Death Deals a Hand

by Janet Dawson

  She took another sip of coffee and smiled, thinking about Mike and her family. She already had a date scheduled with Mike for the coming weekend. And she was supposed to meet someone for lunch in San Francisco, later in the week. That appointment was with Mrs. Grace Tidsdale. She’d met Tidsy on that same eventful December journey and the two women had stayed in touch.

  “May we join you?”

  Jill looked up. The woman wore a flowered shirtwaist and a green cardigan sweater. She and two children, a girl and a boy, had entered the dining car from the direction of the coach cars. She had stopped at Jill’s table, one hand on the back of a chair.

  “Of course.” Jill set down her coffee cup. “Please sit down.”

  “I’m Mrs. Saxby,” the woman said, pulling out the chair next to Jill. “These are my children, Maureen and Bruce.”

  Maureen took the window seat, opposite Jill. Her hair, worn in pigtails, was the same light brown shade as that of her mother. She was about ten, her sturdy body clad in a pink nylon blouse and a green-and-blue plaid skirt. Her brother, settling on the aisle chair, was a few years older, perhaps thirteen. His hair was darker, worn in a crew cut, and he wore gray slacks and a striped shirt.

  “You look so pretty in your uniform,” Mrs. Saxby said as she reached for the menus and meal checks, distributing them to her children.

  “Thank you.” Jill’s uniform was a tailored teal blue suit worn with a white blouse. On the left breast pocket of her jacket, a monogram read Zephyrette. There was a similar monogram on her garrison cap. The blouse under the jacket also had a CZ monogram, standing for California Zephyr, and she wore a Zephyr pin as well.

  Maureen stared at Jill. “Are you a train hostess?”

  “Yes, I’m the Zephyrette for this run. My name is Miss McLeod.”

  “What do you do on the train?” Maureen asked.

  “I do lots of things,” Jill said. “I greet passengers and answer questions. At the station in Chicago, I was there with the Pullman conductor, meeting passengers as they arrived and directing them to their cars. One of my duties is making dinner reservations. This afternoon, I’ll walk through each of the cars and ask passengers what times they’d like to have dinner.”

  “We got on the train in Omaha,” Mrs. Saxby said. “It was midnight when we left. So we had dinner at home before my husband drove us to the station.”

  “That was a long time ago. That’s why I’m so hungry.” Bruce looked up from the breakfast menu and marked his choices on the meal check. “Bacon, eggs and toast, that’s what I want. Milk and orange juice, too.”

  Maureen was more interested in Jill than she was in the menu. “What else do you do? Gosh, it must be interesting to work on the train.”

  Jill smiled as she cut off another piece of her French toast. “Yes, it is. I enjoy it. What else do I do? Well, there’s a public address system here in the dining car, so I make announcements, pointing out some of the sights to see along the train’s route. I keep a first-aid kit in my compartment, just in case. Sometimes I babysit so that parents can have some time to themselves. And I collect postcards and letters to mail at the stations. I send wires, too.”

  Mr. Gaylord returned to the table, coffeepot in hand. “Oh, there you are, Waiter. Coffee, please, and plenty of it,” Mrs. Saxby said. The waiter poured coffee for her and then looked up as Mrs. Saxby finished marking her meal check. “I’ll have apple juice and the corned beef hash with a poached egg and toast.” She handed the check to the waiter, and Bruce did the same with his. “Maureen, you haven’t even looked at the menu. What do you want for breakfast?”

  The girl had been staring at Jill. Now she dropped her gaze to the menu. She grabbed a pencil, marking her choices on the meal check. “Ham and eggs, with the eggs over easy. And I’d like a muffin instead of toast. Milk and orange juice, too.”

  “I’ll get these orders in right away,” Mr. Gaylord said. Meal checks in hand, he turned away from the table.

  “I do love eating in the dining car on the train.” Mrs. Saxby stirred cream and sugar into her coffee. “It’s such fun to sit with other people and chat. On my last trip I met a couple from Manchester, England. And the trip before that, some people from Italy.”

