by Sandra Balzo
Maybe that was why she was coming unhinged.
Pavlik was squinting up the line. ‘Looks like the passenger and sleeping cars are still high and dry.’
‘Well, that’s good, at least.’ I rubbed the bump on my head. The pounding was starting to lessen as we reached the front locomotive, still in place, nose down facing the flooded tracks.
‘This seems pretty much the way it was earlier,’ Pavlik said.
Earlier, as in the fight to reclaim Potter’s body. Pavlik and I might have won the battle, but the python had certainly won the war. At least until the thing had explo— ‘It’s gone.’
‘What’s gone?’ The sheriff had stepped up into the locomotive to look around and now stuck his head out.
‘Our python.’ A chill ran up my back as I pointed across the gulley to where the remains of the pregnant python had been strewn on the railbed. ‘And its eggs.’
‘Maybe it’s the tide, if there is one. Or I suppose an alligator could have claimed it,’ Pavlik said, jumping down from the cab. ‘Poetic justice, given what we’ve heard about the balance of nature out here.’
‘Too bad there aren’t enough Bambis and Thumpers left in the Glades to rise up, unite, and exact revenge on the lot of them.’
‘By Bambis, I assume you mean deer, though I suppose it could just as easily be a hot woman from a personal ad. But what are Thumpers?’
Poor boy. Yet another classic I’d force him to watch with me.
‘Thumper is a bunny.’ Then, fearing he’d think I was referring to the Playboy kind, ‘You know, like Bugs?’
‘Bugs?’ Pavlik still seemed confused. ‘Even in the Everglades, I don’t think they have insects big enough to consume a snake’s body in just a few hours.’
‘No, no. Bugs! As in Bunny—’ I interrupted myself as the sheriff waded into the water at an angle away from the train bed. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m just trying to get a better view of the trailing locomotive.’
‘Oh.’ Now that the rain had stopped, the nocturnal creatures seemed to be out in force. And in good voice. On a Wisconsin night you’d hear crickets and toads, maybe the occasional owl.
But the sounds of the Everglades were far more exotic. Rising from everywhere and nowhere – at least nowhere I could pinpoint. They seemed to have a physical presence and, of course, they did. We just couldn’t see it.
‘Hey, Pavlik, what is that?’ I was looking at a mound rising from the water. Amazing I hadn’t noticed it earlier, since it had to be a city block in width, or so it seemed in the low light. Directly opposite the sleeping car, the berm had a tangle of trees on it. ‘Is it one of those mangrove islands you were talking about?’
‘Maybe.’ But he was gazing the other way.
I took a step closer to the water to get a better look. Away from civilization and its ambient light, the sky was hazy with stars. ‘I think I see fireflies. But they’re … I think they’re red.’
‘Fireflies aren’t red.’ Pavlik still wasn’t paying attention.
‘True. At least I’ve never seen any this color.’ I waded in a cautious foot or two and squinted. ‘I think there are two of them, but they’re not flitting around like you usually see. Maybe sitting on something.’
‘Two? How far apart?’
‘Six or seven inches?’ Another step. ‘It’s hard to judge from here.’
‘Probably an alligator.’
I turned, though, in retrospect, that might not have been the smartest move of my life. ‘Alligator?’
‘Its eyes, to be precise. According to the pilot of the airboat ride we took the last time I was down here, their retinas reflect red in the dark.’
We took? Who was the ‘we’? But something more immediate – and considerably less catty – also struck me as I splashed hastily back to dry land. ‘Did you say airboat?’
‘Airboat or fan boat, so-called because the flat-bottomed vessel has a giant fan up top that propels it over marshes and shallow water.’
Like the Everglades. ‘I don’t suppose the transit powers-that-be thought to equip the train with one.’
‘An airboat that we’d stow and deploy like a life raft? Somehow I doubt it.’ Pavlik returned to the track. ‘Are you staying to explore, Marco Polo, or coming with me?’
I snuck a glance across the way to where I’d seen the red ‘fireflies,’ but they’d disappeared. Or, more likely from what Pavlik had said, crawled away on its belly like a reptile. ‘With you. Definitely with you.’
