Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead

by Livia J. Washburn

  Lord, things were getting jumbled up. In her grief, Maura was confusing Margaret Mitchell’s novel with reality. In the book, Rhett hadn’t been romantically involved with Melanie. Melanie had married Ashley Wilkes.

  Real life didn’t have to mirror Mitchell’s fictional world exactly, though. Janice Ralston played Melanie in the recreation, and her affair with the man who played Rhett had landed her in this moment of deadly danger, with a knife at her throat and a crazed, jealous woman ready to plunge that blade in.

  “Please, Ms. Kelley,” Farraday said again. “Let go of Ms. Ralston and put the knife down. Otherwise you’re going to get hurt again, worse this time.”

  Maura shook her head. “Nothing could be worse than losing Steven.”

  She sounded like a woman gone mad with grief and anger, but not like one who had killed her own husband.

  Suddenly, Ralston drew himself up straight, squaring his shoulders, and said in a voice thick with a Southern accent, “Scarlett, honey, I demand that y’all stop this nonsense this minute, you hear me? Put that knife down and let go o’ that poor girl. That’s jus’ Melanie, sweet little Melanie. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, honey, and y’all are scarin’ her.”

  Maura blinked at him and looked confused. Was it possible that by falling back on his make-believe role as her father, rather than Janice’s, he was getting through to her? It was a big gamble, but in Maura’s precarious mental state, it might just work.

  Ralston pushed the masquerade even further by stepping closer and extending his hand to her. “Jus’ gimme the knife now, child, ’fore you hurt yourself. You don’t need to be handlin’ knives. You’re too genteel for that, Scarlett. You’re made for dancin’ at balls and breakin’ the hearts of all the young men and livin’ your life here at Tara, blessed Tara. Think about Tara, m’dear, think about all it means to you. This place, and the dirt, and the cotton watered with the blood and sweat of all the O’Haras. You’re home here. You’ll always be home. Now gimme the knife…”

  He got too close. Maura let out a strangled cry as the spell Ralston had woven with his words shattered. She lunged at him, slashing with the knife. Ralston yelled in pain as the blade sliced deeply across his outstretched palm.

  But to do that Maura had to jerk the knife away from Janice’s throat, and as soon as she did, Farraday leaped forward and chopped down at her wrist with the edge of his free hand. The blow connected solidly and knocked the knife out of Maura’s grip. As it fell to the floor, Farraday tackled both young women. They toppled back on the big four-poster bed, pulling down the sheer drapes that hung around it. Ralston ignored the blood welling from his slashed palm to grab Janice and yank her free from the struggling Farraday and Maura.

  Maura was a wildcat. I thought about trying to give Farraday a hand, but I figured I might get in the way more than I helped. Anyway, several of the deputies rushed into the room as Farraday managed to get Maura flipped over on her stomach. They grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her back, and in the blink of an eye some of those plastic restraints they use now instead of handcuffs were looped around her wrists, securing her.

  Farraday pushed himself up off the bed and said in a slightly breathless voice, “Get her out of here.” Then he turned to Ralston, who had his arms around Janice. “How bad are you hurt, Mr. Ralston?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. Just as long as Janice is safe.”

  I still didn’t like Ralston very much, and I thought Janice was a silly little fool for falling for Kelley’s smooth lines and letting him seduce her into an affair. But at that moment, watching the burly plantation owner cradle her in his arms as she sobbed against his chest, my heart went out to them. I was glad that Janice hadn’t gotten hurt. Maybe she was heartbroken over Kelley, but that would go away, just like the gash on Ralston’s hand would heal.

  Maura had been half led, half carried out of the room by the deputies. She would be in custody for the foreseeable future. A couple of the deputies took Ralston and Janice downstairs, too, at Farraday’s order. The lieutenant told his men to see to it that Ralston’s wound received medical attention.

  That left Farraday and me by ourselves in Janice’s sitting room. He looked at me and shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a civilian who manages to stick her nose in where it doesn’t belong as much as you do, Ms. Dickinson.”

