TOKEN FOR YOUR TROUBLES, GENTS?” the flapper asked with a dazzling smile as we passed her in the library car. “They’re our way of saying sorry for tonight’s misfortunes.” She held a few shiny gold coins out to us, and I noticed she looked confused as she took in our disheveled appearances. But she thankfully didn’t comment on it. “They’re good for twenty dollars off any purchase in the gift shop onboard or the main one at Trainsville.” I flashed Frank and Chet an excited grin as we each took one from her gloved hand.
Chet seemed less enthused. “So the coin I found isn’t a piece of lost treasure from the twenties?” He drew the crawl-space coin from his pocket and turned it over in his hands, comparing it to the one the flapper had just given him. Both had overlapping rail spikes engraved on one side and a railroad crossing symbol emblazoned on the other.
“Who else did you give these to?” I asked.
It seemed Frank had landed on the same idea as me. Whoever had one of those gold coins had dropped it in the secret passage.
“Hmm. Let’s see….” The flapper glanced around the library car now full of bored passengers thumbing through books or glancing around suspiciously, or whispering behind cupped hands.
My heart hammered in my chest. This was it!
“Well, now that each of you have one, I’ve given a coin to every passenger on the train.” Our faces fell, but she didn’t seem to have noticed. “Glad I could help you boys!” she said, beaming before she sauntered away to strike up a friendly conversation with the married couple by the far wall.
I glumly returned the lantern to Ravi. “Thanks again.”
He took it and pointed to the display case. “Did you take a rail spike?” he asked. “I swear when I came back in here from the bathroom, it was gone.”
Frank, Chet, and I shrugged and shook our heads. I pocketed my coin.
Shoulders slumped, Ravi turned back to ring up a girl’s purchase.
“Murder on the Orient Express!” Chet said, taking in the book’s cover. “Agatha Christie. Classic,” he said before turning back to us.
“The flapper gave a coin to every passenger,” Frank mused. “Marigold? Karen? Mr. Crowley?”
“Whoever crept into the secret passage to meet Trent in the second-class sleeping car would have needed to know when to step out of the performance.”
“Which means they’d need to know the script,” Chet mused. “It must be an actor, then.”
“Unless it’s a passenger….” Frank rushed back to the counter and madly flipped through the ledger. “There’s only one way to know for sure if any of the other passengers have been onboard before. Here. Look,” he urged, pointing at the page. “Mr. Crowley. He was on the train last weekend.”
“That must be how he knows the ironing shoelaces line,” I concluded.
“Duh, of course he’s been on before,” Chet said. “Isn’t he Trainsville’s biggest patron?”
Frank pursed his lips.
“Wait a minute!” I gestured to Frank’s jacket. “That handwriting on the note. Can we compare it to the ledger again?”
Frank dug the scrap out and set it down beside the ledger.
I looked from the note to the list of names. “I think it’s a match!”
“Yeah, this does look pretty similar,” Frank said.
I grinned. “See! It’s Mr. Crowley!”
“Bathroom Man?” Chet said with a laugh.
Frank leaned lower over the ledger, closely comparing Mr. Crowley’s handwriting to the anonymous note. “Yeah, I’m not convinced. It doesn’t seem like enough evidence to confirm anything. I still think we should follow up on the information from Marigold about Sebastian.”
“Let’s do it,” I said. Maybe we could at least figure out the truth about Sebastian, one way or another.
Back in the performance car, passengers and actors were sucking mints and drinking sodas, stretching their limbs. The milkman was in a complicated yoga pose on the floor. The aristocrat was reading in a chair. The group of girls were playing Truth or Dare as they sipped on steaming cups of coffee. I overheard one of them muttering about how nothing beat the Coffee Stop’s iced lattes.
“Why is that woman in pink staring at me?” Chet whispered out the side of his mouth.
“I don’t know.” Frank gave him a once-over. “You don’t have anything on your face, but you are pretty dusty everywhere else.”
“She’s been watching me almost all night,” Chet quietly complained. “What’s her deal?”
I shrugged. “You’re a handsome fellow. Can you blame her?”
“Dear?” a voice called out. I turned as the grandmother flagged down my brother. “Thanks for the motion-sickness cure! My grandson is doing fine now.” The little boy turned away from the window and gave us a shy wave before focusing on the horizon again. The color had returned to his cheeks.
“Glad to hear it!” Frank called back.
“See?” Chet said. “It wasn’t the dessert after all!”
“Save it for your YouTube review,” I teased.
In the dining car, we found more actors and passengers seated around the little tables, and Sebastian at the back of the coach playing cards with the mafia mama, the reporter, and Biff.
I gestured for Frank and Chet to follow me. It was time to get some answers from the guy. Across from them, Murph looked like he was catching some z’s, while Charlene scribbled furiously in her pad, presumably taking notes for her story.
Before we reached the table, Murph shot out of his chair and stepped into the aisle. “This prison on wheels is getting old,” he griped.
Charlene closed her notepad, then rose to join us. “Yeah. Any updates?”
I shook my head.
Murph sighed. “Sorry, again. For causing a scene earlier.”
“It’s okay.” I cracked a slight smile. “People were bound to find out sooner or later.”