As I trailed after him, the night animals shifted into high gear.
Chk, chk, chk, OWoo, Wwaahk, Wwaak … Quock! Quock, quock!
‘That last was a night heron, I think,’ Pavlik said as we retraced our steps west along the railbed toward the exit door.
‘We’re probably disturbing them.’ Happily, we’d be out of their hair – and feathers or scales or jaws – soon. As in, safe in the train.
‘Most likely.’ Pavlik passed the dining car and the entrance where Hertel waited and kept right on going.
‘Aren’t we going back onto the train?’ I asked, hanging back.
‘I have to check something out first. I’m hoping my eyes deceived me.’
I hesitated before following. Whither he goest, I will go.
Whither I wanted to or not.
Hurrying to catch up, I nearly ran up the sheriff’s back when he reached the rear of the club car and stopped.
‘What is it?’ I asked, pulling up short.
Pavlik pointed.
Our now trailing locomotive, the one that had earlier led us west, was illuminated by moonlight reflecting on the water.
The water on all four sides of the tipped locomotive.
‘I guess there’s no point worrying about uncoupling anything,’ I said.
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Well, I’ll say I’m not surprised,’ our engineer, Theodore B. Hertel, Jr, said after we filled him in.
‘You expected us to get stuck out here?’ I asked sourly. We were inspecting the club car, walking sideways in the aisle so we could grab hold of the counters and tables along the way to keep our balance. Boyce’s espresso machine had bitten the dust again. I hefted the thing onto the bar and it slid right back off. This time I left it.
‘No, ma’am. Not that. It’s just that once the track started to wash out, what with the rain continuing and all, like I said, the ballast …’ Hertel shrugged his shoulders, the denim straps of his overalls almost touching his earlobes.
I stopped short, causing Pavlik to run into me this time. ‘Are you saying we could lose these cars, too?’
‘I sure am hoping not,’ the engineer said, opening the vestibule door to go into the dining car. ‘The rain’s stopped, which is always a good sign.’
This from the man who just an hour ago told us storms roared up quickly here.
Pavlik picked up his cell phone from the table we’d been sitting at when the car tipped. ‘It’s nearly four a.m.’
I said, ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I’m not sure there’s anything we can do until the sun comes up.’ Pavlik was pushing buttons on his smart phone. ‘When it gets light, we’ll decide our next move.’
‘Do you have a signal?’ I asked, my futile triumph of hope over experience.
‘Afraid not.’ Pavlik looked up from his miniature screen. ‘I tried to send a text message last night, knowing they require less bandwidth than a call, but it wasn’t delivered. I was checking now to see if we might have had intermittent service and the thing sent itself. No soap.’
The thought of soap made me feel my head where the bump was, to see if it needed cleaning.
‘Still hurting?’ Pavlik asked as we followed the engineer to the next car.
‘A little, but I was just checking to see if the skin was broken. It’s not, though.’
‘I could have told you that.’
‘You checked?’ I asked, pleased he’d been concerned.
‘Of course. I
f you’d been dripping blood out there, we would have been alligator bait. Or at least python nuggets.’
‘Or both.’ I punched him in the shoulder and then turned the other cheek, literally. ‘Truly, can you take a peek? How do I look?’
Pavlik grinned and pulled me against him as we waited for Hertel to slide open the door. ‘Lovely, as always.’
‘Lie, Pinocchio, lie,’ I chanted, parroting the old joke.
Entering the passenger car, I was surprised to see that people seemed unconcerned. In fact, they seemed to be having a fine time.
‘Everything all right out there?’ Prudence asked, pearls askew and her voice a little more airy than I’d previously heard it.
‘Just ducky.’ Pavlik put his hand on the back of the first seat and surveyed the scene. Then nearly under his breath, ‘Jesus, Maggy. I think they’re all drunk.’
The passenger car was, indeed, as high as it was barely dry. Zoe Scarlett was making her way to an empty seat, but instead of simply sitting down in it, she scarfed a bottle of what appeared to be Kahlua before moving on.