  “Heck, Lieutenant,” I said, “I’ll take that as a compliment. And as much as we’ve been through together tonight, maybe you ought to call me Delilah.”

  I wasn’t sure why I said that. I was still mad at Farraday, too, but I admired the way he had acted so swiftly and decisively to save Janice’s life.

  I couldn’t forget, though, that he was willing to let the blame for Steven Kelley’s murder fall on Elliott Riley, and even though I had considered Riley the leading suspect, I no longer believed he was guilty. I thought he was probably a murder victim himself.

  Farraday frowned and said, “I don’t think it would be proper for me to call you by your given name, Ms. Dickinson. I may not sound like it most of the time, but I’m a Southern gentleman myself.”

  He didn’t sound like it at all. His accent was about as neutral as it could be. And at times tonight he hadn’t acted like much of a gentleman, either, although to be fair I supposed that his job made that difficult.

  I changed the subject by saying, “I don’t think Maura Kelley killed her husband, do you?”

  Farraday shook his head. “Despite the fact that she threatened Ms. Ralston with a knife…no, she certainly didn’t sound like she killed Kelley. Of course, we’ll question her again, just to make sure, but my gut never did think she was much of a suspect.”

  “And yet your gut doesn’t understand that Elliott Riley would’ve put that toupee on before he killed himself.”

  Farraday’s eyes rolled in their sockets. “Let’s don’t start that again. Tell you what. I’m sure the whole house is awake by now, and since it’s”—he checked his watch—“only an hour or so until dawn, why don’t I go ahead and send Mr. Cobb back to Atlanta to fetch that bus? You and your people can get an early start, as soon as he gets back.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “The sooner we all get out of here, the better, and if I never see another plantation, that’ll be just fine with me.”

  “Sho’ nuff.” He flashed an unexpected grin at me. “See? I told you I was Southern, too.”

  CHAPTER 24

  When I finally came out of Janice’s suite with Lieutenant Farraday, I found Luke, Augusta, Amelia, Will Burke, and Wilson Cobb among the crowd in the third-floor hallway, waiting for us. The girls threw their arms around me, and then Luke enveloped us all in a relieved group hug.

  Will looked a little like he wanted to get in on that hug, too, but he hung back with a smile on his face. I reckon he was just a little too shy to demonstrate how glad he was to see that I was okay.

  After a minute or so the hug broke up, and suddenly everybody was full of questions.

  “Did somebody else get killed?” Luke asked.

  “Has the murder been solved?” Amelia asked.

  “When can we go home?” Augusta asked.

  “Soon,” I said, answering the last question first. “Nobody else was hurt too bad in there just now, although Mr. Ralston got a nasty cut on his hand. And yeah, Lieutenant Farraday is in the process of closin’ the case, even as we speak.”

  “So who did it?” Luke asked. “Who killed Steven Kelley?”

  The words tried to stick in my throat, but I was able to force them out. “The lieutenant thinks Elliott Riley did.”

  “Riley?” Augusta said. “That creepy old guy with the toup?”

  “You could be a little more respectful than that, young lady. The man’s dead.”

  “Dead?” The surprised exclamation came in unison from Augusta, Amelia, Luke, and Mr. Cobb.

  But not from Will Burke, since he already knew about Riley’s so-called “suicide.” He didn’t know I had come to doubt
that Riley actually killed himself, though, because I hadn’t had a chance to talk about that with him yet. Will might not believe my theory, either, since he hadn’t known Riley at all, and didn’t even have the limited acquaintance that I had with the man.

  Quite a crowd gathered around me as I explained about finding Riley’s body earlier. Farraday hadn’t instructed me not to talk about it, so I figured there was no reason to keep any of it a secret now. I told them about how the stolen items had been found hidden in the tool shed in the garden, too, and how Riley had been identified as a professional thief with a long criminal record and several phony identities.

  “I told you so!” Gerhard Mueller practically crowed when he heard that. “The man tried to steal my camera while we were at the museum, just as I said!”

  “Yeah, Mr. Mueller, he probably did,” I said with a weary sigh.

