February Fever (12 page)

Twenty-Seven

“It's all in the
details.”

Apparently, Chad was a great fan of
Attenborough PI
and couldn't get enough of Doghn Attenborough. I didn't mind. It saved me having to make small talk.

“But how'd you know the body was in the suitcase?” Chad asked.

Doghn pointed at his eyes. “It was the way he squared his knees before he grabbed it, like he knew it was going to be heavy. Then, that little jerk just before he got it off the ground. I'm telling you, you pay close attention and expect to find what you're looking for, and the world opens up to you.”

Chad was so starstruck that he hadn't even cut into his steak.

Doghn, however, had no such compunctions. He jabbed his fork at Chad's sirloin. “Are you going to finish that?” He had his napkin tucked into his shirt, was on his second entrée, and had already ordered dessert. The guy liked his food.

“Maybe you should try the lemon dill cod,” Mrs. Berns suggested. “Mira enjoyed it last evening. Said she'd never forget it.”

I kicked her under the table. She and I had stuck with bread and salad tonight. Both were delicious, surprisingly. I wondered if fresh supplies had been loaded back in Glendive.

“So,” I interrupted, curious what version he would tell, “how'd you come to hear about the missing person case on this train?”

Doghn patted his mouth with his cloth napkin before letting it drop against his chest. “Luck and a police radio. I was driving to the same conference as you in Portland when I heard the call come in.”

“Driving?” Mrs. Berns asked. “I thought you said you live in Michigan.”

“Only a fool would trust their life to an airplane.”

Dang it. There's nothing worse than finding out a weirdo has the same neuroses as you. Makes you look crazy. How many PIs were afraid to fly, anyhow? Were all of us touched?

“Where's your car?” I asked.

“By now, back at the rental station. AmeriTrain agreed to return it for me and supply me train accommodations in exchange for my services.”

“And for keeping this case off your TV show?” Mrs. Berns asked.

Doghn allowed her a small smile. “The AmeriTrain corporate offices and I came to the mutual agreement that it would be best if this case was solved quickly and quietly.”

“If you're going to go missing, the best place to do it is on a train full of PIs, I bet,” Chad said. “That little girl and her dad won't be gone for long.”

I wondered how much Chad knew about Sofia Ramos's death, or Steve Nunn's murder back in Fargo, for that matter. It'd be a stressful train ride for any civilian who discovered the truth. Doghn either wasn't worried about how much everyone else knew, or he didn't care.

“If they're even on the train anymore, which I suspect they aren't. Before we arrived at dinner, I received word from my connections that the prisoner who escaped has confessed to shooting his accomplice back at the Fargo train station. He claims no such responsibility for the death of the woman in Car Eleven. I suspect she died of a heart attack, and that her male companion was involved in some sort of illegal activity that wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. He and the child could be crossing into Canada by now.”

My eyes shot to Chad. Would all this talk about death throw him off his meal? No such luck.

“Two dead bodies! People are whispering about that stuff on the train, but I didn't know whether to believe them. How cool!”

Mrs. Berns elbowed me and pointed her fork at him. “This is a quality you should look for in a man. He doesn't mind corpses.”

“When I was in high school,” Chad said, continuing as if he hadn't heard her, “we had some satanic killers in town. At least that's what the newspapers said they were. Four killings in a year, all local teenagers, all their bodies found in the middle of a pentagram.”

I didn't like the hungry look in his eyes. “Did they catch the killer?”

He glanced down at his steak before looking back up at me. “No.” His face was expressionless. I hid my shiver.

“You can have my steak,” Chad said, sliding it over to Doghn. The train lurched, and a splash of blood from the rare meat spilled onto the table.

“Ooh-ooh!” Doghn cried. “Don't waste the juices!”

And just like that, I lost my appetite. I signaled to the waitress and asked for as many desserts as I was allowed, planning to bring them to Jed, and stood to excuse myself.

“Not without me, you aren't,” Mrs. Berns said, throwing her napkin over her salad. “We've got activities planned for tonight. Remember? The beauty parlor, then a painting class in the viewing car. This is still the Valentine Train, after all. Let's roll!”

