to young Sam Clemens's boyhood in Hannibal. I didn't know which pieces of writing the passages came from—probably more than one—but Mark wove them together into a narrative that was, well, rollicking. It was easy to see how young Sam's experiences in Hannibal had become the stuff of fiction in
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
. Mark kept the audience alternating between rapt attention and uproarious laughter. He never broke character and was never less than convincing in his portrayal.

Most of the performance had to do with Hannibal and the Mississippi, but to wrap it up Mark performed some material about Twain's days as a newspaper correspondent in the West, then talked about politics for a while. The jabs at Congress and the president were as timely as when Twain wrote them, and the passengers in the salon seemed to enjoy them a lot. When Mark waved his cigar in the air and said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” they gave him a standing ovation.

After the performance people crowded around to talk to him. Some of them even wanted an autograph, which Mark provided even though he looked a little uncomfortable doing so. I thought he did, anyway. He stayed in character while chatting with the passengers. I waited until they left him alone before I slipped up beside him.

“Oh, Mr. Twain, that was just amazin',” I said in a breathless voice. “You're my favorite writer in the whole wide world.”

Mark kept smiling under the bushy mustache, but he said, “I don't think I've ever been so scared in my whole life.”

“You didn't have anything to be scared about. You were great!”

“You really think so?”

I nodded and said, “I do.”

“You're not just saying that?”

“Nope. You had all these folks eatin' right out of the palm of your hand. I think everybody in here enjoyed it. I know I did.”

“Well, it's kind of you to say so.” Mark took a handkerchief from the breast pocket of the white suit coat he wore and patted his forehead with it. A little make-up came off on the handkerchief.

I linked my arm with his and said, “Come on over to the bar. It's not every day I can ask Mark Twain to have a drink with me.”

The same bartender brought us champagne. Mark had some trouble drinking his through the drooping fake mustache, but he managed. “Next time I'll get rid of this soup strainer first,” he complained.

“No, no, you have to leave it on,” I told him. “It makes you look distinguished.”

“You really think it went all right?”

“I know it did.”

Mark relaxed after that, and we chatted about his performance and the passengers' reactions. Some of them still came up to him to shake his hand and thank him for an entertaining evening. He seemed to enjoy talking to them, and after a while I leaned over to him and said, “I think you may have a future in this business.”

“What, riverboat acting?”

“It's a start. Today, the riverboat. Tomorrow, Hollywood or Broadway!”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” he cautioned, but I could tell he was pleased by what I'd said.

I started thinking about what a pleasant evening it had turned out to be after all, despite the strains and worries of the afternoon. The Kramers could work out their problems between themselves. Wherever Ben Webster had gone, at least I was confident he wasn't still on the riverboat. The rest of the overnight cruise was bound to go smoothly.

I know, I know. I'm dumb that way sometimes.

I was nursing another glass of champagne when the cell phone in my purse rang. Thinking that it might be Melissa or Luke, I said, “Excuse me a minute,” to Mark and stepped away from the bar while I took the phone from my purse.

The number on the display wasn't a familiar one, though. I didn't even recognize the area code. I opened the phone and said, “Delilah Dickinson.”

“Ms. Dickinson.” It was a man's voice, calm and powerful, and one that I'd never heard before, as far as I could recall. I didn't have to wonder whom it belonged to, though, because he went on immediately, “This is Captain Williams.”

“Captain Williams?” I repeated.

“Captain of the
Southern Belle,
” he explained. “Where are you right now?”

The blunt question took me by surprise. “Why, I'm in the salon—” I began.

“Stay right there if you would, please. Mr. Rafferty will come and get you.”

“Come and…get me?” Whatever this was, if Rafferty was involved it couldn't be good.

“That's right. There's something…or rather, someone…you need to see.”

No, sir, I thought. Not good at all.

M
ark must have seen the worried look on my face as I closed my cell phone and slipped it back into my purse. “Problem?” he asked. “Something about your tour?”

“I don't know.” I picked up my glass and threw back the rest of the champagne. Luckily there wasn't much of it left, or I might have choked on it. “That was Captain Williams. You know him?”

“I've met him a couple of times. I'm new at the job of playing Mark Twain, remember? I don't know any of the crew all that well yet.”

“When you talked to him, did the captain strike you as the sort of fella who'd get worked up over something if it wasn't important?”

“Not at all,” Mark said, not hesitating a bit. “He seemed very calm and levelheaded to me.”

There went my idea that maybe the captain wanted to fuss at me because one of my clients littered the deck or something like that. Calm and levelheaded meant that Williams wouldn't be sending the head of security to fetch me unless something important had happened.

“If there's anything I can do to help…” Mark went on.

I didn't want to burden him with my problems. Besides, I didn't even know yet what the problem was. So I shook my head and said, “No, that's all right. But I appreciate the offer from a famous man like Mark Twain.”

Just then, Logan Rafferty came into the salon. He moved with a brisk efficiency that said while he wasn't hurrying, he wasn't wasting any time, either. He spotted me and started across the salon toward me.

