Murder On The Texas Eagle
Page 5
curled up in a blanket, like Angel was in my sweater. The only thing visible of the big man’s seatmate was his nose—a cute little turned-up thing. The kind that you’d expect to see on a cheerleader.
I felt one of them dizzy spells coming over me and I tried to fight it off. Especially when I saw that the big man was holding that magazine upside down. Then he glanced up, saw me looking at him with my mouth hanging open, and I knew that he knew that I knew.
My chest got to pounding and the dizzy spell got worse and I fell back into my seat and started fanning myself. If I’d thought I was feeling sickish over traveling on this train before I got on, it weren’t nothing compared to what I was feeling now.
The man in the brown coat noticed me trying to keep from passing out. He bent way over Angel, his face close to mine.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” he asked.
I emphatically shook my head “no.”
“Do you need a doctor?”
I shook my head “no” again and then jerked my head toward the back of the train and motioned with my thumb, trying to tell him that there was something BACK THERE that he needed to investigate AT ONCE!
He glanced at me, then at the big man.
The big man must have figured out something was up, because I heard this commotion back there, and some women started screaming, which set the babies off again—the poor little things had started to quiet down earlier.
“Stop him!” The man in the brown coat yelled.
I forgot all about being dizzy and stuck my head up over the seat again and I saw the man in the brown coat practically climbing over the police people’s backs to get past them—everything on the train was so narrow and crammed up. And the big man was lumbering through the train like he was a locomotive, knocking people this way and that. By the grace of God, the little babies were in the front of the car and weren’t in the way of any danger. The man in the dreadlocks gave up trying to sleep and just sat there looking at the ceiling shaking his head like he was having a conversation with himself over how bad he was being mistreated on this train trip.
The last I saw of the man in the brown coat, he was headed out the back of the coach with his coat tails flying going after that bad man. Several regular-dressed police people were right behind him.
As soon as the train people could, they uncoupled that train car and set it off to the side so the police could remove the bodies and I surely hope they cleaned those two seats good. They scattered the rest of us throughout the rest of the train wherever there was a seat and we made it back to Chicago a few hours later almost like nothing had happened. I never did see Angel again. We got put in separate cars. I hope she finally woke up long enough to say hello to her husband.
It seemed strange walking into that giant terminal in Chicago. Especially after all that had happened. I finally got to use the little wheels on Holly’s suitcase.
I didn’t know where to go or what to do again. Then a man driving around on a cart asked me if I was lost, and I said I was. After finding out what train I was going to be waiting for, he put me on the cart and drove me to a counter where they asked me my name. When I told them, the girl behind the counter said that she had a message for me. That the chief of police from some town in Indiana had called with some information for her to give me.
She said the doctors had been able to save the younger man who had been unconscious from the bad man nearly strangling him to death. They’d caught the murderer and he’d told them everything, and it had all had to do with drugs. Everything seems to have to do with drugs anymore, of course. The father in the forest warden clothing actually did work in the park service as a sort of custodian. He cleaned toilets and trails and such. He’d gotten mixed up in some stuff he’d had no business getting involved in.
Turns out that the parks we got in northern Kentucky makes a nice place to hide stuff if you know where to hide it, and he knew all the good places. Some of them have a whole lot of caves in them, and not all of them are well-known to the public. The father had dragged his boy into it with him cause the boy had a wife and two children and needed money. The two of them knew they were in trouble and were trying to get away. It turns out that the big man thought it would be funny to kill the father like he did, with nothing more than a sharp peppermint stick to the jugular vein. The boy, leaned so far back in that recliner, had been little effort for the muscle-man to strangle and then slide right off into the empty seat beside him and cover up. It was a deliberate killing meant to send a warning to others who might try to cheat the cartel who had been running the drugs.
It certainly sent a warning to me. I’d been thinking about asking Angel where she got those little pills that knocked her out—but I don’t think I want to know anymore.
I thanked the girl for all that information and went over and sat down at a seat she showed me to. It turned out the man in the cart had taken me to an old-fashioned lounge they reserved for important people, or those who had first-class accommodations. The girl behind the counter said I reminded her of her grandma, and then she went and got me some coffee and a doughnut. They had coffee and drinks and doughnuts set out in that lounge place for free.
The train people have been real nice to me. Since the man in the brown coat, who turned out to be a chief of police, contacted them about me, they decided a woman my age who had been through the trauma of discovering a dead body on their train, needed to go to San Antonio in more comfort, and since they had extra empty rooms anyway, they upgraded my coach ticket to first-class accommodations and that’s why I’m sitting here in my own little private room staring at the Texas landscape as it flies by.
These “roomettes,” as they call them, include three meals a day. I get to go to breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a real dining car with elegant settings and good food instead of that little-bitty snack bar. It feels like I’ve stepped back in time to a more gracious age than the one I’ve been living in. I’ve never done or had anything first class before. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I like it a lot.
During the day I got two nice recliners to sit in. I take turns looking toward the front, and then I switch seats and look out the back. It seems a waste to just use one chair. I found a paperback novel someone left behind that had gotten stuffed in the crack of a cushion. It had a picture of a man and woman on the cover hugging each other. I’ve always liked a good love-story, but there’s things in that book that would curl your hair, so I put it in the little trash bin I got in my room. After I finished it. I hope the porter won’t think it’s mine. I tried to skip over the curl-your-hair parts, but it was a good story and hard to put down. I’m thinking about reading extra chapters in the Bible to make up for it when I get to Ralph and Carla’s.
At night, a different porter than the one I had on the other train comes to turn the chairs into a bed. He makes it up with white sheets all fresh and clean. Then he brings me a new, cold bottle of water to get me through the night.
I’ve never flown in an airplane before, but I’ve read about how cramped and miserable people are on those flights, and I’m pretty sure I’d rather travel like this—even if it does take a lot longer. It ain’t like I got anything else important to do. It might be nice to see the topside of clouds sometime from a plane, but for my money, not much can beat watching out the window of a train. I had no earthly idea how big our country was. I’ll never forgive Ralph for permanently moving far, far away, but I think I’m starting to get an inkling why he wanted to see places and do things he couldn’t see or do if he lived forever in South Shore, Kentucky.
I sometimes wonder if I hadn’t taken so much time going to the toilet and snack bar if I might have somehow prevented what happened to that young man and his father. Maybe I could have started screaming or something. But I wasn’t there, and I didn’t, and there are just some things in life you have to let go of and leave in the Lord’s hands.
There’s one other thing about being given this little room that I like. In addition to
a nice bed, comfortable seats, free meals, and control of my own thermostat—it has a sturdy lock on the door and I’m using it.
The food on this train is some of the fanciest and best I’ve ever eaten, but I can’t hardly wait to make some plain old bean soup and cornbread for Ralph and Carla. I think I’ve had quite enough adventure to last me these past three days.
They say that travel changes a person. I know for a fact now that is true. There is no doubt in my mind that I will never taste another peppermint stick again as long as I live.