Chapter Fifteen

Miss McLeod? Miss McLeod? Wake up, please.”

Someone was tapping on her door. Jill shook off sleep and reached for the light switch. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked at her watch. She hadn’t been asleep long. It was just after eleven.

She heard it again, a low, insistent voice. “Miss McLeod?”

“I’m coming.”

She threw back the blanket, stuck her feet into her slippers, and got out of bed. Reaching for her blue plaid robe, she put it on and tied the belt around her waist, taking a deep, steadying breath.

There was only one reason anyone would wake her in the middle of the night—a crisis of some sort. Perhaps someone was injured. She unlocked and opened the door.

Lonnie Clark, the porter from the Silver Crescent, stood in the corridor, a worried look on his face. “Come quick, Miss McLeod. Bring your first-aid kit.”

“Who’s hurt? How bad is it?”

“It’s Mr. Fontana, in the drawing room. Something’s wrong. I think he’s ill. Best you see for yourself.”

“I’ll be right there,” she told the porter.

Mr. Clark nodded and turned, heading back to the Silver Crescent. Jill shut and locked her door. CZ policy prohibited her from responding to these late night calls in her nightclothes. She quickly shed her pajamas and put on her uniform. Then she pulled the first-aid kit off the luggage rack above her bed and left her compartment.

Usually when she was called upon to give first aid to passengers, it involved something minor, like the scrape on Robby Demarest’s hand earlier today. Or motion sickness among the passengers, whether adult or child. But Mr. Clark’s demeanor suggested that this was more serious. Jill wouldn’t know what she was dealing with until she saw Mr. Fontana for herself.

Jill walked quickly through the train. At this time of night, nearly an hour out of Salt Lake City, most of the passengers were asleep. In the Silver Quail, all was quiet. There were no lights showing under the doors of the berths, and Joe Backus dozed in the porter’s seat on the Silver Quail. He didn’t wake as she passed him. Back in the Silver Falls, the door to the porter’s compartment was closed. She assumed that Frank Nathan was also asleep.

In the sixteen-section sleeper, she encountered Lois Demarest coming out of the women’s restroom. The girl wore a silky red nightgown and robe. Bundled in her arms she carried her clothing and her shoes. The teenager smiled and put a finger to her lips, then she tiptoed to one of the berths and slipped behind the curtain.

Jill continued down the aisle. Snores and mutterings came from several of the berths she passed. She went past the men’s restroom at the rear of the car and into the next car, the transcontinental sleeper. Finally she entered the Silver Crescent, walking past the porter’s compartment and the closed bedroom doors.

The porter waited for her in the passageway outside the drawing room door, a strained look on his dark face. He motioned with his hand and she stepped toward the doorway.

The light was on inside the drawing room. The seat perpendicular to the window had been folded down into a bed. The pillow had tumbled to the floor. Mr. Fontana lay on his right side, his arms in front of him and his shoulders hunched forward. His right leg was drawn up, completely on the bed, while his other leg, the foot encased in a maroon slipper, dangled over the edge. He wore gray silk pajamas under his plush maroon bathrobe. His breathing was slow and irregular, the air rasping as he drew it in and expelled it from his lungs.

“Mr. Fontana?” The man on the bed didn’t respond. Jill turned to the porter. “I don’t like the way he’s breathing. Do you have any idea what happened? Did he fall?”

Mr. Clark shook his head. “No, I don’t know. I didn’t see or hear anything. I was up in the Vista-Dome. When I came back down I checked the lounge and the buffet, like I always do before going to bed. Then I headed up the passageway to my own quarters. I saw Mr. Fontana’s door was open. It was moving back and forth like it hadn’t closed right. I reached for it, going to shut it. The light was on. I looked in, and I saw Mr. Fontana.”

