Literary Tour 01 - Frankly My Dear I'm Dead Read online

  It would be more accurate to say that the actors on the plantation were portraying the actors from the movie. They were chosen for their resemblances to Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Thomas Mitchell, Hattie McDaniel, and other cast members. It’s quite a show, I tell you. I’d seen it several times myself. Being from Atlanta, when I decided to start my own agency and specialize in Southern-oriented tours, Gone With the Wind was a natural. Everybody’s read the book. Everybody loves the book. And who wouldn’t want to go hang around for an evening with Scarlett and Rhett?

  “Oh, I’m not much of a dancer …” I said to the man who had come up to me—I was surprised at myself for feeling flustered all of a sudden.

  “I have a hard time believing that. Why, a person can tell just by looking at you how graceful you are.”

  He was flirting with me, I told myself in disbelief.

  And I didn’t know whether I liked it or not.

  He was a nice-enough-looking man, I suppose. About fifty, which made him approximately the same age as me. Mediumsized, with dark hair that I was pretty sure was at least partially a toupee, but a good, expensive one. The smile he gave me was a little smirky. Not too bad, though.

  But the important thing was, he was a client, and I don’t like to mix business with pleasure. An old-fashioned attitude, I know, but I’m an old-fashioned girl.

  How could I be anything else with a name like Delilah Dickinson?

  “I’m sorry, Mister … ?” I’d heard his name earlier but couldn’t remember it.

  “Riley. Elliott Riley.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Riley, but I have a policy about not fraternizing with my clients—”

  “Fraternizing? What is this, the army? I just want to dance with you tomorrow night at the plantation.” He moved closer to me. A little too close. “I got a thing for redheads, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” I told him, and this time I didn’t bother trying to keep my voice pleasant. I let it get nice and chilly. He had paid for the tour in advance, after all. But that didn’t entitle him to any special privileges, no matter what he appeared to think. “If you’ll excuse me …”

  He took hold of my arm as I started to turn away. “What is this? What happened to that famous Southern hospitality you advertise on your Web site?”

  “I’ll give you the same sort of hospitality we gave you damn Yankees at Manassas if you don’t let go of me.”

  I know, I shouldn’t have said it. You may have guessed that I have this problem with my temper when I’m pushed far enough. Just don’t blame it on my red hair. That makes me mad, too.

  Mr. Riley’s face sort of pinched in. He didn’t let go of my arm. I was trying to figure out whether I needed to take a step closer to him before I kneed him or if I could reach the target just fine from where I was, when Luke moved up behind him and said, “Everything all right here, Miz D?”

  My fiercely protective son-in-law was three inches taller and probably thirty pounds heavier than Riley, who took one look over his shoulder and then released his grip on my arm.

  “Everything’s fine, Luke,” I said. “Just talking to one of our clients. Isn’t that right, Mr. Riley?”

  “Uh, yeah.” He looked nervous now with Luke looming behind him. He gave me a curt nod and moved on into the gallery. Luke didn’t try to stop him.

  Instead he asked me in a quiet voice, “Was that guy botherin’ you, Miz D?”

  “Oh, not too much. Just flirtin’ a little, I guess. Nothing I couldn’t handle. But I appreciate you stepping in like that, anyway.”

  He nodded, looked satisfied with himself, and said, “That’s my job. I’m a troubleshooter. I see trouble, and I shoot it.”

  “Didn’t Barney Fife originally say that?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I hate to say it, but you’re gonna have to get used to things like that, Miz D, now that you’re single and out on the market again.”

  “Being single is not the same thing as being on the market, Luke.”

  “Yeah,” he said, like he hadn’t heard me, “a woman like you who’s good-looking in, uh, an older sort of way, you’ve got to expect to get some attention from those older, desperate kinda guys—”

  “Luke,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth too hard. “Why don’t you go back to circulating, in case any of our clients need anything.”

  “Oh. Sure, Miz D. But I’ll be close by if you need me. Just give a holler.”

  “I’ll do that,” I promised, although I wasn’t sure I could think of a situation that would make me holler.

  Boy, was I wrong about that.

  After everyone had had a chance to go through the Visitors Center and have a look at Margaret Mitchell’s apartment, which has been restored to look as much as possible like it did during the years she was writing her novel, we all adjourned to Mary Mac’s Tea Room for lunch. I kept an eye on Elliott Riley, just to make sure he wasn’t bothering any of the other single women. He kept to himself, though, and didn’t even talk much to anyone else. Despite what had happened earlier, I felt a little sorry for him, obviously vacationing by himself like that. Had to be pretty lonely.

  After lunch, we all returned to the Gone With the Wind Movie Museum, which was part of the Mitchell house on Peachtree Street. The exhibits there told the story of how the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning novel became one of the most popular motion pictures of all time, and certainly one of the most eagerly awaited when it was first released in 1939. The lengthy search for the perfect actress to play Scarlett O’Hara, the troublesome production that saw four different directors, including Victor Fleming, George Cukor, and Sam Wood, and the producer, David O. Selznick, work on the movie at one time or another (despite the fact that only Fleming received screen credit—see, I told you I read up on this stuff), and the controversy over whether or not Clark Gable would utter an uncensored version of Rhett Butler’s famous final line from the book. You know the one I’m talking about.

