Annie nodded. “I seen that in movies lots of times. Is it really like that, flying in a storm, tipping and jumping? Did you ever get hurt in a plane?”

  Betsy said, “Louis Armstrong said something one time that I’ve never forgotten. He said he wasn’t afraid to fly because ‘they might kill you, but they ain’t likely to hurt you.’”

  Betsy smiled, but Annie said, “Hey, that’s not funny!”

  “Sure it is, because it’s mostly true. Listen, you stay here and hold our place, I’m going to go find us something to eat and drink.”

  “Are you hungry?” Annie sounded surprised.

  “No, but I may be before we get home. Remember, the club car was closed on the train, so no snacks were available.”

  “Betsy, what if when it’s time to head for the train station, the roads are closed, too? What if the railroad is closed?”

  “I don’t think the railroad will cancel, but you may have a point about the roads. I’ll detour to the cab stand to see what the status is on my way to look for food. Sit tight.”

  “I will.”

  Betsy came back about twenty minutes later with a white plastic bag, which she put down on the bench beside Annie.

  “What did the taxi driver say?” asked Annie, pulling the top of the bag apart and peering in. She saw an apple, an orange, a banana, a package of six Oreos, a bag of corn chips, and two diet Pepsis.

  Betsy said, “Funny mix of food, right? But there were lines everywhere, and I had to take what I could get at the end of the shortest line. About the cab: I bribed a driver with fifty dollars. He called it an advance on the fare, but it’s a bribe; it can’t possibly cost fifty dollars to take a cab from here to the train depot. Look around, people are leaving now, so there are plenty of fares, but he says that will stop soon, and when it does, he wants to go home. But for fifty dollars, he’ll either stay or come back. He said the train depot opens an hour before the train comes in.” She checked her watch. “That’s a little under five hours from now. We’ll go out to the cab at half past midnight. While we wait, how about you tell me what you learned at the YWCA shelter.”

  “Okay.” Annie paused to gather her thoughts. “Janet was crazy but not the kind of crazy that scares people. She was the one who was scared—of herself, mostly. And here’s something interesting: Putting together what two different women told me, Janet was contacted by a relative of some kind who wanted her to come to Minneapolis. The woman was sure it was Minneapolis, not Saint Paul. The relative bought her a bus ticket.”

  “How did that happen? I thought no one there would tell a visitor or even someone asking on the phone the name of a person staying there.”

  “That’s true, but there are ways. Like, there’s a bulletin board near the back door, and a resident or staff member can pin up a message for someone. And there’s no way to prevent someone from talking to a resident outside the shelter, is there? An’ givin’ her a message to pin up. Plus I think the people running the place will put a message up, too. They won’t admit the resident is staying there, but they’ll put up a message. Then it’s up to the resident, if she’s there, to get in touch or not. But what I don’t understand is why Janet would reply to any message. She thought everyone was out to get her.”

  “Not everyone. She liked her niece in Excelsior, for example. And she called her ex-husband every so often, too. When did she receive this offer of a bus ticket?”

  “About three weeks ago.” Betsy frowned over that for a while. It just about fit the timeline of the murder. But who sent it to her? Emily would want Janet to come to her hometown—wouldn’t she? But Emily wasn’t a suspect. Why would Janet’s ex-husband want to get her out of town? So he wouldn’t be linked to her death? And what about that cranky veterinarian, Alec Porter? Could it have been the one person Janet trusted: Emily Hame?

  “What are you thinking?” Annie asked.

  “Oh, a whole lot of things, none of which I really understand. Not yet anyway.”

  “Ohhhh-kay. So what do we do next?”

  “We wait until we can go to the train depot and start for home.” Betsy went into her big purse for the instruction book on Hardanger, but quickly decided it had been too long a day for her to begin again to learn it. She put it away and got out her knitting instead. But she was also too worried to concentrate on decreasing on the three double-ended needles of the pink mitten, and so she went into her suitcase and brought out a scarf she was knitting in heavily slubbed purple yarn on fat, size ten needles.

