Deliah Dickenson Mystery 01-Frankly My Dear, I''m Dead

by Livia J. Washburn

“Well, then, how could Luke possibly have anything to do with it?” I demanded.

  Quietly, Farraday said, “I thought maybe Mr. Edwards would like to tell me about Lauren Holcomb.”

  At that moment, Luke turned paler than I had ever seen him in the time I’d known him. He looked shaken, too, even more so than when we’d gone out into the garden and seen Steven Kelley’s body. In fact, he looked more scared and pale than he had the day he married Melissa, and I’d thought then that he was fixing to faint as he watched her father walk her up the aisle of the church.

  “Luke?” I said. “What’s he talking about? Luke?”

  He ignored me and stared at Farraday. “He can’t be the same one,” he muttered. “He didn’t look anything like him.”

  Farraday took Luke’s arm. “Come on, son.” His voice was gentle, but I could tell by the way his fingers dug in that the grip was a tight one.

  Luke went with him, but he shook himself out of his stunned state long enough to glance back at me as Farraday led him out of the ballroom. “I’m sorry, Miz D,” he said, and then they were gone.

  Leaving me there to wonder what in blue blazes was going on.

  And who was Lauren Holcomb?

  I went over to where Augusta and Amelia were sitting.

  They had seen Farraday take Luke out of the ballroom, and both of them wore anxious expressions.

  “What happened, Aunt Delilah?” Amelia asked.

  “That detective looked like he was ready to arrest Luke,”

  Augusta said.

  “I think Lieutenant Farraday is just questioning Luke like he’s been questioning everybody else,” I said, even though I knew from Farraday’s attitude that it was more serious than that. “Do either of you girls know who Lauren Holcomb is?”

  “Never heard of her,” Augusta said without hesitation, and Amelia shook her head. “Who’s she supposed to be?”

  “I don’t know, but Luke recognized the name.”

  I cast my memory back to when Melissa had met Luke when they were both in college. He was from a small town in southern Georgia, had gone to school on a football scholarship, and then had injured his knee in the first practice. He wasn’t hurt so badly that he could never play again, but he lost his starting safety job while he was laid up and couldn’t get it back from the player who had stepped in for him. Eventually, tired of sitting on the bench, he had quit the team, given up his scholarship, and finished his business degree on his own.

  By then he’d met Melissa and they had started dating. They got engaged during their senior year and then married as soon as they both graduated. During that time I had gotten to know Luke pretty well. I had figured out quickly that he was going to be my future son-in-law, so I made it a point to take an interest in him.

  But I didn’t recall him ever mentioning anybody named Lauren Holcomb.

  I pulled over another chair and sat down with Augusta and Amelia to wait for Luke to come back … if the police let him go. While we were sitting there I looked around the room.

  The animation that had gripped the place after the discovery of Kelley’s body was long gone by now. It had been replaced by boredom, impatience, and anger. The dance floor was empty because everyone was sitting around the tables, and of course there was no music anyway. Deputies stood guard at all the doors leading out of the big room, including the ones that went to the garden. I could see through those doors, and the view included the crime scene, illuminated now by powerful lights set up by the crime scene technicians as they went over it, searching for evidence.

  “Ms. Dickinson.”

  The tightly controlled but still obviously angry voice made me look around. Gerhard Mueller stood there.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Mueller?”

  “How much longer will we be forced to endure these indig-nities, Ms. Dickinson? My wife is tired and wishes to go to bed.”

  “I’m sure she’s not the only one,” I told him. “Lieutenant Farraday will let us know when we can go up to our rooms. I’m sure it won’t be too much longer.”

  I wasn’t sure of any such thing, but I hoped that would sat-isfy Mueller and he would go away. He stayed where he was, glaring down at me.

  I sighed. “Is there something else?”

  “This high-handed treatment by the police is unconscion-able.”

  I wanted to make some comment about the Gestapo, but that would just make a bad situation worse, I decided. “Well, they do have a murder to investigate.”

  “Murder is not the only crime that has taken place here tonight.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I have overheard people talking. Wallets and jewelry have been stolen.”

  That made me sit up straighter. In fact, it made me get to my feet. “What?”

  “You heard me. There is a thief in the group.” He sneered.

  “And I think we both know who it is.”

  “Riley,” I breathed.

  “Ja . Herr Riley. Yesterday he tried to steal my camera.

  Tonight he has, how do you say it, picked the pockets of these people.”

  “Why hasn’t anybody said anything to me about it?”

  “No one wanted to interfere with the police investigation, for fear that we would be here even longer.”

  That seemed a little far fetched to me, and I wondered suddenly if Mueller was just trying to stir up more trouble for Riley because of the grudge he held against him from the day before. Elliott Riley was so unlikable that even he knew it, but I hadn’t seen any evidence that he was a thief.

  “Look, everybody’s still here,” I said. “I’ll talk to one of the deputies. If there are any items missing, the deputies can search everyone. That’s bound to turn up anything that was stolen.”

  “Unless the thief has already hidden it somewhere for safe-keeping until he can retrieve it later. Or perhaps Herr Riley has a confederate, so to speak, among the people who work here and has already passed along the things he stole.”

