G'Day to Die (3 page)

I scanned the windows at the rear of the bus to do a quick head count, aghast when I saw there
were
no heads, only rows of empty seats.

EH! They
were
the culprits! Oh, my God. Where were they?

I gave Henry’s arm a frantic tug. “It’s my group that’s missing. This is
so
unlike them. They’re never late. Ever. Something terrible must have happened to them.”

He unholstered his cell phone. “No worries. I’ll call emergency services again if you like.”

Etienne grabbed my wrist and aimed me toward the visitor’s center, motioning with his hand. “Is that one of your group in the window?”

I strained to see what he was pointing at. It was fluorescent pink and filled the entire window, which meant it had to be Lucille Rassmuson. Oh, thank God. “Hold off on the phone call,” I instructed Henry. “I see them. I’ll be right back.”

I rushed into the visitor’s center to find all eleven of them cowering by the window, bunched up like grapes. “Are you guys okay? Is someone hurt?
What
are you doing in here? The bus is about to leave!” And then I said something to them that no other person in the annals of history has ever said to a group of Iowans. “You’re late. Do you hear me? L-A-T-E. Late!”

They stared back at me like zombies. Good Lord, what was wrong with them? “Guys?”

“Did you know that of the ten deadliest snakes in the world, all ten are Australian?” said Dick Teig in a strained whisper.

“And there’s a seashell here that can kill you if the creature inside chomps down on you?” said Grace Stolee.

“And there’s a rock with thorny spikes that can pierce shoe leather and shoot you full of enough toxin to turn your innards to creme brulée?” added Dick Stolee.

“It’s not a rock,” said Bernice. “It’s a fish that looks like a rock.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dick sputtered. “Well, I think
you
look like a rock.”

“And there’s a saltwater crocodile that can leap twenty feet out of the water and eat you in
one
ferocious bite,” fretted Lucille, though in her case, it might be
two
.

“And there’s a big bird in the rain forest that can split you open with one swipe of its claw,” Osmond croaked. “It’s like a can opener with wings.”

Since no one was waving around
The Big Golden Book of Reptiles, Insects, and Marine Life that Can Kill You in Australia,
I figured all this sudden knowledge had originated in one place.

Nana regarded me anxiously. “Emily, dear, did you know there’s more things that can kill you in Australia than anywhere else on earth? That fella what looks like the crocodile hunter was nice enough to give us the scoop.”

Note to self:
Kill Jake Silverthorn
.

“Okay, gang,” I said in the most soothing voice I could muster. “I think you might be overreacting a teensy bit.”

“Tell that to the girl who keeled over out there in the underbrush,” argued Dick Teig, his gaze riveted on the floor in an obvious search for killer insects with dinner plans.

“None of us would have signed up for this trip if Emily had told us how dangerous this place was,” complained Bernice. “It’s all her fault. No one wants to be insect bait for the next two weeks. I say we go home. And we better get refunds!”

“Show of hands for how many people want to go home,” asked Osmond.

“EEE-YAH!” yelled Dick Teig, stomping his foot on the floor so hard, the windows rattled. “Die, you cussed bug.”

Dick Stolee sidled up to him. “What’d you kill?”

Dick lifted his sandal. “Dust bunny.”

Dick Stolee nodded. “Looks like a poison one.”

Section two, subparagraph three of my official
Escort’s Manual
states that the savvy tour escort “will do everything in her power to place her guests’ minds at ease so they can fully enjoy every moment of their tour experience.” Unfortunately, subparagraph three offered no suggestions about how to do that, so I was going to have to ad lib my butt off.

“Listen to me, everyone: the only thing you’re in mortal danger of is missing the bus. We’re not walking on a beach, so you can’t be attacked by seashells. We’re not wading in the ocean, so you can’t be stung by rocks. We’re not visiting the Great Barrier Reef, so you can’t be devoured by crocodiles. We’re not exploring the rain forest, so you can’t be ripped open by birds.”

Alice Tjarks shot her hand into the air. “Excuse me, Emily, but what’s left to see if you’re not taking us to visit any of the exciting touristy stuff?”

“Yeah,” sniped Helen Teig. “We expect to get our money’s worth!”

“We didn’t fly all the way over here to do everything on the cheap!” Dick Stolee protested.

Gee, that worked well. “You
will
get your money’s worth. It’s a big country. There’s plenty left to see. But you won’t see any of it unless you get on the bus.”

Foot shuffling. Sighs. Indecisive looks. “What about snakes?” Margi called out.

