“Is he married?”
Babs paused, her folded hands tensing slightly. “No. I don’t believe he’s ever been married.”
Something told me Babs had designs on Juergen. He would make a great catch, wouldn’t he? As far as I knew, Babs had stayed single since her marriage to Erin’s father ended. I changed the subject. “I know Erin intends to continue at the zoo after the wedding. Do you know how far it is from their new condo to where she works?”
“Wonderful of Chet, buying them their first home! I was completely surprised, weren’t you?” Babs’s tone of voice was the only indicator of her excitement since her expression was incapable of showing anything. I waited for her to answer my question. “Oh, you asked how far it is. I don’t know. But Erin is determined not to give up her career. That’s how it is now, I guess.”
“Patrick says Erin is great with animals.”
“A girl used to be considered an old maid if she wasn’t married by thirty, but I think that number is higher now, don’t you, Dotsy?” She droned on, oblivious of my comment. “Of course, you and I have jobs. But then we have to, don’t we? It’s an economic necessity when you don’t have a man to see to that side of things for you.”
Babs made my neck itch. I tried to recall what I’d been told about Erin’s father. Had he died or had they divorced? The family was Roman Catholic, I knew, so it may have been one of those annulment things the church sometimes allows in certain circumstances. Whatever had happened, I was sure Mr. Toomey was in a better place now.
* * * * *
I heard the crackle of a door opening somewhere below, and then the sweet, familiar voice of my life-long best friend, Lettie. “Where is everybody?”
I jumped up and, arms out, waited for her to appear. There she was! Red, spiky hair, red nails, bright purple luggage. Five feet one and appropriately round for her age. We hugged and she made her normal little squealing noises. Juergen had reappeared so I introduced him and Babs to Lettie.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to get here. Those roads! Are they as scary in the daytime as they are at night? We were flying along in this little toy cab sort of thing and the road was going like . . .” Lettie demonstrated hairpin turns with her stubby little hands.
“There are more ways to kill yourself in the Alps than just skiing. Believe me,” Juergen, standing in the doorway, tilted his head to one side and grinned.
“Don’t I know it!” Lettie’s eyes widened. “Everywhere you look they have Red Cross stations. On every corner. All over the country. I’ve never seen so many Red Cross stations. Everybody here must need a rescue every day!”
“Red Cross?” Juergen asked, his brows lowered.
“Are you sure they were red crosses, Lettie? Or were they white crosses on a red background?” I asked, already anticipating the answer.
“Well, I . . . now that you mention it, they were white. With red backgrounds.”
“That’s the Swiss flag, Lettie.”
“Oops,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand.
Erin joined us. She and Patrick took the sofa, Juergen reclaimed the big leather chair, but Lettie declared she’d rather stand since she had been sitting all day. She patted her backside to emphasize the point. Babs watched from her nest in one of the chintz-covered chairs.
“Well! Let me tell you how I almost got arrested in Geneva!” Lettie said, stepping forward to take center stage.
Oh, golly! I loved hearing about Lettie’s harebrained predicaments—afterward. I hated being there at the time, and Lettie seemed to have particular problems with airports. I recalled the strip-search a few years ago at the airport in Milan when the water pistol in her carry-on showed up on x-ray.
Juergen interrupted her. “Before you begin . . .” He paused and pulled a cell phone from his pants pocket, looked at its screen, then held up a finger. “Excuse me. Just a minute.” He answered the incoming call. “Yes. The Italian wine.” He pressed the phone to his sweater and looked at me. “Dotsy? Do me a big favor, will you? Go to the kitchen and ask Gisele to start a pot of decaffeinated coffee for us. Do you know how to find the kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“If she isn’t there, would you mind starting the coffee yourself? The decaf should be in the cabinet above the coffee maker.”
He went back to his phone conversation, mouthing, “Stephanie,” to the rest of the room. “No, no. The Lacryma Christi. With black labels.”
