From Bad to Wurst (17 page)

sixteen

The lunch crowd adored
him.

He received so many standing ovations, he was basically forced to play right through everyone else's slot. By the time we dragged him off the stage to board the bus, he'd depleted his playlist while the other musicians had gotten off not a single note, which kinda explained their grumpiness as they stomped out of the dining room. I volunteered to help Dad pack up while Wally and Etienne herded guests across the parking lot to the coach. I greeted him with a bewildered smile and the question of the hour.

“What was that?”

He looked burdened with guilt as he opened Astrid's instrument case and maneuvered the accordion into its foam insets. “I hogged all the time. You suppose the real musicians were okay with that?”

“Real musicians? Dad, you just entertained us with an hour's worth of flawlessly played polka music. You
are
a real musician.” Although I couldn't have made that statement last night. “What did you do? How did you do it?”

He shrugged as he closed the lid and secured the locks. “I didn't look at the sheet music.”

“Okay. And then what?”

“Nothin'.”

“C'mon, Dad. Last night you couldn't buy a chord. Today you're inventing new ones. What changed?”

A one-shouldered shrug. “I did what I used to do before my teacher found out I couldn't read music. I just let my fingers play the songs I hear in my head.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You mean, you play by ear?”

“Guess so.”

“So…you can play anything?”

“Gotta hear it first.”

“Holy crap, Dad. You're a musical genius! They should have treated you like…like a child prodigy when you were growing up.”

He shook his head. “Before you can be a prodigy, you gotta know how to read sheet music, and I couldn't.” He let out a rueful laugh. “They didn't think your ole dad was too bright back then, hon.”

“Well, they were wrong, and now you've been discovered. You're going to be the next great sensation, Dad. I can see it all now. The seventies had the Rubik's Cube. The nineties had Tickle Me Elmo. The new millennium will have”—I opened my palm and panned across the headlines of an imaginary newspaper—“Bob Andrew, accordionist extraordinaire. You'll probably get your own action figure!”

Dad sighed. “Hope not. It'll be just one more thing the grandsons can sneak into the bathroom to clog the toilet.”

I was all smiles as I escorted him through the dining room beneath the admiring eyes and congratulatory handshakes of the restaurant staff and guests. In the space of an hour he'd become king for the day. The toast of the town. The gold standard against which all other accordion players would heretofore be judged. “Spread the word,” I advised the hostess on our way out the front entrance. “Bob Andrew. Windsor City, Iowa. He's available for weddings, anniversaries, football games, and bar mitzvahs.”

Not that she understood a word I said, but the grin on Dad's face told me it made him feel pretty special.

Etienne met us at the rear door of the coach, and it was obvious that something was up. “The authorities in Munich have lowered the boom. They'll be meeting our bus the minute it arrives back at the hotel.”

For the third time in as many days we trooped into the Prince Ludwig room, but we weren't expecting another commendation from the mayor. We were expecting to be grilled—a process that started less than a minute after we'd seated ourselves and been introduced to the officer in charge, Kriminaloberkommissar Axel Horn.

He spoke perfect English with no trace of an accent, which gave me hope that he might allow us to call him something other than Kriminaloberkommissar, which I suspected none of us could twist our tongues around. Standing in the front of the room with his arms folded and feet braced apart, he studied our faces as if his mere gaze could detect guilt like an X-ray could detect broken bones. “Before we begin, would anyone like to confess to the murder of Zola Czarnecki?”

Gasps of shock. Murmurs of disbelief.

Wow.
Talk about cutting to the chase. Just one more example of German efficiency.

“Someone killed her?” cried Maisie. “But…what about her heart condition? Wally told us—”

“How'd it happen?” Bernice called out. “When they loaded her onto the gurney she looked okay, except for the fact that she wasn't breathing.”

“Are you accusing one of
us
of killing her?” demanded Gilbert Graves.

