Huckleberry Finished:

by Livia J Washburn

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Dead Man Overboard! Delilah Dickinson's literary travel agency is a hit! But the latest package tour, a leisurely steamboat trip down Huckleberry Finn's Mississippi, delivered one dead passenger. As it turns out, Ben Webster made a few enemies before he expired by trying to slug a roulette dealer. Delilah knows the steamship's no-nonsense head of security definitely is dirty and low-down and just plain old mean. . .but could he be a murderer? Pretty soon her list of suspects is longer than the Mississippi is wide. . .not to mention she's taken quite a shine to Mark Twain himself--or rather Mark Lansing, the handsome actor playing Huck Finn's scribe for the tour. Of course, things just ain't never what they seem when Delilah's at the helm, and one tricky murder turns into two and things start to get pretty dicey on yonder steamboat. Hopefully Delilah can nab the killer before she's too many fathoms deep. . . Praise for Livia J. Washburn and Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead "Amusing, breathlessly quick." -- Publishers Weekly "Gone with the Wind fans will cozy up to this tale." -- Mystery Scene "Liva J. Washburn's mysteries are among the best." -- Mystery News

Release date: November 1, 2010

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 253

Sample

Mark Twain once wrote, “I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then…the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun.”

As I stood at the railing of the Southern Belle, I knew what he meant. I had seldom seen anything quite so beautiful and serene as the great river. Sure, the scenery along the banks wasn’t as pristine and unspoiled as it was back in Twain’s day. I could see tall fast-food signs and electrical lines and jets winging across the blue summer sky. But out here in the middle of the river all I could hear were the gentle rumble of the boat’s engines and the splashing of the paddlewheels as they propelled us through the water at a sedate pace. I felt the faint vibrations of the engine through the deck, and the sun was warm on my face. If you closed your eyes, I thought, it would almost seem like you were really back there and Sam Clemens himself was up in the pilothouse, guiding the riverboat toward the next quaint little river town where it would dock.

And then somebody’s dadgum cell phone rang.

“Yellll-o!”

That’s the way he said it, swear to God.

“Yeah, guess where we are?…We’re on a riverboat!…Yeah, on the Mississippi. Helen wanted to come. But it’s so freakin’ slow, I think I could walk faster! Haw, haw!”

My hands tightened on the smooth, polished wood of the railing. I figured I’d better hold on, because a good travel agent never punches her clients. That’s one of the first rules they teach you.

“What?…No, damn it, I told him those reports had to be finished by yesterday…What’s he been doing this whole time, sitting around with his thumb up his—”

I couldn’t let him go on. I turned around and said, “Sir!”

He looked surprised at the interruption. He was a big guy, balding, with the beginnings of a beer gut in a polo shirt. Played college football, from the looks of him, but that was more than twenty years in the past. Beside him, wearing a visor, sunglasses, a sleeveless blue blouse, and baggy white shorts, was a blond woman carrying a big straw purse and a long-suffering look. She was married to the loudmouth, more than likely.

He said, “Hold on, Larry,” into the cell phone, then took it away from his ear. “Yeah? What can I do for you?”

About a dozen other members of my tour group had lined up along the railing. I gestured vaguely toward them and said, “These folks are tryin’ to, you know, soak up the ambience of the river, and your business conversation is a little jarring.”

“I’m sorry”—he didn’t sound like he meant it—“but I got a crisis on my hands here.”

“I understand that. Maybe you could go inside to talk to your associate.”

He shook his head. “My crappy phone won’t work in there. I’m barely getting any reception out here.” He put the crappy phone back to his ear and went on, “Larry, you still there? You tell that worthless little weasel to get those reports done by the end of the day or he’s fired! You got that? And if any of this comes back on my head, he ain’t gonna be the only one, capeesh?”

I didn’t know whether to be mad at him for ignoring me or flabbergasted at the guy’s language. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard anybody say “Capeesh?”

“Yeah, yeah, you and Holloway both know where you can put your excuses. Just take care of it.”

He snapped the phone closed, looked at me, raised his eyebrows, and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, Now are you satisfied, lady?

I managed to say, “Thank you.”

He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and moved off down the railing toward the stern.

