Page 31 of With a Vengeance
“I’m simply pointing out that you had the opportunity,” Edith says.
“As did Herb.” Sal grabs her handbag from the bar and uses it to gesture at the man next to Edith. “And Lapsford. And everyone else in this car. Including you, Edith. Speaking of which, you’ve been suspiciously quiet throughout all of this.”
Edith sighs. “I see no point in raising a fuss. Especially when you and the others are all too happy to do it for me.”
“Or maybe you’ve been plotting something this whole time and hoping no one would notice.”
Now that Sal’s mentioned it, Anna realizes Edith has been silent for most of the night. Following, never leading. Usually speaking only when spoken to. A far cry from the gregarious woman who’d once regaled Anna with stories from German folklore.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Edith says. “I’ve barely moved since we returned to this car.”
“Who took the second drink?” Anna asks.
Herb raises his hand. “That was me.”
“And I took the third,” Lapsford announces. “Anyone who watched me do it saw that I didn’t tamper with the remaining glass.”
“But youdidchange your mind,” Dante says, drifting back to the bar top and placing his hands where the final two drinks had been. “I saw you reach for one glass, decide against it, and grab the other. What made you change your mind? And don’t say it’s because one had more in it than the other. I poured the same amount into each glass.”
Anna approaches Lapsford, curious. “Was there something wrong with the other drink? Is that why you left it for Judd?”
“Not the drink itself,” he says. “Both looked exactly the same. It was the glass that prompted me to choose the other drink.”
“The glass? What was wrong with it?”
“There was a smudge on the inside rim.” Lapsford holds up an index finger. “Like a fingerprint. So I took the glass that was cleaner.”
Anna rushes back to the table beside Judd’s corpse. The martini glass is still there, now sitting upright after she found the residue inside. Turning it over in her hands, she sees several fingerprints, including a lengthy smear left by her own index finger when she swiped the inside rim. If Lapsford had seen a print mark there, it’s now indistinguishable from the rest.
“Dante,” she says, returning to the bar. “Which direction were the martini glasses facing when you grabbed them? Up or down?”
“Up,” Dante says before ducking behind the bar to double-check. “Just like all the others.”
“Did you examine any of them before putting them on the bar?”
“I barely even looked at them.” Dante pauses, awestruck. “Wait, I know what you’re thinking.”
There’s a gleam in his eyes that Anna remembers well from her youth. It revealed itself whenever Dante was excited about something, whether it was her agreeing to go on a first date with him or that time he suggested they go skinny-dipping in his backyard pool. Every time, Anna found herself eagerly going along with it. Including, to her shame and eventual regret, the skinny-dipping.
Now, many years later and under very different circumstances, she realizes how easy it would be to get swept up in that old, familiar rhythm with Dante. Tearing her gaze away from his sparkling eyes, Anna reminds herself who Dante is, what he did to her, and what his father did to her family.
“And what am I thinking, Mr. Wentworth?”
If Dante notices her change of tone, he doesn’t show it. “That it was the glass, and not the drink, that was poisoned.”
“It’s possible,” Anna admits, countering his enthusiasm with a frown. This is nothing to be excited about. A man is dead, her plan has been reduced to rubble, and they’re not even close to reaching Chicago. Then there’s the fact that, if poison had been placed in that glass, it means Judd might not have been the intended target—and that the killer could have put it therebeforethey’d all gathered in the lounge.
“So it wasn’t one of us,” Sal says, thinking the same thing.
“I didn’t say that,” Anna snaps.
Yet she’s certainly considering it. If her theory is correct, the killer might not even be among them. Yes, they’re currently the only people aboard the Phoenix, but that hadn’t been the case earlier that evening. Anna thinks about the dozens of workers andpretend passengers who were aboard the train minutes before its departure. Any one of them could have slipped behind the bar of the first-class lounge and coated the inside of a single glass with poison.
Why someone would do that is beyond Anna. It makes absolutely no sense, which is why, in her mind, it remains likely that it was the work of someone in this very car at this very minute. After all, the car had been empty at some point immediately after the Phoenix left the station.
“Mr. Pulaski,” Anna says.
Herb, still gripping his handkerchief so tightly his knuckles are white, looks up, startled to hear his name. “Yes?”
