Huckleberry Finished (20 page)

At the same time, Rafferty denied killing Ben Webster, and as far as I could see, he wouldn't have any reason to lie about that to his own partner in crime, which Williams obviously was. If that was true, who had killed Webster?

I lay there trying to keep my breathing even so they'd think I was still out cold, and as I did I thought back over everything that had happened since I came on board the
Southern Belle.
I would have said that as much as I'd mulled over all the facts of both cases during the past day and a half, I must have considered every conceivable possibility, every theory no matter how far-fetched….

But then I realized there was one theory that had never crossed my mind. One question with an obvious answer that I had overlooked. One answer that tied everything together while, unfortunately, raising even more questions.

Those new questions would never be answered unless I could get out of here somehow. A part of me still wanted to panic, to start crying and begging for mercy, but I knew Rafferty didn't have any mercy to give. He had proven that with the callous way he had gotten rid of Hannah Kramer once she realized that the roulette wheel in the casino was crooked. Had she tried to cut herself in on the action? That didn't seem likely to me, but I didn't know. Maybe she had thought Garvey was working the scheme on his own and had reported him to Rafferty, never realizing until it was too late that Garvey was working for Rafferty. At this late date, that didn't really matter. All that was important was that Rafferty was a killer—and he planned on getting rid of me next.

So, no, I couldn't beg for mercy. I had to get away somehow, or get help to come to me.

All those thoughts had gone through my head in a matter of seconds. Williams said, “If you didn't kill Webster, who did?”

“I don't know and I don't care, except that it got that bitch cop nosing around. Still, she's got no idea what's really been going on, and as long as the casino's closed down, she won't find out.”

Williams snapped, “The casino can stay closed down, as far as I'm concerned. It's bad enough that this beautiful old boat was turned into Gallister's own private, floating brothel.”

Yeah, he was old-fashioned, all right. Old-fashioned enough to let his resentment over Gallister using the riverboat for philandering justify his own involvement in Rafferty's crooked gambling operation. I had wanted to like and respect Captain Williams, but not anymore. He couldn't justify Hannah Kramer's murder.

Rafferty gave a harsh laugh. “You weren't too proud to take your cut from the money we made,” he said, echoing the sentiment that had just gone through my head. I can't tell you how much it bothered me that Logan Rafferty and I would think alike about
anything
. “Look, keep your head in the sand if you want to,” he went on. “I don't care. Just let me take care of things.”

“What are you…what are you going to do with her?”

“I haven't decided yet, but I'll make it look like an accident, you can count on that.”

“Like you did with Hannah Kramer?”

“That would have looked like an accident, damn it, if that nosy passenger hadn't spotted her in the water too soon. That wasn't my fault.”

“No,” Williams said. “Nothing is ever your fault, is it?”

Maybe they would argue so much that a fight would break out between them, I thought desperately, even though I knew it was unlikely that Williams would want to take on a bruiser like Rafferty. But if that happened, maybe I could use the distraction to jump up and try to get away. If I could just get out of the pilothouse, I planned to start yelling my lungs out.

They didn't start fighting, though. Instead, Williams went on, “Ms. Dickinson has been spending quite a bit of time with Lansing, that actor who plays Mark Twain in the salon. If she disappears, he's liable to start looking for her.”

“I'm not worried about some damn actor,” Rafferty said with contempt in his voice. “If he gives us any trouble, he can disappear, too.”

“Yes, just kill everyone. That's an excellent solution to our problems.”

Rafferty laughed again. “What's that old saying? They can only hang me once.”

Even though I like to think I'm not a violent person at heart, the mental image of Rafferty at the end of a rope was pretty appealing right then. But even stronger was the worry and fear I felt for Mark. Because Williams was right: Mark would try to find out what had happened to me. And even though Rafferty was underestimating him, I wasn't convinced that Mark was really a match for him.

Even as upset as I was, I heard the faint noise that came from somewhere nearby. I opened one eye the narrowest crack and found that my head was turned toward the door into the pilothouse. I saw the knob turning ever so slowly, as if somebody was trying to open it without Rafferty and Williams hearing.

Mark!
That thought leaped into my mind. He had figured out somehow that I was being held prisoner up here, and he had come to rescue me. Normally I would think that I could take care of myself, thank you very much, and wasn't the sort of woman who needed rescuing—but under the circumstances I'd take any sort of knight right about now, even one in tinfoil armor.

