Murder on the Orient Espresso (6 page)

As Pavlik continued on to the rest of the group milling around on the platform, I skirted the crowd, noticing Danny the supposed sycophant talking again with the sports-jacketed former actor from the bus. The two were standing on the fringe of the herd, the plaid of the older man's jacket even gaudier in the lights of the station. He seemed to be pointing out people of interest – or more likely, of note – to the newcomer.

‘Oh, dear!'

I reached Missy just in time to catch a corner she had just secured – or tried, with duct tape, to secure – before it peeled away and brushed the railbed. ‘Can I give you a hand?'

‘Oh, thank you,' Missy said gratefully. ‘I'd planned to have this all done before your bus arrived, but the traffic on my “shortcut” was heavier than I expected.'

‘It was good of you to drive Rosemary Darlington,' I said, smoothing the banner. ‘Given what I've seen, the farther apart you keep her and Laurence Potter, the better.'

Though admittedly not nearly as much fun for onlookers like me, who always appreciated being witness to a train wreck.

Not that I wanted to jinx the poor young woman's project.

‘I didn't mind driving.' Missy swept her hat off and swiped her forehead with the back of the same hand. Wearing a fur coat in eighty degrees Fahrenheit must have been taking its toll, even on a Floridian. ‘Rosemary suffers from motion sickness and buses are the worst. I hope she'll be all right on our trip tonight.'

‘Eric – that's my son – gets car sick, but he's fine on trains as long as he's facing forward.' Which made me recall that passenger cars often had half the seats facing rearward.

‘I suggested that to Rosemary,' Missy said, replacing her hat. ‘Facing forward and, as you say, as far away from Laurence Potter as possible.'

The last was said under her breath and she glanced over at me, just seeming to realize it'd been said aloud. ‘They …' Missy hesitated, ‘… have a history.'

Hmm. An affair gone wrong would certainly explain the venom with which Potter had criticized Darlington's literary side-trip to the erotic. Maybe I'd read the book just to see if one of the characters was a tall, bald man. ‘So Larry Potter and Rosemary Darlington had a personal relationship?'

But Missy had colored up. And, apparently, decided to clam up as well. ‘Conference rumors, I'm sure. Please don't say you heard anything from me, Maggy.'

‘Of course not.' I was thinking about my dentist husband and the years of conferences he and his hygienist had attended so the office could ‘stay current.' Undoubtedly there'd been ‘rumors' in the dental community back then. I only wish somebody had bothered to share them with me. ‘What happens in Fort Lauderdale, stays in Fort Lauderdale, right?' I said, echoing my earlier words to Pavlik in the hotel lobby.

Missy's eyes went wide. ‘What do you mean?'

My turn to blush. I had no business inflicting my hard-earned cynicism on the next generation. Besides, if Laurence Potter – or anybody else – was playing musical beds, it was none of my business. I changed the subject. ‘Are you a writer yourself, Missy?'

‘No, not really. More a researcher.'

‘That must be interesting. For authors?'

Missy moved the scissors aside with her toe and bent down to pick up the roll of duct tape while still holding up her end of the banner. ‘Almost exclusively now. At first, I didn't get paid or anything, I just helped authors whose work I enjoyed.'

‘That was certainly nice of you.'

‘I was having a tough time getting a job in library science, what with all the budget cuts, and this gave me something to do – something I loved.'

‘Library science,' I repeated. ‘So how did you end up in event management?'

‘You mean helping with the conference?' Missy looked surprised. ‘Oh, that's just a volunteer post. It's not what I do for a living.'

‘You don't get paid?'

‘I get my hotel room comped, and I don't pay for the conference, of course. Plus, I meet such interesting people.'

An increase in the chatter coming from the ‘interesting people' milling about on the platform drew my attention. The natives were getting restless. And Zoe Scarlett, of course, was nowhere to be seen to settle them down. ‘You couldn't pay me enough to take orders from that woman.'

‘Zoe?' Missy shot me a smile. ‘She's not so bad, truly, though I think her divorce has left her a bit off balance.'