  Now Mueller was just looking for conspiracies where none were likely to exist, I told myself. But considering everything that had already happened on this tour, maybe nothing was too crazy to rule out completely.

  “Tell the people who have lost things to come talk to me about it,” I said. “I’ll make a list of everything that’s missing, and then I’ll talk to Lieutenant Farraday. If somebody’s really stealing stuff, we don’t need to ignore it.”

  “Very well. But if this results in a longer incarceration for the entire group, people will not be happy.”

  “We’re not incarcerated.”

  “We are being detained against our will. I fail to see the difference.”

  Mueller turned around and stalked away. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples for a moment, wondering what else could go wrong.

  A word of advice: never ask yourself what else could go wrong.

  Because it was right then that a vaguely familiar voice called out loudly, “Let go of me, blast it! I haven’t done anything!”

  CHAPTER 12

  It took me a few seconds to place that cranky tone, but then I recalled who it belonged to. I swung around and saw an elderly man struggling in the grip of one of the deputies by the ballroom’s main door. I was surprised because I hadn’t expected to see him again until the next day.

  But I hadn’t expected a lot of things that had happened since the bus pulled away that morning, so I wasn’t sure why anything still surprised me. I told Augusta and Amelia to stay where they were and hurried toward the door.

  “Mr. Cobb,” I said, “what are you doing here?”

  The deputy who was holding Wilson Cobb by the left arm turned to look at me. “You know this old guy, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Of course I do. He’s Mr. Cobb. He drove the tour bus out here this morning.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “I’m not blind,” I said. “He’s Mr. Wilson Cobb, and I reckon he’s old enough to be your grandfather. Now show a
little respect and let go of him.”

  I could tell that the deputy was thinking of telling me that he didn’t take orders from me, but then he thought better of it. He shrugged and let go of Mr. Cobb’s arm.

  With an offended sniff, Mr. Cobb straightened his jacket.

  “Old enough to be your great-grandfather,” he said to the deputy, then turned to me. “Thank you, Ms. Dickinson.”

  “Mr. Cobb,” I said again, “what in the world are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to bring the bus back until in the morning.”

  “I’ll tell you what he was doing,” the deputy said. “He was sneakin’ around like a burglar. That’s why I grabbed him. I figured Lieutenant Farraday would want to talk to him.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking around like a burglar,” Mr. Cobb insisted. “The front door was open. I came in to see if I could find anybody, and when I opened this door to look in, this bruiser pounced on me. Like to broke my arm. Haven’t you ever heard that old bones are brittle, boy?”

  “Why did you come back out here to the plantation?” I asked him. His story about the front door being open sounded unlikely to me. There should have been at least one deputy watching it. But that was just part of what I wanted to know.

  “You didn’t bring the bus back tonight, did you?”

  He drew himself up. “Of course not. The tour’s not over until tomorrow. But when I heard about the trouble out here, I figured I’d better find out for sure what you wanted me to do.

  Thought maybe you’d want me to pick you folks up tonight.”

  “You could have called me on my cell phone.”

  “Tried. Didn’t get an answer.”

  That didn’t make any sense. I reached in the pocket of my blazer where I keep my phone.

  It was gone.

  While I was trying to digest that startling bit of information, something else occurred to me. “Wait a minute. You said you heard there was some sort of trouble out here?”

  He nodded. “That’s right. It’s all over the newsbreaks on the TV tonight. ‘Murder on the Plantation,’ some of them are calling it.”

  “How did the TV people find out?”

  “You’re asking me? I don’t work for TV, I just watch it.” He chuckled. “But a lot more people are going to know pretty soon. I must’ve passed half a dozen news trucks on the way out here.”

  I had a feeling Lieutenant Farraday wasn’t going to be too happy when he found out about that. But then, he hadn’t been happy about any of this so far, so why should things be different now?

  One of the main double doors leading into the ballroom from the hallway was partially open; it must have been left that way when the deputy nabbed Mr. Cobb. Now, through that open door, I heard a commotion from the front of the house. I couldn’t make out all the words, but male and female voices were yelling what sounded like questions, and angry male voices were responding.

  Mr. Cobb smiled. “Reckon those TV news folks have gotten here.”

  I knew he was right. Those were reporters shouting the questions, and deputies telling them to get back and be quiet.

  Edmond Ralston came up and demanded, “What’s going on here?”

  “The story’s gotten out,” I told him. “The media’s arrived.”

  Ralston paled. “Lord, no. They’ll make a circus out of it.

  Everybody will know that someone was killed in my garden.”

  “People would have found out anyway. You can’t keep something like this quiet.”

  He rubbed a weary hand over his face and then sighed. “I suppose not. I just wish it would have taken a little longer.”

  I didn’t see what difference it made if the story broke tonight, tomorrow, or the next day. The end result was going to be the same, whether it was for better or worse.

  Those of us near the ballroom doors weren’t the only ones who heard the commotion. A familiar voice called, “What the devil! Get those people and those cameras out of here!

  There’s an investigation going on!”

