Murder on the Orient Espresso

by Sandra Balzo

  Which, of course, raised the question of what something – or somebody – she wanted.

  I slid my hand off the table and onto Pavlik’s thigh slowly, so Zoe would notice.

  He glanced at me before asking, ‘Umm, are you looking for somebody, Zoe?

  ‘Larry,’ she said. ‘I told him I was going to introduce our players.’

  Which was most likely why the man had disappeared.

  ‘The last I saw of Potter was when he got up and stepped back to let you out,’ Pavlik said, laying his hand on top of mine. ‘He didn’t pass us to go forward to the club car, so he must have headed toward the back of the train.’

  ‘Well, we’d better find him before Missy’s “program” starts. Thank God Markus can be counted on to drone on and on.’

  The librarian was still at the intercom, presenting his talk.

  ‘Larry’s probably in the bathroom,’ I suggested. ‘Has Audra seen him?’

  ‘No,’ Zoe said. ‘And he’s been gone for half an hour.’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe he took his magazine in there with him. He’s obviously quite the reader.’

  ‘Huh.’ Zoe seemed to be thinking it over. ‘Perhaps I should go tap on the door.’

  Pavlik watched her leave. ‘Was that a thinly-veiled knock on male bathroom habits?’

  ‘Hey,’ I said, smiling, ‘if the stool fits.’

  Pavlik laughed and raised my hand to kiss the palm. ‘You’re one twisted woman, Maggy Thorsen.’

  ‘Not as “twisted” as I’d like to be,’ I said, sliding even closer. ‘Bet even Rosemary doesn’t have any wings in her boo—’

  ‘Have you seen Zoe?’ Prudence was standing at our table now, fingers twisting in the ropes of princess pearls around her neck. ‘Missy is going batshit because she can’t find Larry.’

  And these people called themselves mystery writers? The train was four cars long, not counting the locomotives – first and last – so how tough could it be to find someone?

  I had a thought. ‘Maybe Larry’s standing in one of the vestibules between cars smoking. I saw him grab the matches when he got up from our table.’

  ‘Great,’ Prudence said. ‘Markus is done with his soliloquy and we’re all supposed to gather here in the dining car before trooping back to solve the crime. Wait a minute.’ She squinted at Pavlik’s nametag. ‘“Ratchett.” Aren’t you supposed to be dead?’

  ‘Zoe didn’t give me the—’

  ‘Well she should have,’ Prudence said, looking more like the imperious Princess Dragomiroff. ‘How are we supposed to view the body in the sleeping car if you’re out here, obviously still alive?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I—’

  Raucous laughter erupted from across the way. Grace/Greta was trying to climb up onto the table in a manner not befitting her role. In fact, the blouse and skirt somehow invoked more Naughty School Girl than Swedish Lady.

  ‘Damn it,’ Prudence said. ‘We need to get some food into these people.’

  ‘There’s cake,’ I said, watching Grace gain her footing and release her hair from its bun, shaking out the wild curls like Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.

  ‘To be served when the crime is solved, from what I understand,’ Pavlik said. ‘Though maybe if you ask Missy—’

  ‘Any sign of Laurence?’ It was Missy herself, magically appearing but looking concerned.

  ‘No, but Zoe went to check the bathroom,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve already done that.’ Tears were welling up in Missy’s eyes again. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. ‘Twice.’

  ‘OK, let’s look at this logically,’ Pavlik said. ‘He has to be in one of these cars. You’re just missing him because people are milling around.’

  A whoop came from the unincorporated mob as Grace slid butt-first off the table.

  ‘We’re coming to a stop already,’ Missy said as Prudence shook her head in disgust. ‘Now the rear locomotive will pull us back the same direction we came from.’

  Since there were no lights outside to judge our speed by, I had to take her word for it.

  ‘So, are there two engineers, or does the guy in front have to come through the train to get to the other locomotive?’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Missy said, putting her hand to her face. ‘There is no interior connection. Our engineer is a lovely older man – retired, in fact, and a bit eccentric. He’ll have to go out in this rain and wind. We didn’t think of that.’

  ‘Would you like me to go out and check on him?’ Pavlik asked.

