Shadows on the Train

by Melanie Jackson

  “I’m hoping the specialist will teach Ryan some exercises to practice speaking—and to build up his confidence.” Mrs. Zanatta’s eyes grew shinier, and I saw she had tears in them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Patient Is Smuggled Off

  Ryan…Mrs. Chewbley…my thoughts spun like an out-of-control Ferris wheel, and I couldn’t sleep.

  I pulled the laptop toward me and logged on to Jack’s e-mail. I’d intended to write Mother, but there, in front of me, like a malevolent toad, sat a new message from Veronica LaFlamme.

  Jack,

  You’re my ideal man, but I can’t wait forever. Isn’t it better to tell Madge now? Trust me, speaking as a gal myself, it’s better to be honest.

  I’m just so glad you agreed to meet me at J.J. Bean’s café. That secluded nook you chose was perfect.

  J.J. Bean’s! That was Madge and Jack’s favorite place. They met there for breakfast and had long, meaningful talks over steaming coffee and fat fruit muffins.

  Some guys in your situation would’ve refused to have anything to do with me. Thank goodness you’re so open-minded!

  Vee

  I made indignant exploding noises that half-woke Madge. “You having a nightmare, Di?” Her hand flailed sleepily to give me a reassuring pat.

  It’s your nightmare, I reflected grimly. Little do you know you’re not a fiancée anymore, but an old Flamme.

  So “Vee” was glad Jack was “open-minded” about meeting other women! I punched Reply. In a return message to Veronica LaFlamme, I bashed out, Why “Vee,” by the way?Get it—y…v…? Gosh, I’m a fun guy. And y’know the reason I agreed to meet you? Huh?

  I thought of yet another king and smiled evilly. You remind me of my favorite movie star. Yes—KING KONG!!! Oh, and try not to forget the deodorant next time, okay?—Jack.

  I pressed Send and felt extremely satisfied. Next time, a mega-insulting group-send message to Jack’s entire contacts list.

  “Fish!” I announced.

  Talbot, Pantelli and I were playing cards in the games room. None of us could sleep.

  “Poor Mrs. Chewbley,” Pantelli mourned. “Nicest piano teacher I ever had. With her gone, I guess it’s back to mean Mrs. Grimsbottom.”

  “Mrs. Chewbley isn’t dead,” I scolded. “At least, I hope…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Maybe she’s dotty and wandered off,” Talbot suggested. “My grandfather did that once. Gran phoned the police, who searched everywhere—and then Grandfather calmly strolled in the door. He’d spent the weekend in Vegas. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he asked Gran. Now he wears one of those tracking bracelets for his safety—and for their bank account, Gran says. She’s still steamed because Grandfather gambled away five grand at the Seven Kings Hotel in Vegas.”

  Pantelli laughed, but I was staring thoughtfully at Talbot. “Kings,” I repeated. “You’re our resident history expert. Tell me about Charles the First.”

  Talbot made a chopping motion with his hand. “Lost his head, Di. The Roundheads axed it off.”

  “Cool,” breathed Pantelli—but I was hearing Ardle’s feeble parting words as the stretcher attendants bore him off.

  A king who lost his head.

  “The eighty-thousand-dollar king Dad was keeping for Ardle,” I breathed. “It’s something to do with Charles the First!”

  “Hail the junior sleuth,” Talbot said, grinning. “But, Sherlock, of what nature is this valuable? A painting? Naw, that wouldn’t fit in an envelope. A coin or letter, maybe?”

  “A stamp,” Pantelli suggested.

  I produced the envelope, held it upside down and shook it. “Whatever it was, it’s long gone,” I sighed.

  Still, I couldn’t get Charles the First out of my mind. “So who were the Roundheads, and why were they after him?” I asked Talbot.

  Talbot got the solemn academic look he so often wore at school. “The Roundheads were people who believed in the power of parliament, of elected representation. As opposed to Charles and his supporters, the Cavaliers, who believed that the king should be all-powerful.

  “The Roundheads were so-called because they cut their hair short to distinguish themselves from the Cavaliers, who had long curly manes. That part of it was pretty childish.”

  I thought of my feud with Liesl, which, as Madge had pointed out, centered on hair. “Yeah,” I agreed sheepishly.

