Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead

by Livia J. Washburn

  But I knew someone who had already demonstrated a violent reaction to Riley’s attempt to steal something.

  Gerhard Mueller.

  Maybe it was because I just didn’t like Mueller, but I could see him walloping Riley in the back of the head, knocking him to the floor, shattering his skull. And I could also see him coming up with the plan to conceal his crime by making it look as if Riley had killed himself. There were probably others in the group who could have done the same thing, but I definitely believed that Mueller was capable of it.

  Like it or not—and I was pretty sure I didn’t and he wouldn’t—I had to talk to Lieutenant Farraday again.

  Before I lost my nerve, I got out of bed, put on my robe, and went to the door. There would be deputies in the hallway for sure now since Riley’s room was a crime scene, at least officially, and Farraday would want to protect it. I eased the door open so that I wouldn’t disturb Augusta and Amelia, although it would probably take an earthquake that was at least a six on the Richter scale to disturb a couple of teenagers sleeping as soundly as they were, and stepped out into the hall.

  Sure enough, a couple of deputies were standing in front of the door to Riley’s room, which was closed at the moment. I thought they were the ones called Perkins and Morton. They turned toward me immediately and frowned as I started toward them.

  “You’re supposed to stay in your room, ma’am,” Perkins said. “Lieutenant Farraday’s orders—”

  “It’s the lieutenant I want to talk to, Deputy. You reckon you could get him out here for a second? I’m assumin’ that he’s in there.” I nodded toward Riley’s room.

  “Yes, ma’am, but I’m not sure he wants to be disturbed.”

  “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to be, but I’m gonna have to disturb him anyway.” I wasn’t looking forward to this. I figured that when Farraday heard my theory, he’d tell me that I’d gone nuts and order me back to my room. But I had to try to convince him anyway, since I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I just ignored everything about the situation that was wrong.

  Perkins and Morton hesitated and looked at each other. After a moment Morton nodded. “You might as well get the lieutenant,” he told Perkins. “I don’t think the lady’s going away.”

  He was right about that. Crazy or not, I wasn’t budging until I heard Farraday’s reaction to the ideas I’d had.

  Perkins opened the door—I guess they’d dusted the knob for fingerprints by then—and went inside, pulling it closed behind him. I wondered briefly if Riley’s body was still in there. I wondered, too, how much trouble it was going to be to get his blood out of the carpet and the lampshade and off the wall. If it was me, I think I would have replaced the carpet and the lampshade and repainted the wall. Maybe even torn it out and replaced the sheetrock. The whole thing gave me the creeps.

  A couple of minutes dragged by before the door opened again and Farraday came out into the hall, followed by Deputy Perkins. He didn’t quite glare at me, but he came close as he said, “What is it, Ms. Dickinson? I thought you were going to get some sleep.”

  “I tried, but there’s something bothering me about Riley’s suicide, Lieutenant.”

  “What’s that?” he asked through not quite gritted teeth. I could tell he was trying hard not to lose his temper with me.

  “I’m not sure it was suicide.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he grunted. I had managed to surprise him. He took me down the hall, away from Riley’s door and out of easy earshot of the two deputies.

  “Is that so?” he said. “The gun was in Riley’s hand, and the barrel was in his mouth when it went off. That’s pretty doggone conclusive.”

  I stalled a little, unable to come right out with my theory just like that. “Whose gun was it?” I asked instead, not knowing if Farraday would tell me.

  He did, though. “It’s registered to Elliott Riley. The registration appears to be legitimate, even though Riley’s identity was bogus, of course. He didn’t have a permit to carry it here in Georgia, but it was definitely his gun. That’s another thing indicating that he killed himself.”

  I took the plunge. “Yeah, but what about his toupee?”

  This time the lieutenant’s eyes widened, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He struggled to get the words out as he said, “His…toupee?”

  “Yeah.” I gestured toward my head. “His hairpiece. His rug.”

  “I know what a toupee is, Ms. Dickinson.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “What does Riley’s toupee have to do with whether or not he killed himself?”

