“What? Where?”
“Ray’s on the train. I just saw him get on.” She held her breath as she stared at the door at the car’s entrance. It remained shut. “He must’ve gone the other way. We’ve got to warn the others.”
“Inspector O’Reilly said—”
“Jackson! That was before a murderer hopped the train. You go after Niall and Yseult. I’ll go forward after Kenneth and Inspector Mulroney.”
“Sissy—”
“We’re on a moving train full of people. What can he do? But it won’t be long before we get to the next stop. So move. We don’t want him to get off. We’ll lose him. Hurry.”
She pushed past Jackson and headed toward the front of the car without waiting to see if he went the other way. A few of the other passengers glanced at her as she rushed past. Most remained absorbed in their smartphones, tablets, books, and newspapers. The train lurched as she stepped onto the platform connecting her car to the one in front of it. She grabbed at a railing to steady herself. How far had Ray gone? Had he reached Kenneth and Inspector Mulroney yet?
She saw the frizzy blonde hair as soon as she stepped into the next car. Maire. No police, no Ray. Where was everyone? Maire pressed the button to open the door at the opposite end. She disappeared onto the platform before Gethsemane could reach her.
Gethsemane followed through to the next car. No Maire. Not possible. The maid couldn’t move that fast. Could she? Gethsemane surveyed the sea of headphones and earbuds that filled the car’s seats. You could drive an armored vehicle through and no one would notice, let alone a blonde rushing down the aisle. Unless…Gethsemane looked to her right and her left. Toilets. Maire could have ducked into a toilet. She knocked.
“Hold yer horses,” a man bellowed. “Someone’s in here, ain’t they?”
She tried the opposite stall. Empty. She kept going. Maire had to be in front of her. Ray, too. Maybe they planned to meet on the train, Maire being smart enough not to fall for the ruse of an isolated exchange spot that had nearly cost Gethsemane her life. If she had the original will or the forgery and the magazine pages with her she could hand them to Ray, he could hand her the money, and she could get off the train at the next stop and vanish to start a new life. She must have noticed Ray’s gold lighter, his expensive clothes—so much nicer than her discount-store fast fashion—his thirty-euro haircuts. She would have held him up for a lot more than five hundred euro.
Gethsemane braced herself against another lurch, then moved on. Plenty of other toilets to hide in.
Gethsemane reached the last carriage before the dining car. Fewer people occupied this one. Some napped, some read, only one wore headphones. She hurried past to the toilets at the far end of the car. The stall to her right was empty. She tried the door to her left. It wouldn’t open. She knocked. Silence. She knocked again, louder. No impatient answer telling her to go away or wait her turn. She turned the door handle again and pushed the door harder. It moved a few inches, then stopped, jammed. More pushing gained another couple of inches, far enough to see what blocked the door—Maire, legs splayed, mouth open, eyes bulged, obviously beyond help. A blue-patterned silk necktie knotted around her neck dug into her flesh. Gethsemane stumbled back and leaned against a window as she fought off waves of nausea. She jumped at a noise at the same moment the train lurched and pitched forward toward the toilet. Desperate not to fall on Maire, she spun and flailed as she grabbed for something, anything, to steady herself. Her hands grasped rough fabric and she found herself holding onto the tweed lapels of a chubby man with rosy cheeks and a scowl. His voice had been what startled her.
“I asked if you were going to use that.” He nodded toward the toilet as he pried her grip loose.
She shook her head. “Call a porter or the conductor, tell them to stop the train. There are police—gardaí—onboard, get them here.”
He looked past Gethsemane into the toilet. He looked as queasy as she felt. “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph.” He crossed himself, stumbled back, and hit the train wall with a thud.
Other people in the car noted the outburst. Soon a group clustered around the grisly find. The volume rose as the air filled with expressions of shock and dismay and calls for someone who “knew what to do.”
