Dutch Me Deadly (4 page)

It was gut wrenching. The poor man was so beside himself with grief that I felt guilty bearing witness to his heartache. I blinked away tears as I turned to the woman standing beside me. “Do you know what he’s saying?”

“
Ja
. He says, ‘Damn these tourists. They’re going to be the death of me.’”

Four

If the cellphone reception
in our Amsterdam hotel lobby had been subpar, my conversation with Etienne might have been reduced to a few minutes of frustrating static, but aided by a profusion of cell towers in the area, I was able to recount the tale of our most recent tribulation with landline clarity.

“So the bus driver dropped us off at our hotel about a half hour ago, and we’re supposed to leave again in twenty minutes for a dinner cruise on the canal. Not that anyone can think about food right now. But our driver informed us, and I quote, that ‘the show must go on.’ Why are Europeans so fond of American clichés? Don’t they have any of their own?”

I waited a beat for him to answer. When he didn’t, I figured the call had been dropped despite the good reception. “Hello? Etienne? Are you there?”

“Your tour director is dead?”

I winced. This wasn’t exactly the kind of event we could highlight in our travel brochure. “She warned us about the bicycles, but she apparently forgot to heed her own warning.”

“Your tour is one day old, and already you’ve transported a body to the morgue?”

“C’mon, sweetie. You’ve visited Holland. You know what bicycle traffic is like around here. An accident like that could happen to anyone.” I paused. “I guess.”

He muttered something in French, or Swiss-German, or Italian. I couldn’t tell which.

“Here’s the thing,” I explained. “Charlotte was a terrible tour director. No one liked her. Actually, that’s an understatement. Everyone
hated
her. She was controlling, and petulant, and treated us like children.”

“So you think the accident happened on purpose?”

“You bet I do.” Etienne had hung up his Swiss police inspector’s badge only a short time ago, so his law enforcement genes were still easily stimulated.

“Did any eyewitnesses step forward?”

I cupped my hand around my mouth and lowered my voice. “That’s the really weird thing. The sidewalk was absolutely choked with tourists, but not one person claimed to have seen anything. How unbelievable is that?”

“Not as unbelievable as you might think,
bella
.”

The lobby elevator
dinged
open to reveal the entire Iowa contingent staring mindlessly at their cellphones, heads down, shoulders hunched, and thumbs flying.

“Any number of crimes can be committed in crowds where people are preoccupied with window shopping, talking on cell
phones, listening to iPods, text messaging. We’re allowing crimes to happen in plain sight because we’re no longer aware of our surroundings. Too many other distractions vying for our attention.”

I rolled my eyes as the elevator door slid shut with my guys still crammed inside. “Ya think?”

“Do you know if the police are continuing to investigate the incident?”

“According to the woman who was translating the blow-by-blow
for me, the bicyclist involved in the accident swore that Charlotte stumbled into the street right in front of him.” The indicator needle over the elevator drifted to the first floor, second floor, third floor … “The police discovered a broken paving stone near the curb, so they put two and two together and decided that she probably tripped over it, stumbled off the curb, and never saw what hit her. Nice, neat, and tidy.”

“A reasonable explanation.”

“Not if you consider the ill will she’d stirred up with the guests. She’d already had one serious run-in with a grouchy guy from Maine who just happened to be in the vicinity when she took her spill. He conveniently disappeared after the police arrived, but I wouldn’t mind getting him alone so I could ask him a few questions. The bicyclist might have thought Charlotte stumbled into the street, but how do we know she wasn’t pushed?”

“By the grouchy guy from Maine?”

“Or by some of the other Mainers. They’re all old high school classmates, so they could be covering up for each other.”

“Do you think they’re so fond of each other as to risk becoming accessories to a crime?”

I gnawed my lip as I watched the indicator needle glide back t
oward the first-floor lobby. “I don’t actually know that any of them
like each other. In fact, I think the opposite is true. A few of them really despise each other. Or at least, they used to. Popular kids versus nerds and wallflowers. Bruised feelings. Emotional scarring. Youthful insecurities. The whole nine yards.”

“I have another call coming in on line one, Emily. Could I trouble you to hold for a moment? I think it’s important.”

Yeah, but … my call was important, too, wasn’t it?

