Huckleberry Finished

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Huckleberry Finished Page 12

by Livia J. Washburn


  Vince and I sat down on one of the benches. He had a camera bag slung over one shoulder. He reached into the bag, brought out a digital camera, and started taking shots of the riverboat and Hannibal. In between pressing the shutter, he said, “I can see why people like to come here. You can look at the world the way it used to be and forget about all the bad things, at least for a little while.”

  I heard a touch of sadness in his voice I hadn’t noticed there any of the other times I’d talked to him. “You said you’d been in Iraq, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I reckon you must’ve seen some pretty rotten stuff over there.”

  He nodded. “That’s true. Even now you run across reminders of how brutal people can be to each other. But that’s not just true overseas. People hurt each other all the time, everywhere. Sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes it’s not. And all you can do is try to embrace the good times and hang on to them for as long as you can.”

  “That’s pretty profound….”

  “For a kid, you mean?” he asked with a laugh.

  “No, I didn’t mean it that way,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Ms. Dickinson. It doesn’t bother me when people point out how young I am. The thing is, when you consider a person’s years, you have no way of knowing how old their soul is.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “I like to think I have a young soul.”

  He looked over at me, and after a moment he nodded. “I believe you do. I think you have a lot of vitality and compassion and humor in you.”

  The depth of emotion in his voice surprised me. I said, “Wait a minute. You’re not flirtin’ with me, are you? Because young soul or not, I’m still old enough to be your…aunt.”

  Vince grinned. “No, not at all. But I do enjoy your company, Ms. Dickinson. You remind me a little of my mom.”

  Well, that took most of the wind out of my sails, let me tell you. At the same time, I was glad Vince wasn’t flirting with me. My feelings were confused enough about Mark. Not to mention I was still upset about Ben Webster’s murder. I didn’t need anything else on my plate right now.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I told him.

  “That’s the way I meant it. I’m just sorry…”

  “What?” I said when his voice trailed off. “What are you sorry about?”

  He grinned and shook his head. “Nothing. Just that I started to get all maudlin on you. Look around us.” He waved an arm at our surroundings. “Despite all the trouble in the world, it’s a beautiful day. I think I’m just going to sit here and enjoy it for a while.”

  “All right.” I took that as my cue to leave.

  As I stood up, he asked, “Have you heard anything about when we’ll be able to start downriver?”

  I shook my head. “Not a word.” Movement on the dock caught my eye. I saw Detective Travis step out of a car that had just pulled up and parked. “Maybe I can find out, though.”

  I lifted a hand to wave good-bye and headed back down the stairs. By the time I reached the main deck, Detective Travis had come on board. I intercepted her.

  “Good mornin’, Detective.”

  She nodded. “Ms. Dickinson.”

  “Any progress on the case?”

  “I can’t really talk about that,” she said.

  “Well, do you know when the riverboat can start back to St. Louis?”

  “That’s not something I can discuss, either.”

  “Well, what can you tell me?”

  I saw a flash of irritation in her eyes. “That you’re interfering with a police officer.”

  I held my hands up, palms out, and backed away. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to cause a problem. It’s just that some of my clients have asked me about it this morning and it’s my job to make their trip as pleasant as I can.”

  “Then you failed with Ben Webster, didn’t you?”

  I thought that was a cheap shot, and even though I don’t like people talking about how I must have a hot temper because of my red hair, sometimes it’s more true than I’d like to admit. I said, “I can see why you’d be worried. You don’t want a second unsolved murder on this boat, do you?”

  Sometimes my mouth runs ahead of my brain, too. I saw the look of surprise that came over Detective Travis’s face for a second. Then she asked in a sharp voice, “What do you know about another murder?”

  What had happened to Hannah Kramer was no secret. Melissa had found out about it through a simple Internet search, even before Louise had spilled her guts to me. But if I’d been thinking, I wouldn’t have brought up the subject with Travis. With a murder investigation going on, nobody wants to draw any more attention from the cops than he or she absolutely has to.

  I didn’t have to answer Travis’s question just then, however, because a man’s voice behind me said, “Detective, I want to speak to you.”

  I looked back over my shoulder and saw Charles Gallister coming along the deck toward us, trailed by a concerned-looking Captain Williams.

  Travis said, “Excuse me? Who are you?”

  “Charles Gallister. I own this boat.”

  He said it with a note of pride in his voice that didn’t quite come across as pompous. Almost, though.

  “Then I’m sure Captain Williams has informed you of the crime that took place on board yesterday,” Travis said.

  “He certainly has. He also tells me that you refuse to let the Southern Belle proceed back to St. Louis on schedule.”

  “This boat is a crime scene, Mr. Gallister. The police like to keep crime scenes as secure as possible until the initial investigation is complete.” Travis took me by surprise by smiling. “We’re funny that way.”

  Gallister made an encompassing gesture. “You can’t just declare that the entire boat is the crime scene. That’s absurd.”

