by Sandra Balzo
‘You remind me of my son,’ I said, lying through my teeth. Eric was five years younger and an actual human being.
‘Oh, yeah?’ Danny said. ‘Does he write?’
‘No, but he texts regularly.’ I smiled. ‘Now tell me about your book – or is it called a manuscript at this stage?’
‘Getting closer to becoming a book with every minute we’re here.’ He lowered his voice confidingly. ‘I’ve snagged an agent.’
‘Congratulatons!’ I said. ‘Who is it?’
‘Carson – that guy who doesn’t shake hands. Audra introduced us.’
How accommodating of the widow. And the agent. Maybe my speculation about Carson wasn’t as farfetched as Pavlik seemed to think. ‘But isn’t that a little awkward?’
‘Awkward? Why?’
‘I understand your book is very much like Mr Potter and Ms Edmonds’ projected novel.’
‘Projected, maybe. But it’s not going to happen.’ The kid might be sitting down, but there was a definite swagger in his voice.
‘Really?’ I asked innocently. ‘Have you and Ms Edmonds decided to collaborate on your book, instead?’
‘My book?’ He seemed genuinely shocked.
‘Yes, of course. Since Audra introduced you to her agent, I thought she might have a new partnership in mind. Assuming,’ a thought had struck me, ‘this all happened after her husband was dead.’
The young man’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean by that?’
I shrugged. ‘Seems clear to me. Did Audra introduce you to Carson before or after the sheriff and I returned to the train with Potter’s body?’
I could see the wheels turning in the young man’s head. ‘After, definitely after. I remember because I figured Audra agreed to introduce me because she was grateful for my help.’
‘Your help?’
‘Sure. We bonded when I took her to the club car after she nearly shot that guy.’
Boyce, standing guard over Potter’s already cold body.
On the other hand, sweat was beading on Danny’s upper lip. ‘Shit. I hope she didn’t get that idea. I mean, Audra’s awfully old and this is a sex book.’
I opened my mouth to inform the little twerp that even a woman of Audra’s advanced age, which I judged to be early forties, still had sex.
And then I remembered she apparently didn’t. At least, not with her husband.
Back in the sleeping car, I unfolded the stool and situated it across from the door of the roomette where Potter’s body lay. Sitting down, I tried to figure out what to do with the pistol. On the floor, it was too far away from me to easily reach. Maybe I’d just sit on the floor next to it.
Though I’d wasted ten minutes of my life going back to get the stool, at least my conversation with Danny had been enlightening. If the kid was to be believed, he’d achieved everything he’d wanted when he’d set foot on the bus: not only was there no book forthcoming from Potter and Edmonds, but he’d secured a literary agent.
According to Danny, the initial contact with Carson had been via email – almost certainly the accusatory message Carson had mentioned. Then, in gratitude for Danny’s aid during this so-called bonding opportunity he had ‘lucked into,’ Audra had introduced aspiring writer to agent.
Carson hadn’t yet been approached by Danny when Pavlik and I met with the literary agent in the dining car but, given his suspicions of the kid, wouldn’t it have made sense to inform us of this new development?
Maybe the germaphobe’s hands weren’t quite as clean as he’d like people to believe.
I shivered, suddenly very glad Pavlik had suggested I camp out in the sleeping car, even if its only other occupant was a corpse. Or maybe because of that.
Moving the stool out of the way, I decided the best place to sit was with my back against the wall of the roomette across the narrow corridor from Potter’s – this despite the nasty smells not quite contained inside. But this way, at least, I could comfortably keep a peripheral eye on that door as well as the outside exit and the doors leading to the passenger car.
But first …
Gun ready in my hand, I slid open the door across from Potter’s, clearing that roomette as Pavlik and Boyce had.
The space was empty, of course. Once I checked that one, though, I felt like I had to do the others, just to be sure. I went down one side of the car and into both shower rooms, my still-damp sandals echoing on the tiles. Then I worked my way back up to the space where Potter’s body lay.
