From Bad to Wurst Page 18

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

  “I have a dynamite selection that I took at the site where that bomb exploded,” offered Bernice. “Real Pulitzer Prize–winning stuff. You wanna see those?”

  “For what reason?” asked Horn.

  She shrugged. “You need a reason?”

  He grabbed the edges of the podium, his knuckles turning white. “Has everyone posted their name on the board?”

  Nods. Yups. You bets.

  “I will ask once more. Would any of you like to confess to the murder of Zola Czarnecki?”

  Head shaking. Shrugs. Blank looks.

  A hand shot into the air. “I’d like to make a confession.”

  Gasps. The loudest of which was my own when I saw who’d said it.

  “You are…?” asked Horn.

  “Wendell Newton.” He nodded toward the whiteboard. “Table two. Trumpet player for the Guten Tags. I had a run-in with Zola yesterday in Oberammergau, so I wanted to ’fess up. She told my fortune, and—”

  “Explain, please?”

  “She was a self-proclaimed psychic. A fortuneteller.”

  “She preferred the term clairvoyant,” corrected Dick Stolee.

  “Anyway,” Wendell continued, “she told my fortune, and I didn’t like what she had to say, so I reacted like a hothead and said some pretty unkind things. I shouldn’t have lost my temper, but I did. I acted like a real jerk. Doesn’t make me feel very proud. I’m usually pretty level-headed, but what she said just hit me the wrong way, and I overreacted. Emily witnessed the whole event, so she can verify what a dope I was. So I’d like to apologize to Emily for my bad attitude, and if Zola were here I’d apologize to her too. And I’m sorry for the bad example I set for all my employees who’ve come to expect better from me.”

  Horn lifted his brows in a questioning look. “Emily is…?”

  I inched my hand into the air. “Emily Miceli. Co-owner of the tour company.”

  “And the reason I’m telling you this,” Wendell continued, “is because I might have been fuming with Zola yesterday, but I sure as hell didn’t kill her.”

  Horn nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Newton. Anyone else at table two who didn’t kill Frau Czarnecki?”

  Otis, Gilbert, and Hetty shot their hands into the air, followed by Osmond, George, Dad, and Dick Stolee. Helen Teig fired an impatient look at her husband before she whacked his arm. “Raise your hand, Dick.”

  “But I didn’t sit at table two.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  She hoisted his arm in the air for him. “My husband didn’t kill her either. Dick Teig. Table two. Idiot.”

  “Does Mr. Teig play a musical instrument?” asked Horn.

  “No,” Wally spoke up. “Table two was a mixed bag—the Guten Tag band and several non-musicians. The other three bands sat at table three.”

  Horn studied the whiteboard. “How many guests on the tour in all?”

  “Thirty-two,” said Wally. “Including me.”

  Horn paused. “Then why are there only thirty names on the board?”

  All eyes flew to the whiteboard. Gazes narrowed. Lips moved silently as everyone started counting.

  “That’s probably because them two women what aren’t here can’t write their names down on account of they’re dead,” said Nana.

  An awkward silence flooded the room. Well, duh?

  “Sorry,” Wally apologized. “I gave you the wrong head count. We’re presently down to thirty guests.”

  “Yes,” said Horn, “but last night at the Hippodrom Frau Czarnecki was still alive, bringing the count to thirty-one names. So would someone kindly show me where she was sitting?”

  “I can do that,” said Wally. “She was at my table.”

  As he grabbed a marker off the tray, Nana raised her hand. “S’cuse me, young man, will you be wantin’ to know where we ended up sittin’ after we come back from goin’ potty?”

  Horn stared at her, nonplussed.

  “Personally, I think colored markers would make our seating- arrangement plan look much more attractive,” said Margi.

  “Hey, I’ve got some.” Dick Teig removed two permanent marker pens from his jacket pocket. “But they’re for emergency use only—in case Helen’s eyebrows get washed off in a torrential downpour and she needs a touchup.”

  Mom squinted at the board. “Are those names in alphabetical order?”

