Murder on the Orient Espresso Read online

  Missy blushed. ‘I suppose so. I—’

  ‘Missy works closely with all sorts of famous authors,’ I said encouragingly. ‘And publishers, too, I’m sure. Right, Missy?’

  ‘Well, I … No—’

  ‘All guests to the dining car,’ Zoe’s voice thundered over the intercom again.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Missy said. ‘If we don’t find Laurence, who’s to solve the crime?’

  ‘If it helps, Mr Potter passed through here not long after you and Ms Darlington did,’ Danny said. ‘He had a pack of cigarettes and was headed the same way.’

  Toward the sleeping car. Having walked a mile in the cheated-upon spouse’s shoes myself, Danny’s statement would have raised a red flag for me. It apparently did for Audra as well.

  ‘“The same way,”’ she repeated, not seeming at all surprised. ‘What a coincidence.’

  ‘He may have gone out on the landing – or whatever you call it, between cars – for a smoke.’ Danny seemed to sense he’d said something to upset her. Why he cared, I didn’t know.

  ‘It’s called a vestibule,’ Missy said. ‘And there’s no smoking on the train, anywhere.’

  So I’d been right.

  ‘Like I said,’ Danny continued, ‘I wasn’t sure where he was going, only that he had his cigarettes. I was going to follow, see if we could talk, but I saw Mrs … um, Audra, and thought I’d introduce myself.’

  I frowned. Something wasn’t right. ‘I’m sorry, but didn’t I see the two of you speaking in the club car before Audra surprised everyone?’

  ‘Just for a second,’ Danny said. ‘I didn’t know who she was then.’

  Well, that explained it. I had to admit Zoe Scarlett was right. It is hard to know who to suck up to without a scorecard – or, at least, last names and titles on nametags. I was curious about this kid. Hell, about all these people. ‘You sent your manuscript to Larry Potter, why—’

  Missy tugged on my arm. ‘We really need to find Laurence, Maggy.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ I said and then to Danny, ‘I’m sorry. We can talk later.’

  ‘Umm, sure. Anytime,’ he said distractedly. Then to Missy: ‘I’d love to hear more about you. Maybe you and I can get together for a drink.’

  Missy giggled and tugged at her dress. ‘Maybe.’

  As we pressed on toward the restroom at the end of the car, Missy was walking taller, with a sexy little wiggle that threatened to send her careening off her shiny spiked heels as the train chugged along the track.

  Ahh, amour. And ambition. And always the twain shall meet.

  Which brought me back to our guests of honor. Missy had said that Rosemary Darlington and Laurence Potter had a ‘history.’

  I took that to mean an affair and Audra Edmonds’s reaction to Rosemary seemed to bear that out. But was this affair truly ‘history’ or more current events? As in, the two of them shacked up in the sleeping car at this very moment.

  If so, I had to give both Potter and Darlington props for acting ability. The disdain he professed for her – and her new writing endeavor – seemed very genuine. Ditto, our female guest of honor’s feelings toward the reviewer, not to mention her own reaction to the motion of the train, her medication and my espresso martini. If Rosemary Darlington was faking, I’d eat her beret.

  As Missy and I reached the back of the car, wind was whistling through the opening in the windows I’d been forced to leave in order to secure her banner.

  For all the good the thing was doing. Not only, as I expected, was there no one out there to see it except for the denizens of the Everglades, but the vinyl banner was slapping rhythmically against the side of the train, occasionally being lifted by a gust to cover the windows.

  The sign might not survive the trip. I just hoped the windows would.

  Hesitating at the restroom door, I said to Missy, ‘I suppose it won’t hurt to check again.’

  She shrugged. ‘Sure, maybe third time’s the charm.’

  ‘Speaking of charm,’ I said casually, as I tapped on the restroom door, ‘Danny is kind of cute.’

  ‘You think?’ She cocked her head. ‘He seems awfully young to me.’ She must have seen the surprise on my face. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, Maggy. What girl doesn’t like a little male attention, but …’

  ‘But?’ I gave another knock.

  ‘But he’s really not my type. I don’t like users.’

  ‘Losers?’ Still no answer from inside, I tentatively slid the restroom door open.

