by Maddy Hunter
“How do you remember everyone’s name? I mean, I know name tags help, but it’s only been two days, and you sound as if you have everyone’s name memorized.”
“Photographic memory. It was my biggest selling point when I applied for the job.” He bobbed his head toward me. “What was yours?”
Mine? Hunh. No one had ever asked me that before. “I think it was that…I was available.”
“Oh, come on.” He laughed. “Someone hired you because you’re good with people. You take initiative. You smile a lot.”
He was obviously making a personal judgment here because I hadn’t written any of that on my travel form.
“And you’re kind enough to lend an ear when someone needs to talk.” His eyes traveled to my mouth, where they lingered for a moment too long. “Thanks, Em.” His voice was soft, his words slow. “I appreciate it.”
He boosted himself to his feet. I rose at the same time, feeling a little emotionally awkward, and walked him to the door. “If your sister is such a romance fan, you should have Gillian and Marla sign their books for her,” I said in full escort mode. “She’d probably be thrilled.”
He paused on the threshold, his voice suddenly strained. “I wish I could. She was killed in an accident ten years ago. On her honeymoon. The biggest romantic adventure of her life gone miserably awry.” He cleared the gravel from his throat. “Hey, get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
His sister had died? I closed the door behind him. Good going, Emily. Way to rip open old wounds. Oh, Lord.
I wandered around my room, craving sleep, but too wired to lie down. I thought about calling Etienne, but it was after two. I’d never call anyone at two in the morning unless it was an emergency, and this really wasn’t an emergency. It was just one of those times in my life when I could use a little reassurance from someone who loved me.
Beating back my need for hand-holding, I rearranged my shoes along the wall, reordered the mess in my shoulder bag, then scanned the list Duncan had given me earlier to see what room Jackie had ended up in.
Ooh. Mom would love this guy. He’d taken time to alphabetize and cross-reference all the names. Let’s see. Thum — 212. And directly beneath that, Trzebiatowski — 211. Hunh. Cassandra Trzebiatowski had been in the room across the hall from Jackie, but it was the name in brackets on the same line as Trzebiatowski that caused my heart to skip a beat.
Frounfelker.
Cassandra had been sharing a room with Brandy Ann Frounfelker?
I set the list down, reliving the scene that had played out earlier in my room. In my mind’s eye I could see an ash blonde fighting over my denim dress and swearing that Gabriel Fox would be eating out of her hand when he saw her in it. I knew now the blonde had been Cassandra Trzebiatowski. I also recalled Brandy Ann Frounfelker in the middle of the fray, beating off the competition with her massive fists. And I knew that Duncan had been wrong about one thing.
Brandy Ann had indeed spoken to Cassandra this evening. In fact, I believe the exact phrasing had been, “If you don’t let this dress go, I swear I’ll kill you.”
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
I jackknifed upward out of a sound sleep. I squinted at my door. I checked my travel alarm: 5:43.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
Now what? I glared at the door and mumbled a groggy, “Uff da.”
“Uff da” is an expression of irritation and/or alarm used by many Iowans, especially those of Norwegian descent. It’s kinda like the “F” word disguised in a rubber nose and glasses.
“Coming,” I muttered. I struggled into my dress and sleepwalked to the door. Dick Teig stood in the hallway looking like three hundred pounds of lime Jell-O in his too-small polo shirt embroidered with the words JOHN DEERE. He was as wide as he was tall, with a head as big as a medicine ball, but hey, at least he wasn’t naked.
“What can I do for you, Dick?” I asked, unable to stifle a yawn.
“What time’s breakfast? I didn’t hear last night.”
I slumped against the doorjamb. “Starts at seven. Ends at nine.”
He checked his watch. By now it had to be at least 5:44. He looked relieved. “Good. We can still make it then.”
I forced a smile. “Only if you don’t dillydally.”
“One more thing.” He paused and took a deep, anguished breath, as if he hated to continue. “It’s about Helen’s…problem.”
Helen had lost her eyebrows in a freak accident with a gas grill, so for years now, she’d had to pencil on fake ones, compliments of Revlon, L’Oréal, and Maybelline. His anguish could only mean one thing. “Unh-oh. Did her eyebrow pencil get incinerated in Rome?”