Not surprising, given the size of the woman's new breasts. I refocused my attention on Missy. ‘… has contacts everywhere, which is crucial,' she was saying. ‘She really put this conference together.'

‘If you say so.' I'd had experience with ‘idea' people who were only too happy to hand off their ideas to other people – like Missy – to implement. And guess who'd take all the credit? ‘But you seem to be the one who gets things done.'

‘It's mainly logistics. Which is why, between you and me, I'm so excited about tonight.' She lowered her voice. ‘I want to show everyone, including our guests of honor, that I'm capable of more creative things. Who knows where that might lead?'

Probably to Zoe dumping even more work onto her unpaid assistant. ‘But how do you pay the bills? You said you didn't get paid for the research either.'

‘That's changed, happily. A girl has to earn a living.' Missy tried a longer piece of tape, this time attempting to wrap it around a rope attached to the top of the banner.

Well, that was good, at least. ‘Can you say who your clients are, or is that kept confidential?'

‘I always ask about the confidentiality issues, because it varies from writer to writer. Everyone here, though, knows I've worked for Rosemary Darlington.' Missy took her hands away from the precariously hung banner. ‘That's why she agreed to come to Mystery 101.'

‘Wow, that's impressive. Zoe apparently isn't the only one with contacts.'

The girl looked pleased and not only because the banner seemed to be holding. ‘Oh, it was nothing, really.'

‘Not true. As you said regarding Zoe, contacts are crucial in event planning.' But I wanted to hear more about the research, especially in regard to Rosemary Darlington. ‘Did you work on
Breaking and Entering
?'

A quick sidelong look. Missy seeming uncertain about my motives for asking. I held up my hands. ‘Hey, I haven't read the book. I'm not judging.'

‘Oh, not
that
kind of research,' Missy said with a slightly embarrassed smile. ‘Heavens, I'm sure Rosemary … well, I don't mean to say she has more experience, but … Oh, dear, I'm still making a mess of this.'

The banner took another dive and I made a grab for it. ‘I'm not sure even duct tape is up to this job.'

But I was also fairly certain the banner-hanging wasn't what Missy thought she'd messed up. Or, at least, not the only thing.

She was happy to follow my differing lead, though. ‘You're right. I didn't ask the banner company to attach these ropes and they make it ever so much heavier. Maybe I should cut them off.' She was eyeing the scissors.

‘Uh-uh.' I scooped up the scissors before she could and stepped back to look at our options for securing the signage to the side of the train. ‘How secure does the banner have to be?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Are we moving or staying right here in the station?'

‘Oh, no, we'll be leaving in a few minutes. It's very exciting. I've managed to get us a sneak preview of a brand-new excursion into the Everglades.'

I surveyed the ‘excursion' train. There were four cars and … ‘We have a locomotive on each end.' And facing opposite ways.

‘Of course. The west one,' Missy pointed at the locomotive to our left, ‘will take us into the Everglades. The east one will bring us back to Fort Lauderdale.'

Seemed like kind of a waste to me. ‘Don't they usually have just one locomotive and then circle it around to the other end at the station so it can go back in the direction it came?'

‘Yes, if there
was
a station. We'll be stopping on the single track in the Everglades and simply reversing back the other direction.' A gust of wind ruffled the banner. ‘I hope the storms will hold off until after our three-hour tour.'

‘Three-hour tour,' I repeated, the theme from
Gilligan's Island
dancing through my head. Not to mention the photograph of what was left of Flagler's Railroad after the 1935 hurricane. ‘Isn't the route through the Everglades called Alligator Alley?'

‘Well, the driving one, anyway. However, we'll be on a railroad bed that has just been completed – or almost completed – quite a bit north of the highway. We won't even see Alligator Alley. And besides,' Missy picked up one of the banner ropes and eyed it with evil intent, ‘you don't see quite as many alligators anymore. The pythons are eating them.'

I reflexively glanced west toward the Everglades, imagining ominous clouds building in the dark. Despite the Florida heat, I felt a chill. ‘Pythons? As in … snakes?'

‘Yes, of course,' Missy said. ‘Burmese pythons.'

