Free Lantern Sam and the Blue Streak Bandits by Michael D. Beil Page B

they’d never even let a salesman like Romeo into the
lobby—
except maybe to polish the marble floors in the middle of the night.”
    I dug the stub of a pencil out of my pocket, quickly scribbled the note on a scrap of paper, and handed it to Clarence on his next pass by the piano. When I looked up, a man and a woman were preparing to sit at the lone table between the judge’s table and the piano. As the man helped his wife into her chair, I recognized him immediately as the man in the gray suit—the one from the club car who had teased me about Ellie. The woman, I noticed immediately, worea scarf tied around her head and fashionable dark glasses, even though she was inside a train car
and
the sun was hidden behind clouds.
    Sam noticed the same thing.
“Now, there’s somebody who doesn’t want to be recognized. Look how she’s sitting, bent over, hiding behind her menu. The scarf, the glasses—I wonder what her story is. She’s up to no good—you can count on that.”
    “You’re a very suspicious person, er, cat,” I said.
    “In my line of work, you have to be. Tell me, what else do you see when you really look at them?”
    I watched them for a while, then shrugged. “I don’t know—other than the sunglasses, they look kind of ordinary to me.”
    “Look at their hands. He can’t stop fiddling with his wedding ring, and she can’t stop looking at hers. What does that tell you?”
    “They’re married?”
    “Mrrrraa. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but they’re certainly not used to wearing those rings. They could be newlyweds—after all, he did pull the chair out for her. Husbands don’t do that for long.”
    “My father still does it for my mother,” I said. It was true; Captain Shipley was an old-fashioned gentleman, through and through.
    “Well, he’s the exception to the rule.”
    As Sam and I watched, the man reached across the tableand took the woman’s hand in his. He spoke softly: “Stop worrying. Everything’s going to work out perfectly. We’re going to get away with it, at least until—”
    “Until someone recognizes me,” said the woman, slinking even lower into her seat. “If word gets out, those vultures will be waiting for us when we get off the train. You saw the way that girl looked at me—I’m telling you, she
knew
. And then there’s our friend with the bird’s nest on her head. It’s no accident that
she’s
here.”
    “As soon as we’re done with dinner,” said the man, “we’ll go back to our room and stay there. It’s too late for the little girl to say anything, and don’t worry about our friend with the hat. I’ll take care of her.”

Her name was Marmalade and she was nothing but trouble from the moment I laid eyes on her. She was a round-faced tabby with long legs and a voice that made me go weak in the knees. The first time I saw her, she was on the roof of Fagin’s Place, a hole-in-the-wall bar down by the Cuyahoga River.
    “Rrroooowww,” she said. “Hey there, handsome.”
    I looked around, wondering who she was talking to.
    “I’m talking to you, Calico. You new in town?”
    Back on the Dilly farm, Mom had warned me about girls like Marmalade, and I should have just kept walking. But for the second time in less than a week, I ignored the advice ofan older and wiser cat. I couldn’t help myself; Marmalade was a knockout.
    “Came in on the train today,” I said. “From Ashta—”
    She cut me off. “Why don’t you come up here so I can get a closer look at you. I’ve never seen a boy calico. Go around to the side. There’s a stack of old beer kegs in front of the truck that’s parked there. If you climb up those, you can jump onto the roof of the truck, and then … you’ll see. It’s easy from there.”
    I hesitated for a moment and the first few drops of rain splashed onto the pavement at my feet.
    “It’s dry up here,” said Marmalade, ducking under an overhang. “You don’t want to get wet, do you?”
    “Not