Death Deals a Hand

by Janet Dawson

  “Yes, it is.” Pamela Larch picked up the case. “It’s not loaded.”

  The small revolver had a short barrel with a legend reading Smith & Wesson. Just above the wood grip were two superimposed letters, an S and a W. Tucked into the case next to the gun was a box of cartridges, .38 special. Pamela took the panties from Jill and covered up the gun.

  “Do you know how to use it?” Miss Grant asked.

  “I certainly do. I learned to shoot when I was growing up.” Miss Larch shrugged, giving Jill and Miss Grant a deprecating smile. “My brother gave me that gun. He insists that I carry it with me when I travel. I suspect he thinks that bad things will happen if I don’t.”

  “You can’t be too careful,” Miss Grant said. She knelt and picked up the perfume bottle and handed it to Jill. Then she continued on her way.

  “I bet she thinks I’m a dangerous woman. I’m not. That’s why I don’t keep the gun loaded. I just carry it with me. Doesn’t make any sense, I suppose. Anything to keep my brother happy. I’m sure you don’t see a lot of passengers carrying guns.”

  “You’d be surprised.” Jill handed the perfume bottle to Miss Larch.

  “I’m so glad that bottle didn’t break. It would really have stunk up the place if it did. I love perfume, but one should use it sparingly, I believe.” Miss Larch laughed as she put the bottle into the case. She placed the plastic insert inside and closed the lid.

  “I’m making dinner reservations. What time would you like to eat?”

  “I had dinner at seven o’clock last night,” Miss Larch said. “But, well, I’d like to wait a bit, to see if Mr. Cleary is interested in having dinner with me.”

  “I understand. I’ll check back with you.”

  “He seems like a very nice man. He told me he’s your cousin. Is that true?”

  Jill nodded. “His father is my mother’s older brother.”

  “I see. He’s older than you are.”

  “Nearly eight years.” Jill turned to leave.

  “Miss McLeod, could I talk with you? In private?”

  “Certainly.” Jill stepped into bedroom C and shut the door.

  Miss Larch sat down and smoothed the skirt of her soft green dress. With her other hand, she reached up and rubbed the thin gold chain around her neck. “I like your cousin a lot.”

  Jill shifted the reservation binder from one arm to another, choosing her words carefully. “You only met Doug this morning. So you don’t know him very well.”

  “I don’t know him at all,” Pamela Larch said. “I just know that I like him. And I’d like to get to know him better.”

  “He’s getting off the train in Portola tomorrow,” Jill said. “That leaves the two of you several hours to get better acquainted.”

  “Not much time, is it?” Miss Larch gave Jill a wistful smile. “And just to complicate matters, I’m engaged to be married.”

  Yes, that did complicate things, Jill thought. Miss Larch wasn’t wearing an engagement ring, not on her finger, anyway. She didn’t look like a radiant bride-to-be. Instead she looked like a woman who wasn’t sure she wanted to go through with her planned marriage.

  “That puts a different perspective on things.”

  “My fiancé is a cotton broker. In New Orleans. It’ll be fun, living in New Orleans.” Miss Larch sounded as though she was trying to convince herself. “It’s such a beautiful city. Have you ever been there?”

  Jill shook her head. “I’d like to visit New Orleans some time.”

  “Me, I want to see the Pacific Ocean. That’s one reason I’m going to California. I’ve seen the Gulf of Mexico, of course. We go down to Biloxi all the time. I have an aunt that lives down there. That’s where I met Nicky.”

  “Is Nicky your fiancé?”

  Miss Larch shook her head and her fingers toyed with the gold chain at her neck. “No, my fiancé’s name is Earl. Why do you ask about Nicky?”

  “You mentioned Nicky,” Jill said. “You said you met him in Biloxi.”

  “Did I? Well, Nicky was the man I thought I was going to marry. Then Korea happened.”

  “I lost my fiancé in Korea, too. He was killed a couple of years ago.”

  Miss Larch’s laugh was brittle. “Oh, Nicky didn’t die. He just threw me over. He was in the ROTC at Ole Miss and went into the army after that. He met some sweet young thing when he was in training out in California and he married her instead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jill said.

