by Maddy Hunter
“Only when there’s a blue ribbon involved.”
I gave Nana a pleading look. “So what do you think?” I still hadn’t figured out Bernice’s connection to the death squad, but I figured I could tackle that angle later.
Nana sucked a little on her teeth. “I don’t buy it, dear.”
“Why not?”
“Three reasons. Number one, I never seen her speak to that Angowski woman. Why would she kill someone she don’t know? Number two, she didn’t have no good reason to wanna kill Andy. What’s her motive?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t worked that out yet, but I have a feeling something happened between the two of them that we don’t know about yet. What’s your last reason?”
“Bernice is my friend. She might be whiny, and snippy, and crabby, but she’s no killer. The killer’s gotta be someone else.”
I’m glad she could be so confident. I wasn’t so sure. “Will you promise to stay away from her?”
“How am I gonna do that without havin’ her put me through the third degree? She’s not gonna hurt me, Emily. I done nothin’ that’d make Bernice wanna kill me.”
“You won the lottery.”
“My money’s no good to Bernice, specially if I’m dead.”
I hoped Nana was right. Bernice could schedule a lot of face-lifts with seven million and change.
“I went shoppin’ today,” Nana said, effectively closing the door on our discussion of Bernice. “Seein’s how they took away our defense spray, I figured we needed to rearm ourselves, so I got somethin’ even better.” She removed an object from a white plastic Casa Grande sack and held it up for me to see.
“A Swiss Army knife? Cool.”
“I bought two. This one’s yours. See, it even has a little clock in the housin’. And it has all these cute little dinguses inside.” She began flipping so many metal gadgets out of the housing, she looked like the stunt double for Edward Scissorhands. “Isn’t this somethin’? All these jiggers can perform twenty-nine different functions. I don’t know what they all do yet, but if this doesn’t scare the killer, it’ll sure as heck confuse him.”
“I went shopping today, too. I picked up another cow watch to replace the one you lent me. It got a little waterlogged when I dived in after George.”
“I shoulda mentioned it wasn’t waterproof.”
Probably wouldn’t have helped.
The phone rang. I answered. “Etienne’s waiting for me in the lobby,” I said when I hung up. “Keep your knife close to you this evening. Okay? Do you have any big plans?” I slipped into my raincoat and stashed my new Swiss Army knife in the outside pocket.
“Don’t know yet. I might try out the Jacuzzi. Or I might set up my laptop and send some E-mail to your mother. If her mailbox isn’t full, she can go into a full-blown depression. I’m afraid I created a monster when I give her that computer last Christmas. She’s sufferin’ major addiction.”
“You think she does chatrooms and forums and things like that?” I’d once hit the wrong key and landed in a chat-room with “Stud Master” and “Power Prick.” Obviously, too many men were spending far too much time at Home Depot these days.
“I don’t think she’s advanced beyond E-mail yet, but we was talkin’ at one of our Legion a Mary meetin’s about how people was havin’ electronic romances these days. Imagine.” She shook her head. “Time was, a fella come to your front door with candy and flowers and courted you real proper. Now he types a couple a sentences into a computer and that’s s’posed to be good enough. There’s no hand holdin’. No smoochin’. Where’s the romance? When I grab a man by his gonads, I wanna see his face while I’m doin’ it.”
Eh! If my tongue hadn’t been attached, I would have swallowed it. “How often did you grab men by their gonads?”
“I only did it with your grampa. And only when I was feelin’ frisky.”
That was a relief.
“In later years I never did it more than a couple a times a day.”
“A couple of times a day?”
“I slowed down some when I hit seventy.”
I wondered if I’d inherited Nana’s nymphomaniac gene. I hadn’t seen any evidence of it yet, but who knew? Maybe I’d be a late bloomer.
I left Nana locked up safely in room number 5111. I suspected she was going to be perfectly fine by herself. After all, the death squad wasn’t after her. They were after me.
