Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead

by Livia J. Washburn

  I didn’t want to interrupt their flirting, so I looked around the room. I saw Gerhard Mueller sitting with his wife and looking sour. I sure didn’t want to talk to him. I wasn’t totally convinced that Mueller hadn’t had something to do with Elliott Riley’s death…although if that was the case, he’d been pretty blatant in his satisfaction when he heard about the way Will and I had discovered Riley’s body. I had to admit that crowing about it didn’t seem like the reaction of a guilty man, unless Mueller was really tricky and was trying to throw everybody off his trail by acting that way. I didn’t believe he was that cunning. He was just a natural-born jackass.

  Perry Newton and Lindsey Hoffman were sitting at one of the tables with some of the other kids from the college. They were pretty subdued, and I reminded myself that they had lost their mentor. Sure, Steven Kelley had been pretty much of a scumbag where women were concerned, but he had also been a decent drama teacher, from what I had seen, and he had gotten all of them acting jobs here on the plantation for the summer. Most college kids always needed extra money, and this would be a professional acting credit they could put on their resumé, too. It couldn’t hurt when they went on auditions in the future.

  Edmond Ralston wandered into the dining room. He had finally changed out of his Thomas Mitchell outfit and now wore jeans and a polo shirt. A white bandage was wrapped around his hand where Maura Kelley had cut him.

  He spotted me and came toward me. I summoned up a smile and asked, “How’s your hand?”

  He lifted it and looked at the bandage as if he had forgotten it was there. “Hurts like the dickens,” he said. “I’ll be going to the doctor later this morning to get some stitches taken in it. But I think it’ll heal up nicely in time.”

  “I hope so. That was mighty brave of you, trying to get the knife from Mrs. Kelley like that.”

  Ralston shrugged. “I had to do something. My daughter’s life was at stake. And I thought Maura might respond if I acted like Scarlett’s father. Steven was a believer in the method school of acting, you know. He liked to immerse himself in a character, and he demanded that all the other actors do so as well. That’s the way he taught them in their drama classes.”

  “So you thought that a part of Maura might still be so wrapped up in playing Scarlett that she would react like Scarlett.”

  He nodded. “That’s right. It almost worked, too. But at least Janice is all right. That’s all that really matters to me.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Upstairs, sleeping. She has a prescription for sedatives, and she took one of them. What she needs to do now is rest and forget all about everything that’s happened.”

  I understood that feeling. That was exactly what I wanted to do. I didn’t think I would need a sedative, though. Sheer exhaustion was going to take care of the problem for me.

  “I’m going to go out to the kitchen and see how breakfast is coming along,” Ralston said. He started in that direction and then paused to look back at me. “I hope all this unpleasantness won’t keep you from bringing some of your tours back here in the future, Ms. Dickinson.”

  “You’re going to continue with the Gone With the Wind recreations?”

  “Of course. Perry’s already agreed to take over as creative director on an interim basis, and if he does a good job, I’ll keep him on. He knows all the actors, of course. With a wig and a mustache, he can even take over as Rhett…although he won’t be as good in the role as Steven was.” Ralston sighed. “For all his faults, that young man made a really good Rhett Butler. Sometimes I thought he believed that he really was Rhett.”

  With that, Ralston lifted his uninjured hand in farewell and went on to the kitchen. I strolled around the room for a few more minutes, then finally realized that I was looking for Will Burke. He’d said that we would exchange contact info this morning, and I didn’t want to miss him before the bus left.

  But I didn’t see him anywhere in the dining room. He was probably still upstairs. He might even be getting a last-minute nap before breakfast. I knew which room he was in because I’d been part of the arrangements with Ralston and Lieutenant Farraday, but I couldn’t bring myself to go up there and knock on his door. Despite the friendship that had sprung up quickly between us and a few intimate feelings that had cropped up here and there, I figured it would be too forward to go calling on him in his bedroom before dawn.

  So I left the dining room instead and wandered down the hall, looking idly at the antique furniture and the paintings on the walls. I came to a partially open door, pushed it back further, and looked into the big library. It was a beautiful room with several mahogany tables and chairs, some comfortable armchairs, and built-in bookshelves on three walls. The other wall was a sort of Gone With the Wind shrine. It was hung with framed photographs of scenes from the movie and of the actors who had played in it, of various editions of the novel, and of Margaret Mitchell herself.

  I went in and walked slowly around the room, looking at everything. A valuable first-edition copy of the novel, signed by Mitchell, was safely locked up behind glass, but there were numerous other editions on the shelves. I ran my fingers over their bindings, then selected one and carried it to a table and sat down.

  I wasn’t going to read the book, but I felt a certain sense of peace steal over me as I sat there slowly turning the pages of the most popular novel of all time. The wall of photos was behind me, and it seemed almost like Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, Thomas Mitchell, Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, and even poor, doomed George Reeves were looking over my shoulder at the words that had given birth to the characters they played. All of them rose up from those pages, figments of one woman’s imagination, phantoms who had taken on life and become real in the minds of millions of people.

  I looked up suddenly from the book on the table in front of me, then twisted in the chair to peer up at the photographs on the wall. Things started coming together in my brain with dizzying speed, so fast that they took my breath away. Because of that, it was several moments before I could put into words some of what was filling my head.

