‘You really think we can stop them?’ He shrugged. ‘At least this will keep them busy and away from the body. We can make a record of what they claim to have seen and done before their memories are further compromised.’
Hmm. My ‘tootsie’ was a smart cookie, too. God knew when the local authorities would arrive and by then this group would have written their own storylines and rearranged their memories to match. Not to mention using their cell phones as we drew sufficiently near civilization to sew up book and movie deals before we left rail for pavement at the station.
‘Maggy, I have to ask you to serve as secretary,’ Pavlik said, raising his voice so the rest of the group could hear and pulling a notebook out of his pocket. ‘I’ll conduct the interviews and record them on my smart phone.’
Even without the ability to make a call, we could do that. ‘Good idea.’
‘Oooh,’ Grace squealed. ‘This is just like Murder on the Orient Express. Do you want to interrogate us in the dining car?’
Pavlik said, ‘I think that will do nicely. Just give us a few minutes to set up.’
A tired-looking Zoe Scarlett stood and tugged closed her perpetually gaping dress. She was looking less like a bombshell and more like its crater. ‘What would you like me to do, Jacob?’
‘Stay in this car and Maggy will let you know who to send in next.’
The woman, who an hour ago would have thrown me a scathing look, just nodded resignedly and turned away. ‘I can’t believe this,’ I thought I heard her say. ‘I just can’t believe this is happening to me.’
‘Do you think it’s odd there was just one real railroad employee on the train?’ I asked Pavlik as we prepared the same table in the dining car where we’d sat earlier in the evening. It was just past midnight. ‘Shouldn’t there have been a conductor and … I don’t know, a brakeman or steward or something?’
‘Got me,’ Pavlik said, sliding into the booth. ‘We’ll ask Zoe and Missy when they’re in here, but it sounds to me like corners were cut, probably because of budget limitations.’
‘Missy did say she’d hoped more people would attend.’
‘And now there’s one fewer.’ He handed me his smart phone.
‘I thought you wanted me to take notes.’ I held up the cell. ‘What do I do with this?’
‘Changed my mind.’ Pavlik took back his pad and flipped it open. ‘You video and I’ll take notes. I need to be looking at their faces directly, not paying attention to a screen.’
Made sense. My ex, Ted, had been a camera bug and I swore the man never experienced any place that we went except afterwards on video and photos. Always had his eyes glued to a lens, following the strategy of ‘make camp and break camp: we’ll look at the pictures when we get home.’
‘Did you bring a charger?’ I slid the control on the phone to ‘video.’ ‘I’m afraid this could take all night.’
‘Yes, I did, and I hope it will. Take all night, I mean.’ Pavlik was jotting down a list of buzzwords toward his questions. ‘The longer we can keep these people engaged the better.’
‘You mean the less trouble they’ll be to us?’
‘That’s exactly what I mean. You saw it. Their imaginations are already running away with them.’
I found it hard to believe that the imaginations of even a bunch of mystery writers could measure up to the reality of what we’d just witnessed.
‘The minute Missy mentioned pythons,’ Pavlik continued, ‘they started fabricating. That’s what I want to avoid.’
‘That’s not really fair,’ I protested. ‘There was a python. A big one. And eggs, filled with little bitsy pythons. Remember?’
‘But not on the train.’ Pavlik spaced each word as though it were a separate sentence.
‘True.’ As far as it went.
‘Remember, Maggy: we obtain information, not provide it. The detail of the python’s involvement is better kept among those of us who are already privy to it.’
The detail of the python’s ‘involvement’? I was starting to feel like I’d fallen down the rabbit hole with Alice. ‘You’ve reminded Missy, Zoe, Boyce, Markus and Engineer Hertel to keep mum?’ Our privy wasn’t very private.
‘I have.’
‘Then consider the snake off the table,’ I said. ‘What’s next?’
‘Any chance you remember the order of the witnesses called in Murder on the Orient Express?’
‘No, but we do have access to a crib sheet.’
Pavlik, for nearly the first time since I’d known him, let a look of confusion cross his face.