* * * * *
The kitchen was large, with a bright red Aga cooker dominating one end. I had never seen a real Aga, but since they were often mentioned in detective stories set in England, I had looked it up on the Internet and found they cost more than some cars. I could see why they were found only in the large manor houses. This one had several ovens, and six burners.
While the coffee brewed, I snooped. The refrigerator seemed too small to hold provisions for a house party the size of ours. I speculated that they might also keep supplies in the bunker. That made sense. It would be like a cave inside. Caves, I knew from Luray Caverns near my home in Virginia, maintained a steady ambient temperature year round. An ideal place to store food and wine. That must be where Stephanie was now. Juergen had been talking to her about wine a few minutes ago and he apparently knew I wouldn’t find her in the kitchen. Gisele maybe, but not Stephanie.
I waited until the coffee maker finished gurgling and heard laughter as I carried the pot upstairs. Patrick was convulsed, holding his sides. Juergen, red in the face from laughing, arched back in his leather chair until his eyes found me. “You missed it, Dotsy. You must hear about Lettie’s airport adventure!”
“I’ll tell it to her later,” Lettie said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to turn in. It’s been a long day.”
* * * * *
Lettie and I stayed awake talking for another hour until my watch said one a.m. We crawled into our twin beds, pulled up the covers, and squashed pillows so we could see each other as we talked. Lettie thought she had picked up on some uncertainty in Patrick and she was concerned. He hadn’t told her anything specific, but there was something in his manner. Patrick was Lettie’s godson, and they had always had a special bond.
“He seems distracted, Dotsy. Have you noticed?”
Lettie, although a complete scatterbrain in matters of logic, is one of the most emotionally perceptive people I know. Her heart is big enough to enfold the world. Over the years, I’ve come to respect her “vibes” and learned to heed them. She’s not to be trusted around heavy machinery, but if she says someone is worried, someone is worried.
I told her about the strange reactions to Stephanie’s phone call at dinner, about Marco’s gift, about Chet’s gift, about my hour alone with Babs, and what Patrick had said about Babs. “And Chet looks really bad, Lettie. He’s drinking too much and he’s lost weight.”
“Serves him right, after what he did to you.”
“I’m over that. Truly I am. Stephanie can have him with my blessings.” I turned over and jammed my pillow against the headboard. Someone tapped softly on our door. “Come in,” I said.
Juergen opened the door a crack and stuck his head in. “Have you seen Gisele?”
“No.” Strange question, I thought. Until then, I hadn’t wondered where Gisele lived. Did she live here? I asked him.
“She has a room downstairs. She actually lives in town with her parents, but she stays here when we’re entertaining guests.”
Lettie reminded him that she had not met Gisele yet.
I thought back. “I can’t recall actually seeing her since dinner, Juergen, but I think I heard her. Cleaning up, you know.”
“She wasn’t in the kitchen when you went down to make coffee?”
“No, but the kitchen was clean. The dishes were done.”
“Thank you,” he said and closed the door. I heard his knock on Babs and Erin’s door a second later, and his same question asked again.
“As I was saying, I don’t even want Chet any
more.” I reshaped my pillow and turned back to Lettie. “I spent the last couple of days with Marco, in Capri. Did I already tell you that?”
“Now that’s more like it! You should marry Marco, Dotsy.”
“I don’t want to marry anybody. Besides that, which side of the Atlantic would we live on? We both like our jobs.”
Heavy feet clattered down the stairs, sounding almost as if they were tumbling or falling down to the lower level where I had seen the indoor pool. I heard nothing for a few minutes. Then heavy feet, now climbing to our level, crossed the landing, faded as they entered the dining room, and—I could barely hear them now—continued climbing, a few stairs creaking. I heard steps overhead, back and forth, back and forth, then down again, down some more, back to the pool room.
“Why do you suppose he’s so anxious to find Gisele?” Lettie asked.
“I haven’t the foggiest, and I’m too tired to worry about it.”
We said goodnight and I switched off the bedside lamp.
Much later I jerked awake. Someone was coming up the stairs. I heard a thunk, as if the climber had hit the wall, and a loud belch. After a minute the steps retreated, descending, then faded away.
