Shadows on the Train (7 page)

Clackety-clack!
Mrs. Chewbley's knitting needles swooped and dove.

“Knitting soothes me,” she explained cheerily as I shoved aside the chocolate creams and romance novels she'd dumped harum-scarum on the other armchair. “Goodness, that assistant head conductor was so
very
bad tempered. My, my!” The piano teacher wagged her head, dropping at least one hairpin onto her shoulder.

I surveyed Mrs. Chewbley's clothes, including the red flannel nightgown, which a good percentage of the train passengers had viewed earlier on the platform. Privately I agreed with Madge. Mrs. Chewbley was far too disorganized to be a chaperone. She sure was fun, though.

I was about to hint that a chocolate cream would be nice about now when a piercing whistle shrilled, followed by a snappish “All aboard, if it's not asking too much!” in Beanstalk's aggrieved tones. Suddenly the Gold-and-Blue was gliding from the station.

Now that we were actually leaving, I had an achy yearning for one of Mother's tearful hugs. Soon there'd be miles between us! I couldn't even do math that high.

I shoved open Mrs. Chewbley's window and peered up and down the platform. The Gold-and-Blue's gleaming cars stretched on either side of me: three locomotives, one baggage car, three coaches, two observation cars with panoramic glass domes, eleven sleeper cars like this one, and the rounded, mostly window, lounge car at the rear, for relaxing in and watching the miles slide away.

“Mother!” I yelled. An ocean of people waved back. I got dizzy peering among them. Where was Mother? It was like a
Where's Waldo?
scene
.
Only I'd never single her out. I didn't have time.

I did, however, have volume. “Mother!” I belted out. “MOTHER!”

“Dinah!” She pushed out of the crowd and blew kisses at me. Jack grinned and gave me the thumbs-up.

I waved vigorously at both of them. Heck, I'd miss Jack so much I wasn't even suspicious of him.

Well, not for now, anyway.

The train slid farther out of the station. Mother's red-and-white-checked dress shrank to a pinkish blot. I started to withdraw from the window.

Started to—and then I saw him.

Bowl Cut.

He was pelting alongside the train, hands fisted, cheeks fiercely puffing in and out, straight bowl-cut locks flapping around his head.

He stretched out a hand, grabbed a door handle and swung himself
splat
! against the train. Forcing the door open, he jammed himself and a plaid knapsack through.

Chapter Nine

The Elusive King: Elvis? An Elk?

The next morning, the Gold-and-Blue wound through the icy slopes of the Rockies. In the bright sun, their peaks burned a blinding white against the pure blue sky. We craned our necks to see the view out the dining car window.

“To the artist Yves Klein, blue was the color of infinity,” Madge mused dreamily.

Just then a waiter presented us with breakfast, and Mrs. Chewbley, Pantelli, Talbot and I were more interested in tucking back fluffy scones, swirled butter and raspberry jam than hearing about art.

Madge dipped a fork into her own breakfast, if you could call it that: grapefruit and melon wedges. “I might do a whole canvas in blue someday,” she said. “I've never done abstracts before, never wanted to, till now, seeing the Rocky Mountain sky…”

“There's a song in that somewhere,” Talbot said. With the prongs of his fork, he carved a treble clef and bars into the crisp, thick navy of the tablecloth. And then some quarter notes. “Under a Rocky Mountain sky, I bid my darlin' good-bye,” he sang softly.

Pantelli smothered a scone in jam. “But why would you bid your darlin' good-bye?” he asked, ever the analytical scientist, before cramming the scone in his mouth all at once.

“Yeah,” Talbot conceded. “It's a sappy lyric. Besides, if I liked someone that much, I wouldn't bid her good-bye.”

He glanced at me. Madge noticed and gave me yet another of her knowing, older-sisterly smiles. So
annoying
. I changed the subject.

“I questioned Beanstalk and the other conductors this morning,” I announced. “They swear up and down that they haven't seen a bowl-cut passenger aboard.”

Madge shook her head at me. “I'm relieved to hear that, Dinah. But I wish you wouldn't go around
grilling
train staff. It's so uncouth.”

Talbot and Pantelli traded grimaces. Translation: Brace yourself for another Galloway sister spat.

The know-it-alls.

