Loco Motive (10 page)

“You're half right,” Renie said, rummaging in her purse to see if anything was missing. “Ah! I've still got all my horse chestnuts. Eight big new ones from this September.”

Judith smiled faintly at Renie's gathering of horse chestnuts every fall, a tradition started by her father, who'd give some to her and keep the others for himself as a talisman. Uncle Cliff's reason had nothing to do with alleged health benefits, but because he'd picked one up shortly before catching the biggest rainbow trout he'd ever seen. Years ago, Judith had suggested to Renie that her cousin's handbag wouldn't be so heavy if she didn't fill it with so many horse chestnuts. Renie had replied, “It's not heavy, cousin, it's my father.”

Renie closed her purse. “I didn't want you to see them.”

“Why not?”

Renie groaned. “Because I don't want to spend this trip obsessing about that Weevil bunch. It makes me nervous.” She shuddered. “It also scares me.”

“Oh, coz!” Judith laughed. “I'm always curious about people.”

“Yeah, right. But your interest has gotten you into some dangerous situations.”

Judith made a face. “That isn't my fault. I can't help it if—” She stopped as her cousin made a sharp gesture.

Renie's smile was a bit frosty. “We have company. Hi,” she said to the two stout gray-haired men who were joining them.

The shorter of the newcomers smiled apologetically. “No English.”

“That's okay,” Judith said. “I mean…we understand.”

“Polish,” he said, pointing to himself and then to his friend.

“Hungarian.”

“Ah,” Judith said, nodding.

“Lucky us,” Renie said with a genuine smile.

Both men smiled back and nodded.

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” Renie said cheerfully.

The foreigners seemed puzzled. “Sorry?” the other man said. Renie kept smiling. “No problem.”

Judith perused the fairly lavish menu, given the restrictions of what she presumed was a small kitchen. The waiter appeared to take their orders. Judith chose the salmon; Renie asked for the chicken. The foreigners weren't sure.

Renie reached across the table, pointing to the menu. “Cluck, cluck,” she said flapping her arms. “Moo, moo,” she said, tapping the steak. For the salmon, she made swimming motions, accidentally hitting Judith with her elbow. “Excuse me, coz,” she said. “What can I do for vegetarian lasagna?”

Judith pointed to Renie's napkin. “You're the artist,” she said. “Draw vegetables, then do your animal imitations again, but shake your head.”

“Jeez,” Renie murmured. “I can design an annual report expending that much energy.” Before she could take a pen out of her purse, both men mooed. “Good work,” she remarked. “I might have screwed up the carrot. It could be mistaken for a turnip.”

The foreigners were engaged in conversation. Judith couldn't figure out what language they were speaking, but their manner was amiable. “So,” she asked Renie, “how did you know Pepper and Wayne were in the dining car?”

“Pepper's red hair is hard to miss,” Renie said. “When I went to get our refills, I had to go through the dining car. I saw a redheaded woman with the man you identified as Wayne Fielding. I decided not to mention seeing them for the previously stated reason of making you crazy and you making me even crazier.”

Judith understood. “How can I not be interested in that Weevil crew? I was so relieved to be rid of them, but then they showed up here and it unsettled me. I'm even more upset now that they're supposedly suing me. Why shouldn't I be concerned?”

Renie didn't respond until after the waiter brought their salads. “The account that Roy has given us is wildly exaggerated. I'm sure there are other people on this train who know who Willie is. Once gossip starts, it gets twisted after it's passed on—and on. When we got in line for dinner, I noticed Pepper and Wayne were still in the dining car. The two other people who had been sitting with them were just leaving. I was afraid we might get stuck sitting with Willie's cohorts. But then they got up, too. I didn't want them to see you because you know there'd be some kind of scene. That's another reason I wasn't keen on going to the dome car after dinner. Since they came out through the sleeper section, it's possible that they're staying on the lower level with Willie. You'll have to avoid those two until they get off in Montana unless you want to go head-to-head with Pepper and Wayne.”

“Damn.” Judith sprinkled salt and pepper on her salad. “Maybe you're right—we shouldn't play cards with the Downeys.”

Renie shook her head. “I've nothing against the Downeys,” she said. “I was just distracted by figuring out how to prevent Pepper and Wayne from seeing you—and vice versa. We can't stay cooped up in our compartment for what may be another whole day. Unless…how about a disguise?”

Judith looked incredulous. “Absolutely not!”

“It's Halloween,” Renie pointed out.

“But only until midnight,” Judith declared. “How would I explain looking like Catwoman or Batgirl tomorrow?”

