From Bad to Wurst (13 page)

“Whaddaya s'pose them folks are havin' words about?” asked Nana as she nodded toward the alcove.

“I hope they're not fighting about Dad. Maybe they're not as willing as they initially appeared about keeping him in the group.”

“It'd be a blessin' if they'd can him.” She rubbed the heel of her palm against her cheek.

“Don't give up on him yet, Nana. We need to have faith in him.”

She gave her nose a long, slow scratch. “You got any musical ability that you know of, dear?”

“None whatsoever.”

Nana nodded sagely. “You get that from your father.”

We hit the elevator as soon as the crowd cleared. Etienne still wasn't back from the hospital, so I sent him a quick text before I stripped off my clothes, grabbed my nightie out of the dresser, and headed for our luxuriously upgraded bathroom, noticing something odd about Astrid's lime green spinner as I walked by the place where Etienne had stowed it.

I paused, my gaze lingering on the wad of material that was poking out from the spot where the dual zippers met beneath the top handle.

Wait a sec. Hadn't I double-checked to see that all her clothing was completely tucked inside last night? Head trauma or not, I remembered that much. So why was something sticking out now?

I flipped the suitcase onto its side and opened it up. Her clothes remained in neat stacks, the way I'd folded them, but that didn't explain how the corner of her blouse had worked its way through the zipper. Did Etienne have cause to open her suitcase today? Was this his doing or someone else's?

Uncomfortable with the turn my mind had taken, I walked to the bed and picked up the phone.

“Hallo. Front desk.”

“This is Emily Miceli in 728. Are there surveillance cameras operating in this hotel?”

“We are a boutique hotel, Mrs. Miceli. I'm happy to report there are no surveillance cameras on the premises. It's our policy not to spy on our guests.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. Thanks anyway.”

Surveillance footage might have revealed who'd entered our room besides the maid, because I had a sneaking suspicion that someone other than Etienne had tampered with Astrid's suitcase. The question was, who?

I took a quick shower and crawled into bed with every intention of waiting up for Etienne, but sometime during my wait I inadvertently closed my eyes, and that was all she wrote.

The desperate knock on our door jarred me from a sound sleep and sent my internal alarm system into high alert. My heart flew into my throat. My stomach sank to my knees. I felt Etienne's hand on my arm, soothing me. “Stay here, bella. I'll get it.”

When the door clicked open, Tilly's voice exploded into the silence.

“It's Marion. I think she's got leprosy.”

twelve

“Contact urticaria.”

I stared at Dr. Fischer. I wasn't sure what the words meant, but I sure hoped they weren't Latin for leprosy or German for something even worse. Etienne might have been able to translate, but I'd insisted that he hang out in the waiting room and attempt to catch forty winks before the sun rose. He hadn't slept all night, so he was running on fumes.

“I'm sorry. Contact
wha
t
?”

It was 4:13
am
, and we seemed to be stuck in the middle of the Munich version of
Groundhog Day
. Same emergency ward. Same treatment room. Same attending physician, who was apparently on duty 24/7 at the hospital. The only difference was the patient, who was sporting a grisly rash on her face and hands that included irregular swelling, inflammation, scaly patches, and welts the size of jawbreakers.

“Your grandmother appears to be suffering from a severe reaction to an allergen.”

“It's not leprosy?”

He slatted his eyes behind his rimless specs. “Are you aware that leprosy has been virtually eradicated in Europe, Mrs. Miceli?”

“I guess I'm not up to speed with the world's current infectious disease maps.”

“Obviously.” He nearly broke a smile, but not quite. “Why would you think leprosy?”

Not wanting to disparage Tilly and her decades of anthropological research, I opted for ambiguousness. “Hearsay?”

Refocusing his attention on Nana, who was sitting on the edge of the gurney with her feet dangling over the side, he grabbed a penlight and tongue depressor and asked her to open her mouth and say
ahhh
. “Any trouble breathing?” he asked her.

“Nope.”

“Your throat doesn't feel as if it's closing on you?”

“Nope.”

He disposed of the tongue depressor and placed the penlight back in the pocket of his lab coat. Nana peered at him through the tiny slits that remained open beneath her swollen eyelids.

