Read Online Huckleberry Finished by Livia J. Washburn - Free Book Online

first, rather than sending out some uniformed officers to the scene and letting them call in the detective, as it would have been done in a bigger city.
    Williams introduced the other crew members who were there, then said, “And this is Ms. Delilah Dickinson.”
    Travis looked curiously at me. “Do you work on the riverboat, too, Ms. Dickinson?”
    â€œNo, I’m a travel agent,” I told her. “Mr. Webster booked his cruise through my agency, and I’m leading the tour.”
    â€œThen what are you doing here?” the detective asked me with a frown. “Did you discover the body?”
    â€œNo, that was Henry here,” Williams said.
    Travis shook her head. “There are too many people here.” She turned to the uniformed officers who’d accompanied her. “Take everybody except the captain and the man who discovered the body and hold them somewhere else for the time being, until I send for them.”
    â€œWait just a minute,” Rafferty protested. “I’m the head of security. I ought to be here.”
    â€œYou will be when I’m ready to talk to you,” Travis said. “Until then, maybe your office would be a good place for you and the rest of these people to wait.”
    Rafferty didn’t like it, but after a second he gave a surly shrug. The cops shepherded us back along the corridor and up two sets of stairs to the deck where the security office was located.
    As we went through the room where the video monitors were located, I asked Rafferty, “Are there any security cameras below decks?”
    â€œYou mean in the corridor where that storage closet is?” He shook his head. “Most of our video coverage is of the casino.”
    That came as no surprise. The casino was where the money was, after all.
    â€œYou’ve got to have some cameras out on deck, though,” I said.
    He grunted. “You ask too many questions.”
    As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. I was curious about what happened to Ben Webster, of course, and it bothered me that somebody had killed one of my clients. I thought that was a natural enough reaction. But it wasn’t my job to find the killer, I reminded myself again.
    Still, I glanced at the monitors as the cops took us through to Rafferty’s office, just to get an idea of which areas on the boat the cameras covered.
    The office was crowded with six people in it, especially when one of them was Rafferty. The cops told us to sit down and wait, but there weren’t that many chairs. I didn’t feel much like sitting, anyway, so I wound up crossing my arms and pacing back and forth. I couldn’t even do that well, since there wasn’t much room to pace.
    Rafferty looked at me from behind his desk and said, “You don’t think I had anything to do with that kid getting killed, do you?”
    Before I could answer—and I wasn’t sure what I would have said, anyway—one of the cops held up a finger and said, “No talking about the case. Detective Travis wouldn’t like that.”
    Rafferty snorted. “What, you think we have to get our stories straight or something?”
    â€œI can tell you this much,” I said to the cop. “Mr. Rafferty and I aren’t likely to be conspiring together on anything.”
    â€œThe feeling is mutual,” Rafferty said. He didn’t have to add that the feeling was dislike.
    The two stewards, if that’s what they were, just looked uncomfortable. I’m not normally a hostile person, but something about Logan Rafferty brought out the worst in me, I guess.
    We waited in silence for a while after that. It got on my nerves, and it must have bothered Rafferty, too. He grinned at the uniformed officers and said, “That Detective Travis is sort of hot, isn’t she, boys?”
    One of the cops cleared his throat and looked away. The other one just stonily ignored Rafferty. That seemed like a