Shadows on the Train Page 3

  “Mfglmtch,” I said, my mouth full of tarts, by which I meant, You’d think it was Mother and Mrs. Rinaldi’s wed–ding from the way the two of them are carrying on.

  Normally each woman was quite sensible: Mother, shy and dreamy; Mrs. Rinaldi, good-humored and practical, like Jack.

  In one of those weird, sisterly psychic moments, Madge thought of Jack at the same time. She whispered, “Jack can’t make it here after all. He was just leaving, but somebody called ‘LaFlamme’ showed up at his office and insisted on seeing him. What kind of name is ‘LaFlamme’?” Madge added crossly.

  Mrs. Rinaldi peered distractedly up at Madge from the detailed notes she’d started making on pew flowers. “What’s this about flames?” she demanded. Then Mrs. Rinaldi relaxed and chuckled. “Oh, you mean Jack’s on fire, as it were. All men are like that before the marriage, m’dear. It soon changes! Why, my Luigi barely looks at me anymore.”

  Madge’s eyes widened. She gaped at her future sister-in-law. Then she burst into tears and ran from the room.

  “Oh, dear,” Mother exclaimed, with a flash of her normal worried motherliness. “Perhaps I should go to her…”

  Mrs. Rinaldi patted Mother’s hand. “Typical bride behavior, Suzanne. Nerves of gossamer! If you want my opinion,” and Jack’s sister leaned forward confidently, “we’ll get a lot more wedding work done on our own.”

  The two women were so busy I polished off most of the tarts on my own. Then, feeling a tad stuffed, I waddled round the room for exercise. “I’ll tell you something inter–esting,” I interrupted Mother and Mrs. Rinaldi, feeling that this planning nonsense had dragged on long enough. “Today, Liesl Dubuque emptied raw eggs on my head.”

  Mother and Mrs. Rinaldi stared. “Poor girl!” Mrs. Rinaldi exclaimed.

  “Yes,” I agreed, basking in this sympathy-for-the-victim attention, a rare experience for yours truly. “It took ages to wash—”

  “Poor, poor Liesl,” Mrs. Rinaldi continued, and Mother nodded along with her. “Dumped by her dad while he goes traipsing around the world with his new wife. And you know, Suzanne, wife number two isn’t quite as young as he thinks…” The two women raised their eyebrows significantly at each other.

  “The Dubuques can’t be at all easy to live with,” Mother said. “Not used to having children around, for one thing. That Mr. Dubuque, always shouting about the proper care of his tomato plants! Meanwhile, here’s Liesl, trying desperately to fit in…”

  I would have made retching noises, but at that moment Pantelli’s head popped into view over the windowsill. He was carefully removing leaves from a lilac bush for his leaf specimen collection. At the sight of Mrs. Rinaldi’s butter tarts, he pointed to his mouth. Subtle, Pantelli was not.

  Mother and Mrs. Rinaldi were engrossed in a debate about orange blossoms versus calla lilies. I raised a tart. Pantelli opened his mouth wide. I threw.

  There are reasons besides lack of height that I don’t make the basketball team. As with everything about me, it seems, my throw just had too much energy. The tart sailed right over Pantelli— “AAAGGGHHH!”

  Mother and Mrs. Rinaldi jumped up, clattering their teacups. “Nice one, Di,” Pantelli commented.

  On the sidewalk, massaging her eyelid, was the woman in red, Ardle’s friend, Mrs. Zanatta.

  Her little boy, like her, big eyed and chestnut haired, picked up the now-mashed tart and examined it—without saying anything. I remembered what Liesl, pardon me, poor Liesl, had said about him. That weird kid of hers who doesn’t speak.

  “Uh,” I called to his mother, “this is a bit awkward. Sorry. I mis-aimed and—”

  “Dinah, you will go upstairs this instant,” Mother ordered.

  Out of the side of his mouth, Pantelli stage-whispered to me, “That Zanatta dame has been gaping at your house for about ten minutes, Di. Think she’s casing it for a break-in?”

  Mother advanced to the window. Pantelli fled.

  Chapter Four

  Chestnuts and Cobwebs

  Spotting me at the Trout Lake Farmers’ Market, which we Galloways trooped down to every Saturday, the regular guitarist immediately strummed and sang:

  Dinah, is there anyone finer,

  In the state of Carolina…

  It’s the song I was named after. Dad used to sing it to Mother in the days when they held hands in cafés along Commercial Drive, put their quarters together to split a cappuccino and dreamed of all kinds of wonderful possibilities.