  “There is no ‘probably’ about it, as you Americans say.” He pounded a fist against his pajama-clad thigh. “There is no doubt!”

  “Sure, whatever you say.”

  Mueller sneered, seemingly determined to be as arrogant and unlikable as possible. “If you ask me, this man Riley got what was coming to him. I am glad that he is dead.”

  His wife finally spoke up, for one of the few times on the whole tour. “Gerhard!” she scolded. “You should not say such things.”

  “Why not? It is true.”

  Why not? Because if Lieutenant Farraday hadn’t been so willing to accept the idea of Riley killing himself because he was guilty of Kelley’s murder, comments like that might make somebody start wondering whether or not Mueller had something to do with Riley’s death.

  Somebody besides me, that is.

  Perry Newton pushed his way to the front of the crowd. “You said this man Riley killed Steven, Ms. Dickinson?” he asked.

  “That’s what Lieutenant Farraday believes, yes. That’s why he’s releasing all of us. The investigation into Kelley’s murder is wrapping up now.”

  Perry frowned. “But why would Riley do that? He never even met Steven until yesterday during the tour. He didn’t have any motive.”

  “Kelley must have found Riley hiding those stolen items in the shed, and Riley killed him to keep him from telling anybody about it.” As I repeated the lieutenant’s theory, I knew that the words had the ring of truth to them. Things could have happened just that way. They surely could have.

  So why was I so reluctant to accept all of it? Just because of a wig that was on a stand instead of its owner’s head? That was crazy.

  Or was there something else, I suddenly asked myself. Something I had seen or heard and not fully understood, just sensed that it was wrong somehow, that everybody, myself included, was looking at things from the wrong angle?

  Perry Newton had begun to nod as if what he’d heard had made sense to him, though. He said, “Yeah, it could have happened like that. Since that guy Riley killed himself, I guess there’s not much doubt that it really did.”

  His girlfriend, Lindsey, had come up beside him. She nodded and muttered agreement, and other people in the crowd did, too. Acceptance of Riley’s guilt was beginning to spread, and I had a feeling there was nothing I could do to stop it, no matter what I believed.

  And it sure as heck wasn’t my job to be the defender of Elliott Riley’s reputation now that the man was gone. He’d been a slimy thief, and that I didn’t doubt at all.

  Of course, there was a difference between being a thief and being a murderer. A big difference.

  A feeling of utter weariness swept over me. I hadn’t slept for nearly twenty-four hours, because excitement and anticipation had woken me up early the day before. At the time I had expected the plantation tour to go just fine and had no idea that before it was over I’d be dealing with a murder or two, a bunch of stolen stuff, and a mob of angry clients.

  I guess you never really know what to expect when you get up in the morning, do you?

  “What about our valuables?” Mueller asked. “You say that the police discovered the place where they were hidden?”

  I didn’t want to deal with this annoying man anymore, but it was a legitimate question. I nodded and said, “Yes, they did.”

  “When will they be returned to us?”

  And that was a good question, one that I didn’t have the answer to. Farraday hadn’t said anything about returning the stolen items to their rightful owners.

  I still had a responsibility to my clients, no matter how worn out I was. “I’m not sure, but I’ll try to find out,” I told them. “There’s a chance the authorities may have to hold those items as evidence, so you may not get them back right away.”

  That news brought a fresh wave of angry muttering. I held up my hands to quiet it and went on, “I’ll check with the lieutenant, and you have my word that I’ll stay on top of this situation until everybody gets their stuff back and gets what’s comin’ to ’em.”

  I don’t know why I phrased it exactly that way; wishful thinking, maybe. I wished I could see to it that everybody got what was coming to them, including me.

  But then, there’s an old Chinese saying: May you get what you deserve.

  It’s a curse for one’s enemies, not a blessing for friends.

  The members of the tour group were excited that they were going to get to leave right after breakfast, or as soon as Mr. Cobb got back to the plantation with the bus, anyway. The actors who worked here wanted to head for home right away, but Farraday nixed that, explaining that everyone would be released at the same time.

