On the Wrong Track (24 page)

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Authors: Steve Hockensmith

BOOK: On the Wrong Track
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“My husband?” the widow gasped, the thin crepe of her veil fluttering slightly. Obviously, a question about her dearly departed was the last thing she’d expected. “Why, yes. He was only thirty.”
“He had a heart attack,” one of her sons reported solemnly.
“In Chicago,” the other added, equally somber.
“Boys,” Mrs. Foreman said, the word coming out harder than before—almost like a threat.
“At the Exposition.”
“On the Midway.”
“Boys,” the widow said again.
“In the Street in Cairo exhibit.”
“Watching girls dance the hootchy-kootchy.”
“Boys!”
Harlan and Marlin took to staring at their shoes, silent and still, for once.
“My condolences, ma’am,” Gustav coughed out. He couldn’t have looked more mortified if the widow had jumped up on her seat and had a go at the hootchy-kootchy herself. “I hope you won’t mind just one more question. Your sons … they take after their father? Looks-wise, I mean.”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Foreman seemed to be on the verge of saying more, but she held back, as if waiting for something. Too late, I realized what it was—a handkerchief from one of the “gentlemen” nearby. When none of us leapt to do the chivalrous thing, she reached into her handbag and produced a delicate hankie of her own. She maneuvered it under her veil and dabbed at her eyes even though no actual tears seemed to appear.
“I’ve seen pictures of Christopher—my husband—when he was a child.” She turned a bittersweet gaze on Harlan and Marlin. “The resemblance is remarkable.” When she looked back at Old Red again, her voice turned so cold any tears she might’ve shed would’ve turned to icicles on her pinched cheeks. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, they’re just such fine-lookin’ lads,” Gustav said, making a half-assed stab at nonchalance that quickly collapsed into stammers. “N-not that you’re not fine-lookin’ yourself, I mean. For a widow. Y-you know. In a p-proper, ladylike, widowy sorta way.” He cut himself off with a mighty sigh. “Ma’am, as you’ve no doubt noticed, I am an utter simpleton—and a very tired one who’s feelin’ more than a bit poorly. So let me just apologize for intrudin’ and wish you and your sons a very pleasant journey back to San Jose.”
Mrs. Foreman acknowledged the apology with a slight tilt of her head, though she didn’t bother responding to (or contradicting) anything my brother had said.
Kip and I added our own good-byes, which were received with
equal iciness by the widow but not her twins. Marlin and Harlan smiled and waved as we left, then leaned out into the aisle to watch us follow Old Red toward the front of the car. When I turned to wave a last farewell, I saw that someone else was watching, too: Miss Caveo was peering at us over the top of her book.
I waved to
her,
as well. And she waved back.
“What was that all about with the widow lady?” Kip asked as we gathered near the door to the forward vestibule.
“I can show you … if you’ll help us,” Gustav said. He sounded both grave and eager, like a man in a hurry to get to his own funeral. “But I gotta warn you—there might be some danger.”
“Danger?” Kip’s face flushed red behind his freckles. “Does this have anything to do with the Give-’em-Hell Boys … or Joe Pezullo’s murder?”
“It has
everything
to do with
both
.”
The news butch looked terror-stricken. “Jeez … in that case … if you think it might be dangerous”—he let a cocksure grin bust through his mask of fear—“you’d darned well
better
let me help. What do I gotta do?”
My brother gave the boy a slap on the back. “Just whip out your passkey, kid … and then be ready.”
“Ready for what?” I asked.
“Answers,” Old Red said, and he turned and headed for the baggage car.
ANSWERS
Or, We Find Solutions to Our Mysteries, but Not Our Problems
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Gustav led us into
the baggage car, his hand hovering over his holstered .45. When we were all inside, he skulked off to scout things out—and ordered me and Kip to “fort up” the door.
“You want us to
what
now?” I said.
“Fix it so no one can get in here ’less we want ’em to,” Old Red called back, disappearing into the stacks of baggage. “Push Pezullo’s desk in front of the door, maybe. Or gum up the handle somehow. Whatever you can do. We don’t want anyone bargin’ in here till we’ve seen what we’ve come to see.”
“Which is?” Kip asked as he strolled over to the car’s only chair (its mate having been buried in the Nevada desert tethered to a dead hobo). He dragged the chair to the door and jammed it under the handle.
When Gustav reappeared, he gave the makeshift barricade his approval with a single downward jerk of his head. Then he picked Pezullo’s crowbar up off the desk, walked across the compartment, and dropped it atop the plain pinewood casket Chan was hauling back to San Francisco.
“Aww, jeez!” Kip moaned, looking horrified. “You can’t be serious!”
