Strangers on a Train (Nancy Drew Diaries #2)(17)

Alan leaned over from his seat beside Bess across the aisle. “Aren’t you glad I talked you into coming, Nancy?” he whispered. "You wouldn’t have wanted to miss this just to stay on the boat and keep an eye on you-know-who.”

I glanced around to make sure nobody was listening. Luckily, all the nearby passengers were glued to their windows and paying no attention to our conversation.

"Yeah, you were right, Alan,” I said. "I’m glad we’re all here.”

It was true. As it turned out, all my suspects except Max were going to be on the land tour. Well, and Fred—he’d stayed behind on the ship too. But when I’d told the others about my encounter with him, they’d agreed with my decision to cross him off the list. Becca had said she’d keep an eye on Max while we were gone, so I’d decided it wasn’t worth leaving someone behind, especially for such a weak suspect.

Thinking about that reminded me that we’d been on the train for at least an hour, and I hadn’t done a thing except admire the scenery. “Think I’ll stretch my legs for a bit,” I said, standing up.

“Good plan,” George said, snapping a photo as the train rumbled over a bridge crossing a scenic river. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”

I nodded. The trip to Denali would take about eight hours. That should give me plenty of time to check out all the suspects onboard. I’d already seen that Wendy and Hiro were in our car, and I figured Scott and Tatjana couldn’t be too far away—most of the Arctic Star people seemed to be seated in the same section of the train.

Heading up the aisle, I came to Wendy first. Good. The blogger still wasn’t my favorite suspect, and I was hoping I could cross her off my list with a few key questions. I mean, sure, maybe writing about odd happenings on the cruise could drive more viewers to her blog. At least, it had seemed like a decent motive when we were only talking about falling moose antlers and similar incidents. But it just didn’t seem like a good enough reason to aid and abet a jewelry store robbery.

"Hey,” I said, pausing beside her seat. "Enjoying the scenery?”

"Sure. What’s not to like?” Wendy grinned up at me and patted the empty seat beside her. "Want to hang for a bit? Tobias’s dad is sitting here, but he just left to take Tobias for a walk to see the rest of the train. Guess the kid was getting restless.”

“Thanks.” I sat down and glanced across the aisle, where Tobias’s mother was staring out the window with her camera in hand. “So you’re sitting with Tobias and his family, huh?”

"Yeah, we were talking last night at dinner, and they invited me to hang with them today,” she replied. “They had an extra seat, and I didn’t want to get stuck with some stranger.” She barked out a laugh. “Anyway, they’re cool, even if Tobias is kind of a pain. He’s been freaking out about Hazel.”

"The spider?” I couldn’t help a slight shudder.

"Uh-huh. Their room steward is taking care of the thing back on the ship while they’re gone, and Tobias is afraid she’ll get squashed or something.” She grinned. “Maybe Hazel should’ve tagged along. She could have had my seat. Now that would be a photo worth posting on my blog!”

I smiled. "Speaking of your blog, I bet all your readers will love reading about your adventures in Denali.”



"Yeah, I hope so.” A shadow passed across Wendy’s face. "They’re not exactly flocking to read about the trip so far.”



"Really?” Apparently things hadn’t picked up since I’d last talked to her, a couple of days earlier.

“Uh-huh.” She picked at the back of the seat in front of her. "I was really hoping that blogging this trip would grab me some attention out there. You know—get some buzz going, maybe attract some advertisers or get me some paying gigs, whatever. Make this writing thing happen, you know?”

“Actually, I don’t know that much about how blogs work,” I said. "Do you mean you’re hoping someone will want to pay you to turn your blog into a book or magazine article or something?” "That would work.” She cracked a rueful smile. “But really, I was just hoping maybe one of my posts might go viral. If it’s big enough, something like that can lead to TV interviews or whatever, and then from there, who knows?”

"Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to think. It sounded as if Wendy was doing everything she could to succeed at this blogging thing. Would that include helping a thief?

"Yeah, so here I am in this supercool place—” She sighed and glanced out the window. “And I still can’t get anybody to pay attention. I’m starting to think this trip was a big, fat, expensive mistake.”

“My friends and I won the cruise in a contest,” I said. "I guess I didn’t really think about how much it must cost.”

“Let’s put it this way,” Wendy said. "My cousin works for one of the big travel websites and got me a serious discount. And I still had to sell my car to pay for it.”

“Ouch.” So much for crossing Wendy off the list. In my experience, desperate people sometimes did desperate things. And based on what she was saying, Wendy was as desperate as they came.

"Wah, wah, let me play the world’s tiniest violin, right?” Then she wiggled her shoulders, as if shaking off her gloomy thoughts. “What will be will be, as they say. Anyway, look at me, spilling my guts to someone I just met, like, a week ago!” She laughed. “Sorry about that.”