“You only have to walk a short distance to the bus, and it’s on pavement, so just watch where you’re going. Australian snakes prefer to slither in the grass anyway.” At least, I hoped they did.

“Does anyone have a weapon in case Emily is feeding us a line of bull?” asked Dick Stolee.

“Tilly has one,” Bernice piped up. “Let her go in front. If she sees a snake, she can beat the crap out of it with her cane while the rest of us hightail it to the bus.”

Nods. Smiles. Grunts of approval. In the next half second Tilly got body-passed from the back to the front, and everyone bunched up in line behind her.

“Are you okay with this setup, Tilly?” I asked skeptically.

She stood pencil straight in her madras skirt and visor, looking stern and professorial. “I’ve faced giant dung beetles in Africa and black flies in Maine. I should be able to handle this.” She rapped her walking stick on the floor. “Come along, people! Look lively, or you’ll be using your opposable thumbs to get back to Melbourne.”

They scuffed across the floor in a solid clump, as if they’d been Super-Glued. “Hey, we still have a vote pending about whether we’re going home. Can I see a show of hands?” Osmond yelled, as they squeezed through the door.

I whipped out my camera and got off a shot, grinning, as they shuffled across the pavement in caterpillar formation. I could see the caption under the photo in my travel newsletter:
TOGETHERNESS, AUSTRALIAN STYLE
. I snapped another for good measure, suddenly reminded of what Peter Blunt had said.

He’d implied that tourists use up all their film shooting pictures of the Shipwreck Coast. But Claire told me she always cut off the heads of her subjects, so she didn’t even own a camera. So if she hadn’t gone back out into the heat to take pictures, why
had
she gone out?

I
took an instant liking to Melbourne with its grandiose Victorian buildings, modern high-rises, and colorful electric trams. Back in the 1850s some guy with a lot of vision drew a blueprint for the city, so streets are laid out in an orderly grid that has “Iowa Highway System” written all over it. Even people without maps can’t get lost.

Unlike Iowa, however, Melbourne leans toward the eclectic. For instance, our hotel was located on a quiet side street around the corner from an imposing stone government building, a five-star Pan-Asian restaurant, and a boutique with a tasteful display of whips, chains, and leather bras studded with metal spikes. Iowans are more discreet about specialty boutiques like this. They prefer them to be located in places that are more off the beaten path. Like…LA.

We’d made it back from Port Campbell with an hour to spare before our “Meet and Greet,” so after showering and restyling my hair, I zipped myself into a strapless black number with a peekaboo cutout in the back, slipped into stiletto slides, grabbed my shoulder bag, and rode the elevator to the lounge on the top floor.

The glass-enclosed room afforded dazzling bird’s-eye views of Melbourne’s darkening skyline and city lights. Henry sloshed punch into glasses at a buffet table, whistling slightly off-key to a tune that was being piped in over the stereo system. “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”? Hmm. Was it odd that we were in Australia’s cultural epicenter, listening to America’s greatest hits of World War II?

I took quick visual inventory, surprised when I found none of my crew in the conversational groupings scattered throughout the room. I tried to ignore a frisson of worry. Five minutes ’til showtime; they should be here by now. I hoped they weren’t all cowering in their rooms, too scared to go out, or…or stockpiling bug killer. That stuff could blow like a grenade if exposed to extreme heat, and not to put too fine a point on it, but it was poison!

“Are you Emily?” asked a man who spoke with a hint of a foreign accent. “Conrad Carver,” he said, shaking my hand. “I heard your name being called out at the Port Campbell visitor center. Did the coroner give you any idea what might have happened to the Bellows woman?”

I suspected the reason Conrad Carver looked familiar was because he had Albert Einstein’s hair and mustache. He was short and slightly built, with a unibrow that looked like a happy victim of Miracle-Gro. “He couldn’t tell me a thing, other than he’d be performing a postmortem.”

“It’s a terrible way to begin a holiday.”

“I’ll say.” Especially for Claire. “Are you traveling by yourself, Conrad?”

“No, no. My wife is with me. If you want to know the truth, this is our anniversary trip.” He smiled modestly. “Fifty years tomorrow.”

“Congratulations!” I clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s a great accomplishment, especially in this day and age.” I couldn’t place the accent. German? Russian?

“You must give all the credit to my wife for putting up with me all these years. The long work hours. The extended travel. The phone calls telling her I’d have to miss the children’s birthdays, again.”

“What kind of work did you do?”

“I was senior paleobotanist for the Smithsonian Institution, and in my spare time I wrote botany textbooks for universities.”

Guy Madelyn motioned to us with his camera. “Do you mind? I’d like to get shots of everyone.”

