Strangers on a Train (8 page)

Personally, I wasn't sure that finding illegal drugs among someone's possessions counted as “no real evidence.” But it was pretty obvious that Fred had latched on to the incident and was planning to milk it for all it was worth and then some.

“You could be right,” I said. “Then again, there have been some odd things happening on this cruise. Maybe this Sanchez guy had something to do with all that.”

“Huh?” Fred looked confused. “What odd things?”

“You know—like the jewelry store getting robbed, and the chandelier falling in the theater,” I prompted. Okay, so I already knew that Vince and Lacey had sabo­taged the chandelier. I figured it would still be interesting to see his reaction.

“I thought they caught the robber, didn't they? And I heard the chandelier thing was some kind of accident.” He chuckled. “Actually, I'm not convinced the thing actually fell at all. Figured Merk the Jerk just felt like lounging by the pool for a few more days instead of doing an honest night's work.”

He was already glancing back toward the room behind him. But I wasn't ready to let him go just yet. “There was an accident on the mini-golf course, too,” I said. “An antler came off that big fake moose.”

“Really? Wow, didn't hear about that one. Were any employees hurt?”

“No, no employees were nearby.” I didn't bother to tell him that
I
was the one the antler had almost landed on. Unless he was a better actor than I thought, I was pretty sure this was the first he was hearing about the incident.

“Crazy.” He rubbed his chin. “Guess being friends with the assistant cruise director gets you all the gossip, huh? But listen, you can tell your friend Becca that John Sanchez wasn't involved in any of that stuff. He's a good kid.” He glanced over his shoulder again. “Now if you'll excuse me . . .”

“Sure.” I watched as he hurried back into the meeting room. I wasn't ready to take Fred's word that the busboy couldn't be our culprit. He had too much to gain by insisting that Sanchez had been wrongly terminated.

As for Fred himself? Now that I knew why he was really on the ship, his suspicious behavior didn't seem so suspicious anymore. I was pretty sure I could cross him off the suspect list.

“Now this is traveling in style!” George exclaimed, settling back against her comfortable seat. “Where else can you sit on your rear end and get views like this?”

“No argument there,” I said. “But you're going to give me a shot at the window seat sometime, right?”

George grinned. “Maybe. If you're nice to me.”

We were aboard the train that was carrying us from Anchorage to Denali National Park. It was definitely a different experience from the train ride in Skagway. This train was a sleek, modern double-decker. We were on the top level, which featured two double rows of seats and enormous windows that offered an uninterrupted panoramic view of the scenery we were passing. The bottom level held the dining cars.

Alan leaned over from his seat beside Bess across the aisle. “Aren't you glad I talked you into coming, Nancy?” he whispered. “You wouldn't have wanted to miss this just to stay on the boat and keep an eye on you-know-who.”

I glanced around to make sure nobody was listening. Luckily, all the nearby passengers were glued to their windows and paying no attention to our conversation.

“Yeah, you were right, Alan,” I said. “I'm glad we're all here.”

It was true. As it turned out, all my suspects except Max were going to be on the land tour. Well, and Fred—he'd stayed behind on the ship too. But when I'd told the others about my encounter with him, they'd agreed with my decision to cross him off the list. Becca had said she'd keep an eye on Max while we were gone, so I'd decided it wasn't worth leaving someone behind, especially for such a weak suspect.

Thinking about that reminded me that we'd been on the train for at least an hour, and I hadn't done a thing except admire the scenery. “Think I'll stretch my legs for a bit,” I said, standing up.

“Good plan,” George said, snapping a photo as the train rumbled over a bridge crossing a scenic river. “We've still got a long way to go.”

I nodded. The trip to Denali would take about eight hours. That should give me plenty of time to check out all the suspects onboard. I'd already seen that Wendy and Hiro were in our car, and I figured Scott and Tatjana couldn't be too far away—most of the
Arctic Star
people seemed to be seated in the same section of the train.

Heading up the aisle, I came to Wendy first. Good. The blogger still wasn't my favorite suspect, and I was hoping I could cross her off my list with a few key questions. I mean, sure, maybe writing about odd happenings on the cruise could drive more viewers to her blog. At least, it had seemed like a decent motive when we were only talking about falling moose antlers and similar incidents. But it just didn't seem like a good enough reason to aid and abet a jewelry store robbery.

“Hey,” I said, pausing beside her seat. “Enjoying the scenery?”

“Sure. What's not to like?” Wendy grinned up at me and patted the empty seat beside her. “Want to hang for a bit? Tobias's dad is sitting here, but he just left to take Tobias for a walk to see the rest of the train. Guess the kid was getting restless.”

“Thanks.” I sat down and glanced across the aisle, where Tobias's mother was staring out the window with her camera in hand. “So you're sitting with Tobias and his family, huh?”

“Yeah, we were talking last night at dinner, and they invited me to hang with them today,” she replied. “They had an extra seat, and I didn't want to get stuck with some stranger.” She barked out a laugh. “Anyway, they're cool, even if Tobias is kind of a pain. He's been freaking out about Hazel.”

“The spider?” I couldn't help a slight shudder.

“Uh-huh. Their room steward is taking care of the thing back on the ship while they're gone, and Tobias is afraid she'll get squashed or something.” She grinned. “Maybe Hazel should've tagged along. She could have had my seat. Now
that
would be a photo worth posting on my blog!”

