Murder on the Sugarland Express

by Angie Fox

  The conductor had been right about everything else. I really didn’t want to test him on this.

  She zipped out of the room and returned seconds later with a dozen gray, ethereal roses in a vase. “Here,” she shouted, dousing Frankie from head to chest.

  He didn’t even flinch.

  “Nothing,” I gritted out.

  Roses lay on his chest and under his chin.

  “I don’t know what else to do!” she implored.

  “Molly, as soon as we hit that switch in the tracks, I’m out of time.”

  “Oh no! Oh no!” Her fear gave way to panic.

  Then it hit me. I pushed aside a wave of fear and loathing.

  I knew what to do.

  I reached down, and before I could think twice or brace myself or even consider what I was doing, I enveloped the gangster in a big sloppy bear hug.

  Wet, icy tendrils invaded my body, curling into my skin and bones, settling deep inside of me. The touch was too intimate, too damp and clammy and close. The chill turned to fire, hot and searing. I held on. I hugged tighter, embracing the pain.

  “Aargh!” Frankie shot up into a sitting position, straight through me. I lost my balance and fell deeper into him, landing on my elbows, my chest and shoulders buried inside the ghost. “Get out! Get out of me!” He shot up off the floor, his energy curling into itself until he remained a shivering orb huddled in the corner by the door.

  My teeth chattered; my brain scrambled.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  The ghost bell rang and, through the window, I saw the ghost engine split onto a secondary rail up ahead.

  Just like the conductor had predicted. It was grossly unfair and terrifying, and I watched in horror as the coal car behind the locomotive peeled away, then the baggage car a mere two cars up from this one.

  “Unhook me, Frankie,” I ordered, watching the ghost train race for the ruins of a wooden rail bridge.

  The ghost cowered in the corner. “Why would you touch me like that?” he demanded. “You’re never allowed to touch me! You can’t touch me!”

  “Don’t argue!” I yelled over the blistering noise of metal torn from metal. The ghostly walls shook. Dusty gray volumes fell from their shelves.

  One struck me hard, the pain exploding through my shoulder. The conductor was right. He was right!

  “For once in your life, do as I say.” The floor trembled under me. “Frankie, unhook me. Now!”

  Chapter 20

  Frankie ripped his power away so fast it made my knees weak and my head spin. I stumbled sideways into Ellis, who held me upright, his arms caging me and supporting me, and I needed it because what I saw next chilled me to the core.

  The right side of the train bore down on me faster than Frankie’s energy could loosen me from its grip.

  I screamed and buried my head in Ellis’s chest, waiting for the crushing impact of the steel outer wall of the car, feeling it whoosh through me like a blast of air.

  I clutched his arms, stunned but alive. I was never asking Frankie to open me up to the other side again. It was too awful, too scary, too much of a risk.

  “You’ve got to see this,” the mobster hollered, hitting me with a fresh wave of ghostly power.

  “Frankie,” I protested as the shot slammed into my left shoulder, quickly spreading in a cascade of prickling energy, “stop.” He couldn’t just douse me like that. Seconds ago, I’d barely survived being pulverized by the steel carriage of a classic train car, and he wanted to power me up again.

  “Too late now,” the gangster said with glee.

  “I don’t want to see.” I didn’t want to know. Still, I watched in utter fascination as the faint gray outline of the ghost train rushed down the split track to my left, the rest of the train peeling away.

  “What did he do to you?” Ellis demanded, shooting a dirty look in Frankie’s general direction.

  “The list is long,” I said, stumbling toward the window, amazed I was in one piece. The ghost train curved along the sidetrack toward an old metal railway bridge.

  The bridge appeared solid in the ghostly realm. Yet in the modern world, half the supports had rotted away. Moonlight reflected off the river below and shone up through the bottom.

