Loco Motive

by Mary Daheim

  “No,” she replied. “I’ll get the key. You know all about the vandalism we have around here.” She shook her head. “Kids!”

  As Marsha went to fetch the key, Purvis scowled at Judith. “If you know who killed Roy Kingsley, you’d better say so right now.”

  Judith felt uncomfortable. “I can’t. I’m not quite sure. There are at least three possibilities, but I need more information.”

  “This better not be some kind of humbug,” Mr. Peterson muttered. “Thirty years with the railroads, and I’ve never been in a mess like this.”

  Purvis didn’t comment on the conductor’s rueful sentiments. Instead, he had a question for Judith. “It’d help if you’d give us a hint.”

  “I can’t. Not yet.” Her expression was contrite. “I’m sorry.” Marsha brought the key and handed it to Purvis. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” The trooper looked again at Judith. “Well? What’s your next move? I can’t cut you a lot of slack at this point.”

  Judith, in turn, looked at Marsha. “Let’s put it this way,” she said, her gaze shifting back to Purvis. “Marsha may have the key in more ways than one.”

  Coffee?” Marsha asked.

  “No caffeine this late for me,” Renie responded.

  “No, thanks,” Judith said. “I’d get wired, too.”

  Marsha picked up the mug she’d placed on one of the empty chairs. “I need to stay alert.” She settled in between the cousins, shrewd black eyes fixed on Judith. “So you think I know something about who killed Roy. That sounds unlikely—but interesting. Are you really a detective?”

  “No,” Judith replied, “but my husband is. He’s a retired police officer who works part-time in the private sector.” She smiled ruefully and glanced in the direction of the restroom, where Purvis was filling in Mr. Peterson about FASTO’s track record as an amateur sleuth. “Skip my background. Purvis will vouch for me.”

  Marsha nodded. “Okay.”

  “Good,” Judith said. “What I need is background on people you may know. Let’s start with Randy Kloppenburg.”

  “Randy?” Marsha was aghast. “That boy wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “You’re probably right,” Judith said, pausing as Purvis and Mr. Peterson came out of the restroom.

  The trooper tossed the key at Marsha; it landed in her lap. “Thanks. We’re giving the train another look.” The two men hurried out of the station.

  Judith didn’t miss a beat. “Marsha, who’s Randy’s father?”

  If the query surprised the other woman, she didn’t show it. “His pa’s dead, has been for years. That’s why his granny, Ella, raised him. She’s gone; so’s her husband, Chet.” Marsha shook her head. “That family’s suffered way too much.”

  Renie spoke up for the first time. “Chet? As in Chet Huntley?” Marsha nodded.

  “Another Montana native son.”

  Renie nodded. “Wayne said the name of Willie’s original bodyguard reminded him of someone on TV. The Huntley-Brinkley Report, I’ll bet.”

  “Chet,” Judith echoed. “Chester. Mrs. Gundy asked her husband where Chester was. Mr. Gundy told her he was in Wolf Point.”

  Marsha frowned. “He is—in an urn at the cemetery. Chet passed away about five years ago. He worked for Willie. Now they’re both gone.”

  Judith played along with the charade. “You must’ve known Willie quite well if he came here for the annual rodeo.”

  “Well…” Marsha hesitated, apparently choosing her words carefully. “Now don’t go around saying I didn’t admire Willie. I did, for all the risks he took. He made something of himself. But once he got rich and famous, he forgot the so-called little people. Oh, I know celebrities have to protect themselves from crazy fans, and of course he wasn’t young anymore. The rodeo’s the biggest in the state, maybe the best in the country, if you ask folks around here. Willie’s name sold tickets, even if he didn’t do the crazy stunts like in the old days. He’d mostly ride out on his horse and wave at the crowd.” She shook her head and chuckled. “The past few years he got to dressing up like old Western heroes—Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, the Earp brothers. I figured he’d show up next as Calamity Jane.”

  “So,” Judith remarked, “he didn’t mix and mingle with his fans?”

  “That’s right.” Marsha made a face. “Like so many big shots, he forgot who helped him get to the top. Plenty of us were fed up with him. But,” she went on more softly, “now he’s gone and I’ll miss him. He might’ve acted like he was some kind of god, but he was all Montana, larger than life, risking his neck, daring the weather, racing against the wind. There may not be many people living in this state, but the ones who do got more grit than anybody in the other forty-nine. They have more heart, too.” Again, she paused. “The problem with Willie was his heart got smaller when his head got bigger. It’s a crying shame.”