I slid open the door and, holding my breath, stepped over the two frosting smudges and into the room. Potter was on the bunk, of course, faced away from me like he was still just napping.
I tiptoed nearer, still trying not to breathe, and—
‘Maggy?’
I jumped back and turned, raising the gun, which was now moving in sync with my shaking hand. ‘Holy shit, Missy! You scared me to death. What are you doing in here?’
Missy looked hurt. ‘Well, I knocked on the door to give you this, but I didn’t hear any answer.’
She was holding out an e-reader. ‘I’ve got a ton of books loaded on it and I figured it would help you pass the time. Oh, and I also put a “Keep Out” sign on the other side of the door.’
My heart-rate descended toward quasi-normality. ‘Thanks, Missy – that’s very nice of you.’ I took the reader. ‘And I’m sorry I yelled. And, well, almost shot you. I must have been at the other end of the car checking the showers when you knocked.’
‘No, I’m the one who should be sorry,’ Missy said, her eyes welling up. ‘But when you didn’t answer, I was worried.’
‘I appreciate that. I was just making sure everything was secure.’
She glanced over at the bunk, her nose wrinkling and her next words a little strangled. ‘Can we get out of here?’
‘With pleasure.’ I let her precede me out the door. ‘And thank you again.’ I held up the e-reader.
Missy smiled. ‘You’re welcome. Come to the door and call out if you need anything.’
‘I will. Thanks.’ As she turned away, I couldn’t resist saying, ‘I noticed you talking with Pete. He seems like a nice guy.’ Unlike Danny. ‘And really good-looking.’
‘I suppose, but too young. And a waiter.’
My, my, but the younger generation was picky. ‘Everyone has to start somewhere.’
Missy sniffed. ‘His real name is Brandon. I saw him at the restaurant last week and asked if he’d like to earn some extra money.’
‘That was smart.’
‘You’re telling me. You know how much it costs to hire a professional bartender? And I bought all the liquor at Costco.’
You had to give the woman credit. She knew how to stretch a dollar. I hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite her in the form of lawsuits by the passengers on the train and even the train company itself.
Which was another reason I’d wanted out of event planning: the liability if something went awry. At least I’d been bonded and had a corporation standing behind me. If I were Missy, I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of support from Zoe.
After the young woman left, I settled onto the floor. Propping the gun against my right thigh, I picked up her e-reader.
She wasn’t kidding about the books. A ton of them and, in the mix, some of Rosemary Darlington’s.
Including … I scrolled down. Yes, Breaking and Entering.
Leaning my back against the wall, I punched up the book cover. Steamy, in itself. A woman in red leather, a dog collar around her neck and a whip in her hand. A man’s naked body was half-hidden in shadows, the glass of a broken window on the floor nearby.
I looked around guiltily, like I was twelve and reading the early scene in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, where Sonny and the bridesmaid … well, you know. I clicked to the next page. These e-readers were great – convenience, discretion, and they couldn’t accidentally fall open to the spicy pages you’ve read. And reread.
The first chapter was a lot of set-up. I yawned, r
esisting the urge to peek ahead.
Kat opened the door, knowing what she wanted but not if she had the nerve to take it. He was lying on the bed facing the window, his skin glistening in the moonlight. The edge of the white sheet revealed his firm, naked glutes. Kat wanted – she desperately needed – to run her fingers along the curve of them.
As Kat reached out, the man roused. Stepping back, she watched from the shadows as he rolled onto his back, sending the sheet slipping to the floor.
Kat nearly gasped aloud. She moved forward, waiting for him to settle before she let her nails barely touch, tracing his mustache and lips. The curve of the neck cords to his throat.
Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud …
The pulse suddenly stopped under her fingertips.
Panicked, Kat laid her hand flat against his chest. She was praying now, to feel something, anything inside.
A flutter. Not quite a beat, more a … twitch? Once, twice, three times. It grew stronger and then stronger again, settling into a rhythm before seeming to coil back on itself, regrouping to race faster, heading toward a seemingly inevitable crescendo.
