Murder on the Sugarland Express

by Angie Fox

  “Inspector!” a man called out a friendly greeting from the door.

  A handsome ghost in a black suit stood in the doorway, looking stiff in a starched white collar and a tie. I guessed he was in his late thirties, with styled black hair and intelligent eyes. He escorted a gorgeous young blonde in a long silk dress that hugged every curve, yet still managed to appear classy and modest. This must be the older sister of the girl who had died in compartment 9. I saw some resemblance to the dead girl and to my own appearance. However, this woman’s features were more defined, her look more polished. She wore a feather in her hair and clung to her man like he was the last cookie in the box.

  “Monsieur Ward,” the inspector said, with a slight tilt to the head. “Mademoiselle Flores.” He lost the civility when Frankie drew up behind the couple. “Detective Lawson.”

  No telling what Frankie had done to get on De Clercq’s bad side.

  Leave it to Frankie not to notice.

  “Hey, we’re all here,” the gangster said, clearly forgetting about both the Green Lady and the spinster.

  “I’m very interested to learn what the inspectors have found,” Mr. Ward said, eyeing our little party of detectives.

  Mr. Ward escorted Miss Flores to a plush chair next to the table with a bust of Edgar Allen Poe. Meanwhile Frankie strolled up to De Clercq and me like he owned the place.

  The inspector frowned. “Detective Lawson, I told you there would be no living souls at this gathering.”

  Frankie shrugged. “I’m training the next generation. You ever have a protégé?” He stood next to me. “Well, you’re looking at mine.”

  Oh brother.

  De Clercq didn’t seem to believe it, either.

  “You said it yourself.” Frankie clapped the inspector on the shoulder. “Astute observation. A study of the clues. Our great methods are dying out. We need to pass them down. How else is this kid going to learn?”

  “Her?” De Clercq said, as if it were impossible. “You picked one of the living,” he clarified, as if I were a table or a piece of dead fish.

  I swallowed my pride and went for it. I gestured to Frankie. “This man is a truly great teacher and a great thinker,” I said, trying to sound sincere.

  He was certainly teaching me how to BS.

  Frankie, at least, seemed pleased. He clasped his hands in front of him and addressed the inspector. “You called me in on this case because you’ve been unable to solve it. We agreed you would try my methods. Need I remind you that I’ve already offered stellar insight on a major clue?”

  That was all Ellis, but I wasn’t about to argue if it meant I’d be on the case.

  The gangster glanced toward the ceiling, and I saw a glistening orb. It danced a greeting when it noticed my attention.

  Molly.

  He’d better not be showing off for his girl. Oh, who was I kidding? Frankie did everything for Molly these days.

  I just had to hope he’d stay focused on the mystery as well.

  “Let us begin,” Frankie said. And just then, the Green Lady shimmered into being slightly behind me, in the same spot she’d been before.

  I’d give anything to know why she was interested in that particular book.

  Frankie opened his hands wide. “We are here to solve a murder most foul,” he said, addressing the room. “We’ve returned to this train so that your souls may finally rest.” He looked out over the gathered spirits. “Each of you is tied somehow to the death of young Emma Flores found murdered in compartment 9.” Behind him, Emma’s sister choked back a sob. “May we discover the truth tonight, and may the truth set us free.”

  “Lovely speech,” I said, even if it was mostly borrowed. “May I suggest we conduct individual interviews—” I wasn’t so sure how any person, living or dead, would react to being called out in front of a crowd.

  “Silence, young one!” Frankie commanded. Clearly, he’d missed his calling in community theater.

  And I’d made a mistake letting him watch Clue with me.

  “We have Miss Flores”—he gestured to the plush chair where the blonde sat—“sister of the poor victim.” She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “We have her fiancé, president and founder of the Sugarland Lumber Company, Mr. Charles Ward.” The man stood behind the distraught blonde and gave a sharp nod. “And finally…” Frankie swung around and pointed directly at me. “The spinster from compartment 10.”

  “Don’t call me a spinster,” I told him. I wasn’t even a suspect.

  Really, this was too much.

