Shadows on the Train

by Melanie Jackson

  Talbot and Pantelli were chopping ever closer through the water. Growing bolder, I marched across the raft to glare at the fisherman. “I don’t have any answers for you. None.”

  The fisherman smiled, his teeth showing very white against his pointy beard. “But you will. I’d bet on you anytime.”

  With comfortable backward strokes, he began rowing away. “Now just a minute,” I called angrily. “You’re being cryptic. I hate cryptic.”

  He was fast turning into a speck. “COME BACK HERE,” I bellowed, stepping forward some more.

  Memo to self: Next time you walk across a raft, keep in mind that you’re nearsighted. My right foot met air… SSPPLLAASSHH.

  It was Talbot who grabbed me under the arms and hoisted me to the surface. “That was the most pathetic dive I’ve ever seen,” he told me as I coughed out water. “Next time you enter the lake, use the ladder.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Lady Vanishes

  Talbot, Pantelli and Madge were in the observation dome along with other passengers, watching Jasper shrink as we pulled away into the Rockies again. Sitting on my own in the dining car, I pressed my nose against the window and stared at the wide, sparkling Athabasca River flowing parallel to the railway tracks. Dad just couldn’t have had the mysterious eighty-thousand-dollar king on him when he died, I decided. Or—now here was a gruesome possibility— what if he’d had the king in the envelope, but someone removed it from his body?

  I rubbed my temples. Whenever I thought about possibilities, as opposed to facts, my head hurt. Hypotheticals, the what-ifs and supposes of life, didn’t agree with me.

  Beanstalk strode by and I asked him for a Coke. He immediately looked offended, but, seeing no waiters around, paced off with huge angry strides to fetch me one.

  I closed my eyes. Ardle McBean rose up against the lids, displaying his nicotine-yellow teeth and asking for the king. “I don’t have it,” I muttered.

  “Well, now you do,” Beanstalk snapped. He plunked a glass of Coke on the table so that the ice clanked furiously. My walkie-talkie, which I’d set by the place mat, jumped. Beanstalk looked down his Rocky Mountain-slope nose at it. “Let me know if I should dispose of that scrap metal for you,” he sniffed and swung off, slinging a blue napkin over his shoulder with a slap!

  I glugged back a good portion of the Coke. The ice cubes crowded up to my nose, tickling it. Ah, the small pleasures of life.

  Blurry through the ice cubes, a face appeared. A plump, worried one.

  Edwina Chewbley’s.

  Her chin was trembling so badly her whole head shook. Ping! A hairpin popped out to land on some cutlery. Lifting a gold and blue napkin, the piano teacher mopped at her forehead. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you, Dinah. When I got back to the train, I saw Bowl Cut getting on just ahead of me.”

  “Holy Toledo,” I breathed.

  “I followed him, or tried to,” Mrs. Chewbley reported. “Amazing he didn’t hear me. I was huffing and puffing behind him all the time.” She gave an apologetic little laugh. “I suppose I really should cut down on my chocolate creams.”

  She began to fan herself with the napkin. “Someone got in the way, and Bowl Cut slipped out of view. I’m so sorry I doubted you. I’ve already left a note for the head conductor saying I must speak to him as soon as possible.”

  Mrs. Chewbley began to sway in her seat. “Goodness, all that rushing about…I’m not used to it…If only I had something to drink…”

  Afraid she was about to faint, I jumped up and waved at Beanstalk, down at the other end of the dining car. Sniffing, he crooked a long forefinger in an annoyed, just-a-minute signal and continued punching keys on his BlackBerry.

  I sat down again. “Some Coke?” I offered, pushing my glass toward Mrs. Chewbley.

  Mrs. Chewbley surveyed the Coca-Cola, which had bits of squashed lemon floating about in it. Pounding lemon wedges into pulp with a spoon is one of my favorite sports. “Er…no. You drink it up, Dinah. I’d rather order a—”

  The train let out a long whistle, the kind you hear at home from faraway that makes you long to run off and explore the world.

  At the moment it was preventing me from hearing Mrs. Chewbley. “Pardon?” I shouted.

  Mrs. Chewbley opened her mouth. The whistle sounded again, as if it were blasting from her lungs. We both laughed. Shrugging good-humoredly, Mrs. Chewbley picked up the saltshaker and emptied some out on the table. L-E-M- she began tracing in the salt—but then the whistle died out.