Renie stirred a lavish amount of dressing into her lettuce and tomatoes. “I was thinking more Darth Vader. But we don't have costumes. Unless,” she went on, brightening, “we use the bedsheets and dress up as ghosts.”

“Oh, no!” Judith exclaimed. “Not the dreaded bedsheets! Your
poor kids never got to be anything else, and they had to use pillowcases for their treats. Meanwhile, I was forced to spend money I didn't have on Luke Skywalker.”

“True,” Renie admitted. “But our kids had fun. Or did they? Maybe that's why they moved so far away.” She stuffed a big helping of salad into her mouth.

“Forget the disguise,” Judith said. “We'll watch for Pepper and Wayne sightings. You move faster, so you can be my advance man. Woman, I mean.”

“Your scout,” Renie said, and frowned. “I've got to explain my odd behavior to the Downeys after dinner. It's a good thing we're not seated near them. It gives me time to explain why I acted like a jackass.” She paused, adding more salad dressing. “You do it. You're much better at untruths.”

Judith smirked. “The truth is that sometimes you are a jackass.”

“Okay. Go with it.” Renie shoveled in more salad and chewed lustily.

Judith laughed. “I can be blunt?”

“Suptuyu,” Renie replied with her mouth full. “Hifis!”

The cousins slapped hands. The foreigners smiled and nodded.

“America woman, very good,” the first man said.

The other man agreed. “Live well. Live long. Much courage.”

The cousins smiled at the foreigners. “Let's hope,” Judith said, “we don't need too much courage to stay alive and well.”

“Amen,” said Renie.

T
he four-handed pinochle game with the Downeys had gone so well that Judith and Renie agreed to play bridge with them Monday night. When the cousins got back to their room around eleven-thirty, they remembered to set their watches ahead.

“We've lost another hour,” Renie grumbled. “By the time we get to Boston, it'll be Thanksgiving.”

“You gained an hour today,” Judith reminded her.

Renie looked puzzled. “I did?”

It was pointless to argue. “Never mind.” She stared at Renie's tiger-striped nightgown.

“What zoo did you buy that from?”

“Nordquist's zoo, marked down to less than half price.” She reached into her carry-on.

“Matching peignoir included,” she said, holding up a flowing garment with black boalike feather cuffs. “Bill hates it. I think it scares him.”

“It scares me,” Judith said. “It's a good thing we're not going on safari. You'd get shot the first day.”

“Right,” Renie conceded. “By Bill.” She twirled the thin satin rope that served as a belt. “I thought he'd find this sexy. Maybe I should've added tassels.”

“You should've avoided the lingerie sale,” Judith muttered,
waiting for Renie to climb into the upper berth before getting into her own bed.

“You okay?” Renie asked after a moment or two later.

“I may have nightmares about tigers, but I've settled in,” Judith replied.

“Good. 'Night.”

There wasn't another peep from Renie, who seemed to have already dozed off in her cozy little nest. Judith, however, was still awake when the train made its last stop before Idaho. Minutes later she heard voices in the corridor and remembered that the third bedroom's passengers must have just boarded. As the train picked up speed, the rocking motion lulled Judith to sleep. When she woke up the sun was out.
Montana,
she thought, wondering where they were in Big Sky country. Pushing aside the curtain, she peeked through the window.

“Coz!” she cried. “I see snow!”

“Wha'?” Renie's voice was muffled.

“Snow. Trees. We've slowed down. Are we near Glacier National Park?”

Renie groaned. “Shuddup.”

Judith heard her cousin rustling around in the upper birth. “It's after eight-thirty. When do they stop serving breakfast?”

There was no reply.

“Coz?” Judith felt stiff when she stood up. “Are you conscious?”

“I am now, dammit.”

“I'm taking a shower,” Judith said. “Don't go back to sleep.”

“Eight-thirty,” Renie muttered, “mountain standard time, but my body knows it's seven-thirty back home. I never wake up until—”

Judith closed the door, cutting off her cousin's habitual complaints about not being a morning person. By the time she emerged, Renie was up and griping. “I hate showers,” she said, “but I have no choice. Move it.” She nudged Judith out of the way. “If I don't come out in half an hour, you'll know I drowned.”

Judith got dressed. She'd finished drying her hair when the train slowed to a crawl. Brush in hand, she looked out the window again. A group of children were having a snowball fight in front of a four-story half-timbered building. As the train picked up speed again, Judith saw a sign that read Izaak Walton Inn. As the inn disappeared from view she heard Roy's voice in the corridor and opened the door. He was headed in the opposite direction just beyond the stairwell. “Roy?” she called, keeping her voice down in case other passengers were still asleep. “Roy?”

