BUCKAROO WAFFLE MURDER Page 7

  Sonja instantly froze. Clipped to the board just underneath the paper was the map.

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  “I found it,” Sonja exclaimed, pulling the map out of the clip. She needed to show it to Frank as soon as possible.

  “Yes, yes. Very good. Now give it to me,” came a man’s voice from the doorway.

  Snapping her head up to see who was there, she realized she was standing nearly nose to nose with Jake, the train’s conductor. “Jake,” she gasped. “You killed Vaughn. You loaded that bullet into the gun.”

  “Yes, you’re right. I did it.” He held out his hand expectantly.

  Sonja raised one eyebrow, trying to see around him and into the car. Where was Nathan? Where was Frank? One of them had to be around.

  “If you’re looking for your police officer, you won’t find him. He went to find out what all the ruckus on the roof was. I’m sure between the howling wind and the train engine, he won’t be able to hear you scream. Even if he did, he wouldn’t be here in time.”

  “Why? Did you just want the money?” Sonja pressed, trying to buy herself time for Frank to find them standing out there.

  “Of course, for the money,” he laughed. “I’ve been working as a struggling actor for years, making pennies here, a few there. At this point, I’m in my sixties and I haven’t had one single decent job. So, what happens? I get stuck working as a play actor for this terrible attraction. At first, I was just here as a grunt, helping them move things here and there, getting the place ready. However, when I overheard Vaughn telling Robert about the map—and the gold—I knew that I had to have it. It would finally give me the monetary boost to make something of myself.”

  It was true then. There was no other motive besides money involved. Greed was a horrible thing.

  “Now, hand over the map before you find yourself falling off the train.” He motioned toward the rushing ground around them. “I know for a fact that we’re coming up on a bridge. It would be a nasty fall.”

  “You’re just going to push me off either way,” she pointed out, having dealt with one too many murderers in her day.

  An unamused grimace came to his lips. “Give me the map,” he ordered, jumped toward her with his hands outstretched. Unfortunately, Jake hadn’t accounted for the ice build up on the walkway. His feet slipping out from under him, he tumbled right into Sonja.

  Letting out a scream, she felt herself falling backward. Her hands went out, grabbing for the railing and barely getting a hold in time just as Jake fell past her onto the stairs gripping for anything to keep him from falling off the speeding train.

  In her sudden attempt to save herself, the map had gone flying out and now flapped against the siding of the train, the corner stuck between two planks of wood.

  The whistle of open air surrounded them as they left the canyon and started across the bridge over an icy gorge below. The killer’s conductor hat tumbled off into the expanse below while he clung to the bottom stair. “Agh, help me,” he groaned.

  Pulling herself up and making sure she had a good footing, she crouched and held out a hand. “Hold on,” she called, watching with a sick sense of vertigo as the man’s legs kicked out over the lengthy drop.

  “The map. Get the map before it blows away,” he ordered, his eyes shooting to where the piece of paper held on for dear life.

  “No way. Take my hand. Your life isn’t worth the money.”

  “Get the map,” he screamed.

  “No.”

  Letting one hand off the stair where he was gripping, he reached out for the map himself.

  “Are you insane?”

  “Just a bit more,” he insisted, his finger’s only a half-inch away from where the map fluttered precariously.

  “No, give me your hand, now!” she screamed, leaning as far forward as she dared to try and grab the struggling man.

  “Got it,” he shouted, but too late.

  As his clinging hand slipped from the stair, he and the map plunged into the gorge below as the train made its way back onto solid ground.

  “Sonja, what are you doing?” Frank exclaimed, grabbing his fiancé and pulling her back further from where she knelt on the edge.

  “Jake. He fell into the gorge,” she gasped for air, realizing just how exhausted she was from the last few minutes.

  “Jake? The conductor?”

  She nodded, “Yeah. He had the map with him.”

  CHAPTER 14

  * * *

  “Well, I guess that the ghost got his way. No one is going to ever find that gold,” Frank sighed as he and Sonja climbed back into her catering van. The parking lot was filled with all manner of emergency vehicles and personnel running back and forth.

  Frank, as the official first responder, had spent the last hour filling in the local sheriff on all the events of the day before. Meanwhile, a deputy interviewed Sonja about her interactions with the killer, trying to get a clearer picture of just how Jake had ended up falling off the train at the bridge.

  She was glad to finally get out of there, and out of those old clothes.

  “I think it’s better that way,” Sonja responded to Frank’s comment, buckling her seatbelt.

  “I wonder just how much that gold would have been worth,” he mused, staring off into space.

  “I don’t even want to think about it. It was enough for a regular guy to kill someone and then die himself—all because he thought he could get a little money.”

  Frank nodded as she started up the car. “Greed is a terrible thing,” he agreed.

  “Jake seemed like such a nice guy, too. Who would have ever suspected him of something so horrible?”

  “It’s even worse that he made someone else basically do the dirty work. I’m not sure Robert will ever recover.”

  “I never asked. How did Nathan take the news?” Reversing the van, she pulled out of the space and started off down the dirt path to the main road.

  “Not well, as you can imagine. However, I think it really has changed his mind about his life.”

  “Had he really shown up just for the money?”

  Frank settled into his seat. “It seems that way, yes. He’d caught wind of the map, and the potential gold, and decided it was time to rekindle his relationship with his brother.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “But now that he will be inheriting half of the museum, I think he intends to turn his life around. He was telling me he wanted to carry on the museum and train experience just as Vaughn would have wanted it.”

  “That’s good,” she admitted. Pulling out onto the main road, they began the long journey back to Haunted Falls. Sonja was done with taking trips for a while, she decided. She wanted nothing more than to stay in her hometown, in her diner, and cook tasty waffles for residents and tourists alike. She wanted to keep life moving forward. Glancing over at Frank, she knew that involved him. “How are you holding up with all of this?”

  “I’m fine, Sonj’, honestly.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. It’s hard. I’m sad about what’s happened, but I just have to keep looking forward.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  They were both quiet for a moment, lost in their thoughts, when Frank spoke up. “So, when do you want to get married?”

  Sonja was caught slightly off guard by the question. “I’m not really sure.”

  “I think the sooner the better, don’t you?”

  Chewing her lower lips, she considered this. “Yeah. I think so.” She didn’t want to admit that her best friend had been stressing her out about the whole thing.

  “Then let’s do it soon,” he reaffirmed what he wanted.

  A flutter of excitement rose in Sonja’s chest. Even though they were engaged and had been since Thanksgiving, the whole marriage had seemed like it wasn’t actually happening. It had been sort of unreal.

  Now, for some reason, this conversation was making it real. “Okay, soon,” she bea
med, smiling over at him.

  “Great.” Smiling back, he folded his arms with satisfaction. “You know, there is still one other thing I regret from this little trip.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “We never got to actually try those waffles.”

  “I’ll tell you what, as soon as we get back into town we can have an early lunch together and I’ll make the waffles.”

  “Sonja, how would you even know how to make them? You didn’t even taste them?”

  Reaching down into her purse, she produced a notecard with little-scribbled words on it. “I got the recipe from the train’s cook,” she announced proudly. “I’m thinking the museum isn’t going to reopen for a bit and won’t mind me giving them a whirl at the diner.”

  Frank burst out laughing. “This is why I love you.”