  “Well, the Roundheads put Charles on trial and beheaded him in 1649. Two years later, there was this tremendous battle at Worcester,” Talbot’s dark eyes were really sparkling now, “where the Roundheads totally trounced the Cavaliers. Here, I’ll show you,” and Talbot began moving the playing cards around on the tablecloth.

  Pantelli was studying the envelope under the booth lamp. “Hey, Tal, put the troop movements on hold for a minute.” He pointed to Dad’s messy handwriting. “Look at this!”

  I shrugged. “Welcome to a new concept, Pantelli. The return address.”

  “No, look.”

  I looked. “A postal code—wait, no, it isn’t!” I exclaimed. “It’s a phone number—and not ours.”

  I was back in my compartment, trying once more to sleep. But the phone number from the envelope danced in my head. Two-five-five-nine-nine-five-five. Did it belong to someone Dad had given the king to? Or who at least knew something about what and where the king was?

  Reluctantly, Talbot, Pantelli and I had nixed the idea of phoning the number. It was too late, even by Vancouver time. I’d have to wait—the activity I hated most—till the morning to call.

  Taunting me, the numbers did cartwheels. I sat up, not bothering to try to sleep anymore. So much for the soothing lull of a moving train.

  Just a minute. There was no lulling movement. The Gold-and-Blue was still.

  Leaning over my sleeping sister, I pushed the curtain aside to peer out the window.

  We were at a station. Weird—I thought our next stop was in the morning, in Winnipeg. It was 1:30 AM and inky black outside.

  Except for that splash of lights over to the right. I grabbed my housecoat and padded out into the passageway in my fluffy white cat-face slippers (a gift from Wilfred last Christmas).

  “Good evening, Miss Galloway.”

  It was a conductor, but a nice freckle-faced one, not the rubbery, disapproving Beanstalk. “Freddy McClusky, at your service,” he said. “I enjoyed your performance in The Moonstone last year. Man, what a set of pipes! With that and your red hair, you’re a miniature Bette Midler.”

  The Bette Midler part I was pleased about; the miniature, less so. “Why are we stopping? An emergency?”

  “A routine.” Freddy grinned. “We always stop the Gold-and-Blue at Saskatoon, or just outside it, actually, at one thirty in the morning. Just for half an hour to drop off or pick up packages.” He wrinkled his nose good-naturedly. “Too bad. I have an aunt here who makes the best Saskatoon berry pie. But there’s no time to visit her. That’d be the one advantage of being the new guy stuck on the nightshift, but no-o-o.”

  He started describing his aunt’s recipe, which called for cramming in as many of the juicy dark berries as possible.

  But for once I wasn’t in the mood to think about food. Nurse Ballantyne was shoving past us, her crisp white uniform crackling with static. “Make way. Patient leaving. Make way,” she ordered, sounding even more nasal than usual. Her bony hands shot out and—wompf!—flattened Freddy against one wall, me against the other.

  Behind her, two ambulance attendants carried a body on a stretcher. The body was covered by a blanket, and the head was completely wrapped in bandages. The train stopped to drop off packages, Freddy had said.

  And sometimes people, it seemed.

  I stared hard at the patient, momentarily halted between the two stretcher bearers. Nurse Ballantyne was wrenching at the exit doors.

  “Who’s under the bandages?” I demanded.

  “A frail passenger with a head injury,” the nurse snapped. “I’ll thank you not to slow u
s down. Getting my patient to the hospital is vital in a case like this.”

  “In a case like what?” Jogging up beside the stretcher, I poked a finger in the patient’s tummy. “This patient’s awfully well-fed for being frail.” Chewbley well-fed, I was thinking. What better way of sneaking the piano teacher off the train than wrapped up in bandages?

  Nurse Ballantyne held the door open for the stretcher bearers. The first backed gingerly out, trying to keep the stretcher straight. Nevertheless, it tipped slightly, and the patient started a headfirst slide.

  “Be careful,” I said and scowled at Nurse Ballantyne. “That’s Edwina Chewbley, isn’t it? You kidnapped her because she knows too much.”

  Nurse Ballantyne’s right hand flared out from under her cloak. This time I was wompf!-ed against the wall and held there. The nurse’s beady eyes were two tiny black cannon–balls. “Don’t cross me, Dinah Galloway,” she whispered.