“Yes,” admitted Horn. “I am.” He loosened the tie at his throat and unbuttoned the placket of his sport coat. He carried no notebook, iPad, or clipboard. This guy was apparently so well versed with the case that he kept all the details tucked away in his head. “Who are the smokers in the group? Please identify yourselves.”

Heads turned left and right, but no one raised their hand.

“No smokers among you? Not even one?”

“Maisie Barnes smokes,” Hetty offered helpfully.

“I do not,” Maisie fired back. “I'm quitting. Everyone knows that.”

“Frau Barnes?” Horn drilled her with a no-nonsense look. “Please show me what you claim not to be smoking.”

“It's an e-cigarette.” She reached into her shoulder bag and fished out the device, holding it above her head for his perusal. “No smoke involved. Just vaporized liquid.”

“Do you refill the cartridge yourself?”

“Sure do. It's a lot cheaper than the disposable prefilled kind. But what does my e-cigarette have to do with Zola's death?”

“Frau Czarnecki was poisoned with liquid nicotine, which is conveniently contained in a refill bottle for an e-cigarette.”

More gasps.

Maisie, however, remained oddly impassive. “So?”

“So…were you carrying a refill bottle in your bag last night, Frau Barnes?”

“I always carry a refill with me.”

“I'd like to see it, please.”

She shook her head. “Can't help you.”

Horn tipped his head slightly, as if to indicate checkmate. “So you disposed of the bottle after you poisoned Frau Czarnecki at the Hippodrom last night?”

Maisie stared at him, aghast. “Are you crazy? I
liked
Zola. Why would I want to kill her?”

“I intend to find out, Frau Barnes. But since you are the only member of your tour group who is known to be in possession of liquid nicotine, the mantle of guilt seems to fall squarely on your shoulders.”

Maisie looked him squarely in the eye. “I don't think so.”

“Really? And why is that?”

She sat up straighter in her chair. “Because at some point between the time I left my hotel room and the time our band left the stage last night, my refill was stolen out of my shoulder bag. I couldn't have poisoned Zola even if I'd wanted to. I had nothing to poison her
with
.”

“How very convenient. And I should believe you why?”

Her voice turned hard. “Because…it's the truth?”

“Excuse me.” Mom waved her hand in the air. “Did someone we know die?”

“Besides,” Maisie continued, “you can't pin this on me and make it stick. Nicotine refills are sold in every corner store. I'm not the only guest on this tour with exclusive access to them. I'm just the guest who got pickpocketed. And furthermore…” She heaved herself to her feet. “If someone in this room is the thief, I have a warning for you. If liquid nicotine comes in contact with your skin, it can kill you, so I hope you took some precautions when you used it because if you didn't, you'll be joining Zola in the morgue.” She dropped back into her chair.

A nervous undercurrent swept through the room. Osmond rose politely to his feet. “If that stuff is so toxic, why do you carry it around with you?”

“Hey, no one uses it except me, and I'm always extra careful, so what's the big deal?”

“The big deal is, you just said it can kill us,” huffed Lucille.

Maisie's voice grew tight. “Not if you avoid direct contact.”

“What I want to know is, if that liquid is so toxic, why do you
smoke
it?” Tilly inquired.

“I don't smoke it. I vape it.”

“What's that mean?” asked Nana.

“It means she smokes it,” said Dick Teig.

“I do not! I don't even inhale.”

“Just like Bill Clinton!” enthused Mom.

“You might as well be carrying unexploded ordnance around with you,” Dick Stolee accused. He gestured toward Horn. “Don't you people have laws against carrying weapons-grade material around in purses?”

“Our tobacco laws apply to minors and vending machines, not to purses.” Horn nodded toward Maisie. “Frau Barnes, perhaps you would show the other guests what the bottle in question looks like as a point of reference.”

“I—uh, I don't have one with me.”

He lifted his brows. “Was it not you who claimed to carry a refill with you at all times?”

“I stuck a fresh bottle in my shoulder bag this morning, but when we left the castle, my bag broke and just about everything fell out.” She held her detached strap up as evidence. “I haven't seen it since. It's probably still rolling down the hill.”