  The old Sugarland Express rushed headlong toward its destiny.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  I gasped as the bottom supports of the ghostly bridge gave way. They tumbled, gray and glowing, into the empty black void below. The train lurched and the engine tipped forward, plunging toward the churning river, taking the original Sugarland Express with it.

  But this time, there were no souls on board.

  No one to relive the tragedy. No voices crying out in terror over the grating of metal or the hiss of steam on the river. The old Sugarland Express fell in silence, dissipating as it dropped until there was nothing left to hit the water.

  We’d averted tragedy tonight. And for that I was supremely grateful.

  The new Sugarland Express thumped as its wheels charged over the modern steel bridge next to the old one. I remained at the window, watching the dark river churning below.

  It was over. At least on the ghostly side.

  I turned and hugged Ellis, who had remained at my back, always watching and protecting. “Thank you,” I said into his shirt.

  “I can still feel Verity touching me,” Frankie groused from the other side of the room. “It’s crawling all over me, like bugs in my brain.”

  “Let it go,” Molly coaxed. “It’s over now.”

  I lifted my head and saw she’d gotten Frankie down off the ceiling and stood embracing him.

  His eye caught mine and he pointed a finger at me. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

  “Believe me, I won’t,” I said, still nestled against Ellis. “As long as you stop getting shot in the head.”

  The modern train cleared the bridge and began a sharp ascent up the hill on the other side of the river. I turned back for one last look at the true, historic Sugarland Express before the curve in the tracks obliterated it for good.

  “It’s done,” I said to Ellis.

  He brushed a lock of hair behind my ear and I leaned up to kiss him. I was enjoying the warm touch of his lips when suddenly the train lurched and shuddered.

  I stumbled backward, out of Ellis’s embrace. The lights flickered. The plush chair slammed onto its side.

  “Verity!” Ellis shouted.

  I grabbed the bookshelves to the side of the window, realizing at once that it was a bad idea. Heavy volumes rained down, barely missing my head.

  He reached for my arm and pulled me close, shielding me between the window and his body.

  “Sweet heaven! What’s going on?” I asked, my voice rattling with the heavy vibrations from the floor and the walls. It felt like we were going to crash.

  “We’re losing speed,” Ellis’s voice rasped against my ear as his body shook with the impact of falling hardbacks.

  He was right.

  Brakes squealed. The train rumbled and swayed, rapidly losing acceleration.

  Darkened fields stretched from the tracks and ended in dense forest.

  The train gave a hard lurch and ground to a screeching halt.

  The lights flickered, but held.

  Ellis and I shared a worried look. “Let’s check it out,” he said, releasing me, heading for the doorway. When I didn’t move right away, he hesitated. “Are you all right?” He returned to me. “I can set up the chair again. You can sit.”

  “No,” I said, shaking off the shock and fear of the night. “You need me. One of the ghosts gave me a clue to solving Stephanie’s murder.” I told Ellis about the shoeprint in the blood.

  To his credit, the flash of surprise across his features was brief.

  “Okay, let’s figure this out,” he said, taking my hand and escorting me out into the hall.

  The door at the front of the car slam
med open, and the conductor rushed toward us, his hat gone and his dark hair a mess. “Are you all right, folks?” he asked, his concern warring with his need to press on.

  “We are,” I assured him.

  “What’s happening?” Ellis demanded.

  He paused, as if deciding what to tell us. “Rockfall on the tracks,” he said quickly. Ellis was, after all, the law.

  “Again?” Virginia asked from the back door of the car. She hurried forward, a white dressing gown wrapped tightly around her slim figure. I’d never seen her barefoot before. “It can’t be an accident,” she snapped, “not twice in a row.”

  “That’s my fear,” the conductor said, giving Ellis and me the side-eye, clearly not a fan of having this talk in front of us.

  “They’re fine,” Virginia said, casting a crisp wave of her hand in our direction. “In fact, I want them to hear.”

  “All right,” the conductor said. “If you want my opinion, this looks like a setup. I haven’t been out on the tracks yet, but from what I can see up front, the rocks are too neatly stacked.”