  Oh, lemonade. I windmilled my arms at Beanstalk. I drank from my Coke and pointed at Mrs. Chewbley. Really, I should be in improv. But Beanstalk merely flapped an impatient wrist at me.

  Mrs. Chewbley proceeded to cluck about Bowl Cut and how nasty he was to be giving little girls frights like this.

  Just because I’m height-challenged doesn’t mean I’m little, I thought—but I couldn’t feel annoyed at Mrs. Chewbley. She’d out-detectived me by noticing Bowl Cut.

  “Such shady goings-on,” Mrs. Chewbley clucked. She started knitting again. Click, click!

  Clucks and clicks. Even though I wanted to charge up and down the train, alerting everyone that Bowl Cut was aboard, I began to grow sleepy. It’d been a vigorous swim at Annette Lake, not to mention the fifty-odd sandwiches I’d packed away…

  “Dreadful fellow,” clucked Mrs. Chewbley.

  Cluck, cluck…click, click…

  Snap, snap! Twigs crunched as Charles the Second climbed down from the tree he’d been hiding in. “Do you think they’ll find me?” he asked, brushing twigs off his black socks.

  “I’ve been trying to find you myself,” I replied. “I’m wondering if you’re the king everyone’s talking about.”

  Charles sniffed. “Well, I ought to be.”

  I held out Dad’s unmailed letter to him. The scrawled return address gave a wriggle. It changed from my home address to a face that promptly stuck its tongue out at us.

  “Very rude, and to a royal, no less,” Charles remarked disapprovingly over his pointed beard.

  “You rather look like the fisherman on Annette Lake,”I told him.

  “A fisher— ? How dare you? Guards!” shouted Charles, brushing leaves off a satin sleeve.

  None came. “Those bloody Roundheads,” the King fumed. “I suppose they’ll be here any minute.” He tugged at his beard. “Hmm. You can’t think of a cleverer hiding place than a tree, can you? Being such an imposing figure, I do tend to stand out. What a bother! And you haven’t been any help at all,” he accused.

  “But I wanted you to help me.”

  “Impertinence!” Charles scrambled up the tree again, and I got another flash of black socks. They didn’t go very well with his satiny, lace-trimmed outfit.

  “Isn’t it about time you bolted to France?” I suggested helpfully. “Wait … ”

  “Wait,” I mumbled and woke myself up. “Hey, Mrs. Chewbley, you won’t believe the dream I just—”

  “Mrs. Who-bley?” inquired the woman sitting across the table from me.

  And, with a sick feeling, I saw it wasn’t Mrs. Chewbley at all, but Mrs. Zanatta.

  Chapter Twelve

  Di-verging from Reality

  Nobody had seen Mrs. Chewbley.

  What was worse, Beanstalk flapped a note in my face that was signed Edwina Chewbley. It said she’d decided to stay in Jasper for a few extra days and not take the train any farther.

  “That’s forged,” I said flatly. I glared at Mrs. Zanatta. “You’re in this king thing, aren’t you? What did you do with her? ”

  Mrs. Zanatta was as scarlet as her dress. “I’d hoped for a confidential word with you, Miss Galloway—though up to now on this trip, after the butter-tart incident, I’ve been hiding from you.”

  To our fast-gathering onlookers, she added, “Honestly, Miss Galloway was alone when I arrived,” and edged away.

  Head Conductor Wiggins, a tall, gray-haired man whose gold buttons blinked and winked at me from hi
s navy uniform, stepped forward. “I escorted Mrs. Chewbley onto the platform at Jasper myself—she needed help, as her bag had split open somehow.”

  Beanstalk, standing nearby, flushed angrily at this reminder of his little adventure with the piano teacher at the journey’s start. “You see? The Chewbley dame had her bag with her. There is no question of her being aboard.”

  “Mrs. Chewbley took her bag because she’d crammed extra sandwiches into it,” I argued.

  The head conductor glanced at Madge, Talbot and Pantelli, who were all gaping at me. His lean, handsome features were doubtful. “Miss Galloway, you say Mrs. Chewbley wanted to warn you about a man with a bowl cut?”

  I brightened. “Yeah, did you get her note?”

  Head Conductor Wiggins turned to Beanstalk. “Did you see any note?”

  Beanstalk snorted. His goggly gaze wandered to Madge, where it stuck. A silly grin simpered across his long face. “May I offer you an iced tea, Miss Galloway? This,” he flicked his bulbous eyes at me, “must be very upsetting for you.”

