“Preston, enough’s enough!” said Frankie. “Sometimes it’s just not funny anymore. Like back in Bridgeport when that mob chased us out of Private Ryan. I was ready to strangle you with my bare hands.”
More writing in notebooks.
The book club marched angrily up the aisle, ready to read Preston the riot act. A woman in a red dress pushed by them and stormed to the front of the car.
“Preston?”
He turned around. “Yes?”
“You don’t remember me, do you?” said the woman.
Preston squinted at her face. “Should I?”
“Albuquerque.”
“Let’s see… Albuquerque, Albuquerque… oh, Albuquerque! I remember now. Wait, don’t help me…” — snapping his fingers — “…Helen, Helga, Heloise…”
“Betty.”
“I was just about to say Betty.”
“I finally tracked you down, you worm! How dare you take advantage of me like that!”
“Take advantage of you how?”
“Hypnotizing me to think you were Brad Pitt so I’d have sex with you!”
“Moi?”
“You!” said the woman, pulling a gun from her purse and pointing it at Preston.
Some passengers ran out of space and had to break out new notebooks.
“Hold on a second! I can explain! I, I was trying to help you…”
“Help me! How was that helping me?”
“You obviously have a problem with men…”
Mistake.
Just before she pulled the trigger, Spider grabbed her arm, and the bullet flew out an open window. Andy and Frankie helped wrestle the woman to the ground, kicking and screaming.
Preston looked around with a fake grin. “Those blanks sure sound real!”
They got the gun away and hog-tied the woman with Andy’s belt and waited to hand her over to authorities at the next stop.
The BBB looked at each other.
“Did she say ‘Brad Pitt’?” asked Rebecca.
“Yes, she did,” said Sam.
“Something’s not kosher in Denmark,” said Teresa.
“You used me!” the woman screamed from the floor. “You made it so every time I heard the word harmonica, I’d think you were Brad Pitt.”
Rebecca began jumping up and down. “Look, it’s Brad Pitt!”
“The trigger word is probably a toggle,” Sam told Teresa. She grabbed the shrieking Rebecca by the arm. “Harmonica!”
Rebecca stopped jumping up and down. “Why are you holding my arm, Sam?”
“I think we need to have a talk.”
The women stood in the aisle explaining things to Rebecca. Rebecca’s head shook side to side. The other women nodded. Rebecca shook her head harder. The others nodded sadly.
Rebecca broke from the group and ran to the front of the car. “Wait!” yelled Teresa.
Too late. “Did you have sex with me last night while I was under hypnosis? I’ll kill you if you did!”
“Moi?”
One passenger leaned to another. “That Preston’s finished.”
The second passenger nodded, still writing. “Too many enemies, plenty of motive. Now it’s just a matter of creating the opportunity for murder.”
The train slowed at the next depot. Only a few little patches of snow left. The Savannah police boarded and carried off the woman in the red dress, still kicking and screaming. “I’ll kill you, you bastard! I’ll cut your fucking dick off if it’s the last thing I do!”
A passenger turned to a fresh page in her notebook. “This is the best mystery train I’ve ever been on.”
36
The dining car began filling up again shortly after noon.
Waiters circulated, dropping off drinks, opening order pads. “Chef’s salad or Caesar?”
It was a sunny day on the train; warm light poured into the dining car through the glass skydome.
Serge was sitting with the book club. “Chef’s salad,” he told the waiter. “Extra dressing on the side. Double-chop the lettuce. That is all.” He still hadn’t seen any sign of Eugene Tibbs. Surely he hadn’t missed the train.
Paige pointed out the window. “Palm trees!”
They crossed the Florida state line as Tanner Lebos stood and clinked a glass of water with a spoon again, signaling the official start of the author’s luncheon.
“Thank you once again and welcome.” He shook his head and chuckled for effect. “This already has been quite an action-packed trip to say the least. And we have one person to thank for that! The author who thought all this up, Ralph Krunkleton!”
The audience began applauding. Ralph didn’t know what the hell Tanner was talking about. He had no idea what was happening — this was the craziest damn train he’d ever been on.
Passengers began standing up, five, ten, twenty, until it was a solid standing ovation.
“Speech!” someone yelled.
“Don’t worry,” said Tanner. “The problem will be shutting him up.”
Everyone laughed.
Ralph stepped into the aisle, and the crowd quieted.
“First, I’d like to thank the best agent money can buy.”
More laughter. Tanner pointed at Ralph and smiled: Ya got me!
“Seriously. What a weird business. What a weird life. I still haven’t figured it out. I’m getting to associate with a better class of people by writing about a worse class of people.”
More laughs.
“But I’m glad to see the mystery genre finally getting its due. For the longest time, people automatically thought there was no meaning. That’s simply not true. In my case, I’m on an internal journey, the crime plot just a pretext for me to explore the spiritual side of existence. Like when I used the urinal guy as a metaphor for Christ…”
The audience looked puzzled.
“…pure humility, serving others,” said Ralph. “And the tribulations of the people developing the first orange harvester are straight from the Twenty-third Psalm. I also borrowed some Eastern elements of cleansing and rebirth for the reunion of that women’s book club after all those lost years…”
The audience exchanged glances. Were they reading the same books? Tanner saw what was happening; he gave Ralph a slashing gesture across his throat with an index finger.
Ralph saw him and nodded.
“…Uh, and then I killed a whole bunch of people.”
“Hooray!” the audience yelled.
Tanner stood up and slapped his hands together. “What do you say we sign some books?”
The passengers quickly formed a line in the aisle.
Ralph’s little speech had been especially comforting to Serge. So he’d been right all along about the religious imagery in the book — it wasn’t just more hallucinations. “After you,” he told the BBB, who got up from the table and joined the autograph line. Then Serge stood and bumped into someone who didn’t recognize him.
“Excuse me,” said Eugene Tibbs.
The line began working its way down. The BBB finally made it to the front, and they heaped on the praise. “Your books have changed our lives,” said Teresa.
Ralph blushed. “Maybe that’s exaggerating a little.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Maria. “What a path of self-discovery!”
“Ahhhh,” said Ralph, nodding with satisfaction as he signed his name. “So you got my spiritual message.”
Teresa shook her head. “No, we went to all the bars. They were great!”
Next, a book critic from Miami.
“Oh, hi, Connie,” said Ralph, opening her book and writing. “Don’t you think you were a little hard on me in your last review?”
“It was more than fair. That one character you have who can never seem to score — he’s overstayed his welcome.”
Ralph finished signing and handed the hardcover back to her. “How’d you like me to pair you up with him in a book?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.”
Next, Eugene Tibbs. He pumped Ralph’s hand. “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time. Your writing has completely changed my life.”