From Bad to Wurst (22 page)

“I never knew what she was going to do next,” Gilbert pined. “She was so full of surprises.”

Wendell nodded agreement. “When she wore that little nylon number with the lace bodice…” He gave his lips a lusty smack.

“The pink or the white?” asked Otis.

“I cannot
believe
the time I've wasted on you three bozos!” shrieked Hetty. “It makes me want to spit. Did you get a thrill out of making me feel so…so unwanted? Did it make you feel manly to pander to Astrid's every whim? Do you know how much that hurt me?”

Otis looked unsympathetic. “It's your own fault for not—”

“Don't you dare place blame on me, Otis Erickson, you…you underhanded
sneak
. What were you doing with Emily and Etienne when they were packing up Astrid's belongings? You want to fess up to what you were looking for or should I take a wild guess and assume you were going out of your mind trying to find her journal?”

Hey, I'd had that theory, too, hadn't I? At some point in time.

“
You
were looking for her journal?” barked Gilbert, bristling at Otis. “What gave you the right? Weasel! I knew you weren't looking for any damn library book.”

Otis's cheeks reddened like Christmas tree lights. “I wanted a keepsake. Something to remember her by.”

“Bull!” shouted Wendell. “You wanted to see what she'd written about you. You wanted proof in her own handwriting that she liked you best.”

“She
did
like me best,” crowed Otis. “I was always her favorite. I didn't need to read her journal to know that.”

“Then why'd you go looking for it?” taunted Wendell.

“I
told
you. I wanted a memento. Something she'd touched. Something she cherished. Something that might make me smile for the rest of my life.”

“But you didn't find it, did you?” needled Gilbert with no small amount of snark.

Otis shook his head, bereft. “It wasn't there.”

“That's because it was destroyed in the bomb blast,” snapped Hetty. “Isn't that right, Emily? She was carrying it in her shoulder bag, so I guess you'll never know which one of you she preferred, will you? I don't know how you'll ever survive the disappointment. Gee, my heart bleeds.”

Emotion drained from the trio like air from inflatable yard ornaments. They stared at Hetty. They stared at each other. “It's really gone?” asked Gilbert, looking as if he might burst into tears. He grew quiet, sullen. “I guess that explains it, then.”

“Explains what?” Wendell asked him.

“Why I couldn't find it either.”

“You went looking for it, too?” sputtered Otis. “Aww, hell, you're the one who trashed her room, weren't you? Geez, dude, you ever heard of restraint? You should have had more respect for her stuff. There was no need to tear up her room like that. Astrid would have been appalled.”

“I was in a hurry.”

Omigod.
I'd been right. The room
had
been ransacked. I fired a look at Gilbert. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I'm sorry! I would've been more tidy, but I only had a small window of opportunity during the newspaper interviews, so I had, like…no time.”

“How did you get into her room in the first place?” I demanded.

A collective snigger rippled through the contingent of musicians.

“We work in a lock and key factory,” said Stretch.

“The operative word being
key
,” added Arlin.

“All my employees acquire a certain expertise after a time,” Wendell spoke up. “Kind of goes with the territory.”

“He means we're good at picking locks,” said Maisie. “If we didn't work for Wendell, we could all become independent locksmiths.”

“Or professional lock picks,” offered Gilbert.

I regarded the faces of the musicians, my gaze settling on Wendell. “Did you pick my door lock too? Did you riffle through Astrid's suitcase looking for her journal?”

Wendell tucked in his lips, guilt stamped all over his face. “If I'd known what Gilbert and Otis had been up to, I wouldn't have bothered. Guess I was a little late to the party. I apologize for breaking and entering, but I swear I didn't take anything. I just…I just wanted to savor whatever Astrid had written about me, because despite what my two friends claim, I know for a fact that
I
was her favorite.”

“You were not,” grumbled Otis.

“That's bogus,” spat Gilbert.

“You turkeys,” blasted Hetty. “I'm
glad
Astrid's gone. And I'm glad her accordion's gone, too. You boneheads might have robbed me of physical contact, but that accordion of hers isn't going to gyp me out of another minute of performance time.”

“You
did
throw it over the side of the mountain,” bellowed Wendell.

