Authors: Maddy Hunter
"I seem to have buried the bags under a few things, Emily. I'm sorry to keep you waiting." I heard the echoes of plastic crinkling and pills rattling. I jumped at the sound of glass shattering on the tile floor.
"Are you all right in there?" I asked.
"Uff da!
My drinking glass."
"You need help cleaning it up?"
"No no. It'll only take me a minute. I hope you're not in a terrible hurry."
I checked the face of my little cow watch. "I have plenty of time." I wandered over to her desk to look over her stash of drugs. Amazingly, she'd taken the time to arrange the items in alphabetical order, which sure made it easy to find things. It also made me wonder if the ability to alphabetize was a major requirement of the profession. But this sent up a flag of warning in my head. What if Jane had invited the Rassmusons and Teigs and Stolees to her room? That would have given them easy access to a whole raft of drugs. What if Helen or Dick or Lucille had used some of Jane's drugs to commit murder? Could the interaction of several different drugs cause a reaction that mimicked dimethyl sulfate poisoning? Oh. My. God. What if Jane had unwittingly aided the murderer? Had her pharmacist's sense of order allowed her worst nightmare to be realized?
"Have you been socializing with the Dicks and their wives at night?" I asked in as neutral a tone as I could muster.
"Sure have." I heard toilet paper being ripped from the roll. Pipes groaning. Water running. "We met here the first night. And since it was my room, I decided to invite the Bakkes to join us. And George and Bernice. Since they're traveling by themselves, I thought they might enjoy getting together with the group, at least for one night."
I wondered how the Dicks and their wives had reacted to the expanded dynamic of the group. Good for Jane! Mother Hubbard watching out for the loners in the group...all the loners, I suddenly realized, except one. "Did you invite Andy to join you that first night?"
"Of
course
not. That wouldn't have worked. You know how the Stolees felt about Andy."
I felt a trill of anticipation bunch my stomach into knots. I looked toward the bathroom. "Actually, I don't know how the Stolees felt about Andy."
She appeared at the door, her hands full of moist toilet paper. "It was because of that dance school business years ago."
"What dance school business?"
She leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb. "Grace used to run that Arthur Murray dance studio on Main Street, in that brick building between the shoe store and the dress shop. Do you remember? A real nice location. Lots of parking. First-floor access. Well lit. Andy apparently signed up for ballroom dance lessons, but from what they tell me, he took the 'ballroom' part too literally because Grace couldn't get through a rumba or a jitterbug without Andy hitting on someone. She lost a lot of clients because of it, so she ended up banning him from the class."
"For how long?"
"For life! Grace was really angry, but so was Andy. He didn't like being humiliated. Unfortunately, he owned the building the studio occupied, so when Grace went to sign a new lease, Andy refused to renew it. She was forced to relocate at the other end of town in that seedy building near the grain elevator. A third-floor walk-up. No parking. No streetlights. Her business really dried up. Then one night when she was closing up, she tripped over a loose board and fell down a whole flight of stairs. That pretty much ended her dance career. She broke her leg in four places. And it never mended like new. She still suffers a lot of pain. You wouldn't believe the scrip she brings in every month for painkillers."
I stood there in a stupor, wondering what other gossip I'd missed while I'd lived away from home. Okay. I could see how Grace and Dick might blame Andy for the accident. But had Andy's conduct enraged them enough to kill him? Geesch, was there anyone on this tour who
didn't
want him dead? "So there was bad blood between the Stolees and Andy. I had no idea."
"That's what I heard."
Which further piqued my curiosity. "Who did you hear it from?"
"Bernice. She told me about a month ago when she came in to fill a prescription." Jane disappeared into the bathroom again.
Bernice? The knots in my stomach tightened. Funny how Bernice was always so Johnny-on-the-spot to divulge damning information. How she always managed to overhear conversations despite her supposed hearing loss. How she always seemed to glide in and out of our presence as if she were invisible.
"Here you go, Emily." Jane emerged from the bathroom and placed a small packet in my hand. "Six Motrin tablets in a Ziploc bag."
Funny? At one time, maybe, but suddenly it wasn't so funny anymore.