Then, just as Kat thought her own chest would burst, his did. Bits of tissue and cartilage splattered onto the window pane, seeming to mingle with the rain streaking down the outside of the glass.
Kat held her hand up in front of her, trying to understand what had just happened. Blood and something thick and white covered her fingers.
A movement caught Kat’s eye. She looked down into the man’s open chest and … it looked back at her.
A python. Where Larry Potter’s heart should be.
THIRTY-ONE
‘Stay away from the pointy end!’ I yelled, my head falling back against the wall, waking me.
Looking around, I waited for my own heart to settle back into my chest. Sunshine poured in from the windows by the vestibule door and I could hear voices – if not cheerful, at least reassuringly alive – in the passenger car beyond.
Apparently, I’d nodded off and managed to combine our current situation and Rosemary’s book into one hell of a dream. Getting to my feet, I retrieved the pistol and, holding my breath, crossed the aisle to Potter’s roomette and opened the sliding door. Still there, chest intact, no snakes in sight. Check, check, check.
My cell phone told me it was 10:20 a.m.
I slid Potter’s door closed. Some guard I was. Not only had I fallen asleep for two hours, but I’d awakened with a full-blown case of the heebie-jeebies.
As I turned from the corpse I was responsible for guarding, my stomach growled. I wasn’t sure what that said about me, but I feared it wasn’t good.
I also needed to use the bathroom, preferably not the one in what I’d come to think of as Potter’s room. I also didn’t want to return to the passenger car or dirty an unused roomette’s facilities.
That left the compartment Rosemary had napped in. It was at the end of the hall, but I could leave the door open so I’d hear anyone coming through from the passenger car, as Missy had.
As I flipped open the toilet, I thought about the one in Potter’s room. I’d touched it when we’d found the cigarette butt and I hoped that wouldn’t cause problems with the police. Potter obviously hadn’t been stabbed in there anyway, because there was no blood.
In fact, come to think of it, I hadn’t seen blood anywhere when I’d inspected earlier.
How could that be?
After washing my hands, I sat down on Rosemary’s bed to think. Had Laurence Potter been killed when the train stopped because of the flooding? It had seemed an outside chance when Pavlik and I first talked about it, but if the victim had been stabbed outside, it would explain why there was no blood found on the floors inside the train.
But stabbed by whom? And where had Potter been up to that point? We knew he’d visited the sleeping car, as evidenced by the cigarette butt in the toilet. The possibility he’d been tucked away with Rosemary in this roomette had certainly occurred to me, as it had to Audra, Potter’s wife.
Could Rosemary have faked the motion sickness to have an excuse to lie down? Perhaps she’d invited Potter to steal away for a little early evening delight and, when he’d arrived, killed him. Perfect timing and apparent alibi. The female guest of honor was drunk and sleeping it off.
Then there was Audra. She’d said she wasn’t sleeping with Potter and that it was by her own choice. Was that the truth? Or the words of a woman determined to save face with people who might know more about her husband’s peccadillos than she did? If I’d gotten wind of Ted’s extracurricular activities would I have shown up at one of his conferences, as Audra had?
I thought so. The only thing worse than knowing is suspecting. Always wondering if you’re being made the fool. That suspicion, in and of itself, could make you act foolishly.
Could it also make you a killer?
Audra had been with us in the dining car when her husband had disappeared, but she certainly could have slipped out later and killed him. Ditto pretty much anyone else on the train, given the one-hour window of opportunity from nine to ten p.m. that Pavlik and I had settled on. Even Zoe Scarlett, once she’d finished her welcome speech. Much as I’d love to pin the murder on the woman, though, I couldn’t see why Zoe would kill her guest of honor. Sure, she might have had the unrequited hots for Potter, but the same was true for Pavlik and he was still alive, right?
Please, God.
I twisted to look out the window, blinking back unexpected tears. But there was no Pavlik to the rescue, no anybody. A train full of people and I’d never felt more alone.
Wah-wah-wah. I wasn’t the one tramping about in the Everglades with snakes and alligators.