But then Rafferty said, “What the hell was that?” and started to turn toward the door.

Without thinking too much about what I was doing, I groaned and pushed myself onto my hands and knees, like a person who has suddenly regained consciousness. I crawled toward the other side of the pilothouse, trying to draw their attention away from the door.

It worked. Rafferty snapped, “Damn it, she's awake! Grab her!”

“You grab her!” Williams said.

Neither of them grabbed me, although Rafferty took a long step toward me. Still groaning to cover up any sounds the door made as it opened, I reached a chart table against the wall and took hold of it. I used it to steady myself as I climbed shakily to my feet. The shakiness wasn't an act. I was dizzy from being knocked out. The room spun crazily around me.

But I could see well enough to recognize not Mark, but rather Vince Mallory, as he stepped into the pilothouse, leveled a gun at Williams and Rafferty, and said, “Don't move, either of you.”

R
elief didn't exactly flood through me, but just then I was glad to see Vince anyway.

The feeling didn't last long, because Rafferty grabbed my arm, jerked me in front of him like a human shield, and rushed at Vince, who couldn't fire without hitting me. We crashed together. The impact knocked Vince backward, and he almost toppled backward down the stairs. He flung out his free hand and grabbed the doorjamb just in time to keep from falling.

I twisted out of the way, but unfortunately, that gave Rafferty the room he needed to throw a roundhouse punch. His fist slammed into Vince's jaw. Somehow, Vince managed to hang on to the doorjamb. He lifted his leg and drove a kick into Rafferty's belly.

Earlier, I hadn't been able to do any good hitting Rafferty's stomach, which seemed as hard as a rock. Vince was stronger and trained for combat, though. His kick made Rafferty turn pale and stagger back a couple of steps. Vince leaped forward and swung the gun in his hand. It thudded hard against Rafferty's skull. Rafferty's eyes rolled up in his head as his knees unhinged. He crumpled to the pilothouse floor.

I made a leap for the door, but Vince was too fast for me. He caught the collar of my blouse and swung me back inside. I crashed against the chart table. Pain shot through my hip where I ran into the table. I slapped my hands against the table to keep from falling.

Vince leveled the gun at a stunned Captain Williams and said, “Call the engine room. Tell them to start getting up steam.”

Williams gawked at him for a second, then said, “We…we can't go anywhere. The police—”

“Don't worry about them,” Vince interrupted. “Just do what I told you.”

“But the mooring lines—”

“I've already cast off.” A faint smile appeared on Vince's face. “That's what I was doing, or I would have been up here sooner after I saw Rafferty manhandling Ms. Dickinson up the stairs.” Vince paused, then gave Rafferty a vicious kick to the ribs. I heard at least one of them crack under the impact. Rafferty groaned from the pain and stirred slightly but didn't regain consciousness.

“Young man—” Williams said.

Vince took a step toward him, thrusting the gun out so that the barrel stabbed almost between the captain's eyes. “Do it!” he ordered. “Get the engines started!”

Williams didn't have any color in his face anymore. He jerked his head in a nod and reached for the old-fashioned speaking tube that connected the pilothouse to the engine room. “We'll be leaving shortly,” he said. “Prepare the engines. Get up steam.”

As a matter of fact, I could already feel the boat moving a little more than usual, confirming that Vince had cast off the thick mooring ropes that held the
Southern Belle
to the dock. The Mississippi's inexorable current was tugging at it, but here along the shore it wasn't strong enough to sweep the boat out into the river. The engines would have to do that.

Vince glanced at me and said, “I hope I didn't hurt you, Ms. Dickinson. I couldn't have you running around the boat telling everybody what's going on, though. There's not much time left.”

“Time for what?” I asked. I had the glimmering of an idea, but that was all.

“Until the anniversary,” he said, and that was enough to make the remaining pieces of the puzzle slide together in my head and form a picture.

“You knew Hannah in St. Louis, didn't you?” I said. “You were dating her before she got involved with Gallister.”

“We were more than dating,” he snapped. “We were going to be married. Then she met that bastard Gallister, and his smarmy charm and all his money swept her away. If it hadn't been for him, we'd be a family by now, Hannah and the baby and me.”

