by Janet Dawson
Money. That was the key, and the motive.
Jill recalled the argument she’d overheard when she came upon Kevin and Hardcastle in the vestibule. “The figures don’t add up,” Kevin had said. He’d traveled to Portola to look at the Piersons’ books. He’d found something amiss, Jill realized now. Hardcastle must have known what he’d find, and he was protecting Pierson, his accomplice. Or was it the other way around? What if Pierson was embezzling money from the lumber company, and using Hardcastle to cover his tracks? That scenario made sense. It was the Piersons’ company, even though it was now owned by the Vennor Corporation, and Harry Pierson, who had been intimately involved with the business for years, would know how to siphon away the money.
Jill stopped in the Silver Poplar, the sixteen-section sleeper, answering a question from a passenger. “Yes, we’re due into Oroville at eleven twenty-five. We’ll make a stop in Marysville at noon, and be in Sacramento by twelve fifty-five.”
She went through to the Silver Rapids. The Greenleafs, the passengers who had come all the way from New York City, were just stepping out of their bedroom, headed back to the Silver Planet. “I want to get a seat in the Vista-Dome,” Mrs. Greenleaf said. Jill followed them to the car, passing the four sleeping accommodations at the front of the dome-observation car. The lounge in the middle of the car was full, and Mr. Garson, the porter, was busy behind the bar. The lounge area at the back of the Silver Planet was full of passengers, and when Jill took the stairs up to the Vista-Dome, she saw that the Greenleafs had gotten seats near the back, across the aisle from the Hagedorns. Jill stayed in the dome for a few minutes, chatting with passengers and answering questions as the train reached the Tobin Bridges. She went downstairs again, intending to head for her own quarters in the lounge car, a brief respite before the train arrived in Oroville.
As Jill entered the Silver Gorge, the porter’s compartment was empty. Many of the passengers were no doubt in the Vista-Domes, looking at the scenery. But roomette one was occupied, judging from the loud, rattling snore she heard. She smiled at the sound. It appeared Colonel Lusco was taking a post-breakfast nap.
Harry Pierson rounded the corner in the middle of the car, walking toward her. She stopped outside roomette four and stepped inside to let him pass. Then she glanced back the way she had come and felt a frisson of alarm. Wade Hardcastle had just walked into the car, coming from the back of the train. All too late, she realized that he must have been following her.
Pierson grabbed Jill’s left arm, twisting it behind her. She winced with pain as he shoved her back into the roomette. “You were eavesdropping on me and that old biddy. And later, in the Vista-Dome, I saw you talking to her. Why?”
Hardcastle crowded into the roomette. It was barely big enough to hold two people, let alone three. He shut the door. “I told you. She knows.”
“How could she?” Pierson glared at him. He gave her arm another vicious twist and she gasped. He put his hand over her mouth. “Shut up.”
Now Hardcastle leaned close to Jill, malice in his cold pale eyes. “You were the Zephyrette on that run, back in May, when I was in the vestibule with Randall. You heard something. Now you’ve been talking with his fiancée. Oh, yeah, I remember you from the party at Vennor’s house. All that nonsense that brassy woman and the Vennor girl were talking about. You were watching me all the time.” He shook her, so hard she was dizzy. “What did Randall do with those ledger sheets? You must know. You must have helped him hide them. Do you have them? Does the Vennor girl have them?”
“What nonsense?” Pierson asked, his voice urgent. “Who was talking at the party? About Randall?”
“Some twaddle about a ghost and a séance.”
“A ghost?” Pierson’s mouth thinned under his mustache. “What the hell kind of crap is that?”
Hardcastle smiled, but it didn’t extend to his eyes. His voice dripped with contempt. “Randall’s girlfriend, the Vennor girl. At the party she was going on and on, spouting a bunch of nonsense about how Randall was murdered and his ghost is haunting the train. And this brassy blonde was egging her on, saying they ought to have a séance, to get in touch with his spirit. I think they were doing it just to see how I’d react. So this one—” He squeezed Jill’s arm hard. “This one knows too much.”
“She sure as hell does. She was pumping that nosy old bitch for information.”
