Loco Motive

by Mary Daheim

  “You don’t have them at all,” Judith countered. “You shot the front of our house, but nothing else in the cul-de-sac. Let’s cut a deal. Tell me why you took the pictures of Willie and I’ll drop the charges.”

  “Screw you.” Maddie nodded at Tiff. “Do it.”

  Judith and Tiff were the same height, but the younger woman had a lean, willowy body and no apparent physical flaws. As Maddie stepped aside, Tiff grabbed Judith’s upper arms and shoved her back toward the outer door. Maddie was already there, trying to turn the latch.

  Judith dug in her heels and screamed at the top of her lungs. “Hurry up!” Tiff urged.

  “Somebody might hear her.”

  Judith screamed again, but her struggle to loosen Tiff’s viselike grip was doomed. All sorts of hopes and fears raced through her mind. The door must be locked. Her fierce resistance could dislocate her hip. Someone would hear the commotion. Pain ate away at rational thought. Judith began to feel weak, even light-headed. Maddie swore a blue streak. Another scream echoed in Judith’s ears. Is that me? I can hardly breathe. How could I scream? A scuffle. A shrill cry. A loud thud. Judith crumpled to the floor.

  “Hey!” a woman shouted. The voice was familiar. “What’s this?”

  The pain was ebbing, but someone close by was making odd, bleating sounds. Judith slowly opened her eyes.

  “You want to take me on?” the not-quite-recognizable voice asked.

  Another woman spoke. “Not me, Pepper.”

  Renie. Relief surged through Judith’s battered body. She concentrated on focusing her vision and her brain.

  “You sure?” Pepper demanded. “What’s in that sock?”

  “Horse chestnuts,” Renie replied. “They make a nice weapon.” A man called out.

  “Pepper!”

  Judith recognized Wayne’s voice. She raised her head. Tiff was rolling around on the floor, groaning. Maddie froze in place, her back against the door.

  Pepper confronted Maddie. “Who are you? I thought you were partners in crime with Mrs. Flynn.”

  “Never!” Maddie cried. “She’s a crook!”

  Pepper lunged at Maddie, viciously twisting her arms. “Talk!” Renie and Wayne helped Judith to her feet. “Easy does it,” Renie said. “She’s got an artificial hip.”

  The words stabbed at Judith’s mind. But I don’t hurt, at least not in the unbearable way I feel when I dislocate. Thank God.

  Tiff had stopped her groans and moans, but stayed on the floor, catching her breath as she tried to sit up.

  “Which team are we on?” Renie asked Wayne.

  He didn’t answer. Judith leaned against the luggage rack and shook herself. “Good question,” she mumbled.

  Wayne also seemed confused. “Don’t ask me. Maybe Pepper can tell us.”

  Pepper, however, was waiting for Maddie to say something. When the younger woman didn’t speak, Pepper twisted her arm again. “You want me to put you in traction?”

  “Okay, okay!” Maddie was in obvious pain. “Can we go someplace else?” she asked in a quavering voice.

  Pepper nodded at Wayne. “Haul the other one to my compartment. It’ll be crowded, but we can sit on these little twits.”

  Before anyone could move, the family-room door opened. “What’s happening?” Courtney asked as Emily raced to the scene of the disaster. “Darling, don’t—” her mother called out, but stopped as she took in the carnage. “Oh, dear! Has there been an accident?”

  “Nothing to see here!” Renie shouted. “Go ’way, Emily.” Emily was fixated on Tiff.

  “You dead?” the little girl asked eagerly, probing Tiff’s backside with the yellow bill on her ducky slipper. “You like tickleth? Tickleth make me laugh. Like dis.” She let out a series of high-pitched giggles.

  Pepper glared at Courtney. “Get the kid out of here. Now.” Obviously frightened, Courtney quickly scooped up her daughter. “Don’t kick Mommy again,” she begged Emily, who was protesting loudly and waggling her ducky feet. “We need night-night time.”

  Judith was recovering. “I’m okay, but I need to sit,” she admitted. “How can we all do that in any of the compartments?”

  Pepper was watching Maddie and Tiff with a wariness that would have made a prison guard envious. “If,” she said, “I close the beds in the accessible bedroom, some of us can sit on the floor. Like this pair,” she added, indicating the two young women by pointing with her foot.