Gethsemane backed away from the commotion, heart racing, breath caught in her throat. She pressed her hands against her temples and recited Negro League stats. She shook her head to clear the image of Maire’s blue distorted face. This was no time to lose it. Only Ray had reason to kill Maire, and Ray still lurked somewhere on the train. A few more batting averages and her heart slowed. The crowd gathered around the toilet blocked the hallway. Gethsemane peered into the deserted dining car for another exit and saw the door at the far end open. The door to the car beyond stood open as well. The baggage car. Of course. Where better for Maire to hide the wills and magazine pages than in her checked luggage, disguised by hundreds of similar bags, in a car only staff visited? Ray must have had the same thought. Or maybe Maire told him before he—Gethsemane shook her head again. A vision of his ever-present gold cigar lighter flashed in her mind. She needed to find that suitcase before he did.
“Excuse me,” she said in case anyone stopped staring at Maire long enough to wonder where she’d gone. “I think I’m going to be sick.” She ran through the dining car. No one followed. She stepped onto the small platform between the dining and baggage cars and paused, listening. The clackata-clackata-clackata of the train filled the air. Light shone from somewhere deep inside the baggage car. Another door must have been open, an easy way for Ray to get off the train without being seen. The light illuminated the car enough for her to see luggage stacked as high as the ceiling along the carriage’s walls, held in place by webbing, and in shorter columns on racks throughout the car. Plenty of corners hidden in shadow provided places for Ray to hide. Gethsemane let her eyes adjust to the dim interior and scanned in vain for something to use as a weapon.
“Be the big dog,” she whispered to herself. She needed him to say something, make a noise, so she could locate him. She called out. “Give it up, Ray. We found Maire. The gardaí will swarm as soon as we reach the next station. You’ll never make it off the train.” She didn’t tell him about the law-enforcement officers already on the train. No point in showing all her cards.
Ray’s voice sounded from the gloom. “I don’t have to make it off, do I? I’ll just slip into a seat and be ordinary Joe as shocked as everyone when I hear about the terrible tragedies that befell the poor maid and the American woman. It’s getting so no place is safe these days.”
Ray’d thought this out. Her heart pounded. More stats. Hilton Smith, four thirty-five, Willard Brown, three forty-six, Harry Else, three ten. Of course, Ray didn’t know about Jackson. Her brother-in-law must have found O’Reilly and Yseult by this time. He’d have told them about Ray and they’d be on their way. Right? “No place will be safe for you. You shouldn’t have strangled Maire with your tie. It’s custom-made, isn’t it? Tailors keep records. Or had you planned on murdering the tailor and burning down the shop? You’ve already committed murder and fraud. Why not add arson and make it a trifecta?”
Ray swore. Gethsemane thought she heard movement, then the baggage car fell silent again. She glanced toward the dining car. The connecting doors had closed, but the crowd—which now included several people in rail company uniforms, but none of the gardaí nor either of the FBI agents—clustered around the toilet, and Maire’s body in the car on the other side remained visible through the windows. If she made a run for it, she could reach them before Ray reached her, but—she turned to the baggage car as a shaft of light fell on the wall of suitcases. Ray only had to toss Maire’s suitcase off the train and with it the proof of his fraud and murders. He could backtrack later, retrieve the case, and destroy the wills and magazine pages and anything else Maire might have against him at his leisure.
“How much was Mair
e into you for?” Gethsemane asked. Anything to keep him talking. If she could keep track of him, she could keep from ending up like Maire. And Andrew. And Olivia. And the New York widow. She hoped.
“Seventy-five thousand. Can you believe that? The greedy little bitch.”
“A regular Lady Muck. What’d she have on you? Did you put her up to luring me out to the distillery?”
“Of course. Do you think she came up with that plan on her own? Can you see her crawling around on a catwalk loosening bolts? She’d have killed herself. Maire and I were partners. She knew everything about the wills. She stole the original for me. Had to seduce that gobshite solicitor’s clerk to get it. I owed her for that. She was supposed to discover the forged copy hidden in Olivia’s office.”