  Miss Larch shrugged. “I kept telling myself I didn’t care. But I do. I loved him.” Then she shook herself. “Anyway, he’s gone now. Good riddance to bad rubbish. That’s what my granny said. He wasn’t good enough for me. My family kept shoving eligible men at me. Consolation prizes. Nice men. But they didn’t make me feel the way Nicky did.”

  She sighed. “I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. That’s when I met Earl. He’s older than me, almost forty. A nice man, very wealthy, from a fine old family. He has a grand house in the Garden District. It was a whirlwind courtship, you know. He asked me to marry him right away. I said yes and we set the date for June. He gave me this lovely ring.”

  Miss Larch tugged at the chain she wore around her neck and pulled it out of the bodice of her pale green dress. Dangling at the end of the chain was the ring that Jill had seen that morning, a band of gold with a large square-cut diamond. Miss Larch slipped the ring onto the third finger of her left hand. Then she held out her hand. “Isn’t it beautiful? A whole carat.”

  “You don’t love him.” The words came out of Jill’s mouth before she realized she’d said them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. It’s none of my business.”

  “Maybe it isn’t your business. But you’re right.” Miss Larch removed the ring from her finger. She held the chain and twirled the ring. Then she tucked the ring and the chain back into her bodice. “I don’t love Earl. He deserves someone who does. He’s a nice man. But he just doesn’t spark me the way Nicky did.” She looked up at Jill. “I wonder if anyone else will make me feel that way. I want to get married and settle down. Isn’t that what girls our age do?”

  “Some people don’t,” Jill said.

  “I guess I could work. Like you do.” Miss Larch favored Jill with a lopsided smile. “I must confess, I don’t think I’d be any good as a Zephyrette. Maybe there’s something else I could do. ­Besides sit at home in Jackson and stare at the walls. I have a degree in English. Mainly because I didn’t know what else to study. Getting married seemed like something to do. When Earl proposed all of a sudden, I just said yes. Why not?”

  Now Miss Larch laughed. “I’m supposed to be in Memphis shopping for wedding gowns. I told my mother that’s where I was going when I left home. Told her I was going to stay there a few nights, with this girl I went to school with at Ole Miss. Except I didn’t get off the train in Memphis. I rode the City of New Orleans all the way up to Chicago and I spent the night there. I’d never been to Chicago before. My, it’s a big place. Then I bought me a ticket on the California Zephyr. I’m going all the way to San Francisco, and after that, I don’t know what I’ll do. I guess I will get my chance to see the Pacific Ocean.”

  “I hope you enjoy the ocean. It’s beautiful,” Jill said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to making reservations.”

  “Of course,” Miss Larch said. “Thank you for listening.”

  Jill opened the door and stepped out of bedroom C, closing the door behind her. Just then, the door to the drawing room opened and Doug stepped out. She heard Fontana’s voice. The man from Chicago sounded angry.

  “Seems like a good time to take a break,” Doug said.

  “Are you ahead?”

  He grinned. “I’m doing all right. Won three hands in a row and Fontana’s upset. He’d like to accuse me of cheating, but I don’t and he knows it. I’m a better poker player than he is and that gets his goat. So I’m letting things cool off. Say, about dinner reservations, I was thinking seven o’clock, but
I wanted to ask…” He pointed at bedroom C.

  “I suspect the answer will be yes.” Jill watched as he knocked on Miss Larch’s door. Her cousin was as smitten with Miss Larch as she was with him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jill knocked on the door of bedroom A. Inside,­ Audrey Carson called, “Who is it?” When Jill replied, Mrs. ­Carson ­invited her in.

  Mrs. Carson sat near the window, with a book on her lap. It was a copy of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. She stuck a bookmark between the pages of the novel. “One of my favorites. Every now and then I reread it.”

  “Mine, too. As for rereading, my mother’s the same way with Gone With the Wind.” Jill stepped into the compartment, binder in hand.

  Mr. Carson was in the seat facing the window, his legs stretched out in front of him, his eyes closed. A soft snore rumbled from his mouth. His wife smiled at him and looked up at Jill. “The children are in the Vista-Dome, I’m sure.”

  “I saw them. I was just up there.”

  Mrs. Carson glanced at her watch. “We’ll eat dinner at six. That’s a good time for us.”