“Sorry to have embarrassed you by grilling the staff,” I told Madge, who set down her grapefruit spoon and viewed me with astonishment.

Stunned silence all round. “Maybe this is an alien disguised as Dinah,” Pantelli choked.

“Yeah, like in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
,” nodded Talbot. He sounded genuinely frightened.

I took advantage of Talbot and Pantelli's statue-like stares to steal extra scones from their plates. Madge was being statue-like as well, but needless to say I left
her
plate alone.

Out the window, I watched a doe and her white-speckled fawn snack on bluebells sprouting out of the snow. Had I just imagined that Bowl Cut actually made it through the train doors?

After breakfast we headed along to the games and library car. It had rows of booths whose tabletops were imprinted with chessboards. There was also a rack of books you could borrow.

Madge settled into a plush gold seat to sketch the mountains that were flowing past like endless vanilla sundaes. Pantelli produced Treevial Pursuit, at which Talbot and I quickly suggested climbing the stairs to the observation dome.

The domed ceiling and windows curved round us, giving us a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the mountains. Also giving us the impression we were hurtling through the air, with no train around us. Pantelli made four pre-barfing noises. A four-barfer: wow. That proved it. The dome was better than the Sears Tower in Vancouver.

It occurred to me that I should suggest Pantelli exit the observation dome, but then the train angled down a steep hill and I forgot. Squashing my face against the front bubble window, I felt like an eagle, soaring past the snowy peaks, over the scarlet wildflowery slopes.

We plunged down an even steeper slope. “Way cool,” Talbot exclaimed. He was doing the same squashed-face routine against the glass. He stretched out his arms and made
vroom!
noises followed by spluttering ones. “We're planes with engine trouble. Whoa, we're falling straight down the mountaaaiiiinnn…!”

“Ker-ash!” I shouted. I removed my sweater and tossed it on a nearby seat, the better to free up my arms for enjoying the plane-in-peril experience.

“BLEECCHH.”

Pantelli was barfing into the lid of his Treevial Pursuit box. “I knew coming up to the observation dome was a mistake,” he said glumly.

A rubbery, stem-like forefinger zoomed toward Pantelli's face. “
You
are a mistake,” Beanstalk informed him, in a tone dripping with icicles.

All three of us jumped. Beanstalk sure moved stealthily, like some sort of mobile elastic band.

Sniffing, the conductor surveyed Talbot and me with equal scorn. “Plane trouble, indeed. More like
brain
trouble.”

Beanstalk ordered everyone out of the observation dome. “Evacuate!” he commanded pompously. “Cleaning crew!” he called down the stairs.

“But I aimed and shot squarely in here,” Pantelli objected, showing Beanstalk the box lid and its, er, contents.

Back in the games car, we jammed into the booth with Madge and jabbered about Beanstalk's unreasonableness. “A tiny barfing incident,” I complained.

Talbot, grimacing down at the lid Pantelli was holding out, said, “Maybe it's time to get rid of that. I'm not sure we need forensic evidence.”

Madge was occupied in staring at her laptop, which she'd plugged into an Internet outlet. “No messages from Jack,” she said mournfully, as Pantelli trotted off to drop the box lid in a garbage can. “I can't understand it. I mean, we've now been apart for seventeen hours and twenty-three minutes. This isn't like Jack.”

Talbot, Pantelli and I shrugged at each other. These lovebirds were a whole different breed. “Repeatedly clicking
Get Mail
won't help,” I advised Madge.

“Tons of messages from Mother and Geneva Rinaldi, though.” Madge clicked on one. “They've appointed eight new bridesmaids. Here's what Geneva says: ‘Matilda French of Charlottetown insists on lime green bridesmaids' dresses, the better to show off her new, Emerald City-themed arm tattoos.'”

With a sigh, my sister took up her sketchpad again. I slid her laptop in front of me to check my own e-mail. Specifically for an update from Mother about Ardle.

He's too weak to do more than mumble, but his
color's improved
, she'd written
. The doctors are hopeful.

I bashed out a message to Mother with questions to ask Ardle.
Make him tell you who the king is,
I wrote.
And no,
I don't want to explain what I'm talking about.

