Murder on the Orient Espresso(73)

A flutter. Not quite a beat, more a … twitch? Once, twice, three times. It grew stronger and then stronger again, settling into a rhythm before seeming to coil back on itself, regrouping to race faster, heading toward a seemingly inevitable crescendo.

Then, just as Kat thought her own chest would burst, his did. Bits of tissue and cartilage splattered onto the window pane, seeming to mingle with the rain streaking down the outside of the glass.

Kat held her hand up in front of her, trying to understand what had just happened. Blood and something thick and white covered her fingers.

A movement caught Kat’s eye. She looked down into the man’s open chest and … it looked back at her.

A python. Where Larry Potter’s heart should be.





THIRTY-ONE





‘Stay away from the pointy end!’ I yelled, my head falling back against the wall, waking me.

Looking around, I waited for my own heart to settle back into my chest. Sunshine poured in from the windows by the vestibule door and I could hear voices – if not cheerful, at least reassuringly alive – in the passenger car beyond.

Apparently, I’d nodded off and managed to combine our current situation and Rosemary’s book into one hell of a dream. Getting to my feet, I retrieved the pistol and, holding my breath, crossed the aisle to Potter’s roomette and opened the sliding door. Still there, chest intact, no snakes in sight. Check, check, check.

My cell phone told me it was 10:20 a.m.

I slid Potter’s door closed. Some guard I was. Not only had I fallen asleep for two hours, but I’d awakened with a full-blown case of the heebie-jeebies.

As I turned from the corpse I was responsible for guarding, my stomach growled. I wasn’t sure what that said about me, but I feared it wasn’t good.

I also needed to use the bathroom, preferably not the one in what I’d come to think of as Potter’s room. I also didn’t want to return to the passenger car or dirty an unused roomette’s facilities.

That left the compartment Rosemary had napped in. It was at the end of the hall, but I could leave the door open so I’d hear anyone coming through from the passenger car, as Missy had.

As I flipped open the toilet, I thought about the one in Potter’s room. I’d touched it when we’d found the cigarette butt and I hoped that wouldn’t cause problems with the police. Potter obviously hadn’t been stabbed in there anyway, because there was no blood.

In fact, come to think of it, I hadn’t seen blood anywhere when I’d inspected earlier.

How could that be?

After washing my hands, I sat down on Rosemary’s bed to think. Had Laurence Potter been killed when the train stopped because of the flooding? It had seemed an outside chance when Pavlik and I first talked about it, but if the victim had been stabbed outside, it would explain why there was no blood found on the floors inside the train.

But stabbed by whom? And where had Potter been up to that point? We knew he’d visited the sleeping car, as evidenced by the cigarette butt in the toilet. The possibility he’d been tucked away with Rosemary in this roomette had certainly occurred to me, as it had to Audra, Potter’s wife.

Could Rosemary have faked the motion sickness to have an excuse to lie down? Perhaps she’d invited Potter to steal away for a little early evening delight and, when he’d arrived, killed him. Perfect timing and apparent alibi. The female guest of honor was drunk and sleeping it off.

Then there was Audra. She’d said she wasn’t sleeping with Potter and that it was by her own choice. Was that the truth? Or the words of a woman determined to save face with people who might know more about her husband’s peccadillos than she did? If I’d gotten wind of Ted’s extracurricular activities would I have shown up at one of his conferences, as Audra had?

I thought so. The only thing worse than knowing is suspecting. Always wondering if you’re being made the fool. That suspicion, in and of itself, could make you act foolishly.

Could it also make you a killer?

Audra had been with us in the dining car when her husband had disappeared, but she certainly could have slipped out later and killed him. Ditto pretty much anyone else on the train, given the one-hour window of opportunity from nine to ten p.m. that Pavlik and I had settled on. Even Zoe Scarlett, once she’d finished her welcome speech. Much as I’d love to pin the murder on the woman, though, I couldn’t see why Zoe would kill her guest of honor. Sure, she might have had the unrequited hots for Potter, but the same was true for Pavlik and he was still alive, right?

Please, God.

I twisted to look out the window, blinking back unexpected tears. But there was no Pavlik to the rescue, no anybody. A train full of people and I’d never felt more alone.