19644d8eebdf42e4b611005d94748ece

“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.

Chapter Fourteen

I’d asked so many people if they knew where we could find Rhonda that my voice stung from overuse. The corners of my mouth also hurt from all the forced smiles. The cats and I had already hit up all the cars between the front of the train and the dining car, which meant there were only a few more to cross before arriving at the sleeper cars, and only a handful of those to try before we ran out of people to question altogether.

C’mon. C’mon, please. We have to find something.

I took a few more steps down the aisle, then turned to an older woman with shoulder-length black hair and large brown eyes rimmed with thick lashes. I could tell she’d been pretty in her youth because she was still stunning even now. She wore a hooded sweatshirt that you didn’t often see women her age sporting, and she definitely didn’t look like the type of person who’d have associated with Rhonda Lou Ella Smith, unless she was also a cat enthusiast.

I smiled and took a deep breath, leaning closer to her as I spoke.“Excuse me. Do you know where I can find Rhonda Lou Ella Smith?” I asked pleasantly, widening my smile as I waited.

She frowned and mouthed,“Sorry” without actually making a sound. Respecting her sleeping seatmate, how thoughtful. I’d been far less considerate in my search, jostling several passengers from sleep unintentionally.

“We’ve got a live one here!” Octo-Cat bellowed.

“She knows something,” Grizabella confirmed in her melodic voice. “I can smell it all over her.”

Showtime.

“Excuse me,” I said to the woman who had already returned her attention to the paperback novel in her hands. “Are you sure you don’t know Rhonda? It’s really quite urgent.”

“No. Now please let me return to my reading,” she grumbled, then raised her book higher to block me out.