by Maddy Hunter
“I told you she had cosmetic work done,” Grace Stolee squealed to Helen. “Crow’s feet don’t disappear on their own like that.”
“Fifty-four minutes until dinner,” announced Dick Stolee.
“I have an idea,” suggested Dick Teig. “How about we all write down a secret on a slip of paper and toss it into a hat. Then Officer Horn can read them off one at a time and let us try to guess whose secret it is. If we guess right, we get to go to dinner!”
“When he reads the one about the dermatologist and the Botox treatment, I hosey first dibs on guessing,” said Margi.
“Does our secret have to be sordid or would mildly disgusting be acceptable?” questioned Lucille.
“Can we guess our own secret,” asked George, “or would that be considered cheating?”
“Good idea,” applauded Margi. “That would really get us out of here fast.”
“Excuse me, Officer,” said Osmond, “but can I be excused to visit the facilities?”
“Ditto for me,” said Helen.
“I’ve gotta go, too,” said George.
A fine sheen of sweat appeared on Officer Horn’s upper lip. His eyelid began to twitch. His Adam’s apple bobbed erratically above the knot in his tie.
As if closing in for the kill, the group shot their hands into the air with desperate pleas of “me too, me too” echoing through the room.
“Fifty-two minutes,” shouted Dick Stolee.
“go,” bellowed Horn, apparently deciding that the spontaneous failure of two dozen aging bladders could be more catastrophic than a delay in his interrogation.
They raced to the door as if they were running from the bulls on the streets of Pamplona. “They have no intention of coming back, do they?” Horn asked the handful of us who remained in the room.
Etienne shook his head. “I believe you’ve lost them until after dinner.”
“I have to go too,” insisted Hetty.
“You may use the facilities at the police station,” Horn told her.
“If you’ve no objection, I’d like to accompany Ms. Munk to the station,” said Etienne. “She may find herself in need of an advocate.”
“Fine. But I’m not through here, Inspector Miceli. You can expect me back in this room at eight o’clock sharp, and I will expect your guests to be here with full bellies and empty bladders. One of them is a cold-blooded murderer, and before this evening is out, I promise you, I will find out which one.”
I hoped he changed his methodology. If he didn’t, the only thing he could promise was a neverending time-out.
twenty-two
After making a brief pit stop in my own suite, I stopped off at Mom and Dad’s to console Dad a little more about the loss of Astrid’s accordion and to reassure myself that the return of Mom’s memory hadn’t been a fluke.
“Is this the honeymoon suite?” asked Mom as she looked out over the city of Munich through the slender floor-to-ceiling windows.
Uh-oh. She wasn’t starting to slip away again, was she? “Why do you ask, Mom?”
“Because there aren’t any magazines on the coffee table. Newlyweds are so busy with other activities, they don’t need reading material.” She gave the bare table a forlorn look. “A half dozen or so would have been nice. I can just imagine how out of order they would have been.”
I smiled with relief. Yup. She was back.
She checked her watch. “I’m through in the powder room, so we should be heading down to dinner, Bob.”
Dad sat on the sofa, head bent, moping. “Yup.”
I sat down beside him, cradling his hand in mine. “How about when we get back home, you and I go shopping and buy you a brand-new accordion? I bet you could even start your own oompah band. Just think of the places you could play—the senior center, the church, the bowling alley, that supper club out on the highway, the—”
His head popped up with jack-in-the-box quickness. His down-in-the-mouth expression faded. His lips softened into a smile. “I could, couldn’t I?”
“You’re darned right. No more hiding your talent, Dad. You need to share it with the world.”
He mulled that over for a half second. “You suppose I could just start with Windsor City?”
I gave him a peck on his cheek. “You bet.”
“Well, would you look at this?” Mom stood at the kitchen counter, bursting with excitement as she fingered a tall stack of Dad’s mini videocassettes. “They’re not labeled.” Ecstasy lit her every feature as she gathered them against her chest. “We can’t have that, can we? Do either of you have a pen?”
