The Branson Beauty (10 page)

Jeffrey gave substantially the same version of events as his mother had earlier. But he had not seen Mandy flee into one of the other rooms because he had gone ahead of her and Mrs. Honneffer to welcome the arriving guests downstairs. After seeing his nephew hanging all over the blonde, he assumed Mandy had left the boat altogether after witnessing the same thing. He'd had no idea she was still aboard until his sister called at four in the morning to yell news of the murder at him and demand he come down and represent Ryan.

“I declined,” Jeffrey said in a clipped tone. “I am not a criminal defense lawyer. And I was not going to drive back down to Branson in a blinding snowstorm just to spend two seconds telling some two-bit local cop to stop questioning him.”

Hank smiled winningly.

“Oh,” Jeffrey said. “That was probably you, wasn't it?”

Hank nodded.

“Sorry.”

“Do you think he did it?” Hank asked.

“Ryan? No,” Jeffrey said immediately, then paused. “No,” he repeated slowly. He thought for a moment. “I think he was too entranced with that new girl. And I don't know that he even knew Mandy was on the boat.”

“Did he leave the dining room, or the lounge, at all?” Hank said.

“The dining room—no. I don't recall anyone leaving the dining room during lunch. And it was very soon after that when we ran aground. That captain fellow came in and had us all move to the lounge at that point. No one knew what was going on. There was a huge sound of cracking wood from the back, and we just jolted to a stop. Everyone was stunned.”

“What captain fellow?” Hank asked. He resisted the urge to lean forward.

Jeffrey chuckled. “Oh, that ridiculous actor. He plays ‘the captain.'” He made quote marks in the air. “He was included in the luncheon package. Apparently he usually dines with the guests and narrates the trip around the lake. I told him when we came aboard, however, that his services would not be needed. I wanted a nice environment for Mother's party, not a cheesy sideshow.”

An actor. Not Albert the Moron. Hank mentally slumped back in his chair. It would have been nice to know Eberhardt's condition when the boat crashed.

“Once we were in the lounge,” Jeffrey continued, “people did leave to go down the hallway to the restrooms. We were there for several hours before you even came aboard.”

“Did you go?”

“Well, of course,” he said. “I'd just had lunch, after all.”

“Did you leave the lounge at any other point?” Hank asked.

“I don't think so—wait. I did go outside on the deck to try to get cell reception. That was about two hours into it. I needed to make some business calls and send a few emails. I had not expected to be on the boat all day.”

“Were you able to make the calls?” Hank asked.

Jeffrey frowned. “No. Not a one. I couldn't get any kind of signal, no matter where I stood. It was like the whole boat was just a black hole.”

Hank went back to one of Jeffrey's earlier statements. “How do you know people just went down the hallway to the bathrooms? Couldn't they have gone somewhere else?”

Jeffrey snorted with laughter. “Half of them—no way. The elevator went out when we hit those rocks. None of the old folks could get off our level after that. On the way to the lounge after the crash, Leonard Dovecoat and I checked. The cables or rails or whatever were messed up. The doors weren't working, so we pulled them open a little bit—who knew if we were going to have to flee a sinking ship, right?—and we saw it stuck a couple of feet down. It wasn't going anywhere.”

“What about the stairway?”

“I guess someone could have gone down that. No one could have come up it, though. It had one of those fire doors. I had to prop it open when all of our guests were boarding. Otherwise it locks from that side—to keep us safe from the riffraff down below, I suppose.”

Normally it would have been a mostly harmless toss-off attempt at humor. Instead, as soon as he uttered it, Jeffrey Honneffer cringed. The two men stared at each other as an expensive clock in the corner ticked away the silence.

“Actually, then,” Hank said quietly, “it appears the riffraff was among you.”

Jeffrey swallowed and his mouth tightened. “Look, I'm sorry. I don't mean to make light of any of this. Mandy was a beautiful girl. This is … this is just horrible. I cannot imagine who would do this.…”

He trailed off. Hank leaned forward.

“Did
you
?”