The elevator
dinged
open again.

“This is the lobby, you morons! Are you going to get off this time?”

“You’re standing on my foot!” snapped Margi.

“I can’t move until Bernice moves,” whined Helen.

“Can anyone see Marion?” George asked desperately.

They were jammed in the car like college kids in a VW Beetle, hips bumping and arms tangling into knots as they struggled to squeeze through the door at the same time.

“Press the button to keep the door open!” yelled Alice.

“I can’t see the selector panel,” fussed Tilly.

“That’s ’cuz Dick’s stomach is squashed against it,” cried Nana.

Osmond’s voice rose to a fever pitch. “Well, yank him outta there before his stomach hits the button for the fourth floor again.”

Amid a cacophony of frustrated grunts and grumbles, Dick got catapulted out the door and into the lobby. With the human log jam broken, everyone else staggered into the lobby behind him, massaging the kinks out of their necks and shoulders like the survivors of a train wreck. I shook my head, wondering if I should declare their phones a health hazard and demand they hand them over to me. One inattentive step in Amsterdam and
splat
! They’d either be bobbing in a murky canal with the rest of the swill or flattened on the pavement like Charlotte. But they’d never give them up willingly.

As I watched them bend their heads over their phones again, I made up my mind. If they were to survive Holland, they needed to get rid of the things. I could convince them. I knew I could.

I just had to figure out how.

“Sorry,
bella
.” Etienne came back on the line. “That was your mother.”

“You ditched me for my mother?”

“She needed to tell me what time she and your father are picking me up in the morning.”

Alarm bells began ringing inside my head. “You’re going someplace with Mom and Dad?”

“Fishing,” he said in a pained voice. “In the wilds of Minnesota. Away from Main Street, cable television, and cellphone towers.”

“Fishing?” I paused. “Why?”

“Because your mother set off the sprinkler system when she flambéed lunch for me in the office yesterday, so while the cleaning crew squeegees the water out of the carpet, I’m going fishing with your parents, at their insistence, to help me cope with the stress of the situation.”

I sat frozen in place, my stomach sliding to my knees. The
sprinkler system? “How much damage did—”

“Another call coming in, Emily. Forgive me.”

Outside, our tour bus pulled up by the revolving door at the entrance to the hotel, its engine roaring powerfully enough to rattle the window glass. My guys, however, remained in cellphone comas until they noticed a steady stream of Mainers meandering into the lobby from the stairwell, and then they pounced, approaching the newcomers, engaging them in conversation, acting unnaturally friendly.

Whoa. This was a little weird. My guys never volunteered to break the ice, so what was up with all the spontaneous schmoozing?

“I’m back,” said Etienne, “but I can’t talk. Our insurance adjustor is on the other line. But tell me quickly. What are the Passages people doing about your tour director issue?”

“The company is sending us a replacement. We’re expecting him to arrive either late this evening or early tomorrow morning. He’s on holiday at the moment, so he probably won’t be too happy about having his vacation interrupted. Keep your fingers crossed that he’s not another Charlotte. I don’t think any of us could handle an instant replay of that fiasco.”

“Promise me you’ll contact the authorities if the man from Maine gives you reason to suspect him of something untoward.”

“I promise.”

He sighed. “I miss you,
bella
.”

“I miss you more.”

“I’ll call you the minute I return to civilization.”

“You better! Happy fishing. I love you.” I disconnected.

Fishing? Etienne?
I shook my head. This could turn out to be an even bigger disaster than the Hindenburg.

“Emil
yyyyyyy
!”

I looked up at a woman so tall, she could have played the lead
role in
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
Her hair was long and glossy—
the kind that men imagine seeing fanned over a satin bed pillow. Her complexion was flawless, her makeup so artfully applied that her face could have hung in the Louvre. She was dressed in a leather skirt the size of a man’s handkerchief and a cropped leopard-print jacket that hugged her curves like plastic wrap. A gargantuan designer bag hung over her shoulder—metallic bronze, to match the stiletto-heeled boots that caressed her legs all the way to her thighs. Her name was Jackie Thum. Before she’d acquired breasts and a passion for handbags the size of Delaware, she’d been a guy named Jack Potter, and I’d been married to him.