"Watch your step, please. Step down into the boat." A blonde-haired deckhand greeted us as we crossed the plank onto the cruise boat. On a sunny day, I imagined people would be jockeying for seats on the exposed upper deck, but given the spitting rain and heavy mist today, everyone was filing down to the enclosed lower deck, where they could stay warm. Iowans might not be given credit for having the brashness of New Yorkers or the sophistication of Californians, but they sure know enough to get in out of the rain.
Dick Stolee was ahead of me with his camcorder glued to his eye. "Cruise boat on Lake Lucerne." He panned the length of the boat. "Life preservers strung along the upper deck. Long-handled fishnet lashed under the rail." He panned left. "Fog on Lake Lucerne." He continued turning in a circle, sucking in his breath when he zoomed in on my face. "Crazy woman who tried to kill me last night."
"I did not!" I protested. "I was only trying to help!"
"Stay away from me," he shouted back. "And that goes for your grandmother, too!" He lowered his camcorder so he could glare at me with both eyes. That's when I saw his nose.
EHHH! It didn't look like a zucchini. It looked like a malignant lump growing in the middle of his face. If the antigun lobby ever saw what I'd done to Dick's nose, they'd probably start a drive to ban room freshener instead of assault rifles. But I was looking at Dick a little differently this morning anyway. Yesterday, he'd been just another tour member. Today, he was a tour member who'd had a plausible reason to want to make Andy suffer. And he'd had words with Shirley on Mount Pilatus. Good God. Could either he or Grace be responsible for Shirley's death? Could they be the kind of people who took offense at the smallest slight? If Dick could knock Shirley off for a little tiff, I shuddered to think how he planned to deal with the person who may have permanently disfigured his nose.
"Hey, Stolee," Lars Bakke called out from behind me. "What happened to your nose? You forget to open a door or something?"
I shrank down into the crowd, trying to make myself invisible.
"Did you see how bloodshot his eyes are?" Solvay Bakke whispered to her husband. "I bet he's been tippling in his room at night. I've always suspected he had a drinking problem."
I didn't want to point out that Dick's red eyes might suggest some kind of ocular sensitivity to Alpine Meadows room freshener. He'd probably be okay with other room fresheners, especially ones that weren't sprayed directly into his eyes.
The real shame here was that if Dick
had
been trying to kill Grace, everyone would be congratulating me this morning for clobbering him in the hall last night. Instead, the hotel manager had confiscated my room spray, and Dick seemed about to slap a restraining order on me. Could anything else possibly go wrong?
The lower deck was set up like a diner with long booths and tables flanking both starboard and port sides. I walked to the far end of the boat and slid into the last booth, hoping to be spared further discussion of the incident in the hall last night. To my right, a sliding window opened onto a vista of rain plinking onto Lake Lucerne and layers of fog hanging over the water. Yup, we were sure going to see some sights today.
"Well, if it isn't Annie Oakley," Wally said as he slid into the seat opposite me. "Nice job on Dick's nose. What caliber aerosol spray were you packing?"
I shot him an exasperated look. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Hey, you're not lisping anymore. You must have gotten your tooth fixed. Gotta admit, though, that lisp was pretty cute. I'm kind of sorry it's gone. But, now that you're back to your old self, what about that drink at the Hotel Chateau Gutsch tonight?"
"Tonight?" Could I tell him I was going out with another man? Would the revelation hurt his feelings? I didn't want to do that. Better play it safe. "Did I tell you the hotel still hasn't found my suitcase? I'm not sure how I can go anywhere without the proper dress clothes."
"Still
no suitcase? This is ridiculous. Okay, when we get back to the hotel, I'll rattle a few cages. They're usually so fastidious about transporting luggage. I can't understand what's happened."
"Ladies and gentlemen," said a voice over the loudspeaker, "vee velcome you aboard the
Vilhelm Tell
for our excursion of Lake Lucerne. If you vould kindly take your seats. Hot drinks vill be on sale in the bow of the boat once vee are under vay. Vee hope you enjoy your tour."
The engines revved and sputtered. Diesel fumes wafted through the air. Nana slid onto the seat beside me, with Bernice in tow.
"Have you seen Grace Stolee's hair this mornin'?" she asked under her breath. "Three booths back on the other side of the boat. Go ahead and take a peek."
I snuck an inconspicuous look over my shoulder. EHH! Her hair looked worse than Dick's nose. Her normally stylish coif resembled a field of windblown ragweed. "I didn't do it," I said in defense of myself. "I didn't get anywhere near Grace with my aerosol can."
"I know, dear. It's because of her curlin' iron. Dick tried to fend off that bat with it, but since bats are a protected species, there's laws against thwackin' 'em with hairstylin' equipment. Dick's lucky he didn't end up in jail. He got off with a warnin', but they still confiscated the curlin' iron 'cause he'd tried to use it in the commission of a crime. If you ask me, the real crime is Grace's hair. Lookit her. That's the worst case a bedhead I ever did see."
"You're our escort," Bernice piped up. "I think the responsibility falls on you to get Grace's curling iron back for her."
"I'll get right on it," I said without missing a beat. I'd had such good luck with luggage, I could hardly wait to see my results with small appliances. I regarded Bernice offhandedly, trying to recall a visual memory of her that was flirting with my subconscious. What was it? Unh.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" asked Bernice.
I shook myself out of my reverie. "Sorry." Had I gone over the top with my suspicions about Bernice? She was one of Nana's closest friends. Nana was a great judge of character who had better intuition than to hang out with a cold-blooded murderer, didn't she? Of course, she did. So why did I still have a niggling doubt in my mind?
I saw the lines being cast off from the pier, heard more chugging and sputtering from the engine, then we were angling out of our berth and heading into open water. "Lake Lucerne is the fourth largest lake in Svitzerland," our guide said over the microphone. "It is tventy-four miles long, and at its broadest point, is two miles vide."
I peered out at the fog, thinking this would be a good time for it to lift. Nana and Bernice excused themselves to buy coffee at the snack bar, and Wally excused himself to make the rounds. "Chitchat is part of the job," he said. "A good tour guide is attentive to every member of the group. Besides, if you ignore someone, they'll probably give you a lousy evaluation."
"Evaluation? Guides get evaluated?"
"Yeah. At the end of the tour I'll hand out a sheet that all the guests are supposed to fill out. It asks questions like: Was I courteous? Was I informative?"
"Are escorts evaluated, too?" It would be just my luck. I could imagine what Bernice would write about me when I dumped her cuckoos back in her lap, or the Stolees after the incident last night. If the evaluations were too bad, maybe the bank wouldn't even reimburse me for the trip. Then what would I do? How would I pay back all those credit card bills that would be landing in my mailbox?
"I don't know if bank escorts are subjected to the evaluation process, but I can find out for you."
I nodded my thanks and as we nosed farther away from the shoreline, felt myself slip into a semivegetative state. I'd wondered what else could go wrong, but hadn't expected the answer to come so quickly. It looked like I was going to have to redeem myself, and fast, but the problem was, how?
"Out the vindow to your right is the snowcapped, seven-thousand-foot mountain named Mount Pilatus," the guide announced.
Heads turned to the right. Cameras clicked. Film whirred. It didn't seem to matter that we couldn't actually
see
the mountain. People obviously wanted to capture the
moment
rather than the mountain. I could hardly wait for the picture exchange.
"Some kilometers in the distance to your left is Mount Rigi," the guide continued.
Heads to the left. Cameras clicking. Film whirring. I rolled my eyes. I wondered who was going to be the first person to realize we could only see twenty feet in front of us.
"If you had been here
last
veek, you might have been able to see Mount Rigi," joked the guide. "Last veek there vas no fog."
Laughter. Giggling. Sounds of mirth. I was delighted the group was so happy to be taking a scenic cruise on a lake where they could see nothing. Who knew? Maybe I'd reach a point in my life where I could be happy about paying big bucks to see nothing, too. But I figured I had a long wait.
When the guide began to talk about the four cantons surrounding the lake, I put my brain into neutral and nested into a comfy corner of my booth, relieved at how much better my tooth felt. The Motrin really worked. I'd have to do something nice to repay Jane for her kindness. Hmm. Maybe a fashion consultation.
After a while, the sound of the guide's voice blended into the sound of the engine in a hypnotic serenade that started to put me to sleep. But I was cooking inside my raincoat and from what I could see, the fog was growing worse. Boy, we were really getting socked in.