Dutch Me Deadly (18 page)

“I’m claiming the authority.” He marked the time. “The new driver should be here within the hour. His name is Jens.”

“Wow. That’s pretty gutsy of you. How did Dietger take the news?”

He squared his shoulders and jaw as Dietger swaggered through
the front door. “I’ll let you know after I tell him.”

Unh-oh. No way did I want to be any part of this. In the next moment Peewee swooped out of the men’s room and blew past Jackie and Beth Ann, his jacket slung over his shoulder and his shoes squeaking across the floor. He picked up his audio guide at the front desk and without even giving it a trial run, charged out the door. Caught off guard, the girls sprinted after him, wrestling through the doorway at the same time like a couple of Iowans vying to be first in the buffet line.

I hurried out the door after them, intent on being out of earshot when Wally brought the hammer down. Dietger might be nothing more than an immature blowhard, but something about him made me nervous, so I was more than happy to have him traded in for a more functional model.

“He’s heading for the site,” said Jackie as we watched Peewee stride down the path signposted, Atlantikwall. She gave Beth Ann a thumbs-up. “He’s all yours, so as your coach and confidante, I have only one bit of advice: If he notices your hand on his butt, tell him there’s a string hanging out of his pocket that you’re pulling out. Guys always buy that line.”

Yup. This had disaster written all over it. “You know, ladies, Wally has agreed to collect passports when we get back to the hotel, so maybe you should forget about—”

“No,” objected Beth Ann. “I made my decision, and now I’m going to follow through. I want to show Jackie how far I’ve come. I want to prove to her that I could be the poster girl for
Jackie’s Life Improvements, Inc
.”

“Isn’t she adorable?” asked Jackie, preening like a proud parent.

“And maybe if we crack the case, we could write a story about it,” Beth Ann continued breathlessly. “A novel. Or a screenplay. We could have our names on the big screen! Or on a six-ninety-nine paperback. Really, I wouldn’t be fussy.”

I bet she wouldn’t
, I thought, as a light bulb suddenly went on over my head.

“We could,” Jackie agreed, then warming to the idea, “We could!
We could be writing partners. Co-authors. Two brains, one pseudonym.
EEEEEEEE
!”

They hopped up and down with their arms wrapped around each other. I threw a long look down the path.

“Peewee’s gone,” I said dryly.

“Get going,” Jackie urged, sending us both on our way. “Meet you back at the cafeteria.”

“I hope we haven’t lost sight of him permanently,” Beth Ann fretted as we followed the arrows around a series of embankments to the first venue.

“So how long have you wanted to be a writer?” I asked as I kept pace beside her.

She immediately slowed her steps, my question seeming to cut her off at the knees. “Everyone wants to be a writer, don’t they?”

“Apparently some more than others.”

“Come on, Emily. Haven’t you ever wanted to pen the great American novel?”

“Nope. I have a hard enough time writing notes in birthday cards.”

“They say everyone has at least one book in them.”

“And Jackie’s already written hers. It wasn’t a bestseller, but that’s
not the point. She’s still a published author.” I went in for the kill. “Does she have any idea that the only reason you signed up for her life coaching instruction was because of her connections to publishing?”

She slowed to a standstill, her face reflecting the throes of self-conscious guilt. She threw her hands up as if surrendering to the police. “Busted. I was trying to be so subtle, but subtlety isn’t Jackie’s strong suit. I was having to drag out the neon arrows and baseball bats. I love Jackie, but at times, she can be really dense.”

I led the way up a short flight of stairs that opened onto a battery emplaced with a World War II anti-aircraft gun.

“Why didn’t you just tell her the truth?” I asked. “I bet she would
have been thrilled to give you pointers on novel writing. She loves handing out advice.”

“Tom told me she had such a bad publishing experience that she swore she’d never have anything to do with writing again, so I figured I had to break down her defenses by taking the back door approach.”

“You couldn’t have just joined a critique group? Isn’t that what aspiring writers do?”

“That’s what I
should
have done, but what do they say about hindsight being 20/20? A critique group sure would have been cheaper. Jackie charges a bloody fortune for her life coaching services.”

We wandered over to the far embankment and peered across the noisy highway to the wide strip of sand beach that Hitler had been so fanatical about protecting.

“How can you afford to pay her? She said you’d lost your job.”

“My job, my husband, my dad. Dad had a life insurance policy, so that’s kept me flush for awhile. But to be honest, after he was gone, I lapped up the one-on-one attention from Jackie. It was like a spa treatment for my emotional health. I was so depressed after he died that I turned to journal writing as a kind of catharsis. And then I thought, why not a book? Something that could generate income. But I got impatient.”

