Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead Read online

  I looked around and saw the deputy he was talking about glaring at me. “Oh, Lord. He thought I’d gone nuts and was charging Farraday, didn’t he?”

  Will chuckled. “To tell you the truth, that’s sort of the way it looked to me, too.”

  I shook my head. “My temper gets the best of me sometimes, I guess. I was gonna give the lieutenant a good talkin’ to, but I wasn’t about to attack him or anything like that.”

  “I thought I’d better step in anyway. Maybe distract you a little.”

  He was right. Whether it was my nature or not, it wasn’t going to do any good to lambaste Lieutenant Farraday. I had already seen how stubborn the man was, and I didn’t think he’d change now.

  Besides, while I didn’t think this search was going to turn up the missing items, maybe it would find something else.

  Like a motive for murder, maybe. It didn’t hurt to hope.

  “What about you?” I said to Will. “Won’t you get in trouble for leaving the line?”

  He shook his head. “They’ve already searched me.” A grin broke across his face. “I’m not the thief. Or the murderer.”

  Now that was something that had never occurred to me. But if what Augusta had said about other people who worked on the plantation having grudges against Steven Kelley was true, then I supposed Will Burke would have to be considered a suspect, too. My instincts told me he wasn’t a killer…but again, I had never met him before this evening and didn’t really know him at all.

  “I guess I’d better get back in line before that deputy gets trigger happy,” I said. “Want to come along and keep me company?”

  Will was still smiling as he nodded. “I guess I could do that.”

  I moved back into my place just behind Augusta and Amelia. Augusta said, “I was afraid you were gonna rip that cop a new one, Aunt Delilah.”

  I frowned at her. “I don’t think your mama would like you talkin’ that way, Augusta.”

  “Call me Gussie.” She turned her high-voltage smile on Will Burke. “Hi, Dr. Burke.”

  She wasn’t flirting with him, at least not any more than she flirted with every male she met. Both girls seemed to be a little taken with him, Amelia because of his smarts, Augusta because he wasn’t hard to look at.

  That combination sort of appealed to me, too, or at least it would have if I hadn’t still been hurting a little from the divorce and stressed out over starting my own business, which was on the verge of getting ruined by that blasted murder. This was no time for me to be thinking about some man being smart and good-looking, whether he was or not.

  I figured it might be a good idea to distract the girls from Will; I didn’t have to worry about distracting him, because he was being polite to them but that was all. I said, “Since you work here and at the college, you must’ve known the murdered man pretty well.”

  Will’s smile went away. “I knew him. Like I said earlier, we were just colleagues, though.”

  “I’ve heard some things about Kelley since we talked then,” I said. “Things that make him sound like he wasn’t…well, wasn’t a very good person, even though I hate to speak ill of the dead.”

  Will suddenly frowned. “Did Kelley make a pass at you, Delilah?”

  “Me? No, I never even talked to him.”

  Will looked at Augusta and Amelia. “Did he try something with you girls?”

  “Oh, wow,” Augusta said. “How did you know that?”

  “Because Mr. Kelley must have done things like that before,” Amelia said. “Isn’t that right, Dr. Burke?”

  Will hesitated for a second, then shrugged. “Kelley had a reputation among the faculty. Some of his more attractive female students occasionally got better grades than they seemed to deserve. He wasn’t too blatant about it, though, and I never heard any rumors that students who turned him down had their grades lowered. That wouldn’t have been tolerated. University administrators are very sensitive to charges of sexual harassment these days. Nobody wants their school to be the target of a lawsuit.”

  “But some professor/student hanky-panky still goes on anyway,” I guessed.

  Will inclined his head in agreement. “Some of it still goes on. As long as everybody keeps it low-key, and as long as the students who are involved are willing, blind eyes get turned.”

  “I reckon Kelley had a pretty good idea what he could get away with and what he couldn’t.”