  “That’s a very perceptive description,” Judith said. “It must’ve been hard for Chet Gundy to work with him.”

  Marsha sipped her coffee. “Chet could hold his own, a real feisty guy, willing to take risks, too. Not as daring as Willie, but who is? Brave, too. As a bodyguard, he took on all comers.” She nodded to herself. “But underneath, Chet had a bigger heart. That’s how it got broken. They told us it was an aneurysm, but I don’t believe it. Just like Ella, he couldn’t live with the heartbreak that finally blew him down like a Chinook wind roaring over the prairie.”

  Judith continued putting pieces together. “What broke his heart?”

  Marsha leaned back in the chair. “Let me go back to Randy. His mama, Lynne, was Chet and Ella’s younger daughter. Lynne and Rob had Randy a few years before they tied the knot.” She sipped more coffee and cleared her throat. “Rob worshipped Willie. He dreamed of being the next daredevil champ, and like lots of folks around here, he drove like a maniac on our long, empty stretches of road. Ten years ago come February, Rob and Lynne were driving home from Dripping Springs. It was dark and Rob didn’t see the black ice. He skidded, crashing head-on into a semi. Rob was killed outright and Lynne was left a helpless invalid. The only good thing was that Randy wasn’t with them.”

  Judith was moved by the tragedy, but her priority was the living. The gold band’s RK could be for Robert Kloppenburg, but JG didn’t fit Lynne Gundy.

  After a long pause, Marsha continued. “Chet’s wife, Ella, didn’t last long. She never had good health. Within a year, she withered away. I still marvel at how Dottie’s coped. I’d like to see her, but I won’t be a pest.”

  Judith felt she’d lost the story’s thread. “Dottie?”

  “Oh!” Marsha looked embarrassed. “You don’t know who I mean—Chet and Ella’s older daughter. When she went to work for Willie she called herself Pepper. More showbizlike, and that red hair. Her real name’s Dorothy May.”

  Judith nodded. “Sorry. ‘Dottie’ didn’t click right away.”

  “It wouldn’t if you met her recently,” Marsha said. “I heard she was getting off with Willie’s remains, but Don—Mr. Peterson—told me she’s going on to Chicago. That poor girl has been through so much. She’ll always be Dottie to me, though I never saw much of her after she went off to the police academy.”

  Judith gaped at Marsha. “She’s a cop?”

  “She was, but she quit after her pa died to take over as Willie’s bodyguard.”

  Judith noticed movement and sounds outside. “The train may be about to leave,” she said. “Was Rob’s grandfather a local?”

  Marsha turned sour. “Another one with big ideas and a head to match. He and Willie…oh, skip it. You’d better go.”

  All three women rose from their chairs as Mr. Peterson entered, holding his railroad watch. “Five minutes, ladies,” he said before speaking directly to Marsha. “We found Mr. Rowley. He was out cold in a vacant sleeper.” His gaze veered in Judith and Renie’s direction. “The local police are taking him home.”

  “Wait!” Judith cried. “Did Purvis talk to him?”

&n
bsp; “Given Mr. Rowley’s almost mummified condition, it was impossible,” the conductor said tartly.

  “Somebody had better sober him up quick,” Judith declared.

  “Or don’t you care about what happened to Roy Kingsley?”

  “Of course,” Mr. Peterson snapped. “I leave that up to the police. I have a train to run.” He turned on his heel and went back outside.

  “We have to go,” Judith said, turning back to Marsha, “but can you tell me about Randy’s paternal grandfather?”

  Again, Marsha seemed unfazed by the question. Judith figured that as stationmaster in a small town, she kept close watch on her fellow residents. “I’ll try,” she said, speaking faster than usual. “His real name is Conrad Kloppenburg. Now there’s a mouthful—we called him Kloppy. He got a notion to go to Hollywood, but it wasn’t what he expected. You had to know people, have connections. Kloppy returned to Montana and settled in Butte. Maybe he was ashamed to come back to Wolf Point. By then, Willie had made a name for himself, so he and Kloppy formed a partnership to make movies.” She shrugged. “They got rich, famous—and snooty. The only time I see Kloppy—and that’s from a distance—is when he comes back with Willie for the rodeo.”

