Dutch Me Deadly (9 page)

At two o’clock I called Jackie’s cell. “Please, please,
please
tell me the Dicks are back at the hotel.”

They weren’t. “But everyone else is functioning normally again, except for the double vision, so I made them form a conga line on their way back to their rooms so they could hold onto each other for support. You better get them to a clinic in the morning though. Double vision isn’t a good thing for old people to have. I don’t want to be an alarmist or anything, but I think it means they’re all getting ready to suffer kidney failure.”

At 4:20 a.m., discouraged by my failed efforts and unable to keep my eyes open, I decided if I didn’t call it a night, Nana might soon be sending out a search party for
me
. Not only did I need to catch forty winks, I needed to regroup.

I passed by the “Come to Jesus” bridge, where the same batch of protestors were warning people to repent, but Mike was gone, so I hoped that was a good omen. Too tired to hoof it back to the hotel, I phoned a cab and began the weary walk to my pick-up point. As I approached the footbridge by the Café Bar de Stoof
,
I noticed a woman leaning against a van parked by the canal and realized there was a good chance
she
might know more about the Dicks’ whereabouts than any other person I’d talked to this evening.

“Excuse me, Officer,” I said as I approached her, “could you help me?”

_____

I returned to the hotel armed with official police forms that were to be filled out and delivered to the nearest station within twenty-four hours of my reporting the members of my party missing. The policewoman had assured me that most people who went missing in the Red Light District usually turned up embarrassed but deliriously happy the next morning, so I should probably wait a few hours before filing a formal report. “Things like dis happen all der time,” she insisted.

Feeling slightly more confident that the situation would have a positive outcome, I headed straight for my room, kicked off my shoes, and collapsed face down on the bed without bothering to brush, floss, or moisturize. I was awakened about six seconds later by a loud and persistent knock on my door.

“God, Emily,” Jackie warbled when I let her in, “you look terrible, but you don’t have time to do anything about it now. You have five minutes to get downstairs before the breakfast service ends. Our new tour director wants to speak to you, Nana and the gang are running into the furniture in the dining room like it’s not even there, and the Dicks never came back last night.”

I hung my head tiredly. “Is that all?”

“Nope. Paula Peavey never came back either.”

Nine

“Emily?” The man waiting
for me at the entrance to the dining room looked vaguely familiar, which probably explained why my name flew from his mouth like a spitball rather than a greeting.

I suspected he knew me.

“Holy crap. You’ve gotta be kidding me. Emily Andrew? Well, well, well. This explains a lot.”

Recognition struck, accompanied by an uncomfortable twinge of guilt. Oh. My. God. He hadn’t changed all that much since I’d last seen him. Same chubby chipmunk cheeks. Same bland eyes. Same neat, buttoned-down appearance. He’d traded in his navy-blue blazer and khakis for a pea-green Passages Tours blazer, but if you ignored his expanding waistline and receding hairline, he still looked a lot like the boy next door, in a middle-aged kind of way.

I hazarded a cautious smile. “Wally?”

“Throw the girl a fish. She remembers me.”

“Of
course
, I remember you! Golden Swiss Triangle Tours. The
Grand Palais Hotel. Lake Lucerne. Mount Pilatus. You were a
terrific tour director. How could I forget you?” I pulled a face. “Our local guide was pretty annoying, but you were wonderful. I’m astounded
you
remember
me
.”

“Are you serious? Three days in Switzerland? Three dead bodies? How could I forget you?”

“I had nothing to do with those deaths.”

“You found the bodies. Close enough.”

“It is not!”

“Besides which, you deliberately ditched me so you could have drinks at the Hotel Chateau Gutsch with that hot police inspector.”

Okay, he had me there, “I wouldn’t call what I had a drink. It was more like an extravagantly expensive sip.”

“You were a jinx!”

“I was n—!” I winced. “You really think so?”

“I know so. The rest of the trip went great after you and your group left, except that the company canned me because they held me responsible for exceeding the allowable number of guests expected to die over a three-day period.”

“There’s an allowable number?”

“Yah: zero! So I get hired by another company, establish a perfect record, and what happens? My holiday gets canceled so I can replace an otherwise healthy guide who croaks for no reason at all.”

“Actually, there was a bicycle involved, so—”

“And who do I find in the middle of it all?”

I forced a smile. “Have I caught you at a bad time?”

“And I’m hearing rumors that not all the guests made it back from an unauthorized excursion to the Red Light District last night. Is that right?”

“Which part?” I asked sheepishly. “That the excursion was unauthorized or that several guests didn’t make it back?”

“
Several
? As in, more than one?”

“We were only missing two last night.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “But the number sort of climbed to three this morning.”

His eyes seemed to dance in his sockets, aping the kind of reaction you might expect if you stuck a screwdriver into a live electrical outlet.

“I’m right on top of the situation though,” I chirped. “I’ve talked
to the police, I have a couple of forms to fill out, and I know exactly what to do if nothing is resolved by early afternoon.”