I exchanged a furtive look with Etienne, who'd stashed it in his pocket, then felt my heart nearly burst from my chest as I was struck by a sudden paralyzing fear.
What if the bottle leaks?

“Well, that's just great,” railed Dick Stolee. “What if some kid finds it lying on the side of the road and decides to play with it?
You
might know not to touch the stuff, but the kid doesn't. Victim number two, coming right up.”

“There was
no
victim number one,” yelled Maisie. “I
did not
kill Zola.”

Kriminaloberkommissar Horn cleared phlegm from his throat like a faulty muffler expels exhaust—with ear-popping explosiveness. “Thank you,” he said after every eye in the room riveted on him. “Since we appear to have reached a temporary impasse, I believe this would be a good time to re-create the scene of the crime. If you would be so kind as to ignore my lack of artistic ability.”

He strode to the whiteboard that spanned the front wall and picked up a black marker from the tray. At the top of the board he wrote the word
Hippodrom
. Beneath that he drew three rectangles, each one over a yard long. “The rectangles represent the three tables you occupied in the festival tent last night. I've made them overly large to provide you plenty of space to indicate where you sat in relation to Frau Czarnecki. If you would be so good as to write your name in the location where you sat, it would be most helpful.”

He recapped the marker and stared at the group.

The group sat quietly and stared back.

“I mean for you to do it
now
,” he barked. “Everyone up. Form a queue.”

We merged into some semblance of a line, with Bernice pushing her way to the front and grabbing a marker. “Are your little boxes lined up from right to left or left to right?”

Horn blinked. “What?”

Bernice rolled her eyes. “I sat at the table closest to the partition. So, depending on your perspective, I could either be sitting at
this
table”—she flicked her hand toward the rectangle on the far right—“or
this
table”—the rectangle on the far left.

“If I could intercede briefly,” said Etienne as he uncapped a marker. “My wife and I presided over tables one and two.” He wrote our names in the center of the appropriate rectangle. “Our tour director, Mr. Peppers, was responsible for table three. I suspect this might help guests remember where they sat.”

It helped the musicians. As for the rest of the gang? Not so much.

“I'm telling you, Helen, I sat right here.” Dick Teig rapped his knuckle beneath the name he'd just written. “Table one. With Emily.”

“You did not. You sat with Etienne and Dick.”

“Stolee and I
both
sat with Emily. Tell her, Dick.”

Dick Stolee sidled up to him and whispered out the side of his mouth, “Let it go, bud. That was today.”

Nana picked up a marker. “Are we s'posed to mark where we was sittin' before or after we changed places?”

Horn strolled over to her. “When did you change places?”

“It was on account of them folks what thought we was celebrities. We had to pose for pictures, but when the food started comin' we had to sit down real quick, so we ended up in other spots on the bench.”

“Write your name in the place you sat to eat your meal,” instructed Horn.

“Should we write our name if we didn't eat anything?” asked Margi.

Horn regarded her oddly before focusing on Nana once again. “There were photos?”

“You bet. You wanna see? I got lots.” She whipped her phone out of her jacket pocket. Horn turned around to face the room.

“How many of you took photos on your camera phones last night?”

Just about every hand in the room went up.

“I would like to see them. Please, form a queue behind the podium.”

While the room erupted in another mass movement, I wrote my name on the whiteboard, then handed the marker to Mom. “You were sitting next to me last night, Mom, so you can write your name right here.” I tapped my finger on the board.

“Why am I doing this?” she asked as she dutifully penned her name.

“To help the police with their investigation.”

“What are they investigating?”

It took only a few minutes for Horn to examine a gazillion digital photos, a circumstance that related more to subject matter than German efficiency. “Did any of you take a photo of anything other than your own face?” he asked with frustration.

“Like what, for instance?” asked Margi.

“Like group photos. Table shots. Who was conversing with whom.”