by Mary Daheim
“Don’t tell me about your fear of flying or your guzzling of Wild Turkey before a flight. You embarrassed Bill, Joe, me—and yourself!”
Renie looked puzzled. “I don’t remember. Did we get to London?”
“Oh, shut up!” Judith threw her handbag on the bed. “It’s eight-thirty. Leave me in peace. It’s been a long day.”
“It sure has,” Renie groused, heading for the bathroom. “Hey,” she yelled, “there’s no tub, only a shower. I hate showers. They scare me.”
“Buy a fifth of Wild Turkey,” Judith shot back. “Just stop griping.”
Renie glowered at her cousin. “I think I will. I saw a liquor store across the street.” Whirling around, she opened the door—and saw a tall, dark-skinned man in a police uniform.
Judith saw him, too, and couldn’t suppress a little gasp.
The officer removed his hat. “Are you Judith Flynn?”
“Never heard of her,” Renie said. “Excuse me, I’m going—”
“Answer the question.”
“Never heard of her,” she repeated.
He nodded at Judith. “Is that Ms. Jones?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Renie muttered, forced to step aside as the officer entered the room.
“I’m Lieutenant Alex Hernandez,” he said. “Ms. Jones, Ms. Flynn, you’re wanted for questioning in the death of Dietrich Wessler. Would you both please come with me?”
Chapter Four
The cousins exchanged beleaguered glances. “Okay,” Judith said, picking up her purse and jacket. “But we can’t tell you anything. We left before anything happened.”
“Too much oompah,” Renie remarked.
“Oh?” Hernandez said, arching his dark brows.
Judith realized her slip of the tongue. “We had dinner at Mad Ludvig’s. Our waitress told us there’d been some kind of accident.”
The officer made a gesture for the cousins to go out the door. “Please. You can tell me all about it downtown.”
Judith reluctantly followed Hernandez, but Renie stopped on the threshold. “Downtown? What downtown? Aren’t we already there?”
“Sorry,” he said over his shoulder. “I transferred here only a few months ago. I was a city cop for ten years. Come along, Ms. Flynn.”
“I am coming,” Judith retorted, already halfway down the stairs. ”I prefer ‘Mrs.,’ not ‘Ms.’ I like being married.”
Hernandez ignored Judith’s remark. “Where’s Ms. Flynn?” He turned to see Renie still in doorway. “Hey, move it. Do I need backup?”
“I’ll back up if you don’t stop calling me Ms. Flynn,” she snarled.
“Fine, Mrs. Flynn,” he said, making a sharp motion with his hand. “I guess you like being married, too.”
“Sometimes,” Renie said. “But I like it better when you call me by the right—”
“Hey!” Hernandez shouted. “Do you want to get arrested for impeding justice, Mrs. Flynn?”
Renie crossed her arms and leaned against the doorway.
The officer took two steps toward Renie. “I’m not kidding.” He reached for his cell.
Pointing to Judith, who was at the bottom of the stairs, Renie gazed innocently at Hernandez. “Why don’t you ask her? For all I know, she might enjoy getting arrested instead of having her husband in jail. That episode made her fractious,” she went on, alluding to the nerve-racking events of the past January.
“Coz,” Judith yelled, “cooperate! We can sort it out downtown. I mean, at headquarters.”
Looking mulish, Renie slammed the door behind her and stomped downstairs so fast that Hernandez had to lean against the balustrade to keep her from bumping into him.
The woman behind the desk stared at the trio marching out the door. “Their credit cards better be good!” she called after them.
“Up hers,” Renie muttered as Hernandez opened the cruiser’s rear door.
The cousins heard the locks click while the officer went around to the driver’s side. “Stick with Mrs. Flynn,” Judith murmured.
“What?” Renie said, aghast.
“Try it. He’s already baffled. It might work for us.”