I stepped up to the coffin and knelt down beside it. “No need to
fret, kid. There ain’t no body in here.” I looked over my shoulder at Old Red. “Right?”
My brother’s response did little to bolster my confidence: He shrugged, then backed off a couple paces to give me room to work—or to get out of smelling range should Lockhart’s tale of a casket packed with “treasure” prove untrue. There was a crunch underfoot as he moved, and he crouched down to peer at whatever he’d just ground into the floorboards.
“Sliver of glass.” He looked up and scanned the car. “Either of you see that empty whiskey bottle that was in here yesterday?”
Kip and I shook our heads.
“Must’ve broke,” Kip said, still looking rattled by our would-be grave-robbing. “We’ve sure had enough sudden stops to do it.”
“I suppose. But then the question is, who swept it up?” Gustav stood slowly, wobbling with the car’s gentle swaying as he strained to straighten his legs. “Anyway, we got us other questions to attend to first.”
“Shall I begin attendin’ then?” I asked.
Old Red nodded, and I dug in the crowbar’s claw.
“Wait!” Kip yelped. He appeared to have lost his appetite for adventure—and looked like he was about to lose his breakfast, as well. “This ain’t a good idea, fellers. It’s a miracle Wiltrout ain’t got you fired already. Bust open a coffin on his train, and he’ll see to it you never
ride
the S.P. again, let alone work for it.”
“I could live with that.” I turned to my brother. “You?”
“Yup.” Old Red gave me another nod.
I worked cautiously at first, prying the lid up just a fraction of an inch. When no cloud of rot gas came billowing out, I grew bolder, tugging one side of the lid up high enough to get a peek inside.
“It’s stuffed with straw,” I was relieved to report. Both Kip and Gustav suddenly found the nerve to crowd in closer.
With a few more quick jerks, I got the lid off entirely. I prepared to shield my eyes lest I be blinded by the sparkling of rubies, sapphires, and carbuncles. But black velvet doesn’t put up any kind of gleam whatsoever, and that’s what we saw packed in the straw.
There were maybe a dozen wads of velvet visible, with plenty of room for more to be buried beneath them. They ranged in size from apple-ish to pumpkin-ish, with most leaning to the smaller side.
I picked up one of the little bundles and gingerly unwrapped it, Kip and Old Red pressing in on either side to watch. Beneath the velvet was newspaper, and beneath that cotton.
What I found under that last layer did indeed glisten, in a cold, hard, flat kind of way. But it was no precious gem.
It was porcelain—and it was very familiar.
I was holding a small, handleless cup exactly like the one Old Red had found in the desert after the robbery. As if there could be any doubt, my brother produced the cup’s twin, and we held them up side by side.
They were as much a match as Harlan and Marlin. The size, the dark blue pattern running around the rim, the leaves painted on the side—everything was identical.
While I rewrapped the cup I’d taken out, Old Red gently settled his back in the straw like an egg he was returning to its nest. Then he fished out the biggest bundle in the box and unswaddled it just enough to give us a glimpse of a large, ornate teapot.
“I don’t get it,” Kip said. “What is all this crap?”
“Well, they was supposed to have ‘priceless treasures of the Orient’ in the Chinese exhibit at the Exposition.” I waved a hand at the casket packed with tea party fandangles. “I guess that’s it. Or some of it, anyway.”
Kip gave me a skeptical frown. “A dumb old teapot’s a ‘priceless treasure’?”
“Why not? For all we know, that teapot’s as old as Adam. Put some years on anything, and it gets to be valuable. Why, a hundred years from now, even them dime novels you peddle might be worth something.”
The kid shook his head. “Still seems like crap to me.”
“Dr. Chan didn’t think so,” Gustav said. He spoke haltingly, almost reluctantly, as if his thoughts were leading him someplace he
didn’t want to go. “That’s why he kept tryin’ to get in here—to make sure this stuff was alright. He wouldn’t just up and leave it.”
“But his bag—?” I began.
“Tossed off the train to make it look like Chan skedaddled,” Old Red cut in. “It’d be easy enough to get the bag from his berth once Chan was out of the way.”
“Whoa!” Kip hooted. “‘Out of the way’?”
“Chan’s dead, most likely,” Gustav announced glumly. “Brought in here and walloped with a whiskey bottle.” He looked over at me. “I admit that’s pure theorizin’ of the sort Mr. Holmes wouldn’t have tolerated, but it fits the facts snug enough.”
“Just this once, I’m gonna hope you’re wrong,” I said.
Old Red nodded. “Just this once, I will, too.”
“Hold
on
!” Kip protested, standing up and waving his hands. “Why would anyone kill the Chinaman?”
“Probably cuz he kept sniffin’ around the baggage car,” I told him. “There’s something in here our killer’s been tryin’ to hide.”
“Like what?”