“
Someone
had to! I did it for all of us—or did you want to spend the rest of the tour listening to solo performances from Emily's father?”

“Told you so!” cried Mom.

Officer Horn put a bead on Hetty. “Did you just confess to destroying Frau Peterson's accordion?”

She bobbed her head. “You bet I did.”

“In that case, I'm placing you under arrest on two counts of criminal activity. Theft and vandalism.” He produced his handcuffs as he crossed the floor and slapped them around Hetty's wrists.

“You can't arrest me. I watch
Law and Order
. You need the owner of the accordion to press charges against me, and she can't because she's dead.”

“A minor point,” noted Horn. “We'll address it at the station.”

Margi waved her hand over her head. “Excuse me, Officer. Can you charge her with Zola's murder, too, so we can get out of here? Dinner's in an hour.”

“I didn't kill Zola!” swore Hetty.

“Do not move from your seats,” warned Horn, his body language threatening.

But the fuse had already been lit.

Alarm began to creep through the room.

Nana stuck her hand in the air. “Can them fellas tell us how they decided what girl got to swing with 'em on what night?”

“Oh, sure,” said Gilbert. He removed his wallet from his pants pocket. “Our company keys.” He waved a key like the one Wendell had shown me in the air. “All employees at Newton get a key with their name engraved on the back. So after our band finished a gig that called for an overnight stay, us guys would toss our keys into a hat and the girls would pull out the two lucky winners.”

“Astrid picked winners,” sniped Hetty. “My winners always turned out to be losers.”

“You s'pose that system would work just as well if the names was on sticky notes?” asked Nana.

I bowed my head and covered my eyes.
Oh, God
.

“Say, fellas.” Bernice's voice assumed a breathiness that made it sound less scratchy and more seductive. “Now that you're short two playmates, will you be accepting applications for replacement models?”

“Fifty-seven minutes until dinner,” alerted Dick Stolee.

Horn narrowed his gaze as he probed the anxious faces before him. “I am warning you to remain seated.”

“Is this like a time-out?” asked Lucille. “I always made my kids do time-outs on chairs in the kitchen.”

“Do we have to sit here until every one of us tells you a secret?” questioned George.

“There is only one secret I'm interested in hearing,” said Horn, “and that is which one of you killed Frau Czarnecki. When that secret is revealed, you'll be dismissed.”

“So it
is
a time-out,” groaned Lucille.

“Does anyone remember that old quiz show
I've Got a Secret
?” asked Tilly.

“I loved that show,” said Nana. “But I don't recall none of them contestants ever admittin' they whacked someone.”

“How big a secret does it have to be?” asked Alice. “Can it be a small secret like a woman's dermatologist talks her into having a Botox treatment at her last appointment? Or does it have to be something bigger like, say, the same hypothetical woman throws her old DVD player out in the regular trash rather than pay the fee to have it recycled?”

“I
told
you she had cosmetic work done,” Grace Stolee squealed to Helen. “Crow's feet don't disappear on their own like that.”

“Fifty-four minutes until dinner,” announced Dick Stolee.

“I have an idea,” suggested Dick Teig. “How about we all write down a secret on a slip of paper and toss it into a hat. Then Officer Horn can read them off one at a time and let us try to guess whose secret it is. If we guess right, we get to go to dinner!”

“When he reads the one about the dermatologist and the Botox treatment, I hosey first dibs on guessing,” said Margi.

“Does our secret have to be sordid or would mildly disgusting be acceptable?” questioned Lucille.

“Can we guess our own secret,” asked George, “or would that be considered cheating?”

“Good idea,” applauded Margi. “That would really get us out of here fast.”

“Excuse me, Officer,” said Osmond, “but can I be excused to visit the facilities?”

“Ditto for me,” said Helen.

“I've gotta go, too,” said George.

A fine sheen of sweat appeared on Officer Horn's upper lip. His eyelid began to twitch. His Adam's apple bobbed erratically above the knot in his tie.

As if closing in for the kill, the group shot their hands into the air with desperate pleas of “me too, me too” echoing through the room.

“Fifty-two minutes,” shouted Dick Stolee.

“
go
,” bellowed Horn, apparently deciding that the spontaneous failure of two dozen aging bladders could be more catastrophic than a delay in his interrogation.