Pavlik shook his head. ‘Well, that explains it. I’m going to check with Boyce.’
I followed the sheriff, stopping at the row Zoe had. There had to be fifteen bottles there, some on the seat, some in a box on the floor. Pete the bartender was snoring next to them, head tilted against the window.
‘How’d you get the entire contents of the bar in here?’ I asked Markus, who was slouching across the aisle.
‘The bartender helped Audra and that kid Danny bring it to us.’ He nodded about halfway back in the car, to where Audra Edmonds sat beside Rosemary Darlington.
Now there were curious seatmates. The widow and the woman she suspected her husband had been cheating with?
‘And good thing, too.’ Zoe was a few rows farther down with the Kahlua bottle. ‘Since I’m not sure we’d want to go up there now.’ She took a swig. ‘Should have gotten glasses, though. This is unsanitary, even given the alcohol content as antisleptic.’
She giggled, then stopped. Then resumed and couldn’t stop.
Given the situation, it might not be the worst thing in the world if they all got drunk and fell asleep – or passed out – until help arrived, even if by boat.
Assuming it ever did.
Trying to remain positive, I continued on past Harvey/Hardman, who had his plaid jacket reversed and tucked under his chin. He probably meant it as a blanket but the effect was a really gaudy bib. Then again, you’d never see the food stains on it.
Pavlik was at the back of the car, talking to Boyce.
‘You wouldn’t have seen the three of them,’ Boyce was saying. ‘They bypassed the dining car where you were, coming back in this exit.’ He pointed to the vestibule.
No wonder we’d heard opening and closing with no one actually entering the dining car itself. The threesome had risked going out into the Everglades to smuggle the booze without our noticing.
We should have asked them to be the scouting party.
I put my hand on the bathroom door handle, intending to check out the bump on my head, when it slid open and Missy appeared.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Maggy,’ she said, stepping out. ‘Go ahead, but be warned. It’s pretty disgusting with all of us using just this one.’
I looked at Pavlik, thinking of all the toilets and sinks in the sleeping roomettes. ‘Do you think we—’
He shook his head. ‘Sorry, but we’ve already made things difficult enough for the crime-scene people. The least I can do is keep that car reasonably untainted.’
I sensed his frustration and put my hand out. ‘Hey, you’ve done a great job of keeping everybody calm during a horrible situation.’
Harvey let out a snort and began to snore.
‘Not, apparently, as effectively as the booze did,’ Pavlik said. ‘You want to take a break, Boyce? I can take over.’
‘I don’t mind if I do,’ the other man said. ‘This is one of those times I wish I still smoked, but maybe I’ll just go answer the call of nature.’
I stepped aside to let him go into the bathroom, but he shook his head. ‘Given the sheriff saying the rain has stopped, I think I’ll venture out.’
Boyce continued on to the exit.
‘Guys are so lucky,’ I said. ‘You can go anywhere.’
‘One of our many charms,’ Pavlik said. ‘Why don’t you get some sleep? Once the sun comes up, a couple of us will probably have to hike out of here and get help. I’d like you to be fresh.’
I sniffed my armpit. ‘I’m not sure that’s possible, but I’ll do my best.’
Pavlik laughed.
But I put my hand on his forearm. ‘Are you sure we should venture off our little … island instead of just waiting for help?’
‘I’m not sure we have a choice, but we’ll talk about it before I decide. For now, though, sleep. OK?’
As if I’d sleep. So I did the next best thing – found two open seats right behind Audra Edmonds and Rosemary Darlington.
‘Hello, ladies,’ I said, slipping into the window seat behind Audra. ‘Don’t let me bother you, I’m just taking a nap.’
‘No bother,’ Rosemary said, getting up. ‘I’m grateful for the reprieve.’
‘Bitch,’ Audra said to her back as the author retreated.
‘I take it Ms Darlington and you have some sort of … history?’ I asked innocently, using Missy’s word.
‘No,’ Audra said pointedly, ‘but Rosemary and my husband did, much as she denies it.’