His wife lingered long enough to say, “I’m sorry, Ms. Dickinson. Eddie’s just very devoted to his business.”

“That’s all right, Mrs. Kramer,” I told her. I had finally remembered their names. “I understand.”

I didn’t, not really, but that’s what you tell people anyway. I didn’t understand why people would pay good money to take a vacation and then bring their work with them. I was devoted to my business, too, but if I were getting away from it, I’d get as far away as I could and stay there until it was time to go home.

Louise Kramer smiled at me and then followed her husband along the deck. He had already opened his phone and was talking on it again, but at least he wasn’t disturbing the other members of the group as much.

The Southern Belle had started upriver from St. Louis about an hour earlier, after the forty members of my tour group had gotten together for lunch at a restaurant not far from the riverfront. I had booked a private room so that we could eat together, and then everyone had gotten up and introduced himself or herself. I don’t think that everybody who goes on one of my tours has to be all buddy-buddy with the other clients, but since we were all going to be together on a relatively small boat for the next twenty-four hours I didn’t think it would hurt for them to get to know each other. After all, some people go on vacation tours hoping that they’ll meet someone who’ll turn out to be special in their lives.

Most folks, though, just want the scenery and the history. And, in the case of the Southern Belle, the gambling. The side-wheeler was a floating casino.

Casino gambling is legal in most places up and down the Mississippi River, and there are numerous riverboats devoted to that purpose. Most of them are permanently docked, however. Some even have the engines gutted out so that they’ll never move again, at least not under their own power.

The Southern Belle was a little different. Built in the late nineteenth century, it had been lovingly restored and refurbished under the supervision of its current owner, a real estate mogul named Charles Gallister. From what I’d heard, he owned half the shopping centers in the greater St. Louis area.

In addition to being a very successful businessman, he was a Mark Twain buff. Because of his interest in the man some consider to be the greatest American author, Gallister had bought the riverboat and set up these overnight cruises to Hannibal, Missouri, the town where young Sam Clemens had grown up.

Gallister had the golden touch in more than real estate, too. Rumor had it that he was making a small fortune from the gambling that took place on the Southern Belle.

All I knew for sure was that it was a powerful draw. When I decided to add the riverboat cruise to the list of literary-oriented tours that my little agency in Atlanta books, I hadn’t had any trouble filling it up. This was the first time my clients had gone on the tour, so I figured I’d better come along, too, just to make sure there were no glitches. I had flown to St. Louis, leaving my daughter and son-in-law back in Atlanta to hold down the fort at the office.

I had been running tours like this for nearly a year. Thanks to a suggestion from a friend of mine, an English professor named Will Burke, I had concentrated on tours with some sort of literary angle. The Gone With the Wind tour, which included an overnight stay at a working plantation designed to resemble Tara from the book and the movie, was the most popular. Which sort of surprised me considering the fact that there had been a couple of murders on the plantation the very first time I ran the tour.

Since then I’d been a little leery of trouble every time I added a new tour to my list, but so far everything had gone smoothly. I didn’t have any reason to expect that this riverboat cruise would be any different.

Laughter from the tourists attracted my attention. I turned to see a man in a rumpled white suit ambling along the deck. He had a shock of white hair, a bushy white mustache, and carried an unlit cigar in his hand. He nodded to the tourists and said, “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class…except Congress.”

That brought more laughter and applause. The white-suited man waved his cigar in acknowledgment and went on, “I’ll be dispensing more of the wit and wisdom of the immortal Mark Twain tonight in the salon, at eight o’clock. Thank you.”

The tourists applauded again. The Twain impersonator continued along the deck, coming toward me. He stayed in character for the most part, stooping over, shuffling his feet, and walking like an old man.

He greeted me with a nod and said in his gruff Twain voice, “Good afternoon, young lady.”

“Hello, Mr. Twain,” I said. I held out my hand to him. “I’m Delilah Dickinson. I put together one of the tour groups on the boat.”

He took my hand. His hand was a giveaway that he wasn’t as old as the character he was playing. His grip was that of a much younger man.

“Very pleased to meet you, Ms. Dickinson. I quite fancy redheaded women, you know. I’m Samuel Langhorne Clemens.”