They raced to the door as if they were running from the bulls on the streets of Pamplona. “They have no intention of coming back, do they?” Horn asked the handful of us who remained in the room.

Etienne shook his head. “I believe you've lost them until after dinner.”

“I have to go too,” insisted Hetty.

“
You
may use the facilities at the police station,” Horn told her.

“If you've no objection, I'd like to accompany Ms. Munk to the station,” said Etienne. “She may find herself in need of an advocate.”

“Fine. But I'm not through here, Inspector Miceli. You can expect me back in this room at eight o'clock sharp, and I will expect your guests to be here with full bellies and empty bladders. One of them is a cold-blooded murderer, and before this evening is out, I promise you, I will find out which one.”

I hoped he changed his methodology. If he didn't, the only thing he could promise was a neverending time-out.

twenty-two

After making a brief
pit stop in my own suite, I stopped off at Mom and Dad's to console Dad a little more about the loss of Astrid's accordion and to reassure myself that the return of Mom's memory hadn't been a fluke.

“Is this the honeymoon suite?” asked Mom as she looked out over the city of Munich through the slender floor-to-ceiling windows.

Uh-oh.
She wasn't starting to slip away again, was she? “Why do you ask, Mom?”

“Because there aren't any magazines on the coffee table. Newlyweds are so busy with other activities, they don't need reading material.” She gave the bare table a forlorn look. “A half dozen or so would have been nice. I can just imagine how out of order they would have been.”

I smiled with relief. Yup. She was back.

She checked her watch. “I'm through in the powder room, so we should be heading down to dinner, Bob.”

Dad sat on the sofa, head bent, moping. “Yup.”

I sat down beside him, cradling his hand in mine. “How about when we get back home, you and I go shopping and buy you a brand-new accordion? I bet you could even start your own oompah band. Just think of the places you could play—the senior center, the church, the bowling alley, that supper club out on the highway, the—”

His head popped up with jack-in-the-box quickness. His down-in-the-mouth expression faded. His lips softened into a smile. “I could, couldn't I?”

“You're darned right. No more hiding your talent, Dad. You need to share it with the world.”

He mulled that over for a half second. “You suppose I could just start with Windsor City?”

I gave him a peck on his cheek. “You bet.”

“Well, would you look at this?” Mom stood at the kitchen counter, bursting with excitement as she fingered a tall stack of Dad's mini videocassettes. “They're not labeled.” Ecstasy lit her every feature as she gathered them against her chest. “We can't have that, can we? Do either of you have a pen?”

Aww. This was so reassuring. Her OCD was back, too. “Dinner's in thirty minutes, Mom.”

“
Psssh
. This will only take me a minute.”

Dad threw his hands up in the air and shot me a woeful look. “There goes dinner.”

“You know what'll happen if you don't leave now, Mom. All the good seats will be taken.”

“Will you text your grandmother and ask her to save a couple of seats for us?” She removed Dad's camcorder from its case. “No, wait. Don't bother. With her complexion the way it is, people are probably still afraid to get too close to her, so we'll just sit in the empty chairs that'll be at her table.”

“Dad can't wait that long. He's famished. Right, Dad?”

He nodded. “Yup.”

Mom began removing the cassettes from their stack and lining them up in a semicircle on the counter. “Five minutes. That's all I need.” She clasped her hands, smiling at the arrangement. “They're speaking to me.”

I strode across the floor, locked my hands around both her arms, and gently marched her away from the counter. “You need to relax, Mom. You're recovering from a major neurological upset. The last thing your doctor would want is for you to overdo.”

“But classifying material is relaxing.”

“I'll tell you what. I'm holding off on dinner until Etienne gets back, so why don't I hang out here, go through Dad's tapes, and label them for you? It'll give me something to do.”

Her lower lip looked as if it might be gearing up to quiver. “But
I
wanted to do it.”

“By tomorrow Dad'll have another big stack that needs to be labeled, so you can have at it then. Right, Dad?”

“Yup.”

Twisting her head at an impossible angle to cast a lingering look at the counter, she relented grudgingly. “Do you know what to do? The main title should be
Germany
with the month and year, and beneath that should be subheadings listing the city, attraction, and minute markers for each separate—”

“I know the drill,” I said as I coaxed them toward the door. “I'll catch up with you a bit later, and unfortunately, at eight o'clock, I'll see you in the Prince Ludwig room again.”