“Why don’t you take one of Conrad with his wife?” I suggested, stepping out of the way. “An anniversary photo. Where’s your wife, Conrad?”

“Maybe later with my wife,” he said, hooking an eager arm around my waist and yanking me close. “Say, cheese.”

Guy pressed the shutter.

Etienne strode toward us, giving me a long, lingering look up and down. “Love the dress, what there is of it.”

“Is this your wife?” Conrad asked, quickly dropping his arm.

Etienne flashed a slow smile. “She could be. All she has to do is say something other than, ‘I need time to think about it.’”

Conrad looked me in the eye. “A handsome young man asks for your hand, and you don’t say yes?”

“I brought you some punch, Em,” Duncan interrupted, cutting in front of Etienne to hand me a glass. “The dress rocks. What’s it made of? Spandex?” He planted a kiss on my bare shoulder, then lowered his hand to the peekaboo cutout at the small of my back, grazing his fingertips over the triangle of exposed skin. “Nice.”

Guy stepped forward and introduced himself to Etienne and Duncan with enthusiastic handshakes. “Could I drag you gentlemen over by the window so I can get a few photos of you against the lights of the Melbourne skyline?” He studied both of them with narrowed gaze. “Interesting bone structure. I bet…Never mind. We’ll see how it turns out. Do you mind?”

“Happy to be accommodating,” said Duncan.

Etienne hesitated before nodding agreement. He threw me a meaningful look. “Don’t move,
bella
. I’ll be right back.”

Conrad wagged a crooked forefinger at me. “I know now why you haven’t said yes to the dark-haired man. The light-haired man is also in love with you. Every woman wants to be beautiful, but for the ones who are, it must sometimes feel like a curse.”

Ooo, I liked this guy!

“Which one will you choose?”

I sighed my frustration. “Here’s the thing, Conrad: last November I conducted a test that was supposed to resolve all my doubts about which man was the one for me, and it failed miserably.”

“Both gentlemen flunked?”

“They both passed! It proved they’re both kind, generous, wonderful people, so I’m back to dithering again. And I hate to dither, but this decision is going to affect the rest of my life, so I have to be sure.”

Conrad appeared fascinated. “I’ve never conducted a scientific test that involved human participation. What was the most difficult problem you faced?”

“Eating all the maraschino cherries they both piled onto my ice cream sundae. I get a stomachache just thinking about it.”

As the background music changed to a rollicking rendition of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” I saw my group straggle into the lounge as if their energy gauges were all registering “Empty.” They checked their watches in one collective motion, then literally sagged against each other, sucking in air. Nana gave me a limp-wristed wave before finding a chair and falling into it.

“Conrad, how would you like to meet my grandmother?” Grabbing his arm, I waltzed him across the floor, stopping in front of Nana’s chair. “Please tell me you haven’t made the rounds of all the nearby convenience stores to clean them out of household pesticide.”

She peered at me as if I’d just caught her switching my mother’s soup cans out of alphabetical order.

“Nana! If those spray cans explode, they can become biological weapons!”

She snapped her fingers to get the group’s attention. “Did anyone buy Raid?”

“Shoot,” said Dick Teig. “How come I didn’t think of that?”

“Make a list,” yelled Osmond.

“Sorry, dear. None of us thought a that. It’s a real good idea though.”

I eyed her suspiciously. “So what have all of you been doing that’s gotten you so tuckered out?”

“We done a little shoppin’.” She cupped her hand over her mouth. “And you know how tirin’ it is when the fellas are along and you gotta put up with their poutin’, whinin’, and grouchies. Your grampa only got grouchy one time when I took ’im shoppin’, then it never happened again.”

“What did you do? Drug him?”

“Nope. I left him home. Worked real good. Who’s this you got with you, dear?”

I presented Conrad front and center. “Nana, everyone, this is Conrad Carver, who will be married fifty happy years tomorrow. How about that?”

Conrad looked a little embarrassed when spontaneous applause erupted. Sketching a little bow, he held up his hand for quiet. “To be completely truthful, not all the years were happy, but we made it through the bad ones, so here we are.”

“He looks like someone,” Grace Stolee claimed. “Who does he look like?”

“He sounds like Count Dracula,” said Bernice. “Where are you from? Transylvania?”

He gave Bernice a hard look. “Poland.”

“Then how come your name isn’t a foot long and end in ‘ski’?”

He lifted his chin proudly. “I was orphaned in Hitler’s war and adopted by an American GI, so my name doesn’t end in ‘ski’; it ends in ‘ver’. Carver.”