Aww. This was so reassuring. Her OCD was back, too. “Dinner’s in thirty minutes, Mom.”
“Psssh. This will only take me a minute.”
Dad threw his hands up in the air and shot me a woeful look. “There goes dinner.”
“You know what’ll happen if you don’t leave now, Mom. All the good seats will be taken.”
“Will you text your grandmother and ask her to save a couple of seats for us?” She removed Dad’s camcorder from its case. “No, wait. Don’t bother. With her complexion the way it is, people are probably still afraid to get too close to her, so we’ll just sit in the empty chairs that’ll be at her table.”
“Dad can’t wait that long. He’s famished. Right, Dad?”
He nodded. “Yup.”
Mom began removing the cassettes from their stack and lining them up in a semicircle on the counter. “Five minutes. That’s all I need.” She clasped her hands, smiling at the arrangement. “They’re speaking to me.”
I strode across the floor, locked my hands around both her arms, and gently marched her away from the counter. “You need to relax, Mom. You’re recovering from a major neurological upset. The last thing your doctor would want is for you to overdo.”
“But classifying material is relaxing.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’m holding off on dinner until Etienne gets back, so why don’t I hang out here, go through Dad’s tapes, and label them for you? It’ll give me something to do.”
Her lower lip looked as if it might be gearing up to quiver. “But I wanted to do it.”
“By tomorrow Dad’ll have another big stack that needs to be labeled, so you can have at it then. Right, Dad?”
“Yup.”
Twisting her head at an impossible angle to cast a lingering look at the counter, she relented grudgingly. “Do you know what to do? The main title should be Germany with the month and year, and beneath that should be subheadings listing the city, attraction, and minute markers for each separate—”
“I know the drill,” I said as I coaxed them toward the door. “I’ll catch up with you a bit later, and unfortunately, at eight o’clock, I’ll see you in the Prince Ludwig room again.”
“Whatever for?” asked Mom.
“Officer Horn is coming back to finish his interrogation. Wally’s going to make the announcement at dinner. I’m just giving you a heads-up.”
“That Munk woman is in jail all because of me,” lamented Dad. “It’s embarrassing. Makes me feel like a stool pigeon.”
“Maybe another bomb will explode,” Mom said, waxing philosophical. “Trust me. It’ll help you forget.”
Tilly was ambling down the hall as I scooted Mom and Dad out the door. She raised her walking stick in greeting. “Are we all headed in the same direction?”
“I’m not, but Mom and Dad are.”
“Good. We can walk down to dinner together. Marion will catch up in a minute. And by the way, Emily, about that request from Bernice. The cream is available ready-made but you’d better tell her to preserve what little compound she has left because we’re being cut off.”
“You can’t order any more?”
She shook her head. “I just received a text from my supplier. He’s in a snit about the outrageous
hike in overseas shipping costs, so he’s decided to boycott his local carrier. Forever.”
“He can’t just stick Bernice with the charges?”
“You’re missing the point. It’s not about money. It’s about principle.”
Oh, joy. And I was the one who’d have to break the news.
“He did say he’d be quite willing to sell Bernice as much product as she’d like, but she’ll have to fly to New Guinea to pick it up.”
Like that was going to happen. “Okay. Thanks for trying, Tilly.”
“I’m afraid I had the easy part. You’re the one who has to deal with the aftermath.”
My digestive system screamed out for a roll of antacids as I headed back into the room. Bernice’s discontent would be epic. I could hear her now. The snarling. The ranting. The griping. The bellyaching.
You’ve got this, said the little voice inside my head. Remember? This is why they pay you the big bucks.
There is no amount of money worth the scene this news is going to cause, I told the voice. Although once I’d made that admission, I realized there actually was an easy way to avoid having to play a part in her meltdown.
I’d text her.
Later.
Yup. I was good.
