Alpine for You

by Maddy Hunter

  “It’s a can opener. But I don’t understand why it’s blunt on the end instead of pointed.”

  “Maybe that’s the cuticle remover.”

  “You’re so stupid, Emily. You don’t even know how to use your knife.”

  “Me, stupid? I’m not the one who’s killed three people! If you ask me, that’s pretty stupid!”

  She gave me an evil look and snapped the belt again. When she did, the front of her bathrobe parted to reveal a dark navy coatdress beneath. I sucked in my breath. “That was you on the stairs with the velvet heels and platinum hair! You were in disguise.” I didn’t know why she was in disguise, but the good news was, at least she’d finally bought herself a decent pair of shoes.

  “You didn’t recognize me in my wig,” she said smugly. “I bought it at the same salon where Dick Stolee bought his, only I paid a lot more. It’s made of real hair instead of that synthetic crap.”

  “You paid more than three thousand dollars for that wig?”

  “Try twice as much.”

  “Six thousand dollars?” I hope she avoided the River Reuss on windy days. “Boy, am I in the wrong profession.”

  “I didn’t know you had a profession.”

  “Well, I don’t at the moment, but maybe it’s my hair color that’s holding me back. You look good as a blonde. Maybe I’d be more dynamic as a blonde, too. What do you think? Here’s an idea! Maybe I could try on your wig.”

  She cocked her head and gave me an assessing look. “You might make it as a blonde. But if you want to try on my—” She narrowed her eyes suddenly. “Oh no. You’re not going to divert my attention, and your flattery will get you nowhere.”

  “It’s not flattery! Really. You’re a knockout as a blonde. And with those shoes and the dress. I thought you were one of the natives.” I could say something about her makeup job, but I wasn’t completely stupid. No wonder she’d needed the remover, but I’m surprised one bottle had been enough.

  Her eyes sparkled for a moment before they turned dark again. “Good. I hope I look like a native, because I’m going to become one of the natives.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m staying in Switzerland, Emily. I moved the last of my belongings to another hotel tonight. I’m already checked in under my new name. I can’t go back to Windsor City, can I? Too much suspicion. Too many arrows pointing in my direction. Jane Hanson will disappear tonight and never be seen again. And tomorrow, I’ll start my new life as…” She looked suddenly petulant. “I’m not going to tell you what my new name is.”

  “How can you start a new life with a passport that says you’re Jane Hanson?”

  “My new passport has my new name, Emily. Like I told you, you can buy anything on-line these days. The technology is incredible. And now I suppose I should finish up matters here before the police arrive.”

  I snapped open another gadget on my knife. No guesswork here. Scissors. They were pointy and sharp, but they were about the size of toenail clippers. I squeezed the handle and scissored the little blades threateningly at Jane. “Stay right where you are. Don’t make me use these.”

  “Are you planning to give me a manicure?”

  “That’s a nice dress you’re wearing. It might not look so nice when I’m through with it.” I jabbed the scissors into the air. Right and left. Up and down.

  “Are you kidding? Those scissors aren’t even big enough to poke my eye out.”

  I gave them another look. Hmm. Maybe she was right. I released another doohickey. Magnifying glass. Key ring. Screwdriver.

  “Give it up, Emily,” Jane advised as she walked menacingly toward me. “I’m afraid nothing can save you now.”

  I kept flipping open gadgets. A toothpick. Tweezers. WHERE WAS THE ROOM FRESHENER WHEN YOU NEEDED IT? A fingernail file. “Hey, I could give you that manicure now.”

  She was closing fast. I catapulted myself onto the bed and bounced around on the mattress. I unfolded another gadget and stopped bouncing as I regarded it. “Okay, smarty, you think I’m so stupid. What’s this one?” I held it up for her to see. It was a small file with one straight edge and one slightly serrated edge.

  Jane shook her head. “I don’t know what that is. A ruler?”

  “I was thinking more like a little saw.” Though you wouldn’t be able to cut down a very big tree with it. Maybe a dwarf cherry.