  Jill filled out the cards and handed them to Mrs. Carson. Just then Mr. Carson woke up, with a snort. He sat up in the chair and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Hello. Making dinner reservations, I’ll bet.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “We’re eating at six,” his wife added.

  “Good, good. Miss McLeod, who is the man traveling in the drawing room? I saw him earlier in the corridor. I believe I heard him say he’s going to San Francisco. And,” he said with a smile, “the porter told me he has a poker game going on in his room.”

  “His name is Victor Fontana,” Jill said. “He’s a businessman from Chicago. He is going to San Francisco. And yes, there is a poker game in progress. Do you know him?”

  Mr. Carson looked thoughtful. “Not really. I have heard the name before. Thanks.”

  Jill took her leave of the Carsons and stepped out into the corridor. The door of bedroom C opened, and Doug waved at her. “Miss Larch and I will have dinner at seven,” he said.

  Jill made a note in her reservation binder and filled out the cards. When she handed them to Doug, he gave her a jaunty salute and opened the door to the drawing room. She heard Mr. Fontana’s voice. “C’mon, Cleary, it’s your deal. Give me the chance to win back the money you took off me this afternoon.”

  Jill walked forward, encountering Mr. Clark at the front of the car, where his small compartment was located. The porter stood at the open door of the supply locker. He moved aside to let her pass, but she stopped. Something had been on her mind since her earlier conversation with Doug.

  “Mr. Clark, can you tell me something about Chicago?”

  He smiled. “Sure, be happy to answer anything I can about my Windy City.”

  “Have you ever heard of a Chicago nightclub called the Bell Tower?”

  “I have.” The porter closed the door to the supply locker and turned to face her. “The Bell Tower was a fancy club on South ­Wabash. It was a good place to see a show and have dinner. The club had a band, a lead singer, and a chorus line. My cousin worked there, in the kitchen, before he joined the Army. When he got out of the service, he went back to see if he could get a job, but the place was shut down.”

  “Do you know anything about a woman who worked at the Bell Tower?” Jill asked. “She called herself Belle La Tour.”

  “That I do,” he said. “She was the lead singer, and a dancer, too. I saw her once, not in the show, but leaving the club. That night I met my cousin at the back door of the Bell Tower, after he got off work. She came outside and said hello. Her lighter wasn’t working, so I lit her cigarette. Then this fancy Cadillac coupe pulled up the alley and she got in. My cousin told me she had a fella, the guy that owned the place, and he was connected to the mob, if you know what I mean.”

  Jill filed that away for future reference. “Would you recognize Belle La Tour if you saw her again?”

  The porter thought about this. “I don’t know. That was, let’s see, nineteen forty-four. That’s nine years ago. Why are you asking, Miss McLeod?”

  “There’s a passenger on the Silver Falls, a Miss Grant. A ­librarian from Aurora. Dresses like one, too. Plain clothes and big harlequin-framed glasses.”

  The porter nodded. “I know the lady you mean. Has that scar on her face. She comes back to the lounge in the back of this car, but she keeps to herself. Doesn’t talk much to any of the other passengers. She was in the lounge just a while ago. Then she left. What has she got to do with Belle La Tour?”

  “One of the other passengers says he thinks Miss Grant is Belle La Tour.”

  Lonnie Clark gave a low whistle. “Belle La Tour didn’t look anything like that librarian lady. She was tall and blond. But like I said, that was a long time ago.”

  “Different hair and different clothes,” Jill said. “And the glasses.”

  “I’ll take a closer look at her next time she’s in the car,” Mr. Clark said. “Maybe I’ll recognize her.” He shrugged. “Or maybe I won’t.”

  “Thanks,” Jill said. “I appreciate your doing that. Let me know what you think.”

  I don’t know why this is important, she told herself as she walked through the vestibule into the transcontinental sleeper. I just have a feeling it is.

  Jill went down the row of roomettes, making reservations for the passengers. In bedroom C, Miss Brandon sat looking out the window, her leather-bound book and binoculars in her lap. As Jill stood in the doorway, Miss Brandon raised the binoculars and peered out the window. Just this side of the river, at the top of a bare-branched tree, a large bird perched, its white-feathered head contrasting with the dark brown of the tree trunk.