Charlene clipped her pen to her notepad. “Do you guys need anything?”
“A private word with the bootlegger,” Frank said.
They nodded before clearing out of the car.
“Hey,” I called to Sebastian. “Sorry to interrupt your game, but can we have a quick word?”
He nodded, and the other actors scooted out of their chairs so we could slide in. Soon, Sebastian, Frank, Chet, and I were alone in the bumpy carriage.
“How can I help you?” he asked in a playful tone.
“Just killing time until we get back to the station at ten p.m.,” I said lightly. “Less than an hour to go. How about you? What have you been up to?”
“Winning at cards… until you guys came in.” He winked, but his smile had faded.
Frank jumped in. “So you’re pretty good at cards?”
“I heard the original owner of this train, Mr. Easton Mayhem, was a real card shark,” I added, flipping over the king of clubs.
“Uhh, guys, I don’t think—” Chet began, but I elbowed him.
“Is that so, Joe?” Frank replied. He looked at Sebastien. “Did you know that?”
“No.” Sebastian started to stand up. “Better get going. Last call for coffee.”
I rested my hand on his arm. “Speaking of lasts, what’s your last name?” I asked, hoping my tone was still upbeat and conversational.
“Rosé,” he said in a tight voice. He hadn’t sat back down.
Frank closed in for the kill. “I heard it was actually Mayhem.”
Sebastian stiffened, then smiled. “I guess the rumors about you two are true. No case you can’t crack, huh?”
“Get to talking,” I said through my smile.
He sat back down. “You got me. I’m the great-great-great-grandson of Mr. Mayhem. The inheritance could have been mine, but it went to someone else. I’m broke and bitter as can be. Can you blame me?” He turned his palms faceup. “But that doesn’t make me a kidnapper.”
“So then why keep your relation to Mayhem a secret from us?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I just didn’t want to get involved.”
“You seem pretty involved to us.” Frank reached into his jacket and slammed the damp diagram pages down in front of Sebastian with the clipped-on scrap at the top of the pile. “Care to explain why one of these diagrams has stationery attached to it with your name?”
Sebastian wearily regarded the pages and scrap of stationery. “My great-great-great-grandfather left my family an old trunk of his belongings. I was cleaning out my folks’ attic a few months back and I looked inside for the first time. That’s where I found these diagrams. In a false bottom.”
“Just like a secret passage!” Chet blurted. “Oh, I just love a good theme!”
“Along with the diagrams was Mayhem’s diary,” Sebastian continued. “He wrote about how he had a bad falling-out with his daughter, so he left his inheritance to his granddaughter out of guilt, to try to make amends. I met Trent one day, and we got to talking. He told me that he was also related to Mayhem, and on top of that, he’d inherited the great fortune. It was a real punch to the gut, or salt in the wound. Well, you get the picture.”
“I’m sure it was,” Frank murmured, giving him an expectant look.
Sebastian released a long breath, then flashed a gleeful smile. “Anyway, at the end of the diary, there was an entry that really got my attention: ‘I’ve hidden a treasure on my train.’ When I looked more closely at the diagrams, I noticed secret passages and compartments drawn in. I knew I needed to get access to this train. I managed to snag one of the roles in the new show, but then I realized that wouldn’t help one bit. An actor constantly sneaking off to snoop around the other cars of the train would have raised more than a few eyebrows.” He picked up the old diagrams and riffled through them. Puzzlement flitted across his face before he returned to his usual self-assurance.
“You’re Ravi’s blackmailer, aren’t you?” I said, leaning forward. “You couldn’t hunt for the treasure on your own, so you had to get someone else to do your dirty work.”
“Ravi had twenty-four-seven access to the train because of the restoration work, didn’t he?” Frank chimed in
Sebastian nodded. “Luckily, I knew how I could get him to help me. I told him to find the treasure or I’d turn his boyfriend in for stealing from the gift shop back at the museum.”
“How could you possibly know something like that?” I asked incredulously.
Sebastian leaned back, interlacing his fingers behind his head. “I’ve been a security guard there for the past year. The CCTV footage I have from a few weeks ago doesn’t lie.”
Chet leaped in excitedly. “And then you and Ravi worked together to kidnap Trent!”
Sebastian chuckled. “Why would I need to threaten Trent when I’m so close to finding a fortune of my own? Everyone can be a winner here.” He stood, took a few steps, then turned back to us. “One more thing. You boys are missing some pages.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I left Ravi ten pages, one for each car. It seems you only have six.”
I furrowed my brow. “Ravi said he only found six pages.”
Without another word, Sebastian shrugged and strolled from the car.
“What if Trent knew about the treasure, and that’s where he’s been this whole time?” Chet exclaimed. “Off in the secret passages looking for it? Maybe the fortune wasn’t enough. Maybe he wanted the treasure, too, and he used acting as a cover to get onto the train to find it!”
Frank and I shot each other an amused look.
My brother rubbed his forehead, then readjusted his cap. “We’re running out of time, and we aren’t any closer to solving this thing.”
He had a good point. “If Trent is tied up somewhere, this is our only window to find him.” But before I could think of next steps, the performance car door flew open and Marigold rushed in. Her mascara was smudged from crying.
“I—I need to talk to you guys.”