She said it as casually as Wisconsinites would say ‘Canada geese.' But geese don't eat alligators. The worst they could do is poop all over them. ‘
Burmese
pythons? How in the world—'

‘—did they get to Florida?' Missy was trying to unstick the tape she'd attached to her edge of the banner. ‘Until a couple of years ago it was legal to have them as pets.'

‘Pet snakes.' Snakes in their natural habitat scare me enough, but in the house? Brr. And what did you do with them? Take Fido out for a slither? Play fetch the squirrel? A snake didn't even have ears to scratch.

‘… ball pythons,' Missy was saying. ‘People who had Burmese pythons before the law was changed are grandfathered in and can keep the one – or more – they already have, assuming they get a “reptile of concern” permit.'

One or
more
‘reptiles of concern'?

‘Unfortunately,' Missy continued, ‘permitted or not, if the snakes get so big they're not cute anymore, people tend to dump them into the Everglades.'

I was kind of stuck on her choice of ‘cute' when describing snakes in general, but especially those that could realistically consider alligators ‘snack-size.'

‘Isn't that like … I don't know, biological littering?'

‘I suppose. And, maybe even worse, Hurricane Andrew back in 'ninety-two destroyed animal and reptile “breeding greenhouses” and pet stores, freeing their inhabitants. I've even heard there were panthers and monkeys and gazelles running free for a while. The panthers are encouraged – they're a native species and quite rare – but the rest of the animals were rounded up, supposedly.'

Supposedly. I knew where this was leading, unfortunately. ‘But the pythons are still out there.'

‘Yes, a nearly eight-foot female was caught recently and she had eighty-seven eggs inside her, can you believe that? I've heard that we could have tens of thousands – even a hundred thousand – pythons slithering around the Everglades these days.'

Missy looked west as I had, but kind of wistfully, I thought. ‘It's very hard to be sure. What they do know is that reported sightings of white-tail deer have dropped by ninety-four percent, and the entire population of rabbits in the Everglades has been wiped out.'

Jesus. ‘The pythons are eating them, too?'

‘Yes, which you'd think would be good news for the alligators.'

‘But it's not? Good news, I mean.'

‘No. Alligators eat rabbits and deer – in addition to birds, turtles and fish, of course – so both the alligators themselves and their food supply have been affected by the pythons.'

Missy looked up from her work. ‘Did you know that nearly sixteen-hundred people signed up to hunt Burmese pythons last year to bring down their numbers? But all those hunters managed to kill only sixty-eight in a month. Apparently pythons are slippery devils.'

Or their hunters didn't have enough incentive. ‘Maybe they should send Fendi and Jimmy Choo in there after them,' I said.

‘For designer handbags and such?' Missy looked thoughtful. ‘In fact, a couple of local places are paying fifty or a hundred dollars a snake. After processing and all, a custom-made python purse can bring, like, twelve hundred dollars, shoes easily a thousand, and jackets nearly five thousand.'

Maybe I should go into the snake-catching business – or better yet, processing. ‘Word gets out and the pythons will be wiped out in no time.'

‘That would be a very good thing,' Missy said absently, her attention seemingly back on the banner.

‘I'm sure the alligators would appreciate it.' Not to mention Thumper. And Bambi.

‘I'm sure they would,' Missy said, looking up, ‘but I don't want you to think there aren't consequences for the pythons, too.'

‘Beyond being turned into Giorgio Armani stilettos?'

‘No, no,' Missy said, a little impatient with me. ‘I was talking about the snakes eating alligators, especially after they've had a big meal of their own. If you go on YouTube you can probably pull up photos and even a video or two of some pythons that have exploded during the digestive process.'

Oh, my. In my head, I'd been visiting the designer shoe floor of Barney's – and actually being able to afford something – and here was Missy yanking me back to the smorgasbord that the Everglades had become.

And with thoughts of rabbit, inside alligator, inside python, no less. The concept of turducken – a de-boned chicken, stuffed into a de-boned duck, in turn stuffed into a de-boned turkey and baked – had always seemed exotic enough, without imagining the Everglades own sushi version of the same. The one remaining comfort being that human beings weren't on the menu.