  “Son of a gun,” I said. “Ashley Wilkes.”

  CHAPTER 25

  “What?” Will Burke asked from the doorway.

  I was so deep in thought that his voice surprised me and made me jump a little. I stood up and turned toward him.

  As he stepped into the library, Will went on, “I’m sorry, Delilah. I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just going past in the hall and happened to see you sitting in here. I was about to say hello when you said something about Ashley Wilkes.”

  My heart was doing that trip-hammer thing in my head again. I saw now that I might have misinterpreted something I had heard earlier. That was understandable, because I had been under a considerable strain at the time, wondering whether or not Maura Kelley was going to cut Janice Ralston’s throat.

  Despite the early hour and the long night that had preceded it, Will looked good, very professorlike in jeans and a corduroy jacket, but I was barely aware of that. My head was still filled with new connections and speculations. He probably thought I’d completely lost my mind, the way I was staring and maybe even muttering to myself. I’m not sure what I said, if anything. But after a moment he took a card from his shirt pocket and held it out toward me.

  “Here’s my phone number and e-mail at school, and I wrote my home phone and e-mail on the back.”

  I took the card without really thinking about it and slipped it into the pocket of my blazer. I did manage to mumble, “Thanks.”

  Will’s eyes narrowed. “I assume you still want to keep in touch…?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He definitely looked a little hurt by my lack of interest now. I remember it plain as day, but there was nothing I could do about it at the time.

  “You were going to give me your contact info…”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that before we leave.” I rushed on, “I’ve gotta ask you a question.�
��

  Obviously, he wasn’t so offended that he wasn’t going to answer, because he said, “Sure, go ahead.”

  “All the college kids who work here as actors, they were in Kelley’s classes? Every single one?”

  “That’s right. Well, except for Janice Ralston, who just graduated from high school. But she’s already enrolled and signed up for Kelley’s freshman class in the fall.” Will shook his head. “They’ll have to find somebody to replace him.”

  “Kelley wouldn’t like that. He was Rhett Butler. He couldn’t stand to have Ashley Wilkes get the better of him.”

  Will frowned. “What are you talking about, Delilah?”

  I didn’t answer. I just said, “I’ve got to go. Got to find somebody.”

  Then I rushed out of the library, leaving Will there staring after me in confusion.

  I headed straight back to the dining room and looked around, not spotting the people I was looking for. I turned around, thinking frantically about where else they could be. I headed for the ballroom, knowing that was a longshot.

  Now, of course, it seems obvious even to me that I should have gone looking for Lieutenant Farraday and told him what I had figured out in the library. But my brain wasn’t working along those lines at the time, and besides, Farraday was hung up on the idea that Riley had killed Steven Kelley.

  I knew that wasn’t true. I didn’t have any proof, but I knew it anyway.

  I pushed one of the doors to the ballroom open and saw that it was dark inside. I was about to turn away when I caught a glimpse of one of the French doors swinging shut on the other side of the room. Somebody had just gone out into the garden. Dawn was less than an hour away, but shadows still covered everything under the magnolia trees outside.

  I’d like to think that my mama didn’t raise any fools, but she did raise one stubborn, redheaded daughter. I hurried across the ballroom and slipped out through the same door, easing it closed behind me without making any noise.

  This early in the morning, there was a faint hint of coolness in the magnolia-scented air. It might have been pleasant if there had been even a breath of a breeze, but there wasn’t. A humid stillness hung over the place. Since it was a garden, full of growing things, it should have seemed like a place full of life.

  Instead I seemed to smell decay and death. The garden had lost its beauty and was just a murder scene to me now.

  The two people I was following must have slipped out here to make one last check to be sure there was nothing left behind to tie them to Steven Kelley’s murder. Crime scene tape was still strung up around the place on the path where Kelley’s body had been found, but there were no deputies guarding it. The three of us were alone in the garden.

  I guess I wasn’t as stealthy as I thought I was. Lindsey must have heard my foot scrape on the gravel or something, because she whirled halfway around, grabbed Perry’s arm, and said, “There’s somebody out here.”

  The beam from a small flashlight lanced out and caught me. “Ms. Dickinson!” Perry exclaimed. “What are you doing out here?”

  I swallowed hard. “Just thought I’d come out for one last bit of moonlight and magnolias before we leave after a while.” I managed to chuckle. “Sorry I interrupted you lovebirds. I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doin’.” I knew it was a mistake, but I couldn’t resist asking, “Did you two get engaged out here?”

  Perry turned the flashlight beam down toward the path so that it wasn’t in my eyes anymore. As they started to adjust, I saw him smiling. He said, “That’s right. How did you know we were going to get married, Ms. Dickinson?”

  Before I could answer, Lindsey tightened her grip on Perry’s arm and said in a horrified voice, “She knows, Perry. Just look at her. She knows!”

  I started backing up. “Yeah, and so does Lieutenant Farraday,” I said with a show of bravado. “He’ll be out here in just a minute with some deputies—”

  “That’s a lie,” Perry said. He took a step toward me. “Farraday wouldn’t have let you come out here after us by yourself if he knew anything about this.”