“It’s her own fault. I told her she should carry a spare with her at all times. A woman’s gotta take precautions when her brows keep sliding off her face. But what do I know? I’m only her husband. You have one she can borrow?”
“I don’t use eyebrow pencil. But I have liquid eyeliner. Would that help?”
“Liquid, hunh? She said not to bring back anything that was water soluble.”
I took a quick mental inventory of my cosmetic bag. “The only other thing I have is long-lasting lipstick. I can’t guarantee its durability, but it comes in six luscious colors.”
He slatted an eye at me. “She’s tried lipstick before. It smudges. Then her eyebrows end up all over her cheeks. Folks begin to stare. It’s not a pretty sight.”
I had one last suggestion. “My friend Jackie might have an eyebrow pencil.” She no longer had a dick, but she’d bought into something better. A great selection of expensive cosmetics!
Dick shook his head. “Helen’s not the kind to borrow makeup from someone she don’t know. You never mind about it then. She’ll think of something.”
I closed the door behind him, thinking I was about to fall asleep on my feet. No more interruptions, I implored as I stutter-stepped across the room. I need my sleep! I stepped into the bathroom.
BLUBblub blub.
Tepid water sloshed around my ankles and splattered the hem of my dress. I hung my head.
Damn.
By seven-thirty, guests were packed into the ground-floor dining room, seated at tables jammed together like stalls in a flea market. Voices echoed off the high ceiling as people sampled the hotel’s Continental breakfast, but some people didn’t look any too happy as they waved their hands at the small glasses of pink juice and plates of hard-crusted breakfast rolls before them.
“Buon giorno,” I greeted the quintet dining at Dick Teig’s table. I nodded to Dick and Grace Stolee and Lucille Rassmuson, my gaze skidding to full arrest at the sight of Helen Teig, who had resolved her “problem” with artfully applied slashes that looked to be compliments of a BIC pen. Medium point. Blue ink. Oh, God.
All five friends were wearing doughnut-sized campaign buttons emblazoned with a color photo of Dick Rassmuson, Lucille’s cigar-smoking husband who’d died unexpectedly a few months ago. The Dicks had been bosom buddies since childhood, so the loss of their brash - talking, practical-joking ringleader had left a huge hole in their tight-knit little group.
“What does ‘bon jorno’ mean?” asked Lucille, who was attired, for the second consecutive day, in a red wind suit that could have won her the role as a main entree in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
“It means hello,” Dick Teig said flatly.
“No, no,” Grace Stolee corrected. “The word for hello is ‘pronto.’ ”
“You’re crazy,” Helen accused. “Pronto means ‘hurry up.’ And I should know. I say it all the time, don’t I, Dick?”
“The Italian word for hello is ‘ciao,’ ” Dick Stolee said from behind the lens of his camcorder. “Do something out of character for the camera, Emily.”
Removing my eye makeup would have been pretty out of character, but it would have taken too long, so I gave him a little finger wave instead.
“Excuse me,” Dick Teig said, addressing Dick Stolee’s camcorder in an ever-increasing huff. “ ‘Chow�
� means good-bye.”
Helen thwacked her husband’s arm. “It does not! It means food. Don’t you ever hear me when I yell, ‘Dick! Your chow’s on the table! Get down here pronto!’ ”
Which just goes to show that a person can be bilingual and not even know it.
Lucille raised her voice to be heard above the din. “Well, I hope ‘bon jorno’ doesn’t mean bon appetit, because that ain’t gonna happen here.” She whisked her breakfast roll off her plate. “Look at this thing, Emily.” She whapped it against the rim of her plate, making a loud chinking sound. “They call this crust? It’s an armadillo shell! And watch this.” She dropped it onto the table and began hammering it with her fist. BAM! BAM! BAM! Plates leaped. Glasses wobbled. Juice sloshed.
Dick Stolee aimed his camcorder at his jiggling plate. “An early-morning earthquake in Florence.”
