Mayhem at the Orient Express Read online

  In an attempt to curb my runaway temper that didn’t work, I clutched my hands together on the table in front of me and flipped like mad through my mental Rolodex, reminding myself of all the things that had occurred to me as I read through Murder on the Orient Express the evening before. Heck, it wasn’t like anyone was listening to me, and it sure wasn’t like anybody cared. The way I figured it, I might as well say what was on my mind.

  “One of the things that struck me as interesting,” I said, “was the pacing of the story. The book was written when, in 1934? It seems a little . . . I don’t want to say dry. It’s a classic, and it deserves to be. But obviously, the world was a slower place then, and the pacing of the story reflects that, don’t you think? As I was reading, I couldn’t help but wonder, what if the book was written today? And what if Agatha Christie was just some wannabe writer who no one ever heard of? The pacing is deadly, the characters are stereotypes, and often insulting stereotypes, and the dialogue doesn’t exactly sparkle. These days, would the book ever make it out of the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts on an editor’s desk and get published?”

  I guess it was expecting a lot to think someone might actually answer me, since their mouths were still hanging open.

  The silence only made me more determined. Not to mention annoyed. “What? I’ve made some perfectly valid points, and they’re worth discussing. So, come on, people!” I slapped the table. “Discuss!”

  Chandra was the first one to shake herself out of her stupor. She leaned closer, her eyes wide. “Are you an English teacher or something?” she asked.

  It was the first I realized that the day’s annoyances had piled up and pushed me over the edge. Slush pile? Had I actually said the words slush pile? I cringed and reminded myself not to make the same sort of mistake again. “I was an English major in college,” I said. The truth if not the whole truth. Then again, the whole truth was the reason I was on the island in the first place, and not something I was willing to share. “I guess some of that stuff about pacing and dialogue and such, I guess it just sort of stays with you.”

  “Well, it sure stuck with you!” Luella clapped a hand to my shoulder. “You make some valid points.”

  Kate’s phone vibrated. She read the message and popped out of her seat. “Pacing, characters, yadda yadda yadda. That’s terrific. Really. And we can discuss it all next week,” she said, grabbing her coat and heading for the door.

  When no one stopped her, I figured she was onto something. I needed time to regroup and regain my composure before I said something else incredibly stupid, so I slipped Murder on the Orient Express back in my pocket and put on my coat, too. “Next week. That sounds good.”

  “But . . .” When I got to the door, I could feel Luella’s gaze on my back. Just like I could hear the disappointment in her voice.

  Even the guilt couldn’t stop me.

  In record time, I was in the car. I didn’t so much back out of the drive as I slid down it and out onto the street.

  After the tension of the meeting and the slip of the tongue that I prayed I’d handled with my English major explanation, I knew there was only one thing that was going to make me feel better.

  With any luck, the Orient Express hadn’t closed because of the snow.

  • • •

  So I never said my timing was impeccable, did I?

  I guess I proved it when I saw the lights still on inside Peter Chan’s place, shouted a hallelujah, parked the car, and raced through the snow to the front door.

  That’s when I realized Kate was already standing in front of the Orient Express and Luella and Chandra were parking in front of the restaurant, too.

  “Well, look at this!” In spite of the swirling snow, Luella’s smile was a mile wide when she got out of her truck. “Looks like there is something we can all agree on after all.”

  “I was just . . .” I began.

  “I just thought . . .” Chandra said.

  “It really doesn’t mean . . .” Kate grumbled.

  “Oh, come on, you three.” Luella hauled open the door and stepped back to let us walk into the restaurant ahead of her. “Think about Peter’s cooking. If that’s not enough to make you act like civilized adults, nothing is.”

  One sniff of the delicious aromas making their way out of the kitchen and into the frosty night air and I knew she was right.

  I stepped inside and the other women followed.

  “Peter!” He wasn’t behind the front counter so I figured he was in the kitchen and I raised my voice so he was sure to hear me. “You’ve got customers.”

