Dutch Me Deadly

by Maddy Hunter

  Why did I get the feeling we weren’t talking about Charlotte anymore?

  “Good-for-nothing buggers,” he spat. “They don’t know I’ve got secrets of my own. That’d surprise the hell out of them, wouldn’t it? I could ruin them all with what I know, and if folks like you don’t stop aggravating me, I swear I’ll make every last one of you pay.” He stabbed a spindly finger at me, forcing me backward. “Stay out of my face, you hear me? I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. And here’s the kicker—that’s never going to change. Get it?”

  He didn’t want to talk to me. He didn’t want to be my friend. He absolutely despised me. Okay, I got it. But other than that, I thought the conversation went pretty well!

  He stalked across the floor, nearly plowing into Sheila and Gary Bouchard who stood in the middle of the doorway, trying not to look uncomfortable. I didn’t know how long they’d been standing there, but if their pinched expressions were any indication, they’d certainly gotten an earful.

  “Are you all right?” Gary asked as I joined them.

  “I’m fine.”

  “What’s got Pete so riled up?”

  “I disturbed him while he was studying the Rembrandt. Apparently, that’s a no-no. Hey, you two cleaned up pretty well from the dinner cruise.”

  Sheila’s lips quivered with ill-concealed rage. “Don’t ever mention last night again. I’ve even ripped the page out of my journal to remind myself to forget.”

  I suppressed a smile. “I hear the situation got pretty ugly in the Red Light District.”

  “That was jealousy talking,” Gary accused. “Pure jealousy.”

  Sheila elevated her chin to a haughty angle. “Since the outies can’t destroy the life Gary and I have built for ourselves, their only recourse is to bring us down by attacking our talent, our intelligence, and our extraordinary good looks. Last night’s performance was a classic case of little people mouthing off, and newsflash! Their insults rolled off our backs like water off very expensive nonstick cookware.”

  “Actually, I was talking about the confrontation between Pete and Paula,” I corrected. “Did you happen to see where Paula went after the big to-do? Because I don’t know if you’re aware or not, but she never made it back to the hotel.”

  Sheila stared at her husband with wide-eyed innocence. “I’m sure we didn’t run into her again. That’s right, isn’t it, hon?”

  “Exactly right. She just took off. Ask anyone.”

  “Did the two of you walk back to the hotel by yourselves?”

  They froze up from knees to eye sockets, giving me the same deer in the headlights look that had paralyzed Mary Lou. Easy to guess what was coming next.

  “Do you remember seeing the girls’ room anywhere around here?” Sheila blurted, seizing my forearm in a show of urgency. “I’m on a diuretic for my blood pressure and it kicks in at the most inconvenient times.”

  “Ground floor,” I said. “By the entrance.”

  “You’re a life saver,” she said in a gasp of breath. “Thanks.” Locking hands, they charged toward the hallway so fast, they left a trail of dust motes behind them.

  “Expect gridlock!” I added for good measure.

  Nope. I wasn’t buying it. Three people? Three quick getaways to the restroom? One person might be normal. Two could be a coincidence. But three?

  Something fishy was definitely going on. The question was what?

  Making my way to the adjoining room, I noticed the Hen-

  nessys loitering near the doorway, as isolated from the main group as they could be and still be within earshot of Harold. Marching up to them, I cut to the chase.

  “For future reference, the restrooms are located on the ground floor.”

  Ricky blinked his confusion. “What?”

  “Did either of you run into Paula on your way back to the

  hotel last night?”

  Mindy stood transfixed, but only for a heartbeat. “Did you say ground floor?” She seized Ricky’s arm. “Is that this floor or the one below us? Oh, never mind.” She pulled him away from me and hauled him toward the exit. “We’ll figure it out ourselves.”

  That clinched it. There was officially something weird going on, which meant I needed to find Wally so I could do the most responsible thing I could think of.

  Dump it all in his lap.

