We got questioned by the police again. They were pretty thorough. Their biggest problem with Lula Faye was how come they had found a knife in her room. Them doors locked automatically. About the only people who could’ve gotten in when she wasn’t looking was her and maybe some crew members—except the crew didn’t exactly have open access—except the cleaning lady and she didn’t have no reason to kill Nolan/Howard. Lula Faye got to crying so hard while they were questioning her that she threw up. They were a little more careful with her after that.
With me, the police weren’t all that happy about the murders I’d been attached to in the past. I tried to tell them that the only time it ever happened was when I left home—and I promised them that if they’d let me go home I’d never, ever leave South Shore again. They chuckled at that, but they did question me about my relationship with Captain Wilson. I guess someone on the ship had brought it up, as though I actually had a relationship with the captain.
Truth be told, it hurt my feelings a little that Captain Evan Wilson had just gone on ahead and left us behind like he did. Even though I knew he had to, it still hurt. I’d gotten the impression that he was sweet on me, and from what I could tell he weren’t giving me and my predicament much thought right now. I realized that Lula Faye weren’t the only one who’d gone stupid over a man on this trip.
I lost sleep them two nights we spent in that Holiday Express down in Natchez while the lawyer who Preacher Roy got for us did whatever it is that lawyers do. I’d lay there thinking over everything, wishing I could come up with a solution to the whole murder problem while Lula Faye lay there snoring away beside me.
It would have been nice if she’d of gone ahead and gotten herself her own room, but she said she was afraid to stay by herself now--but she was dead to the world whenever her head hit the pillow. How that woman could sleep under the circumstances, I have no idea, but some people deal with stress by sleeping a lot. I guess she was one of them kind of people.
I spent the biggest part of my time in Natchez trying to figure out who might have kilt that Nolan/Howard fellow. I guess I’d started to think I actually did have a bit of sleuth in me, and thought if I just tried real hard I could solve this one.
Problem is the only person I could come up with who had a good reason to kill that fake British man was my cousin who was a’snoring right there beside me. Was she capable of it? I thought maybe she was. I remember when her daddy took a notion to raise chickens to eat. He bought a box full of baby chicks and raised them up so he could butcher and freeze them.
Them baby chicks were awful cute and me and Lula Faye cuddled them and played with them and even claimed a couple of them for our own and named them. Which was fine until it came to butchering time. We were still pretty young and I couldn’t stand it. I had to run home to my mama when I saw what my uncle was fixing to do. But not Lula Faye. She seemed to take it all in stride. That girl could cut a pet chicken’s head off, pluck it, cut it up, watch Aunt Belle fry it, and then eat it like there was nothing to it.
Me? I learned to do what had to be done, but it never come easy. I always got real queasy when I had to eat something I’d been good friends with the day before.
The subconscious is an amazing thing. Daddy used to solve math puzzles in his head while he was sleeping at night. He’d go to bed stumped and wake up with the answer.
I wondered if this could happen to me and decided to give it a shot but when I did manage to get to sleep, I just kept having nightmares about being locked up and not being able to breathe. I think it was because of all the cheap perfume I’d smelled in that jail cell.
My prayer life got awful active about that time. I’d never been one of them people who spent a lot of time praying. I kinda saved it for special occasions, figuring the good Lord expected me to take care of what I could and He’d handle the stuff I couldn’t. Well this was turning out to be one of them special occasions. I was worried sick and pretty much praying morning, noon, and night that my cousin weren’t a murderer and the police would find that out.
The second day in Natchez, while she was in the bathroom, I confessed to Roy that I had a few doubts about my cousin’s innocence. I told him about Aunt Belle and the butchering of the chickens and the secret lottery ticket buying down through the years and how crazy-upset Lula Faye had been over that old Nolan/Howard person not wanting to marry her.
“She coulda done it,” I told him. “I hate to admit it, but there’s a wild streak in Lula Faye in spite of all the piano playing and Sunday-school teaching.”
Roy didn’t seem surprised. He just smiled this slow, amused grin.
“There’s a wild streak in all of us, Doreen,” he said. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“Not me,” I said. “All I want is to get back to my little house.”
“Lula Faye is a good woman,” he said. “I’ve known some murderers in my time—shared a cell with some of them—and trust me, your cousin is no murderer.”
Long about evening the second day, Roy got a phone call from the lawyer who had just heard from the police who had gotten big news from Captain Evan Wilson. Turns out the mystery had been solved right before the boat docked in New Orleans. Evan and his staff had figured out what had happened without any help from the police and all because of some missing cutlery.
