Murder on the Orient Espresso (14 page)

This last soliloquy was delivered by Harvey, whose palm was dramatically placed over his checkered heart.

Sheesh. No wonder Broadway had spit him back out.

Pavlik held his hands up in twin stop signs. ‘I'm going forward to the locomotive to investigate. In the meantime, everybody please stay where you are.'

I touched Pavlik's arm. ‘Speaking of the engineer, are you at all surprised he didn't come to check on his passengers?'

‘I am. Though maybe he already has his hands full.' My sheriff looked grim as he continued on toward what was now the front – or east-facing – end of the train.

I went back the other direction, retreating to the club car, where Boyce was hoisting his espresso brewer back into place.

I helped him settle it on the bar and then leaned down to pick up the metal frothing pitcher. ‘You didn't get burned, did you?'

‘Not a bit, thank you. I'd finished brewing the last of the espresso and was letting things cool down. You need a hand there, Pete?' he called over to the young bartender.

Pete turned around from the closet behind his bar, a bottle in each hand. ‘No, I'm good. Luckily, we have reinforcements.' He raised the liquor over his head.

‘Something tells me we're going to need it,' I said. ‘Or at least some people will.' God forbid anyone think that would include me.

‘What happened?' the bartender asked. ‘Did one of the passengers pull the brake?'

‘The brake?' I repeated. The thought had never occurred to me.

‘Right here. I saw the thing when I boarded and asked about it.' Pete pointed to a cord dangling from the ceiling. At the end of it was a red ball and on the wall next to it a sign warned, ‘For emergency use only.'

‘Each car has one,' Pete explained. ‘But you're only supposed to pull it if someone gets caught in a door or dragged or something. The train stops right where you are – in its tracks.' He smiled at his railroad joke. Cute kid.

‘As we just did,' I said.

‘Correct.' Pete was straightening the bottles on the back bar. ‘So if the guy next to you is having a heart attack or something, it's the last thing you want to do because it could take even longer for help to come.'

I looked at the guy next to me, who happened to be Boyce. ‘I suppose that could be what happened.'

‘We'll find out.' He gestured toward the direction Pavlik had disappeared. ‘We're lucky to have some law enforcement with us, regardless.'

‘Amen,' I said. ‘Usually I have to deal with these things myself. Until the police or sheriff's department arrives, of course.'

Boyce shook his head. ‘So you've been in a lot of train derailments, too?'

I felt myself blush. ‘No, not really. Just the other … emergencies.'

‘Uh-huh.' Boyce glanced at Pete and apparently decided not to pursue the subject. At least for the time being. ‘Is everyone up front safe?'

‘So far as we can tell.' In truth, everyone I'd
seen
was all right. I couldn't be certain that all of the passengers were accounted for. Maybe it would make sense to take a roll call just to be sure.

‘Pavlik is going to check on the engineer,' I continued. Then I frowned.

‘What's wrong?' Boyce asked. ‘I mean, beyond the obvious.'

‘According to Missy,' I was already heading for the vestibule, ‘there's no inner connection between the locomotive and the passenger cars. The sheriff is going to have to go outside.'

‘Do you want—'

I didn't wait to hear the rest, letting the connecting door close behind me.

The dining car was empty, the rest of the group still congregated in the passenger car, chattering. Pavlik must have been delayed by further questions, because I was just in time to see him slip into the vestibule beyond.

Before I could catch up, he'd slid open the exit door and disappeared.

‘W
ait!'

Pavlik was standing on the gravel bed beneath and sloping away from the tracks. ‘What?'

The bed was narrow, but it was there, which was a relief. I'd imagined we were traveling on some sort of elevated trestle like that in the photograph of Flagler's ill-fated railroad. In actuality, though, our tracks were mere inches above the swamp.

This was good news because we needn't fear falling. Bad, because we were within serving distance of whatever creatures were making dinner plans.

At least, though, I thought as I jumped down after Pavlik, the warm rain had slackened to a steamy sprinkle. ‘Do you have your knife or, even better, your gun?'

‘Knife, yes. Gun, no. Why?'

‘There are alligators and pythons and, umm … lions.'