  I could tell Madge was not overly pleased with me. Just once, her lupine-blue eyes blazed, just once I’d like to enjoy a peaceful vacation!

  With some difficulty, her sisterly loyalty triumphed. “Dinah isn’t upsetting at all,” she fibbed coldly.

  Beanstalk visibly withered, his shoulders sagging and his rubbery frame bending into an unhappy C.

  “You had to have seen Mrs. Chewbley,” I accused. “Remember how I was waving and waving at you?”

  “The young lady could be mentally ill,” interrupted a tall, thin, sour-faced woman in a nurse’s uniform. She muscled forward, treading on Pantelli’s foot so that he yelped in pain. She brandished a black medical bag that read, in severe gothic letters, BEVERLY BALLANTYNE, RN. “I’m in charge of the train infirmary.”

  “But are you trained,” Pantelli wisecracked, massaging his foot.

  I knew he was being silly in an effort to cheer me up. But Nurse Ballantyne scowled and sharply rapped her bag as if she rather wished it were Pantelli’s head.

  Nurse Ballantyne had a very nasal voice. She gave the impression there was a bad smell she was trying to force out of her nostrils all the time she spoke. Now the nurse placed a palm on my forehead. “I understand you’re set to appear on Tomorrow’s Cool Talent.”

  I glared at her. “A passenger has vanished.”

  Ignoring me, Nurse Ballantyne pronounced, “Stage fright. Nerves.” She cracked open her bag with a snap and reached for a syringe with a large needle.

  “There’s no need for that,” Madge protested, and Talbot moved between the nurse and me.

  Head Conductor Wiggins asked wearily, “Miss Galloway, you haven’t really seen Mrs. Chewbley since our departure from Jasper, have you?”

  Beanstalk shot his neck out of his conductor uniform collar and glared at me. “You dreamed the whole thing. I saw you. You were napping.”

  “Mrs. Chewbley is on the train,” I said stubbornly. I’m good at stubborn. “She warned me about Bowl Cut.”

  The Gold-and Blue whipped past a meadow, reddish gold in the setting sun. From some other window, Mrs. Chewbley might be watching it. Might be unable to speak if she’d been removed against her will.

  Yet no one believed me. Even Madge, Talbot and Pantelli were looking at me questioningly.

  Could I have dreamt it?

  My eyes dropped to the L-E-M the piano teacher had traced in the salt.

  “She was here!” I exclaimed, pointing. “See where she—”

  “I think it’s time to stop this nonsense at once,” Nurse Ballantyne announced, slamming her bag down on the table.

  And the salt jiggled, erasing the L-E-M.

  Sighing, Head Conductor Wiggins ordered a search of the train. From the rigid set of his jaw, I knew he wasn’t pleased. But I had to give him credit. Someone had reported a vanishing passenger, and he was going to investigate, even if that someone was an untidy pre-teen with attitude.

  “I appreciate what you’re doing, but I can tell your enthusiasm quotient is low,” I told him.

  Madge bustled me back to our compartment, though not before I glimpsed Mrs. Zanatta’s red dress flashing into a compartment two doors down.

  Click! Madge shut our door. She said gently, “You were asleep when Mrs. Chewbley disappeared. Isn’t it possible you did dream that she was back on the train?”

  “No.” I pulled my hand away. “She saw Bowl Cut and decided to warn me.”

  “But why would this Bowl Cut person be on the train?”

  “Ummm…” I didn’t want to explain to Madge about having Dad’s envelope.

  Madge pushed back her auburn hair into a ponytail and let it drop again. “Sometimes Mother and I—and Jack too—notice that your imagination tends to be—well, vivid. It’s, um, all part of your natural energy, I guess. Which tends to be—well, excessive,” she said.

  All this hesitating was—well, grating on my nerves. “Do you want to chat when you’ve come up with a final draft?” I invited.

  To my surprise, this rude remark made her grin. “You’re a bright girl, Dinah. What you do with your singing is incredible. Like Pablo Casals with his cello. Or Venus Williams with her tennis game. Bright people, especially when they’re young, can be overly sensitive. Do you,” she stopped, and then got it out all in a rush, “ever think that you see Dad?”

  I goggled at her. Wow, these older siblings were frighten–ingly observant. I’d thought no one knew.

  “I…um…”

  To me, Dad’s appearances were quite normal. I mean, it was simple. Either, A, he was there or, B, he was a figment of my imagination.