“You s'pose it was them flowers in the lobby what done me in, Doc?”

“Your reaction indicates exposure of a more direct nature, Mrs. Sippel. Have you applied anything unusual to your face recently?”

“Just the beauty cream what Emily give me.”

“I see.” He turned humorless eyes on me. “Would that be the same cream that was developed by your retired anthropologist friend who was shrinking heads in New Guinea?”

“I don't think she participated in any of the actual shrinking. She was just there to kind of…take notes.”

“Is this the same compound that eliminated your lesions overnight?”

Wow. Good memory. “Yup.”

“It might have performed a small miracle on you, but it's toxic to your grandmother.” He turned back to Nana. “Stop using the compound immediately, Mrs. Sippel. If you bring the jar in for analysis, we might be able to determine which ingredient is causing your reaction, but I suspect your granddaughter might be averse to any type of analysis.”

“I don't care if you analyze it,” I objected, “but I don't have any left. I gave it all away.”

“I'm sure.” He elevated Nana's chin to examine her face one last time. “The good thing about contact urticaria, Mrs. Sippel, is that once the offending allergen is removed, the symptoms usually disappear within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. So, stop using the face cream, and you should be back to normal in a couple of days.”

“You don't need to give me no shots or transfusions or nuthin'?”

“I can prescribe a mild antihistamine for the itching. You can pick it up at the hospital pharmacy, but the best remedy for your condition is to do nothing at all.”

I worried my lip as a niggling thought gnawed at a far corner of my brain. If the cream had proved to be toxic for Nana, could it be toxic for other people as well?

Holy crap
.

Bernice.

Taptaptaptaptap
.

I rapped on her door with the gentlest of knocks, hoping it was loud enough to get her attention but quiet enough not to disturb her neighbors. Five thirty
am
. She was a native Iowan. She'd probably already been up for an hour.

Taptaptaptaptap
.

Ten seconds passed.

Twenty.

“Bernice,” I whispered close to the door. “Are you awake?”

The door flew open. Bernice stood before me, glaring. “This better be good. Whaddaya want?”

She was a rumpled mess with her short satin robe twisted haphazardly around her body and her hair sticking out like the wire bristles on a pot scrubber. But despite that, she looked…

I blinked to clear my vision.

Geez. She looked good. No irregular swelling. No inflammation. No scaly patches. No welts the size of jawbreakers. Her complexion looked as creamy as 30 percent butterfat. Flawless texture, luminous, rose-petal soft—and free of the wrinkles that usually cross-hatched her cheeks and forehead.

Correction: she didn't look good, she looked like a million bucks. Like…like she was wearing a Hollywood starlet's head on her body. Like…like her whole face had been photoshopped.

“Well, spit it out,” she crabbed, “or are you just planning to stand there gawking at me?”

“No…sorry, I…” I squinted for a better look. “The thing is, I was just wondering if…if…how are you feeling this morning, Bernice?”

Eyes snapping, brows set at an angry slant, she flashed a sneer that sent me back a full step. “Lemme get this straight. You woke me out of a dead sleep to inquire how I'm feeling?”

“I know it's early, but we
are
a full-service tour company, which means our highest priority is the well-being of our gue—”

The door swung shut in my face.

“You'll be hearing about this on your evaluation!” she bellowed from behind the door.

I exhaled a relieved breath. Bernice wasn't allergic. Thank
God
. Catastrophe averted.

But she was starting to exhibit signs of memory loss.

We'd eliminated the evaluation forms a couple of years ago.

Back at the room Etienne greeted me dressed in a towel and nothing else. I wrapped my arms around his waist and snuggled against his chest. “Did you get Nana settled in her room again?” I leaned into him, willing my emotional stress to melt away.

He kissed the crown of my head. “She's a trooper. No whining. No drama. If I weren't already happily married to a member of her family, I'd cut off George at the pass and propose to her myself.”

“Are you headed for the shower?”

He inched my chin upward and pressed a soft kiss on my mouth. “I am…unless you have a more inviting suggestion.”

“Have you opened Astrid's suitcase since it's been in our room?”

“No. I'm not sure when I would have had time. Why?”

