Betsy laughed. “I can believe that.”

  Encouraged, Emily thought some more and then said, “There was half of one of those energy bars, the kind made with peanut butter, a pair of magnifiers with one lens missing, and an old newspaper, all wrinkled but not wadded up. I mean, it was folded up right, but it looked like she had sat on it. In fact, Mike said newspapers are very insulating, that she probably had sat on it or slept under it or used it as a pillow. It made me sad to think of her trying to sleep with a newspaper for a blanket.” She frowned, wrinkling up her nose attractively while she thought. “There was more stuff, should I go on?”

  “Sure, if you can.”

  She could, but none of the items gave Betsy any ideas, unless there was something about Carrie having the bookmark. She dutifully wrote down all the items Emily mentioned.

  “Well, what’s next, then?” asked Emily.

  Betsy cudgeled her brain, but all she could come up with was, “I think I’m going to have to go to Fargo to see if I can find out anything there.”

  “All right, if you think that will help.”

  “Frankly, I don’t know if it will. But it’s all I can think of.”

  Promising to call Betsy with the address of Janet’s condemned house in Fargo, Emily picked up the bag with her kitted tulip pattern and left.

  LATER, Betsy phoned Sergeant Malloy to ask if he had any good news for her. “Did you find Dice Paulson?” she asked.

  “No. But I know where he is.”

  “Where?”

  “In prison in Illinois. He had a fake ID on him when he was arrested for bank fraud and attempted murder of a police officer, and was sent to Joliet Penitentiary down there under the fake name. He’s going to be there for at least three years.”

  “Oh,” said Betsy, her hopes dashed.

  “Where are you in this case?” he asked.

  “Not any forwarder. I think I’m going to have to go to Fargo.”

  “I’ve been. Bring warm clothes. And good luck.”

  Twelve

  BETSY called Roz Watnemo, owner of Nordic Needle in Fargo, North Dakota. “Roz, I need to come to Fargo for a couple of days. I’d like to visit you, see your plant, if I may.”

  “Hi, Betsy! Sure, come on over! What day are you thinking of?”

  “I’ll be leaving here Wednesday night, so I’ll see you Friday around one, if that’s all right.”

  “Certainly. Is it a business trip?”

  “Er . . . yes.”

  “Well, be careful out on the highway. It’s slippery, and more snow is likely tonight.”

  “I’m taking the train.”

  “The Empire Builder? Oh, good for you! But then how are you going to get around?”

  “I’ve got a rental car reserved. They’re even going to bring it to the hotel.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “At the Radisson. It’s just a couple of blocks from the train station.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got your bases covered. Good for you! Looking forward to seeing you Friday.”

  That evening, Betsy was doing some bookkeeping when her cell phone began to play a Beatles song, “With a Little Help From My Friends.” She’d been expecting a call and so had it handy on her computer desk. “Hello, Connor!” she said.

  “Machree,” he said in his pleasant baritone, that being Irish for “my heart.”

  “Glad you still think so.”

  “I’ll never stop thinking so,” he replied.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Well, Peg’s lobbying on behalf of her mother for us to get back together.”

  Betsy’s heart sank. “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. What’s her argument?”

  “The same as her mother’s. We broke up because I wouldn’t stop going to sea, so now that I’ve stopped, there’s no reason we shouldn’t reconcile.” Connor was a retired merchant marine captain.

  “And your reply?”

  “Very simple. I’ve moved on, and so should she.”

  “Is she really angry?” Betsy hoped Connor could not detect the hope in her voice.

  “No, she’s all sweetness and light. Kind of reminds me of back when things were good between us.”

  “Oh, Connor—”

  “Now, darlin’, there’s nothing to worry about.”

  But Betsy did, and spent a restless night in bed, worrying with all her might.

  Said Godwin the next morning, “Why on earth did you let him go?”

  “He’s a grown man. I can’t order him around like a child!”

  “Couples in love can do things like that. He may have been hoping you’d do that.”

  “So I could be the bad guy with his daughter? Uh-uh, we’ve been through that already.”

  “All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you this could end badly.”

  ABOUT nine fifteen on Wednesday evening, Betsy took a cab to the Naomi Women’s Shelter in Saint Paul. She had the cab pull up and stop, but she didn’t get out. A woman was standing inside the door waiting; when she saw the cab, she came hustling out, carrying a small suitcase: Annie, all smiles.

  The cabdriver got out to take her suitcase and put it in the trunk. Annie brushed falling snow off her shoulders and got in beside Betsy. “Wow, I can’t believe we’re really going on a train! I haven’t been on a train since I was a little girl!” She was wearing a thick mannish coat, jeans, her shabby boots, and pilled black mittens. “I’m kind of sorry I couldn’t get dressed up for the ride, but if I’m gonna pass for homeless, I gotta dress like it.”

  “The Amtrak Station, please,” said Betsy to the driver when he got back in.

  The depot was on the west side of Saint Paul, not far off I-94, in a quiet part of town that was mostly warehouses. It was a modest modern building, two stories tall, painted sky blue, with a good-size parking lot in front.

  “It don’t look much like the train stations in old movies, does it?” said Annie a little wistfully.