Pierson’s hand on Jill’s mouth shifted. She bit him, on the fleshy part below the thumb, and tasted blood. He swore and pulled his hand away, but before Jill could scream, Hardcastle slapped her. She reeled back against the window. Hardcastle grabbed her, covering her mouth with his own large hand. She tried to bite him, but he pressed his hand too hard over her mouth. She couldn’t gain purchase with her teeth.
“She’s not going to tell us a damn thing,” Pierson snarled. “We’ve got to get off this train. What are we going to do with her?”
“Don’t lose your nerve,” Hardcastle said. “We’re getting off in Oroville, just like we planned. I have a car waiting. As for her, she stays in the roomette, all the way to the end of the line. By the time they find her, we’ll be long gone. And so will she.”
Jill’s eyes widened and she looked from Hardcastle’s hard blue eyes to Pierson’s brown eyes, eyes that looked as though he didn’t like the direction this was going.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Pierson said. “Can’t we just lock her up someplace and get off the train?”
Hardcastle laughed, a harsh, unpleasant sound. “Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts. A little late in the game, Harry. The time for second thoughts was before Randall figured out the money was missing and who took it. It was before we grabbed him and you forced those pills down his throat. Little Miss Zephyrette here has been asking too many questions, poking her nose in where she shouldn’t. We’ve got to get rid of her. There’s no other way.”
Hardcastle moved his hand from Jill’s mouth to her throat. He began to squeeze, hard and harder. Jill clawed at his hands, fighting, but she was struggling for air. He pushed her back toward the window. She hit her head. And she saw stars.
But was it really stars? Or a trick of the light?
It was no trick. The roomette had gotten colder, a bone-chilling cold that raised gooseflesh on Jill’s skin. The light shimmered and moved.
Tap, tap, tap, tap. Four loud taps. Pierson jumped, looking around for the source of the noise. The taps sounded again, and the pressure of Hardcastle’s hands on Jill’s throat lessened. Now Jill heard buzzing, and it wasn’t because she was lightheaded. These were the same sounds she’d heard last night, riding here in roomette four. The buzz and sibilance of spoken words, recognizable words, the argument between Kevin Randall and Wade Hardcastle.
“The figures don’t add up, the figures don’t add up, the figures don’t add up.”
The words kept repeating, over and over again, louder, more insistent.
Hardcastle’s eyes filled with panic. He took his hands away from Jill’s throat and put them over his ears, trying to shut out the words. But the words wouldn’t stop.
“The figures don’t add up, the figures don’t add up, the figures don’t add up.”
Jill elbowed Hardcastle in the stomach and lunged toward the door. Pierson intercepted her, his hands on her arms, his legs wide apart. She saw her opportunity, swung her knee up, and struck him hard in the groin. He cried out and fell back. She shoved him out of the way and made her escape from the roomette, screaming as she hit the passageway.
The door to roomette one slammed open. Colonel Lusco stepped into the passageway, blocking Hardcastle, who was heading for the rear of the car. He looked at the angry red marks on Jill’s throat, and then down at Pierson, who was curled on the floor of roomette four. The colonel’s face darkened with anger and he tightened his grip on Hardcastle’s arm.
The college student from roomette nine rushed into the passageway, nearly bumping into Lonnie Clark, who came running from the for
ward part of the car.
“Miss McLeod, are you all right?” The porter looked at Jill and his eyes widened as he saw her throat.
“I’m fine,” she told him, though her heart was pounding and her hands shook. “Go find the conductor, please.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
If Jill McLeod says those guys are killers, you can take it to the bank,” Pat Haggerty declared. His face looked like a thundercloud as he glanced at Jill’s throat. The red marks had given way to bruises.
Thank goodness Uncle Pat was here. Jill was relieved to see that he was the Western Pacific conductor boarding the California Zephyr in Oroville. Right now, she needed his familiar face and his support.
Jill stood on the platform at the train station, with Uncle Pat on one side and the departing conductor, Arthur Wylie, on the other. In front of her was Lucas Neal, the Butte County sheriff, a rangy man in his fifties, a tanned face beneath his wide-brimmed hat. Nearby were three deputies who had Hardcastle and Pierson in handcuffs.