“Whatever for?” asked Mom.

“Officer Horn is coming back to finish his interrogation. Wally's going to make the announcement at dinner. I'm just giving you a heads-up.”

“That Munk woman is in jail all because of me,” lamented Dad. “It's embarrassing. Makes me feel like a stool pigeon.”

“Maybe another bomb will explode,” Mom said, waxing philosophical. “Trust me. It'll help you forget.”

Tilly was ambling down the hall as I scooted Mom and Dad out the door. She raised her walking stick in greeting. “Are we all headed in the same direction?”

“I'm not, but Mom and Dad are.”

“Good. We can walk down to dinner together. Marion will catch up in a minute. And by the way, Emily, about that request from Bernice. The cream is available ready-made but you'd better tell her to preserve what little compound she has left because we're being cut off.”

“You can't order any more?”

She shook her head. “I just received a text from my supplier. He's in a snit about the outrageous hike in overseas shipping costs, so he's decided to boycott his local carrier. Forever.”

“He can't just stick Bernice with the charges?”

“You're missing the point. It's not about money. It's about principle.”

Oh, joy. And I was the one who'd have to break the news.

“He did say he'd be quite willing to sell Bernice as much product as she'd like, but she'll have to fly to New Guinea to pick it up.”

Like that was going to happen. “Okay. Thanks for trying, Tilly.”

“I'm afraid I had the easy part. You're the one who has to deal with the aftermath.”

My digestive system screamed out for a roll of antacids as I headed back into the room. Bernice's discontent would be epic. I could hear her now. The snarling. The ranting. The griping. The bellyaching.

You've got this
, said the little voice inside my head.
Remember? This is why they pay you the big bucks.

There is no amount of money worth the scene this news is going to cause
, I told the voice. Although once I'd made that admission, I realized there actually
was
an easy way to avoid having to play a part in her meltdown.

I'd text her.

Later.

Yup. I was good.

I packed Dad's photographic stuff into his camcorder case and dumped it all out on the sofa. Settling in for the long haul, I removed the first tape from its plastic case, popped it into the camcorder, flipped open the display screen, and pressed the play icon.

The chimes of the Marienplatz carillon rang out, rising above the errant sounds of voices oohing and ahhing. The view on the screen focused on the glockenspiel with its trumpeters and jesters and mounted knights charging at each other. I fast-forwarded to the place where the red knight toppled backward over his horse's rump. Laughter. Hooting. A jumpy shot of the dispersing crowd. More fast-forwarding. A classic image of Mom smiling for the camera and Nana curling her lip into a sneer. Another crowd shot. Then pavement. Dad's pant leg. Mom's shoes. Other people's shoes. More pavement.

Dad was obviously still struggling to master the art of switching from recording mode to powering off.

Water. Water running down the pavement. A phosphorescent yellow vest. Okay, he was back on track again. A John Deere backhoe loader. Jackhammers lying by the curb.
kaboooooooom
!
A jerky image of exploding earth, then the screen went black.

Heart racing, I set the camcorder down and inhaled a deep breath, feeling unexpectedly rattled. I was surprised at how unsettling it was to relive that moment, but I fought off the feeling by reminding myself what had come after—how the gang had banded together to react to the crisis. Dad hadn't caught their efforts on tape, but it was something they could be proud of for the rest of their lives.

The tape ended there, so I took note of the minute marker, then annotated the label exactly as Mom has suggested. Germany. Date. Munich. Marienplatz. Glockenspiel. And the marker where the section ended.

I didn't label the explosion in the hopes that once Dad learned how to download a tape to the computer and burn a CD, he'd edit it out. None of us needed to hear the sound of that explosion ever again.

Over the next hour I became a one-woman labeling machine. Hohenschwangau. Horse-drawn carriage. Hike up to Neuschwan-stein Castle. Courtyard of Ludwig's Castle. Berchtesgaden. Winding road. Eagle's Nest from parking lot. All of this footage interspersed with long minutes of bus upholstery, brick walkways, blue sky, and an endless array of footwear.

