Death Deals a Hand

by Janet Dawson

  Milly Demarest looked as though she was about to explode. “A perfect gentleman does not entertain a sixteen-year-old girl in his roomette in the middle of the night.”

  “It wasn’t the middle of the night. Besides, I told him I was eighteen.”

  Mrs. Demarest opened her mouth, ready to lob another salvo at her daughter, but Jill raised her hand. “This is something you’ll have to figure out for yourselves. I really need to ask Lois some questions.”

  “Why?” Mrs. Demarest released Lois’s arm and now looked protective.

  Jill started to answer, then stopped as the door of the women’s restroom opened. A passenger came in, a girl about Patty’s age, looking rumpled in her pajamas. She glanced their way, then went into one of the toilets. When she was finished, she flushed, came out and washed her hands. Then she left the restroom.

  “There’s been an incident in one of the sleeper cars,” Jill said. “A crime. Lois, I need to know if you saw anyone or anything while you were walking through the train. Anything out of the ordinary.”

  “What kind of crime?” Mrs. Demarest asked. “A robbery? Or worse?”

  Lois looked at Jill, alarm on her face. “Is somebody dead?”

  Jill nodded. “Yes. That’s why it’s important.”

  “How did you know that?” her mother asked.

  “That older lady,” Lois said. “The doctor. Ranleigh, that’s her name. I met her and her niece in the dome-observation car earlier this afternoon. Then later, I saw her walking toward the back of the train. She had her doctor’s bag with her. I wondered if one of the passengers was sick. But now you say someone’s dead.”

  “A passenger was killed,” Jill said. “Murdered.”

  “Murdered.” Mrs. Demarest ran her hand through her untidy hair. “Good God, a murder. What else did you see, Lois? Start from the beginning.”

  Lois looked pleased with herself. She was enjoying being the center of attention instead of the object of her mother’s censure.

  “Well,” she said, drawing out the word. “After dinner, Florian asked me to meet him in the buffet-lounge car later in the evening. I knew you wouldn’t let me go with him. So I had to figure out how to get away.” She glared at her younger sister. “Like Patty said, when we got ready for bed, I just kept my clothes on and put my robe on over them. As soon as Mom fell asleep, I got out of bed. I didn’t think anyone saw me. Except little tattletale Patty.”

  “So you left this car and walked forward to the next car, the Silver Falls,” Jill said. “That’s where Florian is, in roomette ten.”

  Lois nodded. “I didn’t stop at his roomette, though. He was already up in the lounge car, so I went there.”

  “Did you see anyone in the passageway?” Jill asked.

  “Not then,” Lois said. “We had some coffee in the lounge, then we went up to the Vista-Dome. But I did see someone later, when we left the dome and walked back to his roomette.”

  “Before or after you saw the doctor in the hallway?”

  “Before. We were walking back through the sleeper cars. When we got to Florian’s car, I saw a woman come out of one of the bedrooms. Then she went into another bedroom.”

  “Do you remember which bedroom she came from?” Jill asked.

  Lois thought about this, taking her time before answering. “We had just walked into the car, so we were at the very end, just about to walk down the aisle in front of the bedrooms. I think she came out of one of the rooms in the middle of the car, you know, down where the aisle jogs to the right and goes down between the roomettes. It was probably the first bedroom. Florian says that one is where Mr. Cleary stays. I’ve seen him in the lounge. The blond guy. He’s not bad-looking, for a man that’s middle-aged. I was surprised. I thought if anyone would be coming out of his bedroom, it would be that lady from Mississippi, Miss Larch. He’s been spending a lot of time with her.”

  “After the woman left the bedroom, where did she go?”

  “She started walking toward us,” Lois said. “So Florian and I backed up, toward the door we’d just come through, so she wouldn’t see us.”

  Jill pictured the layout of the Silver Falls, and the area near the door leading into the car from the front of the train. The clean linen locker was immediately to the right. Lois and Florian would have turned to their left, heading into the aisle in front of the bedrooms, lined up on their right, with the windows to their left. When Lois and Florian backed up, they were out of sight of the person who’d exited the bedroom. And it appeared that person had been coming out of Doug’s berth, which was at the far end of the row.