“Which is when you decided to take advantage of Jackie’s ad?”

“Yeah. Everyone in the salon knows she wrote a book, so I thought if I could establish a good rapport with her, I could coax her back to novel writing, and maybe convince her that I could be a worthy partner. I have some great plots in my head. I just need her to show me the ropes. Really, Emily, with her
chutzpah
and my determination, we could be the next big brand name in publishing.”

“You and Jackie would be to books what Huntley and Brinkley were to TV?”

“Yeah! Kind of. Please don’t think I’m a charlatan. I’m not proud of what I’ve done. And now that you’ve found me out, I’m even less proud.” She had the decency to look embarrassed and a little humble. “Life is funny isn’t it? I came on this trip hoping to find a writing partner, and I may have found a soulmate instead. And I didn’t even have sign up with Match.com.”

From the depths of a nearby concrete pillbox, we heard a loud sneeze, followed by another, and another, and—

Adrenalin pumped through me as Peewee emerged from the stairwell.

“Don’t go down there if you’ve got allergies!” He waggled his
audio
phone in our direction before tromping back down the stairs
to the path.

“His jacket is too long,” fretted Beth Ann, reverting back to detective mode. “It falls clear over his tush. How am I supposed to check out his pockets?”

“Forget his pockets! Would you just tell Jackie the truth?”

“I’ll tell her the truth. I promise. But I really need to follow this guy. If I can’t snatch his wallet, the least I can do is tail him. He’s not who he says he is, Emily. And he’s carrying a weapon. This is serious. Wish me luck.”

She charged across the battery and hit the stairs, leaving me to puzzle over her words.
A weapon?
What weapon?

Only then did I consider what I was carrying in my hand—a fifteen-inch-long hard plastic shaft, equipped with a ten-digit keypad, a readout window, and a speaker tucked inside the molded earpiece. It might look like an audiophone, intended to provide visitors with taped information about each venue, but Beth Ann had been right to call it a weapon. It could easily double as a truncheon or billy club … and everybody had one.

Holy crap
. I pounded down the stairs and hiked down the path, through flat, sandy terrain blanketed with dune grass and around embankments reminiscent of Indian burial mounds. At the end of the path, a brick staircase descended into a gully surrounded by towering dunes. I pelted down the staircase and crossed a short footbridge that opened onto a supply platform and guardhouse, then worked my way back to an enclosed field, where anti-tank and anti-landing craft obstacles dotted the landscape like gigantic weapons of torture.
Euw
. But the good news was that Nana and company were captivated by the display, because they were all here, listening dutifully to their audio phones.

Peewee and Beth Ann, on the other hand, were nowhere in sight.

“Isn’t this somethin’?” Nana marveled when I joined her. “The Germans planted all them contraptions on the beach so’s the allies couldn’t land their boats. I bet they couldn’t get away with it today. They’d probably get fined for litterin’.”

It was quite a display. Long metal bars angled into concrete blocks. Iron bars bolted into the shape of supersized isosceles triangles. Deadly looking metal configurations that resembled giant jacks. And farther afield searchlights, field cannons, and machine guns that would have made Al Capone salivate.

“Did you see Beth Ann go by?” I asked her.

“Yup. And just about everyone else, too. For all the talkin’ that Ricky Hennessy done about bein’ hungry, him and his missus never set foot in the cafeteria. They’re up ahead, doin’ their best to ignore that Bouchard fella and his wife.”

“Mike McManus and his wife are ahead of us, too,” said Alice.

“And Laura LaPierre,” added George.

“And Peewee and Chip,” said Helen. “They shot past like streakers, only with their clothes on.”

Gee, if none of my prime suspects went to the cafeteria, that meant they were all wandering around the site. Great. But at least if my guys stuck together, they’d be out of harm’s way, and I aimed to keep it that way.

“How’s the narrative?” I asked Nana as I punched the site number into my audiophone.

“Good, dear.”

“Lousy!” sniped Bernice. “It’s not even in English.”

Nana gave me the eye. “She reached in the wrong bin. Hers is in Italian.”

Ten minutes later, as I was mustering everyone along the path toward the next exhibit, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Mission accomplished,” Wally whispered as he drew alongside me. He rattled a set of keys in his pants pocket, looking extremely satisfied with himself.

“Bus keys?” I asked.

He nodded.

“You fired him?”

“One of the greatest pleasures of my life.”

