All of us stared at him this time, obviously finding it difficult to grasp what he had just said. Augusta was the one who spoke up first.
“You mean, the guy who got murdered tonight murdered your old high school girlfriend?”
“The one who tragically broke up with you because of him?” Amelia added. “It’s like a novel by one of the Brontë sisters!”
“He didn’t murder her,” Luke said. “They were in a car wreck a few weeks later. Kelley was driving, going too fast like he always did. And Lauren was killed, while he walked away with hardly a scratch.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “If he was driving too fast and somebody was killed, shouldn’t he have gotten in trouble with the law?”
Luke nodded. “He did. I’m sure that’s how Lieutenant Farraday was able to find out about it so quickly. He probably had a couple of his deputies runnin’ everybody through the computers as soon as he got our names. Kelley was arrested and charged with vehicular manslaughter. But his parents had a lot of money and got him a hot-shot lawyer, and the lawyer got him off. He even walked on the stage at graduation. The principal wanted to keep him from doing that, but his folks threatened to file a lawsuit if he tried it.”
“And this is the fella who wound up playing Rhett Butler for a bunch of tourists?”
“He was in the drama club at school, always had the lead in the plays they put on, of course. And I heard he got his doctor’s degree in theater from one of those Ivy League schools. My guess is that he worked here because he liked it.”
“And so that he could hit on hot teenage tourists,” Augusta put in.
I thought she might have something there. Plenty of attractive women would pass through during the tours of the plantation, and if Kelley had really been a sex addict, as Amelia speculated, he would have had plenty of chances to approach some of them with a proposition.
Of course, he was married and his wife worked right here on the plantation with him, I reminded myself. She even played Scarlett to his Rhett. But clearly, based on what had happened with Augusta and Amelia, that didn’t stop Kelley. Carrying on right under his wife’s nose might even make it better for him.
I was making a lot of assumptions and jumping to a lot of conclusions about the man, considering that I had never seen him before today and hadn’t spoken to him even once. But Luke knew him, and I believed my son-in-law. I believed my nieces, too, at least about Kelley’s behavior in the stables. I thought I had enough evidence to reach some of those conclusions in a logical manner.
But I had no evidence whatsoever about who might have killed Steven Kelley. As far as I could see, that was still completely up in the air. Lieutenant Farraday had his suspicions about me, Augusta, and Amelia, but right now, based on the grudge that Luke had held against the dead man, he had to be the leading candidate for the role of murderer.
“You said you weren’t here in the ballroom all evening, Luke. Where did you go?”
He looked up at me. “Miz D! Don’t tell me you think I killed him, too?”
“Oh, of course not.” I stopped myself before I called him a lunkhead. “I just want to know if you’ve got an alibi.”
“Not really.” He glanced at Augusta and Amelia and then lowered his voice. “I was indisposed.”
Mr. Cobb said, “Boy must mean he had the trots.”
Luke glared at him. “I have a delicate stomach sometimes.”
I happened to know that was true. Luke was a big strong boy with the stomach of a little girl. “So you were in the bathroom.”
“Yeah. And since I was in there by myself…”
“No alibi.”
“That’s right. I could have slipped out of the ballroom, stabbed Kelley, and gotten back in without anybody noticing because there were so many people around and there was so much going on.” Luke grunted and shook his head. “That’s the way the lieutenant sees it, anyway.”
And I had to admit that it was a fairly strong theory, especially to somebody like Lieutenant Farraday who didn’t know Luke. Who didn’t know that he couldn’t possibly murder somebody, even a sorry son of a gun like Steven Kelley. Like Luke had said when he found out what Kelley had pulled with the girls, he might take a swing at somebody who deserved it, but that was as far as he would ever go. I believed that with all my heart.
On the other hand—and I hated myself for thinking this way—all I really knew about Luke Edwards was how he had been the past few years, since he’d met and married my daughter. I didn’t want to believe that Melissa could have married a murderer.
And I wasn’t going to believe it.
“Dad gummit,” I said, “it doesn’t matter what Lieutenant Farraday thinks, Luke. We know good and well you didn’t do it. Don’t we, girls?”
“Sure,” Augusta said, and Amelia nodded.
“I don’t think you did it either, son,” Mr. Cobb said. I didn’t point out that he barely knew Luke. At the moment, any voice of support was welcome.
“At least he didn’t go ahead and arrest me,” Luke said. “And it’s not like I’m the only one he’s holding here, either.”
I looked around the ballroom, which was still crowded with tired, impatient, frustrated people, and said, “Not hardly.”
“You know,” Augusta said, “if the guy was such a sleaze that he hit on innocent teenage girls, there could be a lot of people here who were mad at him. He’s bound to have done other things he shouldn’t have.”
That made a lot of sense, I thought. And then Amelia brought up something else that was worth thinking about.
“Where’d the knife come from?”