“See what I mean?” Lucille ranted, holding the unblemished roll up for my inspection. “Somebody goofed and used cement instead of flour. No way am I biting into this thing. And my Dick wouldn’t have eaten it either, would he?” she asked the table at large.
“Nope,” Dick Teig agreed, patting the image on his button with genuine fondness. “He probably would have taken it home and used it as a doorstop.”
Dick Stolee turned off his camcorder. “I think he would have climbed to the top of that domed church here and dropped it on someone’s head. Might have fooled some unsuspecting tourist into thinking it was manna from heaven. He would have gotten a real charge out of that. What do you think, Grace?”
Grace Stolee, whose once ballet-thin shape had expanded to the size of a third world country, shook her head. “He’d had his teeth capped just before he died last year. Remember? So he never would have chanced breaking a tooth on one of these rolls and having to fork out more money for dental work. You know what a skinflint he was.”
They heaved a collective sigh and nodded agreement.
“So what are we supposed to eat?” Lucille complained to me. “Where’s the bacon and eggs and sausage and hash browns and pancakes and toast and jelly?”
“In Ireland,” I said in a small voice. “But the good news is” — I flashed them a smile with my pearly whites — “Italian breakfasts won’t kill you!”
“Buon giorno,” Nana greeted the crowd as she shuffled up beside me.
Lucille regarded Nana with consternation. “Did we decide what that means?”
“I thought you said it meant bon appetit,” Grace fired back.
Nana stared at Helen, assessing her with her usual calm. “Jean Harlow used to have eyebrows just like them. But I think she used black ink.”
“All I had on me was blue,” Helen explained, “so it was either that, or Dick’s red gel rollerball. I thought blue would look better with my skin tone.”
Sure it would. If she was a Smurf.
“Just a minute,” said Nana, rooting around in her pocketbook. “I got a Magic Marker. Will that help?” She squinted at the labeling as she held it up. “Nontoxic. Water resistant. Dries quickly. And lookit this! Permanent on most surfaces.”
Helen leaned over and plucked the marker out of Nana’s hand to inspect it. Behind me, I heard a bubble pop, which could only mean one thing.
I wheeled around to find Keely scanning the room for a place to sit. “You haven’t seen Sylvia Root, have you?” she asked me. “I figure now’s as good a time as any to make an impression on the ole literary agent. Maybe I can even convince her to drop her commission from 15 percent to 10.”
I gawked at her, not because I was surprised at her gall, but because SHE WAS WEARING MY ROSEBUD SHEATH DRESS WITH THE RUFFLE AT THE HEM! “That’s my dress!” I wailed. “It’s brand-new. I haven’t even worn it yet!”
She smoothed the slim skirt over her hips. “Tell you the truth, it’s a little snug. Hope you don’t mind. I let the seam out a little.”
“YOU WHAT?”
“Yeah, I always carry a sewing kit in my pocketbook. Good thing, hunh? If it’d been in my suitcase, it would have gotten fried.” She snapped her gum at me and scanned the room. “The bigwigs all sleep in this morning? They’re supposed to make themselves available to us for consultations, or did they forget to read the small print?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Okay, here’s the thing, Keely. I want my dress back.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Tonight.”
“That might pose a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
She popped a bubble. “I’ll have to go shopping to replace it with something else, and I need to put the finishing touches on my contest entry, so I don’t know if I’ll have time.”
“Find the time.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She continued to survey the room. “I don’t see too many of my fellow contestants here this morning. They’re probably holed up in their rooms, working on their entries. A lot of good it’ll do them. I have this contest all sewn up, so they’re all just wasting their time.” She shifted her position and glanced toward a point beyond me. “Well, well, well. Would you look at who just walked into the room? Philip Blackmore. Gee, can’t have him eating breakfast all by himself, can I? Maybe he’d like to schmooze a little with the next best-selling author at Hightower Books. Ta ta.” With a jarring crack of her gum, she headed off to intercept the publishing giant.
“I’m serious about my dress!” I called after her.
Her hand fluttered lazily in the air. “Yeah, yeah.”
Was it my imagination, or had she just blown me off? Oh yeah, I’d handled that really well.