It turned out that Lula Faye weren’t the only person Nolan/Howard had lied to and cheated. In fact, Nolan/Howard had pulled his act on a whole lot of unsuspecting women over the years who thought he cared about them. Turns out he’d once even cheated one of the ladies we’d met at lunch that day earlier in the year. She was an intelligent business woman, but even intelligent business women sometimes need a love story so bad they are willing to overlook a few red flags that might crop up.
Ethel, that real estate lady we’d eaten with, was the one who done it. Ten years earlier, Nolan/Howard had swindled her out of the entire nest egg she’d hoped to retire on and it had been a considerable amount of money. She’d been so embarrassed and ashamed about it, she’d never told anybody. Not even the police. She’d just swallowed the loss, put all them thoughts away she’d had about retiring early and marrying the man of her dreams, and went back to work. That was back before he’d decided to turn British. Ten years had aged both of them, and it had taken her a couple days to realize who was walking around on the deck of the Mississippi Queen, but when she did, well, there was a lot of anger built up in that woman.
A woman scorned can be a lethal thing. It had not been Ethel’s intention to murder the man. When she booked the cruise, she thought she was just taking a hard-earned vacation. Then she’d seen the man who had ruined her life being all cozy with Lula Faye. The thing that drove her over the edge was that he and Lula Faye had sat at their table the evening before and he hadn’t even recognized her. Something that had impacted every waking moment for the past ten years had meant so little to him that he didn’t even remember it or her. The man was a professional scam artist and there had been a lot of foolish women over the years.
As Ethel said in her testimony later, she’d been so angry at him that she had invited him to her room late that afternoon and confronted him. She said she just wanted to let him know what he had done to her. She told the police that if he had shown some remorse, she wouldn’t have killed him, but he’d made the mistake of laughing at her. That laugh was an expensive one. It got him a death sentence.
Ethel was a big woman and he was a smallish man and ten years of built up anger gave her a whole lot more strength than normal. Earlier in the day she had ordered room service. The dishes from lunch were still there and they had included a steak knife. Roy told us that Ethel said she didn’t remember stabbing the man, but knows she did it because there weren’t nobody else in the room.
A steak knife ain’t usually a person’s first choice for a lethal weapon but there were a lot of knife wounds in that man. Enough to kill him. Evidently, Ethel had a whole lot more anger built up than even she realized.<
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After it was over, she didn’t know what to do, but she weren’t a stupid woman. She did the thing that would cause the least suspicion. She sat the leftover plates and tray outside her door to be picked up, hung a sign asking not to be disturbed on the door handle, and went to dinner hoping to get a revelation over what to do about the dead body in her room and the weapon she’d used.
That’s where me and Lula Faye came in. The whole time Lula Faye had been pouring out her heart to everyone at the dinner table, Ethel had been forming a plan. I remember how she’d excused herself long before the rest of us were done eating. Turns out she’d gone straight to Lula Faye’s room and after wiping the fingerprints off the handle, she’d given that bloody steak knife a hard pitch underneath the door. Them rooms were small, and it had slid beneath the bureau. Being a real estate woman, she’d already noticed that the riverboat was so old, the wood had shrunk a tad here and there which had left a bigger gap than there shoulda been beneath the doors.
She had to wait around until it was dark to stuff his body into a lifeboat underneath a tarp. She’d spent the rest of the night cleaning up her room the best she could before the maid came in the next morning.
What she hadn’t expected was for someone in the kitchen keeping track of cutlery. When Evan found out the man had been killed with a steak knife, he’d done some checking and found out there’d been one missing from Ethel’s tray.
At first, Ethel said the knife had been there when she put it outside her door and Lula Faye must have picked it up when she walked past. But then the cops did that light shining thingy and found traces of blood all over Ethel’s room. It’s awful hard to get that stuff out no matter how hard you clean.
That was when Ethel broke down bawling and confessed everything. Suddenly, Lula Faye and me were off the hook. I was awful ashamed that I had secretly suspected my cousin of murder.
I also realized that in a way poor old Ethel had done Lula Faye a big favor. As crazy as my cousin had been about that man, no telling how long it woulda been before she realized he’d managed to pocket her fifty-two million dollars and there weren’t no manor in England after all.
Preacher Roy gathered us up and we hightailed it out of there just as soon as the police were sure that Lula Faye didn’t do it. Roy didn’t say a lot, but that was okay. We’d heard a lot of words this week. I was ready to be real quiet for a while and I was. That’s one of the nicer things about living alone—most of the time you don’t have to talk to nobody unless you really want to.
Me and Lula Faye didn’t see each other or call back and forth for a long time. I figured we were just plumb sick of each other.
At least that’s what I thought. Later I learned that something very different was going on at Lula Faye’s end to make her so quiet. She and Preacher Roy got married a few weeks later. She called to tell me, as excited as a school girl.