  “Not really,” Travis insisted. “We don’t know where Mr. Webster was murdered, but we know that he had been dead for several hours when he was found. That means he was killed while the Southern Belle was still cruising upriver. The crime has to have taken place somewhere on this boat…unless you expect us to believe that Webster was taken off the boat, killed somewhere else, and then returned to the Southern Belle, where his body was stuffed in that storage locker.”

  Gallister frowned. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Yes, sir. We think so, too.”

  Gallister wasn’t going to give up. “Nevertheless, I’m sure that your crime scene people have been all over the place where the body was found. You’ve documented everything there is to document. There’s no reason to hold the boat here.”

  “Other than the fact that all of the suspects in the case are on board.” Travis inclined her head toward the uniformed cops who were standing beside the gangway. “My men have been here all night. No one has gotten off the boat, and the only ones who have gotten on are passengers returning from Hannibal…and you.”

  “Me?” Gallister’s eyes widened. “Surely you don’t consider me a suspect in this horrible crime, Detective.”

  “No, sir.” Travis smiled faintly again. “I’ve already checked on your whereabouts yesterday. Your presence in St. Louis is well accounted for.”

  Gallister snorted. “I should hope so. Why, I never even heard of that young man who was killed.”

  “Ben Webster. That was his name.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about what happened to him, of course. But I have a boat full of passengers who want to get on with their lives.” Gallister smiled. His brimming self-confidence made the expression a little smarmy. “Surely we can come to some sort of an agreement, Detective Travis. I mean, you’re a beautiful young woman. I’ve always been able to make beautiful young women see that I have only their best interests at heart.”

  “My best interest is in solving this case,” Travis said.

  Gallister’s smile slipped and then disappeared. “No, your best interest is in avoiding the sort of trouble that’s going to come raining down on your
head if you don’t listen to reason,” he snapped. “You have no right to hold this boat and its passengers. I have the largest legal practice in St. Louis on retainer, you know. I’ll call my lawyers—”

  “If you feel you need to do that, Mr. Gallister, you go right ahead.”

  “I won’t be held hostage by some small-town police department! Just what do you think you’re going to accomplish by these high-handed tactics?”

  “I plan to question everyone on this boat,” Travis said. “I’m also in the process of getting a search warrant so that it can be searched from top to bottom. If there’s anything here relating to Ben Webster’s murder, we’re going to find it.”

  “Very thorough, I’m sure,” Gallister said with a sneer. Charm hadn’t worked, and neither had bluster. Now he was trying disdain. “We’ll just see what my attorneys have to say about this.”

  He turned and stomped away like a little kid who had threatened to take his ball and go home only to be told that he couldn’t. He could leave if he wanted to, but the ball—or in this case, the riverboat—had to stay where it was.

  Williams tried to mend fences with Travis. “I’m sorry, Detective,” he said. “I’m sure Mr. Gallister meant no disrespect—”

  “Of course not,” Travis said dryly. “He’s just used to getting his way.”

  Williams shrugged. “For the record, I think you should allow us to return to St. Louis, too. You know it’s inevitable. Mr. Gallister’s lawyers will be able to find a judge willing to sign a court order releasing the Southern Belle and everyone on it from police custody.”

  “I’ll deal with that when it happens,” Travis said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Captain, I’m going to ask to borrow your salon so that I can question the passengers there. I’ll need a copy of your manifest, too. Oh, and I’m shutting down the casino.”

  Williams looked like he wanted to yelp in protest. His bushy white eyebrows went up as he said, “You can’t shut down the casino. Gambling is legal in Missouri, and we’re in Missouri waters.”

  “I consider it a hindrance to a police investigation, so I’m within my rights to close it temporarily. That’s something else Mr. Gallister’s attorneys can take up with their tame judge, I suppose.”

  Now she was just being spiteful, I thought. But maybe I couldn’t blame her. She had a murder investigation to conduct, and she had to be aware of the size of the obstacles a man like Charles Gallister could—and would—throw into her path.

  Travis went on, “Will you give the orders, Captain, or shall I?”

  Williams sighed. “I’ll tell the crew members working in the casino to clear out the passengers and close down. You’re going to have a lot of unhappy people on your hands, though.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Travis said. Then she turned toward me, and I knew she was going to want to question me first. Not only was the murdered man one of my clients, but I had mentioned the other murder that had taken place on the Southern Belle. That probably had Detective Travis pretty curious.

  So naturally, just as Travis started toward me, my phone picked that exact moment to ring.

  Travis paused and frowned. I slipped the phone from my pocket and saw that Melissa was calling from the office again. I opened it and said, “Sorry, honey, this still isn’t a very good time for me to copy down that serial number from my computer—”

  “I’m not calling about that, Mom,” Melissa said. “I decided to do some more digging on the computer here about Ben Webster. And I found out something interesting.”

  I held up one finger toward Detective Travis, asking for a minute of time. I didn’t like it much when folks did that to me, and judging by the frown on Travis’s face, neither did she. But I wanted to hear what Melissa had to say.

  “Go ahead,” I told her. “What did you find out?” I avoided saying Webster’s name where Travis could overhear what we were talking about.