Nana shuffled around to face me and followed the direction of my gaze as I threw daggers at Keely’s back. “Well, would you lookit that,” she said, nodding toward the rosebud dress. “Her outfit’s kinda like the one you bought for the trip. Same ruffled hem and everythin’.”
“It’s not ‘kind of’ like my outfit. It is my outfit!”
“No kiddin’? She find it in the same catalogue?”
“Not exactly. She found it in my suitcase.” I latched on to Nana’s arm and navigated her toward an empty table. “Let’s sit. I have an earful for you.”
When I finished informing Nana about my clothing crisis and Mom’s unwitting part in it, she sat back in her chair and gave a little suck on her teeth. “I knew we shoulda done somethin’ about your mother years ago, Emily, but your grampa was always hopeful she’d change.” She shot a look heavenward. “Are you listenin’, Sam? She changed all right. She got worse!” She exhaled a disgusted breath. “Okay, dear, short a killin’ or maimin’, you have any ideas what we should do about her? Now’s a good time to plan ’cause she’s back in the room, readin’ the first contest entries that come in.”
“Where’s George?” I asked, aware of his absence for the first time.
She managed a hesitant smile. “He’s makin’ his way down to the dinin’ room. And that’s the other thing, Emily. We gotta figure out how to get her outta my room. If she hadn’t went out with Alice and Osmond after the fire drill last night to buy some gelato, I never woulda had any time alone with George. By the way, I like it that this hotel has fire drills. They must have a real good safety record.”
I let that pass. “You got together with George? Okay, ’fess up. Did you…do anything?”
She lowered her voice. “You bet. But we done it so fast, I’m a little fuzzy on the details. Don’t mention it to George, Emily, but we mighta left out a step or two.”
“You can’t recall which ones?”
She shrugged. “I betcha it was somethin’ in the middle. But I don’t understand how we coulda left anythin’ out. We was followin’ the directions in that book real good.”
“Book?” My smile morphed into a frown. “What book?”
She peeked around her to see if anyone was watching, then quietly unzipped her pocketbook and slipped out a ragged paperback. I glimpsed the title.
“The Barbarian’s Bride?” I eyed the blond hair, bare chest, and bulging biceps
of the male cover model and realized that he looked a little like Duncan. “Where’s the bride?”
“Inside the barbarian’s lair, havin’ a panic attack. The barbarian kidnapped her in chapter one, so he’s struttin’ around in his animal skins, makin’ like he’s gonna ravish her, which is really upsettin’ ’cause she made a vow to her father on his deathbed that she wouldn’t ‘couple’ with no one ’til her weddin’ night. My guess is, she’s Catholic.”
I shook my head. “You better read fast before your book falls apart. Where’d you pick that thing up anyway? The senior center book sale?”
“I bought it new from that Michaels woman our first night in Rome.”
“New?” I regarded the shabby cover, the dog-eared pages, the faded color. “You’re kidding. It looks older than the Rosetta stone.”
Nana touched the book’s broken spine with affection. “It’s on account a my hands. When I get to readin’ them love scenes, it makes my palms all sweaty.” She compressed her lips as she studied the book’s cover. “George don’t read much, Emily, but I’m not gonna let that come between us. He says he did read a best seller a few years back. Some book about the thrills a off-trail hikin’. All the famous climbers endorsed it, but George thought it was all hype and way too risky, so he didn’t pay it no mind when he went to Yosemite.”
“How is he able to climb mountains with only one leg?”
“Denial. I don’t think he realizes he’s only got the one.” Nana stuffed the book back into her pocketbook and when she looked up again, broke out in a smile. “Well, would you lookit that. There’s my sweetie pie now.” She raised her arm to signal him.
I gazed toward the dining room entrance to find George taking small, robotic steps toward us. He was walking so stiffly and holding his head so erect that he looked as if he was wearing a straitjacket instead of the same tartan plaid shirt he’d been wearing yesterday. “Why is he walking like that?”
“Lower back pain.”
I frowned. “He never mentioned back pain on his medical form. When did that start?”
“Last night. I was readin’ the barbarian’s first hot love scene out loud, and I asked if it was actually possible for a fella to twist hisself into the kinda contortion the author described.”