by Maddy Hunter
“We’ll be stopping in the town of Titisee-Neustadt for two and a half hours,” Wally announced. “There are plenty of places to have lunch along the main street and lots of boutiques and shops in the town center.”
It was becoming apparent that a Golden Swiss Triangle tour revolved around driving really long distances to eat lunch and shop. But I didn’t mind the drive today. The weather had broken the moment we left Switzerland and crossed the border into Germany, which made me think we would have been wiser to book the Golden Deutschland Triangle Tour. Switzerland might have Alps, but Germany had sunshine.
I rested my head against the window, letting the sun wash over my face, and the next thing I knew, Wally was standing above me, shaking my shoulder. “We’re here, Sleeping Beauty. Do you want to join us?”
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “We’re here?” I looked down the length of the bus to find it empty. “Where is everyone?”
“Walking down to the lake to board the boat.”
“Boat?” Unh-oh. “You never said anything about a boat.”
“I did so. About a half hour ago. You must have been sleeping.”
“We can’t board another boat! We can’t go anywhere near water!”
“It’s on the itinerary. We take a one-way boat trip from the southern end of Lake Titisee to the town at the northern end, and the bus meets us there. It’s not a long boat ride. Only about ten minutes. Are you coming?” He headed off down the aisle. I chased after him.
“But I didn’t bring any dry clothes with me!”
“What makes you think you’re going to get wet?”
“When have I been around water on this trip and not gotten wet?”
He stopped for a beat. “Are you wearing a watch?”
“No.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
We were the last people to board the boat. Much to my relief, the vessel was a sightseeing boat, enclosed in glass, with no upper deck, so there would be little opportunity for anyone to lose anything overboard. I slid into the first booth with a space and took a deep breath, hoping my knees would eventually stop knocking together. Wally was right. I had nothing to worry about. So why did I feel as if I was waiting for the other shoe to drop?
“I’m having the big one!” Dick Rassmuson yelled out from the stern of the boat. “I need mouth-to-mouth, Emily! You did it for George. You can do it for me!”
I threw him my “Get real” look, then settled in for the journey across the lake.
Sonya began a narration over the boat loudspeaker. “Lake Titisee is named for the Roman general Titus, who once camped here with his troops, but the first authenticated reference to the name is found in documents dating from the year 1111.”
The lake was a sparkling gem, with a forest of golden-leaved trees marching from high, steep slopes down to its shore. It was kind of neat to imagine the lake had looked exactly like this two thousand years ago, only without the powerboat.
“How deep is this lake?” Lars Bakke called out to Sonya.
“Why do you need to know that? Are you going scuba diving? There is no scuba diving allowed in Lake Titisee.”
“How cold’s the water?” asked Dick Teig.
“Why don’t you stick your head in and find out?” hissed Sonya.
“No!” I leaped out of my seat. “No one sticks anything in the water! Do you hear me? No piggies. No pinkies. No heads. Stay in your seats and don’t move a muscle!” Okay, so maybe I was a little over the top, but it seemed to work. No one was moving. That was a good sign. Besides, if Dick Teig stuck his head in the water, we’d be looking at a major tidal wave.
“It’s the big one, Emily!” shouted Dick Rassmuson. “I can feel the palpitations. I’m getting short of breath. You better get back here and start puckering up!”
Laughter exploded throughout the cabin. High-pitched giggles. Earsplitting hysteria. I looked from bow to stern. Dick Rassmuson might be a cutup, but he wasn’t that funny. What in the world was going on? Then I noticed the fingers pointing out the window. I pivoted my head around. A man was wading into the lake near the beach area at the opposite shore. There was nothing noteworthy about that, other than the fact that he was buck naked.
The uproar grew louder. Hoots. Wolf whistles. I guess that meant the men had spotted the naked women lounging on chairs in a glass-fronted building behind the beach. I executed a major eye roll. I’m so glad everyone was being so adult about this. Wally wandered over to my side.
“What’s with all the laughter? They’ve never seen naked people before?”