The porter stopped and ran a hand over his face. “He was on the bed like that, on his side, in his pajamas and robe. It looked to me like he was taken sick and fell. Or passed out. You saw how he was when he left the buffet tonight. He was drinking a lot. When I found him like this, I called out his name. Then I stepped inside, called his name again. I didn’t go all the way over to the bed. I just took a look and saw his face all pale like that. And the way he’s breathing, well, I figured I’d better get you.”

Jill walked into the drawing room and set the first-aid kit on the floor near the bed where Mr. Fontana lay. His face, usually ruddy, was pale. In this light, it almost looked blue. And when Jill touched his forehead, the skin felt cold. His eyes were closed, but as Jill stood over him, his eyes opened and he stared up at her. His breath rasped and his mouth worked, as though he was trying to say something. Then he moaned.

Could this be alcohol poisoning? Her father had once described the symptoms to her, and Mr. Fontana’s symptoms were similar. Or was this something far more serious?

“Mr. Fontana?” Jill reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. He moaned again. Then his arms moved. He rolled back, revealing the front of his robe and the blanket where he’d lain.

Behind her, the porter gasped.

The blanket wasn’t supposed to be that color. Jill stared, horrified at what she saw. The maroon color of Mr. Fontana’s robe had hidden the dark red stain. Blood, and lots of it, had soaked into the robe’s thick plush fabric and stained the gray silk pajamas underneath. The letters VF were embroidered in gold on the left breast. A hole had obliterated the leg of the F.

Jill straightened. She looked down at the pillow on the floor and saw another hole on the white pillowcase, this one rimmed with black. She had no doubt that the other side of the pillow was stained with blood.

Mr. Fontana had been shot. And the pillow had been used to muffle the sound.

Jill took a deep breath to steady her nerves. She was surprised that her voice didn’t shake when she spoke. “Mr. Clark, please get Doctor Ranleigh. She’s traveling in compartment I on the Silver Quail. And find the conductor.”

The porter nodded and disappeared from view. Jill turned back to Mr. Fontana. A gunshot wound was far beyond the scope of her first-aid training. She touched his temple gently with her index finger. He groaned. His eyes opened, wide and dark, and he stared up at her.

Jill leaned forward. “Mr. Fontana, it’s Miss McLeod. I’ve sent for a doctor. Can you hear me? What happened?”

Something flickered in his eyes and he groaned again. Guttural sounds came from his mouth. But she couldn’t understand the words. His eyes closed, but he was still breathing, that awful raspy sound, in counterpoint with the clacking of wheels on rails.

A few minutes later, the door opened and Dr. Ranleigh bustled into the drawing room, wrapped in a plaid flannel robe. She carried her medical bag.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Jill said. “This is Mr. Fontana. He’s been shot.”

“I can see that. It looks like he’s lost a lot of blood.” Dr. Ranleigh leaned over Mr. Fontana, her fingers opening the robe and the pajama top to reveal Mr. Fontana’s chest. Now Jill could see the entry wound, just below the man’s heart. “It’s bad. This man needs a hospital. Can we get him back to Salt Lake City?”

Before Jill could say anything, Mr. Dutton, the conductor, entered the drawing room, followed by Mr. Winston, the Pullman conductor, and Mr. Clark. “Miss McLeod, the porter says one of the passengers has been injured.”

“He’s been shot,” Dr. Ranleigh said.

Mr. Dutton looked aghast, momentarily at a loss for words. Then he narrowed his eyes and addressed the middle-aged woman at the bedside. “Who are you?”

“Doctor Ella Ranleigh,” she said in a no-nonsense voice.

“She’s a passenger from Denver,” Jill added. “I sent for her.”

Mr. Dutton moved to the bed and stared down at Mr. Fontana. “Good God, what a mess. How bad is it?”

“Very bad,” the doctor said. “We’ve got to get him to a hospital or he won’t survive.”

On the bed Mr. Fontana moved again and his eyes opened. He grabbed Jill’s wrist, twisting it painfully as he tried again to speak. Then he sighed, the air leaving his lungs in a long, gusty exhale.

That was the last sound he made.