  “Not you, her,” Frankie said, pointing to the Green Lady behind me.

  “Oh,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. It still wasn’t very nice.

  The Green Lady remained in her spot and shot a hostile look at Frankie.

  “I’ve given that look to him plenty of times,” I told her. “It doesn’t work.” The gangster hadn’t even noticed.

  “This murder has gone unsolved for more than eighty years,” Frankie said, beginning a slow walk around the room. “I’m a special detective with the St. Louis office, and Inspector De Clercq asked me here to take another look at the only clue we have.” He whipped out a piece of paper so fast I thought he was going to fling it over his shoulder. “A note! Found with the body!”

  Mr. Ward’s eyes widened, and his fiancée sniffled loudly behind her handkerchief.

  That’s it, I was never letting him watch old mystery movies with me again.

  I studied the suspects and saw Mr. Ward’s hostility, his fiancée’s distress, and…I glanced behind me…the Green Lady was a blank.

  Still, what Frankie was doing seemed to be working. He had the attention of the ghosts, at least.

  Frankie waved the note at Mr. Ward. “This note spoke of a crow’s nest and gave us the location of a secret meeting place and time, a rendezvous with a killer,” the mobster announced.

  Ms. Flores reached up and took Mr. Ward’s hand. The Green Lady pursed her lips.

  I didn’t know how he could possibly surmise that the killer hid out in the crow’s nest.

  “It led me to a small room above the caboose.” He held a finger up. “And there I found a clue that gives us the undisputed identity of the one, the killer among us!”

  The Green Lady gasped. Mr. Ward appeared distinctly uncomfortable, and Miss Flores crumpled into a flood of tears.

  Frankie nodded to the stoic De Clercq and then whipped out a ghostly handkerchief. “This! With the initials CW.” He pointed to the lumber baron. “Your initials, Mr. Ward!”

  The industrialist inspected the handkerchief Frankie held with barely contained scorn. “That’s a woman’s handkerchief, Detective Lawson.”

  Frankie’s eyes widened a bit. “Huh.” He took a second look and ran his fingers over the lace edging. “It is kind of girly.

  “Then it was you,” he said, pointing at the Green Lady. “You’ve been looking guilty this whole time. And if I’m not mistaken, your given name is actually Clara! You go by the term ‘Green Lady’ to hide your true identity!”

  She brought a hand to her chest. “My name,” she said, in a clear, soft voice, “is Clara Elizabeth Bolton. And my initials are CEB.” She notched her chin up. “You call me the ‘Green Lady’ and I like it about as much as I like the term ‘spinster.’”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. I’d been calling her the Green Lady this whole time without a second thought. “We should have known better,” I said on behalf of all the living and the dead. It had to be hard to be renamed by people who didn’t even know you, and don’t even get me started on being called a spinster. She wasn’t much older than I was.

  “It’s bad enough I boarded this train with no standing, no reliable funds or support,” she fumed. “I don’t need to be belittled in death.”

  “I agree,” I told her, vowing to be more sensitive in the future.

  Frankie appeared slightly confused at this turn of events. Then he gave a sharp nod. “So be it.” He raised a
brow. “That leaves us with…” He turned slowly. “Miss Flores, loving sister, and killer!”

  “That’s insane,” Mr. Ward shouted.

  “The inspector has no idea!” the Green Lady—I mean Miss Bolton—cried.

  Miss Flores glared at the gangster, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t accuse me of hurting my sister. I loved her.”

  Frankie threw up his hands. “Well, one of you had to have done it.” He turned to De Clercq. “Unless it was you.”

  The inspector stiffened. “It was not,” he said hotly. “This is over.”

  “You’re just going to give up?” Mr. Ward stormed toward Frankie and De Clercq. The three of them shouted while Miss Bolton maintained her vigil in front of the books and Miss Flores sobbed. “I loved my sister. I’d never hurt her.”

  I approached the young ghost as gently as I could. “What’s your name, dear?” I asked, crouching down next to her.

  She hiccupped and let out a loud sniff. “Bernadette Carter Flores.”