  No answer.

  Apparently, like me, Chandra was a regular and knew Peter’s routine. “He’s probably working upstairs in the apartment,” she said, and she opened the door that led to the stairway and called up.

  No answer.

  “Well, he must be close,” Luella decided, drawing in a deep breath. “It smells great in here, like he’s been cooking.”

  “And he’s had at least one customer.” Kate bent down and picked up a pink knitted glove with a frilly cuff in shades of blue and purple. “Let’s just hope she didn’t order all the orange/peanut chicken.”

  It wasn’t my imagination. There was a collective intake of breath, and I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with us being worried that Peter might actually run out of orange/peanut chicken—and everything to do with being struck with horror when we realized that we were all crazy about the same dish.

  “Whoever lost it, she’ll come back and look for it.” I shook myself out of the thought, plucked the glove out of Kate’s hand on my way by to drop it on the front counter. “It’s so cold out, how could you possibly not want one of your—”

  All set to set the glove on the counter, I froze and stared at the strip of floor behind the front counter.

  The strip of floor that wasn’t empty.

  “Gloves.” Leave it to Kate to refuse to accept anything but perfection. Even when it came to a sentence I hadn’t finished. I could practically hear the disapproval dripping from her voice when she came up behind me and said, “That’s what you meant to—”

  Kate stared at the strip of floor behind the front counter.

  The strip of floor that wasn’t empty.

  “Bea? Kate? What’s with you two?” I’m pretty sure the next person who spoke was Luella, but it was kind of hard to tell seeing as how the voice sounded as if it came from a very deep cave. I’ll bet she was the one who grabbed my arm, too, but then, Luella’s the type who would notice right away that I was swaying on my feet.

  The hold on my arm tightened when Luella looked behind the front counter.

  “What in the world is wrong with all of you?” Chandra’s laugh dissolved when she joined us and saw what we saw.

  The four of us stood side by side, leaned forward, and took another gander at what I’d seen the moment I walked up to the front counter of the Orient Express.

  Peter Chan on the floor.

  His eyes bulging.

  His mouth open in a silent scream.

  A knife through his heart.

  5

  What’s left to say after you’ve found a body with three of your not-best friends?

  I didn’t have the answer, and apparently, Luella, Kate, and Chandra didn’t, either, because nobody was talking. After we called the police, gave our statements, and left the Orient Express, we somehow all ended up back at Bea & Bees, and we were in the parlor sitting in front of that roaring fire I’d envisioned earlier. Like me, the other women stared into the flames. Like me, I knew they were grossed out, upset, and feeling terribly sad, not only at the senseless loss of life, but at a disturbing and frightening act that was surely going to send out shockwaves that would ripple through island life for who knew how long.

  “I never thought . . .” We’d sat in silence for so long, each lost in her own thoughts, that Chandra’s comment made us jump. She sniffled and adjusted the knitted afghan she’d grabbed from a nearby chair
and thrown over her shoulders when we came into the room. “I mean, I’ve never seen anything like . . .”

  “Me, either.” Kate was on the other end of the couch from Chandra and the couch was directly across from the fireplace. Though the logs hissed and popped, the warmth of the fire didn’t seem to make its way over to her. She wrapped her arms around herself, leaned forward, and shivered. “Did you see the expression on Peter’s face? It was—”

  “What a horrible shame.” Luella had taken the wing chair to the left of the couch, across from the chair where I was sitting, and on the other side of the mahogany coffee table. In spite of the orange glow of the fire, her face was pale. “Terrible thing, murder. To think anyone could have done such a thing . . .”

  “Not something you’d expect here on the island.” I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until I heard my own voice. It was so small, it was nearly lost beneath the sounds of the crackling flames and the howling wind outside. “In the big city, maybe. But here . . .”

  “Horrible shame,” Luella muttered. “Horrible shame.”

  Chandra scrubbed her hands over her face. “I wonder if Peter had family.”