“It’s true.” Jill’s voice sounded rough, an aftermath of being choked. “Pierson and Hardcastle killed a man on the train last May. His name was Kevin Randall. When we arrived at the Oakland Mole that day, I found Mr. Randall dead.” She pointed at the sleeper car. “It was roomette four of this car, the Silver Gorge. The autopsy showed that Randall died from an overdose of digitalis. He had a heart condition, so he took a prescription drug called Digoxin, which contains digitalis. So the murder was meant to look as though Randall died accidentally.”
“How do you know about the autopsy?” Sheriff Neal asked, his bushy eyebrows going up.
“My father’s a doctor. He has a friend at the Alameda County Coroner’s Office. Dad was able to look at the autopsy report. He told me what was in it.”
The sheriff nodded. “I’ll be interested to see a copy of that report. Go on.”
“The day Mr. Randall died, I overheard Hardcastle arguing with him, in the sleeper car vestibule.” She gestured at the two men who stood a few yards distant, both in handcuffs, between two deputies. Hardcastle glared at her, malevolence in his pale blue eyes. Pierson looked down at the ground, his tall frame looking as though it would fold in on itself. Jill continued her story. “Later that day, I saw Pierson pour a lot of pills into his hand, from what looked like an aspirin bottle. Today I found out that Pierson’s father takes Digoxin. So Pierson would have access to the drug. What’s more, when they had me in the roomette, Hardcastle said something about Pierson forcing pills down Randall’s throat. The autopsy report also says that Randall had bitten his own tongue, and he had abrasions around his mouth.”
She stopped. The picture her words evoked was dreadful. Hardcastle holding Randall, and Pierson forcing open Kevin Randall’s mouth, pushing in a handful of pills, then closing and covering Kevin’s mouth, so he would eventually be forced to swallow the fatal dose of Digoxin.
Beside her, Mr. Wylie scowled as he looked at Hardcastle and Pierson. “They attacked a railroad employee on the train. I want them prosecuted for that. I don’t know if this happened when we were in Plumas County or Butte County, Sheriff, but we’re in Butte County now. I’m turning these men over to you. Throw the book at them.”
“Be happy to. We can sort out the jurisdiction later.” Sheriff Neal signaled to the deputies. “Take those two down to the jail and put them behind bars.”
Two of the deputies took Hardcastle and Pierson by their arms and hustled them to a pair of cars waiting near the station, in full view of the passengers standing on the platform and in the vestibules. Mrs. Bowman was among them, staring at Pierson with avid curiosity. Jill was sure the old woman would have plenty to tell her fellow townspeople when she returned home to Portola.
“I need a statement from you, Miss McLeod,” the sheriff said. “And from the passengers and crew members, anyone who can shed some light on this incident.”
“I want to cooperate, of course,” Pat Haggerty said, watch in hand. “The train has a schedule to keep, though. We’re already twenty minutes late leaving the station. The stationmaster sent a wire to WP headquarters in San Francisco, to explain the delay. We’ll have to leave soon.”
“I thought of that.” The sheriff waved to the third deputy, a tall young man who had remained on the platform. “This is Deputy Coleridge. He’ll board the train here and ride it to Sacramento. That gives him more than an hour to take statements.”
With this course of action agreed upon, Pat stuck his watch in his pocket, straightened his billed cap with its shiny badge that read Western Pacific Conductor, and called, “All aboard.”
The passengers who’d been on the platform climbed aboard the train. So did Jill and Deputy Coleridge. As the California Zephyr pulled out of the Oroville station, Jill and the deputy set up shop in the Silver Club’s lounge, where Coleridge took Jill’s statement, probing with questions to get a clear and complete picture of what had happened during that morning’s journey down the Feather River Canyon.
“Hardcastle had you by the throat, right?” Coleridge gestured at Jill with his pencil, as the train moved south, toward Marysville.
“He did.” Jill touched the tender spots on the right side of her neck.
“How did you get away from him?”