  “I can stand outside,” Wayne volunteered.

  “Whatever,” Pepper said. “Let’s do it.”

  Wayne pulled Tiff to her feet. Pepper shoved Maddie toward the accessible bedroom. Renie picked up Judith’s purse where it had fallen during the fray and took her cousin’s arm. “I warned you,” she said under her breath. “You’re damned lucky you didn’t dislocate.”

  “I know,” Judith replied meekly. “Thanks for saving my life.”

  “Sure,” Renie said. “I went into the corridor and saw Maddie and Tiff heading downstairs as the train started. I deemed it prudent to arm myself.”

  “Genius,” Judith said under her breath.

  Wayne held on to the young women while Pepper moved the beds with Renie’s help. Moments later, the cousins were sitting down, Pepper was standing, Maddie and Tiff were on the floor, and Wayne was on guard outside. Taking charge, Pepper addressed Judith. “You’re not conspiring with these two?” she asked, gesturing at the forlorn girls.

  “Hardly,” Judith said. “They’ve been playing nasty games with me since last week. I’ve got pictures to prove it.”

  To Judith’s surprise, Pepper seemed impressed. “Maybe I pegged you wrong from the get-go.”

  “Maybe we both made that mistake,” Judith said. “Ask them who they’re working for. They’re not the mastermind type.”

  Maddie uttered a faint growl. Tiff rubbed the back of her head. Pepper sneered at both of them. “Well?”

  “No matter what Mrs. Flynn says, we didn’t do anything illegal,” Maddie insisted with a hint of her usual verve. “We took pictures at the B&B she owns.” She paused, with a quick glance at Tiff. “It was all harmless—like a stunt. In fact, that’s what it was—a stunt. Right, Tiff?”

  Tiff grunted in apparent assent. “Some stunt,” Renie remarked. “Does ‘harmless’ mean you’d push my cousin off a moving train?”

  “She threatened us with the cops,” Maddie said. “That scared us.” Pepper shook her head. “Save the lame excuses. Who hired you to—” She stopped, turning to Judith.

  “What kind of pictures? X-rated?”

  “No,” Judith said, “unless you mean the hospital X-rays taken later. They shot the front of our house when…” She paused.

  “When Willie made his first jump out of the upstairs window. The rest were taken from the backyard, including his accident and the aftermath.”

  Pepper looked puzzled. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course.” Judith removed the memory card from her purse. “I returned their camera, but kept this. See for yourself.”

  Pepper frowned at the card. “I will.” She looked again at Maddie and Tiff. “Were you the ones I saw in that silver car at the corner of the cul-de-sac?”

  Maddie’s defiance resurfaced. “So?”

  “Who asked you to take the pictures?” Pepper demanded.

  Maddie and Tiff stared at each other. Tiff finally spoke. “His name was John Smith. We met him on the train a week ago going the other way.”

  Pepper was incredulous. “John Smith? Are you serious?”

  Tiff nodded—and winced. “My head hurts.”

  “Tough,” Pepper said under her breath. “What did he want?”

  “We got to talking in the club car,” Maddie said. “He told us he was a private detective, doing surveillance on some daredevil guy staying at Hillside Manor. Mr. Smith couldn’t risk being seen too often, so he asked us to drive by on Wednesday and Thursday. If the guy did anything unusual, we were to take as many pictures as we could. When we got to the cu
l-de-sac Wednesday morning, we saw a rental sign on a house near the B&B. That’d be our excuse for being there. We left the car by the curb on the through street after we took the first pictures.” Maddie stopped to clear her throat. “I need water. I’m parched.”

  Pepper looked suspicious. “Pretend you’re in a desert. Go on. Or can’t your accomplice speak?”

  Tiff shook her head. “I feel woozy.”

  “That’s a shame,” Pepper retorted. “Finish your story. Then you can have some water and maybe I can find an aspirin.”

  Judith, however, had some questions of her own. “Hold on, Pepper. I want to know why these two came to my B&B’s door.”