‘Lions?' Pavlik looked skeptical.

‘I may have that part wrong.' I was frowning again. ‘But definitely the rest.'

‘Well, then, stay close.' Pavlik was walking along the outside of the sleeping car toward the locomotive. ‘That way, if something drags me away, you can properly identify it for the local authorities.'

I scurried along behind. ‘Is it my imagination, or is that pitched down?'

‘You mean the front of the locomotive? Sure looks like it to me, too.' He grasped a vertical bar and swung himself up and into the already open door of the engine car.

‘You know,' I called up, ‘there are emergency cords in every car that can stop the train, if they're pulled. Maybe that's what happened.'

‘I noticed the cords,' the sheriff's voice came from inside the cab.

I shouldn't have been surprised. The man was aware of everything. And revealed nothing, damn it.

A hoarse
sqwaaak
pierced the air and hung there, followed by a series of raspy
wok
,
wok
,
woks
.

‘Shit!' I edged closer to the train. ‘It's like we're in a Tarzan movie.'

‘Funny you should say that.' His head appeared. ‘Apparently at least a couple of Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan movies of the thirties and forties were filmed somewhere in Florida. Legend has it that some of the rhesus monkeys used in the movies escaped. Supposedly it's their descendants that run wild here today.' Pavlik jumped down from the cab. ‘Cool, huh?'

Well, I certainly had goose bumps, if that confirmed his opinion.

The big front headlight of the train illuminated the Everglades in front of us, which was a good way to capture a black hole of nothingness. Oh, I could see water, scrub grass – sawgrass, presumably – and some sort of foliage, but nothing else except low, shapeless shadows as far as the light could pierce the gloom.

‘Holy mother of God,' a male voice said.

Startled, I saw the figure of a man standing next to the nose of the locomotive. I didn't remember noticing him earlier.

‘Oh, dear,' I said, sounding like Missy, even to my own ears.

Pavlik and I strode toward the man. Well, Pavlik strode. I scurried fearfully in his wake.

‘Jake Pavlik,' the sheriff said, sticking out his hand to the other man. ‘I assume you're the engineer. Nobody onboard seems to be hurt. What happened?'

The engineer turned. His name was ‘Theodore B. Hertel, Jr,' according to the embroidery that covered nearly the full width of the pocket on his bib overalls. It probably didn't improve my first impression of our train pilot that he shared a first name with my ex-husband, but his appearance didn't fill me with confidence either. The man looked close to eighty, and if the denim overalls had been striped and matched with a hat and red bandana, I'd have said he was in costume for the event. I only hoped he wasn't as ‘fictitious' as our bartender/Wagon Lit conductor, Pete. Or whatever his name was.

‘Did we derail?' I asked anxiously. ‘Or someone pull the emergency brake?'

Hertel shook Pavlik's hand, but virtually ignored me. ‘Well, sir, I certainly did pull on that brake my own self. Have to say, I'm glad to hear the people
in
side the train are OK.'

A shiver crawled up my back. I didn't like the way the engineer had said that, given that Pavlik and I were standing
out
side.

Was that banjo music I heard? In addition, I mean, to the feral monkeys and God knew what else.

Pavlik seemed unconcerned. ‘Looks like the track is flooded.'

The nose of the engine was tilted down and the tracks in front of it gone. Or at least submerged under water blacker than a crow's wing.

‘You're right about that, for sure,' Hertel said, rubbing his chin. ‘But I'm thinking that might be the least of somebody's worries.'

I put my hand on Pavlik's sleeve, trying to pull him away from the engineer who even
Missy
thought was ‘eccentric.'

‘What?' Pavlik glanced over at me. Hertel was watching me, too.

‘DoodooDOOdoo—' I tried shakily.

‘Maggy, use your mother tongue, please?' Pavlik went to shake off my hand.

‘Dueling banjos,' I hissed, hanging on. ‘Ned Beatty. Squeal like a pig?'

The engineer was eyeing me suspiciously. Hertel had abnormally long earlobes, like he'd been hanging heavy earrings on them for years and years. He pulled at one lobe, a more likely cause of the droop. ‘No, ma'am. That just ain't right.'