  “I suppose, because like I said, I never heard about him getting into any official trouble over it. There were just rumors, and vague ones at that.”

  “And he had to be careful because he was married, too,” I pointed out.

  “To a former student.”

  “Really? Maura Kelley was a student of his?”

  Will nodded. “Several years ago.”

  “So she must’ve known what he was like.”

  Will’s shoulders rose and fell. “I wouldn’t hazard a guess what she knew or didn’t know. Maybe he convinced her that he’d changed his ways.” He glanced at Augusta and Amelia. “Although from what I’m hearing now, it sounds like he actually might’ve gotten worse. He didn’t hurt either of you girls, did he?”

  Amelia said, “No, he just made some suggestive comments…after he had gotten us alone under false pretenses.”

  “But we shot him down pretty quick,” Augusta said. “No harm, no foul.”

  I hadn’t seen Maura Kelley since right after the discovery of her husband’s body. I asked Will, “Do you know what’s happened to Kelley’s wife?”

  Will’s face grew more solemn as he nodded. “I heard that since she collapsed, she’s been held under guard in one of the rooms upstairs. Lieutenant Farraday has a deputy outside the door. That’s what Ralston said, anyway.”

  “If she knew that her husband was carrying on with other women and had been ever since she was his student, she either accepted his behavior or finally got so sick of it that she couldn’t stand it anymore.”

  Will frowned at me. “Are you saying you think Maura killed him?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” I answered honestly. “But it seems to me she’d have as good a motive as anybody.”

  Will nodded slowly as he thought it over. “I suppose you’re right. Maura never struck me as the violent type, but she does play Scarlett O’Hara, and Scarlett was capable of doing just about anything she thought she had to do.”

  I wasn’t sure that the role Maura Kelley played had any bearing on this case, but for all I knew, Will was right.

  Before I could think about it anymore, Luke came up to us. He had already been searched, too, he explained, and so had Wilson Cobb, who trailed after him.

  I was introducing Luke and Mr. Cobb to Will when Augusta’s turn came to be searched. Making a face, she went into the cloakroom with the two female deputies. When she came back out a few minutes later, her features were red. I knew it must have been a bad experience, because it took a lot to make Augusta blush.

  Looking nervous, Amelia went in next. She was blushing even more than her sister when she emerged from the cloakroom. “Watch out for that brunette deputy, Aunt Delilah,” she whispered to me. “I think she may have Sapphic tendencies.”

  I thought Amelia was probably overreacting, and after being searched myself, I knew that was true. Both deputies were professional about it. Brusque, uncomfortably thorough, and a mite humiliating, but not unprofessional.

  I came out of the cloakroom and rejoined my little group, which was drifting off toward one of the walls now that the deputies were through with us. The girls and I had been toward the rear of the women’s line, and it took only a few more minutes for the deputies to wrap everything up. As far as I could tell, they hadn’t found any of the missing items, although they had confiscated all the cell phones that the thief, whomever he was, hadn’t gotten around to stealing before all hell broke loose.

  A disgusted Lieutenant Farraday faced the crowd in the ballroom and said, “I’m sorry to report that we didn’t find any of the s
tolen property, but we’ll keep looking. I’ll be honest with you, though, that’s not as high a priority as catching whoever murdered Steven Kelley.”

  Edmond Ralston spoke up. “It’s nearly midnight, Lieutenant. How much longer are you going to keep us penned up like cattle in this ballroom?”

  “I think the furnishings here are a little more comfortable than in a corral, Mr. Ralston…but I know what you mean. You already had rooms arranged for the guests who were taking Ms. Dickinson’s tour, correct?”

  Ralston nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Are there enough bedrooms to accommodate the actors who put on the show, too?”

  Ralston rubbed his chin and frowned in thought. After a moment he said, “We can probably crowd everybody in, especially if some people are willing to double up.”

  Farraday nodded. “That’s what we’ll do, then. Figure out the arrangements and let me know the details. I’ll want a list of who’s in which room.”

