Strangers on a Train (Nancy Drew Diaries #2)(7)

"Very smooth,” George said. "Good thing Alan’s so clueless. He obviously doesn’t even realize we keep trying to ditch him.”

"Yeah.” I glanced around, double-checking to make sure we wouldn’t be overheard. It seemed pretty safe. Our closest neighbors were a pair of senior citizens snoozing in their seats several rows away. There were also a few members of that family reunion huddled at the windows up near the front of the car, but the clanking, chugging sounds of the train drowned out their conversation. "So listen,” I told George, "something happened right before you found me just now. . .

I filled her in on the incident with Scott. George looked surprised.

“Shore Excursion Scott?” she said. "You really think he could be our bad guy?”

"I don’t know.” I sighed, leaning back in my seat and staring out the window at the looming mountains. "But he was obviously angry with whoever he was talking to on the phone. What if it had something to do with that robbery?”

“What if it didn’t?” George countered. "You said he mentioned fixing something before he got to Anchorage. That’s the ship’s next stop, remember? He was probably just doing business, organizing the buses to take us from the ship to the city, something like that.”

"Maybe.” I flashed back to the moment he’d lunged toward me. "But if you could’ve seen his face when he realized I’d heard him…

"Okay, there’s that.” George leaned past me to snap a photo of a picturesque mountain pass. "But Becca said he has a good rep, right?”

"Uh-huh. She said the captain recommended him for this job. And he’s worked in the cruise industry for quite a while.”

George nodded. “Okay. The other thing is, you admitted yourself that you’re sleep deprived today. You’re probably a little on edge from that. Totally understandable, right? But isn’t it possible it’s making you freak out over something that’s not really freak-out-worthy?”

I couldn’t help smiling at her choice of words. "Maybe,” I admitted, stifling yet another yawn. "Still, we both know from experience that you can’t always tell who’s a criminal based on their public reputation. Or even who their friends are.” I flashed momentarily to that hulking tough guy Scott had met in Ketchikan, the man with the scarred face he’d talked to briefly before that. He’d claimed they were poker buddies. Was he telling the truth? "It might be worth checking him out a little more,” I added. "Just in case.”

"Agreed.” George frowned. "Although I’m starting to wonder whether this jewelry robbery business is even worth stressing over.

I mean, the cops are already on the case, right? The/re way better equipped to handle this kind of investigation—you know, the kind with real criminals. Possibly dangerous criminals.”

"Yeah, I guess,” I said. “But if there’s someone on the ship involved—·”

"Then the cops will figure it out.” George shrugged. “That’s their job. Besides, it was probably that busboy we saw get fired earlier. So we could be doing all this investigating and sneaking around for nothing.”

“Maybe.” I wasn’t quite as convinced as she seemed to be. After all, neither the busboy nor his boss had mentioned anything about the robbery—just the illegal drugs. "But even if that busboy is the robber’s accomplice, we still don’t know who left me that threatening note. That couldn’t have been the busboy—he’d never even laid eyes on me at that point.”

"How do you know the busboy didn’t leave the note?” George countered, tapping her foot against the seat in front of us. "You’re famous, you know. Sort of, anyway.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “How do you figure?”

"How many times have you been written up in the papers back home in River Heights for solving mysteries big and small?” George said. “All those stories end up on the newspapers’ websites, you know. For all the world to see with a quick web search. So maybe your rep as the Sherlockina Holmes of the Midwest preceded you, and that busboy thought you were coming to Alaska to investigate him. He might have been trying to scare you off before you got started.”

"Sounds a little far-fetched, but I suppose anything’s possible.”

I shook my head. "Until we know for sure, we’ve got to keep our eyes open. I mean, I know we thought the case was closed when we caught Vince and Lacey.”

“But they swore they didn’t do some of the bad stuff,” George said with a nod. "Like pushing you off that walkway in Ketchikan, and the moose antler thing, and some of the problems Becca told us about from before the cruise started.”

"Yeah. A few of those incidents could’ve been accidents or red herrings,” I said. “Maybe somebody just bumped me innocently on that narrow walkway, and I lost my balance. And maybe there was an oversight and the screws on that moose antler never got tightened properly, so it fell when Bess and Alan leaned on it.”

"And maybe the pre-cruise problems were just bad luck or human error or whatever,” George went on.

"Right. But someone left that note in my suitcase. And if that same someone might possibly have been the one who pushed me over the railing back in Ketchikan, I need to figure out who it is before something even worse happens. If it turns out that busboy was behind it all like you said, cool. All we’ve lost is some time and energy we could’ve used for sightseeing today.” I shrugged. "If not? Then we’d better not waste an entire day looking at pretty scenery and shopping for souvenirs while the real culprit could be planning his or her next move.”