Renie had no chance to respond. Hernandez was behind the wheel, driving westward three blocks down the main street and turning right. The police station was on the next corner, discreetly tucked out of sight. The sturdy gray one-story building took up half the block and bore no resemblance to the rest of the local architecture.
“Gee,” Renie said loudly, “that looks like a jail. How do you say that in German?”
“The Clink?” Judith suggested.
“No,” Renie said, “that was a real English prison, and a very notorious one. I suppose in German it’s der Klinker—with a K, right, Lieutenant Fernandez?”
“It’s Hernandez,” the officer snapped. “I don’t speak German.”
“Oh.” Renie sounded uncommonly meek. “Sorry. I have trouble with names. I get them mixed up sometimes.”
Judith elbowed Renie. “Knock it off,” she said under her breath.
Hernandez got out of the car, opened the rear door on Judith’s side, and ushered the cousins into the police station. To Judith’s surprise, the small reception area was vacant except for a fair-haired young woman behind the service counter. Various maps and flyers covered the walls, but the only local decor was the mounted head of an elk with enormous antlers and a wanted poster hanging around its neck.
“Call me a taxidermist,” Renie whispered to Judith. “I’ll bet that thing with the horns on its head is the former police chief.”
“Shut up,” Judith said, barely moving her lips.
“Interrogation room,” Hernandez said to the young woman, before speaking to the cousins. “Follow me.”
The room was small and spare with a window that Judith assumed had one-way glass since she couldn’t see anything except dim reflections. There was a table with two chairs on each side, a small file cabinet, and another, much smaller table with a coffeepot on a hot plate.
“Would you like something to drink?” Hernandez inquired, indicating that the cousins should sit down.
Judith and Renie both declined. The officer sat down across from them, opened a laptop, and cleared his throat. “We understand that you attended the cocktail party this evening at Wolfgang’s Gast Haus. What time did you arrive?”
“About six,” the cousins answered in unison.
“Please,” Hernandez said. “One at a time. Mrs. Flynn?”
Renie made a face. “Maybe it was six-oh-five. Or maybe six-oh-three. It might even have been—”
“Close enough,” the officer interrupted before nodding at Judith. “And you?”
“Six.”
Hernandez nodded in apparent approval. Perhaps deciding that Judith was prone to more succinct answers, he kept his dark eyes fixed on her. “What did you do once you got to the party?”
“I went to the bar and ordered a drink.”
“And then?”
Judith gestured at Renie. “She joined me. Then I recognized someone I knew—vaguely—so we chatted a bit.”
Hernandez had an unsettlingly steady gaze and rarely blinked. “You remained together?”
“The three of us, yes.”
“And?”
Judith thought back to the sequence of events. It had been only three hours since the cocktail party had begun. Yet it seemed much longer. “About the same time Dietrich Wessler entered the ballroom, we met some recent acquaintances. Many of the guests rushed to greet Mr. Wessler, but we merely watched.”
“Did you know Wessler?”
“Ah . . . no,” Judith said, reluctant to mention the older man’s son, Franz, by name. “Someone told us who he was and how large a role he plays in this community.”
“Did you meet him?”
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br /> Judith shook her head. “A large crowd had gathered around him and we were outsiders. Besides, I think he was speaking in German.”
Hernandez finally made some notations on the laptop. “What did you do next?”
Judith hesitated. “The band started up. A couple of people tried to talk to us, but I couldn’t hear over the music. My cousin and I went back to the bar.”
The officer frowned. “How long had you been at the cocktail party at that point?”
Judith glanced at Renie. “Less than half an hour?”
Hernandez frowned slightly. “You already needed refills?”
Renie finally spoke up. “She did, but I didn’t. I already had mine. The drinks were free—and stingy. I like lots of ice. There wasn’t enough booze to make a newborn goofy. Not that I’d want to do that—nobody likes a drunken baby rolling around in the crib and crying off-key.”
“Certainly not.” Hernandez looked even sterner as he turned back to Judith. “Go on.”
