Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“You had a child. His child. You kept it. That’s why you took the hush money in the first place, because you were pregnant. Now, fast-forward all these years, you wanted his DNA to prove it. It’s taken you two decades to write your second book, partly because of how you felt about the industry—how hard it was to trust anyone with your work, with your life, again—and partly because you were raising a kid on your own. Staging a fight is fine and all, and you walked away with what you wanted: the DNA. But then McTavish dies and you realize that you might be the prime suspect. There’s the history between you, and now there’s also physical evidence of a violent altercation. And now you’ve got even clearer motive, because the copyright in all his books, including the new one, should go to his estate. And your child is the estate. Or at least that’s supposed to be what the DNA test will prove. So you pinch the manuscript to protect it, and hope that by the time anyone realizes you’re gone, we might have caught the real killer. Your only problem was that hot-wiring a car in real life is far more difficult than just researching it. And, of course, that you had to leave your daughter behind.”

Lisa paled so much I think she got immediately sunburned.

I stood up, dusted my knees. “Let’s put your car thieving to the test, because you need to help me get back on the train. Then Brooke can tell me her side of the story herself.”

Chapter 30

It took twice as long as it should have to walk back to the Land Cruiser. Even on flat, safe ground we walked like we were crossing a river on loose stones. I checked every spot I put my foot twice.

“I thought I’d hidden it so well,” Lisa said. “I didn’t want Henry to know.”

“Like mother, like daughter,” I said, pointing to her bruises. “Wrong arm.”

Her shoulders rose. “He hurt her?”

“No. Brooke’s right arm is sunburned. The festival punters are all in carriages on the east side of the train—they paid for the tickets so they get the sunrise views. The writers are all on the west, so we get the sunset. Each cabin only gets sun half a day. If she was sitting by the window in a guest cabin, where she’s supposed to be, she should have had sunburn on her left arm, not her right. If she’d just been burned outside, it would be across both arms evenly. Which means she’s been staying in a writer’s cabin. That, and it was pretty obvious she was lying about her cabin number when I asked her. She’s someone’s plus-one.”

Lisa chuckled. We’d reached the Land Cruiser. I brushed flecks of broken window glass off the seat and hopped in the passenger side. Lisa crouched by the driver’s footwell, alongside the dislodged panel and dangling wires she’d been fiddling with before I gave chase. “Gosh,” she said. “All that out of a sunburned arm.”

“Not just the arm,” I said. “When Royce woke us all up, you made sure to slip out of your cabin quickly, so no one would see anyone else was inside. Royce only deliberately woke the writers, but of course knocking on your door woke her as well. Her curiosity got the better of her and she followed you. That’s why she was last to arrive, and why you were annoyed to see her when she sat down next to you. Then there was her fascination with McTavish, which didn’t quite fit her age; it just took me a while to figure out if it was psychopathic or not. Plus you guided her away from Wyatt’s body. You told her to be careful when she was skipping rocks in the canyon. You gave her aloe vera cream to use on her sunburn. That all points to a motherly instinct. That and the fact that she was in the Chairman’s Carriage looking for the manuscript.”

“Very good,” Lisa said, a cable in her mouth.

“And she knew too much about that night in Edinburgh, when she was conceived. She held on to a copy of the article with you all in it, for one thing. But she knew a lot about Majors’s plagiarism accusations too. She brushed it off as being public knowledge, but that’s not true: there’s barely been a proper plagiarism accusation on this trip, it’s all veiled threats. The only way Brooke would really know about what went on that night was if someone who was there told her.” Brooke had told me, when I thought she was talking about Majors: I should have believed her. But she’d been talking about her mother. “You told her to try to discredit McTavish.”

“She was fascinated by him—Henry himself, sure, given all his success, but it was mostly the idea of a father in general. She hit her teens and she had questions. I knew she would. I’d been spending a lot of time thinking about what to tell her. I couldn’t lie to her, but I also couldn’t bring myself to tell her what he did to me. I hoped that telling her about Majors would be enough for her to know he was bad news without me telling the whole story. I thought I’d never have to, that he was an ocean and a lifetime away. I thought she’d never meet him.”