  Renie looked curious. “So Kloppy’s a producer?”

  Marsha set her coffee mug on a chair. “And a director, I think. Willie was always the hero and his movies were kind of silly. Villains getting trounced, upside-down airplanes, motorcycles flying through the air. For kids, I suppose, who like the action and don’t care about the story or the characters. At least there wasn’t much gore. I hate that.”

  Renie nodded. “I don’t blame you. My husband’s a movie buff, but I’ve never heard of anyone named Kloppenburg. It’s a name you’d remember.”

  “Kloppy changed his movie name to Liberty Whitlash,” Marsha said. “It was Chet Gundy’s idea. Whitlash is a tiny place nowadays, but during Prohibition it was a bustling hot spot in Liberty County just this side of the Canadian border.” She chuckled again.

  “The county seat is Chester.”

  “Ironic,” Renie remarked, standing up. “We’d better go.” She shook Marsha’s hand.

  “Nice meeting you.”

  “Same here,” Marcia said. “A pity it wasn’t a happier occasion, Mrs….?”

  “Jones, but call me Renie. It’s a nickname for Serena.” Marsha nodded. “Like the Gundys, with all their nicknames. Dottie for Dorothy May, Ella for Marcella, and Lynne for Joycelynne.” She shook Judith’s hand. “How come you don’t go by a nickname?”

  “Uh…I never had one,” Judith said, distracted by Marsha’s list of names and nicknames. “I appreciate your time to enlighten me about the locals.”

  Marsha shrugged. “Can’t see that I helped much.”

  “But you did.” Judith heard the train’s whistle. “Maybe I can tell you how when we come back this way.”

  “It’ll be a short stop just before noon,” Marsha said, disappointed.

  “We’ll work it out,” Judith said, following Renie. “I promise.”

  She caught up with her cousin by the stepstool. “Breaking news,” Renie shouted. “Mrs. Flynn has another new best friend. The total now comes to—”

  “Shut up!” Judith hissed. “You’ll wake the dead.”

  “Then you could solve the case,” Renie said, helping Judith get aboard.

  “Marsha filled some big gaps, but I’m missing something,” Judith admitted.

  The train got under way just as the cousins reached their room. Judith gasped when she saw the disheveled bed. “Oh, no! It didn’t sink in when Mr. Peterson said they’d found Rowley in a vacant sleeper.”

  “I caught that. We’ll get the Kloppenburgs’ fresh sheets.”

  “They’re not fresh,” Judith noted, stripping off bedding and tossing it into a corner.

  “They wouldn’t let Jax make up their beds.”

  Renie looked puzzled. “Didn’t Roy change the sheets earlier?”

  “If he—” Judith clapped a hand to her head and led the way to the adjacent room. “Why,” she muttered, “didn’t I think of this sooner?”

  “What?” Renie asked, still mystified.

  “Help me open this lower berth.”

  “We’re trading rooms with the Kloppenburgs?”

  “Come on, do it.”

  With a resigned expression, Renie gave in.

  “Well?” Judith said. “I checked the top bunk, but not this one.”

  “No bedding.” Renie grimaced. “I have a sick feeling I know why.”

  Judith nodded. “I don’t recall Roy saying he made up these beds today.” She stared at the bare bunk. “If he did, something bad happened here.”

  “That something forced the Kloppenburgs to kill him,” Renie murmured. “Then they wrapped his body in the bedding and…what?”

  “They removed Roy after the train wreck,” Judith said as she tried to reconstruct what had happened. “It must’ve been total chaos outside. Nobody was paying attention to the sleeper passengers.” She looked at Renie. “After we originally searched this room, you checked the bin on the lower level and said it was almost empty, but the ones up here were full. The crew probably chucks the trash only at night. Those bins are big. Roy was average-sized. I think it played out like this—the body was wrapped in sheets and put in the downstairs bin. Then the killer—or killers—got off and dumped poor Roy away from the train by that creek. It’d be risky, but everything about this horror story involves risks.”

  “I don’t quite get it,” Renie admitted. “But I am getting the creeps.”

