Huckleberry Finished (8 page)

“You'll need to do that,” Travis said with a nod. “You should let us know so we can add the information to the report. You'll need that for your insurance company when you file a claim for the computer.”

“You don't think there's a chance you'll be able to find it?”

She slipped the gun back into the holster clipped to her belt. “There's always a chance, but I wouldn't count on it. I'm sorry, but we have other cases that are more pressing.”

“Like findin' out who killed Ben Webster?”

Travis frowned. She didn't like me bringing that up in front of Mark, I guess. And as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized that I had just confirmed for him that Webster was murdered, when earlier I had been deliberately vague about it. It was too late to take it back now, though.

“We'll be in touch,” Travis said. She nodded to both of us and walked out of the cabin, leaving me and Mark there.

“So,” he said as he looked at me, “your client was murdered, eh?”

I
met Mark's eyes squarely with mine. I'm no shrinking violet. If he wanted to get mad at me because I hadn't told him the full truth, then he could go right ahead and be mad.

“That's right,” I said. “I don't reckon the detective would want me to say anything else, but since the cat's already out of the bag about that part, I'm not gonna deny it.”

“You could explain why you didn't just tell me to start with.”

“Like I said, I didn't think Detective Travis would want me runnin' around all over the boat tellin' folks that there'd been a murder.”

“People are going to find out anyway.”

“Yeah, but I didn't want to be to blame for it.”

He thought about it for a moment, then started to nod. “Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. It wasn't that you didn't trust me in particular.”

“Shoot, no! I reckon I trust you more than anybody else on this boat.”

I wasn't sure what made me say that, or even why I felt that way. But it was true. I trusted Mark Lansing. Maybe it was because the first time I'd met him, he looked just like Mark Twain. Who wouldn't trust Mark Twain?

He gestured toward my cabin. “Where are you going to stay tonight? That's a crime scene.”

“Not much of one, the way Detective Travis was acting. She didn't tell me I couldn't stay there.”

“Everything's torn up.”

“Not really. I can put it back in order pretty quick, I imagine.” I wasn't going to be too happy about spending the night in there alone, knowing that somebody had already broken in once and could do it again, but I sure as heck wasn't going to ask Mark to stay with me, even though a part of me sort of liked the idea.

“Look, let's go see the captain. Surely he can find you another cabin.”

I shook my head. “From what I've heard, the boat's fully booked. There aren't any empty cabins.”

“Then you're going to stay in my cabin,” Mark declared. “Nobody would think to look for you there.”

I gave him the skunk eye. “Savin' me from a return visit by a burglar, is that what you've got in mind, Mr. Lansing?”

“What? Wait a minute!” He started shaking his head. “You've got me all wrong, Delilah. You can have my cabin for the night. I'll stay up in the salon.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “You can't do that. You wouldn't get a bit of sleep.”

“Why do I need sleep? I don't have a performance again until the day after tomorrow. I'll be plenty rested by then. Anyway, have you seen those big armchairs in the salon? I'll prop my feet up and sleep just fine in one of them.”

“Well…” It was a tempting offer, and I was convinced now that Mark didn't have any ulterior motives. Even though I had known him less than twelve hours, he seemed like an honorable fella to me.

“If you don't say yes, I'm going to have to sleep here on the deck, right outside your door, to protect you.”

“I guess chivalry's not dead after all.” I laughed. “All right. It's a sweet offer, and I'll take you up on it. Let's be careful, though. I don't want folks seein' me slippin' in and out of your cabin. If I'm gonna be bringin' tours on this boat on a regular basis, I don't want to get a bad reputation among the crew.”

I threw a couple of things in a bag and then locked my cabin. I could straighten everything out the next morning. Mark and I went up onto the second deck where the crew had their quarters. I don't know if he was officially considered part of the crew or not, but his cabin was up there with the others.

By this time of night, nobody was moving around. The diehard gamblers were in the casino, the boozers were in the salon, and everybody else had returned from sightseeing and turned in for the night. Mark unhooked the slender chain across the deck that had a sign on it reading
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
and led me past it to the crew cabins. He unlocked his door, pushed it open, and held out an arm to usher me inside.

The cabin looked about the same as the ones used by the passengers. If anything, it was a little more spartan in its furnishings. But the bed was made, instead of stripped, and Mark's belongings hadn't been strewn all over the floor.

He took a phone out of his pocket and said, “Put my number in your phone, and if you have any problems during the night, don't hesitate to call me.”

We engaged in the modern-day ritual of programming each other's numbers into our phones, and then I stifled a yawn and said, “Well, I guess this is good night.”

“Yeah.”

I hoped he wasn't going to linger until things got awkward. He didn't, thank goodness. He just smiled and went to the door, pausing there to say, “Be sure to lock this and put the chain on after I'm gone.”

“I will,” I promised.

He smiled again, lifted a hand in farewell, and was gone, closing the door quietly behind him. I felt a little bad about him having to spend the night in the salon. I hoped he actually would be able to get some sleep.

Once I'd made sure the door was locked and fastened the chain, I sat on the bed and sighed in a mixture of weariness and relief. This cruise hadn't gone like I'd planned so far, but it wasn't my fault that Ben Webster had gone and gotten himself murdered, or that somebody had broken into my cabin.

My fault or not, though, once news of the murder broke in the media, it wouldn't be good publicity for Dickinson Literary Tours. And chances were, some eager-beaver reporter would Google my name and find out that a couple of murders had taken place on one of my tours the year before, which would make my involvement in this one even more newsworthy. If it bleeds, it leads, as the old saying goes.

