Murder on the Orient Espresso(19)

The dining car was through the slider, just as Boyce had promised. Eight white-clothed tables with C-shaped banquettes faced the aisle, four on each side. At the far end of the car, another table held a sheet cake frosted to look like a man sleeping. A knife protruded from his chest and red decorating gel with sparkles had been used to simulate other slashes.

I paused to admire the effect. The knife was real and had a brown staghorn handle, reminding me of a three-piece set that my grandmother had passed down to me. I pulled the knife up a bit and, sure enough, there was the same ‘Hollow Ground Stainless Steel’ stamp as the blade of my set. I’d managed to trace those knives back to the fifties. Well after the era of the book, certainly, but nonetheless, I thought it was a nice touch.

More tapping, increasing in insistence. I replaced the knife, but then turned back to swipe my finger across the cake frosting on the culinary victim’s foot, where nobody would notice. I plopped the sweet icing in my mouth. It had been hours since Pavlik had bought me lunch and I was starving. Needless to say, with our last-minute hanky-panky under the blankie, we hadn’t had time to grab a snack from the newsstand as he’d suggested.

Believe me, I wasn’t regretting it. I’d take Pavlik over a granola bar anytime. Even a sandwich.

Through the next vestibule, I found a regular passenger car with rows of seats. At the end of that car was a restroom. Stopping just short of it, I slid open the window.

‘Sorry,’ I called out to Missy. ‘I stopped to introduce myself to Boyce.’

She passed me the rope. ‘No need to apologize. You’re helping, after all. And as a guest, you should be relaxing. I’m sorry I got a little impatient with you before.’

The girl obviously had no idea of the heights – or depths – I’d seen true impatience reach.

I caught a glimpse of Pavlik walking toward the platform with Zoe, each carrying something in one hand. Behind them was a gaggle of what I guessed to be writers, probably eager to pick the sheriff’s brains about gore and mayhem. I told myself that wasn’t the part of Pavlik I was most interested in.

At least not this weekend.

‘It’s nice to have something to do, since I’m a little out of my element here.’ I opened the next window and tied the rope around the post between them with a double knot. It wouldn’t get me a merit badge, but it should hold. ‘How’s that?’

‘Genius,’ Missy said. ‘Will you be able to close the window, or at least nearly so? I’d hate for it to get too hot in there.’

What a difference a few hours and fifteen hundred miles can make. In Wisconsin on the first day of November, you’d slam the window to keep out the cold air. Here it was the opposite.

‘Good idea. That way the rope will be more secure anyway.’ I slid down one of the windows to prove it. ‘Is that far enough?’

‘Perfect,’ Missy said.

I moved a few rows forward and tied the other end of the banner the same way. By the time we had the banner secure people were already boarding the train, which made the point moot, when you thought about it. I mean, once everybody was on the train and we were in the Everglades, nobody would be able to appreciate the legend on the banner. And I didn’t think the alligators and pythons – whether they were Burmese or African rock – would need help identifying us as boxed-car lunches. Or dinners, adjusting for the time of day.

‘I have to take tickets,’ Missy was saying through the open window, ‘and hand these out.’

She held up a playbill, sepia-toned, so as to seem older. ‘See? The cast of characters is on this side and,’ flipping it, ‘here’s the diagram of the train.’

I took the playbill through the window. ‘Very clever. If I remember right, the book had a diagram, too.’

‘Correct. I’m not sure how readers could have kept the plot straight without a cheat sheet. Our diagram shows this little train, of course, not Christie’s Orient Express. I’ve put “Murder on the Orient Espresso” here, see? I think the playbill will make a nice keepsake, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ I said honestly. Missy had pulled out all the stops to make tonight a success. I hoped, for her sake, people took notice. I offered the playbill back to her.

‘No, no – you can have the very first one.’

‘Thank you.’ I smiled and tucked the souvenir in my non-python skin handbag. For the first time in a long while, I had a hankering to do events again. Even if you’re not on Broadway, opening night of anything presented to the public is a rush. ‘But can I help you with the tickets and all?’