  “He never talked about them if he did,” I said. Then before any of them could point out that I was the new kid on this block, and thus probably didn’t know nearly as much as they did about the island and the people who lived there, I added, “Not that I knew him all that well, but we chatted when I went in to pick up food. He never said anything about a wife or kids.”

  Kate was as still as stone. “He was always so charming and friendly.”

  “Not true!” Once again, I spoke without thinking, and I flinched and braced myself for the firestorm of criticism I knew was sure to come. Being picky, petty, and picayune was what Kate and Chandra were all about.

  When no one jumped in to bite off my head—not yet, anyway—I went on to explain, “Yesterday when I stopped in at the Orient Express, Peter was . . .” I thought back to the scene. “He was distracted,” I said. “There was this man in the restaurant when I got there, and from outside, I heard them arguing.”

  Chandra’s hands flew to her neck. “The killer?”

  “We don’t know that. We can’t know it,” I pointed out. “But after the man left, I went in and placed my order, and Peter wasn’t his usual talkative self. Then again, I can’t blame him. It was a pretty ugly incident.”

  “Somebody we know?” Luella was asking about the man Peter argued with, of course, and the only response I could give her was a shrug.

  “I’ve never seen him before,” I admitted. “The rest of you . . . maybe you’d know him. He was tall and broad. He had small, brown eyes and a sort of doughy face. Not exactly fat, but padded, if you know what I mean. He was wearing a tan trenchcoat and a brown fedora. Kind of an Indiana Jones look without the Harrison Ford face or body to go along with it.”

  Chandra’s smile was watery. “There you go, talking like an English major again. Your description’s so good, I can picture him, and he sure doesn’t sound like anybody I know. Maybe . . .” Her eyes widened. “Maybe you walked in and interrupted something. You did say they were arguing, right?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  She warmed to the theory and didn’t give me a chance to finish, or to mention the creepy note I’d found when Peter went into the kitchen. “Maybe he was going to kill Peter yesterday, and then you showed up and he couldn’t. And so he left, and he went back today and . . . and . . .” The tears on Chandra’s cheeks glistened in the light of the fire.

  And I realized that a good innkeeper has duties that have to come before talking about murder. I had extra boxes of tissues upstairs in the linen closet and I headed out to fetch them.

  At the bottom of the stairway that led to the second-floor guest rooms, I bumped right into Amanda Gallagher.

  “Sorry,” she gasped, flinched, and stepped back at the same time she cinched the belt on her robe. I’m nobody’s idea of tall, but I had a few inches on Amanda, and she looked tinier than ever swathed in turquoise chenille. She had porcelain skin and hair the color of corn silk, and in the glow of the chandelier in the stairwell that I’d dimmed for the night, she seemed ethereal, like a wisp that had blown in on the tail of the winter wind. “I thought I’d just . . .” She sidestepped around me and in the direction of the back of the house. “I was going to make some tea.”

  “Of course.” I stepped back so she could get by, and when she did, I realized something was off. Automatically, I reached for the decorative basket I kept on a table just inside the front door. “I’ve got slipper socks,” I said, offering Amanda a pair at the same time I looked at the sturdy fur-trimmed boots she wore. “I know you weren’t planning on staying here long and you may not have come prepared with everything you need.”

  She grabbed a pair of socks and tucked them in the pocket of her robe. “Speaking of that . . .” A gust of wind rattled the front door and Amanda shivered. “I don’t know if the ferry is running—”

  “It’s not,” Chandra called from the parlor, and I couldn’t exactly fault her for eavesdropping. After all, there wasn’t exactly a talk fest going on in there.

  Amanda’s slim shoulders drooped. “If I need to stay another night—”

  “Of course you can,” I assured her. “They say no one’s leaving the island, and for sure, no one will be coming. I’ve got plenty of room.”

