Murder on the Orient Espresso(64)

We took? Who was the ‘we’? But something more immediate – and considerably less catty – also struck me as I splashed hastily back to dry land. ‘Did you say airboat?’

‘Airboat or fan boat, so-called because the flat-bottomed vessel has a giant fan up top that propels it over marshes and shallow water.’

Like the Everglades. ‘I don’t suppose the transit powers-that-be thought to equip the train with one.’

‘An airboat that we’d stow and deploy like a life raft? Somehow I doubt it.’ Pavlik returned to the track. ‘Are you staying to explore, Marco Polo, or coming with me?’

I snuck a glance across the way to where I’d seen the red ‘fireflies,’ but they’d disappeared. Or, more likely from what Pavlik had said, crawled away on its belly like a reptile. ‘With you. Definitely with you.’

As I trailed after him, the night animals shifted into high gear.

Chk, chk, chk, OWoo, Wwaahk, Wwaak … Quock! Quock, quock!

‘That last was a night heron, I think,’ Pavlik said as we retraced our steps west along the railbed toward the exit door.

‘We’re probably disturbing them.’ Happily, we’d be out of their hair – and feathers or scales or jaws – soon. As in, safe in the train.

‘Most likely.’ Pavlik passed the dining car and the entrance where Hertel waited and kept right on going.

‘Aren’t we going back onto the train?’ I asked, hanging back.

‘I have to check something out first. I’m hoping my eyes deceived me.’

I hesitated before following. Whither he goest, I will go.

Whither I wanted to or not.

Hurrying to catch up, I nearly ran up the sheriff’s back when he reached the rear of the club car and stopped.

‘What is it?’ I asked, pulling up short.

Pavlik pointed.

Our now trailing locomotive, the one that had earlier led us west, was illuminated by moonlight reflecting on the water.

The water on all four sides of the tipped locomotive.

‘I guess there’s no point worrying about uncoupling anything,’ I said.





TWENTY-EIGHT





‘Well, I’ll say I’m not surprised,’ our engineer, Theodore B. Hertel, Jr, said after we filled him in.

‘You expected us to get stuck out here?’ I asked sourly. We were inspecting the club car, walking sideways in the aisle so we could grab hold of the counters and tables along the way to keep our balance. Boyce’s espresso machine had bitten the dust again. I hefted the thing onto the bar and it slid right back off. This time I left it.

‘No, ma’am. Not that. It’s just that once the track started to wash out, what with the rain continuing and all, like I said, the ballast …’ Hertel shrugged his shoulders, the denim straps of his overalls almost touching his earlobes.

I stopped short, causing Pavlik to run into me this time. ‘Are you saying we could lose these cars, too?’

‘I sure am hoping not,’ the engineer said, opening the vestibule door to go into the dining car. ‘The rain’s stopped, which is always a good sign.’

This from the man who just an hour ago told us storms roared up quickly here.

Pavlik picked up his cell phone from the table we’d been sitting at when the car tipped. ‘It’s nearly four a.m.’

I said, ‘What are we going to do?’

‘I’m not sure there’s anything we can do until the sun comes up.’ Pavlik was pushing buttons on his smart phone. ‘When it gets light, we’ll decide our next move.’

‘Do you have a signal?’ I asked, my futile triumph of hope over experience.

‘Afraid not.’ Pavlik looked up from his miniature screen. ‘I tried to send a text message last night, knowing they require less bandwidth than a call, but it wasn’t delivered. I was checking now to see if we might have had intermittent service and the thing sent itself. No soap.’

The thought of soap made me feel my head where the bump was, to see if it needed cleaning.

‘Still hurting?’ Pavlik asked as we followed the engineer to the next car.

‘A little, but I was just checking to see if the skin was broken. It’s not, though.’

‘I could have told you that.’

‘You checked?’ I asked, pleased he’d been concerned.

‘Of course. If you’d been dripping blood out there, we would have been alligator bait. Or at least python nuggets.’

‘Or both.’ I punched him in the shoulder and then turned the other cheek, literally. ‘Truly, can you take a peek? How do I look?’

Pavlik grinned and pulled me against him as we waited for Hertel to slide open the door. ‘Lovely, as always.’