  “I think he would have put it on before he did it. You saw that bald dome of his. He wouldn’t want to be found with that showing.”

  “If he was dead,” Farraday grated, “what earthly difference would it make to him?”

  “You’ve heard folks say that they wouldn’t be caught dead doing so-and-so?”

  Farraday nodded.

  “Well, I think Riley was that way about not wearing his toupee whenever anybody could see him. He was pretty vain.”

  “You knew him, what, two days? That’s not a very long time to make such a definitive judgment about somebody’s personality.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m convinced that’s the way Riley was. And there was no suicide note, either.” I paused. “Unless you’ve found one since I was in here?”

  Farraday shook his head, then grimaced. “Blast it, there you go again, getting me to tell you as much as you’re telling me. Listen, Ms. Dickinson, I’m not saying that I believe what you’re telling me about Riley and his toupee…but if he didn’t shoot himself, then who shot him?”

  “I’ve got an idea about that.”

  “I thought you would.”

  I considered being offended at his resigned tone of voice, then decided that it wasn’t worth the effort. Instead I laid out my theory that someone who was upset about having their things stolen had come to Riley’s room and confronted him, leading to a struggle, Riley’s death, and the killer’s attempt to make that death appear to be self-inflicted.

  When I was finished, Farraday stood there frowning and nodding for a moment before saying, “Tell me, Ms. Dickinson, do you watch a lot of mystery shows on television? Read a lot of mystery novels?”

  This time I was offended, and I didn’t bother trying to hide it. “No more so than anybody else, Lieutenant, and I’m not just some crazy woman makin’ things up, no matter what you think. I don’t believe Elliott Riley killed himself, and what I just told you makes perfect sense.”

  “Maybe. It would also mean that Riley didn’t commit suicide out of remorse over Steven Kelley’s murder. It might even mean that Riley didn’t kill Steven Kelley at all.”

  “Well…yeah.” I had thought of that. I had even tried to consider all the implications of it, which weren’t any too pleasant.

  “Which means we would be right back where we started on Kelley’s murder,” Farraday went on, “and that means the killer is still on the loose. You’d still be under suspicion, along with your son-in-law and Wilson Cobb and who knows who else in this insane asylum of a plantation!”

  I was shocked that Farraday raised his voice like that. It was the first sign I had seen of his self-control slipping since this whole thing began.

  He paused, took a deep breath, and went on, “In that case, Ms. Dickinson, you and your group might not be returning to Atlanta in a few hours after all. Is that what you want?”

  “You know it’s not,” I told him. “But if Riley didn’t kill Steven Kelley and didn’t commit suicide, then it wouldn’t be justice to blame him for those things, would it? Do you want to close this case so much that you’d let a murderer go? I didn’t think you were like that, Lieutenant Farraday.”

  I was getting a little hot under the collar myself now, even though the robe I was wearing didn’t have a collar. Farraday and I stood there glaring at each other as a couple of long moments ticked by. Then he said, “Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me,
Ms. Dickinson. I’ll take your ideas under advisement and see if they warrant further investigation. I’d appreciate it if you’d go back to your room now and let us get on with our work.”

  “That’s it, is it?” I demanded. “You’re gonna just sweep everything under the rug and let a killer—or maybe two—get away with it.”

  “I’m going to forget that I heard you say that.” He took hold of my arm, not roughly but firmly. “I’ll escort you back to your room.”

  I was too mad to put up an argument, almost too mad to see straight. And I was shocked that Farraday had turned so lax in his determination to ferret out the truth. The bulldog had turned into one of those little Foo-Foo dogs that celebutantes carry around in their purses.

  I had done all that I could, I told myself. It wasn’t my job to solve murders. That was up to Farraday, and if he didn’t want my help, then it was his own lookout.

  We were almost back to the door of my room when rapid, heavy footsteps suddenly sounded on the staircase leading down from the third floor. Edmond Ralston appeared on the landing, looked around wildly, spotted us, and exclaimed, “There you are, Lieutenant! Thank God!”