“I’m sure it’s because they’ve never seen a public beach before. Remember. They’re from Iowa.”
Sonya’s voice came over the loudspeaker again. “Titisee-Neustadt is a spa town. The glass-fronted building you see ahead of you is where people are treated for obesity, asthma, chronic bronchitis, allergies, metabolic diseases, and physical and emotional exhaustion.”
“Is that place coed, or do you have to get naked in a room with your own kind?” yelled Dick Rassmuson.
Sonya blew a disgusted breath into the loudspeaker and clicked it off in an obvious snit. I suspected that marked the end of her narration. I heard the engine cut as we neared the shore, and we got jostled a little as the vessel bumped against the rubber tires on the dock. The captain assisted each of us out of the boat and as we followed Wally toward the town center, I breathed a sigh of relief that the excursion across the lake had gone off without incident. All that concern for nothing. I’d become too much of a worrywart. I needed to chill out more.
Wally stopped in the middle of the pedestrian walkway with instructions. “Those of you who are interested in seeing how cuckoo clocks are made can see a demonstration with me in five minutes. The rest of you can explore the town and meet the bus in the parking lot at the end of this road at two o’clock.”
I didn’t want to know how cuckoo clocks were made. If I got curious, I could dismantle one of the clocks Bernice had stockpiled in my room. She’d never miss it. I did want to do some shopping, I wanted to eat, and I wanted to keep tabs on the Teigs, Rassmusons, Stolees, and Bernice. If they had any surprises planned, I wanted to be three steps ahead of them.
“Bernice and me are goin’ to that cuckoo clock demonstration.” Nana tugged on my sleeve to make sure I heard. “The place is probably gonna be really crowded, but we’ll try to wrestle our way down front so we’ll be in full view of everythin’ and you won’t have to worry ‘bout us missin’ nothin’.” She waggled her eyebrows in an overstated gesture which I took to mean, There’s safety in numbers, dear. Don’t worry about me. And she was right, of course. She wasn’t a child. I couldn’t tether her to my wrist to appease my anxiety.
“You gonna be all right on your own?” she asked me.
I gave her a thumbs-up and patted the pocket that contained my Swiss Army knife. “I’ll be fine.” But the cuckoo clock business reminded me that I hadn’t heard a word about the disposition of Andy’s body. Had they shipped him back to Iowa already or was he going to fly back with the rest of us? I made a mental note to ask Etienne. It would give me the perfect excuse to call him. Maybe he’d have the fingerprint results on Shirley Angowski’s camera bag today. I hoped so. All these unanswered questions were making me as cuckoo as some of the clocks around here.
The streets and sidewalks were crowded with tourists eating ice-cream cones, pushing baby strollers, and toting shopping bags. Most of our group followed Wally to the cuckoo demonstration, but the Rassmusons, Teigs, Stolees, and Jane Hanson ventured off down the street toward the spa, so that’s where I ventured, too. I’d never tailed anyone before, but it was pretty much a no-brainer. All I had to do was mingle with the crowd and stay far enough behind them so I wasn’t being too obvious.
They wandered into a couple of shops specializing in wine, cheese, and sausage. I got hungry smelling sausage fumes, so I bought an ice cream and sat on a bench on the opposite side of the road. When they reappeared, t
hey caught my eye, waved, and continued down the road. I was a little concerned about the wave. Were they feigning friendliness or were they on to me? Whatever. I headed down the road behind them.
Near the Spa they detoured into another shop. When I got close enough, I saw that it was a cafeteria-type eatery, which meant, they were going to be in there for a long time. I gnawed on my cone, wondering what to do. Should I go in there after them, or should I look for a pair of shoes to replace the ones I’d ruined last night? Hmm. The ice cream hadn’t filled me up. Maybe I should have some Black Forest cake to top it off. That sounded good. And if they accused me of following them, I could tell them it was a free country. I thought about that for a moment. Germany was free. Wasn’t it? I entered the cafeteria, promising myself I’d brush up on international politics when I got back to Iowa.
