War Train — Donald Willerton

To Mogi Franklin, it simply seemed like a better summer job than stocking supermarket shelves in Bluff, Utah. But the opportunity to help with his sister Jennifer's architectural assessment of the newly refurbished, once-grand-and-glorious hotel and restaurant in Las Vegas, New Mexico, turned out to be much more—the kind of brain-testing mystery he loved and excelled at, along with a heavy serving of adventure and danger. The mystery was more than seventy-five years old: the robbery of a local bank by two gunmen who'd walked out the door with thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills and then simply vanished. The link with the present-day hotel suddenly appeared in an unexpected find hidden in the “ton of junk” from an unknown attic room uncovered during the building's reconstruction. There among the old clothes, books, papers, and other remnants from the early days of World War II, Mogi finds a clue, then another and then more, leading far back in the hotel's unique history. As articles in a sensationalistic local newspaper seem to tie the clues together—and lead as well to false trails and blind alleys—Mogi digs deeper into the fascinating history of the Castañeda Hotel and its storied Harvey House restaurant to unravel the untold tale linking the robbery to a mother's love for the twin sons she was never able to give enough to.