“Like … well, that’s a good question.” I turned to my brother. “Care to attend to it?”
“As it so happens, I was just about to.” Gustav reached into the coffin, snaking his hands through the straw to grope at the bottom of the box. “Joe Pezzulo found the first hidin’ place, so there was a change of … hel-lo! Here we are.”
He grunted and drew his hands out of the casket. They emerged wrapped around a thick, bricklike blob that shone like gold—for good reason. There were words and numbers stamped into the top, and I read them out loud.
U.S. MINT
KARAT
400 OZ.
“Shit,” Kip whispered.
“Now, now—no need to be goddamn vulgar,” I muttered. I turned to my brother. “So that’s how that teacup ended up in the
desert, huh? Some of Chan’s tableware got tossed out to make room for this?”
“Yup. There’s probably fifteen, twenty more under all that straw.”
Old Red set the bar on the floorboards with a
clunk
and dusted off his hands. Like the gold, his fingers were now flecked with sand.
“So where’d the toupee come from then?” I asked. “You can’t tell me
that’s
an ancient Chinese treasure.”
Old Red stood and moved to the second casket—the fancy one Mrs. Foreman was lugging back to California.
“‘It is of the highest importance in the art of detection,’” he said, “‘to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which …’”
He pulled the toupee from his pocket and dropped it on the coffin.
“‘ …
vital,
’” I said with a chagrined nod.
“You know,” Kip said, “I have no earthly idea what you two are talkin’ about.”
“Don’t worry, kid,” I told him. “You’ll catch up.”
I had. Finally.
I’d seen the curly blond hair on that little man-wig, and I’d seen the curly blond hair atop the Foreman boys’ heads. I’d seen the tag in the toupee that said it came from San Jose, and I’d seen the tag on the coffin that said it was
bound
for San Jose.
I’d seen clue, clue, clue, and clue. Yet I hadn’t seen how they lined up like the very rails we were riding upon, tracks that could have but one destination: the casket I was about to open.
Gustav had seen it, though. And I was reminded with the power of a swift kick in the pants that there was another reason I tagged along after him as he chased his dream of detectiving. By God, he was actually
good
at this deducifying stuff.
I dug the crowbar claw in under the lip of the coffin lid and pushed down. Almost immediately, the stench of decay seeped out into the car.
“Oh, jeez … you gotta stop!” Kip groaned. “That sure don’t smell like gold!”
“Could smell a lot worse,” Old Red said, and I took his point and kept on prying.
Given that it was summer and the late Mr. Foreman had been dead at least four days (since it would have taken two just to get the body from Chicago to Ogden), the odor should have been retch-worthy when it was, in point of fact, worthy of a mere pinch of the nose.
It didn’t take long to see why the stink of death wasn’t stronger. Mrs. Foreman had sprung for fine mahogany with hinges along one side, so after just a little more jimmying I was able to pop the lid up and get us a look inside … at perhaps thirty more gold bars.
The exact number I didn’t have time to determine, for Gustav told me to close the casket quick.
“We’ve seen what there is to see,” he said. “Foreman’s gone, but he was lyin’ in there long enough to leave some skunk behind.”
I put down the lid, then swiveled around and sat on it, my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. Something hazy and blotched was swirling before my eyes—an explanation—and if I could just give it the right squint, it might come into focus.
“Would one or the other of you be kind enough to tell me
what the heck is goin’ on
?” Kip demanded.
Old Red could see I was straining my brain to deduce it through, and he gave me a little bow and held out his hands, palms up.
He was offering me first crack at it. And I took it.
“Well … I think the gist of it is the Give-’em-Hell Boys wasn’t stickin’ us up yesterday,” I said, talking slow so my mouth wouldn’t outpace my mind. “They was loadin’ us up. I’m sittin’ on the same gold they stole off the Pacific Express two months ago.”
Gustav nodded, so I forged ahead a little quicker.
“When they hit the train back in May, findin’ that gold in the express car must’ve been a surprise … cuz it looks like they didn’t know what to do with it. There was no way they could tote off all them heavy bars on their horses—long riders gotta move quick. So they buried it right there on the spot, outside Carlin. They’d go back later and lug it
away. But how? Everyone in the country knows Barson and Welsh by sight, thanks to the papers. If they tried haulin’ freight around in the back of a buckboard, they’d be spotted before they got a mile. So they came up with another way to move the gold. They filled a crate with bricks … for the weight?”
My brother nodded again.
“Then they got it put on the Express,” I went on, “probably with help from an S.P. man or a passenger who had it loaded in as luggage. When the train got to where they had the gold stashed, they planned to stop it, throw out the bricks, load in the gold and then …
damn,
Brother. You really think they’d try it? They’d need balls the size of tumbleweeds.”

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