  Well, possibilities didn’t always work out, but music kept on. I sang along with the guitarist, and quite a few people tossed coins in his open guitar case.

  The gleaming white market stalls were filled with cheeses, fresh produce, pottery, jewelry, pickles, seafood and baked nummies.

  Madge, Jack, Mother and I drifted from vendor to vendor, buying from almost everyone and filling up our backpacks. Beyond the market hubbub, dogs chased each other around sparkling Trout Lake. The perfect day.

  “You sure you want to go to Toronto?” Jack teased Madge. His gray eyes studied her wistfully. “Three whole days away from you! I don’t know if I can stand it.”

  “But a train trip,” said Mother dreamily. “Trains, such marvelous settings for Alfred Hitchcock films…One thinks of The Lady Vanishes…”

  “And then one switches one’s mind away from it,” I said firmly. I wrenched a huge radish off one of the bunches she’d bought and bit into it for maximum kee-rrrunch effect.

  Mother was the bookish type, always lapsing into literary references. Since she’d started going out with Jon Horowitz, a play director, she’d added film references to her literary ones. Jon was mad for old movies. He and Mother went to repertory theaters to see old movies at least once a week.

  “Or of course Strangers on a Train,” Mother added.

  “Mother,” Madge and I said crossly.

  She laughed. “I’m sure the train trip will be soothing and serene, not Hitchcockian at all.”

  “Er—yes.” Over by the vendor selling ostrich meat, as well as fluffy ostrich-feathered pens and key chains, I saw Talbot and his mom. Liesl Dubuque had just wriggled up to chat with him. How could he be so friendly with her, after the egg incident?

  With determination, I made myself look away. “So tell me,” I said to Mother, “do you find Mrs. Zanatta unsavory in any way?”

  “Certainly not,” Mother replied, astonished. “I’ve met her in the park a few times, and she seems very nice and quiet. Her little boy is very shy. A kindergartener, I believe. I wonder…”

  I cut Mother off before she could utter something do-goodish, like suggesting we invite the Zanattas over for tea. “But what do you actually know about this woman?”

  “Well…they haven’t lived here long.” Mother’s forehead crinkled into a suspicious frown. “You’re not involved in another mystery, are you, Dinah? Because you’re really too busy to be—”

  “Great, cake!” I exclaimed hastily. Jack had just handed us pieces of sweet, sticky, matrimonial squares, a specialty at the Small Pleasures baking stall. I crammed in the crumbly, buttery, dates-and-golden-syrup-filled square all at once so I wouldn’t have to answer Mother.

  Jack and Madge, meanwhile, were—get this—feeding pieces of their cake to each other. Yech.

  “Dinah, we leave in two days,” Talbot said. “I’m not sure this is the best time to be taking a jaunt down memory lane.”

  He, Pantelli and I were crouching in the low doorway to the Galloway attic. I put up a hand and nudged aside a wheel-sized cobweb. “Mother and Madge are out. This is our one chance to look in Dad’s effects for something worth eighty thousand smackeroos.”

  I let the cobweb fall on Talbot’s face. “Of course, if you have someone you’d rather be spending time with…”

  He shoved the cobweb aside and we glared at each other.

  Pantelli was gazing out the window at the top branches of our horse chestnut tree. “A rare, satisfying, top-down perspective of Aesculus hippocastanum,”
he observed and made his way to the window through an obstacle course of trunks and boxes.

  Talbot informed me coldly, “I’d like to have a rare, satisfying perspective of fairness from you, Dinah Galloway. The reason I was talking to Liesl at the market was to warn her. I said any more pranks—eggs-asperating or other—and she’d be booted off the Garden Park Softball Aces.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I may have been a bit hasty.”

  We grinned at each other and everything was all right again.

  Struggling with the window latch, Pantelli called back, “As aesculus comes from esca, or ‘food,’ there’s some thought that the name was given as a joke. Horse chestnuts are way too bitter to eat, unlike sweet chestnuts.” Cr-r-r-eak! Pantelli flung the window open.

  “Toxic and poisonous,” Pantelli said with satisfaction. “They contain aesculin, a bitter compound that breaks down blood proteins. As in, poisons you. Not fatally, but you’d be so sick you’d wish you were dead.”

