February Fever (9 page)

Seventeen

The train gave a
loud heave and came to a stop with such force that I was tossed out of bed. Mrs. Berns fell on top of me with a
woof
.

“See?” she said groggily, stretching. “You sleep in the bottom bunk and stuff falls on you when we crash.”

She'd knocked the wind out of me, so I couldn't respond. When my breath returned, still wheezing, I squirmed out from under her and helped her to her feet. I made sure she was okay before I pulled aside the curtains. We were at a dead stop. It was early morning, the sun rising in a canvas of tangerines and lavenders. The geography was similar to North Dakota but with less evidence of recent precipitation—endless prairies covered in a fur of brown grass and patches of crusty-looking snow. The train coughed to life and lurched forward again, tossing me back into Mrs. Berns. It made a chugging, unhealthy sound, coasting slowly for a few more minutes before pulling into a station.

The brick building was similar to the one in Detroit Lakes, except for
Glendive
spelled out on its front in blue letters on white tile.

“Montana,” Mrs. Berns said from beside me. “Wonder why the crappy first stop before the station?”

“I wonder why the scream. Did you hear it? It came right before the train stopped.”

“Scream?”

Had I been imagining scary stuff again? I thought about peeking into the hall to find out if anybody else had heard anything. Ms. Wrenshall saved me the trouble. She yanked open our door, her face a clown mask of terror.

“Did you hear?” Her voice was a rasp of its former self. “There's been a murder.”

Eighteen

Mrs. Berns sighed and
slid her arm around me. “Sounds about right.”

I fell into my bed. I hadn't escaped my curse. The murders had followed me. My brain raced down every dark alley before I came to my senses. This wasn't about me. “Who was it?”

Ms. Wrenshall was not a woman who washed her make-up off before going to bed. That's what gave her the clownish look more than anything; that, and her fear. She pointed next door.

My heart stopped and I jumped to my feet. “Aimee? The little girl?”

Ms. Wrenshall shook her head. I leapt for the door and tried to push her aside, but a man roughly the size of a box car was standing there. He was wearing a blue suit and a conductor's hat. His face was grim.

He held out his hands out so I couldn't slip past him, then pointed behind me. “We're going to have to ask you to stay in your cabin. The police are on their way.”

“Please,” I begged. I couldn't lose her twice. “Was it the little girl? Was it Aimee?”

“I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to say.”

“Please.”

Something in my voice touched him, and his face softened. “Naw, it wasn't the little girl. It was her mother.”

My legs weakened. It was better news, but it was hardly good news. “Oh no. Where is Aimee? And her dad?”

The conductor's face tightened back up. “That's what we're trying to find out. Now please, you can help by staying out of the way.”

Ms. Wrenshall walked backward into her room, and Mrs. Berns pulled me into ours, closing and locking the door behind us. She sat me on my bunk.

“I know what you're going to say,” I told her, suddenly very tired. “You're going to tell me it's not my fault that someone was murdered on this train, that it's just a coincidence I was right next door. You're going to tell me I'm a good person, and the fact that bad things happen near me doesn't change that. Am I right?”

She swatted me upside the head. “Nope. You're dead wrong. Which, by the way, would be a fantastic nickname for you. ‘Dead Wrong.' Because you always find corpses, and you're usually wrong. But I digress. I was going to tell you that I don't believe in fault or fate. I believe in making the best of any situation you're in, and let the why of it be figured out above.” She pointed upward.

“On the roof of the train?”

She smacked me again. “By the Flying Spaghetti Monster. My point is that it's not our job to get caught up in stuff we can't fix. Our job is to take our lessons where they're delivered. So, you and dead bodies have a thing going. You could say that's bad.”

I raised my eyebrows. She held her swatting hand up as a warning. I dropped my eyebrows.

“Or you could say that it gives you the opportunity to help people, which you happen to be very good at. Just like I could say I'm old, or I could say I'm experienced. Ms. Wrenshall next door could say she's crazy, or she could say she's eccentric. We all have our quirks, and it's our job to build on our strengths rather than dwell on our weaknesses. So get over that quivering bottom lip and those tears that are thinking of falling, and do it now. You've got a murder to solve, and that little girl is going to need you to crack it quick-like.”

Nineteen

Mrs. Berns was right,
though I hated to admit it, and I certainly wasn't going to celebrate my corpse-luck. I was going to spend zero more time feeling sorry for myself, though, and I was going to do whatever I could to help Aimee. Unfortunately, the conductor kept watch outside the door and wasn't letting anyone near Aimee's room.

So I did what I could: I kept our door cracked, and I listened.

The EMTs arrived twenty minutes after the train stopped. They made quick work of bundling up the body. I heard one of them clearly say, “no visible cause of death.” My heart soared. Maybe it wasn't murder. Maybe Aimee's mom had died of a heart attack, or some other invisible disease. She was young for that, but it wasn't unheard of. But then, where had Aimee and her dad gone? That was weird.