But there was nothing I could do about it tonight. Nothing I could do about it, period, except hope that the police found Ben Webster's killer quickly and that his death would wind up having nothing directly to do with my agency. That may sound a little callous, but Ben Webster was beyond caring about now. I had tried to help him, and that hadn't worked out. If he had just gone to his cabin and stayed there until the boat docked in Hannibal, then gotten off, like he was supposed to, he might still be alive. Instead, he had started roaming around the
Southern Belle
and had wound up dead.

But why? I asked myself. The only motive I'd considered was the idea that Logan Rafferty had killed him because Webster was trying to sabotage the boat some way. But I had no proof that any such thing had happened. Maybe Webster's murderer had followed him onto the boat for the express purpose of killing him. I didn't know anything about the young man's background. He could have all sorts of enemies who'd been stalking him.

That sounded too melodramatic to me, even as the thought went through my head. But one thing was certain: Ben Webster had had at least one enemy, and a bad one, at that.

Detective Travis would investigate his background, I told myself. She would find out if he had anything in his past that would make someone want him dead. That was her job, not mine, and I was glad of it.

I took off my blue dress, washed up, removed my make-up, and put on the pair of pajamas I had thrown into the bag I brought along. By the time I'd brushed my teeth, the late hour was catching up with me. I almost stumbled from sleepiness as I went to the bed, pulled back the covers, and crawled in. As I snapped off the lamp on the little table beside the bed, I figured I'd doze off as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Naturally, it didn't work out that way.

When I closed my eyes, my brain started filling up with all the things that had happened since I'd arrived in St. Louis that morning. I replayed the luncheon, boarding the boat, cruising up the Mississippi, and meeting Mark Lansing in his Mark Twain getup. It hadn't been long after that that things had started to go south, and I don't mean down the river.

Maybe I was searching my memory for clues without really being aware of it. I had figured out who had killed those folks on the plantation, after all. But despite that I didn't think of myself as a detective. I was just a small-business owner trying to minimize the damage to my business.

While I was lying there in the darkness, turning those things over in my head and wondering why the heck I couldn't just go to sleep, I heard a noise. It wasn't very loud, but it came from somewhere close by and my instincts told me that it shouldn't be there. After a second I realized what it was.

Somebody had just slipped a key into the doorknob.

Mark had a key; I knew that. Maybe he had forgotten something that he needed and thought he could slip in and get it without disturbing me.

But he had told me to be sure to fasten the chain on the door, I recalled. He would know that he couldn't get into the cabin without waking me.

Maybe he wanted to wake me. Maybe he had decided that he didn't want to spend the night in the salon after all.

Maybe I was about to have to make a decision I didn't really want to be forced to make.

Or maybe the killer had figured out where I was and had come back to finish his work.

That thought sent a chill through me. I didn't have anything to fight off an attacker other than some pepper spray in my purse, and I didn't recall seeing anything in the cabin that could be used as a weapon except maybe the lamp. And it wasn't big and heavy enough to be very effective as a club. Of course, I could scream—nothing wrong with my lungs, after all—and maybe somebody in a nearby cabin would come to help me. That might be my best bet, I decided as I fought down a surge of panic.

But I didn't want to start hollering if the person who had just unlocked the door was Mark. That would be embarrassing. So I threw back the covers and swung my legs out of bed, then stood up as I heard the knob turn slowly and quietly.

My instincts told me to run, but there was nowhere to run to in the cabin. Instead I moved silently toward the doorway as it eased open. I was about to open my mouth to say
Mark?
when the chain stopped the door from opening any farther. A voice spoke in an urgent whisper.

“Mark? Mark, it's me. Let me in.”

A
woman's
voice.

That stopped me in my tracks. Why would a woman have a key to Mark's cabin and expect the chain to be unfastened in the middle of the night, as if he were expecting her?

Well, there was one obvious answer, of course. He could have a girlfriend among the crew. He might even be involved with one of the passengers. He hadn't
said
anything to me about having a girlfriend, and he'd kissed me, after all. But let's face it—that wouldn't be the first time a fella kissed a woman other than the one he was supposed to be romantically linked with.

The damn dog.

As soon as that thought went through my head, I told myself to stop jumping to conclusions. Maybe there was a logical, reasonable explanation for this woman trying to sneak into Mark's room in the middle of the night that didn't have anything to do with hanky-panky.
Suuuure
there was.

But either way I wanted to know who she was. With her whispering like that, I hadn't been able to recognize her voice. So I leaned toward the door and asked in a whisper of my own, “Who's there?”

“
Oh!
”

The exclamation told me that Mark's late-night visitor was just as surprised to find another woman in his cabin as I had been when she unlocked the door. She didn't say anything else. She just jerked the door closed, and the rapid patter of footsteps on the dock told me that she was running away.

Consumed by curiosity, I hurried to the door and fumbled with the chain. I wasn't thinking about mysterious killers anymore. I wanted to get a look at the woman. When I finally got the chain unfastened, I threw the door open and stuck my head out.

I was just in time to see a flash of blond hair and the flutter of a robe as she ducked around the corner at the far end of the dimly lit deck. She was moving fast, and I didn't get a good look at all. For a second I thought about chasing after her, but then I realized how insane that was. Anybody who saw me running along the deck of a riverboat in my pajamas would think that I was a total loon, and they'd be right. Plus there was the whole lurking murderer business to consider.

I retreated into the cabin, closed the door, and fastened the chain again.

As frustrating and puzzling as this incident was, I knew there was one good way to find out what had just happened here. In the morning, when I saw Mark Lansing again, I would ask him why strange women were sneaking into his cabin well after midnight. Of course, I reminded myself,
I
was a strange woman myself, or at least I had been to Mark until about twelve hours earlier, and here I was in his cabin. In his bed, for that matter. But that was different.

Considering everything that had happened, it took a long time for me to get to sleep.
That
didn't surprise me at all.