“Now what?” I heard Lettie mumble.
“That’s Chet, I’ll wager. Lettie, I’m so glad you’re here now, because I feel like something is about to explode.”
Four
I slept until nearly nine the next morning, got up and followed the smell of coffee to the kitchen. Babs and Erin were already there, Babs at the counter smearing a toasted bagel with cream cheese. Erin was spooning a chunky cereal with raisins and nuts into her mouth.
“Help yourself,” Erin said through a milky mouthful of cereal. “We’re the only ones awake so far, I think. Coffee’s ready and there’s bread, butter, jelly—and eggs, if you can figure out how to work the stove.”
I opted for toast and orange juice.
“Look outside,” Babs said, pointing toward a window with her knife.
I looked. It had snowed. The craggy world outside had been covered overnight with a thick blanket of glistening snow. The view from the window was so bright it hurt my eyes. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “Snow in April. After all, this is Switzerland. But isn’t it lovely?”
Chet, still wearing the same blue shirt and corduroy pants he wore last night, stumbled in. “Coffee,” he croaked.
“It snowed last night, did you know?” I said, handing him a cup.
“Uh—no.” Chet opened the refrigerator door and then spotted the cream on the butcher-block table that dominated the center of the room.
“Stephanie not up yet?” I asked.
“Couldn’t tell you.” He pulled out a stool and sat at the table, one foot searching for a stool rung to hook onto, missing, and hitting the floor. “I slept on the sofa last night.”
We three women just looked at him.
Chet sipped his coffee, grimaced, and scanned our faces with his bloodshot eyes. “What?” he said, defensively. “I came in late, and I didn’t want to wake her up. It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” I said.
Patrick bustled in, rubbing his hands with glee. “Snow! Did you see? Snow! We’re going to have some fun today! How about it, my love?” He kissed Erin on the forehead.
For the next few minutes, we discussed plans for skiing and sledding and where the necessary equipment for each could be found. I debated within my own head the wisdom of sledding or skiing with my sixty-something bones and a wedding on Thursday. I tentatively decided I’d probably risk it. A leg cast might look trendy with my green dress.
“Guten morgen, meine Freunde!” Juergen breezed in. He glanced around. “Where’s Gisele?”
“We haven’t seen her.”
“I never did find her last night. If she went home and didn’t tell anyone—” He looked at his watch. “It’s after nine. She normally has breakfast ready by nine.”
Patrick directed him to look out the window.
“Ah. Snow.” Juergen turned to Chet and surveyed my ex-husband’s scruffy appearance, scanning him from head to toe. “Where’s Stephanie?”
“Still in bed, probably.” Chet answered. He looked as if he couldn’t bear explaining again.
“I’ll bet Gisele has gone to the bunker. We keep our extra food stored there.” Juergen turned to Erin, who had finished her cereal and was rinsing the bowl at the sink. “Would you go out and see, love? You know the combination, don’t you?” He turned to me, and said, “We have a combination lock on the bunker door, because in an emergency we might not be able to find the key.”
Erin went to her room for her boots and Patrick followed her. A minute later, they walked back through the kitchen and out the side door. “Snow! Glorious snow!” I heard Patrick exclaim as they shut the door behind them.
Two minutes passed before we heard Erin’s scream. A horrible, trembling cry, it grew louder and louder as she approached the kitchen door. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Come out! Juergen, come out!”
Patrick came down right behind her. “I’m afraid it’s Gisele. Juergen, you need to come out. Mom, I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I’d rather I did.” I dashed out behind Juergen, my bedroom slippers sinking in the new snow. I might as well have been barefoot.
Patrick headed across the fresh white blanket, not toward the rock wall where I thought the bunker was, but to the left, into the middle of the meadow west of the house and straight toward a splotch of crimson, incongruously marring the pure white all around. Patrick threw his arms out, holding me back as Juergen closed in on the spot and knelt.