Eye blinking. Panicked silence.

“Come
on
, Wally. No one has been officially in charge since yesterday. I’m just doing my best to help out in the void.”

Color drained from his face like dye from a cheap shirt.

“Would you like to sit down?” I asked gently. “You look a little—”

He held up his hand. “I’m changing the itinerary,” he choked out in a sandpapery voice. “This morning we’ll visit the Rijksmuseum. This afternoon, the Anne Frank house. And in between, I’ll be hunkered down in whatever isolated corner I can find, trying to locate our missing guests. Sound like fun?” He glowered at me. “Good thing for you my phone is fully charged. I’ll note the changes on the whiteboard.”

“I’m sure the missing guests will show up. The policewoman I spoke to sounded really confident that they’d be dragging themselves back any minute now. Her advice was simply to be patient and try not to panic.”

“Easy for her to say. She’s never traveled with you before.” He looked me up and down, as if hoping I’d disappear. “So, you’re the official escort for the Iowa contingent, are you?”

I nodded.

“I won’t ask you how many guests you’ve lost in your official capacity.”

Which was a good thing, since I’d lost count.

He threw a long look beyond me, as if he were dredging up more unpleasant memories. “Is that irritating woman with the wire-whisk hair and crab walk still part of your group?”

“Bernice? Bernice Zwerg? You remember her, too?”

“You’d better give her a hand. She just walked into the wall.”

_____

“I’m good,” Bernice snuffled when her nose stopped bleeding. “But
if my pain and suffering get too overwhelming, I plan to sue.”

We’d settled her into a chair in the lobby and plied her with tissues, but had to send Margi running to the restroom for wet paper towels when Osmond keeled over in a dead faint. “Stay calm!” Alice advised as I dug his medical history form out of my shoulder bag. “He’s fine with his own blood; it’s other people’s that gives him the problem.”

“That’s a stupid place to stick a wall,” Bernice complained as we hauled Osmond off the floor.

“Right,” said George. “Contractors always make a point of putting load-bearing walls in stupid places, like … public buildings.”

“Don’t get smart with me, George,” she snapped. “This hotel has got a lot of nerve booby-trapping this place and not bothering to warn us. That wall wasn’t there last night, was it?”

This seemed to perk up Osmond, who called for a group vote despite being half-conscious on the sofa. I studied their faces as they cast their yeas and nays, and noticed something astonishing for the very first time.

“Did you know that your eyeglasses are exactly alike? How do nine people as different as you guys end up with the same eyewear?”

“It’s on account of Pills Etcetera,” Nana explained. “They was runnin’ a special—$39.95 for no-line bifocals.”

“And you all selected the same frame?”

“The special only applied to one frame,” Tilly chafed. “A detail the pharmacy failed to mention in its weekly flyer.”

My brain cells started cranking like the pistons in a steam engine. Identical eyewear? Group vision problems? Hmm. I might be onto something.

“How many of you are accidentally bumping into things this morning?” I questioned.

Nine hands crept slowly into the air.

“How many of you saw fireworks in front of your eyes in the coffeeshop last night?”

Everyone except Nana raised a hand.

“When the symptoms first appeared, how many of you tried on someone else’s lenses to see if a different prescription would improve your vision?”

No hands went up.

Nana rolled her eyes. “They was
all
passin’ their eyeglasses around the table—the thing is, they was so hopped up on chocolate cake, they can’t remember doin’ it.”

Disbelieving gasps filled the air.

“That’s a bunch of hooey,” accused Bernice.

“It most certainly is not,” said Tilly in her professor’s voice. “That’s exactly what happened. Now that my brain is operating on all cylinders again, I’m being haunted by colorful memories I’d rather forget.”

Nana looked frustrated. “Hold on. If
I
didn’t let no one try on my glasses, how come I’m blind as everyone else this mornin’?”

Tilly slid her eyeglasses off her face and offered them to Nana. “See if these help.”

“You guys!” I chided. “You
have
to stop doing tha—”

“I can see!” Nana exclaimed. She coaxed the frames up her nose and darted a look around the lobby. “The furniture’s not miniaturized no more! Your heads are bigger than mothballs. I can even see the scribblin’ on that whiteboard over there.”

Tilly shook her head. “When I got up this morning, I must have grabbed your glasses off the bedside table by mistake. Forgive me, Marion.” She gestured toward the discarded lenses. “Shall I take those off your hands?”

But once she’d adjusted them on her face, she shook her head. “These aren’t mine either. All right.” Giving her walking stick an imperious thump on the floor, she steeled her eyes and hardened her jaw. “I have only two things to say. First, we owe Emily a titanic debt of thanks for resolving this imbroglio, and second, one of you is wearing my glasses. I don’t know who it is, but I’m giving you notice. I want them back.”

Relieved that all nine of them weren’t about to suffer kidney failure, I sucked in a calming breath and allowed myself an indulgent sigh.

