Murder Train: A Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery

by Stacey Alabaster

  Dan stepped forward. "I am a detective, as I already explained."

  Julian returned to his magazine. "Yes. You did," he said drolly. "I think I'll wait for the real detectives."

  I stepped forward this time. "Perhaps you'll want to speak to me then," I said. "I am, by most measures, a real detective. I certainly have more experience than this guy."

  Dan glared at me. I didn't care, I was more interested in Julian's reaction.

  Oh. He was glaring at me too. "No thanks," he said dismissively. "As I said, I'll either wait for the actual police or die waiting."

  Dan and I, both dismissed and both having been put in our place, trudged out of the carriage and back toward our seats.

  "He probably just doesn't want to talk to me because I'll immediately clock how guilty he is," Dan said, brushing his hair out of his face. "Even though I don't need to talk to him to know that."

  "And he probably didn't want to talk to me because he can tell how good I am at seeing through lies," I said, holding my own. "I can always tell when a person is lying. It's one of my super powers."

  "Well, part of being able to tell when people are guilty is being able to tell when they're lying!" Dan snapped back at me.

  I supposed he had a point there, but if his only experience had been solving century-old murder cases, then he wasn't talking to anyone, was he? All he was doing was reading text on a screen.

  Pippa pulled me aside before we could go for another round. "All this arguing between you is getting embarrassing," she hissed.

  "You're right. I don't have to waste my time with this amateur. I've got a killer to catch."

  "I've caught the killer," Dan said with an eye-roll. "Julian, so that makes it two for two."

  "I think it makes it one for two," I shot back. "I mean, zero for two."

  "Will you two cut it out!" Pippa shouted.

  The noise must have travelled from first class to third.

  Conductor Garry entered loudly and glared at the three of us. "Do you people have any respect! There is a dead woman lying here!"

  "Sorry," I said quickly. But he stopped me as I was trying to leave.

  "You look familiar," he said, as confused about my identity as I had been about his. "Hang on, aren't you that chick who was trying to stop The Pastry Tree from opening up in Belldale?"

  Dan's mouth dropped open like this was the most appalling news he had ever heard. "Why'd you do that?"

  I ignored him. "Yes, I am 'that chick'," I said to Garry. "And I was trying to save my business. And I was trying to save the integrity of the town! We don't need big business like that coming in and ruining honest small businesses."

  Garry looked me up and down. "Then why are you dressed in a fancy business suit? And what are you headed to the city for?"

  "I-I, um..." I straightened my skirt. "I really should get back to my seat. The police will be here any minute now, right?"

  Garry nodded slightly. "Yes, any minute. And you three had better get back in your seats. And stay there."

  "You heard what he said, Dan," I called when he lingered for a moment. I wasn't going to leave until he did. But Pippa was already dragging me away. And Garry was about to turn the tear gas on us if we didn't get out of the first class carriage.

  "I'm going to check on Julian," Garry said, keeping an eye on us as we traipsed away. "You three better not have done anything to him."

  Chapter 4

  I shook my head as I sat back down in our tiny cramped seats. "They really do get everything in first class," I grumbled. "Large comfy seats, head rest, free wine and cheese... So much better than what we've got here."

  "Rachael, they get murdered in first class."

  Good point.

  "What are we going to do now?" Pippa asked. "I feel like we're back in school and we've been sent to detention. And now we just have to wait for the principle to release us."

  "I don't even know what the holdup is," I said. "It's almost like Garry didn't even want the cops to get here, did you notice that?"

  Shoot. Dan was looking at me. I leaned in closer to Pippa and told her to keep her voice down while we talked about the details of the case.

  "I did notice that," Pippa said, getting a little excited. And a little too loud. I reminded her to be quiet again.

  "I wonder if he even called the police," I whispered. "Or notified the state? Anything? It's like he wants us all to be trapped out here... We are all his captive prisoners!"

  Pippa checked her phone again. "One of us needs to call the authorities then, before Garry kills all of us. Ugh, there's still no signal, Rachael! What if we really are trapped here?"