  He leaned over the windowsill. Magnifying glass in hand, he was inspecting one of the chestnut gourds that gleamed like green lamps all over the tree. In another month they’d start falling to the ground and splitting. We’d scoop out the smooth, mahogany-colored chestnuts and roll them around in our hands like dice, enjoying their smooth coolness.

  “Poisonous if you eat a lot of leaves, that is,” Pantelli explained, pulling a branch toward him. “The effect all depends on the dose. Ironically, in small doses, and mixed with other ingredients, the plant is useful in the treatment of stuff like hardened arteries, leg ulcers and frostbite.”

  The top half of Pantelli was over the sill by now. Talbot and I traded uneasy glances. “How about for the treatment of people who fall out of windows?” Talbot called.

  “I’m fine. You guys don’t understand what it is to be a dendrologist.”

  “Dendrologist?” I repeated. “Is that someone who makes dentures?”

  “Of course not.” Pantelli’s voice floated back to us, insulted. “It’s someone who studies trees.”

  Exchanging shrugs, Talbot and I began examining the labels Mother had Magic-Markered on boxes.

  Most of the boxes contained either photos or Madge’s and my schoolwork and report cards. The boxes were jammed between broken lamps and chairs that we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw out, and relatives’ presents none of us wanted, like the smiling brass woman whose ten hands each balanced a candleholder.

  “How do we know which box has your dad’s effects?” asked Talbot. He examined a grim portrait of a Galloway great-uncle. “Hey, this old guy scowls just like you do, Dinah.”

  “Very funny.” I eased between stacks of boxes. The problem was I had no idea where Mother had stashed Dad’s effects. I knew, from something Madge had once said, that Mother had put them away as quickly as possible because they were too painful to look at.

  Pantelli had pulled a leaf off the nearest branch and was poring over it. “Reasonably healthy,” he pronounced. And then he mused, “The real puzzler is why the ‘horse’ in ‘horse chestnut.’ Possibly ’cause the plant has been used in mixtures for curing horses and cattle of coughs.”

  Talbot and I were busy shifting boxes back, forth and sideways. “I dunno if this is getting us anywhere,” said Talbot. “I feel like we’re playing Tetris.” His dark eyes narrowed at me in sudden suspicion. “Are you sure your mom said it was okay to do this?”

  “Er…” This was a sticky point. The way I’d explained it to Talbot, Mother hadn’t refused to let us look. Which she hadn’t, since I’d never asked her.

  Pantelli continued, “Some researchers think the ‘horse’ part is from the Welsh word gwres, meaning hot and fierce-tasting. That is, a flavor sensation you’d want to avoid.”

  I snapped my by-now extremely dusty fingers. “‘Avoid’! That’s it! Mother wanted to avoid seeing Dad’s effects. So she would’ve put them somewhere out of the way.”

  Talbot and I stopped moving the boxes on the floor around. “Out of the way” in this attic could only mean the high shelf that ran around the room.

  We squinted past the cobwebs that were strung from sec–tion to section of the shelf like telephone wires. “DINAH’S VALIBLE COMIX,” Talbot read aloud from the side of one small box. “IF U THROW AWAY, PRIPAR TO DIE.”

  “Never mind those,” I said. Being height-challenged, I scrambled up on one of the floor boxes for a better look.

  At the window, Pantelli called, “Hi, Mrs. Chewbley! Whatcha doin’?”

  Mrs. Chewbley’s rueful laugh echoed up to us. “I’m looking for my glasses. I dropped them somewhere when I finished Dinah’s piano lesson earlier today.”

  I spotted a sealed plastic bag. Even through the cobwebs I could read the typewritten label. Michael Galloway: Effects.

  I reached, and then I hesitated.

  “You sure you want to see them, Dinah?” Talbot asked quietly.

  I heaved a big breath. “Yeah. Yeah, we have to.”

  But once Talbot placed the bag in my hands, I hesitated again. I wasn’t at all sure I wouldn’t break into a blubberfest on opening the bag. So, putting off the moment, I strolled to the window to shout my own hello down to Mrs. Chewbley.

  “I’ve been practicing a lot,” I assured her.

  “Um…great,” she said, hunched over our lawn. “Is your mother home, Dinah?”

  “No, she’s working,” I replied.

  “Oh, right. I forgot.” Mrs. Chewbley laughed. She began prattling about her forgetfulness.

