Dutch Me Deadly (3 page)

“Why?”

“No reason. Just … just asking.” My smile stiffened on my face. “Lots of corn in Iowa. Do you like corn?”

“No.”

“Lots of hogs, too.”

He stared at me. “So?”

“So it works out well if you’re partial to pork chops. Have you ever eaten an Iowa chop?”

“No.”

“Really? That’s a shame because they’re totally awesome.”

“So?”

I could feel my smile crack around the edges and slide off my mouth. There was only one way to deal with people who were this hard to talk to. “It’s been fun chatting with you. We’ll have to do it again sometime.” I waved my camera at him. “Would you like to be in my picture?”

He scowled and turned away.

Guess that was another no.

As the group pushed forward, I lagged behind, feeling as deflated as a week-old birthday balloon. This was just great. I was traveling with Charlotte the Loon, Dietger the Lech, and Oscar the Grouch. I could hardly wait to interact with the other members of the group. If they all turned out to be as sour as Oscar, it might behoove me to dart in front of the windmill’s rotating blade right now so I could get knocked senseless. Being in a coma for the rest of the tour would probably ruin my holiday, but on the up side, the ongoing drama might give my guys something to text each other about while they camped out on the bus, ignoring all the sights.

“That’s Pete Finnegan,” said a woman who stopped beside me on the sidewalk. She was a pretty platinum blonde with straight, shoulder-length hair, skin that had withstood the test of time, and blue eyes that snapped with good humor. “He was the valedictorian of our graduating class. Smart as a whip, but he was never big on conversation. A lot’s changed in fifty years. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw him talking your ear off just now.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “He only said a half-dozen words. Most of which were no.”

“That’s pretty typical. He’s a Republican.” She offered me a warm smile. “I’m Mary Lou.” She tapped the name tag that was pinned to her jacket, drawing my attention to a photo of a teenaged Mary Lou O’Leary, a list of high school activities in which she’d obviously participated, and a name in larger print that read Mary Lou McManus. “It was my idea to design our name tags with our graduation pictures as well as our maiden and married names. I mean, we all know what we looked like five decades ago, but none of us look like that anymore. Except maybe Pete. I would have known him anywhere. Still skinny as a rail and looking like he’d be happy if everyone else in our graduating class would disappear.”

“More like everyone in the world,” corrected a man who ambled up beside us. He draped his arm around Mary Lou’s shoulders and smiled pleasantly. “I’m Mike. Her other half.”

“Emily,” I said, returning their smiles. Mike’s graduation picture showed a bespectacled teen with Bugs Bunny teeth,
a buzz cut,
a bad
complexion, and a blank space where his activities should be listed. “Are you sure that’s your photo?” I studied it more closely. “It looks nothing like you.”

“Never underestimate the cosmetic benefits of good orthodontics and dermatological treatments. But let me tell you, high school isn’t easy on guys who look like trolls and are introverts to boot. It was the worst four years of my life.”

“You did
not
look like a troll,” Mary Lou teased. “Trolls walk upright. You walked with your head down in a constant slouch, like a human question mark.”

“I was trying to make myself invisible. It worked, didn’t it? The only female who ever noticed me was you.”

“That’s because I knew there was a prince hiding somewhere behind your Mr. Slouchy impersonation.”

He laughed, squeezing her shoulder affectionately. “You and my
mother.”

“And Sister Margaret Mary. Remember how she’d clap her hands
on your shoulders and tell you to stand up straight when you went to the library?”

He winced. “More ignominy.”

Mike McManus certainly had improved with age. He was now a lean six-footer with great posture, a golden tan, and silver hair that could earn him millions in shampoo endorsements. His eyes were intelligent, his gaze direct, and his body language that of a man whose confidence level was off the charts. High school might have been the worst four years of his life, but he looked as if every year after that had been nothing short of spectacular.

“So the two of you, and Pete, and everyone else who arrived late last night are graduates of the same high school class?” I asked them.

“St. Francis Xavier High School in Bangor, Maine,” Mary Lou announced. “I thought we should pull out all the stops for our fiftieth reunion, so I cooked this up. Our granddaughter planned a destination wedding, so I thought, why not a destination class reunion? The planning committee all agreed, so here we are.”