I had my suspicions about Preacher Roy then. I figured he was after Lula Faye’s money, too. I figured he’d quit preaching altogether and just live off of her.
Once again, I was dead wrong. That marriage between Preacher Roy and Lula Faye is a match made in heaven. He can’t be railroaded by her and she needs someone steady. For reasons I don’t understand at all, he seems to think Lula Faye is cute as a button, and from what I can tell, he truly loves the woman. She adores him and ain’t been the same person since they got married.
To my surprise, he didn’t quit preaching after all. They’re still at that same church and that church is thriving. Having a former jailbird for a preacher and a preacher’s wife who is a reformed gambler hasn’t hurt them one iota. I don’t know. Maybe it helps when people know you got problems, too.
Besides, them two people are doing a lot of good these days.
Long story short, instead of Lula Faye’s lottery money going to an English estate that never existed, it got put into a foundation that funds church orphanages and medical clinics in places that need them awful bad. She and Roy live in the same house her and poor-stupid-Earl-bless-his-heart lived. Roy says after spending too many years in a small jail cell, it feels like a mansion to him. Lula Faye says that wherever Roy is feels like a mansion to her. Them two are just sick in love. I hope it lasts, and I think it might.
Everybody needs a love story to tuck away in their heart. Even a woman in her seventies. Captain Evan Stone is mine. Every now and then I think about Evan and how I got to sparkle at the captain’s table and I am grateful to Lula Faye for making that happen.
Evan called me when I got home. He said not be surprised if he came knocking at my door some time. I told him that would be fine as long as there was no Mrs. Wilson tucked away someplace because I weren’t that kind of woman.
He told me there was no Mrs. Wilson tucked away because she’d passed away a long time ago. Then he told me I could come back onto the boat anytime I wanted and travel down the river on the Mississippi Queen with him. It wouldn’t cost me nothing. I told him that beautiful boat had kinda been ruined for me by what had happened on it when me and Lula Faye took our trip, but that he was welcome to come a’knocking at my door whenever he wanted to.
He said he’d be retiring after this season and would be taking me up on that.
In the meantime, the Mississippi Queen floats by South Shore every few weeks. Evan always calls to let me know when they’ll be coming past. I pack a little picnic lunch and take me a mason jar of sweet tea and gather up my binoculars and then I go sit on the river bank and wait. Before long, there I am, and there he is in the pilot house a’looking back at me through his binoculars. The minute he sees me, he waves real big and then the calliope music starts. He says that music is just for me.
Like I said. Everyone needs a love story tucked away in their heart—and waving at that pretty boat with the handsome captain waving back at me is turning out to be mine.
Also by Serena B Miller
The Doreen Sizemore Adventures
Murder On The Texas Eagle (Book 1)
Murder At The Buckstaff Bathhouse (Book 2)
Murder At Slippery Slop Youth Camp (Book 3)
Murder On The Mississippi Queen (Book 4)
Murder On The Mystery Mansion (Book 5)
The Accidental Adventures of Doreen Sizemore (5 Book Collection)
Love’s Journey Series
Love’s Journey in Sugarcreek: The Sugar Haus Inn (Book 1)
Love’s Journey in Sugarcreek: Rachel’s Rescue (Book 2)
Michigan Northwoods Historical Romance
The Measure of Katie Calloway (Book 1)
Under a Blackberry Moon (Book 2)
A Promise to Love (Book 3)
Uncommon Grace Series
An Uncommon Grace (Book 1)
Hidden Mercies (Book 2)
Fearless Hope (Book 3)
Uncategorized
A Way of Escape
More Than Happy: The Wisdom of Amish Parenting
About the Author
Serena B. Miller lives in Ohio, near the largest Old Amish settlement in the world. Her fascination with this culture led to her first published book, Love’s Journey in Sugarcreek: The Sugar Haus Inn which became the basis for the award-winning movie, Love Finds You In Sugarcreek starring Kelly McGillis, Tom Evert Scott, and Sara Lancaster. A movie based on her second Amish novel, An Uncommon Grace, was recently filmed for the Hallmark Channel. In addition to her Amish books, she's written a lumber camp historical series which includes, The Measure of Katie Calloway, which won the RITA award for inspirational fiction, A Promise to Love, which won American Christian Fiction CAROL award for best historical fiction, and Under a Blackberry Moon, which was a finalist for the CHRISTY AWARD. Before writing full-length novels, Serena worked as a court reporter in Detroit, Michigan while writing numerous articles for periodicals such as Woman's World, Guideposts, Reader's Digest, Focus on the Family, Christian Woman, and more.
For more information:
@serenabmiller
AuthorSerenaMiller
> SerenaBMiller.com
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