Murder on the Sugarland Express

by Angie Fox

  “She would have had to.” I nodded. “Clara couldn’t risk a direct confrontation, not in a small train compartment where sound carries. She had to take her victim by surprise.” So she’d wrapped her hands around poor Emma’s neck, subdued her, and then stabbed her in the back. “Poor Emma didn’t have a chance. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Dang.” Frankie blew out a breath. “I’ve been in that spot a time or two.”

  The grief Bernadette Flores displayed had been real. She’d lost her sister and she didn’t know why. It had drawn her back as strongly as Ward’s guilt had trapped him. He must have realized Clara had resorted to murder.

  Emma had relived her murder back in compartment 9, unable to change the past or escape her fate. While Clara was trapped and turned smoky green at the edges, unable to escape her envy or helplessness.

  It was so sad, so unnecessary.

  Frankie shot me a cocky grin, and I was about to tell him to put a sock in it when a shot rang out from the doorway.

  The mobster dropped like a rock.

  I spun and saw Clara Bolton’s snarl as she aimed her revolver at me next.

  Cripes. I was tuned in to her world, which meant a bullet could kill me.

  “Stop!” I cried, diving for the plush chair. Her shot hit the bookshelf that had been right behind me, spitting wood shards and debris. “Help, she’s got a gun!”

  “Verity?” Ellis charged into the room, but he couldn’t do anything against a ghost. He couldn’t even see her.

  “Get the police!” I hollered.

  “I am the police,” Ellis countered, frantically searching for a way to help.

  I stared from behind the chair as Clara walked straight through him, toward me. She took deadly aim and fired.

  I ducked, and a bullet took off the top of the chair above my head. Goose-down stuffing rained down.

  “Inspector!” I hollered. “De Clercq!” He’d get her. He’d arrest her.

  Maybe too late for me.

  “Stop!” I cried in final desperation as Clara rounded the plush chair and aimed just as the bust of Poe swung from out of nowhere and shattered against her head.

  Clara went down like a load of bricks, and I dropped to the floor. I rolled to the other side of the chair, ready to scramble to my feet and make a break for the door, when I saw Molly’s face hovering above me.

  “I got her!” The petite ghost pumped a fist. She glared back at the fallen Clara. “How dare you shoot my man in the head, you tart.”

  I leaned back on my elbows, staring up at her. “You sure she’s down?”

  “Yes,” Molly said, with relish. “Not bad for my first time.”

  Clara lay knocked out on the floor, glowing red, her hair falling from its elaborate coiffure.

  “Not bad at all,” I told her, trying to sit up and then giving up on it. “Heavens to Betsy. I almost died.”

  She nodded. “It’s not so bad.”

  “Verity.” Ellis rushed to my side and helped me sit straight. “Are you all right?”

  “I am now,” I said, letting him help me off the floor and onto the damaged chair. It looked all right in the mortal world.

  “I didn’t want to get too close and block you in,” Ellis said, “but dang. You scared me.”

  “Me too,” I told him.

  “Poor dear,” Molly said, rushing to Frankie, who lay several feet away on the floor.

  He’d been shot in the forehead. Again.

  “He’s not dead,” I rushed to tell her. “In fact, he and his old gang have shoot-outs for sport. He’ll only be out for an hour or two.”

  “I know.” She gently touched the gaping bullet hole in his forehead, very near to the one he wore all the time. She brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. “He tells me more than you think.” She gave a small smile. “In his own way.”

  I was glad that it worked for them. “Thanks for sticking around,” I said. If she hadn’t been close, I’d have been a goner.

  Molly nodded. She sat and rested Frankie’s head in her lap, still playing with his hair and smoothing her fingers over his skin.

  “You’d better grab the gun,” Ellis said, “ghostly or not. Until De Clercq gets her into custody, Clara is dangerous.”

  He had a point. “How did you even follow what just happened?” I asked, standing on shaky legs.

  Ellis reached out to support me. “I listened.”