“Mary Lou was always something of a visionary,” Mike said proudly.

“Of course, not everyone could join us. Some classmates are rehabbing from hip or knee replacement, and others had family obligations pending, but we signed up a good cross-section of our graduating class.”

“If our flight hadn’t been delayed by weather at Logan, we might have made the welcome reception last night,” Mike lamented, “but by the time we arrived, we were all too tired for socializing.”

“You didn’t miss anything,” I assured him. “Since your group wasn’t there, the rest of us scarfed down an early-bird meal and packed it in for the night.” I gave them the abridged version of who we were and where we came from. “I was back in my room by seven.”

The sidewalk had emptied as guests reached the windmill and spread out over the grounds to take their photos. I checked my watch. “If we want photos, we’d better do it now before Charlotte starts herding us back to the bus.”

“How does a woman with such a foul disposition get hired as a tour director?” Mary Lou asked as we hurried to catch up with the other guests.

“By lying on her personality test,” joked Mike. “She probably claimed she had one.”

“She reminds me of Paula Peavey.” Mary Lou lowered her voice. “Remember what a sourpuss she was all through school? She’d as soon bite your head off as look at you.”

“She’s standing right over there,” said Mike. “Why don’t you ask her if she’s changed?”

“I’m not going anywhere near her. She was just too hateful for words.”

“Why was she so hateful?” I asked as I paused to snap a quick shot.

“I don’t know why.” Mary Lou lowered her voice another decibel. “She just was. Her favorite pastime was making people cry, which she did on a daily basis. I’ll never forgive her for some of the hurtful things she said to me.”

“C’mon, hon,” Mike cajoled. “That was fifty years ago. Let it go.”

“
You
let it go!”

“So what did she say that has any bearing on who you are today?”

“I might not be able to recall exactly what she said, but I remember how it made me feel.” Her tone grew prickly. “And it’ll remain with me until I die.”

“One of the mean girls, huh?” I asked. We’d had mean girls in my high school. They’d squeeze around the same table in the cafeteria and gaze with disdain at the rest of the student population, sniggering importantly as they called us dorks and losers. They usually spent their high school years on academic probation, campaigned to be elected Corn Queen at Homecoming, and married guys whose main goal in life was to buy a three-quarter-ton pickup with a built-in beer cooler and move to the Big City, like Muscatine or Dubuque.

“Mean?” Mary Lou’s eyes drained of humor. “Dogs can be mean. Paula fit into a whole other category. She was pathologically mean.
Serial killer
mean.”

I froze in place. Like I needed to hear that. “Which one is Paula?” I asked, my voice cracking midsentence.

“Sweetheart,” Mike admonished. “You’re scaring Emily.” He handed me his camera. “Would you mind taking a picture of us in front of the windmill?”

I framed the shot and clicked. “So if the two of you had such bad experiences in high school, why did you sign up for the reunion?”

A funny look passed between them before Mike shrugged. “Old-fashioned curiosity, I guess.”

“And not all my experiences were bad,” confessed Mary Lou. “I joined a lot of activities and had lots of friends. In fact, my high school years would have been fantastic if I could have found a way to avoid Paula, but she sat behind me in every single class, so it was pretty much a death sentence.”

“Time’s up!” yelled Charlotte. She did the hand clapping thing again for emphasis. “Back to the bus! We’re on a schedule. Quickie quickie!”

“See that guy in the light blue University of Maine sweatshirt?” Mike asked me as people started heading for the sidewalk. “He was the class clown. What a character. Always had a clever comeback for everything. He was the only guy who fit into every social strata. Popular kids. Unpopular kids. Who doesn’t want to hang out with the guy who makes you laugh? I guess laughter is the universal equalizer.”

“And see the couple holding hands and making moon eyes at each other? The guy is wearing a St. Francis Xavier letter jacket.” Mary Lou pointed them out discreetly. “He was the football quarterback and she was the head cheerleader. We were all so envious of them. They had everything we didn’t have. Good looks. Athletic ability. Popularity. We would have sold our souls to be them.”