“You know, I can almost believe that,” I told him with a smile. “You’ve got the look and the voice down.”

He waved the cigar. “Thank you, thank you.” He leaned closer and half whispered, “You can’t tell that I’m new at the job?”

That took me by surprise. He looked and sounded like he’d been playing Mark Twain for a long time.

“Not at all,” I told him. “You must be a quick study.”

He shrugged. “I have some acting experience.” His real voice was also that of a younger man. “My name actually is Mark…Mark Lansing.”

“I’m pleased to meet Mr. Lansing as well as Mr. Twain.”

I was happy that he’d referred to me as a young lady, too. When you get to be my age, which I refer to as the late mumbly-mumblies, and you’re divorced and have a grown, married daughter, you don’t often feel all that young. I was just vain enough to enjoy the attention from Mark Lansing, even though in reality he might be younger than me.

“Will you be attending my performance tonight?” he asked.

“I hadn’t really thought about it—”

“I’d appreciate it if you would. I could use a friendly face in the audience. Like I said, I’m new at this.”

“Well, all right, sure. I’ll be there,” I promised.

“I hope you won’t be disappointed.” He lifted a hand in farewell. “I have to circulate among the other decks and the casino. See you later.”

He shuffled off—not to Buffalo—and I went over to the members of my tour group who had gathered along the rail to ask them if anybody had any questions or needed any help with anything. Nobody did.

That gave me a chance to go back to my cabin for a few minutes and call the office. Unlike Eddie Kramer’s cell phone, mine worked just fine inside the boat.

Luke Edwards, my son-in-law, answered. “Dickinson Literary Tours.”

“Hey, Luke, it’s me.”

“Miz D! Are you on the riverboat?”

“I sure am. Everything’s going just fine, too. I met Mark Twain a few minutes ago.”

“Really? The guy who wrote Huckleberry Finn?” Luke hesitated. “Wait a minute. He’s dead. He can’t be on that riverboat.”

“No, but an actor playing him is.”

“Oh. That makes sense, I guess.”

“Is Melissa there?” Luke is big and handsome and charming as all get-out with the clients, but Melissa has a lot better head for business.

“No, she’s gone to the office supply place to pick up some stuff.”

“Any problems since I’ve been gone?”

“Uh, Miz D, you only left this morning. We’ve been able to manage just fine for the past five hours.”

“I know, I know. Anybody else sign up for that New Orleans tour yet?”

“Nope. Of course, I haven’t checked the Web site in the past five minutes. Somebody could’ve e-mailed us about it.”

“Why don’t you do that?”

“Right now? Really?”

I sighed. “No, you’re right. I need to just relax and enjoy this tour I’m on. What’s the point in being a travel agent if you can’t get some fun out of it yourself?”

“That’s it exactly. Just relax and let us take care of everything here. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

“All right. Tell Melissa I called, okay?”

“Will do. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“I won’t. Love ya both.”

“Love you, too,” he told me. I knew he meant it. They were good kids, both of them.

I closed my cell phone and slipped it back in the pocket of my blazer. Real estate agents and tour guide leaders would be lost without blazers. And everything was going along so smoothly that I was sort of at a loss to know what to do next.

I know, I know. I couldn’t have jinxed myself any worse than by thinking such a thing. That realization occurred to me just as somebody knocked on the door of my cabin.

I was muttering something to myself about being nine different kinds of darned fool when I opened the door and saw one of the riverboat’s stewards standing just outside my cabin, which opened onto the deck.

“Ms. Dickinson, ma’am?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s a, uh, problem with one of the members of your tour group in the casino’s main room. Could you come with me?”

“Sure,” I said. “Lead the way.” As we hurried along the deck I asked, “What sort of trouble?” I had visions of somebody winning a jackpot and having a heart attack, or something like that.

“I couldn’t really say, ma’am. Mr. Rafferty just asked me to see if I could find you. One of the members of your group told me you’d gone to your cabin.”

He wasn’t claiming not to know what the trouble was; he just wasn’t allowed to tell me. That’s what it sounded like, anyway.

“Who’s this fella Rafferty?”

“Mr. Rafferty’s the head of security for the Southern Belle.”