  “Get her,” Lindsey urged.

  I wondered if she had urged Perry to stick the knife in Kelley’s chest or if Perry had come up with that idea on his own. Heck, Lindsey might even be the one who had stabbed Kelley. I was pretty sure, though, that it was Perry who had struggled with Elliott Riley, either knocking him out or maybe even killing him with a blow to the head, then staging things to make Riley’s death look like suicide.

  “It won’t be near as easy to get away with killin’ me as it was with Kelley,” I said as I continued to back away. “You won’t have a fall guy for this murder who serves himself up to you on a silver platter the way Riley did.” The words bubbled out of my mouth, giving voice to the theory that had begun to form in the library. The picture was becoming clearer all the time. “What did he do, tell you to come to his room so you could talk about the blackmail money you were going to pay him?”

  Perry wasn’t giving up on the idea of talking their way out of this. He said, “Ms. Dickinson, I don’t have any idea what you’re going on about. Lindsey and I didn’t hurt anybody, and we certainly weren’t being blackmailed by that poor Mr. Riley. He’s the one who killed Steven, remember?”

  “He didn’t have near as good a motive as you did. Kelley was going to ruin everything for you, wasn’t he? He was your boss, both at the college and here in this show on the plantation. He was gonna fire you from both jobs unless you broke off your engagement with Lindsey, because he wanted her back. He’d been involved with her before, but she dumped him for you, and then when the two of you got engaged, it was more than Kelley could stand. He always had to win. He’d been like that since he was a kid. And he sure as heck wasn’t gonna let Ashley Wilkes take a woman he wanted away from him.”

  Yeah, a lot of it was guesswork, but it jibed with everything I knew about these people. And it fit with what Maura had said earlier about her husband. When Steven Kelley had ranted about not allowing Melanie to marry Ashley Wilkes, he hadn’t been talking about Janice Ralston at all. He was talking about “Ashley Wilkes”—his teaching assistant, Perry Newton.

  That meant the “Melanie” he’d been referring to was Lindsey, Perry’s girlfriend and—I now knew—fiancée. Sure, Lindsey didn’t play Melanie, but that hadn’t mattered to Kelley. What was important to him was not letting “Ashley” take the girl away from “Rhett.” To Kelley, that was just wrong on more than one level. He was the one who was supposed to steal the ladies from other men, not vice versa.

  But in his determination to force Lindsey back into his arms, he had pushed Perry too far. With Kelley dead, not only could the two of them go ahead and get married, but Perry would also take over as creative director of the troupe that worked on the plantation. His position at the college would be secure. He might even win some sympathy because the professor he worked for had been murdered. Heck, he was even going to play Rhett Butler!

  Yeah, Perry Newton had the starring role in “The Revenge of Ashley Wilkes,” all right.

  But now I stood between him and that goal, and he must have been able to tell from my face that no matter what he said, I could never be persuaded that I was wrong about him.

  So at that moment he leaped forward, breaking into a run toward me. Lindsey was right behind him.

  I spun around and tried to run, but they were too close. And too blasted young, to boot. Perry grabbed the collar of my blazer and slung me to the ground. I rolled over the flagstones on the path. Lindsey tried to kick me, but I got out of the way just in time.

  I don’t know what they thought they were going to do with me. Pry up one of those flagstones and beat me to death with it, maybe. Then they could’ve hidden my body in that shed or somewhere else and slipped back into the house. When the bus got here and I didn’t show up, there would be a search for me, of course, but that would be a whole lot too late to do me any good. I’d already be dead.

  And with some lu
ck, the two of them might get away with that murder, too.

  I wasn’t going to let that happen. Anger mixed with self-preservation sent me scrambling off the path and into the shrubs and flower beds that bordered it. I knew I couldn’t outrun them to the house, so my only chance was to give them the slip in the still-dark garden.

  They came after me, of course. They couldn’t afford to let me go now. I could hear them crashing through the brush—but they could hear me as I tried to get away from them, too. I darted around a magnolia tree and then pressed my back against the trunk, standing stock-still in hopes that they would go on past me. I forced myself to hold my breath so they wouldn’t hear me gasping for air, but my pulse was thundering so loud inside my head that it seemed inevitable they would hear it and know I was there.

  “Where the hell did she go?” Perry whispered. He wasn’t more than ten feet away from me. He had turned the flashlight off, and I figured he didn’t want to go flashing the beam around for fear of attracting attention inside the house.

  “We have to find her,” Lindsey said. “She’ll ruin everything, and then it’ll all be for nothing.”

  Perry was silent for a moment, like he was trying to figure out what to do next. Finally he said, “All right. She can’t have gone very far. We’ll split up. If you find her, grab her and hang on. I’ll be right there.”

  “We need to hurry. What if she starts screaming?”

  As a matter of fact, I had thought about doing just that. Perry’s answer was the reason I hadn’t.

  “If she does, we’ll get to her first and shut her up. Nobody else knows we’re out here.” He gave a curt laugh. “Who knows, maybe we could even pretend to find her and start yelling for help because there’s been another murder.”