  “Would you mind giving us some idea about how much longer you’re going to keep us here?” Otis called out to Horn. He tapped his watch with an impatient finger. “We have an engagement this evening.”

  “Playing in one of the premier beer halls,” boasted Stretch.

  “Does anyone know what time?” asked a member of Das Bier Band.

  “Six twenty,” said Dick Stolee, reading the digital readout on his phone.

  “But it’s six twenty now,” Lucille pointed out.

  “Why wasn’t anyone watching the time?” cried Helen. “We’re late!”

  “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna get shut out of two performances in one day,” swore Gilbert.

  “It’s every man for himself,” bellowed Dick Teig as he led the stampede toward the exit.

  Amid the chaos of instrument case grabbing, overturned chairs, and random shoving, I glanced at the large block letters Wally had printed on the rectangle representing table three.

  ZOLA CZARNECKI.

  He’d inserted her name at the far end of the bench.

  Right next to Maisie Barnes.

  seventeen

  “Sitzen Sie Hin!” demanded Kriminaloberkommissar Horn.

  They continued to charge into the hall like escapees from a burning building.

  “sit down,” barked Horn as the last of them squeezed through the door.

  I wasn’t going to waste my breath trying to explain to a law-and-order German that a dyed-in-the-wool Iowan would rather flout the law than be late. I doubt he’d understand. “They probably won’t get any farther than the lobby before they reach an impasse,” I said as I joined the men at the front of the room. “The bus isn’t here to take them anyplace.”

  Eyes wild, veins bulging in his forehead, Horn let fly a string of German that exploded like firecrackers.

  “They’re usually quite law-abiding, Herr Inspektor, ” Etienne explained in a placating tone. “But since I’ve come to live among them, I’ve discovered that the guiding force in their lives is the clock. When a guest mentioned the time, it was all over but for the stampede.”

  Horn rebuttoned his jacket and tightened the knot on his necktie. “A group interrogation. What was I thinking? I’ll need to speak to them individually then. At the police station. Tomorrow. And I apologize for asking, but the elderly woman with the—the facial boils—” He fluttered his fingers around his cheeks to indicate her disturbing countenance.

  “She’s not contagious,” I snapped.

  Wally cringed. “Can you work with us on timing? We’ll have to juggle our schedule. We need a good two and a half hours to reach Kehlstein tomorrow, so the earlier you could conduct the interviews, the better it would work out for us.”

  Horn removed a card from his wallet and handed it to Wally. “That’s the address. Give it to your coach driver. Interviews will begin promptly at seven o’clock in the morning.”

  Uff-da. I could hear the whining now. “What are the odds that you’ll be able to coax more out of them privately than you did in today’s group setting?”

  “Slim. But that won’t prevent me from trying. Your guests have dug in their heels. They know nothing. They killed no one. But one of them will make a mistake. They always do.”

  I nodded toward the whiteboard. “How important is it that Maisie Barnes was sitting next to Zola C
zarnecki last night?”

  Horn turned to face the whiteboard, eyeing the name that Wally had written. “It’s of no importance if I fail to place the nicotine in Frau Barnes’s hand and prove that she used it to poison the victim. She claims her own refill was stolen from her purse. How do I prove otherwise? If Frau Barnes is not telling the truth, she’s a very skilled liar.”

  “But is she your prime suspect?”

  “I’ve not singled out a prime suspect, Mrs. Miceli. Every one of your guests will be under suspicion until they’ve been successfully cleared.” He removed a small plastic bag. “Thank you for turning this over to me, Mr. Miceli. The lab analysis may be able to tell us if this is the same brand that killed Frau Czarnecki.”

  “And if it is?” I asked.

  “Then we will have one piece of concrete evidence with which to work.”

  Etienne reverted to his police inspector’s voice. “Ms. Czarnecki was scheduled to tell everyone’s fortune after the Oktoberfest event last night, Herr Inspektor, so perhaps our perpetrator is someone who feared the woman might uncover a secret that could be irreparably damaging to them? It certainly speaks to motive.”