  On the other end of the phone, Melissa didn’t have to worry about that. She said, “The only thing I’ve really found out about Ben Webster, Mom,…is that apparently he doesn’t exist.”

  CHAPTER 16

  For a second I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly. Of course Ben Webster existed. I had talked to him. I had seen him when he was alive, and I had seen him when he was dead. Maybe Melissa was speaking metaphorically. Webster was dead, so he no longer existed….

  Nah. I love my daughter and she’s smart as a whip, but she isn’t the type to sit around the office making philosophical comments. If she said Webster didn’t exist, she meant it literally.

  “I don’t see how that’s possible,” I said carefully as Detective Travis started to look impatient.

  “I checked out the address on the credit card he gave us. It would be in the middle of a lake, if there were such an address. There isn’t.”

  “How’s that possible?” I was so bumfuzzled I was starting to sound like a broken record.

  “It’s a new card. Webster must not have used it for anything else, so he hasn’t gotten a bill yet. He must’ve had some sort of fake ID in order to get the credit card, but those aren’t hard to put your hands on these days.”

  That was certainly true. Identity theft and credit card fraud were booming businesses.

  Melissa went on, “Once I found out the address was a phony, I did some more checking. According to the Social Security database, there are dozens of Benjamin Websters around the country who are close to the right age…but none in the St. Louis area, which is where our Webster claimed to be from. I did a public records search and didn’t find anybody who matches his info, Mom. I think he must have had a phony driver’s license and Social Security number. He’s somebody else. He’s not Ben Webster.”

  As Melissa had said, that was mighty interesting. I wondered if Detective Travis knew about it yet. I figured the crime scene techs had taken Webster’s fingerprints, and Travis had probably submitted them to the national databases available to law enforcement agencies. But from what I’d heard, it sometimes took several days to get a match from those databases, even if one existed. The dead man’s real identity might still be a mystery.

  Along with who killed him.

  Travis was starting to look really annoyed now, so I said into the phone, “I’m glad you let me know about that, but I’ve got to go right now. I’ll call you later.”

  “Yeah, I still need to give you those numbers for the insurance claim.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart.” I closed the phone and put it away, saying as I did so, “My daughter. She runs the office for me, back in Atlanta.”

  “I’m sorry to interfere with your business, Ms. Dickinson,” Travis said, but she didn’t really sound all that sorry. “Now, if you’ll come with me to the salon…”

  I nodded. I didn’t like it much, but ready or not, I was about to be interrogated.

  Travis led the way into the salon. She went to the bar, showed her badge to the bartender, and told him, “The salon is going to be closed for a while. You can check with Captain Williams about that if you want to.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll do that,” the bartender said, then picked up a phone that probably connected him to the pilothouse. He turned away, spoke in a quiet tone for a couple of minutes, then said, “Yes, sir, I understand.”

  He hung up, turned back to us, and tossed the bar rag he was holding onto the hardwood. “The place is all yours, Detective.”

  It was still early enough in the morning that not many people were in the salon, only half a dozen or so. I was sure the casino was busier. The bartender went around the room and told everyone that the salon was closing for the time being. That drew some puzzled looks, but nobody argued with him. The passengers just got up and left.

  Travis motioned for me to have a seat at one of the tables. She sat down across from me and took out her notebook. She said, “Tell me everything you can about your contacts with Ben Webster, Ms. Dickinson.”

  “We went over all that yesterday, didn’t we?”

&
nbsp; “Humor me,” she said. “Tell me again.”

  I knew she was trying to trip me up, to catch me in a lie. But since I had told her the truth the day before, I didn’t have to worry about that. I just told the whole thing to her again, up to and including the fact that I’d fainted when Logan Rafferty and Captain Williams showed me Webster’s body.

  I was hoping she had forgotten about what I’d blurted out earlier, but no such luck. When I was finished going over my story, she said, “A while ago you mentioned another unsolved murder that took place here on the Southern Belle. What do you know about that?”

  “Not much, just that a young woman was killed here last year.”

  “A year ago today, to be precise,” Travis said. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd, Ms. Dickinson?”

  “Well, sure. But coincidences happen, even gruesome ones like this one.”

  “You’re certain it’s a coincidence?”

  “I don’t know of any connection between the woman who was killed last year and Ben Webster.”

  But I didn’t know who Ben Webster really was, I reminded myself. I suddenly realized that he could have known Hannah Kramer. It was even possible that he was the person who had killed Hannah Kramer.

  That thought made a chill go through me. Louise had mentioned that Hannah met a man in St. Louis. That man could have been Webster. They could have broken up, and he could have followed her onto the boat and…

  But why take the same cruise a year later? Maybe he was a serial killer, I thought. Maybe it was some sort of ritual for him. Take a riverboat cruise, kill another passenger.

  Webster was the one who was dead, though. He was the victim. I was letting my brain run away with itself and fill itself with crazy theories.

  Theories that I couldn’t actually disprove, crazy or not.

  Detective Travis was saying, “What do you know about the woman who was killed last year?”

 

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