  “No, though there’s a beautiful big old station in Minneapolis and another in Saint Paul. A pity the Empire Builder couldn’t be routed through either of them.” Both had been converted to other purposes and were no longer available to the railroad.

  They got out of the cab and retrieved their suitcases from the driver. Betsy paid and tipped him, and they crossed the broad sidewalk to the front door of the depot.

  Annie asked, “Why does this train come in so late? I mean, there’s only one train a day, and this is a big city, right? So why can’t it come in at a decent hour?”

  “It says in their brochure that they want to be passing through ‘the spectacular Rocky Mountains’ in daylight, so they have to come through here at ten thirty at night.”

  “But we’re not going as far as the Rocky Mountains, right? So maybe they should run more than one train a day, so passengers can choose whether they want to see mountains, or get to their destination at a decent hour.”

  Betsy chuckled. “You should write a letter.”

  “Maybe I will,” Annie said loftily.

  The inside of the train station was as characterless as the exterior, with beige walls and several rows of armless, unstylish chairs with silver legs and thin padding, all linked together. The rows of chairs faced a big map of the United States on one far wall with all the routes covered by Amtrak marked with thick red lines.

  On the left was a high check-in counter behind which a man and a woman waited to issue tickets, check baggage, and answer questions. There were about twenty passengers present, but none at the counter.

  Betsy, who had called ahead and made reservations, took Annie over and they presented identification. They were each issued a white paper ticket, about three by eight inches, perforated near one end. It had their names, destination, some arcane coding, and a notation that each of them had a “reserved coach seat.”

  They went with their suitcases to the rows of chairs and took two adjoining ones. Betsy took off her dark blue winter coat, and sat down. She had that mild headache that comes with being up too late, but she stirred herself to look around. There was a glassed-in room off the back of the lobby, which had a coded lock on the door. She watched as a couple approached the door, consulted a scrap of paper, then punched in the numbers. The door obediently opened and they went in, dragging their suitcases behind them.

  “What’s that for?” asked Annie.

  “I think it’s for people who have sleeping accommodations,” she said.

  “Sleeping accommodations,” sighed Annie. “If we was going to be on the train till morning, we woulda got sleeping accommodations, right?”

  “Yes, of course.” Now that she thought about it, perhaps she should have reserved a “roomette.”

  She looked out of the big windows along that wall, and could see, through the thin curtain of snow coming down slantwise in a steady breeze, railroad tracks under a roof supported by plain wooden pillars.

  She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes until the train was due in. Or was that twenty minutes until the train was due to depart? Probably the latter. Whichever, she had some time to wait. So she dug into her purse—the big one she used for travel—and pulled out the zippered plastic bag that held her latest knitting project, a pink mitten. She got it out, counted her stitches, and set off knitting.

  “I wish I knew how to do that,” remarked Annie, leaning a little sideways to look at it.

  “Maybe I’ll teach you how sometime,” said Betsy absently.

  “Would you? Would you really?”

  Betsy looked over at Annie’s eager face. “All right, if you like.”

  “Yes, thanks! Do some more, I want to watch you do it.”

  Betsy set off again, trying to ignore Annie’s flattering but intense scrutiny.

  As she sank into the rhythm of the stitches—she was past the thumb and had a few inches of just knit, knit, knit—her mind was freed to contemplate other things. For example, was it such a good idea to travel by train? Airline travel was faster, and if she’d chosen to drive, she wouldn’t have had to depart at such an awful hour. On the other hand, it was cheaper than flying, and there was less hassle to it. Plus, she didn’t want to drive for six hours, in the dark, on snowy roads after working all day in the shop. The train was a good choice, considering the alternatives. She hadn’t been on a train since a summer in Europe, many years ago, and like Annie, she was looking forward to this trip.

  Then she heard the deep thunder of an immense engine slowly growing louder and louder, almost as if it had been summoned by her thoughts. She looked up and saw a creeping immensity, a huge locomotive, rolling into the station. It was aerodynamically shaped in silver with blue trim, and its single headlight gleamed brightly in the night.

  “That sucker’s really big, ain’t it!” murmured Annie.

  Silver and blue passenger cars trailed behind it, their roofs wet with melted snow. They were two stories tall, with half the downstairs and all of the upstairs windowed.

  The sound of the engine—engines?—dropped a tone as the train came to a stop. Passengers alighted from two of the cars and straggled sleepily or hurried eagerly through the double doors into the station. Most were greeted warmly by people waiting for them, and they all went out the front doors.

  An announcement was made that passengers for the westbound Amtrak Empire Builder should line up at the doors to the platform, tickets in hand. Betsy tucked her knitting away; Annie grabbed her purse and suitcase.

  Betsy put her coat back on and, pulling her wheeled suitcase, led Annie to a place in line with the dozen other passengers. Annie nudged Betsy and nodded in amazement at some of them carrying blankets and pillows.

  A lectern Betsy had not noticed earlier stood in front of the doors with a man in a white shirt behind it. As they neared the lectern, Betsy could hear the ticket taker ask for tickets, note aloud the destination, then tear off the bigger portion of their ticket and direct each passenger to a specific car. He also gave each of them a slip of paper with a few letters written vertically in bold capitals on it.