  “Another bald eagle. That’s six I’ve seen today,” Miss Brandon said triumphantly, making a notation in her book. “Now, I suspect you want to know what time I’ll have dinner. Seven o’clock, just like last night.”

  ———

  After making reservations in the rest of the transcontinental sleeper and the sixteen-section sleeper, Jill moved to the next car, the Silver Falls. There she encountered Frank Nathan, just outside his small porter’s compartment. He opened his mouth as though to speak, then he stopped, a cautious look on his face.

  “Is there something you want, Mr. Nathan?” Jill asked.

  “I don’t know whether to say anything to you,” the porter said. “But it was odd.”

  That certainly triggered Jill’s curiosity. “Go ahead and tell me.”

  “It was Miss Grant, the one who’s traveling in bedroom C. I’m sure she was eavesdropping. It was earlier, when you were talking with your cousin, Mr. Cleary. I was standing by the linen locker when I saw Miss Grant come into the car, coming from the rear of the train. When she went round the corner, that was about the time Mr. Cleary came out of his bedroom and the two of you started walking toward her. Since I was right there, I couldn’t help overhearing. Mr. Cleary asked Miss Grant if they’d met before.”

  “That’s right,” Jill said. “He thought she looked familiar.”

  “Well, she said no, and kept walking. But she didn’t go far. When I left the linen locker and went round the corner, heading toward the bedroom section, she was there, hovering around the door to bedroom A, like she was listening to you and Mr. Cleary talk. I was about to ask her if I could help her, but she gave me a look, and I just kept going.”

  Jill considered this. So it was possible Miss Grant had overheard her and Doug speculating about whether the librarian from Aurora was actually a former Chicago nightclub singer named Belle La Tour. That would explain the cold look Miss Grant had given her while she was making a dinner reservation for the woman back in the dome-observation car.

  “I’m sure it was nothing,” Jill said now. “Thanks for telling me.”

  Frank Nathan nodded and headed up the passageway between the roomettes. Jill stood for a moment, lost in thought.

  Why would Miss Grant liste
n to her conversation with Doug? Unless she really was Belle La Tour, the former singer, in disguise as a librarian. If so, Doug’s question must have alerted Miss Grant that someone was aware of her past.

  Or maybe it’s all nonsense and I’m making a mountain out of the proverbial molehill, Jill told herself, shaking her head.

  Mrs. Allard, a middle-aged woman traveling in roomette one, appeared at the doorway. “Hello, Miss McLeod. Are you making dinner reservations?”

  “I certainly am.” Jill smiled and opened the reservation binder. “What time would you like to have dinner?”

  Jill worked her way down the row of roomettes. When she came to roomette ten, the berth occupied by the French graduate student, Florian Rapace looked up from the book he was reading. He had requested an eight o’clock seating the previous night, but now he looked at Jill, his face suddenly reserved. “Please, Mademoiselle McLeod, can you tell me what time Mademoiselle Lois will have dinner?”

  Should she alert the young Frenchman to the fact that Lois Demarest was only sixteen? But it really wasn’t any of her business.

  “Miss Demarest and her family have reservations at six o’clock,” she said.

  “So early?” He frowned. She knew from previous trips that many French passengers were used to eating dinner at a later time. Then he sighed. “All right, I will eat dinner at six.”

  She filled out a card for him, then moved to the bedroom section of the Silver Falls. Once she finished there, she went into the next car, the Silver Quail. She found Uncle Sean napping in his bedroom. “Just resting my eyes,” he said, yawning as he opened the door. He hesitated. “What time will Doug be in the dining room?”

  “At seven,” Jill said. “He made a reservation for himself, and a friend.”

  “That girl I saw him with during lunch?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  “He always did have an eye for the ladies,” Sean said, with a wry smile. “Well, give me a reservation for six.”

  She knocked on doors in the rest of the car, finally meeting the passenger in bedroom C who had boarded in Denver. Her name was Miss Carolla, and she was traveling to Stockton, California. When Jill finished in the Silver Quail, she moved on to the Silver Chalet. In the lounge, she found Mrs. Warrick sitting with Dr. Ranleigh and her niece, talking as they sipped coffee. They looked up as she approached, and decided on an early dinner, at six o’clock.