  "Okay, okay," I said, trying to stay calm. "We just need to somehow get to the cab of the train without Garry seeing us, so that we can use his phone there."

  Pippa nodded. "Let's do it."

  I stepped out into the aisle and right into Dan.

  I tried to sidestep him but he was blocking the way. He wasn't that large, but his puffy windbreaker and knapsack just about doubled his width.

  "Where are you going?" Dan asked. "We are supposed to stay seated, remember?"

  "I'm just going...to stretch my legs," I said, trying to sound innocent.

  Dan narrowed his eyes. "No, you're not! You're going to look for more clues!"

  I sighed. Fine. He'd caught me. "Not just more clues," I said forcefully. "More suspects." I stood up straight while Dan's face fell into a pile of indignation.

  "More suspects? You have your suspect! Not just your suspect, but your killer!"

  I just wasn't willing to hand the victory to Dan, no matter how obvious it seemed that he was right. Julian might have confessed—had he, though?—but that didn't mean he had done it.

  Dan crossed his arms. "Then I don't suppose you want to know what I've learned, then? While you two were busy whispering to each other like you were at a slumber party over there."

  What could he possibly have found out in the last fifteen minutes? "No," I said firmly. "Because it won't change anything. Unless you found actual video footage of Julian killing Eden then we can't jump to any total conclusions."

  "Eden had just changed her will to make sure that all her wealth—and there was plenty of it—went to Julian." Dan crossed his arms. "Now maybe I sound crazy, but that's a pretty good motive for murder. That sounds like a pretty good reason for jumping to a, what did you call it? 'Total conclusion'."

  I looked at Pippa for help but she only shrugged. "I'm going to go find a phone so we can get some actual help." When she walked away, I didn't even try to stop her or go after her.

  Okay, Julian did seem to have a pretty strong motive. I had to think quickly.

  "Yes," I said, trying to one-up him. "But if he wanted her money, why would he kill her in an enclosed space with a hundred potential witnesses! Where he has no escape!"

  "Umm, maybe because he knows that everyone would jump to the conclusion you just did. Maybe his theory is that it was so obvious, no one will suspect him."

  Oh my goodness. This was making my head spin.

  We were two dogs fighting over a bone, though, and neither of us wanted to drop it.

  I was so glad when the sliding doors opened and Pippa walked back into the car. Finally, we might get some conversation that made sense.

  Pippa's face was dark. "No one can find Julian."

  "What?" I spun around. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean," she said, looking furious. "You two were so busy arguing with each other that you've let your main suspect go!"

  Suddenly, I was very glad we were trapped on a non-moving train. How far could he really have gone?

  I hated that this only made it seem more likely that Dan was right. Why would an innocent man run?

  Dan left to go look for Julian in the first class carriage. "He's still got to be on here somewhere. They've got large bathrooms in first class. Plenty of room to hide." He seemed very confident that he had solved this mini-mystery, that he knew precisely where J
ulian was hiding.

  I was relieved when he finally left and I could tell my ideas to Pippa in secret, without Dan hearing them and stealing them.

  "I don't think Julian is still on the train," I whispered.

  Pippa looked out the window at the empty fields. "Well, I can't see him outside. There's nowhere to hide!"

  I shook my head. "I know," I had to admit. "But I still think I'm right." I walked over to the window and pressed against it, looking down at the tracks below. "Maybe he is hiding under the train...laying on the tracks..." I murmured.

  "That's not exactly safe!" Pippa cried out.

  "He's currently wanted for murder. He might not be thinking about what is safe. He's acting out of desperation. Come on, we need to get out of this train to check the tracks. And we need to do it quickly...."

  Before Dan thinks of it, was the thing I left unsaid.

  "You mean before your boyfriend beats us to it?"

  "What? No. What are you taking about?"

  We'd been told very firmly by Garry that no one was even allowed to leave their seats until the police arrived. I could only assume that leaving the train itself was an even bigger misdemeanor.