  Jane shrugged. “Half the tools on those knives are useless anyway. But men think it’s neat to have all those silly gadgets. They can’t be happy with a pocketknife that has only one blade. Nooo. They have to have lots of doodads on their knives. Just like they can’t be satisfied with only one woman. They need to have a whole string of them to be happy.”

  “Like Andy,” I said.

  “Yes,” she agreed wistfully. “Like Andy.” She angled her head toward her computer. A faraway look glazed her eyes. “He used to make me feel so special when he came into the drugstore. He paid so much attention to me. I could hardly wait for the days when he’d come in to pick up his prescriptions. And when I’d e-mail him to tell him about our upcoming sales, I’d always add a personal note, just so he’d know I thought he was special, too. And then I bought a personal computer, so I started e-mailing him from home. Of course, he couldn’t tell from my screen name that it was me. He simply knew me as the secret e-mailer. But he liked the mystery. And he liked my messages. He sent me back long, intimate replies every day. We became soul mates. He said we’d continue to write to each other until we became one mind, one soul.” She sighed. “I could have been content living out the rest of my days on nothing more than his words, but then he went and spoiled everything.”

  I’d seen this happen before. “He changed on-line servers?”

  “He changed women! I went to see him in that Christmas play. I even brought him flowers. But when I went backstage to find him, he was kissing Helen Teig’s niece! And I don’t mean some friendly peck on the cheek. He had her backed against the wall with his hand up her dress. It was disgusting. I felt so crushed, so betrayed. And then his messages got shorter, and more infrequent. I went from hearing from him daily, to hearing from him once a week. He apparently didn’t have time for E-mail with all the attention he was having to shower on his new lover. But I couldn’t give him up. I couldn’t live without his messages. I wrote to him and asked if there was any way we could salvage our relationship. I said he was still special to me, and I didn’t want to lose him. He wrote back and said he wouldn’t be writing to me anymore because there wasn’t anything that needed to be said that was more important than what he was doing. The little bastard! How’s that for letting someone know how valuable you are to them? He made me feel as inconsequential as something stuck on the bottom of his shoe! The self-important little runt.”

  Yeah. That had always been my opinion of Andy, too.

  “What a crock he fed me!” she whined. “‘We’ll write to each other until we become one mind.’ I had the shelf life of one of his plays—a limited run of six weeks, then he struck the set and moved on to someone else.”

  “Good analogy,” I commended her.

  “Thanks. I thought so, too.”

  “So you decided to get even with him by killing him?”

  “He ruined my life, Emily! I fell into a depression. I was put on Prozac. Do you know how expensive Prozac is if you’re not on the right health plan? I spent weeks in intense therapy. I still can’t retrieve my E-mail without suffering pangs of how things used to be. He cut me off without giving a minute’s thought about how I’d cope or feel or react. We have AA to help people recover from alcoholism. We have the patch to help people recover from smoking. We have nothing to help people recover from failed E-mail romances.”

  She had a point there. The closest thing I could think of was the Gameshow Network.

  “He deserved to die,” she said viciously, “and so did Lucille, and Shirley, and all those other women who slept with him. But I couldn’t get to them all. I made a list. The
re were just too many of them.”

  Okay, so if Jane was the lone killer, there’d been no death squad. But that still left a major question unanswered. “Not to change the subject or anything, but do you happen to know what Grace Stolee was talking about the other day when she said that she and the Teigs and the Rassmusons were planning the same thing for me that they’d planned for Andy?”

  “She was probably talking about the surprise party. They’d planned one for Andy on our last day as a thank-you to him for being our escort, but since Andy wasn’t available, they decided to throw it for you instead. They even bought little party hats.”

  “That’s so sweet of them!” I cooed, instantly sorry for all my suspicions about them. “They were planning a party? For me?” But wait a minute. “I thought you said the Stolees and Andy weren’t on good terms.”

  Jane rolled her eyes. “Grace attended some religious retreat recently, and wouldn’t you know, the theme was forgiveness. After all these years, she decided she should try to be civil to Andy again, so she agreed to go along with the party idea.”