My eyes widened. The man was bald, had no neck, and was built like a side-by-side refrigerator. The woman was equally large, with a helmet of dyed black hair teased into a bouffant with pink bows clipped above each temple. A health specialist might advise him to lose the weight. A beauty specialist would advise her to lose the bows.

“They married right out of high school,” Mary Lou continued. “It was the second biggest social event of the year.”

Which prompted me to ask, “What was the first?”

“The wedding of the basketball captain and the girl who was elected class president four years in a row,” said Mike. “Football was popular in Bangor, but basketball was king. And the girl hailed from one of Bangor’s ‘elite’ families, so everyone who was anyone received an invitation.”

Mary Lou chuckled. “There was a big flap between the two girls about wedding dates, churches, and reception halls. I can’t remember the details, but all of us ‘outies’ would get together to giggle about the latest earth-shattering news in the dueling divas drama.”

“Outies?” I regarded her oddly. “You belonged to a club for students with protruding bellybuttons?”

She and Mike fell against each other with laughter. “Outies,” she repeated. “Students outside the inner circle, as opposed to ‘innies,’ the ones who wield all the power. The ‘in’ crowd. You probably called it something else when you were in school.”

“Speak of the devil,” Mike said under his breath, wrapping his arm around his wife to form a close semicircle around me.

A man and woman brushed by them on the walkway—he, tall and well-dressed, she, petite and well-kept. They projected an air of prosperity, as if they’d be more comfortable riding in a Lincoln than in a Dodge, more satisfied eating at the country club than at a restaurant, more relaxed living in a mansion than in a townhouse. They strolled hand in hand, their fingers intertwined tightly, as if by clinging to each other, they could keep all their good fortune to themselves. Their nametags proclaimed them Gary and Sheila Bouchard.

“Looks like they’ve fared well,” I commented when they’d passed.

“Not half as well as Laura LaPierre,” said Mary Lou in a voice that oozed disbelief. “She looks thirty years younger than everyone else. She’s drop-dead gorgeous. We used to be such good friends, but you know how it goes. You lose touch. Have you seen her, Mike?”

“How could I miss her?” Then to me, “If you think my graduation picture doesn’t look like me, wait’ll you get a load of Laura’s. She used to be so drab and shy that the ‘innies’ poked fun of her by nicknaming her Minnie Mouse, which was only one of their many put-downs. Now she looks like the mouse that roared. I wouldn’t mind getting the name of her plastic surgeon.”

There was only one woman among the dispersing crowd whom I’d classify as drop-dead gorgeous, and that was a shapely blonde wearing skinny jeans and a form-fitting jacket that accented her small waist and impressive bustline. Her hair was tied back in a simple ponytail. Her only accessories appeared to be small pearl earrings and a thousand-watt smile that caused her face to glow with healthy exuberance. She was chatting up a couple of other guests, her hands flying in wide, animated gestures. “If you’re talking about the blonde with the ponytail, not only is she pretty. She looks really friendly. And extroverted.” In fact, besides Mike and Mary Lou, she was the only person in the Maine contingent who was smiling.

“That’s Laura. Do you suppose she’s had a chemical peel or a facelift?” Mary Lou wondered aloud as she ran her fingertips over her own jaw line. “She’s lived in California for years, with access to all the plastic surgeons of the stars. God, she really does look good.”

“Sweet revenge for all the years she spent being the butt of ‘dog-faced girl’ jokes.” Mike swept his arm toward the bus. “Shall we, ladies?”

As we trekked back to the bus, I realized how much I admired Laura LaPierre’s ability to treat her former antagonists with such good humor, because if a bunch of insensitive creeps had called me dog-faced for four years, I’d want to do something more diabolical than simply smile at them.

Like an avenging angel in a Lifetime channel movie of the week
, I’d probably want to kill them.

Three

“You’re absolutely going to
love Volendam,” Charlotte gushed as we passed a sign announcing its city limits. “This is the one place in Holland where you’ll sometimes see residents dressed in traditional Dutch costumes—men in baggy pantaloons and striped vests, and women in long skirts and white caps with wings. And naturally, they’re all tromping around in those god-awful clogs and making enough noise to wake the dead.”