  Her revolver had skittered away when she dropped it. I found it several feet from the chair, in front of the bookshelves. “Wait.” I stopped just short of the gray, glowing revolver. “I can’t touch it. Not the killer’s fingerprinted gun. That’ll make it fade away, and that’s evidence.”

  By Ellis’s pained expression, I could tell he agreed.

  “I’ll take it from here,” De Clercq said from the doorway. Then he saw Frankie down. “Oh no.”

  “Frankie will be all right. He solved the mystery,” I told him. And then I proceeded to tell him how.

  * * *

  “De Clercq wants to give Frankie a commendation and a medal,” I said to Ellis an hour later as we made our way back toward our compartment.

  “Aren’t you worried that might expose him?” Ellis asked.

  “Frankie will mess it up before that happens,” I said, confident in the gangster’s ability to tick off De Clercq, despite freeing the inspector from his last case in this life and the next.

  Ellis closed the door to the car that held the library, and we passed through the rocking darkness of the space between cars.

  Clara had woken up and confessed everything to the inspector. The fateful night had gone down exactly as I’d suspected, except for the fact that Clara was convinced her lover’s fiancée was more practical than passionate when it came to Charles Ward. Either way, Bernadette had been innocent of it all, along with her sister, who had paid the ultimate price.

  Ellis opened the door to the observation car, and I stopped short when I saw Bernadette Flores sitting in the front row, her hands clasped around the handkerchief in her lap, her gray evening gown flowing against her legs as if swept in an ethereal breeze.

  I reached back and touched Ellis on the shoulder. “Can you give me a minute in here?” I asked, stepping into the car.

  “Um, sure,” he said, hesitating only slightly. “Call me if you need me,” he added, staying in the space between and sliding the door closed behind me.

  Ellis was the one who deserved a medal.

  I approached the ghost cautiously. Even though she wasn’t the killer, she was here for a reason. I had a feeling she’d been waiting for me.

  “Do you know what just happened?” I asked gently.

  She gave a small nod. “Thank you.” Her eyes remained swollen from tears, but she kept her composure. “After all these years, it’s good to finally know.”

  I took a chance and sat next to her. “I’m sorry it had to happen that way.”

  She pressed her lips together tightly. “Emma was the light of my life. Our parents were never around. They were always too busy with one society gathering or another. She’s my world.”

  “You’ll see her again,” I assured her.

  “I can feel her growing strong again,” she confessed, with barely restrained joy. “She’s free now, you know. So am I.” She smiled.

  “I’m so glad.” Moments like this made it all worth it.

  Her eyes darted to her lap and she blinked hard. “Charlie saw her attack you.” She twisted her rings on her fingers. “He didn’t help. He came back to me and confessed it all. He begged for my forgiveness.” She looked me in the eye. “I gave it because I want to move on.”

  “Good for you,” I told her. “You don’t need him anymore.”

  “I don’t.” She looked out at the stars blanketing the night. “He’s already gone from the train, and I say good riddance.” She turned back to me. “I’ll be leaving soon and taking my sister with me. But first, I have to show you something.”

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nbsp; “Whatever’s holding you back, let it go.” Or else she could be on this train when it went over. She didn’t need to die again. “It’s time to go to the light.”

  “This will only take a moment,” she assured me. “You want to know what happened with the other murder in compartment 9. I was there right after it happened.”

  Oh, my word. “Did you see the killer?”

  “No, but I saw the woman’s spirit rise from the train. I was afraid it might be Emma again. When I went to investigate, I found a different girl’s body and…I can’t describe it exactly. Would you mind if I showed you?”

  “Please,” I urged.

  This ghost, this insight, might give me the missing piece I needed to finally learn what had happened to Stephanie. Then we could arrest the killer and at last be safe in our own beds.

  “It was like this.” Bernadette stood, her attention focused on the floor at the front of the observation car.

  I watched as she conjured up a vision of Stephanie’s body. It appeared as I remembered it. She lay like a fallen rag doll, her cheek pressed to the carpet. She’d been stabbed in the back, the knife buried deep, the dark blood seeping out onto the floor.