“We went to the appetizer table,” Judith replied. “The band had started to play and it was really loud. We couldn’t hear ourselves think. A bunch of people were dancing. It was raucous and so noisy. Then,” she went on, pointing to Renie, “she got concerned about her allergies, so we went to the kitchen to ask the chef about nuts.”
“Nuts?” Hernandez seemed bemused.
“Yes,” Judith said. “Peanuts mainly, which aren’t actually nuts, but legumes. She has a life-threatening allergy to them. We spoke to the chef and he assured us they hadn’t used peanuts or peanut oil. But not wanting to take chances, she threw her plate away outside of the kitchen and we left to have dinner at Mad Ludvig’s. We’d just returned when you arrived at Hanover Haus.”
“I see.” Hernandez drummed his fingers on the table. “So you weren’t at the party when the tragedy occurred.”
Judith leaned forward. “Can you tell us what happened? We only heard that it was something terrible and involved Mr. Wessler. Of course we heard sirens when we were going to the restaurant.”
The officer’s expression didn’t change. “Dietrich Wessler apparently died from a stab wound.”
“That’s awful!” Judith cried. “How could such a thing happen?”
“That,” Hernandez said, “is what we’d like to know.”
Judith didn’t dare look at Renie, nor did she utter another word. Her nerves were so taut that she had to fold her hands in her lap to stay calm. She wondered if the interrogation had concluded. If so, it seemed incomplete. Had the local police interviewed every person at the cocktail party? Of course they might have called in the county sheriff or even the state patrol. Judith estimated that there had been a hundred—maybe more—people in the ballroom, excluding the band and servers. The kitchen help, the front desk, the people in charge would all have to be questioned. Yet no one else seemed to be in the station except the young woman at the desk. Maybe there were prisoners in the cells. If so, who was guarding them? Most of all, why had she and Renie been brought to police headquarters? Couldn’t Hernandez have asked his routine queries at Hanover Haus?
“Very well,” he finally said, closing his laptop. “That’s it.” Although he’d leaned back the chair, his eyes were still unwavering. “Thank you. Do you need a ride back to your inn?”
“Yes,” Judith said, starting to get up, “if you don’t mind.”
“By the way,” the officer said quietly, “which one of you is FASTO?”
Judith’s jaw dropped. She had to lean on the table for support. “I beg your pardon?”
He pointed to Renie. “It’s not you, Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Flynn is tall. It says so on the Web site.” He gazed at Judith. “Well?”
Judith sat back down again. “I’m FASTO. How did you know?”
A faint smile touched Hernandez’s wide mouth. “We do our homework, even here in Little Bavaria. Someone mentioned that one of the innkeepers had a knack for solving mysteries.” He tapped the laptop. “You weren’t hard to find. Trying to dupe me was a waste of time.”
“That Web site does not have my approval,” Judith asserted. “Some silly people got the notion that I’m an amateur detective. It’s ridiculous. I’ve just been in the wrong place at the wrong time too often. Not to mention that my husband is a retired homicide detective. In fact, he’s now a private investigator.”
Hernandez leaned back in the chair. “The wrong time? How many wrong times can there be in sixteen years? Shall I start with the fortune teller or just allude to your recent encounter with some big Paines?”
Judith held her head. “Ohhh . . .”
“Relax, coz,” Renie said. “I’ll bet Inbred Heffalump ratted you out to those other B&B people. Doesn’t she always?”
“She thinks I’m a disgrace to the innkeeping profession,” Judith blurted. “You know what she’s like.”
Hernandez sat up straight. “It’s too bad you left early. It might’ve helped us if you’d seen something. You’re obviously a keen observer.”
Judith’s conscience got the better of her. “Okay, so we didn’t leave before it happened. But I truly didn’t see anything that would help. In fact, that’s why we left. I didn’t want to get mixed up in another murder case. I’m beginning to feel hexed.”
“Beginning to?” Hernandez said mildly. “I’d think you might’ve felt that way after you found a body in your British Columbia hotel elevator.”