  ‘No, user. Somebody who uses other people to get what they want. True love should be more than that.’

  Not wanting to get into a discussion of ‘true love’ with the starry-eyed girl, I stepped my jaded self into the empty restroom. ‘Huh, this is larger than I expected.’

  Missy came in after me. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Well, bigger than an airplane restroom, certainly. I mean, we’re both standing in here, not exactly comfortably and it smells like a flaming bag of dog poop, but—’

  The door slid closed.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, grabbing the handle and giving it a shove. ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure nobody did it on purpose, Maggy. It was probably just the motion of the train.’

  We did seem to be slowing. ‘The door is stuck.’

  ‘I think you locked it.’ She pushed the handle the other way and yanked open the door. ‘Here we go.’

  We stepped out into the hall and I let out the breath I’d apparently been holding. ‘Thank God for South Florida’s insistence on over air-conditioning.’

  ‘It was a little stuffy in there. Now, where were we?’

  ‘Heading that way,’ I pointed, proud that I was getting the hang of this front-is-now-back, back-is-now-front reorientation. At least I had a sense of which way we were going, which was more than I could say of my one and only cruise. I’d spent the entire four days wandering the halls and punching up information on the computerized ‘You are here’ maps. And eating, of course.

  My stomach growled again.

  Beyond the restroom was the vestibule leading to the sleeping car. I had a hard time seeing why someone would come here to smoke. The exit doors on both sides of the vestibule had no outside platforms, the floor was a rumbling metal ramp and the space was noisy and smelled.

  Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t unlike a lot of places smokers had been banished to.

  ‘What’s that?’ Missy said, pointing to something in the corner to my left.

  ‘An empty book of matches.’ I picked up the black and silver pack. ‘Potter’s, do you think?’

  Missy took them and read, ‘Titanium.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She looked embarrassed and handed them back to me. ‘A … gentlemen’s club?’

  ‘Ah, then definitely Potter’s.’ I slipped the match book into the pocket of my sundress.

  Missy looked around the cramped space again. ‘He came this way, then.’

  ‘But probably not to smoke,’ I said, looking around myself. ‘Unless he did it in the restroom. Maybe that’s why it smelled like that.’

  ‘I think that was just train smell and toilet. There are a lot of us onboard and we’ve all been using that restroom. I think the other is at the far end of the sleeping car.’

  ‘So if Potter isn’t in this bathroom, maybe he’s in that one. The only other option is …’

  ‘Oh, dear. Do you think he’s with Rosemary? I wondered if that’s what his wife was insinuating.’

  ‘Insinuating’ was putting it mildly. ‘Could Potter have snuck in there after you left?’

  She shrugged. ‘I hate to think he’d do that, but, well, I’m starting to believe no one is what they seem to be.’

  As far as I was concerned, Laurence Potter was exactly what he seemed – a pompous sleazeball, but then I tend to be judgmental. ‘Where is Rosemary sleeping it off?’

  ‘The farthest roomette – that’s what the train company calls the little sl
eeping compartments – from where we are. On the left. I knew we’d be using the nearest one to the passenger car for solving our program’s crime, so I wanted Rosemary to be as far away as possible so she wouldn’t be disturbed.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said, not bothering to add that it was also the room where, like the last one on a hotel corridor, two people could fool around with less likelihood of being discovered. ‘We know Potter came through here, because of the matchbook. Is there an outside platform anywhere that he could smoke?’

  ‘You mean like on the back of an old-time campaign train? I doubt it, though I suppose he could open an exit door.’

  Yikes. ‘Haven’t you seen the news stories about people disappearing from trains?’ I asked. ‘Granted, many of them were older or ill but the authorities suspect they got confused and thought the door led to the bathroom or the next car. Once opened, with the velocity of the train, they—’

  ‘Oh, dear. But then why aren’t the exits kept locked?’

  ‘Because there are also safety issues arguing against that. People need to be able to get out quickly in case of an emergency.’

  Could Potter have opened the exit door to have a smoke and somehow, perhaps when the train hit a rough section of track, tumbled out?