I sighed so deeply that my breath reached my toes. I felt guilty about my earlier whining, though, so I kept my peace about these planned activities. “Let me run this dessert to Jed, and I'll meet you for the makeovers. What car?”

“Six. They're labeling it the Love Car. Bottom level, same place as the dance last night. You remember the dance, right?” She smiled. I could see how much effort she was expending not to make a joke at the expense of Chad and me. I appreciated it.

“Meet you there in twenty.” I left ahead of her, wriggling my way through the cars. People were surprisingly subdued, eating their home-brought meals, settling into the chairs, engrossed in their technology, books, or companions. It was nice, but I wondered what it'd be like if they all knew they'd been traveling with a murderer. Then again, who ever knows that? Murderers might be walking among us all the time. Our job is to focus on the good.

Jed wasn't in his seat when I got there, so I placed the cream puff, cheesecake, and flourless torte on his seat along with a note telling him where it had come from, though I imagined not knowing wouldn't slow him down. I then headed back toward Car 6 and Mrs. Berns but was slowed by a long line that had appeared in the viewing car, Car 7, in the five minutes since I'd passed through.

“What's the deal?” I asked the person in front of me.

“Free ice cream. An apology for putting us so far behind schedule.”

Given the traffic jam, I figured I might as well use the bathroom and wash up before continuing to my makeover. I descended to the lower level, where the restroom was located, but found another line holding me back. “More ice cream down here?”

The woman in front of me turned and smiled. “Yep. I don't know if it's worth the ten hours of my life AmeriTrain took back at Glendive, but it's better than nothing, right?”

True words. I nodded, and she returned her attention to her friend. They were debating whether there'd be more choices than chocolate and vanilla, and I was deciding if it'd be a better use of my time to stay in this line and get a bathroom
and
some free ice cream or to try navigating through the top floor line when I heard it.

“I aim to use the bullet in my own good time.” The voice was female, and angry. It had the same twang as the couple I'd heard arguing earlier. The Fargo shooter had already been caught and confessed, if what Doghn had said was true, but still. I wanted to lay eyes on this couple, with their strange wording and constant aggression.

I pushed my way back to the main level and stood on my tippy-toes. Lots of heads and shoulders. I strained to hear, hoping to catch more of their conversation and maybe figure out their dialect, but there was nothing. I was surrounded by men and women of all ages and sizes, as well as children. Unless the two spoke again, I'd have no way to pick them out of the crowd. Problem was, everyone was talking, making for a constant hum. I must have caught the previous snatch of conversation as the couple was walking right past the top of the stairs.

Frustrated, I snaked my way through the crowd, keeping my ears on high alert. I heard nothing suspicious, but I kept up the vigilance all the way to the lower level of Car 6, where I found Mrs. Berns just getting out of the makeshift beauty chair. I gasped.

“Do you like it?” she asked, fluffing her hair.

The new curls were nice, for sure. What I found alarming was the single eyebrow that looked like it had gotten trimmed with a machete and penciled in by a scared five-year-old. “What happened?”

The train gave one of its vigorous heaves. By now, everyone on the train was acclimated to the unsteadiness of the ride, and we all grabbed the nearest surface out of habit.

“Isn't it great?” Mrs. Berns indicated the jerky train. “It's like beauty roulette down here. You never know if you're going to walk away looking like you got a facial or a waxing. That's why I only got one eyebrow done. I don't want to have all the fun in a single night.”

She smiled at the stylist behind her and handed her a five-
dollar bill. “My friend Mira is next.” She turned back to me. “What's your poison? Eyelash dyeing? Adding bangs? A manicure?”

The train swayed vigorously, throwing Mrs. Berns into me. I had a flash of permanent freckles
à
la misplaced dye, the bang cut I'd given myself at age four, and fingernail polish all over my clothes. “I'll pass for today. But thank you.”

The stylist shrugged. Mrs. Berns and I got out of the way so the next brave soul could take the chair.