To my right, the white-capped Markermeer stretched toward infinity, becoming a smudge of blue-gray haze where lake met sky. Powerboats, sailboats, and barges dotted the horizon, while closer to shore, a two-masted schooner scudded through the chop, the sun drenching its billowing sails with light so searingly white, it made my eyes smart.

“There are shops up and down the main street that cater to tourists wanting to have their pictures taken in traditional costume,” Charlotte continued, “so if that appeals to you, do it first thing, because we’re not going to be here very long.” She gave us one of her patented schoolmarm looks and said in an annoying singsong, “And you know what’ll happen if you’re not sitting in your seats when it’s time to leave.”

Low, irritated groans rumbled through the bus. I hoped this
was an indication of spontaneous indigestion rather than impending
mutiny.

Dietger nosed down a street so glutted with traffic, we were forced to slow to a crawl. Sidewalk cafes lined both sides of the street—festively appointed enclosures with overhead canopies, hanging plants, potted plants, and marquee-size letters advertising Heineken and Amstel beers. T-shirts filled the windows of souvenir shops. Outside tables displayed painted wooden shoes, miniature windmills, decorative tiles, and souvenir dolls. Dutch flags fluttered above doorways, and tasteful blue signs invited visitors to part with their Euros in eight different languages.

“Once we leave you at the car park, you’ll be on your own for two hours, so if you’re hungry, I suggest you try the smoked eel. It’s a Volendam specialty, although if you suffer from ulcers or acid reflux, you might want to pop a few antacid tablets before pigging out. For those of you who’d prefer to explore, stroll down the side alleys. They’ll lead you to a lovely maze of narrow streets and canals with little wooden houses and footbridges, but if you get lost, don’t expect anyone to go looking for you. We’re on far too tight a schedule.” She smiled sweetly. “Have a wonderful time, but wherever you go or whatever you do, remember this.” Her voice rose to a near screech. “Stay on the sidewalk!”

We pulled into a “Tour Busses Only” lot that flanked the dike at the far end of town. When Dietger killed the engine, I regarded Nana sternly. “I hope you’re going to tell me that you’re ready to ditch your cellphone in favor of smoked eel and antacid tablets.”

She cradled her phone possessively to her chest. “What’ll happen if I’m not?”

I knew of only one threat scary enough to have any effect on her.

Digging my own cellphone out of my shoulder bag, I clutched it in my fist and poised my forefinger over the keypad. “Then I’m calling Mom.”

She sucked in her breath so hard, I thought she’d swallow her uppers. “You wouldn’t.”

I smiled. “Try me.”

“This is blackmail.” She narrowed her eyes. “Or is it extortion? I always get them two mixed up.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s extortion. So what’s it to be? Drinking in the sights of Volendam”—I waved the phone at her—“or a long dose of Mom?”

She shoved her cellphone into her pocketbook and stood up. “Anyone feel like taggin’ along while I find one a them shops that takes souvenir photos of tourists dressed up like the little Dutch boy?”

“I’ll go,” said George, popping out of his seat.

“Me, too,” said Tilly. “My thumbs are locking up.”

Osmond boosted himself to his feet. “Show of hands: how many are in favor of having a group photo taken in dorky costumes?”

All hands went up.

“The yeas have it in a landslide.”

“I want to amend my vote.” Bernice stood up. “I don’t want to be
in a group photo. I want to have my picture taken all by myself so I can add it to my portfolio”—she fluttered her stubby lashes—“just in case Hollywood comes to town wanting to film
Twister 2
.”

“Or
Night of the Living Dead,
” sniggered Dick Teig.

She whipped her head around to drill him with an evil look. “I heard that.” A thousand years ago, Bernice had worked as a magazine model, and “comeback” was never far from her mind.

The doors of the bus
whooshed
open, prompting my guys to gather up their jackets and cameras and scramble toward the rear exit.

“No exiting out the rear door!” shouted Charlotte. “You have to leave by the front. Get away from that door!” she yelled at the Dicks. “Honestly, you people are going to be the death of me!”