I grabbed a tray and wandered around the many colorful food islands, having no idea what much of the food was since it was labeled in German. No pizza. No spaghetti. No fried chicken. No Iowa pork chops. They did have serve-yourself soft-serve ice cream with sprinkles, and cherries, and nuts, but since I’d already been the ice-cream route, I loaded my tray with some other awesome-looking desserts and headed for the cashier.
The Dicks et al had pushed two tables together and were digging into their food when I passed them on my way to an empty table. Dick Stolee looked up at me with his hideously deformed zucchini nose. Ouch. He was making the Elephant Man look good. “Are you following us?” he asked.
I smiled nervously. “Of course I’m following you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re stopping at all the places where I want to stop. Would you rather have me get ahead of you? Then you can follow me.”
Lucille and Helen exchanged glances as if they wished they’d thought of the idea. Dick narrowed his gaze at me. “Just don’t get too close,” he warned.
I smiled again. “Enjoy your meal.”
I kept my eye on their table as I plowed through my plates of pastry. They sampled each other’s food a lot and took turns snapping pictures of each other at the table. Dick Stolee wandered around the food islands with his camcorder and came back with a tray of coffee for everyone. They drank, talked, laughed, and drank some more. Then Jane and Grace disappeared for several minutes and returned with a tray of ice cream sundaes.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I heard Lucille say. “I’d rather have sprinkles than nuts.”
Her husband plopped the sundae in front of her. “If you change your order, everyone else’s order gets messed up. You ordered nuts, you eat nuts.”
She skated the bowl back at him. “I don’t want nuts.”
“There’s no keeping you happy, is there? Too damn bad. Nuts is what you’re getting.” He shoved it back in her direction.
“Excuse me?” she snapped. “I don’t remember anyone making you emperor. Does someone else want my nuts?”
“I’m kind of a cherry man myself,” said Dick Teig.
“Me too,” Dick Stolee added quickly.
I suspected both Dicks preferred nuts over cherries but were too homophobic to admit it.
“Jane?” Lucille implored.
Jane shook her head. “I’m allergic to nuts.”
“So’s Lucille,” said her husband. “At least my nuts. She didn’t seem to have a problem with Andy’s though.”
Gasps all around the table. “That was uncalled for,” said Helen.
Lucille propelled the sundae back at Dick. “I wouldn’t eat that now if you paid me, you miserable lowlife.”
“Two-timer.”
“Skinflint.”
“Slut.”
I watched the sundae shoot back and forth between them and wondered what was going to break out first: a fistfight or a food fight.
Lucille shot out of her chair, causing it to crash backward onto the floor. “Slut? How dare you!” She picked up the dish of ice cream. She glared at her husband. Okay. My money was on the food fight. Dick Stolee reached for his camcorder.
“Press one button on that camcorder, and I’ll break your arm,” Grace threatened. She got to her feet to join Lucille. “It’s bad enough Dick Rassmuson has to air his dirty laundry in public, but you’re not going to encourage him by getting it on tape!”
“The hell you say,” said Dick, who whipped the camera up to his eye and aimed it at his wife. “No one’s going to tell me what I can or can’t record. This is Grace under pressure. Boy, she looks like she’s gonna blow.”
Grace picked up her coffee cup and fired the contents at the camcorder. “Grace!” screamed her husband as he sloughed coffee off his face. “You idiot! If you’ve ruined my camera, I’m going to be so pissed! Napkins. I need napkins!”
“Why don’t you use your toupee?” said Lucille. “It’s the closest thing to a mop around here.”
Grace gave Lucille a high five. Helen and Jane stood up in a show of force. “I saw a pharmacy a few doors down,” said Jane to the ladies. “I recommend we wander over and check out the prices.”
Lucille dropped her dish of ice cream back onto the table. “I don’t know who you think you’re going to sit with on the trip back to Lucerne,” she spat at her husband, “but it’s not going to be me. Come on, girls.”
“Don’t flatter yourself!” Dick Rassmuson raved, as the women huffed away from the table. “I’d rather walk back to Lucerne than sit on the bus beside you!”
