From Bad to Wurst Read online

  I allowed myself a self-satisfied smile. I was so right about this.

  I entered Maisie Barnes in my search field and, except for her name being mentioned as part of the Little Bitte Band, I got bupkis. But when I accessed the Iowa White Pages directory, I found her address, age, and the additional detail that she was related to Dale Barnes, who, I discovered after a search on that name, resided at the same address. So Maisie’s gold band wasn’t simply a piece of random jewelry. She was indeed married…to some poor shmuck who was being cuckolded up the wazoo.

  The confirmation caused thoughts to crowd my head like gumballs in a vending machine.

  Had I attributed the wrong motivation to Zola’s assailant? Had the purpose been to kill her not for what she might reveal but for what she’d already revealed? She’d dissected Wendell under a microscope, and he hadn’t liked it. Did Wendell and Maisie want Zola out of the picture before she had an opportunity to broadcast the results of his disastrous reading to the other band members? Was that why Maisie and Zola had been best friends for all of ten seconds?

  I stared at a phone number scratched into the stall’s partition, mentally dazed.

  But if Maisie and Wendell were a couple, why was Wendell hitting on Bernice?

  Unless…

  My mind kicked into overdrive.

  Could Maisie have acted on her own and not told Wendell about her murder plot until after the fact? Wendell had admitted that Maisie always followed through and never disappointed—that she was his go-to person. But this time, could he have been so appalled by her deed that instead of offering his expected congratulations, he’d condemned her? Was that the reason he was fawning over Bernice? To make an obvious show of depriving Maisie of his affection? To punish her in the most public and hurtful way possible?

  Which led me to my next question.

  Were they even a couple anymore?

  In the distance, I heard the first strains of oompah music ring out from the dining room, causing a muscle to clench involuntarily in my stomach.

  If Wendell had dumped Maisie, she might be putting on a good act right now, but she was probably seething inside, a ticking time-bomb ready to explode. And if he was pouring salt into her wound by flirting with Bernice, then…then…

  I stuffed my phone back into my shoulder bag and unlatched the stall door.

  Then Bernice could be in grave danger. What was the old saying—in for a penny, in for a pound? If Maisie had killed once, she was already looking at capital murder charges, so she’d have nothing to lose by killing twice. Was there any better way to get even with a former lover than by offing his latest flirtation? Which meant…

  Omigod. Bernice could be next.

  I dashed into the hallway, startled by the sounds that greeted me. Foot-stomping so raucous, the floor vibrated. Whistling so shrill, my ears crackled. Clapping so loud, it drowned out the music. Was that the audience’s intent? To muffle the band’s presentation with an outburst of moblike behavior? Or were they simply aiming to muffle the sour notes of the one band member who lacked any talent at all?

  Oh, geez. Poor Dad.

  Fraught with anxiety, I raced into the dining room…to find the boisterous mob on its feet, arms intertwined, hips swinging, feet clacking, dancing in the aisles and between tables, gyrating to a polka that the Guten Tags’ accordion player was pounding out like Myron Floren on steroids. His fingers flew over the keyboard and button board with wild abandon, creating a sound so exciting, so heart-pumping, his fellow band members simply stepped aside to give him room. The audience cheered. The audience laughed. Even the waitstaff deserted their posts to kick up their heels with the guests. He played with the ease of a lifelong musician and the confidence of a virtuoso—like Yo-Yo Ma on his cello, Ringo on his snare drum, Schroeder on his toy piano. His performance was flawless. Breathtaking. Spectacular. But the only thing I could do was gawk.

  Dad?

  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 t
o 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. Wit
h 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.