  “Those are not the initials from the hankie,” Frankie declared. “Which is how I know he did it!” Frankie said, whirling and pointing to Mr. Ward. “I was right the first time. You, sir, own a girly handkerchief, and you are a killer!”

  “This is ridiculous,” I told him.

  “I should never have allowed it,” the inspector fumed. “The inspectors in the St. Louis office are hotheads, every last one of them.”

  “Everyone calm down,” I ordered. We weren’t going to solve anything this way.

  “I never owned a handkerchief like that one,” Mr. Ward insisted, turning to me this time. “It’s not mine.”

  “I’m sorry to put you through this,” I told him and his fiancée as well. He’d obviously been a great support to her during this awful time. I couldn’t imagine how horrible it would be to lose a sister like that. I didn’t know if I could go on if I’d found Melody stabbed. “You have my deepest sympathies.”

  “Thank you,” Miss Flores said, her eyes swimming with tears.

  The men went back to blaming, and I stayed with the young socialite.

  “It was her first train trip,” she said. “Emma was so excited.”

  I rested a hand on the arm of her chair. “My sister and I took the train to Nashville together the week before she left for college. It was wonderful,” I told her. “I’ll never forget it.”

  “When they found her, she was wearing the fox stole I’d let her borrow,” she said quietly. “She loved that stole.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “It was my favorite, too.”

  “Oh, honey.” I wished so badly that I could hug her.

  She lowered her gaze and then raised it back to me. “Charlie’s telling the truth, you know. That handkerchief with the initials, that’s a sweetheart gift. You can tell by the lace edging and the way the initials are inscribed.” She dabbed at her nose with her own lace-edged hankie. “I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that I never made him a handkerchief like that, and he has no one else.” She gave a weak smile. “We were engaged on this trip.”

  A tingle ran up my spine. “Congratulations,” I said as warmly as I could with the ice-cold trepidation running through my veins. “Can you tell me when he proposed?”

  She seemed pleased at the question. “At dinner.” Her smile dried up. “Last night, before…before Emma died. She was so happy for me.”

  “I’m sure she was,” I said.

  And if I was right about what was in that book, I knew who did it.

  Chapter 18

  The gathering ended in chaos, but that was fine. I had a clear picture of what I needed to do.

  I was almost glad when Mr. Ward stormed out, with Miss Flores on his heels. The Green Lady—Miss Bolton—took up vigil by the bookcase while Frankie huddled with the inspector by the door, speaking in urgent tones. I had no idea what the mobster-in-hiding was trying to pull now, but it ended up working out all right. De Clercq shot me one final dirty look before fading away. And once she saw she was alone with us, the Green Lady disappeared as well.

  I’d have liked to have the inspector back, but you couldn’t have everything.

  Frankie cracked his shoulders, like he could dislodge De Clercq’s watchful gaze, and strode over to me. “Can you believe it?” he asked, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. “That guy just hinted that I might not be a real detective.”

  “You’re not a real detective,” I reminded him.

  “Hey, I’m doing the job. You see me.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I just don’t appreciate anybody thinking I might be anything but a hundred percent honest.”

  “You must get that a lot,” I said.

  He shot me a dirty look.

  I let it go.

  Worry tickled the back of my neck. I didn’t mind so much about Frankie’s view of himself as the good-to-his-word mobster, but we needed to keep him safely undercover until we could free De Clercq and the rest of the ghosts. Or until the ghost train plummeted into the river tomorrow. I really didn’t want to see that happen.

  “Just be careful around De Clercq,” I warned. The inspector might be anti-woman and anti-living, but he was no fool. And if Frankie ended up under house arrest at my place for eternity…I shuddered to think about it.

  Frankie turned his attention to the hovering orb in the corner. “Molly, sweetheart, can you give us a second?”

  The orb dropped sharply then shot out of the room. I wondered how she didn’t get dizzy doing that, but I’d say one thing for Molly—she didn’t waste time.

  The gangster turned back to me. “We really gotta solve this murder. I can’t last another day with De Clercq.”

