Page 47 of With a Vengeance

“Sweet nectar of the gods,” Dante says before spreading some on the bread. He quickly adds a few slices of roast beef and takes a mighty bite. With his mouth still full, he adds, “What are you looking for?”

Anna, now on her knees, opens the door to the cabinet beneath the sink. “Poison.”

Dante swallows with an audible gulp. “That’s not funny.”

“Good. Because I’m not joking.”

Anna peers into the dark and musty recesses of the cabinet. In the back, sitting behind a bucket and next to a canister of drain cleaner, is a box of rat poison. Its presence isn’t a surprise. She suspects every train with a galley car has some.

She grabs the box and looks inside. The poison itself is a white powder that’s roughly the size and consistency of table salt. Bringing the box to her nose, she gets a whiff of the same chemical smell she detected in Judd Dodge’s martini glass.

Dante, his sandwich completely forgotten, stands behind her. “Is that—”

“Yes,” Anna says before he can finish the question. “This is what killed Judd.”

Nineteen

Anna stands inthe middle of the observation car, the box of rat poison at her feet. She shifts nervously from one leg to the other as, in the preceding three cars, Seamus rouses everyone from their rooms. Not that anyone requires rousing. As the others file into the observation car, Anna sees they’re all dressed in the same clothes they wore in the lounge. No one, it seems, is willing to risk falling asleep.

“Why are we here?” Lapsford grumbles as he enters the observation car.

The reason Anna chose this and not the lounge is because bringing the poison into the same car where a man died from ingesting it struck her as being in poor taste. The observation car, with its row of seats that circle the entire room, is the next-best gathering spot.

But that’s not what Lapsford is asking, Anna knows. She waits until everyone else has arrived before answering it.

“I found this in the galley,” she says.

“Wefound it,” Dante adds.

Anna wishes he hadn’t, because it prompts Seamus to ask, “Why were you in the galley with him?”

“We weren’t together,” Anna adds.

Dante nods. “I was making a sandwich.”

“And I was looking for this.” She nudges the rat poison with her foot. “The murder weapon. Now, who’s been in the galley tonight?”

“We all were,” Sal says. “All of us passed through it on our way to the locomotive and back.”

“Did anyone linger there?”

“Not on the way there,” Seamus says. “I was in the back of the pack, so if someone did, I would have seen it.”

“And we took up the rear on the way back,” Dante says.

They’re right, much to Anna’s disappointment. That narrows it down to before everyone gathered in the lounge.

“Was anyone in the galley between seven and eight?” she asks.

“I was not,” Edith says.

Herb chimes in with “Me neither.”

“Nor me,” Sal says.

“If I was,” Lapsford says, “I wouldn’t tell you.”

Anna crosses her arms. “So that’s a yes?”

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