“Because I swear someone's monkeyed with it. I noticed some clothing poking out from the zipper earlier tonight that wasn't there yesterday. I called the front desk to inquire about surveillance cameras, but just our luck: boutique hotels in Munich have a strict policy about not spying on their guests.”

“Housekeeping might have had a need to open it, although that seems highly unlikely.”

“I think there's something fishy going on with everything connected to Astrid: her room, her suitcase, the Guten Tags, her missing books…”

“Could we postpone further discussion of Astrid until later?” Slipping the towel off his waist, he looped it around my neck and drew me against him. “We have an hour and fifteen minutes before our wake-up call, Mrs. Miceli.”

I slanted a look at the bedside clock and shook my head. “An hour and seventeen minutes, actually.”

His breathing quickened as he twined his fingers in my hair. “Even better.”

thirteen

“Ludwig II ascended the
Bavarian throne in 1864, following the death of his father, King Maximilian,” Wally informed us as we neared Hohenschwangau later that morning. “He was eighteen years old, introverted, and very much a dreamer who imagined himself as the Swan King of operatic lore, but he was more often referred to as Mad King Ludwig. Obsessed with chivalry, knights, and legends, he undertook an ill-advised building project that resulted in the construction of the fairy-tale castle of Neuschwanstein. But there were unfortunate repercussions because his extravagance and excesses drained the family coffers of nearly all its capital—fourteen million marks, which in today's economy would equal three and a half billion euros.”

The countryside through which we were driving was green, lush, and flatter than an Iowa cornfield, with an occasional copse of trees to break up the monotony. But unlike Iowa, the terrain was ringed by a chain of saw-toothed, snow-capped mountain peaks that stretched toward infinity. According to my map, we were approaching the foothills of the Bavarian Alps.

“Seventeen years after the building projects began, the king's finance ministers assembled a panel of doctors to analyze the monarch's mental health, and without ever examining him, they declared him insane. He was carted off to a nearby castle, where a day later he was found floating in the lake along with the panel's lead doctor. The circumstances surrounding Ludwig's death remain a mystery to this day.”

“I'll tell you what happened to him,” Bernice called out. “Someone whacked him. Probably those finance ministers of his. You'd have to be pretty ignorant to let that one stump you.”

Bernice was her usual cantankerous self this morning and appeared to be suffering no signs of sleep deprivation from my early morning intrusion. I, on the other hand, was dragging. All the amazing sights and sounds in Bavaria, and the only thing I would kill to have right now was a night of uninterrupted sleep. Not that I was complaining about my pre-dawn aerobic activity. I felt all warm and shiny inside just thinking about it. But I was so tired, I could swear I was beginning to see double.

Mom tapped my arm. “Why are we on this bus?”

“We're going to visit the most iconic castle ever built, Mom. It's the one that Walt Disney used as inspiration for Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland.”

“We're going to Disneyland? Ooh!” She clapped her hands as she peered out the window. “Look how green California is, Emily. They must have gotten rain.”

“We're in Germany, Mom.” Dr. Fischer had indicated that Mom's symptoms would disappear within twenty-four hours, but I wasn't seeing any sign of it yet—just one more concern that was wearing me down.

“Germany?” Mom's voice was distraught. “Why are we in Germany?”

“We're here to visit Sleeping Beauty's castle.”

“That should be fun. Did you know she has a castle in Disneyland, too?”

Nothing like a circular conversation to start the morning out right.

“When we reach the parking lot,” Wally continued, “please remain on the bus until I give you the okay to exit. It's quite a hike to the castle, all uphill, but since our musicians need to conserve their energy for their performances this afternoon, we're going to treat you to a surprise.”

“I bet he's planning to give us tickets to ride the teacups,” Mom gushed in a burst of enthusiasm. “Emily, will you take a picture of me spinning around in one of those adorable little cups and saucers? Of course, if I end up hurling my breakfast, you might want to use some discretion.”

I nodded dutifully. “You got it.”

She tapped my arm again and leaned toward my ear, saying in an undertone, “Have you noticed that three-chinned dwarf with the boils all over her face? Do you know who she is?”

Oh, God
.

The castle appeared in the distance—a gleaming white confection nestled in a tangle of woodland, its turrets rising like gigantic birthday candles above multilayers of whipped cream frosting. “Thar she blows, Mom. Neuschwanstein Castle. Look out the window.”