I poked my head out when I heard the EMTs leave the room, but there wasn't much to see. The tight angles of the hallway meant that they couldn't use their gurney, so they had Aimee's mom's corpse in a black body bag, held between them. The conductor glared at me, so I ducked back in our room, but not before noting that Ms. Wrenshall was also peeking out of her doorway.

It wasn't until three hours later that we were brought breakfast, and another hour after that the Glendive Chief of Police showed up. He was not a Gary Wohnt, and for that I was grateful. He was around six feet tall, late fifties, built like Santa Claus with a hound-dog face. His blue eyes were kind. I'd spotted him coming through the crack in the door and so had time to shoot to my seat and pretend I was reading across from Mrs. Berns when he knocked at our door.

“Come in.”

He smiled at both of us, holding out a hand. “Bob Harris. I'm head of the police force here in Glendive, for what it's worth.”

His voice was deep and gravelly, perfect voice for a radio announcer. I liked him instantly. “Mira James. This is Mrs. Berns. Have you found Aimee and her dad?”

His lip twitched. “You don't waste time. Did you know the
family?”

“Just from the train ride,” I said. “We got on in Detroit Lakes, back in Minnesota. Aimee said they'd been traveling since New York.”

“That's right,” he said, glancing down at his notes.

Mrs. Berns coughed. “Was she murdered?”

I kicked her, but it was too late.

“Too soon to tell. Do you know this gentleman?” He held out a mug shot. The guy was lean and hungry-looking, with pockmarked skin and a sneer.

Mrs. Berns shook her head in the negative. I mirrored the gesture. “Do you think he's involved in whatever happened to Aimee's mom?”

His lips tightened. “Not directly. His body was found at the Fargo train station, near some abandoned cars. Two gunshots to the head, point blank.”

That information tried to sink in but was not having luck. “Wait, there've been
two
murders connected to this train?”

By way of answering, Chief Harris glanced back at his notepad. “You're on your way to the PI conference in Portland, aren't you, Ms. James?”

My eyes widened. I'd misjudged him. He might look like a kindly small-town sheriff, but he'd done his homework. I wondered how often he was underestimated. Probably made his job quite a bit easier. “I am. I'm not a licensed PI, though.”

He kept staring at his notes. I wanted to snatch them out of his hand. Did they say that I was a dead body magnet, possibly that I should receive a little extra scrutiny if a corpse showed up in my vicinity? Or maybe it was a blank sheet of paper, and good ol' Bob was just trying to get me to confess to killing the woman next door. Dammit. Silence was my arch enemy. I felt compelled to fill it. “There's another PI on this train, a licensed one. His name is Terry Downs.”

Chief Harris raised his eyes. He didn't appear particularly excited by my confession. “You don't say. What else can you tell me?”

Not much. We settled back into silence. I lasted all of twenty seconds. “Aimee reminded me of someone.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Who?”

I sighed. I had gotten myself in too deep. There was nowhere out but forward. “A girl who was abducted when I was five. Her name was Noel.”

Mrs. Berns visibly stiffened next to me. I'd never told her about Noel. What would have been the purpose?

“Do you think there's any connection?” Chief Harris asked.

I didn't, except for my failure: I had let the abductor take Noel, and now Aimee couldn't be found. I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. “No. But I'm worried for Aimee. Can you tell me if she's been located?”

He stared at me for an unblinking eon, and I recognized the steel behind the kindness of his blue eyes. He would do what he could to solve this. “She has not. Neither has her father. According to Ms. Wrenshall next door, you two were the last ones to see Aimee and her father. What time was that?”

I told him about the brief interaction outside their door last night, and everything else I could remember, which wasn't much. Mrs. Berns had little to add. After it was clear we had no more to offer, Chief Harris thanked us for our time and was about to step out when one last question occurred to him, almost as if it were an afterthought.

“Before I go, can I ask? Did you hear a scream last night?”

I nodded. “You mean this morning. Right before the train stopped just outside of Glendive.”

“No,” he said, his expression odd, “at two thirty-four this morning. Ms. Wrenshall said it woke her up, and she looked out into the hall. She saw you talking to a porter just outside the room where the dead body was discovered.”

Twenty

That yellow-livered tattle tale.

I tried to explain myself, even stooping to share the bad poops aspect of it, but I stumbled over my words. It sounded suspicious, even to my own ears, and I was on my side. Chief Bob Harris listened without expression, writing furiously. I was beginning to hate that notepad. After my story spilled out, he left, promising to return if he needed more information.

After he closed the door behind himself, Mrs. Berns began shaking her head.

“What?” I asked.