  ‘That’s so kind of you.’ Missy was trying to peer out the window. ‘I’d be afraid, though, that you’d miss him somehow and accidentally be left behind. The Everglades is a dangerous enough place in the daytime. At night, and in this weather?’ She shivered.

  I was right there with her. Meaning inside the train was safe and sound, which is where I wanted Pavlik to stay.

  But I knew the sheriff wouldn’t be deterred by concern for his own safety, especially when somebody else might be in danger. It wasn’t in his DNA. I wasn’t sure I had that kind of grit myself – to run toward disaster, rather than away – but I was very grateful there were people like Pavlik who did.

  So, I tried another tack. ‘You’re right, Missy. We certainly can’t chance losing your main forensics speaker. There would be no one to teach the panels – or workshops – tomorrow.’

  Pavlik looked at me.

  ‘Imagine the disappointment if you didn’t show up,’ I said to him. ‘You know, to teach killing and guns and bullets and such.’

  ‘Oooh, that reminds me.’ Missy turned away from the window to address Pavlik. ‘Did you bring your own weapons or do you need mine?’

  ‘You have … weapons?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course,’ the two of them chorused.

  ‘I meant Missy.’ When it came to Pavlik, personal experience had taught me that asking Mae West’s come-hither question, ‘Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?’ wouldn’t get me the answer I’d hoped for.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the young woman said. ‘But only props for the workshop. Rubber knives and the like.’

  That was a relief, at least. Maybe I would attend, after all.

  ‘… shipped everything I needed, along with my handouts,’ Pavlik was saying.

  That explained what was in the UPS box that had been waiting for us in the hotel room.

  ‘My Glock Forty semi-automatic,’ he continued, ‘and a Colt Detective Special, a revolver designed for a six-chamber cylinder. I also have a variety of cartridges – standard, hollow-point, Hydra-shok, the Glaser Safety Slug—’

  Suddenly the Flagler Suite wasn’t looking quite so romantic.

  ‘You will talk about caliber versus millimeter, won’t you?’ This from Prudence, whom I’d forgotten about. ‘That always confuses people and we really need to know those things in order to write intelligently.’

  ‘I’ll have thirty-eight, forty and forty-five caliber cartridges as well as nine millimeter, to illustrate,’ Pavlik assured Prudence, then turned to me. ‘What we’re talking about, Maggy, is the diameter of the ammunition. A forty-five caliber bullet or cartridge – the same thing, for our purposes – is forty-five one hundreds of an inch in diameter, or nearly half an inch across. A nine millimeter is, as you might guess, nine millimeters across.’

  ‘And nearly equal to the size of a thirty-eight caliber,’ Missy contributed brightly. ‘If you do the conversion from metric, I mean.’

  ‘A nine is a bit smaller than a thirty-eight,’ Pavlik said with an approving nod. ‘But very close.’

  Obviously gratified, Missy asked, ‘And did you bring – or ship – a variety of knives as well?’

  ‘I have a rubber knife with a five-inch blade to use in the hands-on demonstration, of course. For show-and-tell, I shipped a switch blade, and gravity, pocket and buck knives.’

  What, I thought, no death by butter knife?

  ‘Oh, and my assassin’s dagger, of cou
rse.’

  So I would hang out at the pool tomorrow. Or maybe go to the beach. There was an original thought, given I was in South Florida. From rainforest tonight to sand castles tomorrow. And I’d thought Wisconsin was diverse.

  ‘Gravity,’ Prudence said. ‘Is that the one with the button on the handle?’

  ‘Exactly,’ my personal weapons expert said. ‘When that’s pushed and you flick out to the side with your wrist, the weight of the blade opens the knife.’

  ‘But isn’t that a switchblade?’ Missy seemed puzzled.

  I, for my part, was completely lost.

  ‘Not at all,’ Pavlik said. ‘When you thumb the button – or ‘switch’ – on a switchblade, the blade flicks out automatically.’

  ‘So no gravity needed.’ Prudence was nodding.

  ‘Correct,’ Pavlik said. ‘The pocket knife, on the other—’

  ‘We’re moving,’ I interrupted, feeling the train hiccup in the other direction. And with Pavlik still safely inside. My delaying tactic had worked.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness.’ Missy was back to the window. ‘The engineer has already moved to the other locomotive. We must be starting back toward Fort Lauderdale.’

