Read Online Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train by Maria Hudgins - Free Book Online

eyebrows looked like division signs without their top dots.
    She told him about her train trip and about Sierra picking her up in the van, but omitted any mention of the death on the train or the guilt still nagging at her. Without these her description sounded, to her own ears, like fiction. Nothing she said sounded the least bit like the journey she’d actually taken. Her memory was of a frightened man, of wheels clacking through her dreams, of a body flying past a window, of the heel of her boot smashing glass, of a body sprawled on the slope beneath the tracks. Instead she was telling Henry that the most traumatic part of the journey was arriving to find no Paul waiting for her.
    She looked away and spotted several dig participants  hanging around the buffet table. “I noticed a big bowl of fruit over there. I want an orange. Can I bring you men anything?” Dessert, as in most Turkish meals, was fruit. Lacy had been in the country long enough to become used to the absence of cakes and pies. She grabbed an orange and stood a little back from the table as she peeled it. Those standing nearby, most of them college age, were checking her out while trying not to stare, but their conversation had dwindled to a feeble pretense.
    Glancing around at the other picnic tables, she decided the dig participants gravitated toward their own kind at mealtime, because a couple of the tables were filled with men in Turkish garb and women wearing head shawls. These, she figured, were the paid participants Paul was referring to when he’d mentioned meeting payroll. Other tables held only young people in Western dress—college kids, unpaid, working for course credit.
    She introduced herself and held out one hand, sticky with orange juice, then drew it back, apologizing, and wiped it on her pants. Grinning sheepishly, she altered her gesture to a wave.
    One by one, the kids introduced themselves. Two had Turkish names and accents but the others sounded American. The last American girl to give her name was Madison Ledbetter, and Lacy recognized her as the little mop-top whose hair Süleyman had nearly incinerated. Madison asked, “What are they saying over there? About Max Sebring?”
    “Henry Jones just got back from the hospital and he really hasn’t said much yet that you don’t already know.” Lacy felt hesitant to tell them anything about Max’s death. The information should come from Bob Mueller or Paul, not from her.
    “Oh, come on. We know he just got back from the hospital. We watched him drive up. But we don’t know anything else. They haven’t said jack to us since the ambulance left this morning.” Madison turned to the others for back-up.
    “Well, you know that Mr. Sebring is dead.”
    “Not really. We weren’t even sure of that,” Madison said.
    “He looked dead,” another said.
    “But the ambulance pulled out with its sirens on. I thought they only did that if there was a reason to hurry.”
    “He didn’t look sick.”
    “And he wasn’t that old, either. I mean not really old.”
    “The doctor couldn’t give Henry a definite cause of death,” Lacy said. She stopped herself before she went any further and steered the conversation to the reason she was here and the fact that she, too, was associated with a college, albeit in the role of instructor rather than student.
    As Lacy returned to her table she saw that Sierra had taken Lacy’s seat opposite Paul. But the seat on Paul’s right was vacant so she headed for it. Sierra glanced toward her then reached across the table, placing her hand over Paul’s. Undaunted, Lacy made deliberate eye contact with Sierra, took the empty seat and said, “The kids I was talking to over there want to know more about Max Sebring. They feel like they’re out of the loop because no one has told them anything.” She didn’t know what to call them. Kids? Workers? Students? None of those sounded right. They might be kids, but sensitive about being referred to as such.