  “Can I see that?” asked Annie.

  “What, the knitting?” It would be easier to see how the stitches were formed on needles this size.

  “No, that other stuff, whadja call it?”

  “Hardanger. Sure, take a look. Maybe you’ll come to understand it and can teach me.”

  “Maybe I will,” Annie declared. She opened the book—so thin it was almost a booklet—and read in silence for several minutes, turning back a page then going forward again several times. “You know, this doesn’t look hard at all,” she said at last.

  “I know. That’s the cruel thing about Hardanger. It doesn’t look hard. In fact, some people I know don’t find it hard. But for some reason, I do. Have you done needlework before?”

  “No, but I can sew on buttons. This doesn’t look much harder than that.”

  Betsy smiled. “Next time you come to the shop, I’ll give you some floss, a needle, and some fabric and let you sit down and show me how it’s done.”

  “Just maybe I’ll do that!” declared Annie, and she went back to studying the instructions with even more enthusiasm, now and again making stitching motions with one hand.

  Betsy counted her stitches in the scarf and resumed knitting. Really, she thought, it would be much more useful for Annie to learn to knit, especially scarves and mittens, than to do the esoteric Hardanger. On the other hand, Hardanger was beautiful, and it was possible there wasn’t much beauty in Annie’s life.

  Betsy settled into the rhythm of knit two, purl two. As often happened, she got lost in the repeating stitches and her thoughts began to slow their anxious rush, her mind cleared, and she began to consider the case calmly.

  What did she know? The puzzle had started with two homeless women found dead in Excelsior. The first, Carrie Carlson, was an alcoholic from Excelsior; the second, Janet Turnquist, was a schizophrenic from Fargo. They weren’t sisters or cousins or in any other way related, though they were not far apart in age. They knew one another, too, but probably were not friends. They both had stayed at the Naomi Women’s Shelter in Saint Paul.

  In addition to being homeless, they were unhappy people. Carrie was a bitter and self-centered woman, a permanent adolescent suffering the physical ravages of long-term alcoholism, who also used drugs when she could get them. Long ago, as a teen, she had had a relationship with a criminal named Dice Paulson. She had no children.

  Janet heard voices and thought the United States government was after her. She was divorced, also with no children.

  Carrie had once been a beautiful woman, much admired by her older brother. By the end of her life, she’d become a ravaged petty thief, a window-breaking vandal. She’d also been the cousin of Crewel World customer Margaret Smith. She had a Hardanger bookmark very probably made by Janet in her possession. She was a thief; had she stolen it? When?

  Janet liked needlework and had been learning to do Hardanger. She had embroidered a holographic last will and testament on the shirt she’d been found wearing, leaving all her worldly goods to her niece. She drank to quiet the voices, but was not an alcoholic. She was the aunt of Monday Bunch regular Emily Hame.

  So there was another link between the two dead women: Crewel World.

  Carrie’s frozen body had been found behind Excelsior’s only movie theater, the Dock. About a week later, Janet’s frozen body was found a few blocks away, on a front lawn, buried under snow.

  Interesting, Betsy thought in a kind of sidebar, how close together the incidents of this case were. Emily’s home and Margaret’s home were not even three blocks apart. And the lawn on which Janet’s body was found was between them. And the movie theater was less than three blocks from there.

  It was possible that Janet had fallen or been put on that lawn at the same time—or even a day or two before—Carrie. Therefore, it was impossible to know for sure whether or not the two deaths were related.

  Sergeant Mike Malloy was sure poison was the cause of both deaths, but the autopsy didn’t find any evidence of poison in either body—or in the trace of liquor in the bottle that was found with Carrie’s body.

  What, besides poison, might have caused the deaths?

  A warm weight came gently onto Betsy’s shoulder. Startled, she nearly moved away from it, then realized it was Annie’s head. Poor thing, she had fallen asleep.

  Betsy checked her watch. It was a little past eleven. Might as well let her sleep a little longer. It had been a long day, a tiring three days. Moving as little as possible, Betsy continued knitting and thinking.

  “ANNIE. Annie, wake up.”

  Annie woke, alarmed and confused. “What’s going on?” she asked. She realized she was leaning on someone and jerked herself upright. “Oh, sorry, sorry!”

  “It’s all right.”

  Oh, heck, she’d been sleeping on Betsy. “My gosh, why did you let me do that?”

  “It’s all right, but come on, it’s time we headed for the train depot.”

  They gathered their things. Annie paused and looked carefully around before she followed Betsy to the exit. She had a lot of her good things with her and didn’t want to lose any of them. No, nothing was left behind.

  They went out into the wind and cold. Snow filled the air, but it was hard to tell how much was falling and how much was being lifted off the ground by the wind. A lone vehicle was at the cab stand a little up the way.

  “That don’t look like a cab,” said Annie. “It don’t have that little light on the roof.”

  Indeed it didn’t. Betsy’s heart sank. But the headlights came on and it pulled forward. It was a big car, bright blue in color—a Subaru Outback, sitting high off the ground on big tires with lots of tread, its windshield wipers briskly throwing snow off the windshield. And behind the wheel, waving at them, was the taxi driver.

  Betsy opened the passenger side door and laid her suitcase down on the leather seat, then turned and took Annie’s suitcase and put it on top of hers. Betsy and Annie took their places in the backseat.

  “Whew!” said Betsy. “What a terrible night this is!”

  “I hope the train can get through,” said Annie.

  “The old Empire Builder generally does get through,” said the taxi driver, a burly man in a leather jacket and matching pinch-brim hat. “But I tell you what. I’ll wait at the station for one of you to run in and see what this storm has done to the timetable. If the train’s going to be really late, I’ll take you to a hotel, all right?”

  “Thank you very much,” said Betsy. “That’s really nice of you.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” said the man. He switched to a high-pitched drawl. “’Taint a fit night out for man or beast.”

  Betsy, recognizing the line from an old W. C. Fields movie, chuckled.

  “What?” said Annie, and Betsy distracted herself and Annie from the slippery ride to the depot by telling her about the infamous comic of the thirties. She wound up with one of his most famous quotes, as the driver made a controlled slide into the snow-clogged parking lot. “‘A man who hates dogs and children can’t be all bad.’” Annie laughed.

  Another car, some dark color, had apparently just arrived ahead of them; its roof and hood had barely started to accumulate snow.

  “See?” said the driver, nodding toward the other car. “I’m not the only one with faith in Amtrak.”

  “Wait here,” Betsy said to Annie and bailed out to move at a careful trot into the depot.

  The little waiting room smelled of freshly heated air, dust, and faintly, humanity. There was a young couple with a wailing baby in the man’s arms. Betsy went to the counter, behind which stood a seriously obese middle-aged woman in an ill-fitting black cardigan.

  “Is the eastbound Empire Builder on time?” Betsy asked.

  “Right now she’s half an hour late,” said the woman.

  Betsy smiled in relief. “Wow, I was afraid it might be canceled.”

  “Never happens,” said the woman proudly. “She might run late, but she won’t be canceled.”

  “Terrific.” Betsy hurried back out to the taxi, where she collected her change from the fifty she’d given him earlier, not neglecting a generous tip. As she and Annie went back to the depot, Betsy noticed someone sitting in the car she’d seen earlier. It was, she noted, a dark cranberry color.

  She and Annie took their suitcases into the warm depot. A back-to-back row of fabric-covered, metal-rimmed chairs filled the center of the room and they sat down with identical weary sighs to wait.

  Wait a minute, Betsy thought. Where have I seen that car before?

  MARK sat up straighter in his seat. There she was, and she had someone very shabbily dressed with her. He just wanted to be sure she got out of town, not hanging around to waylay him again with her questions.

  Nineteen

  THE train lost more time traveling through the blizzard raging out on the prairie west of Fargo, and pulled into the station two hours behind schedule, rumbling deeply and shedding great chunks of snow off its nose.