Sensing blood pressures rising and excitement waning, I made a quick decision. “Bite your tongues and do as she says,” I cautioned under my breath. “I’ll have a heart-to-heart with her when I can get her alone. Maybe I can convince her to lighten up.”

“I’m so excited to try on one of those white caps with the wings,” Margi enthused as we shuffled down the aisle single file. “Do you suppose it’ll look like the one the flying nun used to wear on that TV show? I wouldn’t mind flying around like she used to, but I have a few pounds on her, so I’d probably need a bigger hat.”

“I’ve located the nearest photo shop on my GPS,” Tilly called out. “When you step off the bus, take a right and head due northwest.”

Iowans are renowned for their remarkable senses of direction. Some people say it’s a learned skill, but I think we’re just born that way. My dad claims if Moses had been from Iowa, he’d have led the Jews through the desert in way under forty years, even with the inevitable delays for sandstorms and potty breaks.

They hit the ground running. “Be back by two!” I yelled after them. Nana gave me a quick thumbs-up before overtaking Bernice in a footrace to the main street. The reunion people splintered into smaller groups and loitered in the parking lot awhile before following Nana’s lead toward the street. Dietger escaped across the lot to join a couple of uniformed bus drivers whose heads were engulfed in cigarette smoke, but Charlotte seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

Noticing Mike and Mary Lou McManus in a small group still lingering by the bus, I hurried over to them. “Did anyone happen to see which way Charlotte went?”

“Didn’t see her leave,” said the guy Mike had pointed out as the class clown, “but I hope the hell she never comes back.” He was small and wiry, with a fringe of white hair circling his head at ear level, a mustache like a whisk broom, and a nametag that identified him as Chip Soucy. “Geez, what a pill. Reminds me of that nun you girls were always complaining about back in school. The one who got drunk on her own power when she was principal. What did you call her? Sister Hippo?”

Mary Lou exchanged smiles with two female classmates. “Sister Hip-PO-ly-tus,” they chimed in unison. “The Hippo didn’t refer to her size,” Mary Lou explained to me. “We weren’t that mean. It was short for hypocrite.”

“She wore makeup,” accused one woman whose photo showed her younger self in a pageboy and bangs, “and we were supposed to act like we didn’t notice. I mean, no one’s cheeks are that red. Not even if they’re spray painted.”

“She was so vindictive,” said the second classmate, a heavyset wo
man
with a tight perm. “She hated me, but the feeling was mu
tual. I heard she lost her position after we graduated and got demoted to house
keeping duties at the rectory. A lot of important people filed complaints about her to the diocese, so she got the shaft. And atheists say there is no God. Huh!”

“Did you know there was a massive turnover in the teaching staff after we left?” asked Mike. “Keeping us in line for four years wore them all down.”

“We didn’t wear them down,” corrected Mary Lou. “We kept them on their toes. Our standardized test scores showed that we were a bright class. That’s not bragging. It’s the truth.”

“The only reason you girls did so well was because you didn’t have us boys in class to distract you,” teased Chip.

“Wait a sec,” I interrupted. “You all went to the same school, but you didn’t have co-ed classes?”

Mike nodded. “Boys on one side of the building, girls on the other, with a big auditorium in the middle to keep us separated. The brothers taught the boys and the nuns taught the girls, with a sprinkling of lay teachers thrown in for local color.”

“Remember Mr. Albert?” Mary Lou asked the group. Then to me, “He taught algebra and geometry to both sides, but he was so shy, he could never look us in the eye. He’d explain theorems while he looked out the window or stared at his shoes. Poor man. Paula Peavey mouthed off to him continually, but he was too embarrassed to punish her. The boys were always playing practical jokes on him, like sticking imbecilic signs on his suit coat or gluing his desk drawers shut. Pete Finnegan thought he was smarter than Mr. Albert, so he never missed a chance to argue with him over the simplest math problems. We made a nervous wreck out of the poor guy. We antagonized him so much, I honestly think he grew afraid of us.”

“He never threw chalk at me,” said Chip, “so I liked him.”

I frowned. “Why would he throw chalk at you?”