  “Where are you headed?” Jill asked.

  “We’re visiting my sister in Fruita, Colorado,” the woman said. “The children are out of school this week and so are hers, so it’s an informal family get-together.”

  “You’ll be getting off the train in Grand Junction, then,” Jill said. “We’re due to arrive at the station at three-forty this afternoon.”

  Mrs. Saxby smiled. “You must have the train timetable memorized. How long have you been a Zephyrette?”

  Maureen leaned forward, peppering Jill with questions. “How did you get to be a Zephyrette? Did you have to go to school to learn how? How many trips do you make every month?”

  “For heaven’s sake,” her mother said, “let Miss McLeod answer one question before you throw another at her.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m used to it,” Jill said with a laugh. “I’ve been a Zephyrette for two years now. The requirement is that you must have nurse’s training or a college degree, which I have. As to how it came about, well…” She paused, and then went on. “After I graduated from college, I was debating what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”

  There had been a reason for that debate. A few years ago, Jill thought she’d already answered the question about the rest of her life—marriage, family, a teaching career. But something had happened to alter the original road map.

  Jill was going to marry Steve Haggerty, the man she’d met during her junior year in college. They’d both graduated from the University of California in the spring of 1949. Steve was in the Navy ROTC, though. He owed the military a tour of duty. Given a choice of the Navy or the Marines, he’d picked the latter and gone into training at Camp Pendleton in Southern California. As the months went by, Jill worked as a receptionist in her father’s medical office, saving her money and preparing for the wedding, which was scheduled for a Saturday in August 1950.

  But North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950. Steve’s unit was scheduled to go overseas. So the wedding was postponed. Then Steve was killed in December of that year, in a battle at a place called Chosin Reservoir.

  Jill went through the next few months in a haze of grief. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. Teaching had lost its appeal, and she didn’t want to make the job in her father’s office permanent. In March of 1951, Steve’s Uncle Pat, a conductor for the Western Pacific Railroad, proposed a solution.

  “Someone I know suggested that I might like being a Zephyr­ette,” Jill said now. “I thought that sounded like a good idea. So I applied for the job and got it. I didn’t have any formal training, like school or a class. I accompanied another Zephyrette on a run, and then I was on my own. I make two or three round-trips a month. I live in California, so I do the eastbound run to Chicago, then I lay over at a hotel for a couple of days before taking a westbound run to the Bay Area.”

  “Then you’re going home this trip,” Mrs. Saxby said. “I’m sure your family will be glad to see you.”

  “Yes, they will.”

  Jill talked with the Saxbys a while longer as she finished her breakfast. Then she excused herself and stood. As she stepped toward the aisle, she met two passengers coming from the sleeping cars at the rear of the train. One was tall and cadaverous, with brown hair receding from his forehead, his navy blue suit hanging on his thin frame. The other was short, about Jill’s height, maybe an inch or so taller, with a square face and threads of gray salting his thick black hair. His frame was compact and muscular inside his charcoal gray suit. He had an expansive, authoritative manner that commanded attention.

  “Good morning, Mr. Geddes, Mr. Fontana,” Jill said.

  Mr. Geddes, the taller of the two, mumbled a greeting, looking as though he would be unable to communicate until he had a cup of coffee. Mr. Fontana smile
d at her, lines crinkling the corners of his brown eyes. “Good morning, Miss McLeod. You look lovely, as usual.”

  “I hope you both slept well,” Jill said.

  Mr. Geddes shrugged without saying anything. Mr. Fontana’s voice boomed, audible over the dining car chatter. “I always sleep like a baby on the train. Now I’m hungry enough to eat a horse.” He laughed and rubbed his hands together.