Jeffrey's jaw started to drop, but he stopped it and slapped on his best lawyer face. “My God, sir. Of course not,” he said. He tried to continue, but Hank was rising to his feet. An indignant speech would not be informative. And he didn't have time. His phone was vibrating with text alerts. Since Patricia Honneffer managed her husband's law firm, he asked Jeffrey where her office was and dug his phone out of his jeans pocket as he headed down the hall.

Victim still alive right b4 crash. Hanging out in kitchen.

Hank's face split in a genuine smile. Now that was something. That pinpointed things better than the old doc had, that's for sure. Sam must be interviewing the waitstaff. He stopped in the middle of the hallway and texted back.

Who says?

Waiter. Cook up next. Will let u know whats up.

A very feminine cough had him jerking his head up from his phone. The petite brunette from the lounge stood in front of him. She had been crying. The makeup around her eyes was smudged, and the corner of a tissue poked out from the pocket of her dress slacks.

She led him into her office, which was as luxuriously appointed as her husband's, only slightly smaller and with more filing cabinets. She sat behind her desk and waved a hand at the chair on the other side. Hank lowered himself into it, and it was as stiff and uncomfortable as it looked. He was fairly certain he was sitting where her employees did when they were about to be reprimanded or fired.

She folded her hands in front of her and waited. She still had not said a word. Hank figured she was the type of person who did not like having her time wasted. He dived in.

“Do you know who killed Mandy?”

She shook her head.

“Did you know she was on the boat?”

Another silent shake.

“How long had you known her?” he asked.

She started to speak but choked on the tears she had apparently been trying to suppress. She tried again.

“Since she started dating Ryan. So I guess about a year and a half. They started dating the summer before their senior year, I think. She was … she was absolutely wonderful. Charming and funny and so kind. She really took to Ashley—that's my daughter. Mandy would always make time for her, treat her as an equal. Ashley just adored her.”

Hank's chest tightened. “How is Ashley doing?”

That did it. Patricia started to sob. She fumbled for the tissue in her pocket, but it did little good once she found it. Hank waited. Finally, she regained enough control to speak again.

“My little girl.” Patricia tried to mop up the makeup dissolving under her eyes. “My little girl. She's devastated. We told her this morning after we confirmed it with Frances. How do you tell a child that happened? How do you explain that a person could be so evil? That a person would want to do that to someone you love? I don't know how we did it. I don't even remember the words. Just the look on her face … I remember that.”

Hank waited a minute and tried to swallow.

“Ma'am, I'm going to need to talk to Ashley. About yesterday.” Patricia stared at him. Her eyes narrowed, and her hands, which before had been merely clutching the tissue, now balled into fists. There was no clock in this office to break the silence.

“You have got to be kidding,” she finally said.

“I wish I didn't have to,” Hank said. That was certainly an understatement. “She might have seen or heard something important. I know how horrible this is, but, Mrs. Honneffer, I have to. Is she here at the office with you?”

Patricia continued to glare at him. She shoved her chair back and stood.

“Since it is a school holiday, yes, she is here with us.” She paused before walking out the office door. “You will be gentle. And I will be here the whole time.” Neither was a question. Hank nodded and she stalked out of the room. Ten minutes later she returned, holding the hand of a crying twelve-year-old with the same petite frame and brown hair as her mother. Patricia led the child around the desk and sat her in the chair she had just vacated. Ashley was wearing a Sooner Track sweatshirt.

Hank introduced himself and explained why he was there. She looked at him with huge fawnlike eyes, and Hank felt like shit.

“I need to ask you about the lunch, Ashley. Okay? Can you tell me about it?”

“It was Gran's birthday party. There weren't any other kids. Just adults. And stupid Ryan and his friends. They didn't pay any attention to me. Ryan only does when he's by himself. I kept wishing that Mandy had come. She would have talked to me…”

“Did you know she was on the boat?”

Ashley shook her head. Her eyes never left Hank's face. He took her through the lunch and the crash. Nothing she said added to what he'd already heard. Then he asked about the lounge.