  “Like last time,” Ellis said flatly.

  “Yes.” The conductor nodded. “I know we didn’t want to jump to conclusions then, not without proof, but this is more than a coincidence.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We barely missed the boulders this time. They were set up on a blind curve, designed to take us out before we had a chance to stop.”

  Ellis cursed under his breath.

  “What would have happened if we’d hit them?” I asked.

  My question lingered in the darkness of the hallway.

  The conductor stood rigid, and I saw a muscle jump in his jaw. “Best-case scenario, we would have derailed,” he said. “Worst case, we could have lost the locomotive. The whole train could have detached and rolled back down the hill.”

  “Toward the river?” Ellis asked.

  The conductor nodded.

  Virginia shook. Whether it was from fear or anger, I couldn’t tell.

  Ellis’s expression hardened. “I have a feeling whoever did this is also guilty of the murder in compartment 9.”

  It made sense. Earlier, when we’d nearly crashed, someone had used the confusion to sabotage the radio and kill Stephanie. If the rocks were stacked again in roughly the same manner, it had to be the same party at work. Still, I wondered how they’d managed it. It could have been a setup from the start, or perhaps the guilty party somehow had a way of communicating with the outside world. The killer could have ordered an associate to place a second blockade when the first wasn’t enough to cause serious damage.

  “Who in their right mind would strike at a train full of people like this?” Virginia demanded.

  “I have the actual killer narrowed down to one of two passengers,” I said, startling her. In other circumstances, it would have been fun to see that wide-eyed, slack-jawed look on her face, but not tonight. “It’s Mrs. Abel or Ms. Powers. I have no idea which.” But we’d best get a move on.

  We didn’t know what plot our killer was hatching while we were standing here trying to figure out what to do.

  “How do you know this?” Virginia demanded.

  “Ghosts,” Ellis said, with finality.

  She shook her head, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was about to say. “All right. Let’s keep an eye on both women.”

  “We need to do more than that,” I told her. “We need to find the evidence to put one of them away.”

  “How?” Virginia asked.

  “By securing physical proof.” I explained about the unusual footprint in the blood. “Can you remember either Mary Jo or Eileen wearing a shoe with a large square heel and a pointed toe?” Virginia noticed what people wore. It was practically a sport to her.

  Ellis’s mother pressed a hand to her forehead and thought hard before she gave up, exasperated. “No. I can’t recall.” She dropped her hand. “I can’t even imagine where you’d buy something that awful.”

  “We need to find it,” I told her.

  Ellis gave a sharp nod. “You work on that, and I’ll take another look at the evidence in compartment 9,” he said grimly.

  That was right, he hadn’t cleaned up the blood yet.

  He’d gone into police mode, cool and collected. “In the meantime, we’re trapped in the middle of nowhere with a killer on board,” Ellis said, “so let’s be careful.”

  Virginia crossed her arms over her chest. “Where are we exactly?”

  “No more than fifteen miles from the Gatlinburg station,” the conductor said. “Once we’re there, we can call in the local police.”

  But until then, we’d better watch our backs.

  Beau’s voice sounded from the back of the car. “I’ll go for help.”

  I hadn’t even heard him arrive.

  “You will not.” Virginia kept her back turned to him. “I’d barely trust you on a five-mile hike.”

  Beau flinched, but he persisted, inserting himself next to Ellis in our merry little circle. “It’s not your decision to make, Mother.”

  She had a point, though. He’d be out in the dark in rough country with a killer on the loose. And even if he wasn’t stabbed from behind, he could get hurt any number of ways. He could run into wild animals, injure himself in a fall, or follow the wrong set of tracks and get lost.

  “Mom’s right,” Ellis said. “It’s not safe. I’ll do it.”

  “Not this time,” Beau vowed. “It’s my train.”

  “We need Ellis to look at the bloodstains,” I said. It seemed this was Beau’s time to step up.