“But your name ended in ‘ski’ before, right?”

He fired a look at Bernice that, in the movie version, would have detonated her hearing aid and caused her head to explode. “Listen closely, please. My name is Carver.”

“Wilcome, Australian Advinture travelers!” Henry leaped onto a low table that gave him a great overview of the room. “There’s punch for you here, and the kitchen is sinding up a few nibbles for you to snack on.”

We were suddenly invaded by a small army of waiters pushing food trolleys laden with oversized trays. “This is what we call ‘bush gourmet’,” Henry said expansively, “so gird your taste buds.” One of the waiters handed him a small menu that he quickly perused. “You’re in for a treat, mates. Chef Viggo has prepared smoked emu, crocodile macadamia brochettes with bush tomato chutney, bunya nuts, lemon-aspen lemoncurd, prawns fried in coconut with curried mayonnaise, handmade agnolotti filled with yabbie mousseline, baby wattle seed blini topped with cress, and baby Barramundi fish wrapped in paperbark tree sleeves and served with Kakadu plum sauce.”

A ground swell of “Mmmms” traveled around the room, fading when it reached my group, who were staring at each other in gastronomic horror. “What kind of sauce did he say?” asked Osmond, desperately readjusting his hearing aids.

“There are two tricks to a succissful tour experience,” Henry continued, brandishing two fingers in the air. “The first is to learn everyone’s name, and the sicond is to talk to everyone. That’s why you’re here, mates. To be frindly. I also need you to fill out midical history forms, so I’ll leave thim on a table by the door and you can hand thim back to me in the morning. So what do you say we git started? Eat. Drink. Mingle.”

In the background Burl Ives serenaded us with “Mares Eat Oats,” causing me to wonder if this was a subliminal call to the feed trough or a top-ten hit from Melbourne’s Pop Chart list. I located the stack of medical forms by the door and beat back a sudden wave of grief. Maybe if we’d filled out the forms before the trip started, it might have given Peter Blunt some insight into Claire’s death, or at least provided a starting point. I knew Peter didn’t suspect foul play, but I wouldn’t rest easily until we heard the results of the autopsy.

Conrad tapped my arm. “Would you like to meet my wife?”

“I’d love to meet your wife. And I’ll even go one better. I’ll introduce her to the whole Iowa gang. Where is she?”

“Over there by Mr. Madelyn. She appears to be in line to have her photograph taken. Let me run over there and bring her back.”

I checked out the queue that had formed behind Guy and did a quick double take when I spied Etienne and Duncan posing with a top-heavy brunette in Daisy Duke short shorts and snakeskin boots who was gyrating against them like a Vegas showgirl. “Great moves,” Guy encouraged, “but maybe you could just prop yourself against the men for a few seconds so I can get a still shot. Think, Greek temple. You’re a vestal virgin and the men are gods.”

She splayed herself against them, lips puckered and eyes at half-mast, looking hot and seductive. I rolled my eyes. This could take all night. She was never going to get the hang of the virgin thing.

Bernice came up behind me. “Who’s the sexpot?”

“You got me.”

“Looks like your two Romeos are finding out for you. It’s the testosterone. Men don’t know how to handle it. Give ’em an eyeful of bosom and booty, and they all turn into cave men. There’s probably some fancy anthropological name for it.” She grabbed Tilly and gestured toward the trio. “You’re the professor. You see what’s going on over there? What do you call that?”

“Group photo.”

I would have chuckled if I hadn’t been distracted by Jake Silverthorn’s arrival on the scene. He stood just outside camera range, arms crossed, features tight, toothpick twitching in the corner of his mouth. He gave the brunette a “get over here now!” head bob. She stuck her tongue out at him and mugged for the camera.

“Lola,” he said in a menacing tone.

“Git lost! Can’t you see I’m busy with some real gintlemen?”

“Don’t make me come over there.”

“Ooo. I’m scared.”

Nana snapped a close-up of Bernice, Tilly, and me. “I’m gettin’ photos of everyone on the tour.”

“Don’t give me that,” Bernice said in an accusatory tone. “You’re grandstanding. You just want to show off for the famous photographer.”

“Listen here, Bernice Zwerg, if you knew me a little better, you’d know the reason I’m doin’ this is on account a Emily.”

Me?
I stared down at Nana. “Why are you taking photos for me?”

She lowered her voice. “Mug shots, dear. In case it turns out that Bellows woman was done in by someone on the tour, I wanna have your suspects all lined up for you. Like what we done in Hawaii. I’m makin’ one a them preemptive moves.”