The Hotel Chateau Gutsch sat like a castle high above the city of Lucerne, clinging precariously to the side of a mountain. Trees and darkness hovered at its outer edges while floodlights illumined its turrets and whitewashed stone. After parking his car, Etienne led me through a carpeted vestibule beyond which I could see small, candlelit tables set with white linen and gleaming china. For the first time since the incident in Spengler’s dressing room today, I felt safe. No one in the tour group could ever get to this place without a car, so I could let down my guard and relax.
At the end of the vestibule, Etienne ushered me through a glass door and into the bar area. It was a cozy room with floor-to-ceiling windows, round tables, a grand piano, and ice sculptures perched on a table with bowls of munchies. He pulled out a chair for me at a secluded table for two in the corner. “Shall I take your coat?”
I slipped my coat off and felt that familiar tingling in my stomach when he did a slow look up and down my body. “Nice.” His voice washed over me like warm honey. “Very nice.”
Okay. So I’d be paying off my credit card bill for the rest of my life. It was worth it to see that titillating look in his eye. I sat down and opened the wine and cocktail list. Whoa! Twenty francs for a daiquiri? Twenty-two francs for the house wine? I wondered what the incidence of alcoholism was in Switzerland. Probably zero percent. At these prices, a person would fall into bankruptcy before he ever had a chance to fall off the wagon.
“Have you decided what you’d like?” Etienne moved his chair close beside me. Our legs touched casually beneath the table in some kind of unannounced foreplay, and then his pant leg brushed my knee so intimately, I thought my kneecap would have an orgasm.
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” I said, trying to keep the quiver out of my voice.
He ordered two martinis, then returned his attention to me. “You look lovely tonight, Emily. Absolutely lovely. The dress is exquisite. The hotel must have found your suitcase.”
“It’s still lost. But the staff collected thirteen dollars and fifty-four cents to see me through until they find it.”
He smiled. “Generous of them. That should be just enough to buy yourself more contraband room freshener.”
“We’re not doing room freshener anymore. We found something better.”
“Dare I ask what?”
Since I didn’t know if the Swiss had laws against carrying pocketknives concealed, I decided not to press my luck. “I’d prefer not to tell you.”
“I hope this doesn’t mean you’ve graduated to something more lethal.”
“How do you define lethal?”
He stroked the shimmery cloth at my shoulder then feathered a lazy finger down my inner my arm. “An M-16 is lethal, but in your hands, I suspect a wand of lipliner could become deadly.”
Only if it was in a color I didn’t like. “I hope you’re not laughing at me, because I know for a fact that I’m the next victim on the list. They’re going to pop me. And I got the impression it was going to be sooner rather than later.”
“Who is ‘they?’”
“The Dicks and their wives, and maybe Bernice. They’re all in cahoots with each other. They killed Andy, and now they’re going to kill me.”
“You’re making some serious charges, Emily.”
“I know. But I’m not making it up. Something happened today in the changing room at Spengler.”
“Is that why your nose is blue?”
I shook my head. “That happened when a deckhand hit me in the face with a life preserver.”
His demeanor sudden
ly screamed “Inspector Miceli” rather than “Etienne.” “Did you report the assault? Do you want to press charges?”
“He didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a lucky shot. He thought I was trying to kill myself. But that’s not important. I overheard a conversation between Grace Stolee and Helen Teig in the fitting room today, and they practically announced they were going to kill me.”
The waiter arrived with our drinks. I stared at the martini glasses that were filled to a third of their capacity and wondered if the bartender had run out of mix. “Is this normal?” I asked Etienne.
“Is what normal?”
“The glasses aren’t full.” I mean, I’d knocked back more liquid out of the little plastic cup that held an adult dosage of Nyquil than was contained in the cocktail glass in front of me.
“They’re full by Swiss standards.”
I nodded. Definitely no alcoholism in Switzerland. I raised the glass to my lips, making a special effort not to accidentally swallow the whole thing in one sip. “About Grace and Helen,” I continued. “They said they had the same plan for me that they had for Andy.”