I put my hand on the sleeve of Mark's white coat for a second and said, “Maybe I'll see you later. Congratulations again on your performance.”

Rafferty wore a pretty grim expression as I went to meet him. “Ms. Dickinson,” he said. “Please come with me.”

He kept his voice pitched low. I could tell that he didn't want to attract any more attention than he had to. That was sort of difficult to do, though, as big and tough-looking as he was.

“Where are we going?” I asked as we started toward the door of the salon.

“Captain Williams will explain everything to you.” He paused, then added, “And you've got some explaining to do, too.”

“Hey, I may be a redhead, but I'm not Lucy Ricardo.”

He didn't as much as grunt. I don't know if he didn't get the reference, or if he just didn't have much of a sense of humor. Of course, the comment wasn't really that funny to begin with, I told myself.

I expected Rafferty to take me up to the pilothouse, since that's where Captain Williams would normally be. Instead, when we reached the stairway, he headed down toward the main deck. But he didn't stop there. He opened a door and revealed some stairs that led below decks. Down there was the belly of the boat, the engine room and the boilers and all the other things that made the
Southern Belle
go.

“Where are we going?” I asked, suddenly feeling even more nervous than I was before. “Are you sure Captain Williams is down here?”

“He's waiting for us,” Rafferty said.

Short of turning and running, which he hadn't really given me any reason to do, my only other option seemed to be to follow him down those stairs. With plenty of misgivings, I did so.

Since the boat was docked, the main engines were off, but I could still hear the rumble of the generators that provided electricity. The riverboats in Mark Twain's time hadn't been equipped like that, of course, but there were only so many creature comforts modern tourists would give up in the name of authenticity. Folks wanted to be able to flip a switch and have lights and air-conditioning.

When we reached the bottom of the stairs, Rafferty led me along a narrow, metal-walled corridor. We turned a couple of times and then went around a corner to see several men standing in front of a small door set into the wall. The door was partially open, but I couldn't see through it because of the man who stood in front of it.

He was tall and slender—lean was actually more like it—and wore a white uniform with gold braid on it. A black cap sat on his head. He was in his sixties, I estimated, based on his white hair and the weathered look of his face. Dark eyes stabbed at me as he snapped, “Ms. Dickinson?”

I recognized his voice. “Captain?”

“That's right. I'm Captain L. B. Williams. You're the head of Dickinson Literary Tours?”

“Yes, sir, I am. If you don't mind, can I ask what this is all about?”

Evidently I couldn't, because he didn't answer me. Instead he asked another question of his own.

“A man named Ben Webster booked passage on the
Southern Belle
through your agency?”

“That's right.”

“I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Ms. Dickinson, but Mr. Webster is dead.”

In the back of my mind, I'd been halfway expecting that. The other half had been worried that Webster had done something to damage the boat. So I felt both relief and shock, mostly shock, at the news he was dead.

Then it was all shock as Captain Williams stepped aside so that I could see through the partially open door into what was evidently a storage closet of some sort. The only thing stored in there now was a body. Somebody had crammed Ben Webster into the locker, doubling up his arms and legs so that he would fit. No way he could have gotten in there like that himself, I thought.

He hadn't broken his own neck, either. I could tell by the odd angle of his head that his neck was broken. He hadn't committed suicide. He hadn't tried to hide in the locker and accidentally killed himself.

No, Ben Webster had been murdered, sure as anything, I thought.

“You seem to be taking this awfully calmly, Ms. Dickinson,” Williams commented. “Did you already know that Mr. Webster was dead?”

I opened my mouth to tell him that no, the only reason I was able to handle this catastrophe without falling apart was that I had a little experience with murder, from the time Luke and I took a tour group to the plantation.

But I never got the words out, because it suddenly didn't matter that I had seen murder victims before. I hadn't seen
this
murder victim. I hadn't looked into Ben Webster's wide, staring eyes that no longer saw anything, or noted that the tip of his tongue stuck out a little between his lips, or thought about how, if rigor mortis had already set in, whoever took him out of the locker might have to break his arms and legs just to straighten him out again. All of that was new, and it was too much.

I felt my eyes rolling up in their sockets and was aware that I was falling backward. That was all I knew before I passed out.

 

When I came to and opened my eyes, Captain Williams had taken off his captain's cap and was fanning my face with it. I was lying on something soft, and I had to squint against the breeze Williams was stirring up and tilt my head to see that I was lying in Logan Rafferty's lap.

I let out a yelp and started trying to struggle into a sitting position. “Get off me!” I said to Rafferty.

“You're mixed up, Ms. Dickinson,” he said. “I believe you're the one on me.”

“Yeah, but I was unconscious! That's the only way I'd ever be anywhere near your lap, you…you…”

While I was sputtering in indignation, Captain Williams said, “Are you all right, Ms. Dickinson?”

“I just fainted, that's all.” Too much champagne and not enough food, I thought. That, and the sight of a corpse crammed into a storage locker.

“You didn't hit your head when you fell, or anything like that?”

I had managed to sit up. I tugged my dress down with one hand and patted my head with the other, feeling for any goose eggs. I didn't find any.