I smiled. “Speaking of your blog, I bet all your readers will love reading about your adventures in Denali.”

“Yeah, I hope so.” A shadow passed across Wendy's face. “They're not exactly flocking to read about the trip so far.”

“Really?” Apparently things hadn't picked up since I'd last talked to her, a couple of days earlier.

“Uh-huh.” She picked at the back of the seat in front of her. “I was really hoping that blogging this trip would grab me some attention out there. You know—get some buzz going, maybe attract some advertisers or get me some paying gigs, whatever. Make this writing thing happen, you know?”

“Actually, I don't know that much about how blogs work,” I said. “Do you mean you're hoping someone will want to pay you to turn your blog into a book or magazine article or something?”

“That would work.” She cracked a rueful smile. “But really, I was just hoping maybe one of my posts might go viral. If it's big enough, something like that can lead to TV interviews or whatever, and then from there, who knows?”

“Oh.” I wasn't sure what to think. It sounded as if Wendy was doing everything she could to succeed at this blogging thing. Would that include helping a thief?

“Yeah, so here I am in this supercool place—” She sighed and glanced out the window. “And I still can't get anybody to pay attention. I'm starting to think this trip was a big, fat, expensive mistake.”

“My friends and I won the cruise in a contest,” I said. “I guess I didn't really think about how much it must cost.”

“Let's put it this way,” Wendy said. “My cousin works for one of the big travel websites and got me a serious discount. And I
still
had to sell my car to pay for it.”

“Ouch.” So much for crossing Wendy off the list. In my experience, desperate people sometimes did desperate things. And based on what she was saying, Wendy was as desperate as they came.

“Wah, wah, let me play the world's tiniest violin, right?” Then she wiggled her shoulders, as if shaking off her gloomy thoughts. “What will be will be, as they say. Anyway, look at me, spilling my guts to someone I just met, like, a week ago!” She laughed. “Sorry about that.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I understand how money ­troubles can get you down.”

“Yeah. But when you get right down to it, I'm lucky I get the chance to, like, follow my bliss. That's enough reason to stay optimistic, right?” She grinned. “And hey, the trip's not over yet. Who knows, maybe somebody'll get eaten by a grizzly bear and I'll be there to document it!”

I noticed Tobias and his father making their way down the aisle. “Looks like your seatmate's back,” I told Wendy. “I should go.”

“Okay. But hey, thanks for listening.”

“Anytime.” I got up, exchanging greetings with Tobias and his father as I passed them.

Then I wandered up toward Hiro's seat. I'd been just about ready to cross Wendy off the suspect list, but this changed everything. Was it time to move her to the top?

Hiro was deep in conversation with another passenger. Not wanting to interrupt, I kept moving past his seat, planning to check the next car for Tatjana and Scott.

Before I reached the door, Alan caught up with me. “Hey,” he said. “Glad I caught you. We heard we're about to pass through an area where you can sometimes see moose grazing in a field right along the train tracks! Come check it out.”

“Oh. Um . . .” That did sound cool. But I wasn't really in the mood for wildlife watching.

But I should have known better than to protest. Alan wouldn't take no for an answer. Before I knew it, I was heading back toward our seats.

When I got there, I saw that George had moved across the aisle to sit with Bess. “What are you doing over there?” I asked.

George shrugged. “Bess had better snacks,” she said. “Anyway, this is your chance to snag that window seat for a while.”

“Good point.” I glanced at Alan. “You don't mind, do you?”

“Go for it.” He waved a hand toward the seats.

I sat down by the window, and he took the seat beside me. For the next few minutes we watched for moose, but there was no sign of them.

“So where are the meese?” George asked, sounding impatient.

“Guess they're not out today,” Alan said.

“Don't worry,” Bess put in. “Even if we don't see any now, everyone says we'll see tons of them on our tour through Denali tomorrow. The wildlife viewing is supposed to be spectacular there.”

“Cool.” George grinned. “Think I'll get to pet one?”

“I don't think that's such a good idea,” Bess said. “Moose actually injure more people in Alaska every year than grizzly bears.”

“Really?” George sounded skeptical. “Where'd you hear that?”

“It's one of the fun facts in the brochure about this land tour,” Bess said. “Didn't you read it?”

After a bit more bickering, the cousins went back to peering out their window, while Alan and I did the same. The two of us chitchatted about the scenery we were passing. But soon I was feeling restless again. The clock was ticking, and I didn't want to miss my chance to check out our suspects while we were all trapped on the train together.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Think I'll go explore the train a little.”

“No way, you can't leave now,” Alan said with a grin. “We might still spot those moose!”

“No, seriously.” I lowered my voice. “I want to go have a look around, if you know what I mean.”

His eyes widened. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “Wait—do you have a new lead or something? Did one of the suspects do something suspicious?”

He was whispering, sort of. But his voice still seemed way too loud. “Shh,” I cautioned, hoping the people in the seats nearby weren't paying attention.

“Oops. Sorry.” He pressed a couple of fingers to his mouth, pretending to lock his lips shut. “But seriously,” he whispered. “If you need help . . .”

“No, it's okay.” I sighed and leaned back in my seat. “Actually, it can probably wait.”