Uh-oh. There went the hope that this was something minor and easily brushed aside. The head of security didn’t get involved unless the problem was an important one.

We came to a set of fancy double doors with lots of gleaming wood, gilt curlicues, and stained glass. They opened into a foyer with parquet flooring and several windows where pretty girls sat at cash registers. Gamblers bought chips there for the various games and cashed them in when they were done. If they were lucky enough to have any winnings, that is. The unlucky ones just came back and bought more chips.

On the other side of the foyer was the casino’s main room. It looked just like what you’d see in a Vegas casino, only on a smaller scale. A couple dozen slot machines instead of hundreds. Poker tables, roulette wheels, faro layouts. Garish lighting. Music blaring from concealed speakers. Laughter, smoke, the chunk-chunk-chunk of slot machine wheels turning over, the clicking of the little white ball dancing merrily around the roulette wheel, the occasional whoop of triumph or groan of despair…It was a seductive atmosphere, all right, but it seemed as far removed from the sedate and stately Mississippi as if it had been on the moon.

The steward nervously touched my arm to guide me across the room. “This way, ma’am.”

“Where are we going?”

“The security office, ma’am.”

That’s what I had figured. Somebody was being detained.

I hoped they weren’t about to boot whoever it was off the boat.

The steward took me to a nondescript metal door. The short hallway behind it was strictly functional. It ended at some carpeted stairs that led up to the next deck. At the top of the stairs was a large open area equipped with numerous computers and monitors. A low, almost inaudible hum filled the air. The feeds from all the security cameras on board wound up here, I assumed. None of the men and women sitting at the monitors looked around as the steward took me to another door. He knocked on this one.

“Come in,” a man called.

The office on the other side of the door was spacious and comfortably furnished with a big desk, a leather-covered sofa, a plasma TV hanging on the wall, and a window that looked out on the river. Two men waited in the office, one on the sofa, the other behind the desk. Both of them stood up when I came in. The one behind the desk was deliberate about it. The one on the sofa jumped to his feet.

“Ms. Dickinson,” the one from the sofa said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

I remembered him from the luncheon in St. Louis earlier that afternoon. “What’s happened here, Mr. Webster?” I asked him.

His name was Ben Webster. He was in his mid to late twenties, I’d say, with fairly close-cropped dark hair and what seemed to be a perpetually solemn expression. His age and the fact that he was traveling alone made him a little unusual for one of my clients. I get a lot of families and middle-aged and older couples. Not to overgeneralize, but most young men these days aren’t that interested in seeing where Mark Twain or Margaret Mitchell or Tennessee Williams lived and worked.

Which meant that Ben Webster was probably here for the gambling, so I wasn’t particularly surprised to find him in the casino. I was surprised that he seemed to be in trouble, though. He had seemed like a nice, polite young man in the short time we had talked together at lunch. He even reminded me a little of Luke.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t let it pass,” he said now. “That roulette wheel is rigged. I saw the man working it run his finger over the same little mark on the table several times while it was spinning, and then all the big bets lost. There must be a pressure switch of some sort there, or maybe an optical one built into the table.”

The man behind the desk let Webster get his complaint out without saying anything. But he wore a tolerant smile and shook his head slowly while the young man spoke.

When Webster was finished, the man stepped out from behind the desk and extended a big hand toward me. “Ms. Dickinson, I’m Logan Rafferty, the head of security for the Southern Belle. I’m sorry we couldn’t meet under more pleasant circumstances.”

Like his hand, which pretty much swallowed mine whole, the rest of Logan Rafferty was big. He was about forty, with a brown brush cut, and although he wore an expensive suit, he looked like he’d be just as much at home working as a bouncer in a roadhouse somewhere. The afternoon sunlight that came in through the window winked on a heavy ring he wore.

“What seems to be the trouble here, Mr. Rafferty?”

He inclined his head toward Ben Webster. “As you just heard, a member of your tour group has a complaint about the way the games are run in the casino. I assure you, all our games are conducted in an honest, legitimate manner.” A faint smile appeared on his face. “As you may know, the odds always favor the house to start with. We see no need to tilt them even more.”

“. . .