“How’d he take it?”

“Not well. He’s probably still back at the ticket office spewing epithets in five languages.”

“You are the
man
.”

“I gave him cab fare to his apartment and told him I wanted him gone by the time I got back.”

“Thank you from all of us. We may yet live to tour another day.”

He winked impishly. “You bet.”

I eyed his audio guide. “What are you doing now? Taking the self-guided tour? Haven’t you been here before?”

“Years ago, but I want to blow off some steam, so I’m visiting it again. Maybe by the time I reach the end of the tour, I’ll feel more like myself again.”

The path morphed into a brick-lined trench that cut deeply through the terrain. Tunnels radiated in every direction, ushering us into life-like dioramas of the officers’ quarters, communications bunkers, storage bunkers, men’s sleeping quarters, munitions bunkers, and lookout bunkers that sported panoramic views of the sea, with cheat sheets identifying enemy aircraft still attached to the wall. We climbed up stairs and down stairs, inside and outside, observing gun pits, machine gun nests, field guns, anti-tank grenades, and swiveling flak guns. We found ourselves encased by bricks, concrete blocks, and sandbags, with camouflage netting above and darkness below, in bunkers that burrowed deep into the bowels of the earth. That fortifications like this had once stretched for five thousand miles boggled the mind.

Forty minutes into the tour, slowed by Bernice’s having to borrow someone’s audio guide at each venue, my natives started to get restless.

“If you hadn’t been so all fired up to get your device before everyone else, you might have reached into the right bin,” scolded Helen. “The bin that said ‘English’!”

Bernice ripped her wire rims off her face and brandished them in the air. “I’m wearing your husband’s freaking glasses! I thought it
did
say English!”

Alice worried her lip as she checked the time. “We only have forty-five minutes left. We’ll never make it through this whole thing.”

“We’ll be left behind,” fretted Margi.

“Alice has a point,” said George. “We’re lagging so far back, all the folks who were straggling behind us are ahead of us now.”

“Even the bus driver’s ahead of us,” lamented Nana, “and he started out way behind.”

I drilled a look at her. “Which bus driver?”

“Our bus driver.”

“Which one?”

She looked confused. “We got more than one?”

“We do now.” My heart slammed into my ribcage. Acid bubbled up my windpipe. “Look everyone, I need to run ahead. Stay together.
Do not
wander off alone. And here—” I handed Bernice my audio guide. “Try to pick up the pace.”

I could be overreacting. I hoped I was overreacting. But why was Dietger on the Atlantic Wall when he should be in a cab on his way to banishment right now?

Anxiety quickened my step. I raced through narrow trenches and low-ceilinged tunnels, poked my head into bunkers, and checked out exterior gun emplacements. The other guests must have breezed through the site, because save for the uniformed mannequins on display behind protective glass, the place was deserted. No Peewee. No Bouchards. No Hennessys. No—

I ducked inside a darkened pillbox, pausing a millesecond for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light. The stairs were made of brick and descended deep into the earth, but it wasn’t their steepness that forced a sudden scream out of me.

It was the body lying at their base.

Eighteen

With dread knotting my
stomach, I watched the ambulance tear out of the parking lot, lights flashing and siren wailing.

“He’ll be okay,” Jackie assured me. “He’s probably had a spill at every historical site in Europe. Five-hundred-year-old staircases weren’t constructed with safety features in mind.”

“The stairs back there aren’t five hundred years old. They’re not even a hundred years old.” The blaring
weeooo!
of the siren faded as the yellow medical van headed south.

I’d called the emergency services number on my cellphone when I’d found Wally at the bottom of the stairs, but to my horror, the operator spoke no English. “Atlantic Wall!” I kept repeating. “Ambulance!” Unsure of my success, I hung up, called Nana’s cell, gave her the scoop, then asked her to send someone to the ticket office to request an ambulance. “Your fastest runner. And don’t you dare waste time voting. Just do it. Pronto!”

The ambulance arrived sooner than I expected, which was a relief, because although Wally was maintaining a strong pulse, he hadn’t regained consciousness, and that worried me. I’d dealt with head traumas before and knew they could have devastating consequences. I’d asked Beth Ann to ride in the ambulance and remain in the hospital with him, and she’d agreed, so I felt good that we were covering that base. Jackie had even lent her cellphone to Beth Ann so she could report back to us on Wally’s progress. I suspected he might be happy to see a familiar face when he woke up.

If he woke up.

I banished the thought as the ambulance disappeared from sight.

The police car, however, was still here.