“How's Jed doing?”

I started toward the stairs, Mrs. Berns in tow. “Fine, probably. He wasn't in his seat, so I left the dessert. He's either getting high or getting a girlfriend, which are two of his favorite things.”

“I love that kid.”

“Me too.” I really did. Jed was one of the last innocents. A kinder heart I had never met. I vowed to spend more time with him on this trip. Back in Battle Lake, we didn't get nearly enough chances to hang out. Here, there were no excuses, and it belatedly occurred to me that I hadn't even heard his secret yet.

The painting class was scheduled to take place in the viewing car, though I figured there was no way they'd have room for us what with the ice cream giveaway crowd. However, when we arrived on the upper level of Car 7, it turned out that anyone who hadn't signed up for painting had been kicked out for the next hour. Mrs. Berns and I
eased into two seats near the rear of the car, as far away from Chad and Ms. Wrenshall as we could be. We accepted our aprons and settled in for instructions on acrylic painting.

It was pretty straightforward stuff. The thirty or so of us in the car were each given a canvas with a pencil sketch of a field of poppies on it. We were also handed a paper plate covered in dollops of red, yellow, green, white, and black acrylic paints. The sharp smell of the paint took me all the way back to elementary school art class. The instructor led us through the painting process step by step, demonstrating how to mix colors and apply strokes. We each had a plastic cup in our cup holders holding water and a variety of paintbrushes. We were allowed to paint in ten-minute increments before more instructions on the next step. Paint the stems, wait. Paint the petals, wait.

During the waiting period, when I didn't have anything to do, I became acutely aware that Ms. Wrenshall was flirting with Chad. They seemed as though they'd never met before because both had that awkward body language—one glancing at the other when they thought they weren't looking, and then blushing and glancing away when they did. I could only catch bits of their conversation, however. Chad seemed uncomfortable with whatever they were talking about, and Ms. Wrenshall batted her eyelashes and complained. I pulled my attention away from them and turned it outward, to the inky pregnancy of the impending storm. Even inside the car, the air had the electric smell of weather on its way. You grow up in Minnesota, you know what it feels like when a big one is about to hit. The sensation gets under your skin, and you want to both run away from it and toward it at the same time.

After twenty minutes, I got tired of the waiting and storm watching and went ahead and did my own thing with the poppies. Mixing the colors was my favorite part. A drop of yellow added to the red made the most vibrant blood orange color. Swirling and dabbing, I was able to give my flowers texture. If I held my brush lightly while painting the stems, they ended up looking more fibrous. Even the side-to-side motion of the train supported my vision, giving my strokes a natural inconsistency.

I was completely engrossed in the painting, and it was the best feeling. All the stress of the trip melted away while I concentrated. I
forgot that Chad and Ms. Wrenshall were in the room. I even forgot Mrs. Berns was right next to me. The whole world fell away as I dropped into the zone.

When my painting was complete—a glorious canvas of boisterous flowers and lush greenery—I dropped my paintbrush into my water glass and glanced around. Most people weren't even three-fourths finished with their paintings, though everyone wore similar intent expressions—except for Ms. Wrenshall, who was too busy looking at Chad's painting to work on her own.

“I'm going to use the bathroom downstairs,” I whispered to Mrs. Berns. I gazed at her painting for the first time since I'd fallen into the zone. The heat crawled up my cheeks. “What the helicopter?”

Rather than poppies, she'd covered her canvas with naked cherubs. At least, that's what I thought they were. They might have been pink piglets, though they were definitely all male.

Mrs. Berns raised her intact eyebrow. “It's art. I can do what I want.”

Distancing myself from her, I slipped out of my seat and pinballed my way to the stairs. The instructor flashed me a polite but distracted smile. I smiled back. Everyone else stayed focused on their artwork. Even Ms. Wrenshall was back at work. I was wondering if she was a professional cougar, and if Mrs. Berns had sensed it and that's why she disliked her, when I hit the next step down.

And saw Aimee.