Murder on the Orient Espresso(74)

Wah-wah-wah. I wasn’t the one tramping about in the Everglades with snakes and alligators.

Ignoring the inner voice that said, No, you’re the one sitting on a train with a corpse and a killer, I stood up. Time to man my post. And man up, period. Tucking the bunk’s pillow and blanket under my arm, I returned to the corridor outside Potter’s room and settled onto the floor.

Pillow stuffed comfortably behind my back, I tried to think. Specifically, not about Pavlik.

So how about Danny? Without Audra as co-conspirator, I didn’t see what he would gain by killing Potter rather than suing him for stealing his work. In fact, it suddenly occurred to me, wouldn’t the kid be best off waiting until Potter’s book was published, so he could jump on the bandwagon (if there was one) and really benefit from its success?

I supposed it could have been in the heat of the moment – Potter being his supercilious self and the kid just having enough – or a bit too much – of it.

When you thought it through, though, anybody who killed Potter must have done it without premeditation, since we assumed it was Potter who had carried both the hunk of cake and the knife – the eventual murder weapon – back here.

Kind of blew my original theory that Audra had been working in tandem with Carson or Danny. So where did that leave me?

In a word? Nowhere, just like Hercule Poirot in the original Murder on the Orient Express. And since Potter had but a single knife wound, I couldn’t even fall back on Agatha Christie’s multiple killer solution for my ‘aha’ moment.

I eyed the two frosting smudges on the floor. One marked where I’d stepped on the cake. Could the other have been where the knife lay before the killer picked it up and plunged it into Potter?

But, again then: where was the victim’s blood?

I got up and scanned the walls and the carpet. Nothing was exactly clean, but I was fairly certain I’d be able to spot a blotch of blood. No, the only blood in this car was what I’d felt on the exit door handle and gotten on my hand like the fictional Kat in my dream.

Blood, in that case, and thick white … what?

I jumped up and went to the exit. Because the sun was shining in from the window across the way, I could get a better look than I had the night before. There was certainly something dark there, but what I’d felt had been sticky, meaning the blood hadn’t completely dried yet, I supposed. How long would that take, given the natural humidity of the Everglades and the artificial air conditioning on the train?

Trusting Pavlik that my prints could be excluded – and figuring I’d already touched the thing anyway, so whatever potential damage was really damage done – I gingerly touched the door handle. No longer sticky, but dry and crusty. Crouching down, I saw something else – something glistening. I touched it with my finger and this time it did come away sticky. And red, almost gelatinous.

Wait a second. First warily sniffing it and then touching it to my tongue, I realized it was cake decorating gel. The stuff that had been used to represent blood on the cake.

Returning to Rosemary’s bathroom, I washed my hands in the pull-down sink, taking a paper towel out of the wall dispenser to dry them as I walked back.

The piece of cake Potter had taken – the foot – hadn’t had any of the fake blood on it. That decorative touch was concentrated around the knife ‘wounds.’ That meant whoever had touched the door handle had also held the knife.

Potter? And … his killer?

I settled back down onto the floor of the sleeping car and picked up Missy’s e-reader. I didn’t expect to get any more reading done, even if the story had intrigued me. Of course, what I’d actually read and what I’d dreamed might be two entirely different things.

I pushed the toggle on the reader and the John Steinbeck screensaver morphed into words. Curious to see what the last paragraph I’d read was, I saw:

Kat opened the door, knowing what she wanted but not if she had the nerve to take it. He was lying on the bed facing the window, his skin glistening in the moonlight. The edge of the white sheet revealing his firm, naked glutes. Kat wanted – she desperately needed – to run her fingers along the curves of them.

As Kat reached out, the man roused. Stepping back, she watched from the shadows as he turned onto his back, sending the sheet slipping to the floor.

‘Oh, dear,’ Kat nearly gasped aloud.

I laughed, recognizing Missy’s pet expression. I’d forgotten that Missy had worked with Rosemary on the book, though apparently my subconscious hadn’t. It had even inserted snakes, though that vignette might have had to do more with our current situation than my conversation with Missy about researching them for Breaking and Entering.