  Mr. Fontana was a Chicago businessman. Jill had met him shortly after the train left Chicago yesterday afternoon. As the train moved through the rail yard, heading for the outskirts of the city, she had walked back to the Silver Crescent, the dome-observation car at the very end of the CZ. There were four sleeper berths there, and Mr. Fontana was traveling in the largest of these, the drawing room. She’d also talked with him later in the day, when she walked through the train making dinner reservations for passengers.

  His associate, Mr. Geddes, was traveling aboard the transcontinental sleeper, the Silver Rapids. The car was owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad and had made the journey from New York City to Chicago as part of a Pennsy train. Then it was attached to the California Zephyr for the westbound run.

  The two men took vacant chairs at a nearby table. Mr. Geddes wasn’t much of a talker, Jill thought. He nodded briefly to the other people at the table and stuck his nose in the breakfast menu. Mr. Fontana, on the other hand, introduced himself to his dining companions. His voice carried, and Jill heard him talking to the others as she made her way along the aisle, heading forward toward the engine. Something nagged at her. Then, at the end of the car, she realized what it was.

  Mr. Fontana’s voice. That booming voice, the manner of speaking, the cadence of his words. That sounded like the man’s voice she’d heard outside her compartment last night, arguing with a woman. Angry words, she thought, from those she could make out. And then that loud noise, the one that sounded like a slap, followed by a man’s voice saying “Bitch.”

  He was traveling with Mr. Geddes, as far as she knew, but not with a woman. It was possible, though, that Mr. Fontana had met the woman in the lounge car last night. She’d seen him there, drinking and talking with other passengers. Or maybe he’d run into someone he knew on the train.

  That would explain the woman. As for what Jill had heard in the corridor, she could guess. She’d seen it happen many times on the train. A man bought a drink, or two, for a woman in the lounge. As the evening wore on, the man made assumptions about what would follow.

  Sometimes what followed was a slap on the face.

  Chapter Two

  Jill walked up the corridor past the kitchen, then stepped to one side to let two coach passengers pass her. Behind them was the train’s conductor, Mr. Evans. He was a burly man in his forties, wearing a dark uniform, a white shirt and a vest. His billed cap had a badge that read conductor c.b.&q. r.r., indicating that he worked for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. In Denver, the three CB&Q diesel engines at the front of the train would be switched out for five Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad diesels, the extra motive power needed to pull the train over the Rocky Mountains.

  Unlike the dining car crew, which would stay the same for the entire westbound run, the engine and train crews switched out frequently during the trip. From Chicago to Denver, the crews were made up of CB&Q employees. From Denver to Salt Lake City, they would be D&RGW employees. Then crews of Western Pacific Railroad men would take the train all the way to Oakland, where San Francisco-bound passengers would board the ferry at the Oakland Mole.

  Jill and the other Zephyrettes, who numbered about a dozen, were considered Western Pacific employees. And there was only one Zephyrette per run.

  Mr. Evans consulted his pocket watch, then glanced at Jill. “Good morning, Miss McLeod. Looks like an on-time arrival in Denver. I’d better get some food before we get there.”

  “Enjoy your breakfast,” Jill told him. She stepped through the vestibule into the Silver Chalet, walking past her own compartment and the one used by the dining car steward, Mr. Taylor. Next was a door leading to the crew dormitory, which had a shower and toilet, used by the waiters and cooks. Inside this area, bunks were stacked five high.

  A curved stair just next to the dormitory door led up to the car’s Vista-Dome, a glass compartment rising out of the roof, with seats for passengers. The front, rear and side walls of the Vista-Dome were glass windows providing a three-hundred-sixty-degree look at the scenery. It allowed the passengers to “Look up, look down, look all around”—the line frequently used in the California Zephyr’s advertising brochures.

  Just beyond the stairs leading to the Vista-Dome, two steps went down to the depressed floor under the dome. This area contained a small kitchen and a lounge, where the waiter-in-charge, on this trip Mr. Peterson, was scooping oatmeal into several bowls. A toaster popped up golden-brown slices of bread. The breakfast menu in the coffee shop was more limited in food choices than that in the dining car; however, as Jill entered the coffee shop, every table was taken. The shop buzzed with people’s voices, the words overlapping, as Jill picked up the threads of several conversations.