This was not the time, she thought, to bring up what had really happened in roomette four. How could she explain it? The shimmering light, the penetrating cold, the insistent knocks, the voices that kept repeating that phrase, over and over, until Hardcastle had pulled his hands away from her throat and put them over his ears, in a vain attempt to shut the voices out.
“Hardcastle released his grip for a few seconds,” Jill said. “I saw an opportunity to get away, and I took it.”
When Coleridge finished interviewing Jill, it was Colonel Lusco’s turn, and that of the college student who was heading to Berkeley for school. Finally, the deputy spoke with Lonnie Clark and Alonzo Griggs. It was only after the deputy left the train in Sacramento that Jill had a chance to go to the dining car for lunch. Uncle Pat joined her at the table near the dining car steward’s counter.
“Back in Oroville,” Pat said, “I sent a wire to your father.”
“You didn’t have to do that. He’ll be worried and so will Mom.”
“As well he should. He’ll meet the train, and I imagine some folks from Western Pacific headquarters will, too. When I think of those two trying to kill you—” He broke off as a waiter came to their table.
“Are you all right, Miss McLeod?” the waiter asked. “We could hardly believe it when we heard what happened.”
“Thank you for your concern, Mr. Delmond. I’ll be fine. I think I’ll just have iced tea and a bowl of that split pea soup.” Jill handed him her meal check. The creamy soup should soothe her throat.
“A ham sandwich for me,” Pat said.
Mr. Delmond collected the meal checks and smiled. “I’m glad you’re all right, Miss McLeod. We have chocolate cream pie today. I know it’s one of your favorites. I’ll bring you a piece. With extra whipped cream.”
Jill chuckled. Chocolate cream pie would soothe her throat, too. “That would be lovely. I believe that chocolate in any form makes everything better.”
———
The California Zephyr made up some time on the long flat stretches of the Central Valley, and was only a few minutes behind as the train climbed over Altamont Pass for the last leg of its westbound journey to the Bay Area. Jill did her best, performing her duties as Zephyrette, conscious of the looks from passengers and crew members alike. The attack had left her tired and shaken. As the train wound through Niles Canyon, she went to the lounge. Without asking, Alonzo Griggs poured her a cup of coffee and set it on the counter, along with the cream pitcher. After stirring cream into the coffee, she carried the cup to the corner table, where she pulled out her notebook and pencil and wrote an account of the incident for her trip report.
Dr. McLeod was waiting when the CZ pulled into the Oakland Mole. When Jill
got off the train, he put his arms around her, then examined the bruises on her neck. “The bruises will go away soon,” he told her. “I’m so glad you weren’t more seriously hurt. Your mother is frantic.”
“I knew she would be. I have a few things to do before we leave, Dad.”
He took Jill’s suitcase from her and waited patiently as she took her leave of the onboard crew, the waiters, cooks and porters, especially Mr. Clark and Mr. Griggs. She finished all her usual tasks, including her trip report. She talked with the Western Pacific representative who was there at the Mole.
Then the McLeods, father and daughter, went home. Her mother, upset and on the verge of tears, fussed over Jill, who found time to make a few phone calls before taking a hot bath. She went to bed early, cuddling her cat. There was something so comforting about the little ball of fur, purring on the pillow next to her.
———
Jill slept deeply and woke late Sunday morning. Mike was there for breakfast, invited by Lora McLeod. He swept Jill into his arms, kissed her, then held her close, not saying a word. He stayed for Sunday dinner. Drew had made himself scarce again, and Lucy and Ethan were out with friends.
Tidsy arrived at two o’clock that afternoon, followed a few minutes later by Margaret, her aunt and uncle. When they were seated in the living room, glasses of iced tea all around, Tidsy took charge of the conversation.
“I went over the pages from the ledger, and Kevin Randall’s notes.” She gestured at the pages she’d spread out on the coffee table. “There’s enough information there to determine that Harry Pierson has been siphoning money from the family lumber company for quite some time. The embezzlement probably dates back years, before Dan Vennor even acquired the company. It looks like Hardcastle found out what was going on after Dan bought the company. He covered it up and he was taking money off the top as well.”
