Read Mayhem at the Orient Express for Free Online

his hands balled into fists, and his mind clearly a
     million miles away. In fact, I walked all the way to the front counter before he even
     noticed I was there.
    Peter had a narrow face with even, pleasant features. At least when it wasn’t flushed
     and his teeth weren’t gritted. He shook himself back to reality. “Bea! What can I
     get you?”
    No small talk? There usually was.
    No asking what was happening back at the B and B? He always had before.
    I excused the lapse in customer service because I figured he was upset, and placed
     my order for orange/peanut chicken.
    No laugh along with the line that if I wasn’t careful, I was going to get addicted?
    Nope. Though Peter had always teased me before about my inability to try anything
     new now that I’d found the dinner dish of my dreams, this time he merely scratched
     my request onto an order pad.
    “Sorry to be so disorganized today,” he said when he was finished getting out a bag
     and tossing a few of those plastic pouches of soy sauce in it along with a complimentary
     fortune cookie. He touched a hand to the surgical mask around his neck. “Been doing
     some remodeling up in the apartment,” he said, and he glanced up at the ceiling of
     the restaurant. I knew that Peter had just moved from the mainland and that he lived
     above the Orient Express, so it made sense. “It’ll be just a couple minutes,” he said.
    End of small talk.
    He disappeared into the back of the restaurant and shut the kitchen door behind him
     so quickly, a stream of air shot up front and made the piece of paper I’d seen him
     wave toward his disgruntled customer float to the floor.
    It would have been rude of me not to stoop to retrieve the paper.
    As for reading it . . . come on, it’s not like anybody could blame me.
    It was plain computer paper. No big deal there. But the words on it were plenty funky.
     Each letter was cut from a magazine or newspaper, a hodgepodge of both upper-and lowercase,
     some bold and dark against the white paper, others outlined in black, like a ransom
     note in a mystery novel.
    You won’t get away with this,
it said.
I won’t ever forget. I swear, I’ll make you pay.
    Strange. And shocking.
    I was staring at the note, wondering what it meant and if it had anything to do with
     the fight Peter had with the man in the raincoat, when the door to the restaurant
     opened and shut behind me.
    Startled, I jumped—and smacked the paper back on the counter where it came from.
    When I turned to greet whoever had walked into the Orient Express, I looked (I hoped)
     as casual as if nothing unusual had happened.
    That was made just a little easier when I saw that the next customer in line was Luella
     Zak.
    “Hey, nice to see you.” She moved quickly and efficiently, as only a person can who
     is completely at ease with her own body and satisfied with her place in the world.
     Luella stuck out one calloused hand and I shook it. “Finish the book?” she asked.
    There were a couple other things I’d learned in New York. One was that when reluctant
     to admit the truth, it is perfectly acceptable to sidestep it.
    “Not quite,” I replied. “I’ve been kind of busy.”
    Luella grabbed a to-go menu and quickly read it over. “Meg tells me your place is
     really shaping up. Can’t wait to see it.”
    “You’ll have to stop by sometime.” It was the polite response, and besides, I didn’t
     have anything against Luella. Unlike the other members of my book discussion group,
     she seemed like a reasonable and reasonably nice lady. “I’ve already got one guest,”
     I added, tooting my own horn.
    “Bully for you!” Luella emphasized her point by poking a fist in the air. “Innkeeping’s
     not an easy business, but I can tell, you’ve got what it takes. You care about the
     kind of experience your guests are going to have. You must, otherwise you wouldn’t
     have hired the best baker on the island! Speaking of customer