Murder on the Orient Espresso by Sandra Balzo

engineer is a lovely older man – retired, in fact, and a bit eccentric. He’ll have to go out in this rain and wind. We didn’t think of that.’
    â€˜Would you like me to go out and check on him?’ Pavlik asked.
    â€˜That’s so kind of you.’ Missy was trying to peer out the window. ‘I’d be afraid, though, that you’d miss him somehow and accidentally be left behind. The Everglades is a dangerous enough place in the daytime. At night, and in this weather?’ She shivered.
    I was right there with her. Meaning inside the train was safe and sound, which is where I wanted Pavlik to stay.
    But I knew the sheriff wouldn’t be deterred by concern for his own safety, especially when somebody else might be in danger. It wasn’t in his DNA. I wasn’t sure I had that kind of grit myself – to run toward disaster, rather than away – but I was very grateful there were people like Pavlik who did.
    So, I tried another tack. ‘You’re right, Missy. We certainly can’t chance losing your main forensics speaker. There would be no one to teach the panels – or workshops – tomorrow.’
    Pavlik looked at me.
    â€˜Imagine the disappointment if you didn’t show up,’ I said to him. ‘You know, to teach killing and guns and bullets and such.’
    â€˜Oooh, that reminds me.’ Missy turned away from the window to address Pavlik. ‘Did you bring your own weapons or do you need mine?’
    â€˜You have … weapons?’ I asked.
    â€˜Of course,’ the two of them chorused.
    â€˜I meant Missy.’ When it came to Pavlik, personal experience had taught me that asking Mae West’s come-hither question, ‘Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?’ wouldn’t get me the answer I’d hoped for.
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ the young woman said. ‘But only props for the workshop. Rubber knives and the like.’
    That was a relief, at least. Maybe I would attend, after all.
    â€˜â€¦ shipped everything I needed, along with my handouts,’ Pavlik was saying.
    That explained what was in the UPS box that had been waiting for us in the hotel room.
    â€˜My Glock Forty semi-automatic,’ he continued, ‘and a Colt Detective Special, a revolver designed for a six-chamber cylinder. I also have a variety of cartridges – standard, hollow-point, Hydra-shok, the Glaser Safety Slug—’
    Suddenly the Flagler Suite wasn’t looking quite so romantic.
    â€˜You
will
talk about caliber versus millimeter, won’t you?’ This from Prudence, whom I’d forgotten about. ‘That always confuses people and we really need to know those things in order to write intelligently.’
    â€˜I’ll have thirty-eight, forty and forty-five caliber cartridges as well as nine millimeter, to illustrate,’ Pavlik assured Prudence, then turned to me. ‘What we’re talking about, Maggy, is the diameter of the ammunition. A forty-five caliber bullet or cartridge – the same thing, for our purposes – is forty-five one hundreds of an inch in diameter, or nearly half an inch across. A nine millimeter is, as you might guess, nine millimeters across.’
    â€˜And nearly equal to the size of a thirty-eight caliber,’ Missy contributed brightly. ‘If you do the conversion from metric, I mean.’
    â€˜A nine is a bit smaller than a thirty-eight,’ Pavlik said with an approving nod. ‘But very close.’
    Obviously gratified, Missy asked, ‘And did you bring – or ship – a variety of knives as well?’
    â€˜I have a rubber knife with a five-inch blade to use in the hands-on demonstration, of course. For show-and-tell, I shipped a switch blade, and gravity, pocket and buck knives.’
    What, I thought, no death by butter knife?
    â€˜Oh, and my assassin’s dagger, of course.’
    So I
would
hang out at the pool