He’d confirmed her suspicion about Maire only being the decoy Ray had used to lure her out to the distillery. “The copy of the will that left everything to you.”
“Not everything. Mustn’t be too obvious. Others still got their cuts. Your brother-in-law still got his embroideries.”
“After you switched the genuine textiles for fakes, no doubt.”
“I figured discovery of large-scale art fraud would distract attention from my little inheritance scheme. And it would have worked if Maire’d done as she was told. But instead of giving me my version of the will, she kept both.”
“And told you to pay up or she’d go to the gardaí,” Gethsemane said. “Did Andrew forge the will for you?”
“Sweet, sentimental Perry. Delighted to help me out for old time’s sake. I invited him to lunch at Essex House not long after he arrived in town. A chance for us to renew our acquaintance. We eventually got around to discussing securing my inheritance. All the delicious textiles on display inspired him. He devised a way for me to pay him back for the will.” Ray laughed. “An additional way to pay him back.”
“You help him steal Olivia’s textiles, he helps you steal Olivia’s estate. Quid pro quo. Why’d you stab him? Found out he was seeing another man?”
“Unlike Perry, I leave sentiment to the rom coms. He told me you’d traced a button back to him. It came from a jacket I’d given him as a present when we moved to New York. He must have lost it during one of his visits to Essex House.”
Ray sounded close. She peered into the shadows. She still couldn’t see him. Keep him talking long enough to figure out where he hid.
“An expensive gift. You two must have loved each other at some point. I found Andrew’s photograph of the two of you. Half of it, anyway. He seemed happy.”
“In addition to being sentimental, Perry had a flare for the dramatic gesture. I went to see him at his gallery. You and that button and your talk about the Koors painting made him nervous. He thought you knew more than you did.”
“He thought I knew the Koors was one of his fakes,” she said.
“Yes. He got quite hysterical. We had a falling out. Perry wanted to run again. I didn’t. He ripped the snap and threw my half in my face.”
“Which you destroyed. Before or after you killed him to keep him from skipping out?”
“After. Unfortunately, Maire found my complete copy of the photo hidden among my things. I should never have saved it. Maybe I’m sentimental after all.”
“Something for a forensic documents examiner to work with if they ever examined the signatures on the wills.”
“Maire wasn’t as dumb as I mistook her for. She recognized the added value of the photo and the pages from that damned magazine.”
Other copies of the Christeby’s magazine existed, but, by itself, the magazine didn’t prove anything. Lying to a hotel magnate about not being at an art auction was no crime. The photo provided a direct link between Ray and Andrew, but dating a man who later turned up murdered wasn’t a crime either. The wills were key. If Ray burned the original and felt bold enough, he could still substitute the forgery and try to claim the inheritance. Or he could just cut his losses, destroy both copies, let Olivia’s estate stay tied up in probate forever, and find a new widow to prey on. She needed to find that suitcase.
Gethsemane pressed her back against the wall. Luggage handles and straps poked her as she inched farther inside the baggage car. She peered ahead as far as she could. No sign of Ray. Nothing but suitcases, rows and rows of suitcases. How would she find a single battered purple case among all of those?
Ray’s voice boomed in the small space. “Not polite to keep me waiting, Dr. Brown.” Gethsemane froze. “Let’s get this over with. I have things to do.”
“Like find another widow to sucker. And murder. You were behind that mysterious car accident in New York, weren’t you? The car in the Hudson? So nice of your employer to leave you all that lovely money.”
“Malicious gossip. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
“The authorities believe it enough to go back and take a closer look at her will.”
“By the time they sort anything out, I shall be residing in a country with no extradition treaty. You can find rich widows everywhere if you look for them. They’re always so grateful to have some kind person manage all the tedious details of living so they can concentrate on important things, like hosting parties and lording it over the peons.”
“That’s why you killed two women and stole their fortunes? To strike a blow for the proletariat? How very populist of you.”