  That was Lieutenant Farraday. I didn’t know if he was finished with questioning Luke or if the arrival of the media horde had interrupted the interrogation. But a moment later Luke appeared in the doorway, accompanied by Deputy Perkins. Luke still looked pale and shaken as he came into the ballroom. Perkins shut the door behind him, cutting off the sound of Farraday’s angry voice. I could still hear the lieutenant, but his words were too muffled to understand.

  Anyway, I was more worried about Luke at the moment.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess.” He glanced over at Mr. Cobb, and a look of surprise appeared on his face. “Hey. What are you doing back here, Mr. Cobb?”

  I took Luke’s arm and said, “It’s a long story, and right now I want to hear about what Lieutenant Farraday said to you.”

  Luke hesitated. “I dunno if he wants me to talk about it. I dunno if I want to talk about it.”

  “Luke, you better ask yourself just who you’re more afraid of here … him or me?”

  I knew I was being too rough on him, and I felt bad about it.

  But I had the feeling that things were spiraling out of control and that this tour was going to turn into even more of a catastrophe than it already was unless I could do something to stop it. So I had to know what was going on to have any hope of figuring out a solution.

  “All right,” Luke said after a moment. “I guess you’ve got a right to hear about it, Miz D. But let’s find someplace quieter than this.”

  Ralston was arguing with the deputy at the door. He wanted to go out and issue a statement to the media. “This is my house, damn it!” he argued. “I have a right to talk to the press.”

  I knew he wanted to put the best spin he could on the story, but the deputy was equally determined to follow the orders Farraday had given him and not let anybody out of the ballroom. I took Luke’s arm and left them wrangling. Luke and I went over to the wall where Augusta and Amelia still sat, avidly watching everything that was going on. They looked glad to see Luke, too. I noticed that Mr. Cobb was trailing behind us, now that the deputy was distracted by the argument with Edmond Ralston. I let him come along, figuring that it wasn’t going to hurt anything. I had just met him earlier that day, but somehow I thought of him as an ally.

  “Luke!” Augusta said as we came up. “You’re all right?”

  He frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be? The detective just wanted to ask me some questions.”

  Amelia said, “She thought maybe they were going to work you over with a rubber hose.”

  “I did not!” Augusta protested. “I just said it would be terrible if they did.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too,” Luke agreed, “but nothing like that happened.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “I almost wish it had. That might not have been as bad as all the questions Farraday asked about me and Steven Kelley.”

  “You and Kelley?” I echoed. “How can there be a you and Kelley? You never saw him before today, did you?”

  Keeping his voice pitched low, Luke rubbed his chin and said, “I, uh, sort of … went to high school with him.”

  All I could do for a moment was stare at him. When I got my voice back, I said, “You didn’t recognize him?”

  Luke spread his hands. “He looked like Clark Gable!

  That’s all I saw.”

  “But you’ve heard his name probably two dozen times this evening. It didn’t occur to you that it was the same fella you went to school with?”

  He shook his head. “I just figured it was somebody with the same name. Steven Kelley’s not that odd a name, you know.

  And he grew up a long way from here, like I did, and I hadn’t seen him in years, and … and he looked like Clark Gable!”

  When I thought about it, I supposed that what Luke was saying made sense. Steven Kelley wasn’t as common a name as, say, John Smith … although how many John Smiths do you actually run into these days, I asked myself. And the Steven Kel
ley who had gotten himself murdered in the garden was years older than when Luke had known him, as well as looking completely different.

  “When I first heard the name,” Luke went on, “I thought, huh, I went to school with a Steven Kelley. But that brought back a lot of bad memories, so I tried not to think about it anymore.”

  “What sort of bad memories?” Augusta asked. “Was this guy, like, your nemesis in high school or something?”

  Luke sank onto one of the empty chairs. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. We were rivals all the way back to grade school and Little League. He was always just a little bit faster than me, a little bit smarter than me, a little bit better than me at anything we both tried to do. You know how there’s always somebody that you just can’t quite catch up to?”

  “I have the highest grade average in my class,” Amelia said.

  “I’m head cheerleader,” Augusta said.

  “You’re both wonderful,” I said. “Luke, go on.” I made a guess. “Does this have anything to do with Lauren Holcomb?”

  Luke didn’t look shocked by the name anymore. He just looked sad. Incredibly sad.

  “I’ve got a confession to make, Miz D,” he said.

  “You’d better not say that too loud, boy,” Wilson Cobb advised. “Not with all these badge-wearin’ fellas standin’ around.”

  I thought that, too, but at the same time I had to know what Luke was talking about. “Go on,” I told him as I glanced around to make sure that none of the deputies were nearby eavesdropping. “Just be careful.”

  “Well … I hate to say it, Miz D, since she’s your daughter and all … but Melissa wasn’t my first love.”

  Augusta leaned forward and asked breathlessly, “You mean you and this Lauren chick hooked up back in high school?”

  “It wasn’t like that. Lauren and I started dating when we were in eighth grade. We gave each other promise rings when we were juniors. We were gonna get engaged as soon as we graduated from high school.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Have you told Melissa about this?”

  “Of course. We don’t have any secrets from each other.”

  “But neither of you ever saw fit to tell me?”