  He stepped out into the aisle and blocked us just as we were headed to the exit. He seemed to have a sixth sense for knowing just when we were about to escape or about to do something we weren't supposed to be doing.

  "Have to use the bathroom," Pippa said.

  Garry made a face. "On a stopped track?"

  "Oh." Pippa's face fell when she realized what he was getting at.

  All I could think about was Julian laying underneath us on the tracks. I wondered where exactly he was situated. For his sake, I hoped he'd chosen a safe spot out of the firing line.

  "And you need to go together?" Garry asked.

  Pippa shrugged. "Women, eh?"

  He finally got out of our way, shaking his head and waddling down the aisle in the opposite direction. Thank goodness.

  "What is it with you two, anyway?" Pippa asked in disbelief while we climbed off the train railing and jumped down onto the—thankfully, soft—grass below. "You and Dan, I mean.... Is it some kind of flirty banter thing?"

  She had to be kidding me. As if I didn't have enough men in my life to worry about. Well, that sounded like I was bragging or full of myself. I was just in a bit of a sticky situation right then. I had Kenneth of course, and he was my boyfriend.

  But I'd also had a close call with an ex, or an almost ex, named Jackson, who was a local police detective. We'd come close to kissing one day while going out for an almost entirely innocent coffee and Kenneth saw us. We hadn't really spoken about it since.

  "Dan is the last person in the world I would have flirty banter with, thank you very much."

  "I dunno, I thought you two had a bit of chemistry." She was joking. But I told her to shut up anyway.

  The grass beneath us was dry, which was lucky because I fell right onto my butt once we'd leapt from the carriage. I brushed myself off and checked out the damage to my business skirt. It was dark, so it wouldn't show any grass stains if we ever made it to our meeting.

  "Come on, Dan is busy right now so he won't even notice that we’re missing for a while," I said. "But eventually he will. So let's make the discovery first."

  Pippa shooed a fly away from her face. "Rachael, the train is pretty darn long... If he's hiding underneath it on the tracks, where do we even start?"

  "I guess, right here," I said, crouching down. Shoot. It was too dark underneath to see.

  I pulled my phone of my pocket and noticed, right before I switched the flashlight on, that I had a bar of reception. I didn't tell Pippa.

  With a bit of light, I could see a few feet further, but it was still going to take at least ten or fifteen minutes to check the full length of the train. And in that time, he could move. "You start at one end, I'll start at the other, and we'll meet in the middle," I called out to Pippa.

  Staying low so that we couldn't be seen out of the windows, we each made our way to our respective ends of the train, searching underneath every carriage from first to third class with our flashlights from our phones. All I could see was steel and cobwebs and the under carriage of the train.

  By the time we met back in the middle, I was so frustrated I wanted to throw my phone on the tracks. And maybe myself along with it.

  "He's not under there," I said, sour about being wrong. I only hoped that Dan would have no way of knowing how bad my hunch had turned out to be.

  Pippa turned around. "Then where is he?"

  I tapped my foot on the ground. "He's not on the train."

  "He might be! Dan might be right about—"

  "No," I interrupted her, firmly. "He's out here, somewhere. I know it."

  There was nothing but empty fields all around us. "Well, he isn't hiding here in the fields," Pippa pointed out. "The grass isn't even long enough for someone to hide if they were laying flat on their back."

  It was farmland and even though I couldn't see so much as a farmhouse or a barn anywhere nearby, someone had recently run a tractor over the grass, so someone obviously worked the land.

  But where was this person? Or persons?

  "Hey, what is that over there?" I asked, pointing to the tall object I had seen from the train. It was slightly obscured by a hill so it was a little difficult to make out, especially with the glare from the midday sun.

  Pippa glanced over her shoulder. "It looks like a windmill to me."

  I looked up at the train. If we stepped any further away from it, we'd be visible to the other passengers. We'd also be visible to Dan. But I wanted to check out that windmill. We had to make a choice, take a chance.