I popped a new tape into the machine. The Oktoberfest grounds filled the screen. Honkytonk music. Fairway rides. Flashing lights. Delighted screams. I fast-forwarded until I arrived at an interior view of the Hippodrom tent. Oompah music with a side of
“
zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, oi, oi, oi
!”
Revelers standing on benches. Our group huddled around our three assigned tables. Carousel horses hanging from the ceiling. A five-minute interval of the banner draped across the bandstand. A close-up of a group of Germans shooting pictures of us with their phones. Platters of food arriving. More platters of food. Maisie, Stretch, and Arlin on stage, playing their first beer song. Their second song. Their third song.

I fast-forwarded until I saw the Brassed Off Band replacing them on stage, which must have been about the time Dad got tired of filming because while I could hear the Brassed Offs play, the only scene the camcorder was recording was a static view of the food platters and beer steins on table three. As I was about to hit fast-forward again, I caught a sudden movement on the tape—a hand passing over the beer stein at the end of the table. Surreptitiously. Subtly. As if shooing a fly away.
What the
—?

I hit pause, angled the screen to minimize glare, and scrutinized the frozen image.

There was something in that person's hand that looked suspiciously like—

I hit play for two short seconds before pausing again.

Omigod. Omigod. Omigod
.

It was a bottle. A mini bottle. It disappeared in the person's palm as quickly as it had appeared, but I didn't need to read the label to know what it was.

Maisie's e-cigarette nicotine refill.

Holy crap.
This was it! The incriminating evidence. On tape. Without realizing it, Dad had caught Zola's killer red-handed, destroying the myth that there were no perks to be gained from human error.

Heart pounding, hands trembling, I grabbed my phone and called Etienne but was immediately shunted to his voicemail. “I know who our killer is,” I said in a rush of words. “Dad has it all on his camcorder. Get back here as soon as you can with Officer Horn.”

I picked up the camcorder again and stared at the paused profile of the person who had killed Zola, not understanding the motivation. Why? What would prompt an all-round nice person to commit murder? I'd seen photos of all the employees at Newton Lock and Key. Was there a clue I'd missed? Something so obvious that it was hiding in plain sight?

I googled the Newton website once more, accessing the photo galleries from each department. There was our killer, looking as amiable and innocent as—

My phone chimed with a text alert. Not Etienne, but Wally:
need you in the dining room. it's bernice. she's gone ballistic over something tilly told her.

Nuts.
The very situation I'd been hoping to avoid. Bernice obviously confronted Tilly about the beauty compound thing hersel—

The beauty compound thing
. I froze, my gaze riveted straight ahead as the fog suddenly cleared.

Uff-da.
The missing piece of the jigsaw. It wasn't the picture gallery at Newton that held the clue. It was the
other
pictures.

Grabbing my shoulder bag, I raced into the hall, pelted down the back staircase, and skidded into the dining room, out of breath and frazzled. I spied Nana and Tilly first, at a table for two in the center of the room. Bernice occupied a table for six next to them, the only female amid five male band members who looked to be plying her with wine and hanging on her every word. Wally met me at the door.

“I may have gotten you down here for nothing. She's stopped shouting. And the guys seem to be teasing her out of her snit, but she scared the bejeebers out of the poor waitress and flung some pretty colorful words at Tilly. You have any idea what's yanked her chain?”

“Yup. She was having a grand time at the ball when Tilly ruined her evening by telling her that the clock was about to strike midnight.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I don't get it.”

“You would if you were hoping to be Cinderella for the rest of your life.”

He pulled a face. “C'mon. Are you saying all this fuss is over a fairy tale?”

I shook my head. “It's about shipping costs, actually.” I shielded my mouth with my hand. “You might want to wait here for Etienne and Officer Horn. I suspect they'll be arriving momentarily.”

I marched over to Bernice's table disguised as the cheery tour escort in charge of spreading goodwill. “Hi, guys. Enjoying the
buffet
?”

Otis, Wendell, Gilbert, Stretch, and Arlin offered spontaneous nods and grunts. Bernice eyed me suspiciously. “Is this a social visit or did someone rat me out?”

“Let's just say I'm glad to see that tempers have cooled.”

“Ratted out. Bet it was Tilly.”

“I'm sorry you can't get your hands on any more cream, Bernice, but that's not Tilly's fault.”