“But Gallister got her the job on this riverboat, and then she forgot all about you, didn't she?” I wanted to keep him talking, both to understand fully what was going on here and to delay him from proceeding with whatever his plans were.

“That's right,” he admitted. “Gallister and this boat ruined everything.” He smiled again. “So I'm glad that Gallister is aboard. That was a stroke of luck. It saves me from having to settle with him later. I can take care of everything at once.”

“What about Hannah's parents?” I asked. “They're on board, too, you know. You can't have anything against them.”

His expression hardened. “They're to blame, too. Her father told her to move out if she wanted to. If she hadn't, she never would have wound up on this boat, one year ago tonight.”

“But if she hadn't moved out, you never would have met her in St. Louis,” I pointed out. “You should be thankful for that.”

He gave a little shake of his head, not like he was disagreeing with me but rather as if he was trying to make sense of everything. Then he scowled and said, “It doesn't make any difference. They were part of it. They have to pay like everybody else.”

The hatred he had been nursing ever since Hannah's death was too strong for him to let go of it, no matter what I said. He'd been in love, and he'd lost her, and everyone else was to blame, not him. I suddenly found myself wondering just how real the so-called love affair between him and Hannah really had been. Had they actually talked about marriage, or was that all in Vince Mallory's head? Was he really the father of Hannah's baby?

I didn't know, but all that could be sorted out later—if there
was
a later. I had a bad feeling about Vince's plans.

A quiver went through the floor under my feet. It came from the engines being fired up, I figured. A second later the speaking tube squawked, confirming that. Vince gestured toward it with the gun and told Williams, “Ask them how long until they have full power.”

Williams did as he was told, and whoever was down in the engine room reported that they'd have full steam in ten or fifteen minutes. I realized there was a clock mounted on the wall of the pilothouse. It was just past eight o'clock.

Mark's performance as Mark Twain would be getting under way in the salon.

Vince nodded. “That's good,” he told the captain. “Eight thirty-seven is the time.”

“Wh-what time?” Williams asked.

“The time of vengeance,” Vince said.

“The time Hannah died,” I said.

Vince glanced at me again. “One year ago, to the minute. Everyone for miles around will know that she's been avenged.”

Oh, Lordy, Lordy
, I thought. That sounded really bad. It takes a mighty big noise for folks to be able to hear it for miles around.

Like an explosion so powerful that it would blow an entire riverboat into little-bitty pieces of kindling.

“You weren't an MP at all, were you?” I guessed. “You were in demolitions. You and your buddy Ben, or whatever his name really was.”

His voice was sharp as he asked, “What did he tell you?”

“Don't worry, he didn't betray you. He didn't tell me anything about what you were planning to do.”

“It was only a matter of time,” Vince said bitterly. “He was getting cold feet. He said that all the people on board didn't deserve to die, that they hadn't had anything to do with what had happened to Hannah. He didn't understand that this was the only way I could be sure of punishing the ones who were really to blame.”

“He did it!” Williams cried in a voice ragged with panic. He pointed at the unconscious man on the floor. “Rafferty killed that girl! I had nothing to do with it!”

Vince looked down at Rafferty, and for a second I thought he was going to empty the gun into him. But then Vince shook his head and said, “It's too late to stop things now. Everybody has to pay. Gallister, Hannah's folks, this boat itself. This damn riverboat…”

“And when Ben didn't want to go along with that, you killed him,” I said. “That was your cabin he went to yesterday, but it wasn't an accident or a ruse to get away from me. He wanted to talk to you, to tell you that he was backing out of the deal you'd made with him.”

That was what I had realized earlier. I had never considered the possibility that there might be a connection between Webster and Vince. It had seemed to be pure chance that I had made Vince's acquaintance, and I had accepted it as that. Circumstances and his natural likeability—or his carefully calculated
pose
of natural likeability—had blinded me to what was really going on.

“Todd and I swore over there that we'd back each other up once we got home, just like we did in Iraq,” Vince said, his voice trembling with anger. “It was all lies. When it came time to seek vengeance for Hannah, he went along at first, but then he tried to double-cross me. He came to my cabin and said that there had been some trouble, said that the head of security for the boat would be keeping an eye on him and we ought to just call off the plan. When I told him we couldn't do that, he panicked. I knew I couldn't trust him.”