  I squirmed, feeling like a bug being pinned to a Bristol board for a science project. “That telltale whisper,” I retorted. “You’re the one who threw the blanket over me in the observation car.”

  The two tiny black cannonballs gleamed for a second. Then Nurse Ballantyne released me so abruptly I crumpled to the floor. She strode off the train, her white-stockinged legs flashing under the station lamps.

  Nurse Ballantyne might have finished with me. I wasn’t done with her yet. Not as long as I had VOLUME.

  “HELP! HELP! NURSE BALLANTYNE’S SMUGGLING MRS. CHEWBLEY OFF THE TRAIN!”

  Heads began popping out of sleeping compartments. On the platform, porters stopped loading their dollies with packages. The stretcher carriers paused too, with doubtful glances at Nurse Ballantyne.

  In the awkward silence, Freddy murmured admiringly, “What a voice, Miss Galloway. I just wish we had a brass section.”

  Nurse Ballantyne began cracking her bony knuckles. The snaps! echoed out into the still darkness around the station. “Proceed on with the patient! An ambulance is waiting.”

  “KIDNAPPING IS A CRIMINAL OFFENCE!” I shouted. I’d heard this on a police show recently. Kind of an obvious comment, if you thought about it, but I had to stall the removal of poor Mrs. Chewbley.

  The stretcher bearers hesitated some more. The woken-up passengers began providing commentary.

  “All those bandages. An odd way to travel, I must say. Rather like Cleopatra wrapping herself up in a carpet!”

  “Is there even a hole for the poor thing to breathe through? Dreadful the way they treat old people nowadays.”

  “Wonder if that patient had the mussels. I was afraid to—I knew they looked a bit off.”

  Bundled in their housecoats, Talbot and Pantelli trotted up to me. Talbot murmured, “Okay, Di, what gives?”

  I tried not to stare at Pantelli’s housecoat, which was patterned with all kinds of trees, their Latin names underneath. “Edwina Chewbley is under those bandages!” I announced.

  Jumping off the train, I marched up to the stretcher before Nurse Ballantyne could flare out a bony hand at me again. I grasped a bandage end. “Freedom is mere seconds away, Mrs. Chewbley.”

  With an authoritative nod at the porters, Freddy and the curious passengers now clogging the train doors, I peeled the head bandage off, round and round…

  And round…

  A face emerged, but not Mrs. Chewbley’s.

  The salt-and-pepper-haired woman’s.

  Freddy escorted Madge and me into the head conductor’s office. “Way to pull a publicity stunt,” the young conductor winked at me.

  Then, having got his first good look at Madge, Freddy goggled while slo-o-owly closing the door. My sister, who’d changed into a pearl gray blouse and matching slacks, looked fresh and lovely, even at one in the morning—but this was a girl who looked fresh and lovely after playing tennis for two hours. Unnatural, if you ask me.

  “Ow!” Still goggling, Freddy had closed the door on his nose.

  The head conductor switched his unhappy gaze to me. “Forty-two years with the Gold-and-Blue,” he mourned. “Never an incident like this. Never a claim about a disappearing passenger. Never an attack on a patient.”

  “Dinah didn’t attack the patient,” Madge pointed out. “She unwrapped her.”

  Though very critical of me herself, Madge grew prickly when others tried to be. It’s a sister thing.

  “Nurse Ballantyne’s patient injured herself while rummaging in the luggage car for her extra set of dentures,” Head Conductor Wiggins explained. “One of our cleaning staff opened the door for her, and she barged in ahead, without waiting for help. Said something about being ‘dethperate.’

  “She seems to have knocked over a stack of cartons, including a,” Mr. Wiggins frowned at his notes, “box labeled Softie Toilet Paper. Odd. In any event, the falling boxes struck her on the head, jaw and ears, and she passed out. Nurse Ballantyne and I thought it best that she be moved to the nearest hospital.”

  “Very sensible and unmysterious,” agreed Madge, with a stern sideways glance at me. “There will be no further trouble from my sister. Will there, Dinah?”

  “Y’know, it’s just so hard to commit,” I began, and then I noticed the fierceness of Madge’s glance. Blue as in glacial blue. “Er, no, there won’t.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Charles? Chuck that Idea

  Talbot, Pantelli and I poised our forks over the eggs Benedict. “Charge!” I ordered, and we all plunged our forks into the eggs at the same time. Yolks overran the plates like tsunamis. It was glorious, the true advantage of ordering eggs Benedict.

