From Bad to Wurst Page 19

  I didn’t have to worry about Maisie knocking off Bernice in a fit of jealous rage.

  I scooped up a handful of bubbles and blew them into the air.

  So if Maisie had no reason to kill Zola, who did kill her? It had to have been one of the musicians, didn’t it? It couldn’t have been a complete stranger, could it?

  I was so confused.

  I poked my foot up through the bath water to tease the bubbles with my toe.

  Despite Wendell’s impassioned speech to Officer Horn, I wasn’t quite willing to let him off the hook yet. He might not have been involved with Maisie, but he’d obviously been up to his ears in an intimate relationship with Astrid. I understood now why we’d found so much sexy lingerie hanging in her closet. Her nighties might have been old, but they were being put to good use on what I suspected was a regular basis. Heck, she’d packed enough of them to star in her own erotic film flick.

  My toe stilled in the air as a wild thought danced in my head.

  Omigod. You don’t suppose…

  I recalled an image of Wendell’s super-duper camera—the one that had the ability to produce movie-quality video. He’d confessed to being a frustrated film director—an Otto Preminger wannabe. Was he dabbling with movie making? But not family movies—underground movies…Internet movies…racy flicks of Astrid in her retro-chic lingerie?

  Eww. Had he turned Astrid Peterson into a starlet in the world of senior erotica? Was there even such a thing as senior erotica? And if there was, had Wendell been Astrid’s producer, director, and videographer rather than her lover? In it for the art rather than the recreational activity?

  An affair with a subordinate at his company was one thing, but if he had a secret life that revolved around filming and posting girly videos online, that was a whole other kettle of fish. If something like that ever leaked to the community—

  Wendell would be washed up. Finished. A man with that much to lose would indeed have a great deal to fear from a psychic.

  But if he had that much to lose, why did he risk having Zola tell his fortune in the first place? asked the voice inside my head.

  Hubris? Had he been so convinced she was a fraud that he hadn’t thought her capable of sniffing out his secret? But her prediction had apparently cut so close to the bone that her very presence on the tour became a threat.

  So he’d killed her.

  He’d pinched Maisie’s nicotine from her handbag, and, at some point during the Hippodrom performance, he’d used it to poison Zola’s food.

  But how to prove it?

  I stared at the dissolving bubbles, smiling when I hit upon a simple solution.

  Why, I’d prove it the old-fashioned way.

  I’d have my loyal band of computer whizzes and Internet hackers do the footwork for me!

  I shot out of the tub, toweled dry, shrugged into my bathrobe, and rushed into the bedroom.

  “Out so soon?” questioned Etienne. “I was going to join you.”

  I grabbed my phone. “Hold that thought.” At this late hour, I couldn’t call a group meeting, so I’d send out a bulk text: need your help to crack zola’s murder. please check internet sites (legitimate or not) to locate erotic videos of astrid peterson. sexy senior films. racy retro films. she probably used fake name. keep record of charges. i’ll reimburse. thanks. e.

  “Voilà.” I set down my phone and dusted off my hands. “I have a new theory.”

  “Do you now.” He yanked his shirttails out of his trousers and walked over to me. With a languid gesture, he loosened the belt at my waist. “I never fail to be fascinated by your theories.” He coaxed my robe away from my neck and pressed his lips to the hollow beneath my collarbone. “Shall we continue this conversation in the bathtub?”

  Ting! Ting! Ting!

  I grabbed my phone.

  From Dick Stolee: i like the way you think.

  From Helen Teig: i would rather pierce my eyes with hot pokers than access any of those filthy internet sites. so, when do you need the information?

  From Nana: do you know george’s room number?

  Etienne eased the phone from my hand before I could read any more. “But—”

  I bit back the rest of my sentence as my bathrobe glided down my body to puddle at my feet.

  eighteen

  “I don’t get your father.” Nana sat beside me the next morning as we headed for the southeasternmost tip of Germany, where the Bavarian Alps rub shoulders with the Austrian Alps. Even though Dr. Fischer had said her skin condition would improve within forty-eight hours, I couldn’t see much change. Her face was still a lumpy mass of boils and blisters. “When Bob was onstage in that festival tent, he couldn’t play nuthin’ but sour notes. Last night in the beer hall, you’da thought he was channelin’ that fella what plays on Lawrence Welk. How’d he do that? Emergency visit to one a them Suzuki music schools?”

  “The difference was he chucked the sheet music, which he’s never been able to read, and went with his gut, or rather his ear, which he excels at. But why were you surprised? You heard him play for a whole hour at the Neuschwanstein restaurant yesterday.”

  “I couldn’t hear nuthin’ with them earplugs of mine. Shoot. I thought all the hullabaloo was folks tryin’ to boot him off the stage.” She reached into her jacket pocket and plucked out her earplugs, cupping them in her palm. “Guess you get what you pay for. I splurged on the real good ones what was labeled industrial strength. Cost me a quarter more.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Don’t go pooh-poohin’ me. It adds up.”

  We’d arrived at the police station this morning at precisely seven o’clock and were back on the bus by eight without a single person being cuffed, jailed, or detained for further questioning. I guess it was pretty difficult to squeeze incriminating statements out of a couple dozen guests who hadn’t spoken to Zola outside the meet and greet, so we zipped through the formalities at lightning speed. In deference to Mom’s condition, Officer Horn allowed me to accompany her during her interview, which began at 7:16 and ended at 7:17 when she excused herself for a “quickie,” which in Mom’s lexicon meant to organize the clutter on the room’s bulletin board. I took this as a hopeful sign that she really was getting back to normal.

