Читать книгу Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead - Livia J Washburn - Страница 12

The gray-haired man came back into the ballroom a few minutes after the paramedics removed the body of Steven Kelley. He was trailed by a couple of deputies, one of whom asked in a loud voice for everyone’s attention. When he had it, the gray-haired man stepped forward and spoke.

“My name is Timothy Farraday. I’m an investigator for the sheriff’s department.”

That confirmed my guess about him being a detective.

“I’m sorry for any inconvenience, but my men and I will be taking statements from all of you before you’ll be allowed to return to your rooms this evening.”

One of the actors—I think he was supposed to be a Tarleton twin—said, “That’s fine for them.” He gestured toward the guests who had come there on the tour. “But what about the ones who just work here? Can’t we go home?”

Timothy Farraday shook his head. “Not yet. Sorry.”

He didn’t sound particularly apologetic. The irritated, impatient muttering that greeted his answer didn’t appear to bother him, either.

“Everyone just be patient, and we’ll get to you as soon as we can.”

Farraday headed for Maura Kelley, the murdered man’s wife, and led her out of the ballroom. Her face was pale and her eyes were red, but she appeared to have stopped crying. In fact, she had that overly calm look that said the shock was really beginning to settle in on her. While Farraday was doing that, two of the other deputies picked someone else to question, and the others kept an eye on the rest of us.

“They’re going to fingerprint us,” Amelia said. “I just know they are.”

“It’ll be fun,” Augusta said.

“If that’s your idea of fun—”

“That’s enough,” I said. I had already decided that I wasn’t going to let either of the girls be interrogated unless I was there. They were minors, after all.

Luke whispered to me, “I bet they do fingerprint us. You know they got some latents off that knife.”

I looked at him. “Latents?” I knew what he meant, but his use of the technical term surprised me.

“Yeah…Hey, I watch TV, Miz D. I know all about that kind of stuff.”

He wasn’t the only one. I’d read that, because of the popularity of forensics-based police procedural series, people thought they knew so much that it was making life difficult for real-life detectives and prosecutors. Juries expected a ton of forensic evidence, all of it as conclusive as what they saw on TV, and when they didn’t get it, they were less inclined to convict a defendant.

One thing about TV, though: no matter how realistic they make the corpses look these days—and they’re usually pretty dad-gummed gruesome—when you’re watching it there’s a part of your brain that always knows it’s just a TV show. You can tell yourself it’s not real, that it’s just make-believe, an actor made up to look dead.

Well, Steven Kelley had been an actor, but there was nothing make-believe about the blood on his clothes or the pasty, fish-belly look of his skin or the sightless, staring eyes. The real thing always looks different from what you see on the screen.

The angry muttering in the ballroom grew louder as more time went by. The hour was getting kind of late. The fancy dress ball would have been over by now, and the guests would have all retired to their rooms for the night. The people who actually lived here, like Edmond Ralston and possibly his daughter, would have gone to their own quarters, and the actors would be on their way home.

Instead, the burly deputies made sure that no one left the ballroom, even the people who had already given statements. Timothy Farraday obviously thought there was a good chance the killer was still here—a reasonable assumption, I suppose—and he wanted to make sure that he didn’t let a murderer slip through his fingers.

Eventually, he got around to me, coming across the ballroom and saying as he walked up, “Ms. Dickinson?”

“I’m Delilah Dickinson,” I told him.

“Would you come with me, please?”

I hesitated and made a motion toward Augusta and Amelia. “These are my nieces.”

Farraday smiled, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. “And they’re lovely young ladies. Would you come with me, please?”

“They’re minors. I don’t want any of your men questioning them while I’m not there.”

His eyebrows rose. “And why is that?”

“Yeah, Aunt Delilah,” Augusta said. “Why’s that?”

I suddenly realized that I’d made it sound to Farraday like the girls might have something to hide. That was ridiculous, of course. They couldn’t have possibly had anything to do with Steven Kelley’s murder, and since they’d been inside when it happened, they couldn’t even be of any value as witnesses.

I guess I’ve always been just a wee bit too stubborn for my own good, though, because I said, “I just don’t think it would be right. They’re not of legal age.”

“And they’re not being charged with anything.” Farraday’s voice had a patient tone to it, as if he were explaining something to a child—or somebody too dumb to understand what he was talking about. “We’re just taking statements, Ms. Dickinson, not officially questioning anyone yet.” He paused, then with weary patience asked for the third time, “Would you come with me, please?”

I didn’t see any way around it. I turned to Luke and said, “Keep an eye on the girls.”

He nodded. “Will do, Miz D.”

I followed Farraday out of the ballroom and down a hall to another room. He stood by the open door and ushered me through it.

“Right in here, please.”

This was an office with a couple of good-sized desks and some filing cabinets. I figured Edmond Ralston ran the business of the plantation from here, or rather, employees of the management company he used did.

Farraday motioned me into a leather chair in front of one of the desks and took the chair in front of the other desk, rather than sitting behind either of them. As he slipped a notebook and a pen from his jacket pocket, he said, “Mr. Ralston is being kind enough to let us use this office.”

I nodded toward the notebook and pen in his hands. “Sort of low tech, isn’t it?”

He chuckled, and for the first time this evening he seemed genuinely amused. “I’m a low-tech sort of guy.” That moment of good humor lasted only a second, and then he was all business again. “Now, if you would, tell me everything you remember about what happened tonight.”

“You mean after the body was discovered?” I was anxious in one way to tell him about Elliott Riley finding the body, reluctant in another. I was running a business after all.

Farraday shook his head. “No, start before that. In fact, since you’re in charge of the tour, why don’t you back up all the way to the time you and your clients arrived here at the plantation and take it from there.”

I stared at him. “That was this morning.”

He nodded. “I know.”

I had already figured out that he wasn’t the sort of fella who could be talked out of anything very easily, so I took a deep breath and then launched into as detailed an account as I could remember of the day’s activities. I actually went back further than he had asked, explaining how the bus driven by Mr. Cobb had picked up the tourists at their hotels and motels to bring them out here. Farraday wrote something down, and I figured it was Mr. Cobb’s name. That probably meant he’d be questioned, too, the poor man, and I felt bad about dragging him into this.

From there I went over the details of the tour, and after a few minutes I started to feel like I was giving a sales pitch, not being questioned by the authorities. Farraday didn’t seem to mind, though. He kept taking notes, occasionally interrupting me to ask a question and get something straight. I reached the part where the ball started, but I didn’t say anything about the conversation I’d had with Dr. Will Burke. It didn’t seem the least bit relevant.

“Then I heard some sort of commotion going on and went to see what it was all about. Mr. Riley was yelling and pointing out into the garden. He said, ‘He’s out there,’ or something like that.”

“What did you think he meant by that?”

I took a deep breath. “Well, Mr. Riley had something on his hands, and it looked like blood to me, so the first thing I thought…I thought he’d gotten into a fight with Mr. Mueller again.”

Farraday’s eyebrows were a little bushy. Not prominently so, just a little more than normal. They climbed up his forehead now.

“Who’s Mr. Mueller?”

That opened up a whole new can of worms, as the old saying goes, so I had to explain about the trouble at the museum the day before. “There was bad blood between those two, so I thought they’d been tusslin’ again. I was afraid that maybe this time Mr. Riley had really hurt Mr. Mueller, because of the blood and all, you know. So Luke and I hurried out there to see what had happened.”

Farraday consulted his notebook. “That would be Luke Edwards, your assistant?”

I smiled. “He’s my son-in-law, too.”

“Okay. So you thought you’d find this man Mueller out in the garden, maybe hurt. How’d you feel about that?”