“Do you think Wally tripped?” Jackie asked as we headed back to the ticket office.

“I think he had unwelcome help down the stairs,” I told her. And I knew exactly whose hand had done the helping.

_____

“You accuse me?” Dietger railed, florid-faced and indignant. “I was one who found him! I was one who ran back here for help!”

“What was wrong with your cellphone?” I challenged. “Why didn’t you call for help from the site?”

He whipped his phone out of its holster and shoved it in my face. “I have no bars! Is it crime to forget to charge your mobile phone?”

The police officer who’d responded to the emergency call stepped between us. “You realize the charge you’re making is a serious one, madam?”

“You bet I do. Wally fired him from his job just over an hour ago, and he was supposed to be gone by now. But he didn’t leave. He decided to stalk Wally instead.”

The officer’s expression remained neutral. “Is this true?” he asked Dietger. “Mr. Peppers discharged you?”

“So he fired me. What of it? Is there law preventing me from visiting my country’s number-one tourist attraction?”

“There’s a law preventing you from pushing someone down a flight of stairs!” I cried.

“You crazy woman! I tell you already.
I
find him!
I
run back here to phone ambulance!” He stabbed his finger at the ticket clerk. “Ask him. He has landline. He make the call.”

“I did,” the clerk agreed. “I dialed the emergency number to request an ambulance for the gentleman.”

“See?” Dietger crowed.

“And then I called a taxi to pick this man up as quickly as possible.”

The officer’s eyebrow slanted upward.

“This looks maybe not so good,” offered Dietger, his voice losing its bluster. “But I can explain.”

“I’m sure you can,” said the officer, manacling his hand around Dietger’s arm. “At the station.”

“I did nothing,” Dietger fumed as the officer escorted him out the door. “I was mad, but try to kill him? No! I wanted we should talk. But he was at the bottom of the stairs, unable to talk. So what was I supposed to do? Wait until he woke up?”

A second officer took over as mayhem erupted within the room
.

“He’s our bus driver!” yelled Gary Bouchard. “How are we supposed to get back to Amsterdam without him?”

“How can we take a tour without a tour director?” griped Ricky.

“This trip has been cursed from day one,” carped Sheila in a damning voice. “I’ve had it. I’m leaving.”

“Me, too,” said Mindy, “
after
the Belgian waffles we were promised.”

“Does anyone have an address for Wally so we can send him a get-well card?” asked Margi.

Anger. Anxiety. Agitation. With the police officer looking a little overwhelmed, I curled my lips over my teeth and let fly my signature whistle, shocking the room into immediate silence.

“There,” I announced. “That’s more like it. How can you hear anything the police officer says if you’re all talking at the same time?”

“Are you in charge?” the officer asked me.

I surrendered to the inevitable. “I guess I am now.”

We conducted a quick question and answer session between us, going over a litany of loose ends. Wally would be taken to one of the many hospitals in Oostende. Our substitute bus driver would ferry us back to Amsterdam. The officer would call me if they decided to press charges against Dietger. Could he have my name and mobile phone number? And by the way, I told him in parting, we’d lost our first tour director and two other guests on this trip already, so he might want to phone the Amsterdam police for information because at least one of the deaths was being investigated as a murder.

“Is it possible your bus driver is responsible for this other death?” he asked me.

“Now there’s a thought,” I remarked. “Why don’t you ask him?” Dietger was about the only person on the tour whose name I
hadn’t
connected with the other deaths.

The ride back to Amsterdam, hindered by road construction and lane-clogging traffic jams, was interminable. Halfway back, I received a call from an exuberant Beth Ann. “He’s conscious! He has a mean headache, but the doctors are going to do some kind of scan, and if there’s no indication of brain swelling, they’re going to keep him under observation for a few hours and then release him. Isn’t that great?”

A flood of relief washed over me. “Thank God.”

“And I have even better news. He remembers exactly what happened, which his doctor says is an excellent sign. He slipped on some loose mortar halfway down the staircase and went flying. He’s pretty embarrassed about the whole thing, and he apologizes for leaving you in the lurch, but his doctor told him that considering the stairs were made of brick, he’s lucky to be alive.”

“He fell?”

“Arse over teacup.”

“He wasn’t pushed?”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. Tell him we’re all thinking about him, and—and let me know how the scan turns out.”

I blew a long breath of air upward and reflected upon my recent gut instincts, analysis, and accusations. Could I have been any more wrong about Dietger?

Damn
.

I slouched down in my seat, mortified.

I wondered who else I was wrong about?