“Did you hear them say specifically that they were going to kill you? Did they use the words ‘kill’ or ‘murder’ or ‘poison’?”
“Uh—not exactly. They said things like the jig would be up if I suspected anything. And then Helen said she wished Andy had suffered more. And Grace said Lucille had been the brains of the outfit. And Helen said Grace had a roll of fat at her waist.”
“And you put all the pieces together and concluded they’re going to kill you.”
“Well, what would you conclude?”
“From that conversation? I would conclude that Grace needs to be on a salad diet.”
“You didn’t hear Grace’s voice. It was really sinister. Especially when she mentioned my name.”
“I’m afraid we have no law against saying someone’s name in a sinister voice. Grace or Helen will have to threaten you with bodily harm before I can make a move, Emily. I’m sorry.”
“Okay. But when I end up at the bottom of a cliff like Shirley Angowski, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“There’s still a chance Ms. Angowski’s death was accidental. We’ve located her camera bag, but it’s wedged between two rocks halfway down a chasm. The climbing team won’t be able to retrieve it until tomorrow. If neither Grace’s nor Helen’s fingerprints appear on the bag, perhaps that will calm your fears.” He lifted my hand and pressed his mouth gently to the inside of my wrist. I could feel my pulse gallop wildly. “You didn’t overhear them say they pushed Ms. Angowski off the cliff, did you?”
I watched his mouth whisper across my flesh, causing gooseflesh to rise on my arms. “Unh-uh.”
“You didn’t hear them say they poisoned Mr. Simon, did you?”
I shook my head.
“Then for the moment, my hands are tied.”
If his hands were tied, then whose forefinger was tracing the neckline of my bodice, dipping tantalizingly beneath the border and lingering at the place where my bosom swelled above the cloth? Unh. His eyes were so hot on my mouth, I thought my lips might burst into flames. He inched closer. He cupped his hand around the back of my neck and drew me to him, then pressed his lips against the corner of my mouth. “Your dress is driving me insane. If we were alone right now, you’d be up on this table, and I’d be peeling the clothes from your body.”
My idea of relaxation exactly. Having someone else undress you. “Maybe the bartender and those people at that other table will leave.”
“Or perhaps they would be kind enough not to notice us.” He crushed his mouth against mine.
I heard bells. I heard whistles. I heard a door bang open, followed by an intrusive chorus of excited voices. I opened one eye to find Wally leading a contingent of the Golden Swiss Triangle Tour group into the bar. AARRRRRGH!!!
“Hey look!” someone shouted. “There’s Emily!”
They swarmed around us like bees. “Imagine finding you here,” said Wally in a frosty voice. “I guess when I asked you this morning if you were free tonight, it must have slipped your mind that you already had a date.”
Oh, this was going well.
“Official police business,” said Etienne, staring Wally down. “Miss Andrew had no choice but to accompany me here this evening. I’m sure you understand.”
I worried that someone would ask what kind of police business required Etienne’s sticking his tongue down my throat, but no one bothered. They were too busy looking out the window and grabbing munchies from the serving table. “Drinks!” I heard Dick Teig yell. “We need drinks over here.”
Nana slithered through the crowd with Bernice. “You wouldn’t believe what it took for us to get here, Emily. We hopped a bus outside the hotel, then an electric car at the terminal, then we rode a little cable car up here to the top.”
“It’s not a cable car,” corrected Bernice. “It’s a counter-balanced elevator with windows. It’s called a funicular.”
“I thought you were going to stay in the room this evening,” I said to Nana.
“I was, until I got a better offer.”
“Emily!” George Farkas fought his way to the table. I guess they didn’t want to observe him anymore at the hospital. “There’s my little hero. Don’t know what I would have done without you today. Your young man won’t mind if I buy you a drink to thank you, will he? Maybe I could buy him one, too. Hell, I’m so happy, I’ll buy everyone a drink. Drinks on the house!” he shouted to the room in general.
I suspected he didn’t realize he’d have to take out a small loan to pay for a single round of drinks in this place.
