Himalayan Hazard

Chapter Thirteen

Well, it looked like I’d be the one eating crow in the end.

Our sweep of the train turned up nothing, just as the cats had warned. Most of the passengers appeared to be sleeping. The few who had woken up seemed relaxed and unbothered, probably because they didn’t know about the dead body that lay several cars back.

I corralled my feline companions into the tiny vestibule between cars to chat about what we should do next. “Before you say I told you so, listen up. We can’t exactly shine lights in everyone’s faces and ask them if they killed Rhonda.”

“Why not?” Grizabella asked with a long, flat face as she sat back heavily on her haunches.

“Darling, please. Let the professionals talk.” Octo-Cat raised a paw to the Himalayan’s mouth to silence her. Wow, he had a lot to learn about women.

And, okay, perhaps I laughed a bit too hard when she bit him right on his poor injured toe bean. Served him right for condescending to her, especially after he saw what happened when I attempted to shorten her overly fancy name.

A whir sounded overhead, announcing the repaired electrical system. As the overhead lights popped backed on, muffled cheers rose from the cars on either side of us. People wanted to celebrate, but not wake their seatmates, which could definitely work to our advantage.

“Well, look at that.” Octo-Cat deadpanned as I rubbed my eyes and wished for my sunglasses. “The lights are back on. Now, shall we return to plan A?”

“There wasn’t a plan A,” I reminded him as bright spots danced at the edges of my vision.

“Then why was there a plan B?”

“Just listen!” I yelled. Enough was enough already.

Apparently, Octo-Cat was just as fed up with me as I with him. “Well, jeez. You don’t have to yell,” he rasped with his signature snark.

“Octavius, please,” Grizabella interjected, scooting closer to him so that their furry bodies touched at the sides.

Thankfully—and probably just as Grizabella had suspected—this rendered the chatty tabby completely silent. Finally.

She nodded for me to continue with what I had to say.

“Most of the passengers are still asleep,” I explained, keeping a close eye on Octo-Cat to make sure he wouldn’t derail us yet again. “If the murderer is still on board, then he or she is definitely not just sleeping it off. That narrows our pool considerably. We couldn’t find any suspicious behavior when we simply walked through the cars, so I think our next step should be to add a little pressure.”

“Good plan. What did you have in mind?” Grizabella asked while Octo-Cat purred beside her.

“Nobody knows Rhonda’s dead except the people we’ve spoken with… and, well, I guess the killer knows, too. I say we pretend to have an urgent message for her and use that as an excuse to talk to the passengers who are awake.”

“But Mistress is dead. How can we have a message for her?”

“I know that, and we know that. But most of the people aboard don’t know that, so asking them won’t freak them out, right?”

Grizabella’s eyes shone bright as understanding swept over her. “Oh, yes!”

“So we’re just going to go up to each person we notice who’s awake and ask if they know where we can find Rhonda?” Octo-Cat asked, rejoining the conversation with a sappy grin stretched between his whiskers. Ahh, the power of love.

“Pretty much,” I said. “I’ll do the talking, obviously. And you guys keep all your senses peeled.”

Grizabella tilted her head to the side. “What does that—?”

“Human expression,” my cat translated with a giant roll of his amber eyes.

“Sorry,” I said with a chuckle. “You guys can smell changes in people’s hormones, right? So if someone were to get really stressed by my questions, you could tell… Yes?”

“Yeah, humans are super easy to read,” Octo-Cat responded haughtily. “Such simple creatures.”

I scowled at him, then turned back to the Himalayan with a smile. Finally, she was on my side, and it felt great. “Are we ready to do this?”

“Let’s.” She rose to her feet and waited for me to open the door into the next car for her. We’d made our way back to the very front of the train a few cars in front of the one that held my family’s seats.

“Excuse me,” I said to a woman who sat with a sullen looking teenager who was immersed in her phone. Probably not our killer, but I had to talk to everyone to avoid suspicion. “Do you know where I can find Rhonda Lou Ella Smith? I have an urgent message for her.”

“Nope,” she answered with a slight shake of her head. “I’m sorry. Good luck.”

I’m going to need it.

I talked to several more people, both men and women of all ages, but not a single person showed any sign of recognizing the name. I checked with the cats between each car, just to make sure they hadn’t found something.

They hadn’t.

We entered the car that held our seats, and I immediately spotted a problem that I’d forgotten we had. Our special writer friend Melvin Mann paced up and down the aisle, talking to himself and eliciting the stares of every single person as he did. No one here was sleeping. Not a single soul.

“Melvin, what are you doing?” I shouted, rushing toward him.

“Trying to figure out the murder, of course,” he told me, tapping a pen against the fingers on his other hand.

Someone cleared his throat across the aisle, and I laughed nervously. “Um, Mel. This isn’t the best time to plot out your next novel. These people are trying to sleep.” I laughed again and shoved him toward the end of the car, hoping and praying that our culprit hadn’t been sitting in that car while Melvin prattled on about all the pieces of evidence he’d either collected or overheard.

As we approached the vestibule, I rasped in his ear, “Go back to the car. Dan and my parents are there. They’ll get you caught up.” I was hoping they wouldn’t tell our resident loose cannon anything, but I needed to offer something to get him to fall in line.

“What car?” he asked, twisting toward me. A garish smile split his face as he realized. “Oh, the scene of the murder.”

I pushed him through the door. “Get out of here, and—for goodness’ sake—try to keep a low profile.”

“Hey, I’m a writer, not an actor.” He lifted a hand overhead and shook his finger at no one in particular. Not an actor, but he sure was a character.

I stood in the vestibule, watching to make sure he kept going toward the sleeper cars without upsetting any more of the passengers.

Grizabella paced and flicked her tail impatiently. “What now?”

“We keep going and hope for the best.” I thought back over the details of the night, then smiled. “He wasn’t pacing and muttering to himself when we passed through the first time, so he must have just started when the lights turned back on. Just to be sure, I’ll shoot my dad a text and ask him to collect Melvin and get him away from the rest of the passengers.”

My fingers moved over the keyboard on my phone. Eight percent battery now, but we had light, which made the dying phone far less of a problem that it was before.

“Now, let’s get on with our search,” I told the cats, pushing into the next car, more determined than ever to find the murderer before circumstances beyond my control—or more specifically, Melvin—ruined everything.