  After a moment of silence, Maddie responded. “We were scared that we’d been seen taking pictures of Willie’s accident. We hid on the slope in your backyard, but people were all over the place, in and out of the house. We figured someone had called 911. Cops might show up. We went around that big hedge and came to your front porch. There weren’t any sirens yet, so we rang the bell and told you we were looking for the rental agent. You didn’t seem to recognize us, so we pretended to go next door. After you’d gone inside, we hurried to the car we’d parked by the cul-de-sac entrance. We left just before the emergency vehicles arrived.” She cleared her throat again. “Our job was done.”

  Judith recalled Arlene’s remark about cars cruising the neighborhood. No doubt one of them belonged to Maddie and Tiff.

  Pepper wasn’t interested in the recital. “I don’t give a rat’s ass how the pictures were taken. Tell me who wanted them and why.” She moved closer to Maddie and Tiff. “Unless you want to be put permanently out of action, cough up a better name than John Smith.”

  “We can’t,” Tiff said miserably. “It was the name he used as a private eye. He said he’d be on the same train going east Sunday. All we had to do was leave the camera and the pictures in a duffel bag on the luggage rack in this sleeper.” Tiff stopped to catch her breath. “When we got to Williston there’d be a locker at the station with twenty grand in cash as our payment. He gave us the key.”

  Pepper was incredulous. “This crook is on the train? Have you seen him?”

  Maddie shook her head. “No. I mean, I thought I did, but it was from a distance. When I saw the guy closer up, I knew it wasn’t him.” She looked at Judith. “She’s the one who got us all messed up in the first place. She tricked us.”

  Judith was taken aback. “You mean because I took out the film…or…because,” she went on as the light dawned, “you dropped your camera when you fled the backyard and had to come back later that night. Where did you find the camera you thought was yours?”

  “By the side of the house,” Tiff said, finally finding her voice. “Not where the hedge is, but by the driveway. At least it looked like ours. But the more Maddie and I looked at it, the more we realized the model numbers were different.”

  Judith turned to Pepper. “Did Wayne ever find his camera?”

  “No.” She sucked in her breath. “I don’t get it. If you’ve got Wayne’s camera with the pictures he took in it, I want it back.”

  “I don’t have it,” Judith said. “You’ll have to ask Emily. I think she swiped Wayne’s camera from that duffel bag on the luggage rack. She likes to collect cameras, among other things.”

  “That kid!” Pepper briefly closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “Never mind that for now.” She leaned even closer to Maddie and Tiff, her face contorted with malice. “Describe John Smith. Now!”

  Maddie and Tiff shuddered. “He was maybe forty?” Maddie said, talking fast. “Brown hair, five-ten, nice-looking, but no stud. Denim jacket, jeans, dark shirt.” She glanced at Tiff. “Can you remember anything else?”

  Tiff was unresponsive for so long that Judith thought Pepper was ready to pounce. “Yes,” she finally said. “He had sideburns.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tiff’s detail didn’t seem to mean anything to Pepper. “Sideburns?” She threw her hands in the air. “I surrender. You two aren’t just stupid and greedy, but utterly worthless. I’m turning you over to the conductor. He’ll know what to do. Unless,” she went on, looking at Judith, “you have a better idea.”

  Judith had some ideas, but she wasn’t going to air them. “Go ahead. I’ll press charges. Keep me posted. Let’s go, coz. I’m beat—in more ways than one.”

  “Take it easy,” Renie said, standing up first. “Here, grab my hand.”

  Getting to her feet, Judith definitely felt wobbly. “Thanks.” She turned to Pepper. “Are you still suing me for thirty million dollars?”

  Pepper stared at Judith. “Thirty million…are you kidding? If I sued you, I wouldn’t ask that much.”

  Judith opened her purse and took out the legal papers. “See for yourself.”

  As she flipped through the pages, Pepper’s jaw dropped. “I don’t get it. I didn’t do this. How could I?”

  Judith snatched the document from Pepper. “We’ll sort that out later. Shall we tell Wayne to get Mr. Peterson down here?”

  Pepper didn’t answer right away. She seemed genuinely flummoxed. “What? Oh—yes. ASAP.”

  Wayne was leaning next to the door. He looked half asleep. “Is Pepper okay?” he asked as the cousins closed the door behind them.

  “Pepper’s fine,” Judith said. “She’s one tough woman. Get the conductor to deal with the double-trouble pair.”

  “Poor Pepper.” Wayne sighed as he turned to open the compartment door.

