Free Shadows on the Train by Melanie Jackson

“You’re not happy unless you’re disrupting my day, are you? I suppose a budding star will do anything for attention. CLEANERS!” he shouted and began to bounce indignantly toward the stairs in pursuit of them.
    â€œWait!” Wringing out chunks of my hair, I slip-slid after him through the spilled suds. “You must’ve passed the person who—”
    â€œNot another word,” Beanstalk sniffed. He rolled a thunderous look down his sloping nose at me. Then he shrilled, “CLEANERS!” and sprinted down the stairs, three at a time.
    Retrieving my sweater, I clumped down the stairs after him. With one hand I continued wringing out my hair; with the other I clutched the precious but puzzling envelope. Dad, I thought, what is the secret you left? Who is the king?
    â€œOh no, Dinah!” Madge wailed, setting down her elk sketch. “Not another water incident!”
    I’d had quite a few of these in May, aboard the Alaska cruise ship Empress Marie . Let’s just say the thief I was pursuing had kind of a one-track mind when it came to ways of trying to silence me.
    I hesitated. Madge was already uneasy about my claim of seeing Bowl Cut force his way onto the train. If she found out about the whispering blanket-thrower, I’d probably find myself at the nearest airport, awaiting the next plane back to Vancouver.
    â€œIt’s okay,” I assured Madge. “A minor mishap.”
    Other Gold-and-Blue passengers were gaping at me over their books and chess games. All those faces, still and staring, like the moons of Saturn. One of them might just be feigning surprise. One of them might be the Whisperer.
    I scanned the faces, back and forth, till I grew dizzy—and then, as abruptly as if it had collided with a roadblock, my gaze stopped. One person wasn’t staring. One person was holding a tourist guidebook about Western Canada in front of her face.
    I could see her chestnut hair, though. And her red dress.
    Mrs. Zanatta!
    What was she doing on the Gold-and-Blue?
    â€œAnd where’s her little boy?” I muttered.
    Beanstalk breezed back, cleaners in tow. Hearing me, he whipped his rubbery neck round to follow my stare. “Ryan Zanatta is playing quietly in the Gold-and-Blue Day Camp,” he informed me, adding snootily, “We like our adult patrons to enjoy themselves. To escape from children.”
    With a foul parting look at me, he and the cleaners paraded on.
    Much you know, Beanstalk, I thought grimly. Ryan’s playing quietly because, for whatever reason, he’s the kid who doesn’t speak.
    I glanced at Mrs. Zanatta again. Granted, in a short while we’d be in Jasper, the first of two stops the Gold-and-Blue would be making so passengers could take side trips. The next stop would be Winnipeg.
    Maybe Mrs. Zanatta really was brushing up on her landmarks.
    But holding the guidebook upside down was an awfully strange way to read about them.
    On the pale sand by Jasper’s Annette Lake, out of Madge’s and Mrs. Chewbley’s hearing range, I filled my fellow junior sleuths in about the Whisperer.
    â€œThat does it,” Talbot said. From his knapsack, he withdrew two clunky, wire-sprouting black rectangles. Er, walkie-talkies. “Keep this with you at all times,” he instructed, handing one to me.
    I fought back a howl of protest that would have echoed across Annette Lake to the distant blue Mount Edith Cavell, with its splotch of snow at the peak.
    Talbot, Pantelli, Madge, Mrs. Chewbley and I had spread out blankets to enjoy the gi-normous sandwiches the Gold-and-Blue chef had provided. There were an awful lot of them: egg salad, smoked salmon and cream cheese, tuna, blackened chicken, and my favorite, banana-peanut-butter-and-honey. Plus garlicky pickles, Caesar salad, potato salad—we couldn’t gobble fast enough.
    It turned out Mrs. Chewbley had ordered for ten. “You never know how hungry you’ll