Strangers on a Train (6 page)

“Welcome home!” he exclaimed. “How was
Skagway?”

“Great,” Alan said. He started telling the butler all about
our day as we entered the suite.

I didn't hear much of what he said as I headed for my bedroom. My
stomach grumbled as I yanked open a dresser drawer. I was so busy puzzling over
everything that had happened that day that it took a moment for me to register that the
drawer was empty.

“Huh?” I mumbled, blinking at the sight. Hadn't I folded
and put away some shirts in there just that morning?

I opened another drawer above the first one, wondering if I'd stuck
the shirts in with my underwear by mistake. Stranger things had been known to happen
when I was distracted by a case.

But that drawer was empty too. I checked the other drawers—nothing
in any of them. In fact, the only clothes in my room were the ones I'd left in the
little built-in hamper near the door.

I stepped outside. The others had disappeared into their own rooms by
then, and Max was whistling a cheery tune as he swept the floor.

“Hey, Max,” I said. “Do you know what happened to my
clean clothes?”

“You mean the ones I sent out for laundering this morning?” he
asked brightly. “They should be back first thing tomorrow.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the dirty clothes spilling out of my open
hamper. “Which ones did you send out?” I asked. “Because my
hamper's still full.”

“I know.” Max shrugged and grinned. “You left me a note
right on the hamper, remember?”

“A note?” It had been a very long day since that early wake-up
call, and my mind felt sluggish, unable to deal with this new wrinkle. “What
note?”

“The one where you said you'd stuck your clean clothes in the
hamper and the dirty ones in the drawers, so I should be sure to send out the right
ones.” Max grinned and winked. “Most guests do it the other way around, but
I don't like to judge.”

I put a hand to my forehead. “You sent all the clothes in the
drawers out to be washed?”

“Yes.” Max's smile faded slightly. “Isn't
that what you meant by the note?”

“What note?” I said again. “Can I see it?”

“I threw it away.” He shrugged. “Why? Is there a
problem? I'm sorry if I misunderstood. . . .”

My mind spun, still refusing to take this in. I'd been pretty tired
that morning, but I knew I hadn't left Max any notes about my laundry. That meant
that one of two things was happening here. One of the possibilities was that Max was
lying to me—that there
was
no note. So he'd either
sent out the wrong laundry by mistake, or worse yet, on purpose. Was this just another
innocent error along with that messed-up wake-up call? Or should he be a suspect? My
mind shot from the laundry to the wake-up call to the note in my luggage, trying to work
out whether Max could be the accomplice I was looking for.

The other possibility was even more disturbing. Maybe the note was
real—which would mean someone had sneaked into our suite and planted it on my
laundry hamper. Who would do something so petty and weird? Somehow it didn't fit
in with the other incidents we were investigating.

“I'm so sorry, Miss Drew.” Max looked stricken now as he
realized how upset I was. “Did I do something wrong?”

His voice had risen, both in pitch and volume. Bess stuck her head out of
her room. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Not exactly . . .” I quickly outlined the
problem, with Max interrupting every few lines to apologize. He also offered to run down
to the shipboard shops and pick me up something to wear at his expense.

But Bess shook her head. “It's okay,” she told both of
us. “I've got plenty of clothes. Come on in, Nancy—you can borrow
something of mine.”

I smiled weakly. “Thanks,” I said, following her into her
room. “Sometimes it's nice having a friend who's a fashion
plate.”

The following day I awoke feeling rested and ready for anything thanks
to a nice dinner (in one of Bess's dresses) and a full night's sleep (in a
T-shirt and sweatpants borrowed from George). My doubly clean laundry was back by the
time I got up, plus Max had whisked off the stuff from the hamper, promising to get it
washed quickly.

The butler was acting so apologetic about the laundry mix-up that I was
starting to doubt my suspicions of him from the night before. I'd had a few
minutes to discuss those suspicions with Bess in hurried whispers while she was finding
me something to wear, and she'd seemed pretty dubious too. Still, we'd
agreed that it was worth adding Max to the suspect list. Why not? It wasn't as if
we were any closer to solving this thing.

After a leisurely breakfast, we joined most of the rest of the passengers
on the upper decks. The ship was cruising through Glacier Bay today, and we were all
expecting some spectacular views.

The scenery didn't disappoint. Soon everyone was oohing and aahing
over the jagged icy-blue-and-white glaciers surrounding us, framed by the majestic
snowcapped mountains rising in the distance. I even forgot about the case for a while.
Then I noticed Wendy wandering past, clutching her camera and her laptop, and it all
came crashing back. I bit my lip, wishing I could steal a few minutes to discuss my
latest thoughts with my friends. But I couldn't; not with Alan right there.

“Should we try the next deck down?” he asked, leaning over the
rail to snap another photo. “There might be better views down there.”

“Doubtful,” George said. “If you're bored, just
say so, dude.”

“I'm not bored,” Alan answered quickly. He shifted his
weight from one foot to the other. “I just don't want to miss
anything.”

“Tobias!” an irritated voice called out from nearby,
distracting me from whatever George said next. “Settle down, son. Let's not
bother the other passengers.”