  “It’s just that…” Madge absently twisted the pinned-on strap of my rainbow purse. “If you’re imagining Dad, then maybe you imagined Mrs. Chewbley.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Boy Who Wouldn't Talk

  No one believed me, and now my sister thought I chatted with ghosts. Well, I did: one ghost, at any rate. And why shouldn’t a girl have a variety of friends? At school they were always telling us to believe in diversity.

  Feeling very sorry for myself, I did what any junior sleuth would do. I turned my attention to a loose end.

  “A loose end,” Pantelli repeated as I rapped on Mrs. Zanatta’s door. “Is that like a dangling modifier?”

  “Don’t be daft,” I said—unfortunately, just as Mrs. Zanatta swung her compartment door open.

  She cut me off before I could explain that I didn’t find her daft, just sinister. “Dinah, you’ve made it clear you want nothing to do with me. So I’m not going to try approaching you again. It was Ardle’s idea. We met in the park, and I told him about Ryan and how we were taking the train to Toronto. Ardle said you would be on the Gold-and-Blue too, and he thought you might—well, never mind.” Mrs. Zanatta sighed. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

  Behind her, cross-legged on the floor, Ryan was clamping Lego pieces together. Red, yellow and blue pieces swooped and blurred through the air as he blended them into a castle. Wow. I had never got beyond the single-square-room stage.

  “The new Christopher Wren,” Talbot congratulated Ryan. “Christopher Wren, the great English architect who rebuilt London after the Great Fire of 1666, started out playing with blocks, just like Ryan. Actually, he played them with the future King Charles the Second,” he explained.

  When Charles wasn’t practicing climbing trees, I thought. Switching my gaze back from Ryan to his mom, I demanded, “Ardle suggested you approach me? And not about the king?”

  “You must be quite the monarchist,” Mrs. Zanatta said, puzzled. “Always thinking about kings! In any case, Ardle was trying to help Ryan. You see, Ryan has a stutter. In kindergarten, kids made fun of him, and he stopped speaking. Even older kids like that horrible Liesl Dubuque give him a hard time.”

  Mentally I handed a pink slip to my distrust of Mrs. Zanatta. Anyone who referred to Liesl as horrible couldn’t be all bad.

  Mrs.
Zanatta stooped to hug her son. “You don’t like it when I talk about you, do you, honey? I’m sorry.”

  She smiled up at me. “But Ryan can sing perfectly. It’s incredible. Ardle thought you might be willing to sing with him, you know, to bring him out of his shell a bit. He’s so shy about his stutter.”

  I was feeling about the size of one of Ryan’s Lego pieces. No wonder Mrs. Zanatta thought I’d be unsympathetic. As well as hurling a butter tart at her, I’d accused her of co-kidnapping Mrs. Chewbley!

  “Ryan and I have some singing to do,” I announced.

  Mrs. Zanatta, Talbot and Pantelli left the two of us to belt out “On Top of Old Smoky,” “This Old Man,” and other kidlet faves to music from a CD. I also taught Ryan “Black Socks.” “If I’m stuck with it in my brain, so should you be,” I informed him.

  Ryan’s voice was pitch-divine and sweet, like a choirboy’s. But he wouldn’t say anything to me, even after I told him that, in my view, a lot of people who could speak without stuttering were the ones who should keep quiet. Even after I made him laugh with stories about the evil hair-cutting prank I’d played on Liesl, and her egg retaliation. (Weird—I was furious at Liesl, but when I talked about our feud, it was all quite funny.)

  Ryan just wouldn’t speak. One day, I vowed, I would figure out a way to encourage him to.

  Later, while Talbot played ping-pong against Pantelli and Ryan, Mrs. Zanatta and I went for pizza in the dining car. Because I was curious—my normal state, in other words—Ryan’s mom gave me the Cliff’s Notes briefing about stuttering.

  About one percent of the population, and four times as many males as females, stutter. There can be different reasons for stuttering, such as the brain processing language in a different way. Often stuttering runs in the family; Mrs. Zanatta’s grandfather had stuttered.

  “I’m taking Ryan to Toronto to see a world-famous speech specialist,” she finished, peeling her first piece of pizza from the box. Up to then, Mrs. Zanatta had been too busy talking to eat. She had a proud, shiny-eyed expression as she described how Ryan’s creativity far outpaced his problem, if only he’d realize that.