  A screening room in the museum showed vintage newsreels about the fabulous world premiere of the film in Atlanta, as well as a documentary about the making of the movie. Let’s be honest.

  As many people as have read the book, a whole lot more have seen the movie. Without Gable and Leigh, de Havilland and Leslie Howard, the story would be a lot less appealing. So most tourists are more interested in the movie museum than anything else. It has plenty to keep people entertained for quite a while.

  While the tourists were wandering around the museum and watching the newsreels in the screening room, I found a quiet spot in a corner and caught my breath. Things were going well so far. I hoped that the word would get around about what a nice tour I had put together. We just had to get through the plantation visit the next day without any catastrophes occurring.

  I had to rethink that a few minutes later when I heard an angry shout from inside the screening room. It was followed by another yell and then a growing commotion. I muttered, “Oh, Lord, what now?” and looked around for Luke and the girls. But I didn’t see them anywhere.

  Whatever was going on in there, it wasn’t good. I hurried in that direction. A couple of security guards employed by the museum beat me to it. They slapped the door of the screening room open and ran inside. I got there two or three seconds later. My heart was pounding pretty hard, because I didn’t know what was going on in there. All I knew was that there was trouble.

  And my hopes for a perfect tour were disappearing with every yell.

  CHAPTER 3

  T

  he lights were still down, the newsreel playing on the big screen that had rows of seats curving in front of it. The glare from the screen was enough for me to see what was going on. A couple of men must have started fighting, and others had stepped in to pull them apart. Luke, in fact, had hold of a man I recognized as one half of the couple that had come all the way from Germany to visit the Southern states.

  One of the security guards
was hanging on to the other combatant—who was none other than the amorous Elliott Riley, definitely wearing a rug. I could tell that because it was skewed sideways a little on his head from the tussle.

  “He is a thief!” the German shouted as he glared at Riley. “A thief, I tell you! He tried to steal my camera!”

  “I never touched his blasted camera,” Riley insisted. “Let go of me, damn it.”

  The other members of the group who were in the room, including Amelia and Augusta, were watching the confrontation like it was more interesting than what was on the screen. I suppose it was. It’s not often you see two grown men throwing punches at each other in public.

  But all I felt at the moment was anger that something had gone wrong with my tour. My first tour. The one that was supposed to be perfect.

  This was one instance when having a temper and a loud voice came in handy. I stepped closer and said, “Settle down, both of you. This isn’t a bar or a boxing ring.”

  “He stole—” the German tourist began.

  “I never—” Riley began.

  “Hush!”

  They all looked at me, including Luke and the security guard, and I realized that my voice had been really loud that time.

  Amelia and Augusta said in unison, “Whoa.”

  I tried to tone it down some as I went on. “Look, you’re ruining the tour for everybody else. Why don’t we step out of the screening room and try to settle this somewhere else, where we won’t be disturbing folks?”

  “We can go in the security office,” the guard suggested.

  I nodded. “That’s just what I’m talking about. Luke, you take over the tour for a few minutes.”

  “Hadn’t I better go with you?” he asked with a frown.

  “No, I want you looking after the clients. I’m sure I’ll be fine with—” I looked at the guard.

  He supplied his name. “Dave.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine with Dave,” I went on, “and anyway, Mr. Riley and”—I searched my memory for the German’s name and came up with it—“Mr. Riley and Mr. Mueller are going to settle down and behave themselves. Aren’t you, boys?”

  Both of them looked sullen. Mueller said, “I believe the police should be summoned.”

  “Fine with me,” Riley said. “They can arrest this Kraut for attacking me and making wild accusations.”

  Mueller’s face started to turn red again. “Kraut? Kraut?”

  I took hold of Riley’s arm and hustled him out of there while Dave followed with Mueller.

  I felt a sense of relief when the door of the security office closed behind us. At least this commotion wouldn’t be distracting my other clients from the tour anymore. But I still had to deal with Riley and Mueller and try to make peace between them. They glared at each other from opposite sides of the room. I wished the office was a little bigger so they wouldn’t be within fist-swinging distance of each other.

  “Now,” I said, “what happened out there?” They both opened their mouths to yap at me, so I pointed to the German and added, “You first, Mr. Mueller.”

  “Why does he get to go first?” Riley asked before Mueller could say anything, reminding me of the argument between my nieces a few days earlier. Riley sounded just about as mature as they had.

  “Because he’s a guest in our country and we’re going to be polite.”

  Riley gave a surly shrug and didn’t say anything else.

  “This man was sitting behind me and my wife,” Mueller said. “I felt my camera move and looked down to see his hand on the case. He was trying to steal it.”

  “That’s not true and you know it,” Riley said.

  The benches that formed the rows of seating in the screening room had no backs to them, so it would have been easy enough to reach forward and try to sneak something away from whoever was sitting in front of you, I supposed. But Mueller had the strap attached to his camera case looped over his shoulder, so I didn’t see how anyone, even the slickest thief in the world, could have hoped to slip it away from him without being noticed.