Glancing that way, I saw Tobias swinging on a railing. His mother was
snapping pictures nearby, while his father glared irritably at the boy.

George was looking that way too. “Looks like you're not the
only one with a short attention span, Alan,” she said with a laugh.

“Ha-ha, very funny,” Alan answered.

Suddenly I had an idea. “Looks like Tobias's poor parents are
at the end of their rope,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “Too bad Hiro
isn't around to take him to get his energy out on the climbing wall. Especially
since there's probably nobody else there right now—he could go crazy on that
thing.”

“Good point, Nancy.” Bess turned her big, innocent blue eyes
toward Alan. “Maybe you should offer to take him, sweetie. I know you've
been dying to try the climbing wall.”

That was exactly what I was counting on. Alan had mentioned wanting to try
the ship's state-of-the-art rock-climbing wall several times, but as far as I
knew, he hadn't done it yet. Probably because Bess had no interest in such
things.

“Oh,” Alan said, glancing from Bess to the scenery and back
again. “Um, I guess that's not a bad idea. We could just go for a little
while—give Tobias's folks a break.”

“What a nice idea.” Bess squeezed his arm, turning on that
million-watt smile of hers that never fails to turn guys into jelly. “Why
don't you go suggest it to them? I'm sure they'd really appreciate
it.”

Moments later Alan and Tobias were disappearing into the nearest
stairwell. “Come on,” I told Bess and George, heading away from the crowds
at the rail. “We need to talk.”

Soon the three of us were huddled behind a stack of lounge chairs. I
started by filling them in on the previous day's chat with Becca and subsequent
encounter with Hiro, since this was my first chance to talk freely to them since then.
We discussed all that for a few minutes, though we didn't reach any new
conclusions.

“Did you tell George about your newest suspect?” Bess
asked.

“You mean Max?” I said.

“Max?” George said. “You're kidding, right? The
guy doesn't exactly seem like a hardened criminal.”

“I know,” I said. “But it's weird how he keeps
messing things up lately—and how it always affects me.”

“Paranoid much?” George rolled her eyes. “I mean,
seriously, Nancy—a botched wake-up call? Sending out the wrong laundry? This is
your evidence that he's up to no good?”

“I know, I know.” I glanced around to make sure nobody had
wandered close enough to hear us. “But what if he's been in cahoots with
that jewelry thief all along? He definitely had access to our luggage, which means he
could have left that nasty note in my suitcase on the first day. And maybe now
he's just trying to distract me however he can, hoping it'll throw me off
the case.” The argument sounded weak even to my own ears.

“Okay, there's that,” Bess said diplomatically.
“What about the rest of the suspect list?”

We went on to discuss our other suspects, including Wendy, Scott, Fred,
and Tatjana. Could any of them be the thief's accomplice? None of us could come up
with any compelling evidence for or against.

“It just doesn't quite add up, does it?” I said at last,
leaning against the stack of chairs and squinting up into the cloudless blue sky.
“We have a whole bunch of suspects, but not much solid evidence. Just vague clues
that could mean anything. We've been investigating for days, and it feels like
we're no closer to figuring out who could be the thief's
accomplice.”

George opened her mouth to respond. Before she could say a word, another
voice spoke up from behind us.

“Thief's accomplice?” Alan said. “What the heck
are you guys talking about?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Comic Relief

“ALAN!” BESS BLURTED OUT.

Alan looked over the stack of chairs. His forehead was creased in a puzzled frown. “What's going on?” he asked, looking at each of us in turn.

“Um . . .” George gulped. “We were just, ah, role-playing. That's it—we're actually super geeks, and we're really into, um, acting out famous true crimes from history. Now you know our secret—oh well, we're pathetic nerds.”

Alan shook his head. “Nice try.” He glanced at me. “I thought I was going crazy when I heard you talking to the assistant cruise director about clues and stuff. And now here you are again, discussing suspects and evidence and accomplices. . . .”

Uh-oh. Apparently Alan had overheard more than I'd thought yesterday morning. Added to his accidental eavesdropping just now? Well, it seemed the cat was out of the bag.

I took a deep breath, glancing at my friends. “I guess our secret's out. We'd better fill him in.”

“Fill him in?” George echoed cautiously. “Um, you mean . . .”

“The truth,” I finished for her. I was annoyed at myself for being so careless, letting him find out more than he should. But besides that? I was mostly, well, relieved. Now we wouldn't have to sneak around behind Alan's back anymore, which should make our lives—and the investigation—much easier. Maybe he'd even be some help.

“Okay, if you say so,” Bess said. She turned and took Alan's hands in hers. “I'm sorry we haven't been honest with you. It's only because Becca swore us to absolute secrecy. We didn't win this cruise in a contest. We were called in to look into some mysterious happenings. See, Becca knows Nancy from way back, and when she suspected someone was out to sabotage the
Arctic Star
 . . .”

From there, the three of us took turns telling him the whole story. Alan's eyes got wider and wider as we talked. When we finished, he let out a loud puff of breath.

“Wow,” he said. “This is insane!” He turned to stare at me. “And you're some big-time girl detective? I had no idea!”