  “Did you see where this woman went?” Jill asked.

  “I peeked around the corner,” Lois said. “She went into another room right away. So it must have been the one right next door, or the one next to that.”

  A woman coming out of Doug’s room at the end of the row, Jill thought. The person next to Doug, in bedroom B, was Avis Margate, with Cora Grant in bedroom C. The next berth was occupied by Mrs. Warrick, and Jill doubted that the retired professor was poking around in Doug’s room, or that she had a reason to kill Victor Fontana. At the other end were berths occupied by the Olivers and old Mr. Poindexter.

  “Did you recognize the person? Are you sure it was a woman?”

  “Of course I’m sure it was a woman,” Lois said. “She was wearing a dress.”

  “Can you describe her?”

  “I wasn’t that close,” Lois protested.

  “Young, old,” Jill prompted. “Tall, short.”

  “She was old, like Mom.”

  “Old.” Mrs. Demarest snorted. “I’m in my forties. That’s not old.”

  “You know what I mean,” the girl protested. “Older than me. Not as old as Grandma. Anyway, she looked like she was tall. The dress, it was nothing special. Dark. She had her purse with her. A great big purse. I didn’t recognize her. But maybe Florian did. He’s traveling in that car.”

  “Yes, maybe he did.” Jill consulted her watch. Nearly one in the morning. Should she knock on Florian’s door?

  The door to the ladies’ room opened and an older woman in a bathrobe entered. She swept past them toward the toilets. When she had closed the door, Jill said, “Thank you for answering my questions, Lois. You’ve been very helpful.” With that, she excused herself and left the restroom.

  She headed forward, toward the Silver Falls. The door to the porter’s tiny compartment was closed and Jill guessed that Frank Nathan had gone back to bed. She walked up the aisle between the roomettes and stopped at roomette ten, Florian Rapace’s berth. She tapped on the door, but the Frenchman was evidently a heavy sleeper. He didn’t respond.

  Had it been Avis Margate who went into Doug’s bedroom? Or Cora Grant? Both women were tall. Miss Margate had been wearing a cranberry red dress, while Miss Grant’s dress was brown. In the dim light of the train corridor, both dresses would have looked dark. Both women carried large handbags, large enough to conceal a gun. Avis Margate had told Jill she’d gone to bed and hadn’t awakened till Jill and Sean appeared at Doug’s door. Was she lying? Or was it Cora Grant who had paid a visit to Doug’s bedroom?

  Jill turned from the roomette and walked forward, going around the corner to the corridor in front of the bedrooms. She stopped at the door to bedroom C. All she wanted to do was ask a question. She raised her hand, then hesitated. Then she knocked. No answer. Well, it was late, after all. Jill’s weariness tugged at her.

  Just as she turned to leave, the door opened. Miss Grant was wrapped in a sky-blue terrycloth robe, with matching slippers on her feet. Her brown hair was loose on her shoulders and she wasn’t wearing the harlequin glasses. She looked younger without the glasses and the tightly wrapped hairstyle.

  “What is it, Miss McLeod?”

  “I want to ask a question,” Jill said.

  Miss Grant frowned. “At this hour? It must be after midnight. Well, come in.” She held the door wider and Jill entered the bedroom. It was configured the same
way as Doug’s bedroom, with the bed on the wall opposite the door. Miss Grant’s large handbag sat on the floor next to the bed, along with a big carpetbag, its beige fabric decorated with a cabbage rose pattern. Both the purse and the carpetbag were open.

  Miss Grant remained standing, her hands stuck into the pockets of the robe. “Has something happened?”

  “Yes. One of the passengers is dead.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Mr. Fontana. He was traveling in the drawing room in the Silver Crescent. Someone shot him.” Jill looked at Miss Grant, checking to see if her face revealed anything.

  But Miss Grant’s expression remained closed and wary, as it had during most of the journey. She shrugged, a tiny movement of her shoulders. “I don’t recall having met him. But then I keep to myself. Any idea who shot him?”

  “Not yet,” Jill said. “But I have some ideas. A gun was found earlier in bedroom A.”