  On the other hand, maybe Riley had intended to open the case and take the camera out of it, leaving the case where it was. That might have worked, although he would have to be pretty daring to attempt that in the middle of a crowd. Some thieves are downright brazen, though.

  “Is your camera worth a lot of money, Mr. Mueller?” I asked.

  “It is a fine camera. I paid”—he paused to do the math in his head—“what would amount to four hundred of your American dollars for it.”

  A four-hundred-dollar camera was pretty expensive, all right, but not something that was fabulously valuable. I had no idea how much a thief could have gotten for it, but surely quite a bit less than its retail value. Steal enough stuff, though, and I supposed it would be a living, despite getting only pennies on the dollar for it.

  “Did anybody else see Mr. Riley try to take your camera?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” Riley said, “because I didn’t do it.”

  I shushed him and turned back to Mueller. He frowned and asked, “How would I know what the others saw?”

  “Nobody spoke up to say you were right,” I pointed out.

  “Naturally, they would take the side of a fellow countryman over a foreigner.”

  I wasn’t sure that was true; most folks were still pretty honest, or so I liked to think.

  “Look, you’ve still got your camera, so no harm was done,” I said. I took a deep breath, hating to do what came next, but I didn’t see any other option. “If you want your money back, I’ll be glad to refund it.”

  Now that was a bald-faced lie. I wouldn’t be glad to refund what he had paid for the tour at all. But I knew from my years working at one of Atlanta’s largest travel agencies that you’ve got to have a reputation for being honest and trustworthy if you want to succeed in business. I would give Mueller his money back if I had to—but I wouldn’t like it.

  Mueller sniffed. “My wife is very fond of this Gone With the Wind book. I would not deprive her of the enjoyment she gets from this tour.”

  I looked over at Riley, who had tugged his toupee back into place. “How about you?”

  “I’m tempted, believe me, but … nah, I’m not going to back out. A deal is a deal, I always say. But I’m going to stay as far away from this guy as I can.”

  I thought that was a good idea. The more distance between the two men, the better.

  I looked at Dave the security guard. “Does that work for you?”

  “They didn’t damage anything as far as I could see,” he said. “Sure, they could be arrested for disturbing the peace, I guess, but what’s the point? It’s all over, right?”

  Mueller nodded, and a second later so did Riley. They had made their peace, such as it was.

  “All right,” I told them. “Mr. Riley, you go on back to the tour. Mr. Mueller, give him a minute, then you can rejoin the others, too.”

  “I could sue you for slander, you know,” Riley told Mueller. “Making false accusations against me that way.”

  I made shooing motions at him. “Go on now.”

  Riley left the office. A minute later, so did Mueller. I looked at Dave and said, “I’m sorry about all the fuss.”

  “You’re going to be bringing more tours here, right?”

  “All the time, I hope.”

  “Maybe the next bunch won’t start fighting World War II again. They’d better not.”

  All I could do was agree with him.

  CHAPTER 4

  T

  he rest of the tour went smoothly enough that day, with Riley and Mueller staying well apart from each other. The best part of the ruckus was that it got Riley’s mind off of flirting with me. He didn’t bother me again about dancing with him at the plantation ball the next night.

  The bus that would be taking the tour group out to the plantation the next morning would pick them up at their hotels. They were on their own, free to enjoy Atlanta, until then.

&nb
sp; By the next morning, I was over being upset with everything that had happened the day before. When you’re trying to get a new business off the ground, you can’t afford to brood about the past.

  You have to just charge ahead and do your best.

  So that was the plan. The girls and I were at the office early, ready to meet the bus. Luke and Melissa showed up a short time later, and right behind them, the charter bus pulled into the shopping center’s parking lot. I walked out to meet it as it rolled to a stop.

  The door clattered open as the driver worked the lever. He was a grizzled black man wearing the uniform of the charter bus company. “You Mrs. Dickinson?” he asked as he leaned toward me in the seat.

  I didn’t bother correcting him about the Mrs. part. “That’s right,” I said.

  “Name’s Cobb,” he introduced himself. “Wilson Cobb. I’ll be your driver today.”

  “I’m mighty glad to meet you, Mr. Cobb,” I told him. I held up a printout and went on, “I’ve got a list here of all the folks we’ll be picking up and where they’re stayin’.”

  “You folks put your bags in the luggage compartment and climb aboard, then,” he invited, “and we’ll get started. That is, if you’re ready to go.”

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  The truth was I was more than ready. I was anxious to get the second day of the tour started and anxious for it to go well. I didn’t expect it to be otherwise. The folks at the plantation hosted tour groups like mine all the time, so they were experienced at this sort of thing and knew how to make everything go smoothly.

  Luke stowed our overnight bags in the compartment that opened on the side of the bus. Melissa wouldn’t be going to the plantation, but the rest of us would. We climbed on board and spent the next hour riding around downtown and suburban Atlanta as Mr. Cobb picked up the members of the tour group. Then we headed north out of town. The plantation was less than an hour’s drive away.