Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead. Livia J Washburn
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Название: Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead
Автор: Livia J Washburn
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
isbn: 9780758249166
isbn:
“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?”
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