  Betsy and Annie handed over their tickets. Their slips of paper said FAR. They were told to go to the next to last car. There were only six cars in the train, so it wasn’t a really long walk. Another man in a charcoal black uniform stood beside an open door to that car. He asked Betsy her destination.

  “Fargo,” she replied.

  “Me, too,” said Annie, holding out her ticket stub.

  “This is the right car, then,” he said. “You want to go upstairs. And pointing to the slip of paper in Betsy’s hand, he added, “You’ll want to stick that up over your seats.” He helped each of them up onto a little stool and again into the car, which was cramped and not brightly lit. On their right were deep, floor-to-ceiling shelves, almost filled with suitcases. They found a gap on a shoulder-high shelf and stowed their suitcases on it.

  The enclosed stairway to the second floor was opposite the shelves. It was narrow, with higher-than-normal risers, and it twisted sharply around on its way up. Betsy climbed up, Annie breathing heavily behind her—whether from excitement or exertion, she couldn’t tell—into a dimly lit aisle lined with rows of twin seats. Several of the seats were occupied by sleeping passengers draped with blankets and snuggled deep into pillows—that’s why people are bringing them along, she thought. Most of the sleepers were taking up both seats. She went down along the aisle and found a pair not occupied. She took her coat off and looked around for a clue as to where she should put the F A R slip of paper.

  There was a shelf running the length of the car above the seats and on its outer edge, over each pair of seats, was a metal holder. Above the occupied seats other slips of paper had been tucked into it. She tucked her own in, did the same with Annie’s, then sat down by the window.

  Annie took off her coat. She was wearing a thick brown sweater under it. She took her own and Betsy’s coat and stuffed them into the overhead shelf, then sat down with a satisfied sigh.

  The seat was wide and comfortable. Looking around, Betsy saw it could be laid back, and there was even a flat support that came up from under it to rest one’s legs on. There was ample space between Betsy’s seat and the seat ahead of her, and a little metal footrest. Her seat came up high enough in back that she could rest her head against it.

  “This is all right, isn’t it?” said Annie, grinning, experimenting with her seat, wriggling her shoulders and settling her bottom. “Better than the old Greyhound.”

  “Much. Even more comfortable than flying coach, that’s for sure,” replied Betsy. She looked out her window, which was on the side away from the station. Back here, the rumble of the locomotive was silenced, and the only sounds were of a pair of passengers several rows forward, talking quietly. There was another set of railroad tracks out there, across another platform, and beyond them some brick buildings—warehouses, by the look of them. Big snowflakes passed into and out of the halos of the platform lights.

  Disconcertingly, one of the supports for the roof over the tracks began to drift slowly backward past her window.

  No, the train had started moving forward, smoothly and silently.

  “We’re on our way,” said Annie softly, somewhere between excitement and awe.

  Thirteen

  THE train made its sedate northwesterly passage through a series of big railroad yards Betsy didn’t know existed. A downtown—Saint Paul? Minneapolis?—she couldn’t tell, it was from an unfamiliar angle. Whichever, it stood in tall, golden glory, glimpsed fitfully in the distance between nearer buildings, and through filmy curtains of snow.

  As they moved faster, the car began to rock gently from side to side.

  Now and again they would cross a street, with cars waiting behind barriers guarded with flashing red lights.

  These became fewer until, finally, they were out in the country. It was very dark out there. Rarely, a light would appear up on a high pole that marked a farmhouse and barn. The train speeded up and the car’s rocking motion increased, causing Annie to sit up straight with an anxious look on her face. But when no one else looked alarmed, she settled back with a little nod, and smiled reassuringly at Betsy.

  “Are you nervous about tomorrow?” asked Betsy.

  “Naw, why should I be?”

  “You’ve never been to the women’s shelter in Fargo.”

  “Aww, that don’t matter. I been to a lot of shelters, they’re all pretty much alike, though some are better than others.”

  There was a stir in the seat in front of them, and a tousle-haired woman rose up to peer at them, with a very disapproving look on her face.

  “Oops,” said Betsy in a much quieter voice. “We’re keeping someone awake.”

  “She’s not the only one,” growled a male voice from across the aisle.

  Annie hunched her shoulders. “I guess we should be quiet from now on.”

  “I guess,” said Betsy.

  The two women sat back in their seats and fell silent.

  One of the things that Annie had learned at the Naomi Shelter—and that she’d shared with Betsy—was that there was a good shelter in Fargo, run by the YWCA. Doubtless Janet had stayed there. The plan was for Annie to go to the Fargo shelter tomorrow, where she would apply for two days’ refuge, during which time she would, perhaps, learn from the other people staying there something about Janet Turnquist. For example, did anyone hate her?

  Meanwhile the late hour, dim lighting, and gentle rocking were making Betsy drowsy.

  A movement in the aisle brought her back to full awareness. She looked around, then up, to see a conductor standing like the Statue of Liberty with his lit flashlight pointed at the ceiling. He was peering at the slips of white paper tucked into the silver metal holder over their seats.