  Leaving the group in Harold’s hands, I breezed across the floor, stopping short when I noticed Nana and the gang crowded onto the viewing bench at the far end of the next room. Built like an oversized ottoman, the bench provided seating on all four sides—a design that encouraged patrons to study the room’s masterpieces at length, which was exactly what my guys were doing.

  Kinda.

  “Were the faces in the painting clearer with pair number one, or pair number two?” Grace asked Osmond. She stood in front of him, a pair of eyeglasses clutched in each hand.

  “Pair number one,” he said definitively.

  “I think he means pair number two,” corrected Helen, standing beside an exceptionally large painting as if she were Vanna White poised before Wheel of Fortune’s letter board. “He mistook the milkmaid for Newt Gingrich with the first pair.” She swept her hand toward the milkmaid in question.

  Osmond gave his head a scratch. “Can’t rightly remember what I saw now. Can I try ’em on again?”

  “No retesting!” snapped Bernice. “One chance, that’s it, or the rest of us won’t get a turn.”

  “Shouldn’t we be sterilizing the equipment after each use?” asked Margi. She yanked a pint bottle out of her handbag and smiled breathlessly. “I have sanitizer.”

  Oh, good God. They were using a Rembrandt masterpiece as an eye chart.

  I regarded the operation with a critical eye and shrugged.

  Okay. That could work.

  I shot through the remaining exhibit rooms, hit the stairwell, and bounded down the stairs two at a time. To my great relief, I found Wally seated on a bench in the entrance lobby, pocketing his cellphone.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I gasped out, sitting down beside him to catch my breath, “but—”

  “Your Dicks haven’t shown up yet.”

  My shoulders sagged with the news. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. I just got off the phone with the police.”

  “But that’s partially what I needed to tell you. If Paula Peavey doesn’t rejoin us, you have to tell them not to spend a lot of time pounding the pavement for her, because I have it on good authority that she might have caught a flight back to the states.”

  “Paula Peavey, on the other hand, has shown up.”

  “Oh, my God. Really? See! That’ll teach you to be such a pessimist. Is she back at the hotel?”

  “No. Her body was dragged out of the Kloveniersburgwal canal about an hour ago.”

  Eleven

  I wheezed so forcefully, I nearly sucked my tonsils up my nose. “Ohmigod.” Was this why everyone was running away at the mere mention of Paula’s name? Was this why no one would admit how they got back to the hotel last night? They all saw something. Or did something. Or—“Ohmigod.” I squeezed Wally’s forearm as the puzzle came together. “They killed her.”

  “What?”

  “They. All of them. No wonder they’re stonewalling. They’ve committed murder!”

  Wally raised his eyes heavenward. “I had to be put on two different kinds of blood pressure medication after my first run-in with you.” He plucked my fingers off his arm. “And I’m not about to fork out the co-pay for a third. Not with my crappy prescription drug benefits. That’s why you see me remaining calm and in control.”

  “You’re hypertensive? Have you tried yoga? I’ve heard it can work wond—”

  “Quiet!” He stuck his nose so close to mine, his breath singed my face. “Now, just so we’re on the same page, there was no murder.”

  “But—”

  “No murder. The police aren’t even planning to investigate unless the autopsy reveals something su
spicious.”

  “The suspicious stuff is happening right under our noses! The vacant stares. The urgent trips to the restroom. The—”

  “They’re treating this as an accidental drowning, because as you may have noticed on your city tour—”

  “We haven’t had the city tour yet.”

  “As you’ll notice when you take your city tour, Amsterdam has so many canals, and so few guardrails, that one misstep can spell disaster.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Especially if you’re pushed.”

  “She was not pushed.”

  “How do you know? You never met Paula Peavey. She was a mean-spirited, unkind bully whose greatest pleasure in life was humiliating people. No one liked her. Even the people who associated with her hated her.”

  “That doesn’t mean any of them decided to murder her.”

  “Says you.”

  “Say the police! I pulled Paula’s medical history form earlier. Did you know she suffered from vertigo? Just like in the Alfred Hitchcock movie. It can cause dizziness, loss of equilibrium, and a swimming motion in the head that can result in loss of balance.” His eyes gleamed with a “gotcha” look. “Still think she was pushed?”

  “Yes.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Maybe.” I bobbed my head with indecision and tried not to look at him. “All right, how bad was her vertigo?”

  “Severe.”

  “So why would a woman with severe vertigo go anywhere near an open canal?”

  “Why would a woman with severe vertigo go anywhere? Because she wasn’t living in a box. People travel despite their limitations, Emily. If they didn’t, you and I would both be out of a job.”

  I acknowledged his premise with an ounce of grace and a pound of skepticism. “I don’t buy it.”

  “You don’t have to buy it. The police aren’t soliciting your opinion.”

  “They will,” I grumbled. “After the autopsy.”

  He chatted away as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’ll tell the other guests about the incident once we’re gathered back on the bus. I hate to ruin their day with news like this, but they have a right to know what’s happened to a fellow member of—”

  “No!” I straightened up so fast, I heard my spine crack.

  Wally bowed his head, his voice oozing sarcasm. “Now what?”

  “Please don’t mention Paula, at least not until we get some positive feedback on the Dicks. If my guys learn that Paula went missing because she was floating in a canal, they’ll convince themselves that the Dicks are floating in a canal, too, and the emotional upheaval might be too much for them to handle.”

  “She wasn’t exactly floating,” he corrected.

  “That’s not the point. I just want to spare Grace and Helen the needless anxiety of thinking their husbands are dead. Can you meet me halfway on this?”

  Indecision flickered in his eyes, followed by a resigned snort. “All right, but I can’t wait forever. People have a right to know. I’ll give it until after our tour of the Anne Frank house this afternoon, and if we still don’t have any word on the Dicks by then, I’ll need to inform the group about Paula, whether you think it’s advisable or not.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough. Thanks.”

  He shrugged it off. “By the way, you might mention to the guests with those ‘urgent’ needs that they can take pills to treat the condition now, and the side effects are pretty minimal. Death only occurs in rare instances.”

  My mind wasn’t focused on bladder control at the moment though. It was focused on something else he’d said. “If Paula’s body wasn’t floating, how did they find her so quickly?”

  “A bicyclist spied something in the water that looked like a piece of polka-dotted kelp, so he got curious, took a closer look, and discovered it wasn’t a new species of kelp, but a woman’s polka-dotted scarf. Unfortunately, it still appeared to be attached to its owner. That’s when he called the police.”

  “How did the police know it was Paula?”

  “Contents of her fannypack. It was still fastened around her waist, which pretty much rules out robbery as a motive.”

  Of course, robbery wasn’t a motive. Her classmates didn’t want to rob her; they wanted to kill her! “What did you say the name of the canal was?”

  “Kloveniersburgwal.”

  “And where is that located?”

  “It runs south from Nieuwmarket to the Amstel River, on the edge of the medieval city.”

  I pinched my lips in exasperation. “I’ve been here one day. I don’t know where any of that is. Can you give me some landmarks I might recognize?”

  “Okay, you’ve been to the Red Light District. If you were walking home from there, you’d have to walk right by it to get back to the hotel.”

  _____

  “The bus will pick us up at this exact spot two hours from now,” Wally announced over the microphone, “so be sure and orient yourselves to the area so you won’t get lost.”

  This was something of a no-brainer since we’d parked opposite a huge church whose spire reached the stratosphere. You could probably see it from Jupiter.

  “The tour of the Anne Frank house takes about an hour,” he continued, “and it’s unguided, so you can view the rooms at your own pace. Be forewarned, they don’t allow large bags, backpacks, luggage, or picture-taking, so stow your cameras. The stairs throughout the house are typical Amsterdam stairs, meaning they’re extremely steep, so if you have problems with your knees, hips, or heights, I’d advise you to spend your time reading the display material rather than risk a visit to the secret annex.”

  “Why can’t we take the elevator?” asked Ricky Hennessy.

  “There’s no elevator,” said Wally.

  “They should be reported,” huffed Bernice in a nasally voice. “It’s the law of the land. All public buildings must be handicap accessible.”

  “We’re in Amsterdam,” Wally replied with restraint. “There’s no elevator.” He took a deep breath and continued. “After the tour, I suggest you pick up a bite to eat in the museum cafeteria. Prices are reasonable, and you can’t beat the view overlooking the canal. They serve coffee, tea, lunch, drinks, snacks, and killer apple pie from a local bakery. Any questions?”

  “Is there an elevator?” Helen shouted out.

  I hung my head. Oh, God.

  “Where is it you said we’re going?” asked Grace.

  In their defense, they were so worried about their husbands, they obviously weren’t thinking straight, but having them this addled could become dangerous. I leaned close to Nana and lowered my voice to an undertone. “How did Grace and Helen perform on the eyeglasses task?”

  Nana gave me a thumbs-up. “They missed their callin’, dear. Them two girls are natural-born opticians. They done such a good job, everyone ’ceptin’ Bernice and George has got their own glasses back again. When the Dicks show up, we’ll do the final swap. And I sure hope it’s soon. Bernice is so afraid of walkin’ into another wall, have you seen what she done to herself ?” Stealing a glance in her direction, she whispered, “She’s got so much tissue shootin’ out her nose, she looks like a bull walrus.”

  “We’re touring the Anne Frank house,” Wally repeated in an even tone, “and for those of you who might need a refresher course, during World War II, thirteen-year-old Anne, her family, and four other people hid from the Gestapo for two years in the back section of this house. They were eventually betrayed, imprisoned, and transported to concentration camps, but Anne’s diary survived and remains one of the most seminal documents chronicling life in Amsterdam during Nazi occupation. I think it’s been translated into sixty different languages.”

  “Isn’t that somethin’?” marveled Nana. “Who knew there was sixty languages?”

  I dropped my voice another decibel. “Do you think Helen and Grace would benefit from having another diversion?”

  “What’d you have in mind?”

  “Missing person forms. I was going to fill them out, but it might be better if th
e girls did it. The paperwork is pretty extensive, so it’s bound to keep them busy for a while.”

  “Any word on the Dicks?”

  I sighed. “Still missing.”

  “That’s not good. Them drugs musta wore off by now. Could be they’re just too stubborn to admit they’re lost. Think of the humiliation, dear. How would they ever show their faces in Iowa again if they was forced to break down and ask someone for directions? They’d be broken men.”

  I prayed it was that innocent, but the longer they were missing, the more frightened I was becoming.

  As the doors of the bus whooshed open, I scooted into the aisle to catch Helen and Grace before they left. “I have homework for the two of you,” I said amiably as I pulled a wad of papers out of my shoulder bag. “We’re going to put the police on the trail of the boys, so—”

  “You haven’t notified the police yet?” cried Grace.

  “It’s the same protocol as back home,” I reassured them. “A person has to be missing for a certain number of hours before the police can get involved.”

  “Children get Amber alerts,” fussed Helen. “You mean to tell me there’s nothing like that available to track down old men?”

  I shrugged. “Seniors are in a different category. They’re supposed to be mature enough to take care of themselves.”

  “I wonder who decided that?” asked Grace.

  “Someone who never met our Dicks,” said Helen.

  “As I was saying”—I passed the forms to both of them—“once you fill out the paperwork, the police can do their part to help find the boys.”

  As she riffled through the pages, Helen arched what would have been an eyebrow if she’d been wearing any. “How much time have we got to fill them out?”

  “It’s not a test. You can take as much time as you need. But the sooner you finish, the quicker the police can step in.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Grace effused as she scanned the first page. “This is wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much, Emily.” She threw her arms around me in an uncharacteristic hug. “I’m so relieved!”