“You don’t mind if I join you, do you?” George asked us as he pulled up a chair.
Maybe that was a good idea. I knew CPR. I could probably resuscitate him after the bartender presented him with the bill.
“Marion. Bernice. Jane. Lars. Solvay,” said George. “Grab yourselves a chair. Come join us. Maybe we can convince Emily to tell us how she rescued me and my leg today.”
Etienne squeezed my knee beneath the table. I flashed him a hopeless smile, then caught sight of the three Dicks and their wives at the next table. They were looking this way, and for whatever reason, they weren’t smiling.
Chapter 11
“The Black Forest is named for the dark pine and fir trees that cover a mountainous region that is one hundred miles long and twenty miles wide. Throughout the centuries, the forest has been the setting for many fairy tales, but in the most recent decades, nearly half the trees in the region have been damaged by acid rain. And the source of much of that toxic rain is from factories in the United States. In Switzerland we are kinder to the environment. We are the most environmentally conscientious nation in the world.”
I yawned as I stared out the window at the forest Sonya was describing over the loudspeaker. Two seats ahead of me, Grace Stolee punched a button on Dick’s camcorder and aimed it out the window. “Trees,” she said. Grace could really cut to the chase.
We were on a day-trip today, heading for a little spa town called Titisee-Neustadt, which was located at the point where Germany, France, and Switzerland converge. We had already stopped for picture taking at the Rhine Falls, which I considered a major water hazard, but since Dick Stolee’s toupee didn’t fly off his head, I was spared having to fling myself into the raging water to save it.
I didn’t have to worry about George Farkas losing his leg today. George wasn’t with us.
Nana and I were sitting on the long bench seat at the back of the bus, she at one window and I at the other, with a good six feet of space between us. I eyed the space longingly and thought about a nap. Not a bad idea considering how little sleep I’d gotten last night.
I looked over at Nana to find her snoring quietly with her chin slumped onto her chest. I guess she wasn’t too interested in Sonya’s dissertation on acid rain, which didn’t mean she was antigreen. It just meant she hadn’t gotten much
sleep last night either.
When Sonya finished her spiel, Wally navigated to the front of the bus and took over the microphone. “You’ve probably noticed that George Farkas isn’t with us this morning. George suffered what we all thought was a major heart attack last night at the Hotel Chateau Gutsch after the bartender presented him with his bill. Emily had the presence of mind to throw him to the floor and begin resuscitation measures, but luckily it only turned out to be a panic attack.”
I’d suspected he wasn’t having a heart attack when he tried to give my lip a hickey during mouth-to-mouth.
“Emily and her grandmother were kind enough to accompany George in the ambulance to the hospital, and to stay with him until he was released, so let’s have a round of applause to show the ladies our appreciation.”
Scattered applause. A few whistles.
“George decided to stay at the hotel today to recuperate,” Wally continued. “But you have to ask what he’s recuperating from? The panic attack or the excitement of Emily’s mouth-to-mouth!”
Hoots. Guffaws. Giggles.
Dick Rassmuson stood up and clutched his hands to his chest. “I feel the big one coming on, Emily. I need oxygen. I need mouth-to-mouth!”
“Take an aspirin!” one of the men shouted.
I hunkered down in my seat and began counting the number of days left on our Golden Swiss Triangle tour. I didn’t know how much longer I could play the part of the escort extraordinaire. Last night had started out so perfectly. The intimate room. Etienne’s kiss. The prospect of getting naked. Hanging out in a hospital waiting room for five hours hadn’t been part of the plan. I didn’t even get a chance to kiss Etienne good-bye. I’d merely had time to wave to him from inside the ambulance as we drove away. There was no justice in the world. With the way I’d looked last night, I should have spent the evening doing something that would have caused me to wake up this morning feeling satisfied and glowing. Instead, I’d broken the heel of my strappy new shoes in an altercation with the hospital’s vending machine and I had bags under my eyes. Was I the poster child for today’s successful woman, or what?