  It was exactly as I’d seen before. And then I noticed a single difference.

  I stepped closer to get a better look at an impression in the blood. A single faint footprint made by a lady’s high-heeled shoe.

  “Are you sure this was there right after this woman was killed?” I asked the ghost. I had to know for certain.

  Bernadette drew next to me, so close I could feel the chill of the ghost. “This is the scene exactly as it was when I saw it.”

  The killer must have returned to wipe it away. Or maybe the pool of blood had overrun the footprint. It still existed on the ghostly plane, however, just as Bernadette had witnessed it.

  “Thank you,” I said to her.

  “Use it,” she urged, her image glittering with a gorgeous silver light. She began to rise. “Find justice,” she said, leaving me behind. “Make it right. Just like you did for me.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  I hoped.

  “Wait.” She hesitated. “I can’t leave without my sister.” As she spoke those words, a glittering golden light surrounded Bernadette and she began to cry. “Oh, my goodness. It’s you, isn’t it? Emma.” Tears streamed down her face in relief and recognition as she reached out and touched the glowing mist. The light surged and grew stronger. “I’ve got you. I’ll never let you go again,” Bernadette promised. “Now let’s go home.”

  I watched in wonder as, together, they rose up through the glass of the roof and up into the night sky until I couldn’t see them any longer.

  I turned back to the scene on the floor, memorizing it as it too faded into nothing.

  The killer was a woman.

  All right. There were only four other women on the train. One was Virginia, whom I dismissed immediately. If she were one for killing girlfriends, she’d have done me in long ago. The newlywed Madison was far too petite to have worn the shoe in question, and Barbara Danvers, the other half of the fiftieth-anniversary couple, was even smaller than Madison.

  That left the journalist, Eileen Powers. And my friend, Mary Jo Abel.

  Chapter 19

  I had to figure out which woman made that footprint. The shoe might still have blood on it. Even if it was only a trace, Ellis could link it to the murder scene. Even if it didn’t, if we could find the shoe, we’d know who killed Stephanie.

  I was just about to return to Ellis and tell him the news when the ghostly conductor shimmered into view directly in my path.

  “Excuse me,” I said, barely dodging him.

  “My apologies.” He removed his black cap. “I’m not quite myself.” He ran his fingers over the embroidered Sugarland Express script above the brim. “I didn’t think you could save us. I didn’t expect…” He broke off. “Thank you, Verity. You’ve done more than I could ever have imagined to protect my passengers. You freed us from this train.”

  “I’m so glad I could be here,” I said, meaning every word. If I’d understood what I was getting into, if I’d let him warn me off, I might have had a vacation with Ellis in Kingstree, but I wouldn’t have had the privilege of helping these ghosts find peace.

  “Mr. Ward has moved on,” he said earnestly. “The Flores sisters, as well.” He looked past me to the place where Bernadette had been. “Those sweet girls will no longer suffer. Young Emma is free.”

  “What about Clara Bolton?” I asked. The Green Lady might not deserve a happy ending, but she shouldn’t be trapped here, forced to relive her death. Nobody deserved that.

  He grew somber. “Clara Bolton is gone,” he said, “although not to a better place.” He appeared uncomfortable, turning the hat over in his hands. “She’s imprisoned herself in a place other ghosts have abandoned. I suppose I understand. She’s going to be very lonely, though.”

  She’d sentenced herself in the afterlife. I wondered when it would end for the Green Lady. I could free her from suffering on the Sugarland Express, but not from the punishment she inflicted upon herself.

  “What about you?” I asked the conductor, the man who’d started all of this.

  He returned his hat to his head. “I’m leaving soon. I just saw the inspector off and told him I’d warn you.”

  That didn’t sound good. “I’ve already stuck my nose into his investigation.” And helped solve the case. “What does he have to warn me about now?”