“Give me a hug!” she squealed, yanking me off the sofa-bench and hoisting me into her arms like a weightlifter executing the clean and jerk. “I thought we’d never get here!”

“Where’ve you … been?” I choked out as she bear-hugged the air out of me.

“Sitting in Kennedy Airport, waiting for the weather to clear.” She set me back on my feet and boxed my shoulders to straighten the lines of my jacket. “I thought we’d never get out of there. And of course, no one met us at the airport this morning, so we had to hire a taxi. Do you know why the Dutch ride bicycles, Emily?”

“I think it’s be—”

“Because they can’t afford to pay freaking cab fare. I about blew my whole budget to get to the hotel, only to discover that the tour bus had already left for the day. If we’d known you guys were going to skip out without us, we’d have walked from the airport and saved ourselves forty Euros. So we had to wander the streets of Amsterdam by ourselves, sampling the local pastry products.”

I scanned the lobby in search of a face. “You keep saying, ‘we.’ Is Tom here with you?” Following my annulment and her gender reassignment surgery, Jackie had moved to upstate New York, where she married a New Age hair stylist who was fast becoming an industry phenomenon despite one prominent distinction.

He wasn’t gay.

“Tom is in Binghamton,” she said in a breathy voice, her eyes twinkling with excitement. “I brought someone else.” She fisted her hand on her hip and perused the lobby. “If I can find her.”

My eyes froze in their sockets. “Her?”

“She’s the surprise I e-mailed you about, Emily. Wait ’til you meet her. You’re going to love her! I sure do. She’s changed my life so much. There she is. Yoo-hoo!” She waved her arm. “We’re over here!”

Unh
-
oh. After two years of marriage, Jack had left me for another man. Now that Jack was Jackie, was she pulling the same stunt and leaving Tom for another woman? Oh, my God. Was my ex-husband a serial home wrecker? Or was she simply crying out for a hormone replacement drug with more active ingredients?

“Here she comes,” Jackie tittered, bouncing on her heels in anticipation. “Isn’t she adorable?”

I wouldn’t have pegged her for Jackie’s type at all. She didn’t look self-absorbed, ditsy, or flamboyant, but rather gave the impression of being modest and quietly intelligent, the kind of person who’d be happy to give you directions or walk your dog if you were pinched for time. Her eyes were snappy, her makeup tastefully understated, her clothes fashionable without being overly trendy. She was about my height and weight and had hair the same color and length as mine, but hers was sleekly cut into cascading angles that rippled with movement and liquidy shine. I suppressed a twinge of envy. I supposed my hair could look like that, too, if I borrowed someone else’s head.

Jackie grabbed the woman’s hand and pulled her close. “Emily,” she gushed, “this is Beth Ann Oliver. I told her all about you, but I didn’t want to tell you anything about her until she and I had set our relationship in stone.”

I forced a tentative smile. Not only did Beth Ann and I share the same body type and hair color, we had the same shape face. The same green eyes. The same fair complexion. She extended her hand to shake mine.

Holy crap!
We were wearing the same color nail polish! We probably even used the same name-brand concealer and blush. Oh, Lord. This was terrible. The unthinkable had happened.

Jack had fallen in love with me all over again. Only it wasn’t the real me. It was a lookalike me! The only difference between us seemed to be our perfume. I smelled like white tea and lemon; she smelled like a funeral parlor. Oil of roses. I hated oil of roses.

“I’m so happy to meet you, Emily,” my lookalike effervesced as she gripped my hand with both of hers.

“Me, too.” I pumped more energy into my smile. “Imagine. You. Me. Together on the same trip. Wow.” The smile remained plastered on my lips. “So, how long have the two of you been, you know … together?”

They exchanged questioning glances. “Has it been two months already?” asked Beth Ann.

“Two months, three days, and”—Jackie checked her watch—“six hours.” She lifted one shoulder in a coquettish shrug. “Approximately.”

“They’ve been the most wonderful two months of my life,” Beth Ann confessed. “I’ve never felt so vital, or alive, or — or fulfilled.”

Jack used to have that effect on me, too—before he realized he felt more fulfilled in my bikini panties than his boxer shorts. “It’s official then?” I asked squeamishly. “The two of you are a couple?”