I packed Dad’s photographic stuff into his camcorder case and dumped it all out on the sofa. Settling in for the long haul, I removed the first tape from its plastic case, popped it into the camcorder, flipped open the display screen, and pressed the play icon.
The chimes of the Marienplatz carillon rang out, rising above the errant sounds of voices oohing and ahhing. The view on the screen focused on the glockenspiel with its trumpeters and jesters and mounted knights charging at each other. I fast-forwarded to the place where the red knight toppled backward over his horse’s rump. Laughter. Hooting. A jumpy shot of the dispersing crowd. More fast-forwarding. A classic image of Mom smiling for the camera and Nana curling her lip into a sneer. Another crowd shot. Then pavement. Dad’s pant leg. Mom’s shoes. Other people’s shoes. More pavement.
Dad was obviously still struggling to master the art of switching from recording mode to powering off.
Water. Water running down the pavement. A phosphorescent yellow vest. Okay, he was back on track again. A John Deere backhoe loader. Jackhammers lying by the curb. kaboooooooom! A jerky image of exploding earth, then the screen went black.
Heart racing, I set the camcorder down and inhaled a deep breath, feeling unexpectedly rattled. I was surprised at how unsettling it was to relive that moment, but I fought off the feeling by reminding myself what had come after—how the gang had banded together to react to the crisis. Dad hadn’t caught their efforts on tape, but it was something they could be proud of for the rest of their lives.
The tape ended there, so I took note of the minute marker, then annotated the label exactly as Mom has suggested. Germany. Date. Munich. Marienplatz. Glockenspiel. And the marker where the section ended.
I didn’t label the explosion in the hopes that once Dad learned how to download a tape to the computer and burn a CD, he’d edit it out. None of us needed to hear the sound of that explosion ever again.
Over the next hour I became a one-woman labeling machine. Hohenschwangau. Horse-drawn carriage. Hike up to Neuschwan-stein Castle. Courtyard of Ludwig’s Castle. Berchtesgaden. Winding road. Eagle’s Nest from parking lot. All of this footage interspersed with long minutes of bus upholstery, brick walkways, blue sky, and an endless array of footwear.
I popped a new tape into the machine. The Oktoberfest grounds filled the screen. Honkytonk music. Fairway rides. Flashing lights. Delighted screams. I fast-forwarded until I arrived at an interior view of the Hippodrom tent. Oompah music with a side of “zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, oi, oi, oi!” Revelers standing on benches. Our group huddled around our three assigned tables. Carousel horses hanging from the ceiling. A five-minute interval of the banner draped across the bandstand. A close-up of a group of Germans shooting pictures of us with their phones. Platters of food arriving. More platters of food. Maisie, Stretch, and Arlin on stage, playing their first beer song. Their second song. Their third song.
I fast-forwarded until I saw the Brassed Off Band replacing them on stage, which must have been about the time Dad got tired of filming because while I could hear the Brassed Offs play, the only scene the camcorder was recording was a static view of the food platters and beer steins on table three. As I was about to hit fast-forward again, I caught a sudden movement on the tape—a hand passing over the beer stein at the end of the table. Surreptitiously. Subtly. As if shooing a fly away. What the—?
I hit pause, angled the screen to minimize glare, and scrutinized the frozen image.
There was something in that person’s hand that looked suspiciously like—
I hit play for two short seconds before pausing again.
Omigod. Omigod. Omigod.
It was a bottle. A mini bottle. It disappeared in the person’s palm as quickly as it had appeared, but I didn’t need to read the label to know what it was.
Maisie’s e-cigarette nicotine refill.
Holy crap. This was it! The incriminating evidence. On tape. Without realizing it, Dad had caught Zola’s killer red-handed, destroying the myth that there were no perks to be gained from human error.
Heart pounding, hands trembling, I grabbed my phone and called Etienne but was immediately shunted to his voicemail. “I know who our killer is,” I said in a rush of words. “Dad has it all on his camcorder. Get back here as soon as you can with Officer Horn.”