“All the teenagers sat in the middle of the room. They were laughing and talking the whole time. I think they were glad that they were gonna have a cool story about a boat crash that they could tell when they went back to school.”

“They were like that the whole time?” Hank said.

“Yeah—wait. No,” she said. “Ryan was way upset when he came back from the bathroom. He pouted over by the windows for a while. I guess Gran musta yelled at him.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she came back into the lounge right after he did. She wasn't gone as long as he was, though. I hope she yelled at him. I think something was up with that blond chick. Why did he bring her? Why didn't he bring Mandy? Was he cheating on her? Do you know?”

“I'm trying to figure all that out,” Hank said. “Did you ask him about it?”

“Yeah. I tried to. He blew me off. Said it wasn't any of my business. That what's-her-face was his friend and I should stop bothering him. Jerk.”

Hank hid a smile. “Did you notice anyone else who was upset, or gone for a really long time?”

She cracked a split-second smile. “My dad. He was so ticked when he couldn't make those calls he needed to. He even went outside to try, which was stupid, because it was really, really cold.

“And Gran's friend Doris. She and her husband—I don't know his name, but he's funny, I like him—they were gone to the bathroom for a long time, too. But they're old.” She shrugged. “Probably takes them a long time to, you know…”

Hank did smile at that one.

“And there was Ryan's friend. The tall one. He left for a while. Kinda the same time as Doris did. I remember, cuz when he came back he asked if there was any coffee left. There wasn't, and he got all huffy, said he needed some bad. Like he was a grown-up.” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

The door behind Hank opened, and Jeffrey came in. Ashley looked at her father and started crying again. Hank knew he'd been lucky to get what he had before she broke down. He leaned forward.

“Ashley, honey? Thank you for talking with me. If you remember anything else later that you think is important, I need you to call me, okay?” He slid one of his business cards across the desk. Through the sheen of tears, her eyes lit up. The kid just wanted to be treated with some respect. Like Mandy had evidently done.

She left the room with Jeffrey, and it was once again just Hank and Patricia. He asked his questions as quickly as he could. Nothing she said differed from what her husband and daughter had told him, although she did rat out Jeffrey. He apparently had tried to send a few emails during the lunch itself, while his mother wasn't looking. Two had gotten through right after they'd said grace at the beginning of the meal, she said, but the rest had failed.

Hank gave her another of his business cards, thanked her for her time, and fought the urge to ask for a cup of coffee to go. She walked him to the door.

“You will catch this person, won't you, Sheriff?” she asked.

He paused with his hand on the shiny brass knob. “Ma'am, I will do everything I can,” he said. “And that's a lot.”

She stared up at him and nodded. He stepped outside, yanked his wool hat down over his ears, and strode through the falling snow to his car.

*   *   *

A cup of gas station coffee steamed in the squad car's cup holder. It tasted particularly bad right after the wonderful stuff Hank had had at the law office. But he didn't have time to be choosy. He had to get back to Branson. He'd gotten permission from Mandy's parents to search her car, which was still parked in the lot at the landing where people had boarded the
Branson Beauty
. The boat, however, remained at the rather rickety down-shore dock it had been tugged to last night. He would need to head there, too.

If he didn't have time for decent coffee, there was no way he could justify stopping at the Russell Stover outlet in Ozark. He loved pulling in there with the kids on their trips back from Springfield. It was about halfway home, the perfect place to stop for a bathroom break and some Pecan Delights. He'd have to make due with the crappy coffee and the bag of stale chips he'd found under the front seat.

He tossed the chip bag onto the seat next to him and looked out the window. As he drove south, the relatively flat and open land around Springfield started to fold up into real mountains. Highway 65 rolled up and down, over and over, as the trees filled in the valleys and clung to the jutting limestone cliffs.

He usually did this drive as quickly as possible, on his way to or from somewhere. Today he was forced to creep along on the barely plowed roadway. The view coasted sedately by, making him feel guilty he'd forgotten it was there.