“Don’t rub it in,” Judith warned.
“So what did you see?” Hernandez asked.
Judith took a big breath. “Probably what everybody else did from the same angle. The music and the dancers stopped. The crowd sort of melted away from the middle of the ballroom. And there was poor Mr. Wessler lying on the floor. I didn’t see a knife. At least I don’t remember it. But I did see some blood. That’s when my cousin and I took off.”
Hernandez inclined his head. “How about before it happened?”
“Nothing, just what I told you earlier. No strange behavior on anybody’s part, nothing suspicious. Just a typical cocktail get-together except for the enthusiastic dancing and the loud oompah band.” She turned to Renie. “Am I missing something?”
“No. I never got a really good look at Wessler until I saw him lying on the floor. That was after I got off the floor.”
Hernandez raised an eyebrow. “You were on the floor? You were dancing?”
Renie shook her head. “I can’t dance worth a hoot. Very disappointing for my husband. My experience on the floor involved my eyelashes. Don’t get me wrong, my lashes are real, but I dropped—”
“Never mind,” Hernandez interrupted. “So far no one else has given us much help either.”
“How long was the knife?” Judith asked.
Hernandez held his hands apart. “The blade was no more than three and a half inches.”
Judith nodded. “Yes, that makes sense.” She paused. “I suppose that was how it was planned.”
Hernandez frowned. “Beg your pardon?”
Judith grimaced. “Is this an official homicide?”
He shook his head. “We won’t make it official until after the autopsy. But I don’t see how it could’ve been an accident.”
Judith shrugged. “If it was murder, it was premeditated. In that crowd, with all those bodies so close together in constant motion and the noise such a distraction, who’d notice a small weapon like a steak knife? Was Mr. Wessler dancing? I didn’t actually see him in the blur.”
“Yes. He’s a very vigorous old man. Was, I mean.” Hernandez looked chagrined. “That’s the strange part. He seemed to have been loved by everybody around here.”
Sadly, Judith shook her head. “No, not quite everybody. Unless,” she added, “someone loved him to death.”
Chapter Five
To her dismay—but not to her surprise—Lieutenant Hernandez insisted that Jud
ith keep in touch.
“I realize you couldn’t see much under the circumstances,” he allowed, after stopping the squad car in front of Hanover Haus, “but judging from your history, you have an uncanny way of getting people to open up. You’re also very impressionable—in the literal meaning of the word. It’s possible that something you saw or heard this evening may come back to you. Chief Duomo would like to have you drop by tomorrow morning. He’s very impressed with your credentials.”
“Then he’s easily impressed, especially about me being so impressionable,” Judith said glumly. “Or something like that. Okay, but it’ll have to be after eleven. I’m working the B&B booth until then.”
“That’s fine,” Hernandez said. “I’ll let him know. Thanks again. And,” he added as Judith started to get out of the car, “be careful.”
“Hey,” Renie said, “coz is always careful. Nobody’s tried to kill her for almost ten months.”
“Yes,” the officer murmured. “So I understand.” He saluted before pulling out onto the street.
“Damn!” Judith cried. “What happened after I fingered the killer last January was never on the FASTO Web site because Joe and Woody wouldn’t allow the full story to reach the media. How do these cops know about it?”
“Because they’re cops?” Renie said, opening the door to the inn. “It’s the Blue Network. Word gets out.”
Judith sighed. “You’re right. Let’s just hope none of this current disaster gets back over the mountains to Joe.”
The woman behind the desk looked up. “You’re back,” she said, sounding disappointed.
“They let us out on bail,” Renie said. “If any of our customers show up, send them to the right room. You might want to pat them down first to make sure they brought cash.”
Ignoring the woman’s startled face, the cousins went upstairs.
“Why,” Judith asked as they entered their room, “do you have to make things worse?”
Renie looked innocent. “Like how? Hey,” she went on, shifting gears, “maybe we should stick with the charade that I’m you?”