  “My dear, you’ve lost track of time.” He drew his watch from his vest and clicked it open. “This train will plunge off the Holston River bridge in—” he studied the clock face “—seven minutes, and you’re still very much attached to this world.”

  “No. Wait. That happens tomorrow.” He’d said it himself.

  “It is tomorrow. Very early, but still. The train goes over the bridge at precisely 1:17 a.m.” He kept an eye on the watch. “You have six minutes now.”

  “Six minutes?” I stammered, my chest tightening. Why had he felt the need to warn me? “I’m on the mortal train.” Only I’d crossed into the ghosts’ world as well.

  And then it occurred to me: When I was tuned in like this, ghostly bullets could kill me. Therefore, so could the accident that doomed the original Sugarland Express.

  I brought a hand to my mouth. “Sweet Jesus.”

  The conductor gave a solemn nod. “My train will split from the mortal train just before we reach the old rail bridge. You must not be attached to the ghostly realm when that happens. The steel walls of the original Sugarland Express will pass straight through your ghost friends. They don’t have physical form. But those same walls will crush you.”

  “But those are ghost walls.” Not real walls. Except, so long as I held Frankie’s energy, they might as well be real to me. I’d thought our biggest problem was the phantom train nose-diving into the river with its original passengers on board—not flattening me on the way when its path diverged from the modern track. He had to be wrong. “I’ve never had anything on the spirit side try to crush me before.”

  Then again, I’d never been on a train racing through the countryside while tuned in to a ghost train, either.

  Why couldn’t I have just taken a vacation for once?

  “I have to get Frankie to detach his power.” But the mobster lay dead—again—in the library. The last time he was shot in the head, it put him out for hours.

  This was impossible. “I need more time.”

  Glittery shards of light streamed from the conductor’s image. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You know I can’t stop this train.” His image began to break apart. “Release yourself now. Return to your world.” I took a step back as he began to rise from the train. “Live your life. And know that I thank you,” he said before he was gone.

  Sweet heaven.

  Sure. Live. Enjoy. He was going back to his afterlife while I had to try to save the one mortal life I had.

&n
bsp; * * *

  I turned and ran. I had to wake Frankie.

  Now.

  The mobster lay unconscious on the library floor where I’d left him, his white Panama hat abandoned in the doorway.

  Maybe the conductor was wrong. Maybe I’d be okay.

  I didn’t want to bet my life on it.

  “Is he awake?” I asked, dropping to the floor next to Molly.

  “These things take time,” she said sweetly.

  Yeah, well, I didn’t have it.

  Ellis hovered behind me. I’d caught up with him in the space between cars and filled him in on the mad dash back to the library.

  “There has to be something we can do,” Ellis insisted. “Shock him, douse him with cold water, anything.”

  “This train wrecks in six minutes, Molly.” Probably five by now. “Before that, the new track will veer off its original course and the ghost train will continue toward the bridge. I can’t be tuned in when that happens. I’ll get crushed between the trains when they separate.” I resisted the urge to shake her. “Come on. You’re a ghost. You must know how to wake him.”

  “Oh my. Okay,” she said, clearly nervous. She smoothed her hair over her shoulders. “I’ll wake him with a kiss.”

  “That’s your solution?” I pleaded. He wasn’t Snow White. Not even close. I looked back to Ellis, glad he wasn’t able to hear that.

  “Trust me,” she said, leaning to give him a sweet peck on the lips.

  “Is he moving?” I asked.

  “No,” she said in dismay.

  Frankie lay as dead as he ever was.

  “Umm…!” She smothered him with a big wet one.

  Heavens. She might be a ghost, but she had no idea how to rouse one.

  The darkened landscape whizzed past the window. Mountains gave way to trees. We were nearing the river.

  “Douse him with water,” I urged.

  “I don’t have any,” she pleaded.

  “Well, I can’t do it,” I snapped, and she winced.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. But I couldn’t manipulate things on her plane. I could barely pick them up. The shadows of the trees grew sparser, and we passed a ghostly bridge warning. “Molly!”