‘It's not?' I was backing away. Pavlik could fend for himself.

‘No, ma'am. It weren't
Dueling Banjos
. That was the name of the music. The movie was
Deliverance
. But I'm scratching my head wondering why you're trying to sing about anything when we've got this mess on our hands.'

Pavlik cocked his head, probably wondering which of his two companions was crazier. Then he turned to the engineer. ‘I'm a county sheriff up north, but I don't know a whole lot about trains or the Everglades. I assume from your exclamation that we're stuck pretty good?'

‘My “exclamation”?'

‘“Holy mother of God”?' I was trying to be helpful.

‘Oh, that. No, it weren't the flooded track got me down. I seen worse. It's that what sort of took me by surprise.' He pointed.

Pavlik and I both followed Hertel's index finger. On the other side of the dip in the tracks and not ten feet away from us was the biggest fucking snake I'd ever seen.

With a pair of custom-made wingtips protruding from its jaws, the knees and shoes flicking up and down in a primeval two-step.

‘H
oly mother of God!' I screamed, echoing the engineer's sentiments. Except I had more information to add: ‘It's Potter!'

Pavlik and Hertel just looked at me.

‘Those are Potter's legs sticking out of that thing.' Even as I said it, I was backing-pedaling as far and as fast as I could.

The snakes I was accustomed to sunned themselves in my flower bed. They were maybe two feet long and an inch thick and
they
scared the bejeebers out of me. This one … this one, it could be a whole different species. Not a snake at all. This monster was big enough to devour—

The limbs sticking out of the thing did a scissor-kick. ‘Oh-my-god, oh-my-god,' I said, as my back slammed into the locomotive. ‘He's still alive!'

‘Well, ma'am,' Hertel said, ‘I suppose that's possible. I didn't spot the snake until I climbed down to examine the tracks, but I think we've got us some kind of python. They like to squeeze their victims mostly to death and then swallow 'em whole to digest later. Sort of nature's doggy bag.'

I think I liked the guy better when I thought he was going to murder us. ‘Enough with the nature lesson!' I screamed. ‘Do something!'

Pavlik was already pulling the knife out of his pocket. He flipped out the blade and started forward. Then, over his shoulder, ‘Maggy, go get help from the train.'

I screamed ‘Help!' at the top of my lungs and forced myself to move away from the relative protection of the train's engine. I might be shaking like a leaf, but there was no way I was leaving Pavlik with only Euell Gibbons for back-up.

‘Can you tell how deep the water is?' I asked the sheriff as he waded in, knife in his hand.

‘To the bottom? I'm not sure. But I can feel the ties seven or eight inches below the water. I'm standing – and staying – on what's left of them.'

‘I'm coming with you.' What was I thinking? Clearly, I wasn't. The words were out of my mouth before I
could
think.

‘I appreciate the offer, but you're afraid of snakes, remember?'

I was, but then I used to be scared of spiders and mice too – things that my then-husband dealt with at home when we were married. If divorce has taught me anything, it's that a person is as brave as she needs to be.

I puffed out my chest. ‘Not anymore,' I said, hoping that saying it would make it true. I turned to Hertel. ‘You have anything I can hit this thing with?'

The engineer pulled a long flashlight from a loop on his belt. ‘This do?'

I took it, my hand sagging under the unexpected weight. ‘Geez, yeah. This should be good.' I was imagining hitting the snake with the flashlight and having it bounce off like a rubber mallet on a concrete block. ‘Listen, can you call for help?'

‘Happy to, though it'll likely just be coming from the train. Cell communication's down.'

Lovely. I had started to follow Pavlik, wondering what the hell we were going to do once we got there, when I heard Hertel again. ‘They say to stay away from the pointy end.' He chuckled. ‘I hear tell these big fellers don't like to be disturbed during supper.'

I'd been noticing that the snake wasn't moving much, other than sort of gulping. And keeping a wary eye on Pavlik and me.

The good news for us, if not for Potter, was that there really wasn't a ‘pointy end.' The snake's mouth was full – stretched impossibly like the thing had dislocated its jaw not only into two parts, top and bottom, but into four quarters in the effort to swallow a human being.