“I'm fine,” I said. “At least I will be if one of you
gentlemen
will help me up.”

Two of the three other men standing in the corridor wore white trousers and dark blue shirts. That was the uniform the stewards and other crew members wore. The third man was in khaki work clothes. The grease stains on his hands told me he probably tended the engines.

Rafferty had stood up. He took my hand and lifted me to my feet. Instinctively, I brushed myself off, even though the corridor floor seemed pretty clean.

“I apologize,” Williams said. “I admit that I intended to shock you by showing you Webster's body, Ms. Dickinson. I thought that if you knew anything about his death, you might blurt it out.”

I glanced at Rafferty. “Sounds like something
you
would do.”

He held up his hands and shook his head. “The captain's running this show. He's the final authority on this boat.”

“Well, within reason,” Williams said. “I'm afraid that in circumstances such as these, I'll have to defer to the law. Call the Hannibal police, Mr. Rafferty.”

Rafferty hesitated. “We don't know when or where Webster was killed. If it was while we were still on the river, before we docked, the State Police will have jurisdiction.”

That answered my question about who was responsible for law enforcement on the Mississippi, I thought.

“We'll start by notifying the authorities in Hannibal,” Williams decided. “If they want to, they can call in the State Police.”

Rafferty shrugged, took out his cell phone, and walked off down the corridor to make the call.

The captain's plan sounded logical to me. Let the cops sort it all out and decide what to do next. Whoever was in charge of the investigation, I intended to cooperate fully with them.

Which meant I'd have to tell them that Ben Webster had had a run-in earlier in the day with Logan Rafferty. I glanced at Rafferty from the corner of my eye.

He was big enough to break somebody's neck, that was for sure. He was considerably taller and heavier than Webster, and in his job as head of security for the riverboat, he'd probably had some training in handling passengers who had lost their temper and gotten violent, as well as practical experience. I didn't doubt for a second that he was capable of killing Ben Webster, at least physically.

I wasn't sure why he would have done such a thing, though. He had seemed satisfied with telling Webster he had to get off the boat when it docked in Hannibal.

But what if Webster had tried to cause more trouble after fooling me with that cabin trick? If Rafferty had caught him in the middle of committing some sort of sabotage, and the two of them had struggled…

It seemed reasonable to me. The problem was that if such a thing had happened, Rafferty could have just told the truth about it. It was his job to protect the
Southern Belle
, after all. He wouldn't have needed to hide Webster's body and try to cover up what had happened. There would have been an investigation, of course, and the incident might have hurt the riverboat's reputation and gotten Rafferty in trouble with the owner, Charles Gallister, but I was convinced that he wouldn't have been charged with anything if things had happened according to the scenario I laid out in my head.

Somebody else would have to sort that out. There was also the operator of the roulette wheel to consider. Webster had accused him of cheating and taken a swing at him. However, I thought it was pretty unlikely the fella would have tracked Webster down later and killed him over that.

As those thoughts were going through my head, Captain Williams turned to me and asked, “When was the last time you saw Mr. Webster?”

“Earlier this afternoon.” I hesitated.

“Mr. Rafferty has told me about the incident in the casino involving Mr. Webster,” Williams said. “You don't have to worry about revealing anything you shouldn't.”

“Well, in that case, it was right after that when I saw Webster last. I went with him back to his cabin and told him to get his things together so he could leave the boat when it docked here in Hannibal.”

I didn't say anything about the cabin switcheroo Webster had pulled. For one thing, it made me look sort of dumb, and for another, despite being the captain of the riverboat, Williams wasn't a police officer. I didn't have to answer his questions.

The trick about the cabins indicated to me that Webster had been up to
something
, so I knew I'd have to tell the cops about it. Until that time came, I intended to keep that bit of information to myself.

“Did he have any trouble with any of the other members of your tour group?”

That was the sort of question the cops would ask, too. But I could answer it honestly by shaking my head and saying, “Not that I know of.” I asked a question of my own. “Who found Webster's body?”

Williams nodded toward the man in khakis and grease stains. “Henry here. He's one of our engineers.”

I looked at the man and asked, “Is this some sort of storage closet?”

“That's right, ma'am,” he answered. “We keep mostly tools in it. I opened the door to get a wrench I needed to adjust one of the valves on the boilers.”

I forced myself to look into the closet again and saw that Webster's body had been shoved up against shelves that contained wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers, plastic boxes full of assorted nuts and bolts and washers, and a lot of other stuff that I didn't know what it was.

“Do you have to get things out of here pretty often?” I asked.

Henry shrugged and shook his head. “Not really. We keep the engines and boilers in top-notch shape, so they don't need much work except for routine maintenance, and all that's done while the boat's docked in St. Louis. It's not unusual for us to make several cruises without anybody ever having to open this door.”

If someone knew that, they would also know that the supply closet wasn't a bad place to stash a body. There was at least a chance no one would discover it until the
Southern Belle
returned to St. Louis. To me, that seemed to indicate that the killer was somebody pretty familiar with the operation of the riverboat.