  Life being short, I was about to smile politely and withdraw from the window. Then, to Mrs. Chewbley’s left, two of the cedar trees bunched at the side of our garden wriggled. Amid their branches, a face appeared.

  A man’s face, staring coldly, speculatively, at our house.

  I recognized his bowl haircut. The man who’d been following Ardle!

  Chapter Five

  Bowl Cut's Hair-Raising Entrance

  “Hey you!” I yelled indignantly. “Whaddya want?”

  Talbot gave me a nudge. “That’s not the nicest way to talk to Mrs. Chewbley.”

  “No, him!” I pointed at the bowl-cut man.

  Two things happened simultaneously. Bowl Cut’s face, round and white like a dinner plate, withdrew into the branches. And I jarred Pantelli’s outstretched hand so that he dropped his magnifying glass. Down, down it toppled to boink! Mrs. Chewbley on the head. She collapsed on some fallen horse chestnut leaves.

  We all raced downstairs, me clutching Dad’s effects, and Pantelli moaning about how his expensive magnifying glasses kept getting broken around me. (His last magnifying glass had cracked when we were sleuthing the month before, in North Vancouver.)

  This one, however, was crack-free. Disentangling it from her bird’s nest bun, Mrs. Chewbley chuckled weakly. “Lucky I have so much thick, unkempt hair. It acts as padding.”

  We helped her to her feet and into the Galloway living room. “I’ll make you some tea,” I offered. Tea was the Galloway cure for everything.

  Talbot then charged back out to investigate whether Bowl Cut really was an intruder or just a Dubuque friend or relative with a strange fondness for cedar trees.

  I left Pantelli inspecting Mrs. Chewbley’s scalp through his magnifying glass. “No injury,” he reported, “but have you considered using Head and Shoulders?”

  I put the kettle on with tons of water because I wanted time to go through the plastic bag. With hands that shook only slightly, I removed Dad’s folded clothes, including the red and black flannel shirt I used to love rubbing my cheek against. I stroked the shirt for a moment, and then I laid all his clothes and his shoes on the kitchen counter.

  The kitchen was very quiet. Through the open window, on a hint of a breeze, the leaves of the Japanese cherry out back fluttered and whispered.

  Dad, I thought. And for an instant I could see him: warm grin, black eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.

  The leaves stopped fluttering, and Dad faded. It was hot an
d still again.

  I made myself think practically. Ardle, and whoever was after him, weren’t interested in Dad’s clothes. The eighty grand, in whatever form, had to be among the other things in the bag.

  I found a black leather wallet with some bills, coins and credit cards inside. Gleaming through a plastic casing was a photo of our family in front of the Pacific National Exhibition’s wooden roller coaster. The one Dad and I had gone on again and again, but Mother and Madge had been scared of. A passerby had snapped us.

  And inside the money pocket—an unsealed stamped envelope.

  Was this the envelope Ardle had meant? It had nothing inside. There wasn’t even an address, though Dad had scrawled our return one on the back flap.

  I held up the envelope.

  “Hey, cool stamp!” Pantelli marched in with his mag–nifying glass. One day Talbot and I were going to have to unweld it from his hand.

  Pantelli pored over the envelope, admiring the stamp—a huge gold-bordered one, featuring an elk in a meadow and the words Celebrating Canada’s wildlife in gold lettering below. “And not franked, either. Betcha this is worth something.”

  “Eighty thousand dollars?” I said doubtfully. “It’s only seven years old.”

  Mrs. Chewbley ambled in, vainly trying to push all her loose strands of hair into place. So much for my idea of some quality time alone.

  “An eighty-thousand-dollar stamp?” She peered through the magnifying glass and laughed. “It’s a nice one, but I doubt you’d get even eighty cents for it at a philatelist’s. A stamp collector’s,” she clarified, in response to Pantelli’s and my vocabulary-challenged expressions. “As you say, Dinah, it’s too recent.”

  Mrs. Chewbley noticed my crestfallen expression. She smiled kindly. “You could ask about it, though. After all, what do I know? I’m just a dithery old piano teacher.”

  The kettle gave a shrill whistle. I set four mugs out beside the wallet, envelope and keys. Then I rummaged for Mother’s loose-leaf Darjeeling tea. I couldn’t see the tea strainer anywhere, so I grabbed the colander and began dumping spoonfuls of tea leaves into it. Pouring boiling water over them, I passed the colander back and forth over mugs. Lots of water splashed on the counter, but hey. We creative types are into improvising.