  “A plausible theory,” commended Horn, “leaving me with the simple task of uncovering the deepest, darkest secrets of thirty American tourists.”

  “Twenty-nine,” quipped Wally. “I don’t have any secrets.”

  “Nonetheless. Forgive me for hoping your theory is wrong, Mr. Miceli”—Horn bowed his head politely—“because if you’re correct, we may never discover who killed Frau Czarnecki. I’m a detective, not a mind reader.”

  “I was presented with a case in Switzerland some years ago that dealt with a similar issue,” Etienne recalled, capturing Horn’s undivided attention. “Perhaps you’re familiar with the details.” So while the two inspectors exchanged fish stories, I cornered Wally.

  “Do you happen to be carrying in your bag of tricks a list of all the room changes we’ve had in this hotel since we arrived?” I nodded at the soft-sided messenger bag he’d propped against the wall.

  “Yeah. I’m a notorious hoarder of useless documentation. What do you want to know?”

  “The night we arrived, what other guests were located on the same floor as Bernice?”

  Hauling his bag off the floor, he set it on the podium and pulled out a file. He scanned a page at the back of a sheaf of papers. “Let’s see: Bernice Zwerg…Bernice Zwerg…there she is.” He continued scanning. “Okay. Easy enough. There was only one other guest on her floor that first night.”

  “Maisie Barnes?”

  He shook his head. “Astrid Peterson.”

  “Astrid Peterson? But…are you sure?”

  Margi Swanson hurried into the room in a breathless panic. “Officer! You’ve gotta come quick. Somebody stole our bus.”

  Was Wendell having affairs with both Maisie and Astrid?

  We’d hoofed it to the beer hall in the old city, avoiding major thoroughfares and pausing a couple of times to watch street performers who, at the toss of an onlooker’s coin, morphed from statue stillness to robotic animation like life-size music box dancers. The beer hall was more intimate than the Hippodrom had been, with lower ceilings, longer tables, and chairs rather than benches. But, like the Hippodrom, it was filling up fast with dozens of guests from other tour groups. The musicians stowed their instrument cases in a storage area, then joined the rest of us in the dining room, visibly champing at the bit to hit the stage. Excitement was too passive a term to describe their exuberance.

  They were stoked.

  “I think we should start out with everyone’s favorite: ‘Beer Barrel Polka,’” suggested Maisie, “then explode into the ‘Maine Stein Song.’” She sat opposite me, next to Stretch, while I sat beside Arlin, the four of us holding down the far end of the table.

  “But we haven’t cleared our playlist with the other bands yet,” objected Stretch.

  “Yeah,” Arlin agreed. “Wendell won’t like it if we steal his thunder by playing all the good songs first.”

  “Wendell’s a big boy,” countered Maisie. “He should know how to handle a little disappointment by this period in his life.”

  “I’m just saying,” repeated Arlin. “He won’t like it.”

  Maisie grinned. “C’est la vie. I just slipped the maitre d’ a cash incentive to let us play first, so the fix is already in. Just protecting our interests, fellas. First is always best. You know that. Am I right, Emily?”

  I flashed a smile, trying to imagine what Maisie’s reaction would be if she learned Wendell might have been two-timing her. “First is good…but last has its place. Like, say…with romantic relationships. Would you rather be someone’s first love or last love?”

  “Hmm,” said Maisie. “Good question.” Elbows on the table, she fisted her hands in the air as if they were the scales of justice. She opened her right palm. “On the one hand, being someone’s first love leaves you with a life’s worth of magical memories.” She opened the left. “But on the other hand, being someone’s last love means you’re the one who inherits all the perks. So I’d have to say…I’d rather be someone’s last love.”

  Interesting how she could make a statement like that while cheating on her husband. Boy, her conscience was really missing in action.

  “My first love was my last love,” Stretch announced proudly. “I married Verna straight out of high school, and we’ve been together ever since. Forty-five years now.”

  “They celebrated the big forty-fifth at the country club last summer,” said Arlin. “What a bash. The champagne was flying.”