Unh-oh. Wally was not going to be happy about the change in seat assignments. The Dicks, on the other hand, looked thrilled about the sudden change in seating. Or maybe they were just happy about all the unclaimed ice cream in front of them. Before the women were out the door, they’d divvied up the seven sundaes among themselves and began scarfing down sprinkles and cherries. They weren’t completely out of touch. Even in Iowa, soft-serve tended to melt fast.
Dick Rassmuson caught my eye and held up the odd bowl. “Last one. You want it?”
I waved him off. “Couldn’t eat another thing.”
He shrugged and ate it himself. When they got up to leave, he caught my eye again, clutched his chest, and hung his tongue out the corner of his mouth. This was getting old real fast. “You need another schtick,” I called out. “Go away. Leave me alone.”
With the group in fragments, I didn’t feel so impelled to keep my eye on them. I suspected they were too annoyed with each other to implement their plot against me. A successful murder attempt would require both cooperation and coordination, and cooperation wasn’t what was happening with the Dicks and their wives this afternoon. Gee. What a shame. I guess I’d be forced to fritter away the rest of my day in some of the little boutiques that lined the main street.
A half hour later, armed with a stack of postcards and some souvenirs for my nephews, I found my way onto the lawn of the spa and dug my camera out of my shoulder bag. No sense letting the sun go to waste. I put a bead on the lake and the surrounding mountains. CLICK. The sightseeing boat that was docked at the pier. CLICK. The base of a hooped barrel that looked as if it might be used for outdoor baths. CLICK. Three men sneaking around the corner of the spa with cameras at the ready. Hmm. I lowered my camera. What a surprise. The three Dicks. I could imagine the headlines of the Windsor City Register should someone catch them—“Snoopy Dicks Branded Peeping Toms in German Spa Town.”
I let fly a whistle that spun them around and had them scampering across the lawn toward me like wayward puppies. Stolee and Teig arrived first. “How’s the scenery down there?” I asked. “Finding a lot of Kodak moments, are you?”
Dick Teig spoke under his breath. “Look, Emily, it’s not every day you stumble across naked babes like this. The guys back home won’t believe it. So if you could keep it under your hat until we show them the pictures.”
“What about your wives?”
Dick Rassmuson pulled up the rear. He must have seen something that scared him because his hands were trembling. “What about our wives?” he asked.
Duh? “What do y
ou think they’re going to say about your extracurricular activities?”
“They’ll never find out,” he rasped. “Not unless you tell them. You’re not gonna do that, are you? Man, is it hot out here or is it just me?” Dick Rassmuson was sure out of shape. A little jog like that had gotten him all out of breath.
Dick Teig elbowed him in the ribs. “Probably the scenery that has you so worked up. Hubba hubba.”
I gave them my sternest schoolmarm look. “Okay, you guys, if you leave right now, I won’t tell your wives. If you don’t, all bets are off.”
“Party poop,” said Dick Teig.
“Might as well go,” groused Dick Stolee. “My camcorder’s not working right anyway.”
Dick Rassmuson urged the two along. “Go on without me. I’ll catch up as soon as I catch my breath.” He placed his hand over his heart. “My chest’s really pounding, Emily.”
“You suppose it’s the big one?”
“I need to sit down. Maybe I need a cigar.”
The man never gave up. “You do that. But you better not stay long because I’ll be back to make sure you’re not doing any more snooping.”
He sat down on a nearby bench and massaged his abdomen. “I don’t feel so good. I could use some serious mouth-to-mouth.”
How gullible did he think I was? Did he think I’d been born yesterday? “Nice try, Dick. You might want to consider some daily aerobic exercise though. It might help with the shortness of breath thing.”
I spent the next forty-five minutes in a ladies’ boutique named Toni Heim, trying to convince myself not to buy a cute little boiled wool jacket that cost more than the national debt. In the end I bought it anyway. The exchange rate made it cheaper than it would be back in the States, so I reasoned it was more like the national debt of Liechtenstein than the United States. Liechtenstein was a small country. I could afford Liechtenstein.