  “I can teach you to play canasta,” an older woman said to her younger companion. “It’s easy. I’ve got some playing cards in my bag. We’ll just find a table in the lounge after we finish breakfast.”

  At the next table, two men rehashed last year’s World Series as they spread jelly on toast and drank coffee. The 1952 Series had seen the New York Yankees best the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the men’s voices grew louder as they argued about the merits of Yankees Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra compared with Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider. “If it hadn’t been for that catch by Billy Martin—” the man on the left said. The coffee cups rattled in their saucers as he slapped the table for emphasis.

  Two women, blond and brunette, were talking about movies. “That one with Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotten,” the blonde said. “It was really good. Niagara, that’s the name of it. I saw it at the Bijou with Frank.” The brunette leaned closer and said something, and the blonde laughed.

  Jill smiled, too. She’d seen the movie with Mike, and they’d both enjoyed it. As she left the coffee shop, she heard another conversation, this one about politics.

  “Now that McCarthy is heading up that Senate Committee on Government Operations, we’ll see some action on Communists in the federal government,” a man said, leaning across the table toward his woman companion. “And it’s about time they get around to executing the Rosenbergs. They were spying for the Commies, for crying out loud. And the Supreme Court turned down their appeal. Enough with all these delays. I say it’s time to get it over with.”

  “I think he’s guilty,” the woman said, “but I’m not sure about her.”

  Jill had heard similar sentiments concerning Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. It had been over two years since the couple had been convicted of espionage and sentenced to die in the electric chair. The couple’s execution date had been set for January of this year, and delayed yet again.

  Jill headed forward, into the coach cars. She walked through the train on a regular basis, every couple of hours, making sure that passengers knew who she was and that she was available to assist them. She did so now, walking through all three chair cars until she reached the first coach car. As Jill walked through the cars, she stopped to chat with passengers, answering questions and assuring several people that the train would arrive in Denver on time. She checked with the coach car porters, who pointed out new passengers who’d gotten on the train during the night.

  A middle-aged man and woman sat next to each other, a small chess set balanced between them. Across the aisle, a young woman worked a crossword puzzle, chewing on her pencil eraser as she studied the clues. Next to her, in the window seat, a girl sat with an open book on her lap, but she wasn’t reading. Instead, she stared out the window, a dreamy look on her face.

  A woman in an aisle seat on the Silver Mustang beckoned to Jill. “How late is the dining car open?”
The woman tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I haven’t missed breakfast, have I? I could certainly use some coffee. I got on the train in Hastings, Nebraska, a little before three this morning. I did manage to get some sleep.” The woman had used her coat as a blanket. Now she sat up and folded the coat, putting it at the small of her back. She smoothed her skirt and straightened the collar of her blouse.

  “No, you haven’t missed breakfast,” Jill said. “The dining car is open. You have plenty of time. Lunch service will start around eleven-thirty. You don’t need reservations for breakfast or lunch. But you will for dinner.”

  “I won’t be on the train for dinner.” The woman stood up. “I’m getting off in Grand Junction. Thanks, I’ll head back to the diner.”

  “Enjoy your breakfast,” Jill said. She continued her walk through the coach cars, greeting new passengers and old. “The coffee shop? Yes, sir, that’s several cars back. You can get food there as well. Cereal, toast, things like that. If you want something heartier, I would suggest going to the dining car. Yes, ma’am, you will need reservations for dinner in the dining car. We have several seatings, including the Chef’s Early Dinner for families traveling with children. I’ll walk through the train this afternoon making reservations.”

  When she reached the Silver Scout, the first car, Jill went up to the Vista-Dome. A number of passengers had staked out places in the seats upstairs. In the distance, Jill saw the Rocky Mountains rising to the west, dark blue against a light blue sky, with white at the peaks.