‘I know that Mr Potter mentored her,’ I was using last names to create distance from the participants, ‘but are you saying they had something more?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’ Audra turned and put her back against the wall of the train, stretching her legs out across the seats before smoothing the handkerchief hem of her vintage dress. ‘The man is – was – the most calculating of cheaters.’
Edmonds managed to look bored. Amazing, given the subject and the fact that her philandering husband had rather recently also become her dead one. ‘You know that book of hers? That fount of smut?’
‘Breaking and Entering? I read Mr Potter’s review of it on PotShots.’
Audra laughed. ‘Review, my ass. The man was just covering his.’
‘His ass, you mean?’ I was confused. Again.
‘Of course. You know all those things the couple does in her book? Those are the very same things Larry had been suggesting we do.’
‘You mean in bed.’
‘No, in the grocery store.’
And Pavlik thought I was sarcastic. ‘You think he learned these … techniques from her?’
‘Where else? Let me tell you, a husband suddenly comes home with new ideas to spice up the spousal love life, you better believe he’s probably learned it through recent extramarital experience. Larry, in particular, wasn’t the type to read and follow self-help books. More the help-yourself category.’
I wasn’t sure I could argue with Audra’s logic, and I had to give her credit for a nice turn-of-phrase. ‘But weren’t you and Mr Potter working on a book of your own?’
She snorted. ‘Larry’s idea. Both Rosemary and he must have had so much fun, they couldn’t wait to write about it afterward. He was just ticked that she dumped him and then got to it first.’
‘Hence the horrible review?’
‘What do you think?’
I wasn’t sure what I thought. ‘Yet you and he were still intending to go ahead with your own … romantic novel?’
‘The only reason he wanted my name on the book was for the hook. It would be sort of a he-said, she-said. Or did, in this case.’
I suppressed a smile. ‘And did you?’
‘Do those things?’ Audra exploded. ‘Of course not. Which is how I know the old dog learned those new tricks from a different bitch. And probably by going to that horrible club, as well.’
‘Titanium?’
She blinked. ‘Yes. But how di
d you know?’
‘The matches your husband was using.’
‘So you saw them, too?’
I didn’t tell her I’d also found the empty matchbook on the floor near the door where he might have made his final exit. ‘I did. What kind of club is it?’
‘Leather. S&M. Swingers. All of the above, and mostly mixed together.’
‘You’ve been—?’ I started to ask, but the look on her face was a conversation-stopper. ‘On another subject, I know Mr Potter seemed to be having some sort of dispute with that young man, Danny. Has he been bothering you, as well?’
‘You mean earlier tonight? Or I guess it would be last night, now.’
I nodded.
‘Honestly? Yes. He wanted to know when Larry came up with the concept for the book.’
I didn’t want to mention Carson, so I said, ‘I heard Danny ask Mr Potter about the manuscript he sent him. Does he think your husband somehow stole his idea?’
‘Of course. As if “boy meets girl, boy does girl and then both do everybody else in sight” is a ground-breaking development in human sexuality.’
‘So you saw his manuscript?’
‘Whose?’
‘Danny’s.’
‘No, of course not. How would I do that?’
‘I thought your husband might have showed it to you.’
‘Larry and I share very little these days, including a bed. And by my choice, before you ask.’
Interesting. Yet the woman had taken the trouble to ‘surprise’ her guest-of-honor husband and seemed to have a considerable number of jealous bones in her body. A case of ‘if I can’t have him, nobody will’?
I said, ‘You mentioned “boy meets girl,” et cetera as the idea Danny thought your husband stole. How did you know what his manuscript was about if you didn’t see it?’
‘The naive boy told me about it, of course. In return for this stunning revelation, I assured him his ground-breaking concept was safe.’ Audra Edmonds shrugged and closed her eyes, seeming to lose steam. ‘Believe me, Larry’s book died with him.’
TWENTY-NINE
When Boyce returned from outside, he insisted on re-taking the watch from Pavlik. The sheriff slipped into the aisle seat and put his arm around me.