  Good thing he had me, and Ellis for leading us here in the first place.

  “This way,” I said, walking him over to the bookshelf.

  “De Clercq needs to believe I’m the real deal,” Frankie continued, “and besides, after seeing everybody tonight”—he gave a small wince—“I feel kind of sorry for that murdered girl and the spirits who are trapped on this train, reliving the same tragedy over and over.” He shivered at the thought. “That’s worse than living with you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, stopping near the right-hand corner of the library. “Pull this book off the shelf,” I said, pointing to Sir Charles Fouchet’s Study of West Indian Botany. “Show me what’s hidden inside.”

  He gave me an odd look, but he didn’t hesitate. Frankie drew the ghostly book from the shelf and opened it. Tucked inside the cover page was an ethereal leaf of paper precisely folded in the middle.

  “That’s it,” I said. She’d been hiding correspondence in the book.

  The mobster opened the folded note and held it between us.

  The flowing script read 01/00 Library.

  “I knew it,” I whispered. Well, not the time and place, but I’d known what we’d find. I checked my watch. It read 12:48. “In twelve minutes, we’ll have the proof we need.”

  The gangster cleared his throat, his discomfort audible even over the rumbling of the train. “What did we just find?” he asked, putting away his pride.

  I glanced toward the open doorway. “Are we alone?”

  Frankie paused, feeling for the energy of other ghosts. “Yeah.”

  “Clara Bolton killed Emma Flores,” I told him.

  “Yes! Of course!” Frankie exclaimed. He quickly ran out of steam. “Why?”

  “If I’m right—and we’ll find out soon—it was a case of mistaken identity.” I walked toward the plush chair on the other side of the library, reasoning it out as I spoke. “Clara Bolton, otherwise known as the Green Lady, was Charlie Ward’s lover. I’m assuming it had been going on for years. Why else would a woman in that day and age never marry?”

  “Didn’t meet the right guy?” Frankie shrugged.

  I turned. “You and I both know it didn’t work that way almost a hundred years ago.” I placed a hand on the back of the chair, like Charlie Ward had done. “Clara Bolton is exotic, beautiful. B
ut she admitted she had no social standing or money. Yet she could afford a private sleeper on this luxury train, very close to the lumber baron’s room.”

  “Why not right next to it?” Frankie countered.

  “Too obvious,” I told him. “The two were better off meeting in secret—in the cupola of the caboose, in the library, where they hid notes for each other in Sir Charles’s Study of Botany.” I ran a hand over the back of the chair where his unwitting fiancée had sat. “I’m betting Miss Flores never suspected.” She’d seemed comfortable. Trusting. Kept.

  She appeared to truly care for her fiancé. She’d certainly defended him back there. Or at least, she’d tried. “I’m assuming she had position and money,” I added. Frankie had called her an heiress.

  “He wanted the girl with the money and the family, and the girl with the—”

  “Watch it, Frankie.” I suspected Clara Bolton had loved Charlie Ward, enough to put aside her life, take a position in the shadows, and sneak any bit of time she could with him. No wonder she’d haunted the library. It was her last, best tie to him. “He probably told Clara that the debutante meant nothing to him.”

  Frankie slapped a hand on his thigh. “But then he proposed to Miss Flores right in front of Clara and everyone.”

  “At dinner, and after a secret rendezvous in the caboose, no less.” I hoped he’d at least broken the news to poor Clara before he asked another woman to marry him, but if she’d been mad enough to kill…

  “Clara had given her life—or at least her future and her chance at marriage—to a man who would only want her as a mistress, at best. He made that clear in the dining car that day, in front of everyone, and didn’t even give her a chance to respond.”

  “So Clara ambushed Miss Flores that night and killed her,” Frankie concluded, as if the murder made perfect sense.

  “But she killed the wrong Miss Flores,” I said. De Clercq had been correct. “No one had a motive to kill Emma Flores. Only Emma looked a lot like her sister, Bernadette—especially from behind, wearing Bernadette’s favorite fox fur.”

  “She could have stolen the key from her lover,” Frankie said.