“Will you at least tell me if she's contagious?” Mom persisted. “Because she looks contagious.” She boosted herself up in her seat and craned her neck, searching. “Where's Margi Swanson? In a case of dire emergency, would she ever consider handing out bottles of her sanitizer free of charge?”

Wally picked up where he'd left off with his instructions. “We'll have an in-depth guided tour of the castle that'll keep you occupied for a couple of hours, and then we'll have lunch at the restaurant, where our bands are scheduled to play after we finish our meal. I'll caution you to stick together for the tour and not wander off because if we lose one of you, it'll throw off our entire schedule. Do not attempt to enter rooms that are not open to the public. Any questions?”

“Where'd you say we're headed?” tossed out Dick Stolee, who apparently remained so rattled by his credit card fiasco that his listening skills had deteriorated to the level of his finances.

Upon arrival at the car park, we remained on the coach until Wally made a few official inquiries. When he returned, we off-loaded into the parking lot and followed him and his oversized umbrella to a ticket kiosk near the entrance, where five horse-drawn wagons with overhead canopies were waiting to transport us up the long road to the castle.

“It doesn't matter which vehicle you ride in,” Wally instructed as guests gathered around the lead wagon. “They're all going to the same place.”

To my amazement, and perhaps influenced by the presence of the castle that loomed high above us, the men tapped into their chivalrous roots and undertook a policy of women first. I helped Mom get situated between Tilly and Nana, and when the seats were full, the driver wasted no time barking a verbal command to his team and jiggling his reins to send them forward.

“What's wrong with your grandmother? Is she contagious?”

Bernice appeared at my side, her voice as abrasive as ever, but her face looked even better than it had at five thirty this morning. Supermodel ready. Inexplicably stunning. “Allergies,” I lied, unable to tear my gaze away from her. “And she's not contagious.”

“What's she allergic to?”

“You know. Just…stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“The—uh…the doctors weren't sure.”

“Morons. They've never heard of allergy skin tests?”

“Maybe they approach skin conditions differently in Germany.”

She slatted her eyes with suspicion. “Funny how it's isolated to only two parts of her body. Like she applied something to her face with her hands and
poo
f
! She starts looking like a troll.”

“Nana does
not
look like a troll, Bernice.”

“Yeah? Well, I wouldn't be asking Osmond to take a vote on it anytime soon. And will you quit staring at me! You're giving me the creeps. Have I got a bug stuck between my teeth or something?”

“Let me help you into the wagon, Bernice,” Wally offered as he directed the remaining guests toward the waiting vehicles.

“I've got this,” said Wendell, appearing out of nowhere to extend his arm to her.

Otis, who was already seated, reached out his hand to help her up. “Here you go, beautiful. I've saved a place for you right beside me.”

Bernice fluttered her eyelashes and reverted to Scarlett O'Hara mode, cooing demurely as the men fussed over her.

“Are you sure you want to sit between those two sourpusses?” Gilbert teased as he slid onto the bench in front of her. “The place next to me is free.”

“I've got a spot next to me too,” added Arlin from the front seat.

Like worker bees to the queen, they buzzed around her. Nothing like a pretty face to turn a man's head. I wasn't going to fault them for their testosterone highs, but I wondered if they realized this gorgeous ingénue was
not
a misplaced tourist but a refurbished version of Bernice Zwerg.

Etienne and I piled onto the last seat in the last wagon, where for the next several minutes we could huddle intimately together, linking fingers and touching thighs. As the wagon jerked forward, he placed a kiss on my forehead. “How are you holding up?”

My mouth widened into a shameless yawn. “I could use one of two things: either a catnap or caffeine.”

“I'm told the horses can be notoriously slow hauling their load, so you might have time to squeeze in that catnap.”

“But I'll miss out on the scenery on the way up to the castle.”

“There's no scenery other than trees. Acre upon acre of trees.”

“Really?” I pressed my cheek to his shoulder and closed my eyes. “Talked me into it.”

The rocking motion of the wagon in combination with the rhythmic clop of horse hooves created a soothing calm that washed over me like a cradlesong, lulling me toward sluggishness…dr
owww
siness…
sleee—

Etienne's phone began vibrating against my hip like an electric blender. “I'm sorry, bella.”