  Betsy and Annie climbed on board, stowed their suitcases, staggered to their seats, and fell asleep almost as soon as they sat down.

  Four hours later, Betsy was wakened by daylight coming through the window. She looked out on a world an improbable pale apricot under an intensely blue sky. As she stared at it, the apricot grew paler and paler until, smitten by the rising sun, it turned dazzling white, with blue shadows marking oceanic waves of snow. The land went gently rolling away to the distant horizon, a vista broken only by the occasional tree lifting its naked black limbs to the sky.

  The train seemed to be moving at a great clip, probably trying to make up some time. She looked at her watch. Nearly half past seven. Breakfast time.

  And she was hungry. She thought about the snacks she’d bought at the Fargo airport, but she didn’t want a snack, she wanted a meal. She’d heard the food was very good on Amtrak trains. She looked over at Annie, her head canted toward the aisle, peacefully asleep. Should she wake her? Could she get past her into the aisle without waking her?

  Then Annie’s head came around to look at Betsy; she was not asleep after all. “Oh, good, you’re awake,” Annie said. “They been announcing that the dining car is open for breakfast, and it’s making me hungry. Where are those snacks you bought?”

  “I didn’t hear any announcements.”

  “Yeah, you’re a pretty good sleeper.”

  “The snacks are in my suitcase. But would you like to go to the dining car instead?”

  “Could we?”

  The two rose and went swaying up the aisle, through the club car and another passenger car, to find themselves in the dining car, with its booth seating on both sides of the aisle, interrupted by a very small kitchen in the middle. Breakfast smells filled the air.

  The place was full of people and there was another couple waiting ahead of them, but it was only a few minutes before they were seated side by side, facing a slender man and woman, both with silver hair and great tans.

  And British accents, revealed when the man said, “Good morning, ladies,” and his partner added, “Lovely morning, innit?”

  A waitress came by with menus for Annie and Betsy— the British couple was finishing up, each of them having a second cup of coffee. The prices were reasonable, and the choices varied. Impulsively, Betsy ordered the corned beef hash. Annie went with scrambled eggs and toast with a side of fresh fruit.

  The British couple explained that they were spending their retirement traveling the world. They came to America frequently and always traveled by train. They were tanned because they’d just spent a week in San Diego.

  “Brilliant country you have here, smashing mountains,” said the woman.

  “And so many climates, all in one nation,” agreed the man.

  “Where are you going now?” asked Betsy.

  “Chicago, and then New York,” said the woman.

  They wished Betsy and Annie good traveling and left the dining car. Because they had booked a room, they explained, their breakfast had been free.

  “Gosh, isn’t traveling by train great?” said Annie as their coffee arrived. She doctored hers generously with milk and sugar. Stirring, she said, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “Are you rich? I mean, really rich? Like a millionaire?”

  Betsy was nonplussed for a moment. “Well, yes, I suppose I am, sort of. That is, if I sold everything I own, it might make a pile of money. But I don’t know how big a pile. And anyway, a million dollars isn’t the big money it used to be.”

  “Of course it is! Gosh, I never thought I’d meet a real millionaire! And you’re so nice and everything. Not snooty at all. But it makes me feel kind of funny, me traveling with you and starting to think we’re friends, all the while me being about as far as I can be from rich.”

  “Don’t let it get to you. We are becoming friends, and why not? I think rich is a state of mind. There was a time not so long ago when I was homeless and didn’t have any money, either. My sister took me in and gave me a job in the shop I now own. I didn’t earn my fortune, I inherited it. And right now it’s all tied up in investments, so it isn’t as if I could write a humongous check or buy anything I want. Why are you asking?” Betsy hoped Annie wasn’t going to ask for a handout.

  “I just sort of wondered. You said we could fly home from Fargo, and that would of meant we just threw our return train tickets away, and only really rich people can do stu—uh, things like that.” Annie hid her face behind her coffee cup, ashamed she’d almost accused Betsy of doing something stupid.