  Farraday let go of my arm and took a step toward the frantic plantation owner, asking, “What’s wrong, Mr. Ralston?”

  “You’ve got to come quick,” Ralston gasped. His face was flushed with exertion, excitement, and possibly fear. “It’s Maura Kelley. She’s gone mad, and I think she’s going to kill my daughter!”

  CHAPTER 23

  I was too surprised to do anything except stare at Ralston, but Lieutenant Farraday reacted like the professional he was. “Where is she?” he asked as he started swiftly toward the stairs.

  “In Janice’s suite,” Ralston replied. “I heard them shouting at each other and went to see what was going on, and when I came out into the hall I saw Maura force her way into Janice’s sitting room. She had a knife, Lieutenant! She’s going to hurt Janice!”

  Farraday was on his way up the stairs by now, with Ralston at his side. Farraday didn’t look back to see whether I was following them.

  What do you think I did? I was right behind them, of course.

  Farraday jerked his radio off the clip on his belt and started barking orders into it. He called for some of the deputies to come up to the third floor, and since what was going on was basically a hostage situation, he ordered that the sheriff’s department SWAT team and hostage negotiation team be alerted, too.

  Maybe it wouldn’t come to that, though, if he could get up there and talk some sense into Maura Kelley.

  “Why would Ms. Kelley threaten your daughter, Ralston?” Farraday asked as they continued to hurry up the stairs.

  “I…I don’t know. I couldn’t understand what they were arguing about.”

  Why, that was a bald-faced lie, I thought, and I almost blurted that out. The argument had to be over Janice’s affair with Maura’s husband, and Ralston knew that. If Maura was aware of the affair, that was one more reason to suspect her of murdering Kelley. She might be trying to finish the job now by going after Janice.

  The two men reached the third-floor landing, and as they did, Farraday finally noticed that I was following them. “Ms. Dickinson!” he said. “Get back downstairs and into your room! Now!”

  “I can help you, Lieutenant,” I said, instead of following his orders. “I know why Maura Kelley’s upset. Janice was having an affair with her husband.”

  Ralston let out a groan of dismay and shot me a look like I had just stabbed him in the heart. I couldn’t believe he was more worried about keeping the affair a secret than he was about saving his daughter’s life. Then I realized suddenly that he might be worried about more than that. He might believe that Janice had killed Kelley.

  Will Burke and I had discussed that very possibility a while earlier. The meeting in the garden, the ultimatum, Kelley’s refusal to leave his wife for Janice, an explosion of anger…It sure as heck could have happened that way, and Ralston might have figured out the same thing. That was why he hadn’t wanted Janice’s involvement with Kelley to come out.

  The secret had been revealed, though, and Farraday swung toward Ralston with a glare and demanded, “Is that true?”

  “I…I don’t know,” Ralston stammered. “I don’t know anything anymore except that Janice is in there with a crazy woman who has a knife! Do something, Lieutenant!”

  Farraday didn’t waste any more time trying to chase me off. He drew his gun, went to the door of Janice’s suite, and called, “Ms. Kelley! This is Lieutenant Farraday! Come on out of there right now, please.”

  The only response from inside was a muffled scream. Farraday muttered a curse and grabbed the doorknob. It turned easily. Clearly, Maura hadn’t bothered to lock the door, and Farraday shoved it open.

  He went into the room swiftly but cautiously, the gun held in front of him. He didn’t know where Maura was or if she might come at him with that knife Ralston said she had. As Farraday entered the room, I realized that we had only Ralston’s word that Maura was even in there and that she was armed. Ralston hadn’t seemed like he was faking his near-panic…but he was an actor as well as the owner of this plantation.

  It occurred to me as well that if Ralston was telling the truth and Maura had threatened Janice with a knife, that was another direct link to Kelley’s murder, since he had been killed with a knife.