Talbot and Pantelli had got chess pieces from a steward and were already jockeying pawns and knights on the chessboard tabletop. “Wanna play?” Talbot invited. “You and I could take on Pantelli, master chess player of Lord Bithersby elementary.”

“No, that's okay,” I said. Chess, I thought. That involves a type of king. But Ardle could have been referring to almost anything. Chess king, card king—even Alaska king crab. Maybe Ardle was chasing a valuable recipe!

But there was no chess piece, card or recipe in the envelope, I reminded myself. Which brought us back to the elk stamp. Was the elk possibly considered the king of the Canadian north?

Right, Dinah. The
elk
.

Still, you never could be sure. I Googled “elk” and “stamp.”

Did you mean the Elvis Presley Commemorative Stamp?
Google asked helpfully.

“I have no idea,” I replied out loud in a cross voice. Elvis: another king I hadn't thought of.

Talbot and Pantelli, engrossed in their game, didn't hear. Madge, doodling wildflowers in her sketchbook, cast me a brief sad-eyed glance. She had the Jack blues. Noticing that I'd typed “elk,” she began drawing one. A sad-eyed one. Obviously if Madge had to feel lovelorn, so did the animal kingdom.

Thoughtfully, I drummed the sides of the laptop to the beat of “Black Socks.” Couldn't figure out who or what the eighty-thousand-dollar king was, but a blazingly bright idea was occurring to me about what I could do for Madge. A Good Samaritan act, you might say.

I called up Gmail.
[email protected]
, I typed in.

I knew my future brother-in-law's password, not through any sneaky means, but because Jack himself had given it to me. Earlier in the summer, Mother had banned me from using my own e-mail address, [email protected]. Too many complaints from neighbors about the helpful hints I'd been sending on theft and fire prevention, recycling dos and don'ts, emotional health and well-being—you name it, I'd probably covered it.

One day, when I was hanging out at the Spotted Owl Advocacy Committee office, I'd informed Jack that I was in utter agony from e-mail deprivation. I had, I absolutely
had
, to let Talbot and Pantelli know I'd found the newest Deathstalkers comic at our favorite store, Komix R Us.

“You could phone Talbot and Pantelli,” Jack sug–gested.

“Phone?! Please. That's so-o-o-o last century.”

Jack, busy photocopying some rally notices, told me to use his e-mail. “My password's ‘Madge,'” he flung over his shoulder.

Madge
. How drearily predictable for a lovebird, I thought at the time and again now, typing it in on the Gold-and-Blue.

My plan? A sickly sweet love message from Jack to Madge. Just the ticket to cheer Madge up, I decided.

Hmmm. Treacly. I wasn't really into that. But wait, there was that Elton John love song. I could borrow liberally from that:

I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world.

Pretty sickening. Yup, Madge would love that.

Quoted adoringly for my true love, Madge Galloway,
by her heart's desire, Jack French
, I finished off and pressed
Send
.

I then took a minute to scan Jack's in-box. Curiosity was healthy, in my view. A true sign of an optimist, eager to find out what's around life's next corner.

I recognized all the sender names: mostly Madge, and Jack's colleagues on the Spotted Owl Advocacy Committee. I was preparing to exit when my gaze fell on a non-colleague name.

Veronica LaFlamme.

LaFlamme, I thought. The person who'd prevented Jack from coming to see Madge the other day.

The subject line beside Veronica's name read
Tried
calling you today, but…

I never could resist a
but
. Pushing aside what shreds of conscience I had about trespassing, I clicked on the message.

…some kidlet answered. I remembered your warning
about an inquisitive redhead, so I hung up. I didn't want
her to alert Madge to my existence.

I glared at the screen. Veronica LaFlamme was Peanut-Butter Voice! I
knew
that was a voice not to be trusted.

With growing horror, I read on.

I understand that you'd want to keep things between
us a secret until you break the news to Madge
.

Just as I'd feared. Jack was two-timing Madge!

Now that I had confirmation, I almost couldn't believe it. I sat and stewed, muttering out plans to draw and quarter Jack, among other slow-death punishments, until Madge glanced up from her elk sketch. “Why the scowl, Dinah?”

“I…um…” I could hardly admit to my sister that I'd been snooping in her fiancé's e-mail. However, I might as well start conditioning her to the single life right now.