  That still didn’t wash. “So how come they all looked so sour last night at the Chateau? They sure weren’t in party mode. They didn’t crack a smile all night.”

  “You were wearing the same dress Grace bought at Spengler yesterday. Didn’t you notice? But it looked much better on you. Grace has a roll of fat at her waist that she refuses to acknowledge. What was there to smile about?”

  She had a point. “With everything that’s happened, I don’t imagine they’re still planning to have the party, are they?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You won’t be attending.”

  She rushed the bed. I chucked my twenty-nine-function Swiss Army knife at her. THUNK! It grazed the side of her head, stunning her momentarily. Twenty-nine functions? Hunh! By my count that would make it thirty.

  “That hurt!” she wailed.

  “Don’t know how to use my knife, do I? Huh!” The fog started to clear from her eyes. I swooped her empty suitcase off the bed and hurled it at her.

  BAM! She fell backward onto the floor with the suitcase on top of her. She struggled to get up. I grabbed a pillow.

  WHUFF! It smacked her in the head. I grabbed another one and launched it. WHUFF! It smacked her in her midsection.

  I seized the corner drapery on the bed’s canopy, gave it a hard yank, and flung it in her direction. It landed on top of her like a fisherman’s net. I heard footsteps in the hall. Running. I vaulted off the bed. Jane screamed epithets beneath the drapery, punching it wildly until she threw it off.

  I ran for the door.

  Jane ran for the window.

  I threw open the door.

  Jane bounded onto the windowsill.

  “Stop right there!” Etienne ordered as he burst into the room.

  Jane swung the window open. “I’ve already lived through one Hell! I’d rather die than live through another!”

  “Don’t do it!” I screamed.

  Out the window she went, her cry echoing hideously in the cold night air.

  “Oh my God!” I shrieked hysterically. “She jumped! She actually jumped!”

  Etienne wrapped his arms around me as two officers raced toward the window. “It’s over, Emily. Shhh. There was nothing you could do to prevent it.”

  “She didn’t have to die! She was sick. She needed help. But she didn’t have to die.” My eyes welled with angry tears. “Don’t you people believe in window screens?”

  The two officers leaned over the sill and shined their flashlights into the courtyard. I felt my stomach churn at the grisly sight that would greet them on the pavement below. “I need to sit down,” I choked.

  “Phone an ambulance,” one of the officers called out.

  “An ambulance?” said Etienne. “Not the coroner?”

  “Not for this one, Inspector. She landed in the Dumpster.”

  Chapter 14

  “Last call for Swissair flight 328 with nonstop service to Chicago. All ticketed passengers should now be onboard. Last call, please, for Swissair flight 328.”

  “Are you sure you can’t stay a few more days?” Etienne nuzzled the lobe of my ear. “A few more years?”

  I was so tired from lack of sleep, I was afraid if I closed my eyes, I’d miss my plane. Between filing my statements at the police station and rushing back to the hotel to pack, I hadn’t even had time for a catnap. I slid my arm around Etienne’s waist and held him close, liking the way his body fit against mine. “I would give anything to stay. But I can’t. I’m the escort.”

  “You could say you had to stay in Lucerne to make sure we treated Ms. Hanson properly.”

  “How long do you think she’ll be in the hospital?”

  “They performed surgery this morning with no complications. It could take her a while to figure out how to walk on two broken legs though. The doctor said she’ll be good as new when she heals, but he wouldn’t recommend jumping off the third floor of a building again anytime soon.”

  “What will happen next with her?”

  “I’m not sure, darling.”

  I loved the way he called me “darling.” It was such a German/French/Italian thing to do.

  “We’ll be working in close cooperation with American authorities on her case. She killed three people, Emily, so it’s no small matter. I can’t predict the outcome, but you can be sure we’ll take into account her mental health at the time of the crimes. I seriously doubt she’ll be walking the streets of Windsor City, Iowa, anytime soon, however.”

  “You could walk the streets of Windsor City,” I invited seductively. “You could come visit me. My apartment’s pretty small, but I have a really big bed.”