  Either of the women in that room could be a murderer. Before tonight, I would have thought that if I ever found myself in such circumstances, I would want to hightail it out of there as fast as I could.

  Instead, I crowded forward right behind Farraday and Ralston, eager to see what was going on and what was going to happen. The strain of being mixed up in a murder investigation really had changed me.

  Or maybe I’d been a little weird all along and just hadn’t known it until now.

  Either way, there I was, standing up on tiptoes and craning my neck, trying to see past the two men who were blocking the door. They moved farther into Janice Ralston’s airy, lavishly furnished sitting room, and at last I could see the two women on the other side of the room.

  Maura Kelley wore an old-fashioned pair of bloomers, probably what she normally wore under the corset and petticoats and hoop skirt of her Scarlett O’Hara role. I suspected that when she’d been put to bed following her collapse after seeing her husband’s body, whoever had gotten her undressed had just taken off the cumbersome outer garments and left the underclothes on her.

  The knife she had pressed to Janice Ralston’s neck wasn’t the sort of accessory you’d associate with the outfit, though.

  Terror had drained Janice’s face of color and put haggard lines on it. She was still wearing the nightgown I had seen her in earlier, when she was arguing with her father. Neither Ralston nor Farraday had thought to ask me just how I knew about the affair between Janice and Kelley. There would be time enough later to explain all that, although it would mean admitting to the lieutenant that Will and I had done more snooping and sneaking around than what we had told him about earlier.

  All those thoughts flashed through my head in a matter of split seconds. We hadn’t even been in the room long enough for Farraday to say anything else.

  Maura beat him to it. She tightened the grip of her left arm around Janice’s neck and cried, “Get out of here or I’ll cut the little slut’s throat!”

  “Maura, p-please!” Ralston begged. “Please don’t hurt her!”

  “Why not?” Maura shot back. “She hurt me! She tried to steal my husband away from me!”

  I wanted to say, Honey, she was a long way from the first and she sure as heck wouldn’t have been the last.

  But I didn’t, of course. It wouldn’t help anything at the moment for Maura to know that she never really had a husband to steal. With his history, it was obvious that their marriage meant nothing to Steven Kelley.

  Or maybe it did. Danged if I know what’s in the depths of somebody else’s heart. I wasn’t sure I ev
en knew what was in my own anymore.

  “Ms. Kelley,” Farraday said in a firm, level voice, “if you’ll just put the knife down and release Ms. Ralston, no one else has to get hurt here.”

  Maura let out a dramatic, scornful laugh worthy of Scarlett herself. “No one gets hurt but me, is that what you mean? I don’t think so, Lieutenant. I’m not going to carry this pain alone. I lost my husband, so now Ralston can lose a daughter.” She glared at the plantation owner. “And the little bitch can lose her life!”

  I was vaguely aware of commotion behind me in the hall. The deputies would be out there by now, probably with some of the tour group and the other involuntary “guests” who had been awakened by the earlier argument between Janice and Maura. From what Ralston had said, it had gotten pretty loud before Maura forced her way into the suite.

  Ralston took a faltering step forward, ignoring the warning look that Farraday gave him. He reached out his hand and said, “You’re wrong, Maura, I swear you’re wrong. Janice never had anything to do with Steven. They were just friends, that’s all.”

  I knew that was a lie, but if Ralston could convince Maura it was the truth, he might be able to save his daughter’s life. I kept my mouth shut, and so did Farraday, perhaps sensing that the best chance of ending this standoff without any more violence lay with Ralston’s pleas.

  Maura wasn’t having any of it, though. “Shut up, you fat old fool!” she told Ralston. “I know they were having an affair. Steven boasted about it, threw it in my face! Told me all about his young lover!”

  Well, shoot, I thought, that could’ve been a lot of people other than Janice Ralston.

  “He said he always got what he wanted, always,” Maura went on. “He said all he had to do was snap his fingers and she would come running back to him, no matter who else she’d taken up with. Even if Melanie married Ashley, he bragged, Captain Rhett Butler would never be denied what was his!”