  “Don’t.” Judith eyed the upper bunk. “We need a clean sheet.” Renie tugged at her cousin’s arm. “Let’s go. Take mine. I prefer sleeping without sheets rather than on one last used by a murderer.”

  “Sleep sounds impossible,” Judith said as the cousins went into the corridor. “Even without Marsha’s coffee, I’m wired.”

  At the door to their room, the cousins were surprised to see Trooper Purvis leaning against the sink. “Where’ve you been?” he asked in a querulous tone.

  “Making our rounds,” Judith said. “I didn’t know you were joining us. Aren’t you supposed to be chasing Roy’s killer?”

  “I can’t do it from Wolf Point,” Purvis retorted. “The local cops are trying to sober up that drunk so he can tell them what he saw by the creek. I’m waiting for the Amtrak police to come aboard. They’ll flag us down somewhere along the way.” Glancing in the mirror, he groaned at his reflection. “This is the worst day I’ve had since I was a rookie.”

  “Get the pillows from the Kloppenburgs’ room so you can sit,” Judith suggested. “I assume you want to talk. And,” she continued as Purvis started to leave, “put up some crime-scene tape on your way out.”

  Purvis turned so quickly that he knocked off his hat. “What?”

  “I’ll tell you when you come back,” Judith said.

  Purvis looked dubious, but retrieved his hat and made his exit.

  Renie sighed. “It’s after midnight. It’s a good thing I always stay up late. Of course it’s not yet eleven-thirty at home. Or is it only ten—”

  “Please stop.” Judith sank onto the bunk and turned toward the window. “Total darkness. The moon’s gone down or it’s clouded over.”

  “I like looking out the window when I’m snug in my berth,” Renie said. “Even in less populated places, you see a lone house or headlights. In small towns you pass through the entire community, getting an idea of how people live.”

  “And die,” Judith murmured as Purvis returned with two pillows.

  “What’s with the bed next door?” he asked. “It doesn’t have covers. There’s a missing pillowcase, too.”

  “That’s why the room may be a crime scene,” Judith said.

  “The occupants were there until they got off in Malta when they claimed the wife had a heart attack. Does the name Kloppenburg ring a bell?”

  Purvis sat down on the pillows. “Kind of
,” the trooper replied. “They must be on the passenger list I got from Peterson. What’s this about a heart attack?”

  “Mrs. Kloppenburg allegedly had one,” Judith said. “Dr. Chan checked her out, and that was his diagnosis. She was taken to the Malta hospital. You might want to follow up on that.”

  “Don’t get pissed,” Purvis said, trying to stretch out his long legs, “but a civilian telling me how to run an investigation sticks in my craw.”

  “Get over it,” Renie snapped from her place next to Judith on the lower bunk. “You’re not the only cop who’s taken her advice, including her husband, who’s no slouch as a ’tec, either.”

  Purvis gave Renie a dirty look before he reluctantly took out his notebook. “I should have a computer for this,” he mumbled. “I should have my head examined. Okay, give me your best shot.”

  “One step at a time,” Judith said. “I have a logical mind, and frankly, I’m still putting this together. Are you a Wee Willie fan?”

  “Used to be,” Purvis said. “He was a big deal around here.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “Yeah—in Wolf Point at the rodeo. It wasn’t long after I joined the state patrol. I was working crowd control.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  Purvis shrugged. “He seemed okay. I talked to him for a few minutes.” He paused, fingering his chin. “Willie was smaller than I figured. Guess that’s why they called him ‘Wee.’ He looked huge on the screen. I don’t remember what we said, just ‘how’s it goin’?,’ ‘like your movies,’ ‘doin’ some new stunts’ stuff.”

  Judith nodded. “Of course. He was friendly?”

  “Yeah. Not palsy, but okay.” Purvis laughed softly. “Before Willie walked off, he gave me a thumbs-up sign and a big grin. I’d never seen him smile, so I thought he was missing a front tooth. No surprise, the way he’d get banged up with his stunts. Then I realized it was just a gap. I’ve heard that a space between front teeth is good luck. I guess that’s why Willie never fixed it. He needed all the luck he could get.”

  Renie smiled. “Our uncle Corky has that gap. It’s hereditary. I had it as a kid, but eventually my teeth closed together. Uncle Corky served in World War Two. The French told him he’d survive because of his lucky teeth. And he did.”