Read Online Shadows on the Train by Melanie Jackson - Free Book Online Page B

salt-and-pepper-haired woman from the Pacific Central Station platform hovered over us. Her lips were pressed inward, covering her gums. “Loth my denturth,” she explained, and her sorrowful gaze slid to Pantelli. “I thought maybe you could help?”
    â€œI’m a dendrologist. Into bark, not enamel,” Pantelli said crossly.
    â€œAh. Bark. A new, natural approach to denturth, I thuppoth.” The woman shrugged. “Oh, well. I do have a thpare pair in the luggage car. Gueth thath where I’ll have to go.”
    When she’d moved off, I leaned over to admire Madge’s drawing. “Great elk there, Madge…ELK!” I exclaimed in sudden horror and jumped, knocking my knee against the table. “ Ow . Excuse me, gotta zoom.”
    Madge, whose pencil-holding hand had been jarred by my abrupt exit, which had the effect of giving the elk an antenna, called acidly after me, “Maybe the reason Emily decided to stay single and childless was that she’d spent time with a pre-teen .”
    I charged up the observation dome stairs. The elk stamp! Dad’s envelope, my only clue to the king mystery, was in the sweater I’d tossed on a seat.
    On the stairs I brushed past two custodians, just finished cleaning, and did a mini high-jump over a pail full of suds they’d left at the top. The sweater had to be on the seat at the very front, where Talbot and I had done our witty out-of-control-plane routine.
    My left arm was wrenched painfully back. What was this, rerun time? Same thing had happened under the big clock in Pacific Central Station.
    I turned. A blanket descended on my head, the warm, snuggly kind I’d slept under last night. But this one was wrapped tightly around me, mummy style. Through its folds a very cold and unsnuggly voice whispered, “What have you done with the king?”

Chapter Ten
    The Clues of the Fisherman
    I was in a woolly fog. The gray blanket stuck on my glasses and filled my mouth. There was a bad joke in this somewhere, about all junior sleuths looking the same in the dark—i.e., totally helpless—but I was too frightened to make it.
    In the middle of my fear, I knew one thing, though. I had to keep the whispering blanket-thrower from heading to that front seat, where my sweater lay in an untidy pile.
    The Whisperer’s shadow inked over me, making the blanket even darker. The Whisperer was too tall to be Bowl Cut, I thought suddenly.
    I remembered reading somewhere that blind people instinctively sharpen their other senses to make up for the missing visual one. If I concentrated on sound and smell, I might be able to deduce something else about the Whisperer.
    â€œSo,” I said conversationally, “what’s new?”
    My shoulder was freed from the clamp-like grip as the Whisperer loosened the blanket over my mouth. “C’mon, give . Where are you hiding it?”
    â€œIn the purser’s safe, of course,” I lied. Then, making my voice prim, I said, “After all, you can’t trust anyone these days, don’t you find?”
    For which I got a shake. “You wanna stay healthy? It’d be just too bad if the Tomorrow’s Cool Talent host had to say, ‘Our next guest, Dinah Galloway, has a lateness problem. As in permanent lateness.’”
    Hot as I was inside the blanket, I shivered. Another shake. I was starting to feel like a castanet. “Next time I pay you a visit, have the king ready,” the Whisperer instructed, in such a hissy voice I couldn’t tell if it belonged to a man or a woman. He, she or it then shoved me forward. Hard. I landed, blanketed face first, in the custodians’ sudsy bucket.
    I was just pulling the sopping blanket off my equally sopping head when footsteps tapped up behind me.
    â€œI might have known,” Beanstalk snapped. Curving over me in that rubbery way he had, the conductor twitched a disapproving forefinger.