Huckleberry Finished Read Online Free PDF Page A

bathroom, my nervous brain reminded me. The closed door loomed ominously in a corner of the room.
    I took a better look around first. There had been a suitcase sitting on the bed in Vince Mallory’s cabin, as there probably was in most of the passenger cabins on the boat. Not here, though. I didn’t see a bag anywhere. I opened the door to the tiny closet. No suitcase, no clothes hanging up, nothing. By the looks of the cabin, it could have been unoccupied.
    That left the bathroom. There’s an old saying in the South about being as nervous as a cat on a porch full of rocking chairs. That’s how I felt as I approached the bathroom door. I was ready to jump.
    I knocked on it first. “Mr. Webster? Are you in there?”
    Either he wasn’t, or he couldn’t answer.
    â€œStop that,” I told myself out loud as that thought went through my head. “Just because you found a dead body that other time doesn’t mean you’re gonna find one now.”
    I knew that made sense, but I still felt a whole cloud of butterflies in my stomach as I reached out and grasped the knob. I swallowed hard and then turned it. I pushed the door open, halfway expecting to bump up against a corpse.
    Instead the door opened all the way, revealing a bathroom with a toilet, a tiny vanity, and a shower, just like the one in my cabin. The shower curtain was pulled across the opening. I started to push it back, then hesitated. I didn’t think the shower was big enough for a body to be hidden in it. The only way that would be possible would be if the body was stiff enough so it could be propped up against the wall and stay there.
    With a rasp of curtain rings on the rod, I shoved the curtain back.
    Then blew out a long breath because the shower was empty. Not just empty, but also dry, as if no one had used it since the passengers came on board.
    I looked around the bathroom. It didn’t take long. No shaving kit or anything else personal. The hand towel beside the vanity was damp, the only sign that this cabin had been occupied anytime recently. If not for that, it would have been like Ben Webster had never been here.
    So he had come to his cabin and cleaned it out after leaving me down on the main deck, I thought. Why? It made sense if he’d been planning to get off the boat at Hannibal, as he’d agreed to do. But he hadn’t gotten off. At least, I hadn’t seen him if he had.
    So where the heck was my missing tourist?

C HAPTER 4
    I admit, I should have gone to Logan Rafferty, told him what was going on, and enlisted the help of him and his security personnel to find out what had happened to Ben Webster. But as I stood there in the empty cabin, I talked myself out of it, at least for the time being. I didn’t know that anything had happened to Webster, just like I didn’t know he was hiding somewhere and plotting to cause trouble. Either of those things was possible, but so were other explanations. He might have gotten off the riverboat, like he was supposed to, and I had just flat missed it. He also could have disembarked while I was wandering around the boat looking for him.
    Don’t borrow trouble, I told myself. I could tell from the response I’d gotten when I announced this tour that it was going to be popular. I didn’t want to have future tours banned from the Southern Belle .
    So, smart or not, I left Ben Webster’s cabin just like I found it, with the shower curtain pulled closed, the bathroom door shut, and the cabin door unlocked. I went out on deck, leaned on the railing, and looked at Hannibal while I thought about my next move. I had a good view from the second deck like this. The only ones better would be from the observation areas on the third deck or the pilothouse.
    The crowds around the dock had thinned out. The tourists who had gotten off the boat had already spread out through the town. The locals in costume who had come out to greet them were gone, too,