  Leaving the question and the vestibule behind, I opened the first roomette door on the left and peered in. All I saw was blackness and all I felt was warmth. Someone had opened the window. ‘Hello? Is anybody in here?’

  Missy reached past me and felt for a light. ‘I think—’

  As I took a step forward, she screamed and grabbed my arm.

  At first I thought the scream was because my sandal had landed in the mutilated left foot from the cake left lying on the floor, grinding buttercream into the carpet.

  But then I saw the body, knife protruding prominently from the chest.

  THIRTEEN

  ‘We have to get the sheriff,’ I said, backing-pedaling and pulling Missy with me. ‘He’ll know—’

  The body sat up, and Missy’s scream nearly deafened me. But the corpse wasn’t the critic, of course. It was Pavlik in the fake mustache.

  ‘Damn it, Pavlik.’ Deafened but not mute, I stomped my foot into a second smear of cake icing on the floor. ‘You scared the living hell out of us.’

  Missy was crying. ‘How did you get past … ohhh.’ Realization dawned on her tear-streaked face. ‘Did you shut us in that bathroom?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The sheriff was smiling and didn’t appear a bit apologetic. Perversely desirable, though. Made me want to jump right in that bunk with him.

  Missy, however, was not as easily mollified. ‘That was cruel.’

  Pavlik held up his hands. ‘Truly, I am sorry. I couldn’t resist, but it was a childish thing to do. Please forgive me?’

  Now it was Missy who was smiling, her toe doing little coy circles. ‘Well, I suppose so. If you promise not to do it again.’

  With luck, the opportunity to shut two women in a train bathroom in order to scare them by playing a fictional murdered villain come-to-life wouldn’t pop up on a regular basis.

  ‘Promise.’ Pavlik crossed his heart.

  Oh, please.

  The sounds of a crowd and sliding doors opening and closing were getting closer.

  ‘Can I hope those are the frenzied villagers, coming to burn you at the stake?’ I asked pleasantly.

  ‘Merely to solve my heinous – or not so heinous, given my character’s own crime – murder.’ Pavlik lay back and repositioned the knife.

  ‘Is that my cake knife? You took it?’ Missy demanded, eyes narrowed.

  ‘Uh-uh.’ The sheriff held it up. ‘My Swiss Army knife. With the blade closed, of course.’

  ‘Ohhh.’ All appeared forgiven again.

  ‘Did you send that with the rest of your “weapons”?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t think you’d opened the UPS box.’

  ‘This?’ Pavlik held it up. ‘It’s more tool than weapon. I brought it with me. In my luggage, of course.’

  In truth, the thing did look like some gadget you’d see on an infomercial. ‘But wait!’ I said, mimicking the medium’s pitchmen.

  Missy teetered on her heels. ‘I wasn’t going anywhere.’

  ‘No, I meant … never mind. Does that thing have a corkscrew?’ I asked Pavlik, thinking we might snare a bottle of wine for the room on the way back to the hotel.

  ‘Of course not. This is a classic Swiss Army knife. Not one of those fru-fru all-in-ones.’ Pavlik closed his eyes. ‘Now get out, you two, before you blow my cover.’

  ‘Will do, Sheriff.’ I went to follow Missy into the corridor, but as she reached to slide the door closed behind us, I held up my hand.

  I stuck my head back into the roomette. ‘By the way, did you open the window?’

  ‘Me?’ He opened one eye. ‘No, it was open when I came in, though I’m grateful for the warmth. Dead men don’t shiver.’

  The eye closed.

  ‘He’s so funny,’ Missy said as we made our way down the corridor, quickly checking each roomette as we went. Behind us the participants were gathered around the door to Pavlik’s chamber. ‘And nice.’

  ‘He is,’ I agreed, closing the second to last door. ‘Most of the time.’

  Missy stopped and looked at me, disbelieving. ‘Please don’t tell me he’s a louse, too.’

  Louse. Great word, and probably fitting of the era we were supposed to be in. ‘Oh, no. Pavlik is a very honorable man.’ Which I’d found to be a problem at times. Like when he suspected yours truly of murder.

  ‘Well, that’s good.’ Missy stopped at the door to the last compartment. ‘This is where I left Rosemary. Shall I rap?’