Blinking awake, I sat up arrow straight as he retrieved his phone.

“Miceli.”

I knew the call was official when the person on the other end of the line did most of the talking, allowing Etienne to utter only a handful of
uh-huhs
to go along with an occasional
I see
. By the time we approached our drop-off point near the top of the mountain, I realized Etienne had been right about the sameness of the scenery. I also realized that something was drastically wrong because when he ended his conversation, his expression took on a dark, introspective quality, as if he were trying to gauge how to deal with a burden that had been unceremoniously placed on his shoulders.

“What's wrong, sweetie?”

“That was the medical examiner's office. The preliminary results of Zola's autopsy are in. Her heart condition wasn't the cause of her death.” He regarded me, baffled. “She died from what, at first blush, is consistent with nicotine poisoning.”

“Nicotine poisoning? But…she didn't smoke, did she?”

“Long-term smoking wasn't the culprit. She either absorbed a lethal dose of nicotine through her skin or she ingested it—a dose so large, it apparently killed her within minutes.”

“So it…it happened at the Hippodrom?”

“That's the current thinking.”

“But how could something like that happen when there was no smoking allowed in the tent?”

“I don't know, but according to the official I spoke with, acute nicotine poisoning isn't that common in adults. It's more common among children who mistake nicotine gum for chewing gum, or toddlers who stick those smoking cessation patches in their mouths.”

I racked my brain for probable scenarios. “Could there have been a mishap in the kitchen? A tin of someone's chewing tobacco getting upended into the food—into the pots of mustard or the potato pancakes?”

“If that were the case, shouldn't we have ended up with more victims?”

“Maybe she ate more than everyone else.”

“I should think that a clump of chewing tobacco in either mustard
or
potato pancakes would render the food completely unpalatable.”

I arched an eyebrow. “There were a few people at my table who thought the entire
meal
was unpalatable.”

“Whatever Zola did or didn't eat, she was exposed to a deadly dose of nicotine in the period between when we arrived at the tent and the moment she collapsed. That's the timeline.”

“Did your contact indicate how her death is being classified?”

“We won't know until after the medical examiner completes his final analysis, but they've promised to keep me in the loop. We'll need to be prepared, though, because if her death is ruled a homicide, we'll be looking at the kind of police investigation that will change our itinerary rather drastically.”

“
Nooo
.” I hung my head in despair. Everything that had gone wrong already, and now this? I heaved a sigh. “Do you ever get the feeling we're in the wrong line of work?”

“It's too soon to jump to conclusions, Emily. The medical examiner may yet decide that her death was accidental.”

Oh, sure. That was as likely to happen as Margi Swanson scarfing down a pig's head sandwich on marble rye. “How does a medical examiner determine if someone's death is accidental or deliberate?”

“I don't know. I'm not the medical examiner.”

Our driver halted the team short of the castle gate, near a building whose hexagonal turret and half-timbered accents smacked of Old World Bavaria and storybook charm. “Schlossrestaurant,” I read aloud as Etienne helped me to the ground. A stone fence surrounded the patio where an array of blue table umbrellas lured guests to dine alfresco. “Is this the restaurant where the bands will be playing?” The place was so enchanting in its alpine setting that I wouldn't have been surprised to find Hansel and Gretel dining at one of the tables, playing host to Goldilocks and the Gingerbread Man.

“I wish. Our restaurant is the large structure off the car park, at the bottom of the hill.”

We made our way toward Wally, who was rounding everyone up to begin the last leg of the hike. “It's about a fifteen-minute walk to the entrance,” he announced, “and you might find it a bit steep, so we're going to proceed at a leisurely pace. There's a waiting area outside the castle walls with an electronic sign board that posts tour numbers. When our tour is posted, we'll proceed to the gatehouse and into the courtyard to await the final posting of our tour, which should happen about five minutes before the tour is set to begin. If there are no questions, let's start the hike.”

As the group surged forward, Etienne and I hung back to keep a lookout from the rear. Given the pitch of the pathway, no one in the gang seemed inclined to race to the castle gate, so there was no jockeying for position or accidental tripping, which made me long to locate all our sightseeing venues at the tops of mountains.