  “That’s Mr. Cleary’s room,” the other woman said, tilting her chin downward. “I understand he had an altercation with someone earlier. One of the other passengers mentioned it. So did Mr. Cleary shoot Mr. Fontana?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible the gun was planted in Mr. Cleary’s room. You see, someone saw a woman coming out of Mr. Cleary’s room earlier this evening. A tall woman in a dark dress.”

  Miss Grant allowed herself a tight smile. “There are lots of tall women on the train, and certainly lots of dark dresses.”

  “True enough,” Jill said. “However, the person who saw the woman coming out of bedroom A saw the same woman enter another bedroom just a few doors down. So that makes me think the woman was Avis Margate. Or you.”

  “Or me?” Miss Grant frowned. “What possible reason would I have to plant a gun in Mr. Cleary’s bedroom?”

  “It could have something to do with what he said when he met you earlier today,” Jill said. “He was sure he’d seen you ­before, in Chicago in nineteen forty-one. He told me he thought you were a woman named Belle La Tour, who performed in a nightclub called the Bell Tower. And I think you heard him say that. The porter said you were listening to us.”

  “I’m a librarian from Aurora, Illinois,” Miss Grant said, with a tight little smile that didn’t extend to her eyes.

  “A librarian who doesn’t know where the main library in ­Aurora is located,” Jill said. “You seemed a bit confused about that during lunch, when Avis Margate was talking about growing up in Aurora.”

  “I was distracted,” Miss Grant said.

  “All the same, I think I’ll tell the conductor,” Jill said. “He’ll want to ask you some questions.”

  Jill turned. She reached for the door handle. From the corner of her eye she saw Miss Grant’s hands come out of her robe pockets. One hand was empty, but the other held something. She grabbed Jill’s arm. Suddenly Jill felt a prick at her throat. She realized it was a knife.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  You think you’re so clever,” Cora Grant snarled.

  She pulled Jill away from the door and pushed her back onto the bed. Then she locked the door and stood in front of it, facing Jill.

  “So clever. So observant. So damn nosy. You’ve got it all figured out, or so you think.”

  Jill’s heart pounded and she struggled to slow her breathing. She stared at the woman holding the knife. When she spoke she hoped her voice didn’t sound as frightened as she felt.

  “You killed Mr. Fontana. Then you planted the gun in Doug’s bedroom. Yes, I figured that out. But I don’t know why you did it.”

  Cora’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “I’ll tell you. It’s an interesting story. It starts back in Chicago, nineteen-forty. That’s when I got my big break, a job in the chorus at a nightclub called the Bell Tower. You heard me singing earlier and told me I have a lovely voice. Yes, I damn well do. And I have long legs and a terrific figure. So it didn’t take me long to move from the chorus to featured performer. That’s when I changed my name to Belle La Tour. It sounded so much better than Elsie Gomulka, from Bucktown. That’s one of the Polish neighborhoods in Chicago.”

  “So Doug was right, when he said he’d recognized you.”

  “I wish he hadn’t. I didn’t want anyone to realize I was on the train. That’s why I disguised myself as the dowdy librarian. You see, my journey from the chorus to headliner wasn’t just a matter of talent, or luck. The owner of the nightclub took a shine to me. He loved me, or so he said.” Cora spat out the last words, her voice sour with bitterness.

  “Victor Fontana,” Jill said.

  “The very same,” Cora said. “I was young and ambitious. He was good-looking and free with his money. So I fell for his line. He was married, of course. But I loved him, or so I thought. And I liked the life he provided. He set me up in a fancy apartment, bought me nice clothes, a fur jacket, expensive jewelry.”

  “What went wrong?” Jill asked.

  “Vic’s a gangster. He even married into it. His wife’s the daughter of one of the Chicago Outfit hoods.”

  “I know Fontana was a bootlegger in Colorado during Prohibition. And that he was involved in gambling in Chicago.”

  “That’s not all he was doing in Chicago.” Cora fingered the knife she held. “When the war started, so did rationing, and the black market. Vic was right there in the thick of it, making money hand over fist, and none of it legal. Vic and his partner, Charley Holt, they had a gang of hoodlums knocking off OPA offices all over town. You know, the Office of Price Administration, the places that issued ration books and gas coupons. They stole coupons and C stickers, the kind that gave you more gas than the regular stickers. Then they sold them on the black market.”