“The woman in New York never earned an honest dollar in her life. She lived on trust funds handed down from robber barons. And I only took from Olivia what was mine by rights. The Boyles stole my family’s lands and sentenced us to abject poverty. It’s taken centuries for us to claw ourselves out of the gutter they left us in. Now I’ve settled the score. Bloody English.”
“Olivia was a McCarthy. She was Irish.”
“She married English for money, even worse. Nothing but a glorified whore.”
“Why couldn’t you wait until she died of natural causes? You probably would have gotten away with the swindle if you had.”
“Couldn’t wait. There’d have been nothing left. The feckin’ wagon was selling off to move to Florida. Florida. Feckin’ Disney. All the properties were going. The distilleries, Essex House. Most of the art, too, what she didn’t plan to leave to your brother-in-law’s museum.”
“The brochures I found in Olivia’s office. Real estate in Florida. She wasn’t involved in art fraud, was she?”
“That prig? Far too self-righteous to be involved in anything so sordid.”
“She didn’t know the Koors was a fake, and she didn’t know you’d switched the Creech miniature for a fake right before the auction.”
Gethsemane halted at the edge of the beam of light and looked back toward the dining car. Where was the cavalry? She looked the other way. Where was Ray? She called his name. Only the train’s clackata-clackata answered her.
The light shone through an open door in the side of the baggage car. The landscape whizzed by at a dizzying speed. Too fast for Ray to jump, but perfect for tossing out a suitcase. The train lurched again and Gethsemane stumbled and pitched toward the open door. She hooked an arm through nearby webbing in time to stop her fall. She pulled herself upright—
A vice clamped around her neck. No, fingers. Ray’s fingers, both hands squeezing her throat, cutting off her air. Ray’s eyes narrowed, filled with hate and rage, as he tightened his grip. She kicked him, but he didn’t let go. He shoved her hard against the luggage and used the leverage to squeeze even tighter. She clawed at his hands, but her nails bounced off his flesh as harmlessly as feathers off steel. The shaft of light dimmed. Her head swam and her arms and legs grew heavy. No ghost was going to rescue her from the depths this time. No one else was going to show up either. If law enforcement was on the way, they wouldn’t get here in time. The best she could hope for was them finding Ray standing over her dead body. She’d come back and haunt the bastard. Or she
could—she reached up and behind her.
The train lurched once more, harder than the last time. Ray loosened his grip a fraction as he steadied himself. Gethsemane used the reprieve to latch onto the first thing her hand landed on. A handle. She pulled down and forward. Another jolt of the train gave her some forward momentum and she brought a hard-sided wheeled case down on Ray’s head. It caught him in the side of his face and knocked him backward. Gethsemane swung the suitcase again and let it fly into Ray’s chest. He fell and lay stunned in the baggage car’s doorway.
She didn’t wait to see if he got up. She ran toward the dining car. She saw Jackson, O’Reilly, and Yseult through the windows, running toward her. Yseult held her phone near her mouth like a walkie-talkie. She tried to cry out, but only hoarse, raspy noises came through her sore throat.
The light in the car dimmed. She looked over her shoulder, expecting to see Ray gaining on her. She froze.
Rock walls, their tops too high to see from within the train, blotted the sun. The train barreled down an ever-darkening chute. A tunnel. She saw Ray stagger to his feet and grab the edge of the open door for support. The tunnel walls narrowed around the speeding train. Ray stumbled as the train lurched. He pitched forward, almost falling out of the baggage car. He grasped the door frame and tried to right himself. His head bobbed out the door, inches away from the tunnel’s wall.
“Look out!” Gethsemane shouted.
A second later, a claustrophobic air surrounded her as rock closed overhead and extinguished the light. The car plunged into darkness. In another second, she heard a sickening noise, a noise she’d heard once before, recently, when a man’s skull smashed against something harder than bone.
Death in D Minor Page 21