  “And the food!” Maisie dug out her phone. “What a feast! A fountain of chocolate for dipping strawberries…smoked salmon… shrimp cocktail…caviar…”

  “I scarfed down half a bowl of caviar before I realized it wasn’t boysenberry jam.” Arlin grimaced. “There’s times when I swear I can still taste it. Who eats that stuff?”

  Maisie began flipping through screens. “But the pièce de résistance was the ice carving—a supersized reproduction of an Iowa hog.”

  “It was big as a small mastodon,” said Arlin. “Musta weighed half a ton.”

  “My folks raised swine,” acknowledged Stretch, “so Verna and I had the carving done to honor their one contribution to our marriage.” He smiled shyly. “Me.”

  “Here you go.” Maisie handed her phone across the table to me. “Just keep flipping through. Arlin can tell you who’s who.”

  “That’s Verna and Stretch in front of the dessert table,” said Arlin. “I suppose you could’ve guessed that.”

  I flipped to a new screen. “That’s Bessie and Bob—Stretch’s mom and dad—standing in front of the hog. Can you see the tears in their eyes? Emotion pretty much got the better of them when they saw that pig.”

  New screen. “All the kids and grandkids. Don’t ask me their names because I don’t know—there’s too dang many of them. That family of yours breeds like rabbits, Stretch.”

  New screen. Arlin chuckled. “A selfie of Maisie and Dale. How many years you two been married now, Maisie?”

  “Ever since 2009.”

  My eyes widened involuntarily. Holy crap. Maisie’s husband, Dale, wasn’t a “he.”

  Dale Barnes was a “she.”

  A waitress in full Bavarian costume paused beside Maisie, leaned over to whisper something in her ear, and discretely handed her something beneath the table.

  “But…he can’t do that!” Maisie complained. “We had a deal.”

  “Es tut mir leid,” the waitress said in an apologetic voice before scurrying away.

  Jaw squared, lips pursed, eyes narrowed, Maisie held up the twenty-euro note she’d just been handed and regarded it sourly. “Chiseler.”

  “Does this mean we won’t be going first after all?” asked Arlin.

  The mait
re d’ strode toward the stage area and stood behind a microphone, his tuxedo and hot pink cummerbund making him look as if he belonged on the top tier of a wedding cake. “Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to the most famous beer hall in the Old City of Munich.”

  Applause. Hoots. Whistles.

  “We’ve altered our scheduled musical entertainment for the evening due to a rather extraordinary circumstance. I received a telephone call late this afternoon from another restaurant alerting me to the fact that a musician blessed with truly epic talent will be joining us in this very beer hall tonight.”

  “Are we getting shafted by a local?” whispered Maisie.

  “We can listen to the music of our beloved oompah bands at any time,” he continued, “on our old vinyl records, on our iPods, on YouTube. But an opportunity to hear a true master only comes along once in a lifetime. So this evening, instead of asking the brave Americans who performed like heroes at the site of the explosion near the Marienplatz to entertain us, we would like to impose upon the goodwill of a single musician to delight us all with an evening of melodious magic.”

  “Is he saying we don’t get to play at all?” griped Stretch.

  Spines stiffened around the table as tensions rose and tempers frayed.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together to welcome the Mozart of the piano accordion, the maestro of the button keyboard, Bob Andrew!”

  Uh-oh. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.

  Submerged up to my chin in a snowscape of bath bubbles, I was happily reliving Dad’s show-stopping performance in my head while coming to grips with the evening’s most unexpected revelation.

  I’d been so wrong.

  Now that my blinders were off, I realized that Maisie and Wendell had not been engaged in a torrid affair. Maisie was blissfully married and batting for the other team, so she had no interest in Wendell’s equipment. Of course, that didn’t disqualify her as a suspect in Zola’s murder, but it sure blew a huge hole in the motive I’d assigned her.

  I was feasting on crow like Arlin had feasted on caviar.

  Way to jump to conclusions, I scolded myself. But at least there was an upside to my miscalculation.