  Another genteel turn of phrase. ‘Probably a good idea.’

  She did, using just the tips of her fingernails.

  ‘Huh?’ we heard from inside.

  I tried the door, which slid ajar. So the thing hadn’t been locked from the inside. ‘Rosemary? We’re just checking to make sure you’re OK.’ And alone.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Missy and Maggy,’ my fellow quester said, flipping on the light.

  Rosemary was on the bunk alone, arm up over her eyes. ‘Jesus, are you trying to blind me?’

  ‘Sorry, it’s because the Everglades are so dark. You can even see the stars at night.’ Missy leaned down to point out the window.

  ‘I don’t see any stars,’ Rosemary said. ‘In fact, isn’t that rain streaming down the glass?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ Missy said, looking again. ‘Oh, dear. It’s coming down in torrents.’

  Oh, dear, was right. ‘Well, we’re on the way back, at least.’

  ‘The train seems to be going quite slowly, though,’ Missy said worriedly. ‘I hope there’s no flooding on the tracks.’

  Flooding? In the Everglades at the end of their so-called ‘wet season’? Who would have thunk it, as my son Eric would say. But then he was a smart-aleck teenager and I, his more mature parent. Or I should be. ‘Flooding? In the Everglades? Might we have foreseen that possibility?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a worry-wart, Maggy,’ Missy said a little sharply, which indicated to me that she herself was worried. Or, perhaps, didn’t appreciate being criticized in front of an important client like Rosemary Darlington. ‘We’ve already had record rains this year.’

  I wasn’t sure why her latest little factoid was supposed to reassure me.

  Nonetheless, I kept quiet as Missy continued. ‘The Murder on the Orient Espresso is being solved as we speak and our event is a success!’

  Her statement made me think. ‘But what about Poirot? Who’s playing him?’

  ‘Potter, of course,’ Rosemary said.

  Missy and I exchanged looks. Rosemary was out of the loop when it came to his vanishing act, but I wasn’t going to be the one to fill her in if I could help it.

  ‘I suppose it’s possible he’s been up front the whole time,’ Missy said slowly. ‘After all, Audra was able to stay h
idden until she sprung herself on Laurence.’

  ‘Audra,’ Rosemary sniffed. ‘That woman is hateful to me.’

  ‘To be fair, she apparently has reason,’ I countered. ‘To hate you, I mean.’ You can take the cheated-upon woman out of the state, but you can’t take the state of being cheated upon out of the woman.

  Rosemary, for her part, looked genuinely bewildered. ‘Me? Why?’

  ‘The affair?’ I knew I should drop it, but my list of things I should do had probably filled three volumes by then.

  Still a blank look, then changing to comprehension. ‘Oh, you mean between her husband and me? There was never any affair.’

  ‘But why would people say it if it weren’t true?’ Missy, trusting girl that she was, seemed sick at the thought. ‘And his wife, even.’

  ‘It’s probably the percentage bet with Larry, though not in this case.’ Rosemary looked at her researcher. ‘Don’t worry, Missy. I know there are rumors about an affair and I truly don’t care. In fact, at the time I preferred that people thought that than the truth.’

  ‘Which was?’ I asked.

  ‘That my career was floundering and he offered to mentor me. I was supposed to be the “Next Great American Novelist,” with his help. And for a percentage.’ Rosemary was sitting on the bunk cross-legged, dress hitched up to her waist. ‘Instead he nearly ruined me.’

  ‘How?’ I was remembering what Rosemary had said earlier about Potter destroying her self-confidence. I’d assumed she’d meant more personally than professionally.

  ‘Oh, nothing horrible.’ With her short cropped hair, Rosemary looked like a little boy. ‘But Larry was relentless about my writing the book he had in mind, exactly the way he imagined it.’

  ‘Why didn’t he just write the thing himself?’

  ‘That’s what I asked him after the fourteenth or fifteenth draft. You know what he said?’

  Missy and I both shook our heads.

  ‘He said, “Happily. And I’ll give you half the proceeds if you’ll allow me to publish it under your name.”’

  ‘Rather than his own?’

  ‘I’m a brand.’ Rosemary shrugged. ‘Or was, back in the day.’