  Virginia and Beau exchanged a look. “Go,” she said, not happy about it.

  Ellis gave a sharp nod to his brother.

  “Come with me, then,” the conductor said. “I’ll show you the route. You can leave once the sun comes up.”

  Beau clapped a hand on Ellis’s shoulder before following the conductor up front. He paused at the front of the car. “You won’t regret it,” he promised.

  “I already do,” Virginia said to herself as the door slid closed behind him.

  “He can handle it,” Ellis said when she stood for a long moment, looking at the closed door.

  “I don’t like it,” she murmured. “He’s not sturdy like you.”

  He might never be if she didn’t let him strike out on his own. “You might be surprised,” I told her. Beau never did what I expected.

  She shot me a dirty look. “At least he’s waiting until the sun is up. I’ll tell the cook to prepare supplies.” She turned to leave us, then stopped. “Verity, you said you needed to find a pair of bloody shoes.”

  “Yes,” I said, not sure I’d put it quite that way.

  “Then come with me.” Virginia had donned the kind of crafty look that usually meant trouble. “If you’re willing and able, I have an idea.”

  Chapter 21

  “Don’t do anything illegal,” Ellis cautioned as the three of us made our way back through the train.

  “Dear, I’m surprised your mind would even go there,” Virginia said in a way that chastised while at the same time refused to tip her hand.

  “He’s right,” I told her as we hurried past the club chairs in the abandoned bar. “Any evidence we find needs to be admissible in court.”

  While I’d be glad to accept Virginia’s help—provided it was the kind I needed—she played by her own rules, and that made me nervous.

  I was about to say as much when we entered the hallway of the kitchen car and encountered both the skinny porter and the cook.

  “Most of the passengers are up,” the porter said, looking frazzled. “We’re assembling a continental breakfast.”

  “Is it that close to dawn?” Virginia asked, looking to the window. Faint light crested the horizon. Voices echoed from the dining room. “Give them mimosas as well,” she ordered. “Wake the wait staff. And go comb your hair again,” she said, continuing toward the back of the train.

  We entered the dining car and foun
d Mary Jo huddled with her husband, Dave, at their usual table. She didn’t look like a killer. Then again, in my experience, killers rarely did.

  Ellis leaned close to Virginia and me. “You two stick together,” he said, low enough not to be overheard. “Our culprit might not be working alone.”

  The newlyweds clustered at the next table, in frantic conversation with the anniversary couple. It seemed that everyone was up except for Eileen Powers. The reporter was nowhere to be seen.

  “Go,” Virginia said, ushering her son along. “We’ve got this.”

  “I’m counting on it.” He grabbed me sideways, kissed me hard, and walked on toward the bloody mess in compartment 9.

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that,” Virginia muttered under her breath. She held up her hands, showing her palms to the room. “May I have everyone’s attention for a moment.” She spoke with the ease and authority of someone used to addressing groups. “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience this morning. Rest assured, there’s nothing to worry about,” she lied through her teeth. I frowned, along with half of the other passengers. “That jolt you felt was the train stopping suddenly.”

  “What did we hit?” asked Xander. The young newlywed appeared shaken as he clutched his wife’s henna-tattooed hand.

  I wanted to know what made him assume there had been anything on the tracks to hit. Virginia hadn’t said anything of the sort.

  His young wife crossed her legs nervously, and I saw that she wore a pair of wedge heels with a pink flamingo print. Her feet were too small to fit the killer’s shoes. But what about her husband?

  “We didn’t hit anything,” Virginia assured Xander. I was pleased for once at her slick nature when she left out the part about the rocks on the track. It wouldn’t make anyone safer to know, and keeping our cards close to our chest on this one might just help us suss out the killer. “The driver thought he saw a bear. After such a sudden stop, he needs to check the engine.” She added quickly, “We should be on our way shortly.”

  “A bear?” Dave Abel asked, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.