I recognized Gisele’s jeans-clad leg and running shoes. An inch or two of snow lay over her and the red stain, near where her chest would be, spread out in a rough circle fading to pink at the edges. Patrick had already pushed back the snow from her face. Milky pale, almost like the snow, her face wore a startled look, the blank blue eyes fixed beneath crystallized, frozen lashes.
Juergen reached out and gathered her up in his arms, rocking silently. A full minute must have passed before he made any sound at all, then it came out as a high-pitched whine. My previous experience with dead bodies and the police urged me forward to pull him back. You weren’t supposed to touch the body. The whole scene took me back, with a sharp pang, to Scotland and the body of a dear young friend—stabbed and wrapped in a blue tarp behind the castle where Lettie and I had been staying.
I couldn’t tell Juergen to leave her alone. It wouldn’t have been right.
“She’s been shot, I think.” Erin said.
“What do we do, now?”
“Call the police.”
“Should we call a doctor first?”
“No need.”
Patrick headed for the house, passing Chet on the way.
“I checked our bedroom,” Chet called up the hill as he approached us. “Stephanie isn’t there.”
Erin and I looked at each other. Her eyes bugged out and I knew what she was thinking.
“Have you checked the bunker yet?” I asked her.
“No. Patrick and I saw Gisele, and we ran straight back to the kitchen.”
I looked around. The only prints in the snow ran between Gisele’s lifeless body and the house. My feet, now frozen numb, stumbled across the field after Erin. She stopped when she reached the rock face. Now that I knew what lay behind, it was easy to see the outline of the door, painted the same grey as the rock, and an industrial-type touch pad for entry.
Erin punched in four numbers.
I said I’ve dealt with dead bodies before, but never with anything close to what lay beyond that door. I will never forget it. I fear I will never quite get over it.
I saw the feet first, then the blood. Erin fainted dead away and left me with an unobstructed view of the horror. Blood everywhere. Splattered, splashed, streaked across the concrete floor from the door to the walls. Stephanie Lamb lay face up, part of her head
blown away, so that nothing but a plum-colored mass of tissue and stringy hair remained on her right side. She lay in an awkward twist, with her right leg folded up under her hips and her torso bent to the left. Her head, what was left of it, lay against her left shoulder.
Within seconds, Chet was on his knees beside me, sobbing. I pulled myself together, took a deep breath of putrid air, and told myself it was up to me. Something, I wasn’t sure what, was up to me. Erin lay crumpled in the doorway, now beginning to stir. Chet knelt beside me, to the right of Stephanie’s body and about two feet from it. His shoulders trembled. I heard Juergen behind me. “Oh, nein! Ach, nein, nein, nein!”
“Don’t touch anything.” My voice sounded surprisingly strong to my own ears. “Juergen, help Erin. Get her outside. Now.”
I knelt down to Chet, and put an arm across his shoulders. “I’m so very sorry. So sorry.” His hands seemed glued to his face. “Can you stand up, Chet? You can’t stay here. I’ll help you.”
He pushed himself up with one hand, the other still covering his face. “I can walk. Don’t help me.” He stumbled out the door. I couldn’t help feeling as if his main concern was to get out of there. As if he had no desire to cradle the body of his wife. Chet had always had a weak stomach.
I stood for a moment before leaving and tried to take in the whole scene. I could see no sign of a struggle. Shelves arrayed with food, a large floor-to-ceiling wine storage rack along one wall. Ski poles, snowshoes and skis leaned against the opposite wall. A cell phone, it looked like one of the pricey kind that do all sorts of things, lay off to one side. A black handgun lay on the floor, inches from Stephanie’s right hand. I backed out and closed the door.
* * * * *
The helicopter arrived first.
Patrick had called the police and the police called the rescue helicopter. He told them Gisele was dead, but their procedures called for a swift helicopter pick-up and transfer to the nearest hospital where, if she was indeed dead, she could be pronounced so. The pilot circled, searching for a suitable spot to put down, then settled the chopper, kicking up a cloud of snow and exposing green meadow and early spring flowers beneath.
Death of a Second Wife Page 4