  Madge was having her breakfast of grapefruit and melon wedges in our compartment. The baleful looks from other passengers gave her a headache, she’d said.

  After stuffing a yolk-soaked English muffin in my mouth, I punched into Madge’s cell phone—which I’d borrowed—the number from the envelope.

  “This is Calvin Blimburg,” a tinny voice said.

  “Mflgmltch,” I said.

  “Sorry I’m not here right now. Got something to get rid of, huh? Without anyone knowing, I bet. Well, no probs. I’ll deal with it, and we’ll both stay mum.”

  “Mflgmltch,” I repeated. The guy was a fence!

  “Leave your name, or a phony name if you prefer, and I’ll get back to you.” Beep!

  I gulped down the muffin. “I don’t have a phony name,” I said wrathfully. “And I don’t approve of the business you’re in. However, my dad wrote your number down, and I need to talk to you. My name’s Dinah Galloway.”

  I added our number to the message and snapped the phone shut. Talbot was regarding me dubiously. “Do you really think you should give your personal contact info to a stranger, Di?”

  I was too glum to worry about it. Had Dad handed over the king to Calvin Blimburg? Was that why it was missing from the envelope?

  And why oh why had Dad contacted a fence in the first place? Whatever his other failings, I’d been sure Dad was honest.

  In Winnipeg, everybody lined up for the tour bus that would first take us to Assiniboine Park and then to the famous Forks Market. At the prospect of shopping, Madge’s mood improved, and she was chatting with another woman about the jewelry, pottery and other knickknacks from different cultures available at the market.

  Pantelli glanced up from the Plant Life of Assiniboine Park brochure he was studying. “Dinah, how come you’re being so quiet?”

  I couldn’t reply. I was too miserable at the thought of Dad getting involved with a fence.

  Talbot rapped me gently on the head. “You in there, Di? I want to check on your walkie-talkie.” Taking it from my hand, he pressed a duct-taped On switch. “Testing,” he said into first my walkie-talkie, then his. “Testing…”

  “We could always use them as doorstops,” I said absently. I was looking at Pantelli’s Plant Life brochure. One of the photos had distracted me, for the moment, from the thought of Dad and Calvin Blimburg.

  I murmured to Pantelli and Talbot, “I�
��ve just had a blazingly brilliant idea about how to smoke out the Whisperer.”

  Talbot and I lowered our strings, each with a chunk of cheese tied at the end, into the green Assiniboine River. Madge, leaning against an elm, shook her head at us over her sketchbook.

  “For all you know, prairie fish might love aged cheddar,” I said defensively. Sitting cross-legged at the edge of the grassy bank, Talbot and I squinted into the green depths. Minnows were nipping at the cheese. Well, you had to start small.

  The cheese was left over from the picnic Beanstalk had handed us when we boarded the Winnipeg tour bus. Though when Madge stepped in front of him, Beanstalk first clutched the basket to his heart. “Is it—can it be true you’re engaged?” he demanded, with a catch in his voice.

  I’d grabbed the basket from Beanstalk. “You’re crushing our lunches.”

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with being unengaged,” I remarked now, as more minnows circled the cheese chunks. “In fact,” I said loudly over my shoulder, “more and more people are choosing the solitary life.”

  “Yeah?” Talbot glanced at me sideways. “Is that what you’re planning for yourself, Dinah?”

  “I was thinking more of Madge,” I said, raising my voice even more as my sister appeared to be dozing. “After all, true artists devote themselves to their work. ARTISTS LIKE MADGE,” I bellowed.

  Talbot grinned at me. “That’s a relief. I mean,” and he reached over to pull my string, which had drifted to the bank, back into the water, “think how solitary the solitary life would be.”

  From behind Madge in the bushes, crackle. That got her attention. Her blue eyes popped wide open. “Bears,” she exclaimed fearfully and leapt up.

  “You’re so urban, Madge,” I said, in withering tones. “That’s no bear, it’s Super Dendrologist.”

  Pantelli emerged from the bushes. He wore long gardening gloves, a full rain suit and a magnifying glass on a string around his neck. “I found just the specimens I wanted,” he announced, holding up a Baggie filled with leaves.