Ignoring the inner voice that said, No, you’re the one sitting on a train with a corpse and a killer, I stood up. Time to man my post. And man up, period. Tucking the bunk’s pillow and blanket under my arm, I returned to the corridor outside Potter’s room and settled onto the floor.
Pillow stuffed comfortably behind my back, I tried to think. Specifically, not about Pavlik.
So how about Danny? Without Audra as co-conspirator, I didn’t see what he would gain by killing Potter rather than suing him for stealing his work. In fact, it suddenly occurred to me, wouldn’t the kid be best off waiting until Potter’s book was published, so he could jump on the bandwagon (if there was one) and really benefit from its success?
I supposed it could have been in the heat of the moment – Potter being his supercilious self and the kid just having enough – or a bit too much – of it.
When you thought it through, though, anybody who killed Potter must have done it without premeditation, since we assumed it was Potter who had carried both the hunk of cake and the knife – the eventual murder weapon – back here.
Kind of blew my original theory that Audra had been working in tandem with Carson or Danny. So where did that leave me?
In a word? Nowhere, just like Hercule Poirot in the original Murder on the Orient Express. And since Potter had but a single knife wound, I couldn’t even fall back on Agatha Christie’s multiple killer solution for my ‘aha’ moment.
I eyed the two frosting smudges on the floor. One marked where I’d stepped on the cake. Could the other have been where the knife lay before the killer picked it up and plunged it into Potter?
But, again then: where was the victim’s blood?
I got up and scanned the walls and the carpet. Nothing was exactly clean, but I was fairly certain I’d be able to spot a blotch of blood. No, the only blood in this car was what I’d felt on the exit door handle and gotten on my hand like the fictional Kat in my dream.
Blood, in that case, and thick white … what?
I jumped up and went to the exit. Because the sun was shining in from the window across the way, I could get a better look than I had the night before. There was certainly something dark there, but what I’d felt had been sticky, meaning the blood hadn’t completely dried yet, I supposed. How long would that take, given
the natural humidity of the Everglades and the artificial air conditioning on the train?
Trusting Pavlik that my prints could be excluded – and figuring I’d already touched the thing anyway, so whatever potential damage was really damage done – I gingerly touched the door handle. No longer sticky, but dry and crusty. Crouching down, I saw something else – something glistening. I touched it with my finger and this time it did come away sticky. And red, almost gelatinous.
Wait a second. First warily sniffing it and then touching it to my tongue, I realized it was cake decorating gel. The stuff that had been used to represent blood on the cake.
Returning to Rosemary’s bathroom, I washed my hands in the pull-down sink, taking a paper towel out of the wall dispenser to dry them as I walked back.
The piece of cake Potter had taken – the foot – hadn’t had any of the fake blood on it. That decorative touch was concentrated around the knife ‘wounds.’ That meant whoever had touched the door handle had also held the knife.
Potter? And … his killer?
I settled back down onto the floor of the sleeping car and picked up Missy’s e-reader. I didn’t expect to get any more reading done, even if the story had intrigued me. Of course, what I’d actually read and what I’d dreamed might be two entirely different things.
I pushed the toggle on the reader and the John Steinbeck screensaver morphed into words. Curious to see what the last paragraph I’d read was, I saw:
Kat opened the door, knowing what she wanted but not if she had the nerve to take it. He was lying on the bed facing the window, his skin glistening in the moonlight. The edge of the white sheet revealing his firm, naked glutes. Kat wanted – she desperately needed – to run her fingers along the curves of them.
As Kat reached out, the man roused. Stepping back, she watched from the shadows as he turned onto his back, sending the sheet slipping to the floor.
‘Oh, dear,’ Kat nearly gasped aloud.
I laughed, recognizing Missy’s pet expression. I’d forgotten that Missy had worked with Rosemary on the book, though apparently my subconscious hadn’t. It had even inserted snakes, though that vignette might have had to do more with our current situation than my conversation with Missy about researching them for Breaking and Entering.