  “You mean you’re still not going to allow anyone to leave?” Ralston sounded flabbergasted, and the angry mutters from some people in the crowd showed that the reaction was widespread.

  “There’s an excellent chance that the person who murdered Steven Kelley is still in this house. Until I’m certain that’s not the case, I’d prefer to have everyone stay here.”

  Farraday left unsaid the fact that it wasn’t just a preference on his part; it was an order.

  “So we’re stuck here,” Augusta said.

  “Cut off from the outside world,” Amelia said. “Like the people in an English country house mystery. Like something out of Agatha Christie.”

  “But we’re not in England,” Augusta said. “And this is a plantation. I thought Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With the Wind, not Agatha Christie.”

  “Margaret Mitchell never wrote anything like this,” I said.

  CHAPTER 15

  Accompanied by Lieutenant Farraday, Ralston went upstairs to try to figure out the sleeping arrangements. A few minutes later, one of the deputies came over to me and said, “The lieutenant wants you upstairs, ma’am.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re Ms. Dickinson, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but what does Lieutenant Farraday want with me?”

  “I dunno, ma’am, he just called down on the radio and said to get you and bring you upstairs.”

  That didn’t bode well. I looked at the girls, Luke, Will, and Mr. Cobb and shrugged, then followed the deputy. There wasn’t anything else I could do.

  The deputy took me out of the ballroom and down the hall to the main entrance of the plantation house, where a grand curving staircase led from the foyer to the upper floors. As we started up the stairs, I had the wild idea that maybe Farraday and Ralston had found another body. Will had said that Maura Kelley was being held in one of the bedrooms. Maybe the killer had struck again, getting to her some way and murdering her, too, just like her husband. Maybe there was a knife-wielding maniac on the loose in the house….

  And maybe I was letting my imagination get the best of me, I told myself. As we reached the second-floor landing and I saw Lieutenant Farraday and Edmond Ralston standing in the long corridor that had bedrooms on either side of it, I took a couple of deep breaths to settle myself down. Neither man looked like he had just discovered a second corpse.

  “Thanks for coming up, Ms. Dickinson,” Farraday said—like I’d had any choice in the matter. “We need your help with something. You have a list of all the guests on your tour, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Maybe you can help us work out who can double up in a room so that we can fit everybody in.”

  I managed not to heave a sigh of relief. Administrative details like that, I could handle, as long as I didn’t remind myself that the only reason there was a shortage of rooms was because everybody was a suspect in Steven Kelley’s murder and had to stay at the plantation tonight.

  At least for tonight, I reminded myself. I’d heard that most murders are solved in the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours, if they’re ever going to be solved. The cops break cold cases every now and then, but those occurrences are rare. What if Farraday didn’t find the killer tonight or tomorrow? I had this sudden wild vision of all of us being stuck here from now on as Farraday conducted a never-ending investigation. The men would all have long white beards, and I’d be a little old lady.

  A tiny shiver went through me, and I shook my head to banish those thoughts. Farraday couldn’t keep us all locked up here indefinitely. It wasn’t even legally possible.

  I nodded and told Farraday, “That list is in my briefcase, which is in the room where I was supposed to stay. I can get it for you.”

  “Thanks. Deputy Morton will go with you.”

  The deputy who had brought me upstairs walked down the hall beside me to my room. Like in a hotel, the bedroom doors all locked, and each guest had a key to his or her room. My key was in my pocket.

  At least, I hoped it was. As I reached for it, I was reminded of my missing cell phone. Maybe my room key was gone, too.

  But it wasn’t. I used the key to unlock the door, went into the room, and retrieved the client list from my briefcase. Out of habit, I turned the case so that Deputy Morton couldn’t see as I worked the combination locks to open it. When I closed the lid, I reset the locks.