He turned around. “Aha. I see you're up and about, Mrs. Flynn. Did you have a good night?”

“I did, once I got to sleep,” Judith said. “Why did we almost come to a stop? Was something on the tracks?”

Roy chuckled. “There's only one flag stop along the Empire Builder's route. That was it, Essex, Montana. Back in 1939, the inn was built to house the Great Northern Railroad workers. Later it became a tourist attraction on the south edge of Glacier National Park. The inn's historical status allows travelers to get on and off during the summer and winter seasons. Depending on the engineer's whim, we slow down to acknowledge the site's importance.”

“Fascinating,” Judith said. “Are we late for breakfast?”

Roy shook his head. “The call for the nine-thirty sitting will be announced shortly. You have plenty of time. I'll make up your room while you're gone.”

Judith had finished her makeup when Renie came out of the shower. “Did I hear you chatting up somebody?”

“Roy. He was explaining why the train…” She stared at her cousin. “You're dressed. What did you do, take a shower with your clothes on?”

“Of course.” Renie looked in the mirror over the sink as she applied a light touch of foundation. “You think I want to be naked when my body is found?”

“You're nutty enough to do it,” Judith said.

Renie swiftly wielded her mascara wand, added lipstick, and ran a brush through her short hair. “Let's go. I'm starving.”

There was no waiting line for the dining car, though only a few tables were vacant. “All clear,” Renie said before a waiter motioned for them to be seated. “No red Pepper hair, no Wayne Whoozits.”

The cousins had the table to themselves. After making their breakfast choices, they sat in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the mountain scenery as the train cruised along the outer edges of the park.

“I've never been to Glacier,” Judith said. “Dan and I couldn't afford pleasure trips. If his mother hadn't paid our way to Arizona, we'd never have seen her. She refused to go anywhere that wasn't sunny and warm. Dan's grandma lived closer to us, but our last visit was sabotaged by the 1980 Mount St. Helens volcano eruption. We were forced to turn back just twenty miles from her home.”

“I forget the fun you never had,” Renie remarked. “Frankly, I wouldn't have recommended Glacier to Dan. Being four hundred pounds, he wasn't the outdoor type. In fact, Bill and I had our own problems. If you hike in Glacier, you take along bells to warn off the bears. Gallons of insect repellent don't faze the park's bugs. The deerflies were bigger than our kids. We stayed in so-called rustic cabins—translate that as old shacks with no air-conditioning. Spectacular scenery, of course, including the Going-to-the-Sun Road unless you get behind an RV from Minnesota with a driver who's never traversed anything steeper than Loring Hill in Minneapolis. But the lakes and glaciers and meadows are worth it, even for us spoiled Pacific Northwesterners. It's been twenty years since we made the trip, so I—” Renie stopped.

“Are you listening? You're staring like a zombie.”

Judith shook herself. “What? Sorry. I thought I recognized someone.”

“Who?”

“A young woman. Maybe she's from Heraldsgate Hill. So many rich young techies have moved into the neighborhood.”

Renie nodded. “Our dirty little blue-collar secret leaked out after Bill and I bought our house forty years ago. Back then we could afford a view and a double lot. Sometimes when I'm on the avenue, I feel like a dinosaur. Condos, apartments, high-end restaurants, and chichi shops are everywhere.”

“Don't remind me, especially after last summer's debacle with Herself and her ill-fated condo venture.” Judith glimpsed a trio of deer grazing in a meadow as yet untouched by snow. “Did you see that?” she asked Renie.

“What?”

“The deer. They seem so tame. They didn't even look at the train.”

“Their habitat may be shrinking,” Renie said. “Remember last winter when a cougar wandered onto a school playground by the city limits? And a bear showed up at an Eastside car lot? I wouldn't want to haggle over price with him.”

The waiter arrived with Judith's cheese omelet, sausages, hash brown potatoes, orange juice, and toast. Renie had ordered pancakes, bacon, eggs, and apple juice. Both cousins focused not only on their food, but on the alpine scenery. No one joined them, and by the time they finished their meal, they'd made a brief stop in the small town of Browning.

Renie pointed to a sign for East Glacier. “From October to April, the only stop for this side of the park is here. We're very close to the Canadian border, where Glacier becomes Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta.”

Judith laughed. “Did you memorize all this before we left?”

“No,” Renie said, indignant. “I like geography. It drives Bill nuts when we travel. He'd ignore me if I told him we were going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.”

“I appreciate it,” Judith said, starting to get up. “Is that an elk?”