  ‘Spry old fellow,’ Prudence said.

  ‘The engineer? Oh, he’s quite the character.’ Missy checked her watch. ‘I do worry that we’ll get back to the station too early, though. You know, before the crime is solved?’

  ‘Maybe someone should make an announcement,’ I suggested. ‘Requesting that Potter and the rest of the “cast” come to this car.’

  There was a flaw, of course, in my plan: Laurence Potter obviously didn’t want to appear. Missy, however, didn’t seem to see it. ‘That’s a wonderful idea, Maggy. Zoe should—’

  ‘Zoe? Why not you?’ Prudence prodded. ‘You do most of the work, anyway. Why let her take all the credit?’

  Missy blushed, tugging down her dress. ‘Oh, no, I prefer to work behind the scenes. I couldn’t.’

  ‘You couldn’t what?’ Zoe, perhaps instinctively, had magically turned up, too.

  ‘Maggy suggested that we make an announcement …’

  ‘Maggy?’ Zoe repeated.

  I raised my hand. The woman was either stupid or trying to rile me. I was betting on the latter.

  ‘Oh, right,’ Zoe said distractedly, her attention drawn to the commotion in the corner, where a huge man dressed in a zoot suit was trying to climb onto the table.

  Pavlik, having been thwarted in his effort to save the day by venturing into the Everglades, slid out of the booth. ‘You!’ he said in a thundering voice. ‘Down! Now!’

  The big man ignored him. With the train’s swaying movement he looked like an overweight, overdressed mob surfer trying to position his feet for one last Big Kahuna of a wave. Worse, he was a decade off in his costume. The high-waisted trousers and long coats with wide lapels and padded shoulders were popular in the forties, not the thirties.

  ‘Off the table, Fred!’ Zoe bellowed.

  ‘Fred’ got off. Pavlik shrugged and returned to our table.

  ‘Zoe, we think you should cut the cake,’ Prudence suggested. ‘Sop up some of the alcohol.’

  ‘Too late,’ Missy said mournfully.

  ‘Too late to sop up the alcohol or too late to cut the cake?’ One more Orient Espresso martini on an empty stomach and I’d be up on a table. Or under it.

  ‘Maybe both.’ Missy was agitatedly tip-tapping her foot. ‘But what I mean is that someone took a big hunk out of our cake and made off with the knife. Can you believe that? What are we going to use to cut the rest of it?’

  I looked down at my swizzle stick, hungry enough to give it a good-faith try.

  ‘I’m sure we can come up with something,’ Pavlik said. ‘If all else fails, I have my trusty Swiss Army knife.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out yet another knife in addition to the ones that apparently awaited us in the Flagler Suite.

  ‘But the original cake knife was also meant to be the murder weapon. We need it for the “reveal.”’ Missy was near inconsolable. ‘Somebody has ruined everything!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be such a child,’ Zoe snapped, adjusting her dress. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’

  By this point I desperately wanted to do something to assist poor Missy, and if it got me closer to food then all the better. ‘Show me the cake, Missy. Maybe the knife just fell off the table after someone messed with it. If not, we’ll come up with a substitute.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Zoe seemed to be glad to be rid of her overly emotional assistant. And, perhaps, me. ‘In the meantime, we can’t wait any longer to solve our little crime. I was going to have you go back to the sleeping car, Jacob, but without Larry I wonder—’

  I wanted to hear more about Zoe Scarlett’s plans for Pavlik, but Missy had my arm and was pulling me toward the cake at the far end of the car.

  TWELVE

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, looking at the hacked-up corpse that had been part of the cake. ‘Somebody amputated the left foot.’ Including the big toe, where I’d swiped the bit of frosting earlier, resulting at least in my tracks being covered there.

  Missy looked forlorn. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘He or she might have taken the knife blade to carry the piece of cake on,’ I glanced around. ‘I don’t see any plates.’

  ‘I didn’t put them out yet. So no one would get ideas of cutting it early, for all the good that did.’

  ‘The best-laid plans,’ I commiserated. ‘By the way, I loved that knife – what a loss. My grandmother left me a carving set that contained one just like it.’

  I was thinking about the gift, which I only brought out for special occasions like Christmas and Thanksgiving. The hinged brown box contained two large knives and a serving fork. One, with an eight-inch blade, was a twin of the missing knife.

  ‘That’s so nice,’ Missy said. ‘I got this one on eBay for fourteen ninety-five.’

  $14.95. Apparently, I wouldn’t be retiring on the proceeds from the sale of my family heirloom. But then if it were a collectible, Missy would hardly have put it in the cake. Unless … ‘Maybe somebody did think it was valuable and stole it. I believe the handle is staghorn and—’

  ‘Your attention, please.’ Zoe Scarlett’s voice came over the speakers.

  The sudden lurch of the train coupled with a metallic grinding made me grab for a pole. Apparently the new tracks were adding a few more kinks for the return voyage.

  ‘Hercule Poirot requests that all guests assemble,’ Zoe continued, ‘in the forward dining car. It seems there’s been a murder.’

  At the words, most of the costumed guests started to head in from the next car.

  A clap of thunder was followed almost immediately by a searing flash of lightning outside the window. Although we’d been traveling through the blackness for more than an hour and a half, this was my first glimpse behind that curtain of darkness.

  ‘My God,’ I said, leaning down to peer out the window. ‘There’s nothing out there except low brush and the occasional clump of trees.’

  ‘And sawgrass, as far as the eye can see. The Everglades is a “slow-moving river of grass,”’ Missy quoted, seeming to relax a little. ‘Over three million acres originally. It really is striking when you fly into Fort Lauderdale at night. You’d swear you’re soaring above the clouds or over the ocean because you can’t see anything and then, suddenly, the lights of South Florida pop up beneath you.’

  Then Missy tensed again as people continued to file past us. ‘I still don’t see Laurence. Would you help me search while the rest of the group is occupied?’

  My eyes lingered longingly at the cake, but I said, ‘Of course.’

  Missy turned, and I managed a last swipe at the frosting before following. ‘Aren’t you going the wrong way? You said the sleeping car is the last one, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Missy stopped. ‘Except that we’ve reversed direction, so it’s the first car after the locomotiv
e, which used to bring up the rear of the train, but now is the front.’

  I think my eyes must have crossed, because Missy waved for me to come along. ‘I’ll show you.’

  We passed from the dining car into the vestibule, where the noise of the track passing below the metal plates beneath our feet made conversation difficult until we opened the next door into the passenger car. It was empty except for Danny and Audra Edmonds. They were seated side by side, curly dark hair and blonde waves close as they chatted in low tones.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Missy interrupted. ‘But we seem to have lost track of Mr Potter.’

  Audra looked up. ‘Have you checked with Rosemary?’

  ‘She’s not feeling well,’ Missy said. ‘She’s lying down in the sleeping car.’

  Danny’s eyes flickered. ‘Rosemary Darlington? I saw you go by with her before. I’d love to meet her.’

  I bet he would. I’d also bet that if I quizzed the star-chaser he’d have no memory of meeting me once, much less twice.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s unavailable at the moment,’ Missy said in the voice of an experienced gatekeeper. ‘But I’d be happy to introduce you sometime during the conference,’ she glanced at his badge, her nose crinkling, ‘Danny.’

  I caught the sign of displeasure, probably at Danny/Col. Arbuthnot’s lack of alliteration.

  ‘He signed up late and barely caught the bus,’ I told her. ‘You and Rosemary had already left, so I assume the conference registration person just assigned a character to him randomly.’

  Danny glanced down at the badge self-consciously. ‘Is there a problem? Like I told Zoe, I did pay.’

  ‘No, no – it’s fine,’ Missy said and, to my surprise, smiled brightly at the young man. ‘We’re happy to have you.’

  The two were probably close in age. Could love be in the air?

  ‘Thank you,’ Danny said. ‘Are you an author?’

  Before Missy could answer that she was ‘just a researcher,’ and thereby render herself invisible, I jumped in. ‘Missy is one of the conference organizers. She knows everyone.’

  That piqued his interest. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Missy. You must have a very interesting job.’