  We rejoined Farraday and Ralston, and I handed over the list. “I can make a suggestion to start with,” I said. “There are two queen-size beds in my nieces’ room. I can move in there with them. That’ll free up my room.”

  Farraday nodded. “All right. I hope everyone is as cooperative as you’re being, Ms. Dickinson.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” I warned him. “And I’m not known for bein’ all that cooperative myself. I guess this is just your lucky night, Lieutenant.”

  He sighed, obviously thinking about the murder and a killer being on the loose. “Yeah. Lucky.”

  It took close to an hour to get everything sorted out so that everyone could be accommodated in the bedrooms on the second and third floors of the plantation house. That meant it was well after midnight before deputies began escorting small groups of people upstairs, either to the rooms where they’d originally been assigned to stay, or to the new rooms they’d be sharing with other guests.

  Nobody felt like a guest anymore, though. They all felt like prisoners, and I couldn’t blame them for that. Even though the rooms here in the plantation house were comfortable, bordering on luxurious, everyone was aware that they couldn’t leave. That made them nervous, angry, and frustrated.

  I was moving my stuff into the room I’d be sharing with Augusta and Amelia when Wilson Cobb called my name from down the hallway. He came toward me with one of the deputies following him.

  “Miz Dickinson, this young fella says I can’t go home,” Mr. Cobb complained. “I wasn’t even here when that killin’ took place. I don’t see why I should have to stay.”

  “Because the lieutenant says you got to,” the deputy explained in a tone of strained patience.

  “He’s not holdin’ all those TV reporters who showed up not long after I did,” Mr. Cobb pointed out.

  That was true, but the TV reporters weren’t leaving, anyway. Farraday had succeeded in banishing them from the inside of the house, but their news trucks with the satellite dishes on their roofs were still parked out front. Some of the cameramen had tried to sneak around to the garden to get live shots of the murder scene itself, but Farraday had put a stop to that, too. Pretty much everything except the long, tree-lined drive was off limits to the TV people. Farraday considered the whole plantation to be a crime scene.

  “I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Cobb,” I said. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up, though. I don’t have any more influence with the lieutenant than anybody else.”

  That was true, too. I had a feeling that, to Lieutenant Farraday, I was just another murder suspect. He would feel that way about everybody until he nabbed the real
killer.

  I finished putting my bags in the girls’ room. Augusta and Amelia were already there, getting ready for bed. They had the resilience of youth, but even they looked tired. It had been a long day, and I guess falling under suspicion of being a killer is enough to wear anybody out, even teenagers.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told them. “I have to go talk to Lieutenant Farraday.”

  “Something about the murder?” Amelia asked.

  I shook my head. “No. He won’t let Mr. Cobb go home, and I thought I’d see if I could convince him he ought to. After all, Mr. Cobb wasn’t even here when Kelley was killed.”

  “I like him,” Augusta said. “He’s kind of grumpy, but in that lovable-old-man sort of way.”

  I knew what she meant. I felt the same way about Wilson Cobb.

  I stepped back out into the hall and looked both ways along it. People were going in and out of their rooms, getting situated so that they could settle down for the night. A lot of grumbling and complaining was still going on. A couple of deputies were posted in the hallway to keep an eye on things. I figured that Farraday would have guards on duty all night to make sure that nobody tried to slip out.

  I approached one of the deputies and asked if he knew where Lieutenant Farraday was. He nodded toward the landing and the curving staircase and said, “Downstairs in the command post, ma’am.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “The ballroom.”

  “Thanks.” I turned and started toward the stairs.

  “Wait a minute, ma’am.” The deputy’s voice was sharp and commanding.

  I paused and looked back over my shoulder, halfway expecting to see him reaching for a Taser—or a gun.

  Instead he just looked worried. “The lieutenant said nobody was supposed to leave this floor until he gave the word, ma’am.”

  “You know I worked with the lieutenant and Mr. Ralston arranging rooms for everybody, don’t you?” I didn’t figure that would confer any special status on me, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.