Renie leaned over to look past her cousin and glimpsed the elk
drinking out of a meandering stream. “Wow—those are some antlers.”

“I wish I had my camera,” Judith said, following Renie into the aisle. “I should've put it in my carry-on instead of in my big suitcase.”

“I'll get it from the baggage area,” Renie said as they exited the car.

“Thanks,” Judith said. “The camera's in a side pocket.”

The cousins parted company by their room. The beds had been put away in their absence. Judith opened the newspaper that had been delivered earlier, but decided the scenery was more enjoyable than the daily dose of bad news. They'd crossed the Continental Divide. The landscape was changing as the mountainous terrain sloped downward. Glaciers, meadows, and lakes were left behind. At the edge of the Great Plains, Judith gazed at great swaths of farmland that merged into distant buttes on the far horizon. After a few miles she was surprised to see oil wells. She had forgotten Montana's deposits of oil and gas.

“It looks like Texas,” she told Renie when her cousin returned.

“A real change after Glacier,” Renie said, handing over the camera case. “The Cut Bank stop is about ten minutes—”

Judith interrupted her cousin. “This isn't my camera.”

“What?” Renie looked puzzled. “It was in your suitcase. Did you bring more than one?”

“No,” Judith replied. “It's not my camera case, either.”

“It was in the pocket you described. How many cameras do you have?”

“Two. Mine's an older model,” Judith explained. “I gave Joe a digital camera for Christmas, but it isn't this one.”

Renie sat down. “Could it belong to Mike and Kristin?”

“Maybe. I can't recall if they intended to take pictures of the parade.”

Renie shrugged. “They might've.” She studied the camera closely. “Top-of-the-line. I've been on shoots with pros who use
these. They cost several grand. Would Mike pay that much to photograph his kids dressed as cardboard boxes?”

“I doubt it, unless the forest service provides cameras for rangers.”

“Call Mike at the next stop,” Renie suggested. “If he lost this camera, he'll be frantic.” She checked her watch. “We'll get to Shelby in less than an hour.”

“I can't use my cell phone on the train?”

“Poor or even no signals in these wide-open spaces.” Renie grinned. “Otherwise, my mother would've called me ten times since we left town.”

Judith nodded. Aunt Deb refused to believe that the umbilical cord between mother and daughter had ever been severed. “How hard was it to tell your mother you were leaving town for so long?”

“I tried something different this time,” Renie said. “I told her Bill and I were going on a 'round-the-world cruise and we wouldn't be back until February. Naturally, she pitched a fit. The next day I let her know that the trip had been shortened by a month or so due to schedule changes. After another day or two, I said we'd decided to take a train trip across Canada for six weeks so we could be home for Christmas. Finally, on Friday I told her we couldn't afford to take such a leisurely vacation, but by a stroke of luck Bill had been asked to speak at a conference in Boston and we'd be gone only a couple of weeks. She was so relieved that she stopped moaning and groaning.”

“I lucked out,” Judith said. “My mother surprised me by not making a fuss. Frankly, that worries me.”

Renie nodded. “That is odd. Is she feeling okay?”

“I think so,” Judith said. “She always perks up when Mike's family visits.” She glanced outside. “We're stopping. Can I get off to call Mike without going through the lower level in our car?”

“This is Cut Bank. You won't have time. Wait for Shelby. We'll go out through the other sleeper on our way to lunch. That'll save you extra steps.”

“Did you bring a camera?” Judith asked.

Renie shook her head. “Cameras are as bad as…clocks. Why do you think I hire photographers for my graphic design business?”

Cut Bank was yet another small town. Judith marveled at the vastness of the land—and the absence of inhabitants along the train's route. Less than fifteen minutes after the brief stop at the depot, the train slowed down again. “What's happening?” she asked. “We don't have a stop around here, do we?”

“No,” Renie replied. “Maybe there's something on the tracks.” Judith shuddered. “I hope it's not a body.”

Renie shot her cousin a disgusted look. “You'd be delighted if it was. It's happened at least twice in broad daylight on my train travels—a spectacular way to commit suicide while screwing up everybody else as a farewell gesture.”

“You really are heartless,” Judith said.

“No, I'm not.” Renie paused. “Well…sometimes. I'm also realistic.”

The train came to a full stop. Except for more oil rigs and some scattered buildings in the distance, Judith couldn't see anything unusual. She was silent for at least a couple of minutes. Renie had picked up her copy of the Doris Kearns Goodwin book on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. “Should we ask Roy what's going on?” Judith asked.

Renie didn't look up. “No.”