I had no idea, and somehow I didn’t think that Farraday would tell me what they’d found out about the murder weapon, even if I asked nicely. But I was going to keep it in mind and keep my eyes and ears open for a possible answer. The idea was taking root in my brain that if I could figure out who killed Steven Kelley, this whole crazy nightmare would be over.
The murder wasn’t the only mystery, though, I recalled abruptly. I checked my pockets again. My cell phone was definitely gone. I hadn’t used it since I’d checked in with Melissa at the office during the afternoon, and I was sure I’d had it after that. So I didn’t think I had laid it down anywhere and accidentally walked off and left it.
Thinking of the call to Melissa reminded me that by now she might have heard that there was trouble here at the plantation, especially if it was all over the TV news like Mr. Cobb said. The media didn’t have the full story yet, but they might know that there had been a murder. The way they reported it might range all the way from “one person suspected to be dead” to “an alleged bloodbath among the magnolias.” Melissa hadn’t been expecting us back until the next day, but if she heard that sort of report on TV, she would probably be scared out of her wits.
“You have your cell phone?” I said to Luke.
“What?” He was still distracted by being suspected of murdering somebody. “Oh. Yeah, sure, it’s right here.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “Or here.” He slapped his trouser pockets, then frowned. “That’s funny. I was sure I had it.”
I turned to Augusta and Amelia. “Girls?” I knew at least one of them would have a phone. Even though we had all put our bags in the rooms we’d been assigned earlier for the overnight stay, no teenage girl was going to be without a phone.
Both of them looked completely aghast, though, as they searched their pockets and didn’t find their phones. “It’s gone!” Augusta announced in a shocked voice.
“That does it,” I said. It looked like there was some truth to Gerhard Mueller’s story about things disappearing.
I told Luke, Mr. Cobb, and the girls to stay put, then went looking for Elliott Riley.
Even though I had no proof that Riley was a pickpocket and a thief, he was where I was going to start. It was bad enough that somebody had gotten murdered on my first tour; I sure didn’t want the word getting around that my clients got robbed, too.
I spotted Riley standing by himself—that was no surprise—and was making my way toward him when the doors into the ballroom opened and an angry-looking Lieutenant Farraday came in, followed by a couple of deputies. Farraday raised his voice and called, “Everyone give me your attention, please!”
It didn’t take much to quiet the place down since all the conversations in the room were pretty subdued by now. In fact, things got noisier as people turned toward the lieutenant and started calling out questions, all of which could be summed up as “When the heck do we get out of here?”
Farraday had to lift his hands over his head and call for quiet several more times before the room settled down again. Then he turned to gesture at his deputies and said, “My men are going to confiscate your cell phones. I hoped that it wouldn’t come to this, but I have no choice.”
That brought more protests. Farraday let them run their course, then went on, “I should have done this as soon as I arrived on the scene, but I thought it might be a good idea to let you people contact your loved ones if you needed to, since you’re going to be stuck here for a while. Unfortunately, several of you decided to contact the news media instead.” His expression was as dark as a thundercloud. “In fact, some of you even sent video footage of the crime scene to local TV stations. I suppose your fifteen minutes of fame was more important to you than allowing the authorities to do their job and catch a killer,” he added bitterly.
That answered the question of how the TV news crews had come to show up at the door of the plantation house. And Farraday was right, of course: these days everybody with a camera phone has the potential to be as famous as that Zapruder fella with his JFK film, or whomever it was who shot the Rodney King video. All you needed was to be on hand for a big enough news story. Heck, Larry King might even call and want you to appear on his show.
One of the tourists asked, “If we give up our phones, how do we know we’ll ever get them back?”
“Yeah!” another man said. “What if you keep all of them as evidence?”
“The likelihood of that is remote,” Farraday answered, “and you’ll all get receipts for the phones.” He didn’t bother trying to keep the disgust out of his voice as he added, “Believe me, people, we have more important things to do than try to steal your cell phones.”
The police might have had more important things to do, but somebody sure as heck didn’t, because over the next couple of minutes all sorts of commotion broke loose in the ballroom as people reached for their phones and found them gone, just like Luke and the girls and I had done. As the angry outbursts spread, it took Farraday several minutes to restore order.
People weren’t just yelling about their phones being gone, either. Wallets and jewelry were missing, too, as Mueller had told me earlier. Once Farraday realized that he was dealing with widespread robbery as well as murder, he looked like he was torn between the urge to shoot us all or sit down and cry.
What he wound up doing was ordering his men to search us. “Each and every one,” he said. “Call for more female deputies if you need to. But it’s past time we find out what everybody in this room is hiding.”
Lindsey Hoffman, the good-looking blonde in the low-cut Southern belle outfit who seemed to be Perry Newton’s girlfriend, said in an outraged voice, “Do I look like I could be hiding anything in this outfit, Lieutenant?”
“Lady,” Farraday said, “you could have an elephant under those hoop skirts for all I know!”