  “And the place to go if you wanted black market gas coupons was the Bell Tower.”

  “Bingo,” Cora said. “You get the prize.”

  “How did you figure into this?” Jill asked.

  “I didn’t,” Cora’s mouth tightened. “I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Oh, I knew something was dicey with the food coming out of the kitchen. You could get a steak without having to worry about using all your food coupons. Hey, everybody was doing that. But I didn’t know about the gas coupon scam. Not until we got raided. That was nineteen forty-four. It was a joint operation, the Feds, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, and the Chicago cops. Somebody tipped off Vic and his pal Charley. I figure that was one of the Chicago bulls. Vic always had cops in his pocket.”

  “So Fontana got away,” Jill said.

  Cora sneered. “Slick as a whistle. Him and Charley Holt both.”

  “Someone got left holding the bag.”

  “You’re looking at her, Miss Zephyrette.” Cora’s brown eyes smoldered, showing her anger. “I took the fall. Vic and Charley were storing all those stolen gas coupons in my dressing room, behind a false panel. I got hung out to dry. I went to trial, early in ’forty-five. They didn’t believe me when I said I had nothing to do with it. The fix was in and I’m sure someone got to the prosecutor. They found me guilty and sent me to prison. The Oakdale Reformatory for Women, in Dwight, Illinois. That’s where I got this.” Cora pointed at the scar that marred her face. “Some bitch came at me with a knife.”

  “So you decided to get back at Fontana,” Jill said.

  “You’re damn right I did.” Cora’s eyes flashed with anger and she waved the knife. “Vic could have gotten me out of the jam, but he didn’t. He let them have me, to save his own hide. So I swore I’d kill him. After I got out of prison a couple of years ago, I went back to Chicago. I changed my name. I’ve been waiting, biding my time. I’ve been keeping an eye on him, sometimes even following him around. He never saw me. I got really good at slipping into the shadows. Somebody I know from the old days tipped me off that Vic was going to San Francisco on the California Zephyr. So I bought myself a ticket.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t recognize you.” Jill looked at Cora, who was waving the knife for emphasis as she talked. Jill took a deep breath and gauged
her chances of making it to the door before Cora could use the knife. If I could distract her somehow, Jill thought.

  “I made sure he didn’t recognize me.” Cora smiled, taken with her own cleverness. She was becoming more agitated as she talked, the knife moving in wider arcs. “I dyed my hair and bought those big glasses. The clothes worked, too. And I kept out of sight. He was surprised to see me, all right.” She laughed. “I waited, back there in the observation lounge, till everyone left. You, the porter, Avis Margate, even that man who went into Vic’s room. Then I knocked on his door. I told him I was Avis. The way he was making a play for her, I figured he’d be happy to hear that.”

  That would have worked quite well, Jill thought. After sending Avis the threatening note earlier in the day, Fontana would have expected her to respond in some fashion. She pictured him opening the door to the drawing room, sure he was going to see Avis Margate, surprised to see Cora Grant.

  “What did he say when he opened the door and saw you?”

  “I said Avis sent me, that she wanted me to give him something.” Cora looked pleased with herself. “I walked right in and opened my handbag. Then I took out the gun. He still didn’t recognize me. I had to tell him who I was.” She laughed again. “It felt good to see the look on his face, when the other shoe finally dropped.”

  “Then you grabbed the pillow, to silence the shot,” Jill said.

  Cora nodded. “Just in case the sound of the wheels didn’t cover the noise. I didn’t want anyone to find him until morning. By then I would have been long gone. I checked all the train timetables. I figured I’d get off this train during the night, at Elko, then catch the next eastbound train that comes along.”

  It would have worked, Jill thought. The California Zephyr and the Southern Pacific’s City of San Francisco went through Elko daily, on eastbound and westbound runs. Jill wasn’t sure about S.P.’s schedule, but it was just possible Cora could have left the Zephyr in Elko at 1:58 a.m., or whenever they got there, after this delay, and caught the eastbound City of San Francisco a few hours later.