  "Come on," I said, grabbing Pippa by the arm. "Let's check out that windmill."

  "I'm not sure we should have left the train," Pippa said worriedly after we'd been walking for fifteen minutes. "This is a crazy idea. I don't think he's hiding behind a windmill, Rachael."

  "I don't think he's hiding behind the windmill, Pippa. I think he's inside it."

  She laughed loudly. "It's not large enough to hold a person inside it!"

  But size could be deceiving at a distance. I was pretty sure she was wrong.

  "It looks large enough to hold a person to me," I said. "More than large enough. I think people actually live in windmills."

  "No, they don't," Pippa said. She was making a habit of being wrong that day, because I knew people definitely did live in windmills. I'd read about it in a magazine on a plane once, and could remember thinking it was pretty cool. Hey, if my bakery failed, or the meeting went badly, maybe a windmill was where I would escape to.

  "But wouldn't it be awfully, I dunno, windy?" Pippa asked. She stopped and looked up at the mill. "And wouldn't the blades, like, hit you in the head all the time?" She threw her hands up. "I dunno. I'm no expert."

  "I don't think it's an active windmill..." I mused. "It's an old windmill. I think it's a home now."

  "You're telling me you think there's a family living inside that thing? Right here? In the middle of nowhere?" Pippa shook her head. "They must be a pretty weird bunch if they are."

  I wasn't sure if it was a family, though. It might just be housing one sole hermit, for all we knew. Or it might be empty, but my gut didn’t think so.

  It took about twenty minutes for us to finally reach the windmill. I turned my head and smiled smugly when I saw that we had not been followed. Dan must have still been on the train, searching the bathrooms.

  "See?" I whispered. "There's a door." I heard the sound of clucking. "There's even chickens here. It's a home."

  I reached out to knock, but Pippa grabbed my hand. She looked over her shoulder and pointed back toward the train. "I think maybe we should go back. What if the train leaves without us?" Pippa's eyes grew very wide. "We might be trapped here forever, Rachael. We didn't tell anyone we were leaving the carriage."

  I rolled my eyes a little. "I don't know about forever. They'll
be another train, Pippa..."

  "Where?" she asked frantically. "That isn't an official train station we stopped at. And where are all the other people, Rachael? Where are the cars? Where are the homes? The only thing as far as the eyes can see are fields, and this windmill."

  I knew there was no way we would get stranded there forever. She was just worried about making our meeting in time.

  Still, it would be incredibly eerie to be stranded there if the train took off. Especially when the sun started to set.

  "We've come all this way now," I reasoned. "We may as well knock on the door and check."

  "Oh yes, we definitely might as well knock on the door and see if a killer is hiding in there. Good thing we aren't totally isolated right now."

  I ignored her sarcasm and reached out for the door again.

  "You just want to beat Dan," Pippa said. "You're not thinking clearly."

  Maybe not. I knocked on the wooden door anyway and called out, "Hello?"

  The door opened, just a crack. I could see a hand, and the white of an eye, but that was about it. If it was Julian, he was hardly going to welcome us in with open arms. I wondered if we needed to leap at him, grab him now while we had the chance.

  "Hello?" I asked, peeking inside. It wasn't Julian.

  The door was pulled back completely and a kind looking older woman with greying brown hair smiled at us. She had crinkly eyes and she seemed more than thrilled to find visitors at her door.

  "Well, hello dears." She clasped her hands together. "Don't you two girls look smartly dressed today!"

  Pippa and I looked at each other. I'd forgotten we were still dressed in our formal business attire. It was a wonder this poor woman didn't think we were there to try and sell her insurance. I wasn't sure we qualified as 'girls,' but maybe we were to her older eyes.

  "My name's Ana," she said, beaming at us. "I'm glad you girls found me hidden all the out here. You don't see young sweet things like yourselves around here very often."

  I thanked her for the compliment before clearing my throat and getting to the real business of our visit.