“Can anyone read the handwritin’ on that whiteboard?” Nana asked off-handedly. “I can’t figure out where it says we’re goin’, but the bus better hurry up and get here, ’cause it says we’re leavin’ at nine-thirty.”

I checked my watch.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
. I couldn’t leave in ten minutes. I hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet!

“Get the eyeglasses thing sorted out,” I urged as I raced toward the elevator. “I’ll see you on the bus.”

“What about Dick?” Grace and Helen shouted at me in unison.

“Don’t worry about them!” I bypassed the closed elevator door and headed for the stairs. “I’m on top of it!”

_____

The Rijksmuseum is a lumbering, red-brick leviathan that sprawls the length of two football fields. Blending the elegance of a French
chateau with the ruggedness of a fortified castle, it’s an imposing
jumble of gothic turrets, decorative gables, grand archways, towering
windows, and cold gray stone. Skylights the size of solar panels
stud its long expanse of roof, spilling light onto paintings that il
lustrate the domestic lives of Dutchmen in an age when their galleons ruled the waves, and their burgomeisters ruled the world in periwigs and pumps. The men responsible for creating these portraits are referred to as the Dutch Masters—a group of artistic geniuses whose masterpieces hung in the homes of seventeenth-century patricians before ending up on the lids of twentieth-century cigar boxes.

We were scheduled to meet an art historian on the first floor at eleven o’clock, so we had plenty of time to explore the ground
floor exhibits before then. I power-walked through the Dutch
history rooms, taking quick notice of the clocks, ships, weapons and armor, then wended my way around to the sculpture and decorative arts rooms, where I found Chip Soucy parked in front of a glass case that housed an exhibit more suited to my taste—a dollhouse.

“Wow.” I joined him at the display case. “My Grampa Sippel built a dollhouse for me when I was little, but it didn’t look anything like this.”

Chip donned his glasses to read the accompanying plaque. “‘Dollhouse of Petronella Oortman, 1686–1705.’ Cripes, it took nineteen years to complete the thing. I’d like to build one for my granddaughter, but I’d like to finish it before she graduates from college.”

The dollhouse was a miniaturized wonder, depicting nine rooms of what were probably high-class digs in Petronella’s day. Built inside an open-fronted cabinet of tortoise shell and tin, it boasted Lilliputian-size furnishings, complete with porcelain spittoons, gilt-framed portraits, tapestried walls, China plates, and itty-bitty irons in an array of microscopic sizes.

“All the comforts of home,” I quipped. “They even played
kids’ games.” I indicated a wooden game board sitting atop a
table in a second-floor salon. “What’s your best guess? I’m thinking Parcheesi.”

“Backgammon,” he said without hesitation.

“How can you tell?”

“I cheated.” He nodded at the wall to my left. “You can see it better in the painting.”

Petronella had apparently been so proud of her creation, she’d commissioned an artist to reproduce it on canvas. The result was
an eight-foot-high painting that replicated the
details of the dollhouse so perfectly, it looked like something spewed out by the Big Bertha copy machine at Kinko’s. But while the painting depicted maids and mistresses in attendance in every room, the dollhouse was strangely unoccupied, or at least, it was now.

“Do you suppose the people in the painting represent dolls that used to be in the dollhouse?” I wondered aloud.

“That’d be my guess,” said Chip. “Looks like they all bit the dust.”

“They must have been really fragile for not even one of them to survive.”

Chip shrugged. “It’s been three hundred years. Stuff breaks, gets set aside, goes missing. Speaking of which, I hear a couple of your guys are MIA.”

“They’re presently unaccounted for, but I’m expecting them back at any moment,” I said in an upbeat voice.

“Yeah? Well, good luck with that.”

“Please
,
don’t sound so grim. They’ll show up. The police
assured
me they would.”

He forced an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Guess I’m a little jaded about the prospect of actually finding a missing person. Personal experience and all that.”

Was this another reference to Bobby Guerrette? His classmates were talking about him so much, I was beginning to think he was on the trip with us. “Would you do me a favor?” I finally asked. “Would you please get me up to speed with the Bobby Guerrette story? I know he was really smart; he championed Laura LaPierre when she was being ridiculed, and he refused to attend his senior prom with Paula Peavey. I keep hearing everyone bat his name around, but no one has breathed a word about how he disappeared. It’s almost as if they’re afraid to.”

“Sounds like you’ve been hanging out with the wrong people. No one’s afraid to talk about it. It’s just that some of these yahoos don’t want to waste time talking about Bobby when they could be talking about themselves. So, what do you want to know?”

“How did he disappear?”

“It was on Senior Skip Day, a month before graduation. We de
cided to spend the day at a park near the Bangor Water Works. It
was a great place to hide out from the parents. More like a grotto than a park. A steep hill. Trees. A waterfall. A little manmade sluiceway that funneled water down the hill. A fountain that could have rivaled Vegas at the time. We used to monkey around in the water, acting like dopes. It only reached our ankles, but it was like wading in a brook, without the aggravation of mosquitoes or black flies.”