I picked up the camcorder again and stared at the paused profile of the person who had killed Zola, not understanding the motivation. Why? What would prompt an all-round nice person to commit murder? I’d seen photos of all the employees at Newton Lock and Key. Was there a clue I’d missed? Something so obvious that it was hiding in plain sight?
I googled the Newton website once more, accessing the photo galleries from each department. There was our killer, looking as amiable and innocent as—
My phone chimed with a text alert. Not Etienne, but Wally: need you in the dining room. it’s bernice. she’s gone ballistic over something tilly told her.
Nuts. The very situation I’d been hoping to avoid. Bernice obviously confronted Tilly about the beauty compound thing hersel—
The beauty compound thing. I froze, my gaze riveted straight ahead as the fog suddenly cleared.
Uff-da. The missing piece of the jigsaw. It wasn’t the picture gallery at Newton that held the clue. It was the other pictures.
Grabbing my shoulder bag, I raced into the hall, pelted down the back staircase, and skidded into the dining room, out of breath and frazzled. I spied Nana and Tilly first, at a table for two in the center of the room. Bernice occupied a table for six next to them, the only female amid five male band members who looked to be plying her with wine and hanging on her every word. Wally met me at the door.
“I may have gotten you down here for nothing. She’s stopped shouting. And the guys seem to be teasing her out of her snit, but she scared the bejeebers out of the poor waitress and flung some pretty colorful words at Tilly. You have any idea what’s yanked her chain?”
“Yup. She was having a grand time at the ball when Tilly ruined her evening by telling her that the clock was about to strike midnight.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t get it.”
“You would if you were hoping to be Cinderella for the rest of your life.”
He pulled a face. “C’mon. Are you saying all this fuss is over a fairy tale?”
I shook my head. “It’s about shipping costs, actually.” I shielded my mouth with my hand. “You might want to wait here for Etienne and Officer Horn. I suspect they’ll be arriving momentarily.”
I marched over to Bernice’s table disguised as the cheery tour escort in charge of spreading good
will. “Hi, guys. Enjoying the buffet?”
Otis, Wendell, Gilbert, Stretch, and Arlin offered spontaneous nods and grunts. Bernice eyed me suspiciously. “Is this a social visit or did someone rat me out?”
“Let’s just say I’m glad to see that tempers have cooled.”
“Ratted out. Bet it was Tilly.”
“I’m sorry you can’t get your hands on any more cream, Bernice, but that’s not Tilly’s fault.”
“Says you.”
“Did she explain to you about her supplier?”
“Exorbitant shipping costs. What a crock. She wants to keep the stuff all to herself and freeze me out.”
“She’s telling you the truth. Have you mailed a package recently? Prices are through the roof. Even for teeny-tiny items.”
“Pfffft.”
I glanced across the table at Arlin and Stretch. “Tell her, guys.”
“She’s right,” admitted Arlin. “In the last ten years, the base price to mail a package cross country has quadrupled, and international fees have skyrocketed.”
Stretch nodded. “The company’s had to funnel a lot more money into our department just to meet basic operating costs.”
Wendell slanted his mouth at an irritated angle. “It’s a real kick in the pants when your fastest-growing department is shipping. We’re getting killed on both ends, paying premium prices for what we receive and losing revenue dollars for what we ship out, because that’s one of the big perks with doing business with Newton. We’ve always offered free shipping. Although if prices continue to rise, we might have to rethink our business model.”
I trained my gaze on Wendell. “The increase in your budget pays for more than just shipping.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I’m pretty sure it pays for luxuries you had no idea you were funding.” I lasered a look across the table. “Isn’t that right, Stretch?”
He stared at me, dumbstruck. “What?”
“Wasn’t some of that shipping budget spent on ice sculptures and caviar and shrimp cocktail and a chocolate fountain for dipping strawberries?”