  “Except . . .” Amanda’s cheeks flushed the same color as the cabbage roses on the wallpaper in the hallway. She plucked at her robe. “I wasn’t planning to stay more than a couple nights. That is, I hadn’t exactly made arrangements, if you know what I mean, and . . .”

  I had never been accused of being slow, but let’s face it, I was new to this innkeeper thing. In fact, I was new to the service industry. It took me a couple moments to catch on to what she was getting at.

  “The cost of the room. Of course!” I made up my mind in an instant and hoped my smile softened the edges of talking business. “The weather isn’t your fault. How about if I charge half the rate I quoted you for however long you stay, including last night.”

  Relief swept over her expression and she disappeared down the hallway and into the kitchen.

  “Well, that was a lousy business decision.”

  When I turned around, I found Kate leaning against the wall outside the parlor, her arms crossed over her chest and her top lip curled in disapproval. “Your business shouldn’t suffer just because she can’t afford to stay here.”

  “And what should I do? Tell her she should go sleep in her car?” Honestly, I wondered how people like Kate could look at themselves in the mirror. Then again, when you don’t have a conscience in the first place, maybe things like kindness and common sense don’t figure into your way of thinking. Shaking my head, I turned back around to head out on my original mission and Kate walked over to the door. She’d slipped off her boots when she came into the house and she reached for a pair of slipper socks. Before she grabbed a pair, though, she stepped back and made a face.

  “Wet spot,” she said, looking down at the floor and shuddering. “Now my socks are wet and—”

  “Take two.” I tossed her another pair of slipper socks. “That way you can take off your socks and—”

  My words were interrupted by a knock on my front door.

  “Go. Get the tissues.” Kate leaned backward and took a quick look into the parlor. “Chandra needs them bad, and she’s going to start wiping her nose in that pretty afghan of yours if you don’t get them fast. I’ll answer the door.”

  She did, and I raced upstairs. I had my head inside the closet outside the main bathroom when I heard the rumble of a man’s voice.

  “Bea!” Kate called up to me. “There’s a man here who’s looking for a room for the night.”

  “I was staying in a cottage over on Mitchell,” the man called out, following Kate’s example and raising his voice loud enough for me to hear. “But the heat went off. Someone in town told me
you had a generator, so I figured I’d take my chances and see if you have a room.”

  I loaded my arms with boxes of tissues decorated with flowers and butterflies and hurried back to the stairs. “Of course,” I said, starting down. “I’ve got six rooms and only one guest and—”

  Three stairs up from the front entryway, I froze and looked down at the man who was looking up at me.

  The same man who’d plowed into me outside the Orient Express the day before.

  The man who I’d seen arguing with Peter.

  “Excellent!” Apparently, I don’t have as memorable a face as I always thought. Without a flicker of recognition, the man lifted the duffel bag that he’d set on the floor next to him and stomped his feet against the hallway rug. He took off his fedora and a sprinkling of snowflakes landed on the floor. “I’m frozen to the bone. I can’t wait to get settled,” he said.

  “Is it him?” Behind the man, Kate took one look at my expression (I am clearly not subtle when I’m gobsmacked), and mouthed the question.

  I nodded in response and scrambled, wondering if there was a way I could announce that I’d remembered there were guests in every single one of my rooms. Before I could, the kitchen door at the end of the hallway swung open, Amanda stepped out, saw our little clutch at the bottom of the stairs, and swung around and back into the kitchen.

  “Ted Brooks.” Apparently, this newest guest thought my hesitation was due to the fact that we hadn’t been properly introduced. He held out a hand and with no choice, I shook it. “I run Island Properties. You may have heard the name.” He looked back and forth between me and Kate, and she knew what he was talking about; she nodded. “I own a number of cottages here on the island and rent them out to tourists. That’s why I came to South Bass yesterday. To check on my properties, make sure everything made it through the winter okay.”

  “Competition, huh?” I hoped my smile looked as casual as I intended. It was better than letting him in on the flood of ideas racing through my mind: