Authors: Maddy Hunter
While I was still in my scooch with my palm open, inspecting the piece of plastic, Bernice walked past and snatched the thing out of my hand, as if she didn't want me to get too close a look. "Thanks, Emily." And before I could straighten up, the whole place emptied out in a mad stampede for the bus. I lost sight of Nana, but, as usual, from the depths of the crowd I could hear her yell something about saving me a seat.
I noted Helen Teig hustling around George Farkas and mulled over what I'd just learned. Helen's niece had tried to commit suicide because of Andy, which meant Helen could be out for revenge. She seemed the type who could hold a grudge, but was she the kind of person who could allow a grudge to lead to murder?
Hmm. Revenge was a definite a motivation for committing murder. Helen had a motive, and Andy's door being unlocked had provided her the opportunity.
I scuffled toward the waiting bus with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I wondered what I'd done with the card Inspector Miceli had given me this morning. I didn't want to make the call, but he probably needed to know that someone other than Mr. Nunzio had a reason to want Andy dead.
"Y
ou're in room 4624, Miss Andrew," said the front desk clerk as she handed me the key. "I apologize for any inconvenience we might have caused you."
I grabbed Nana by the arm and sashayed her to the elevator. Three-quarters of our group had decided to be dropped off in town to shop, so only a handful of us had returned to the hotel.
"You seem awful excited, Emily. They must've given us a real spiffy room this time."
We stepped inside the elevator. I punched the button for level four. "It's not excitement. It's anxiety. I don't want to point fingers, but if Mr. Nunzio didn't murder Andy, I think I know who did."
"My money's on Helen Teig," Nana said. "She was probably holdin' a grudge against Andy for what he done to her niece, and it kept festerin' and festerin' until she couldn't stand it no longer. I can't say I like her doin' him in, but if Andy had hurt you like that, Emily, I'd probably wanna do him in, too. I can't figure out how she done it though. There was no blood on the scene, so you know she didn't riddle him with bullets. I didn't see no ligature marks around his neck, so you know she didn't strangle him. She might a suffocated him, but they'll have to wait for the results of the autopsy protocol to decide that."
I stared down at Nana. "Autopsy protocol?"
"That's the file tellin' you everythin' there is to know about how someone died."
"How do you know about autopsy protocols?"
"Investigative Report,
dear. You can catch it on A & E almost every night at eight o'clock Central Time, nine Eastern."
That did it. I was going to have to start watching more TV...and thinking like Columbo. I'd even cooked up a possible theory. "Do you suppose someone might have tampered with Andy's inhaler? I saw a movie once where a killer discharged the spray from a woman's inhaler so when the woman had an asthma attack, the apparatus was empty. She nearly died."
"That woulda been the most obvious way to do him in. And tidy, too. No screamin'. No fistfights. No splattered blood. Just release the spray or muck up the chemical balance in his Pirbuterol Acetate. But it don't do much good for all this second-guessin', does it? The police won't know a thing until the serology and toxicology reports come back."
Serology report. Right. I knew that.
"So who do you think killed him, dear?"
Considering all my years of higher education, it was deflating to be scooped by a woman with an eighth-grade education and a satellite dish, but not wanting to steal her thunder, I decided to take the high road. "Well, it could be one of several people, but maybe I shouldn't elaborate until I know more." After all, maybe I'd reached my conclusion too quickly. Maybe there was incriminating evidence about other people that hadn't surfaced yet. Maybe Bernice had mentioned the incident with Helen's niece to throw us off the scent. But
whose
scent?
"George Farkas was thinkin' a gettin' a pool together to guess the killer," Nana went on, "but he said he'd need more suspects than Helen to make it worth his while."
"That's terrible!"
"That's what I told him. Between you and me, Emily, I think George has a gamblin' problem."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because he shows up at Holy Redeemer every Thursday night to play bingo."
"So do you."
"But I have an excuse. I'm Catholic. Bingo's part a my religion. George don't have an excuse. He's Lutheran."
I shook my head. "I can't afford to be in a pool anyway. I have to buy a new watch."
"You just
bought
a new watch. Don't it keep good time?"
I coaxed my sleeve up my arm to regard my watch face. The hands had stopped at 10:13. "It'll give me great time twice a day, but when it's not ten-thirteen, I'm going to have a problem."
When the elevator stopped, I pushed open the door and escorted Nana into the hall. We struck out along a corridor to our right, the motion sensors causing overhead lights to blink on as we passed, and followed a maze of hallways until we reached the rooms in the 4620s. "It's right up ahead," said Nana. "That's my suitcase outside the door there."
Yup. There was Nana's suitcase.
"Where's your suitcase, Emily?"
Obviously not in the hall. I slid the room key into the slot, turned the knob and...CLICK. Okay. So I wasn't a fast study. But I was trainable.
The room was dark as a cave. "Hit the light, dear. I can't see a thing."
I fumbled for the switch on the wall and squinted when light diffused throughout the room.
"Well, would you look at that," said Nana. I suspected she was referring to the fact that this room was exactly like the other room, with one exception.
There were no windows.
And from what I could see in a quick visual scan, no luggage either. Delightful. I wheeled Nana's suitcase into the room and picked up the phone.
"Front desk," said the woman on the other end.
"This is Emily Andrew in 4624. We're in the wrong room again."
A pause. "What room are you supposed to be in?"
"A standard room."
Computer keys clicking. "Room 4624
is
a standard room."
"N-no, no. I want the standard room with the four-poster bed, the little balcony, and the Jacuzzi."
"There are no standard rooms with those features. What you're describing is a prestige suite."
"Okay. I'll take one of those."
"There's a notation in our computer from your tour leader clearly specifying that you be assigned a standard room. If you wish to make a change, you'll need to contact him to change the request in the computer. Is there anything else, Madame?"
A slight pain started throbbing between my eyes. "Yes, there's something else. You were supposed to deliver two pieces of luggage to this room. Only one arrived."
Silence.
"Hello?"
"That's impossible. One moment please." Whispering. Mumbling. "The bellman assures me he delivered
two
pieces of luggage to your new room, Ms. Andrew."
"He might have delivered two, but one is missing. Mine. It's a twenty-six-inch tapestried pullman on wheels."
"We'll look into it and get back to you immediately."
I hung up the phone and proceeded to massage my temples. "Is international travel always this difficult?"
"I never been outside the country before, dear, but it don't seem too difficult on
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
Should I unpack?"
"You might as well. We can't go anywhere until Wally changes a notation in the computer."
Nana looked apprehensive. "I hope they find your suitcase soon. I'm gonna feel a whole lot better about defendin' myself when I can get my hands on that hair spray a yours."
I thought about calling Inspector Miceli to tell him my suspicions about Helen, but decided to hold off until I gathered more evidence. Bernice would probably offer Helen up on a platter during police questioning anyway, so Helen would be scrutinized at some point in time. However, if I was patient and said nothing, I'd be spared looking like a complete lunatic in front of Inspector Miceli if everyone, including me, was wrong.
I'd just unlocked Nana's suitcase when I heard footsteps in the hall, followed by an insistent KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. I checked the peephole and threw open the door. I seized Wally's arm and yanked him into the room.
"How
could you think we'd want a room without windows?"
"Hey, you asked for a standard room. That's what I got you."
"You couldn't have
guessed
I was a little confused about the room rating system? You couldn't have
guessed
I was asking for an
up
grade instead of a
down
grade?"
"Go ahead. Blame me. You women are all alike. You think every man has the ability to read your minds."
My ex-husband used to accuse me of the same thing. He was right, of course. All women expect men to be mind readers. I figured it was biological. "Well, you might have asked!"
"And my mother wonders why I've never married."
"You need to change the room request you made in the computer."
"Sure. Why not? Are you going to tell me what kind of room you want this time, or am I supposed to guess?"
"We want a room like the Rassmusons and Teigs."
Wally shook his head. "They're in prestige suites. They requested standards, but their reservation got lost in some computer glitch, so the hotel was forced to give them upgrades. Moving to a prestige suite will cost you."
"That's all right," Nana piped up. "I'm rich."
He shrugged. "It's your dime." He handed me a large manila envelope. "These are the medical forms I mentioned earlier. All you Windsor City people filled them out, so you know what I'm talking about."
The bank had asked us to write down any medical conditions we had, what prescription and nonprescription drugs we were taking with us, and our primary physician's name, in case of medical emergencies.
"I hope I don't have to tell you these forms are very sensitive and should be held in the strictest confidence. If any of this information gets into the wrong hands, we could be looking at major litigation."
I'd written on my form that I have flat feet and was packing bottles of Excedrin and Advil. It was comforting to know that if word leaked out, I could sue the hell out of Triangle Tours. "What am I supposed to do with the forms after the trip is over?"
"Return the envelope to Mr. Erickson at the bank, and he'll see that they're destroyed. And speaking of Mr. Erickson, I just got off the phone with him. Apparently, when he went over to his sister's house to tell her about Andy, she wasn't home, so he tried her cell phone. You'll never guess where she was when she answered."
There was only one place I knew would be considered a surprise if Louise Simon were found there. "Wal-Mart?"
"Vancouver. She was about to board a cruise ship for Alaska."
"Vancouver? How did she get to Vancouver? She's afraid to fly. That's why she didn't come to Switzerland."
"She didn't come to Switzerland because she had plans to take a cruise with another man while Andy was away."
"No," said Nana.
"Yes," said Wally, "and furthermore, when Mr. Erickson told her about Andy's death, she said she wasn't going to fly halfway around the world to baby-sit a corpse. She said Andy might have ruined her life, but he wasn't going to ruin her vacation."
When a man spends his entire married life cheating on his wife, I guess he can't expect special treatment when he drops dead. "So what's going to happen now?"
"Mr. Erickson will make all the arrangements to have Andy's body flown back to the States, and Louise won't have to file for divorce after all."
"She was planning to divorce Andy?"
"That's what she told her brother. She said, and I quote, 'I'm through bankrolling this theater bullshit just so he can boink a bevy of buxom bimbos, then lie his buns off about it.'"
I was impressed with Louise's use of alliteration, especially given her pronounced overbite. But the revelation that she was ticked off about Andy's philandering caused a lightbulb to go on over my head. If she'd decided she no longer wanted to be married to him, would she entertain a way to get rid of him that would spare her having to fork over half her assets and putting herself through an embarrassing public divorce? Would she actually resort to murder? But how? She was an ocean away, which seemed like a pretty good alibi to me. The only way she could have caused his murder was if she'd gotten to him before he went away, or arranged for someone else to do the deed for her. Could
she
have been the one to tamper with his asthma medication? Or could she have hired someone who had a score to settle with him to pop him for her? Someone on the tour? Someone like...
Helen Teig? Oh. My. God. Had Louise and Helen joined forces in some kind of twisted triangle to give Andy his due? Did they both have a hand in killing him, like in Agatha Christie's tale of murder on the Orient Express? I hadn't read the book, but I'd seen the movie a really long time ago.
"I would have brought you the medications the bank gave Andy to take along with him, but the police confiscated all the drugs in his room. So if someone comes to you with a headache now, they're on their own, unless you brought extra aspirin and cold medication along with you. And I guess you'd know enough not to give appetite suppressants to someone on heart medication."
Appetite suppressants? Right. Like someone would actually need a pill to help them resist eating the food in this place. "I'll be sure to check out the medical forms before I dispense aspirin to anyone. And there's one more thing you need to look into. My luggage is missing."
Wally gave me one of those "Aw, go on" hand gestures. "They probably delivered it to someone else's room by accident. Not to worry. It'll show up. There's no crime in Switzerland, so you know wherever it is, it's safe."
When he'd gone, I threw the manila envelope onto my bed and returned to the task of unpacking Nana's suitcase.
"I wouldn't mind takin' a cruise to Alaska," Nana said as she gathered up some of her toiletries. "But I saw on one of them late-night shows on the Fox Channel how a woman flushed while she was still sittin' on the potty on one of them luxury liners, and the vacuum sucked her insides right out of her. They had a devil of a time stuffin' everything back into the right place again. That was a pretty good night for TV. Did you catch that one, Emily?"
BAM BAM BAM. Nana and I looked at the door, then at each other. It sounded as if someone was trying to kick our door down. "Maybe it's the bellman with your suitcase," Nana said.
I peeked through the peephole then opened the door.
Bernice. She'd kicked rather than knocked because she was hugging a dozen plastic shopping bags against her chest, all imprinted with the Bucherer name. My eyes narrowed into a suspicious squint. If I couldn't trust that she was deaf, could I trust anything else about her? "Been on a shopping spree, have you?" I said, as she shuffled into the room.
"Cuckoo clocks." She paused in the middle of the floor. "Would you help me put these things down? I think they're pretty fragile."