“The brothers always fired chalk across the room at us if we gave them wrong answers,” said Mike. “And they nailed us every time. The Xaverian brothers had exceptional throwing arms. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them left the brotherhood for more lucrative careers in the major leagues.”

The heavyset woman beside Mary Lou sighed. “Just think. They’re probably all dead by now. That’s a little depressing.”

“On the other hand,” Mike announced in a booming voice, “the rest of us are very much alive, so let’s celebrate that.” He gestured toward me. “By the way, this lovely young woman is Emily.”

I waved a quick hello.

Mike continued with enthusiasm. “Would you believe, Emily, that not only were we the brightest class to walk the hallowed halls of Francis Xavier High, we were apparently the healthiest and least accident prone? Not one person in our graduating class has died.”

Chip cranked his mouth to the side and gave his jaw a thoughtful scratch. “Well, that’s not exactly true. What about Bob Guerrette?”

Smiles stiffened. Limbs froze. Exuberance dissolved into sudden silence.

“He never graduated,” said the lady with the pageboy picture, “Remember? So he really shouldn’t be included.”

“Why didn’t he graduate?” I asked.

“He died,” Mike admitted uncomfortably.

“We
assume
he died,” corrected Chip.

“Everyone assumes he died,” said Mike, “but I wish we knew for sure. It’s tough not knowing. Every time the evening news airs a story about a backcountry hiker in Maine tripping over a decomposed body in the woods, I always wonder if it could be Bobby’s remains.”

Chip shook his head. “Poor bastard. I’ve often thought about how much he missed in life—marriage, kids, Super Bowl I—”

“Vietnam,” said Mike.

“Colonoscopies,” added Chip.

“Has anyone seen my husband?” asked the lady with the tight perm as she surveyed the near-empty parking lot.

“What does he look like?” asked Mike.

“He has hair. Does that narrow it down enough for you?”

The sound of screeching tires and blaring horns suddenly filled the air. I fired a glance toward the main street, my heart stopping in my chest as I replayed an image of Nana sprinting in front of Bernice to be first out of the parking lot.

“What do you suppose all that ruckus is about?” asked Mary Lou.

Shouts. Echoing cries of distress. A cacophony of car horns.

“S’cuse me.” Overwhelmed by a surge of panic, I raced toward the street as if I were wearing tennis shoes instead of leather ankle boots with four-inch heels. Traffic had slowed to a standstill.
Drivers were stepping out of their cars and rubbernecking to identify the cause of the holdup. Turning the corner, I saw an ever-widening circle of pedestrians gathered on the sidewalk, their eyes riveted on the street.

Oh, God
.

What if my guys had been texting each other while they were crossing the street? What if—

I saw legions of tourists on the perimeter of the crowd, but no Nana, no Tilly, no George.

Oh, God!

Spying a familiar face, I ran toward him. “Do you know what happened?” I asked Pete Finnegan.

He regarded me, stone-faced. “Dunno.”

I stood on my tiptoes, unable to see over the bystanders’ heads, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me. Squeezing around a baby carriage, I created a tiny opening and excused my way through the crowd until I reached the curb, where I stared in numb horror at the scene before me.

The tortured wreck of a bicycle lay on its side, surrounded by loose Brussels sprouts, a smattering of broken eggs, and a woman’s walking shoe. The cyclist was curled in a fetal position nearby, his trousers ripped, his face and hands bloody, being attended by several people who were yelling desperately into cellphones.

A dozen feet away, in a swirl of diesel and exhaust fumes, a woman in a pea-green blazer with jumbo shoulder pads lay facedown on the pavement, seemingly unaware of both the foul air and the people who were hovering over her. Her legs were twisted into impossible angles. Her shoeless foot hung limply from her ankle. She neither coughed, nor groaned, nor moved.

She was still. Absolutely still.

“I know that woman!” I cried, hoping that someone who spoke English would understand me. “Her name is Charlotte.”

The cyclist fought to sit upright. Propping his elbows on his bent
knees, he braced his head in his hands and threw an anguished look at Charlotte’s lifeless body. He let out a tormented sob, then wailed something in a language I couldn’t understand.