  Neither of the cousins spoke until they reached the stairwell. “One at a time,” Renie cautioned. “You’ve been through the mill.”

  Judith saved her breath until she’d collapsed on the lower bunk in their room. “I wonder what would’ve happened if the outside door hadn’t been locked or you hadn’t come along with a sockful of horse chestnuts.”

  “They come in handy if I’m attacked by aggressive squirrels. I sensed you were in trouble even before I heard you scream.”

  “Thank God for your intuition, coz.”

  Renie curled up at the foot of the bunk. “You’d do the same.”

  “True.” Judith was quiet for a few moments, trying to recover both physically and mentally. “Have I misjudged Pepper?”

  “That’s not like you, but it’s possible. As Wayne said, she’s a no-nonsense type. I’ve no idea what’s going on with the lawsuit and her denial of being part of it. I almost believe her. The only thing I’m sure of is that she makes one heck of a bodyguard. If I needed one, I’d hire her. I wonder if she’d take a bullet for me?”

  Judith regarded Renie curiously. “That’s interesting.”

  “What? That somebody might want to shoot me?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t think anybody would want to shoot you. At least not anybody who—” She stopped, fumbling for words.

  “Quit while you’re ahead,” Renie said drily.

  “I’ve been thinking about Pepper’s devotion to Willie—or not-Willie,” Judith said. “What inspires that kind of dedication?”

  “Admiration? Money? A need to be needed?”

  Judith shook her head. “I don’t think so. How about love?” Renie wrinkled her nose. “Wayne insisted there was no romance.”

  “I’m not referring to that kind of love,” Judith said. “I’m mean the more visceral kind—as in parent and child.”

  Renie gaped at her cousin. “Father and daughter?”

  “Do you remember what Wee Willie Weevil looked like?”

  Renie took her time responding. “I didn’t pay attention to him. Neither did our kids. I saw news photos and TV clips, but he often wore a helmet in close-ups or it was a long shot of a crazy stunt. Willie might as well have been wearing a suit of armor—not a bad idea, really. Bill had seen one of his movies and said the guy couldn’t act his way out of a paper sack. Willie never changed expressions, not even an occasional smile. But his fans saw him in person. They’d recognize an impostor.”

  Judith stifled a y
awn. “Willie hasn’t made a movie recently. Whoever was at the B&B looked like Willie, but older. According to Justin and Wayne, the original bodyguard was also Willie’s stand-in, so they must’ve had a resemblance. Justin said the guy doubled for some of Willie’s stunts in his last movie.”

  Renie nodded. “Did Willie die five years ago while his last film was in production? When that Hollywood crew stayed at the B&B, Bill told us about insurance for movie stars. If a lead actor can’t complete his scenes, the company collects big-time. Imagine what insurance for a guy like Willie would be worth.”

  Judith was suddenly wide-eyed and alert. “Thirty mil? The beneficiary was a company called WWF. Wee Willie Films?”

  “Maybe,” Renie replied. “What doesn’t make sense is that if Willie died during filming, why didn’t the company collect?”

  “Good point,” Judith said. “That is strange.”

  “The only reason I—” Renie held up a hand. “Shhh. Somebody’s in the corridor.” She got up to take a peek.

  “What’s happening?” Judith asked after Renie moved back to the bed.

  “Wayne and Mr. Peterson went downstairs. It’s going on midnight. I hope the cops are waiting for Maddie and Tiff in Wolf Point.”

  “Good riddance,” Judith murmured. “Now, if we could only figure out if John Smith and Jack Johnston are one and the same—or two different people, with and without sideburns.” She leaned back and sighed. “It’s so frustrating not having resources other than our fellow passengers. How many are involved, how many are who they say they are, and how many are lying through their teeth?”

  “It’s too bad Wayne hasn’t worked longer for Willie—or should I say Pepper? How would he know if Willie wasn’t Willie?”

  “He wouldn’t. How will Wayne react if he learns he’s been duped?”

  “He’s probably out of a job,” Renie said.

  “Not just that. I think Wayne’s in love with Pepper.”

  “I wondered,” Renie conceded. “I can’t tell if she returns the feeling.”

  “No. Her emotions are focused on Willie or whoever the dead man is.”

  A knock on the door startled both cousins. Renie got up. “Yes?”