“I've heard confessions that sounded less guilty. Why'd you get so nervous all of a sudden?”

“Were you not sitting through all of that? Ms. Wrenshall fingered me as being outside Aimee's door around the same time as a scream, and the next day, Aimee's mom is found murdered? I look like a suspect!”

“Well, you sure do now. You also look like you're unnaturally poop-focused.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice. “You should probably hang onto Johnny. Your good qualities are not immediately apparent, you know what I mean?”

My heart sank because I did. I knew exactly what she meant. I was potentially in deep on this latest murder and disappearance, and I was trapped like a peanut in a can while suspicions swirled around me.

“You want to talk about that girl getting abducted when you were young?” Mrs. Berns asked.

Tears leaked out of the corner of my eyes. “Not much to tell. We were playing, and a man tried to get us into his car. Noel was in front of me, or I would have gone first and be the one who'd been stolen.”

She didn't respond. I finally looked up and saw tears on her face that matched mine. She didn't hug or lecture me, and I loved her for it. The train wasn't going anywhere and neither were we, so we settled into reading. I was periodically distracted by commotion outside our window—train staff being taken out by the police and led back in, passengers being brought out to smoke under guard, men in suits inspecting the train, peering into every crack. It was tense, but then it cleared out. No one entered or left our end of the train for about an hour, which is why the next movement on the platform caught my eye.

I glanced up. Mrs. Berns was asleep across from me,
Cosmo
open across her chest. Staring back outside, I couldn't identify what had drawn my eye from my book. It was going on late afternoon now, and shadows were falling across the platform. Then I saw it—two people, scurrying from the brush at the side of the track toward the train. Both figures were slight, but one could have been a child. Aimee? I jumped up, pressing my face into the glass, but the people were too far away. If they entered the train, they must have boarded at the caboose.

I fell back into my seat, heart hammering. That had definitely looked like Aimee and her dad, but my eyes and ears had played so many tricks on me the past twelve-plus hours. It could have been any two people—hobos, a couple who had slipped off for a rendezvous, workers who'd snuck to town and wanted to reboard before the police came back.

But what if it
was
Aimee and her dad?

If I told Chief Harris, it might make me look even more involved. Plus, Aimee might be in trouble. I could make it worse by narcing her out. I had just decided that my best bet was to keep my mouth shut until I got more information when a knock fell on our cabin door.

I jumped in my chair. Mrs. Berns snuffled awake.

“Yes?” I said, my hands clammy.

The door slid open. Ms. Wrenshall slipped in. She wore full make-up and looked far more composed than she had this morning.

“They're gone,” she whispered.

“Who?” I asked, my mouth downturned. I was cheesed at her for telling on me. I knew that wasn't fair, but I was low on care.

“The Glenlivet police.”

“Glendive,” I corrected her. “And I'm sure they're around somewhere.”

“No, I just saw them drive off. All of them. The parking lot is on the other side of the train, and I was out in the hallway, looking through those windows.”

Mrs. Berns leaned forward. “Out in the hallway, eh? When you were distinctly told to wait in your room? Say, I think I saw you slink into that room next door in the middle of the night last night, too.”

Ms. Wrenshall's eyes widened. “That isn't true!”

Mrs. Berns shrugged. “Probably not, but it'd make me feel good to tattle, like you did on Mira.”

Here's one way to identify a best friend: they'll act petty in your stead so you can take the high road. “Now, Mrs. Berns, that's not entirely fair. Ms. Wrenshall had to tell the truth when she was asked. But I wonder what else she saw last night?” I turned my attention to the woman at the door, clasping my hands. “Do tell.”

Her eyes glittered. She'd guessed this game. “So I tell you everything I saw to keep you from lying about my whereabouts last night?”

“Bingo!” Mrs. Berns said, smiling. “You're a lot smarter than you look.”

Ms. Wrenshall grimaced. “I'll tell you what I told the police. I heard a scream at two thirty-four this morning. It was such an unusual time that I remembered it: two, three, four. Anyhow, I'd been staring at the clock because my insomnia wouldn't let me sleep. I lay in my bunk, waiting for another scream, when I heard voices in the hall. I peeked through and saw you and that black porter talking. He went toward the back of the train, and you went toward the cabin where the murder happened.”

I choked on my own spit. “You told the police that?”

“It was the truth.”

“I had to poop!”

Mrs. Berns made a
tsking
sound. “Remember what we talked about? You really should broaden your conversational topics or people will avoid you.”

I was about to explode on her when I had a thought. “Wait,” I said to Ms. Wrenshall. “You didn't call for the porter last night?”

She pursed her lips. “Why bother? They never come after hours.”

But last night, when I'd nearly run into Reed outside my door, he'd told me she'd called for him.

Which made one of them a big, hairy liar.