  He growled in my ear, his breath warm, his lips soft. “If your goal is to frustrate me with images of you lying in bed, wearing a smile and nothing else, you’ve succeeded. My sister says Chicago is lovely at Christmas. Perhaps I should take her up on her invitation.”

  “Really? You’re not just pulling my leg?”

  “I would love to pull your leg, but I fear I wouldn’t stop there. And while we’re on the subject of legs, we picked up your Mr. Nunzio last night in the lounge of the Hotel Alpha pro Filia.”

  Mr. Nunzio. I’d forgotten all about him. “Was he hitting on another woman?”

  “I suppose you could call it that. Mr. Nunzio is a hair-stylist who specializes in hair care for the over-fifty set, so he drums up business by haunting the lounges of all the local hotels, giving his pitch in rather broken pidgin English/Italian to potential customers.”

  “What kind of pitch?”

  “A somewhat original one. For an additional fee, he’ll come to your room and cut your hair in the nude.”

  “Last call for Swissair flight 328,” announced the voice over the loudspeaker.

  “This isn’t fair,” I complained. “We’re not supposed to leave for another half hour. Why do we have to board so soon?”

  “What time is it?” Etienne asked against the corner of my mouth.

  I plucked my Swiss Army knife out of my raincoat pocket. “It’s—” I regarded the clock face, then pinched my eyes shut in hopeless resignation.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I held the knife up for his perusal.

  “Ah, yes. It’s something of a problem to quote the correct time when your clock has no hands.”

  I slid the knife back into my pocket. “If I’d known Jane’s head was that hard, I wouldn’t have thrown it. But it’s not a total loss. It performs twenty-nine other functions.”

  “Last call, please,” the agent blared over the loudspeaker.

  “I gave you my phone number,” I said desperately. “You’ll call me?”

  “I’ll do one better,” Etienne said as he lifted me against him for a final farewell kiss. “I just bought a new home computer. Do you have an E-mail address?”

  At eleven o’clock in the morning three days later, I was sitting in the office of Mr. Ollie Erickson, pres
ident of the Windsor City Bank. I’d returned the envelope of medical forms to him and was waiting with bated breath to see if he’d make good his promise to reimburse my expenses for the trip. Considering what a fiasco the Golden Swiss Triangle Tour had turned out to be, I wasn’t getting my hopes up.

  “Too bad about Andy and Dick,” Ollie remarked as he sat behind his big walnut desk. “It was nice of the Teigs and Stolees to stay with Lucille over there in Lucerne until they could make arrangements to fly Dick’s body home. Helen called this morning to tell me they’d be on a flight back tomorrow.”

  “The five of them must be prostrate with grief,” I said.

  “Actually, Helen said they’d been trying to stay occupied. They’ve visited a Swiss castle, taken a cheese tour, and today they drove down to Lugano, where Switzerland meets Italy. She said the weather is spectacular. Eighty degrees and sunny. They even had to use sunblock.”

  I wrestled with my tongue, trying not to bite through it. “How nice for them.”

  “Now, what are we going to do about you, Emily?”

  I could hear it in his voice. I was going to have to pay extra for screwing up. Dick Stolee had decided to sue me for assault. The Swiss police had discovered that Dick Rassmuson had actually died on German soil rather than in Switzerland, and I was wanted for questioning. Bernice was blaming me for damaging her hearing aid and I’d have to buy her a new one. And that was just the obvious stuff. To borrow a phrase, Uff da.

  “Will a check for five thousand dollars cover it?” he asked.

  Eh! It was worse than I’d imagined. “Five thousand dollars? I don’t have five thousand dollars! At least, I don’t have it right now. But when I find a job, maybe we could set up some kind of payment plan where I send in small amounts of money every month. It might take me a few years to pay it back, but if you give me a favorable interest rate, maybe—”

  “I don’t think we’re communicating very well, Emily.” He slid a piece of paper across the desk. “I want to give you five thousand dollars. Considering all you had to put up with on the trip, I figure it’s the least I could do. That should cover all your trip expenses plus provide you a little extra for pain and suffering.”