“So you killed him,” I said. “Broke his neck.”

“I convinced him to go below decks with me,” Vince said with a shrug. “I told him I wanted his opinion on where I'd decided to plant the bomb—”

“Bomb!” Captain Williams said. I was surprised he hadn't tumbled to what was going on before now.

Vince ignored him and went on, “Of course, that's not really where I planted it. There's a better place. But I knew the security cameras don't cover that little hall by the engine room, and I was able to take him down there by a route that doesn't show up much on the cameras. Anywhere there was a chance the cameras might catch us, I made sure our faces were averted.”

“You must have studied the layout of this boat before you ever came aboard,” I said.

“Actually, I did, but I've also been aboard eight times in the past year, taking the cruise under various names and using disguises. Preparation is the key to a successful mission. The army taught me that, too.”

“Along with how to blow up stuff real good,” I muttered.

“Yeah,” Vince said with a laugh. “That, too.”

The engine room called then on the speaking tube, reporting that full steam was up. Vince nodded to Captain Williams. “Take us out into the river,” he ordered. “Cruise south.”

“Detective Travis must have left officers on the dock,” Williams said. “They'll stop us.”

“No, they won't,” Vince replied with a shake of his head. “I knocked both of them out before I cast off. I showed them my badge, and I was close enough to take them out before they knew what was going on.”

“Badge?” Williams croaked.

“You're not really an investigator for the attorney general, are you?” I asked. “That was another lie.”

“It comes in handy sometimes,” he said with a shrug. “Like when you're trying to get the blueprints of a riverboat to study.”

“Why'd you follow Mark and me into the casino earlier today?”

“I saw the two of you sneaking around and wanted to know what you were up to. I eavesdropped on you long enough to figure out that the roulette wheel is rigged before I let you know I was there. That was interesting. I thought maybe it had something to do with what happened to Hannah.”

“It had everything to do with her murder,” I said. “She found out about the rigged games—”

“And Rafferty killed her,” Williams said again. “I tell you, I had nothing to do with it, and no one else on this boat is to blame.”

“Gallister is,” Vince said. “Her parents are. You are, too. Anyway, it doesn't matter.” He gestured with the gun. “Take us out into the river,” he said in a flat voice.

Williams swallowed hard and gave the order through the speaking tube, just like in the old days. “Back one-quarter.”

Another shiver went through the deck. I felt the slow, ponderous power of the engines as the paddlewheels began to revolve and push the boat away from the dock. The engine room crew wouldn't know what was going on, but they probably figured that we'd been cleared to leave Hannibal. They had their orders; that was all that would matter to them.

Williams spun the wheel as the
Southern Belle
left the dock behind and moved out into the flow of the river. He gave the order to stop engines. From the window of the pilothouse I saw water sluicing from the paddlewheels as they slowed to a halt. Then Williams ordered, “Ahead three-quarters.” The wheels began to turn the other way, biting into the water, propelling us southward in conjunction with the current. Below, people began to come out on deck, no doubt wondering what was going on and why we were cruising downriver in the dark like this.

“Are you really a reader of Mark Twain, Vince?” I asked. I knew that Vince Mallory probably wasn't his real name; no doubt it was another of his phony identities. But I didn't know what else to call him.

“I love Twain's work,” he said. “Always have. How can you not, growing up in this part of the country?”

“Then you know from readin'
Life on the Mississippi
that it's dangerous for a boat to be out on the river at night. We're liable to hit a hidden snag.”

He glanced at the clock on the wall, which now read eight-twenty. “In seventeen more minutes, it won't matter,” he said.

“No,” Williams said suddenly. “No, I won't let you do it.”

“It's too late now. Hannah will be avenged.”

The lights of Hannibal were falling behind us. From the corner of my eye I saw flashing red and blue lights approaching the waterfront. Maybe one of the cops Vince had knocked out had come to and called for help. Maybe they had figured out some other way that something was going on. It didn't matter. They were too late to stop the
Southern Belle
from heading downstream.

“Get back,” Vince said, lifting the gun as Williams took a step toward him.

“This is my boat,” the captain declared. “I don't care who owns it. It's
my
boat, and I won't see it harmed.”