Strangers on a Train (Nancy Drew Diaries #2)(21)

"Wait! I have a better idea.” Tobias swung his leg around, kicking the seat in front of him. "You could write about the bone smugglers!”

"The what?” Alan asked.

“My mom read about it in the newspaper when we were getting ready for this trip.” The kid sounded excited. "She said the police arrested some guy for stealing tusks and bones and stuff from rare Alaskan animals.” He poked Alan on the arm. "Which Alaskan animals are the rarest? Think we’ll see any when we tour the park tomorrow?”

"I don’t know, little buddy. What do you mean by rare?” Alan said.

“He probably means endangered species,” I put in. I wasn’t too interested in their conversation, though I couldn’t help being a little surprised that Alan didn’t seem to know much about Alaskan wildlife. Still, I guessed an environmental studies degree covered a lot of ground. He couldn’t be expected to know everything about every ecosystem in the world, especially after only a year of study.

"Right.” Alan shrugged. "Maybe you can ask the tour guide at Denali about it, Tobias.” He grinned. "You can also ask him if there are any tarantulas there!”

I shot him a look, pretty sure he had to be kidding this time. Even I was pretty sure that tarantulas were mostly found in warmer parts of the world.

"Yeah, right,” I said. "Tarantulas in Alaska?”

"Hey, there are spiders everywhere, right?” Alan shrugged again. Then his face lit up. “Here come Bess and George.”

I glanced up and saw my friends hurrying toward us. Tobias saw them too and jumped out of their seats.

"Switch places back?” Alan said, standing up quickly as they reached us. “No offense, Nancy. But I miss my best girl.”

“Sure, whatevs.” George flopped down beside me. "Yo.”

“Yo yourself. Find out anything interesting?” I asked quietly.

She took a quick look around. Tobias was hanging on the back of Alan’s seat across the way, still chattering away at him about grizzly bear skulls or something.

“We tracked down Scott and chatted with him for a while,” George told me. "We realized there’s no way he’s our guy.”

“Really? How come?”

"Because he was in full view of a number of people up on the main deck from the time we arrived to the time you found that note in your luggage.” She added, "In the detective biz, we call that lack of opportunity.”



"Thanks for the lesson, detective.” I rolled my eyes. “But I see your point. And I guess his weird behavior on the train could be explained away by the gambling stuff he told me about when I saw him meeting with those tough guys in Ketchikan. If he’s still in debt, he’s probably stressed, especially if that sort of thing could get him fired if anyone finds out.” I thought back to that scary encounter. "No wonder he wasn’t thrilled to catch me listening in on his phone conversation, even by accident, since he knows I know about his problem.”



George nodded. “Next we went looking for Tatjana. We found her, but didn’t get to talk to her much. She blew us off after, like, three minutes. Said something about needing to go downstairs to take care of some paperwork.”

“Hmm. Think she was telling the truth?”

“Who knows? Everything she says sounds mysterious in that crazy Russian-sounding accent of hers. But that’s probably because I’ve watched too many old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.” George grinned. “Anyway, we looked for Hiro on our way back here, but we couldn’t find him.”

“No mystery there. He’s probably still with the security people or something.” I was still thinking about Tatjana. She’d been on the list for a while, but we hadn’t really investigated her very much. “Anyway, we can talk to him later. For now, I’m thinking maybe we should focus on finding out more about Tatjana.”





******





“Wow, that was a long train ride.” George stretched as we all climbed off the bus that had carried us from the train to the lodge where we would be staying that night, a pleasantly rustic place on the outskirts of Denali National Park. "I can’t believe it’s only four in the afternoon.”

“Yeah, well, we left Anchorage pretty early,” I pointed out.

“After all that sitting, I’m ready to go out and stretch my legs,” Alan put in, slinging Bess’s carry-on bag over his shoulder. "Good thing I booked us on that horseback-riding excursion this afternoon. It should be a nice long ride, since it stays light so late here this time of year. Come on, we’d better get checked in and changed or we’ll be late.”

I traded a look with my friends. As usual, Alan had signed us all up for an activity without checking in first. Not that I had anything against horseback riding. But I’d been hoping to have some free time to investigate this afternoon, since from what Scott had told us, we’d be on our Denali bus tour for most of the following day.

As we entered the lodge’s impressive wood-and-stone lobby, I noticed Tatjana standing off to one side of the checkin desk. She was chatting with the ABCs and a couple of other passengers. Okay, maybe this was my chance.

“Can you guys check us in?” I asked Bess and George. "I just want to, um, look around the lobby.”