LITMIR.BIZ

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answer, I really thought about closing the door and going for help, so I wouldn’t have to go in there by myself. I sort of wished now that I’d asked Vince Mallory to come with me. Having a big, strapping former MP with me would have done wonders for my confidence right then.

      It seemed like I stood there, torn by indecision, a lot longer than I actually did. Probably not more than a couple of seconds went by after I called out before I pushed the door all the way open and stepped into the cabin with my heart pounding.

      Nobody was in there.

      Unless they were in the 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.

      “Stop 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?

      CHAPTER 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, having lured customers back to whatever theater or museum employed them. A few stragglers might get tired of gambling or run out of money and decide to see the attractions that Hannibal offered, but for the most part everybody who was going to town was already there.

      The more I thought about it, the more I believed that the most likely explanation was that Webster had gotten off the boat without me seeing him. His cabin looked like he had cleaned it out and left. I didn’t know why he claimed that Vince Mallory’s cabin was his. Maybe he had planned to pull some sort of angry stunt but later changed his mind. I doubted that he could have been wandering around the off-limits areas on the riverboat for this long without being caught by some of the crew. In that case, they would have turned him over to Logan Rafferty, who would have sent for me.

      So when I thought about it like that, it seemed obvious that Webster must have gotten off the boat. If I could just prove that, then I could relax and enjoy the rest of the tour, provided that no more problems cropped up.

      There couldn’t be that many rental car agencies in Hannibal, I told myself as I headed down the stairs to the main deck. All I had to do was find the one where Ben Webster had picked up a car to drive back to St. Louis.

      I left the boat, walked off the dock, and headed up Center Street. When I got to Main I found myself at the Hannibal Trolley Company, which operated sightseeing trolleys around the town. I thought they might be able to tell me where the nearest car rental agencies were, or at least have a phone book I could look at.

      The folks at the trolley company were friendly. No surprise there, in a town that catered so much to the tourist trade. The lady working at the counter pointed me to the car rental places, adding, “But why rent a car when our trolleys can take you anywhere in Hannibal you want to go?”

      I told her I was just looking for some information and headed for the nearest car rental agency.

      It took me the better part of an hour to hike around Hannibal to all the places where Ben Webster could have rented a car. My frustration grew right along with the tired ache in my legs. The folks at the agencies were all cooperative—they could have refused to answer my questions, after all—but none of them recalled renting a car to anybody who looked like Webster that afternoon, and his name didn’t show up in their records.

      So if he wasn’t on the boat and he hadn’t rented a car to drive back to St. Louis, where was he?

      I pondered that question as I started retracing my steps toward the river. My route took me past the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum, at the corner of Main and Hill streets. Hill Street, as you might guess, was kind of steep. The narrow, two-story white frame building where Sam Clemens had grown up faced the street with an old stone building sitting hard against it on the left side. A sign identified the stone building as the Mark Twain Museum and Gift Shop. Across the street sat another white frame structure known as the Becky Thatcher House. I knew from my research for the tour that young Sam Clemens’s childhood playmate Laura Hawkins, later immortalized in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer under the name Becky Thatcher, had lived there.

      That was interesting, but it didn’t help me find out where Ben Webster had gone. Maybe he was wandering around Hannibal trying to see some of the sights, at least, before renting a car and heading back to St. Louis. I started into the boyhood home, thinking how ironic it would be if I ran smack-dab into Webster after searching for him all over the boat and hiking over half of downtown Hannibal.

      I didn’t see Ben Webster anywhere in the house, but the Kramers were there. Louise greeted me with a smile. Eddie just grunted and gave me a curt nod.

      “This is all so fascinating,” Louise gushed.

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