Anything Goes

Lily just stared at her until Mimi looked up and repeated it. “I saw Billy go down into the cabin. He says someone else went down before he did.“
    “Was Uncle Horatio there then? In the cabin?“
    “I don’t know. I wasn’t looking for him, I was looking for Billy. I was hitching up my skirt and one of those men was helping me into the boat and Billy wasn’t there, so I looked around for him. Billy had these new shoes, see. They cost him a lot and he’d worn them to the boat dock, then changed on the boat to deck shoes. He left the good shoes down in the galley. I’m sure that’s why he went down there. To get his shoes.“
    “And he claims he saw someone else go down there, too?“ Lily asked. She was thinking, Or he killed Uncle Horatio and just made up the story about someone else.
    “ He might of done,“ Mimi admitted. “But I don’t think so. He’s just talking big. He always talks big, like he knows important things that he’s keeping secret until he can use them.“
    “Did he get his shoes?“ Lily asked.
    “No, miss. He told me later that he couldn’t find them and didn’t want to drown for a pair of shoes.“
    “Is there anything else you know? Anything about the other men on the boat? How they acted? Odd things they might have said?“
    “Most of them I didn’t even know. Except for Mr. Prinney and Mr. Kessler. And Mr. Horatio, but I’d never even seen him before, so I didn’t know how anybody should of acted.”
    It had been harrowing to both of them to have this conversation. Mimi hadn’t wanted to talk about it and Lily, while she needed to know, hadn’t liked hearing what Mimi had to say. She didn’t think either of them would be able to cope with a further discussion of the missing ten-dollar bill and the scarf.
    “Mimi, thank you for telling me this. If you think of anything else you even wonder if I might need to know, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”
    Mimi looked surprised. “Then you’re not going to fire me, Miss Lily?”
    Lily patted her shoulder. “I wouldn’t even think of it. Thank you for doing such a nice job on the dress,“ she said in dismissal. “And don’t forget you’re to stay in the house. Everybody else is going out for dinner, so please find some keys and lock up “
    When Mimi had gone, Lily dressed and went downstairs to look for Robert. He was nowhere to be found and she wasn’t about to venture outside on her own to look for him. She sat down in the front hall to wait for him and think about what Mimi had told her. Lily liked Mimi and felt sorry for her, but she didn’t really know her. Was the whole story the truth? Mimi didn’t seem to have the guile to make up such an elaborate fabrication. Or did she? Robert finally arrived, breathless and with oil smudges on his shirt. “Sorry, I lost track of the time.“
    “We’ve got plenty of time. I was just ready early. But—“ She drew close and whispered, “I have a lot to tell you, so get ready and we’ll leave so we can talk.”
    Lily paced and kept looking at her watch, rehearsing how she could give the basics of what Mimi had told her while they were in the car. When Robert finally came down, spiffy in his tux and down at the mouth about having to go to the Winslows’, Lily hustled him out of the house.
    “Drive slowly so I can tell you what I’ve learned.”
    She ran through the whole story about Barbara O’Hare telling Miss Flora that Uncle Horatio was responsible for her “delicate condition.“
    “You mean to say that Mimi is Uncle Horatio’s daughter?“ Robert exclaimed, nearly running into a tree as he snapped his head around to stare at his sister in horror.
    “No, listen to the rest.”
    By the time she’d finished, Robert had slowed the Duesenberg to a crawl and a huge black auto behind them was honking at him. Robert waved the other vehicle around, which sped past in a cloud of gravel dust. Robert stopped.
    “Wasn’t that—“ Lily began.
    “Lily, do you know what this means? Billy Smith had the best reason in the world to kill Uncle Horatio. If he believed Mimi was going to inherit Grace and Favor and the rest of his estate—“
    “He wouldn’t have left it to her even if the story of his being her father had been true. And it wasn’t.“
    “But according to what you just said, Billy didn’t believe her when she tried to take back the story. If he believed, for greedy reasons of his own, that she was Uncle’s daughter, it would explain why he