  “Just so we can keep things straight,” he said.

  A few people wandered back to their beds to get another hour or so of sleep, while others stayed up to get their things packed. It didn’t matter to me what people did; I was too tired to care anymore.

  Mr. Cobb hunted me up to have a private word with me before he left to get the bus. “I just want to thank you, Miz Dickinson, for believing in me. When you found out about what happened all those years ago, you could’ve turned on me and figured I was guilty of killin’ that fella Kelley, too.”

  “I never thought that, Mr. Cobb. And as far as I’m concerned, what’s past is past. It sounded to me like you had a good reason for doing what you did…some of it, anyway.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But if I could change it, I reckon I would. It’s hard to live with knowin’ that you killed a man, even an animal like Chantry who didn’t even deserve to be called a man.”

  I didn’t know if he would answer me or not, but I risked one more question. “If you had known about Steven Kelley, about the kind of man he was…if he had made advances to your granddaughter, say…what would you have done?”

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You don’t still think I’m a suspect, do you?”

  “No, of course not,” I said quickly. “And you don’t have to answer. I was out of line to even ask.”

  He smiled, showing that he wasn’t offended. “Can’t blame a person for bein’ curious, I reckon. If I’d known about Kelley, I wouldn’t have killed him. Might’ve taken a swing at him—not with an iron pipe—but with my fists and that’s about all.”

  Luke had said just about the same thing. I believed Mr. Cobb, just like I believed my son-in-law. Because when I’d heard about the things Kelley had said to Augusta and Amelia, I felt like punching him, too. That was a normal, common reaction when you found out somebody was a sleazy, disgusting son of a gun like Kelley.

  Murder was different. The stakes had to be higher to provoke murder, I thought, at least in most people.

  Like preventing exposure as a professional thief? Maybe. It stood to reason that Riley wouldn’t want to go to jail. If the only way to prevent that was to kill Kelley, I supposed he might have done it.

  Dad gummit, I thought. I was starting to accept the theory that Riley was the murderer and had committed suicide because of it, too. It made too much sense, and I was too tired to keep on being stubborn.

  Go home, I told myself. Go home and forge
t all about it…

  “I’d best be headin’ for Atlanta,” Mr. Cobb said, “before the lieutenant changes his mind about lettin’ me out of here. I’ll be back in a couple hours or so with the bus.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Cobb.” I risked giving him a hug, hoping that he wouldn’t mind the familiarity. “You go ahead and drop by your place to check on your little Betsy Blue before getting the bus. We can wait that long. I’ll see you later.”

  He returned the hug briefly, giving me an awkward pat on the back, then turned and started down the curving staircase from the second-floor landing where we’d been talking.

  I went back to the room and found that Augusta and Amelia were awake and talking as they got dressed and packed their bags. “This was a really exciting tour, Aunt Delilah,” Augusta said. “Are they all going to be like this?”

  “Lord, I hope not! Have you forgotten that two people died here?”

  “No,” Augusta said, “but you’ve got to admit that just touring the plantation and going to a dance would have been more boring.”

  Amelia stared at her. “You’re setting a new standard for callousness, you know that, don’t you?”

  “No, I’m not,” Augusta protested. “I’m just saying what everybody knows already. Murder is interesting. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be so many books written about it.”

  Maybe she was right, but at that moment, as far as I was concerned, murder was just exhausting. I got my clothes and went in the bathroom to get dressed. I thought I could manage to keep going until the bus returned to Atlanta and I had seen all my clients delivered back safely to their hotels.

  But after that I was headed home, and when I got there I was gonna crash. Boy, was I gonna crash. I thought I might sleep for a week. Around the clock, at the very least.

  When I came out of the bathroom wearing slacks, blouse, and blazer, the girls were gone, although their bags were still on the bed. I went looking for them and found them downstairs in the big dining room, where people were starting to congregate even though it would be a while before Ralston’s kitchen staff had breakfast ready. Augusta and Amelia were talking to the two college boys who played the Tarleton twins. E-mail addresses were being exchanged, I suspected.