  When it was my turn, I tested out my “Wendell as X-rated videographer” theory on Officer Horn and was rewarded with a polite but incredulous nod. “Seriously?” That’s when his grin appeared. “You Americans are such Puritans, one wonders how you ever reproduce.”

  Well, I still believed in my theory, even if he didn’t, so my goal today was to see if any of the Internet research I’d initiated had hit pay dirt. The whole gang was pretty animated this morning, bright-eyed and chatty, so I was getting a positive vibe that maybe one of them had found evidence that would back up my theory. All I needed to do was steal a few minutes with each of them, starting with Nana.

  I leaned close to her. Keeping my voice low, I asked, “Did you have any success last night?”

  “Define success.”

  “With your Internet search.”

  She bowed her head, causing all three of her chins to pancake onto her chest. “I done what you asked, dear, but I got a question. Is there a difference between them sites what advertises erotica and the ones what say they’re triple-X rated?”

  “Uhh…I think erotica implies a higher level of good taste. Like romantic fantasy blended with enticing costumes and soft music. The triple X sites are probably a lot more hardcore—like everyone’s body parts are front and center, overinflated, and ready to go.”

  “No kiddin’?” She gave a little suck on her uppers that ended in a woebegone expression. “Dang. I think me and George was lookin’ at the wrong stuff.”

  “You didn’t see any familiar faces?”

  Her voice dropped an octave. “Faces?”

  I didn’t a
llow this to disappoint me. I had ten more gang members to check out. The odds were in my favor.

  Halfway to our destination, we stopped for a comfort station break at a rest area whose supply of newspapers included the Munich edition that carried the article featuring the unlikely senior- citizen heroes from Iowa. Front page. Above the fold. Complete with group photo in vivid color. Problem was, it was written in German, so none of us could read it other than Etienne and Wally, although I wouldn’t put it past Dad to attempt a translation if he suddenly remembered that he’d learned German in another lifetime.

  Etienne purchased every copy on the shelf and handed them out to us on the bus so we could follow along as he translated the article. We applauded when he finished, basking in the afterglow of phrases like “unparalleled courage,” “selfless spirit,” “indefatigable grit,” and “unprecedented mettle.”

  “They’re applaudin’ our metal?” Nana asked me. “Lucille musta told ’em about her hip replacement.”

  The real show-stopper, however, was the photograph, which caused more than a little head-scratching.

  “Who’s this woman with the bristly hair in the front row?” I overheard Stretch asking.

  “I don’t remember her at all,” said Arlin. “She probably photobombed our shot.”

  “Publicity whore,” sniped Hetty.

  The fact that Bernice no longer looked like the woman in the newspaper wasn’t lost on me. If she continued to use Tilly’s cream, she’d probably be crowned America’s Next Top Model.

  As the landscape on the horizon mutated from riverbed flatness to saw-toothed ruggedness, Wally fired up the mike. “We’re heading toward the town of Berchtesgaden, which originated as a Benedictine monastery in the eleventh century but later became famous for its salt mines, spas, ski resorts, wellness centers, and the Third Reich. It was here where Adolf Hitler decided to build his private residence and, after rising to power, his entire government headquarters. Allied forces destroyed all the buildings in a bombing raid in 1945, but one structure did survive, and that’s what we’ll be seeing today.

  “The locals call it Kehlsteinhaus, but after the war the American military dubbed it the Eagle’s Nest, and that name stuck. It sits on the peak of a six-thousand-foot mountain, the Kehlstein, and was built as a personal retreat and official guesthouse for the führer to mark his fiftieth birthday. Hitler is reputed to have visited the place all of two times, so it seems it was a gift that was little appreciated. But Hitler’s loss is our gain because you’ll never find a more spectacular view anywhere on earth.”

  “How many bedrooms?” asked Dick Teig.

  “No bedrooms.”

  Collective gasps.

  “What kind of guesthouse doesn’t have bedrooms?” asked Lucille.

  “The kind where guests aren’t actually welcome,” said Tilly.

  “How’s the temperature six thousand feet up?” Stretch tossed out.

  “Glad you mentioned that,” said Wally. “It snowed in the higher elevations overnight, so if you have an extra jacket with you, bring it along. We’ll be touring the inside of the house mostly, but if you venture outside to walk along the hiking trails, you might find things a bit nippy, if not downright frigid. However, you’ll be happy to know there are refreshments available should you need to purchase a hot drink to thaw yourselves out.”

  “What about our performance schedule?” asked Wendell.

  “I talked to the man in charge this morning, and everything’s a go. Ten-minute slots for each band, so whatever you do, remember to pick up your instruments from the storage bay before we transfer from our coach to the Kehlstein bus.”

  Head-bobbing. Scattered applause. Murmurs of discontent.

  Nana leaned toward me. “Them other musicians wasn’t real happy with your father last night, dear.”

  “Ya think?”

  “If I played in one of them bands, I wouldn’t be happy neither if I got canned in favor of some upstart what can’t read sheet music.”

  By the end of Dad’s solo performance, you could have cut the tension in the air with a knife. The other band members sat stone-faced, not only refusing to applaud but refusing to even acknowledge his presence the rest of the evening, as if he’d donned a cloak of invisibility condemning him to non-person status. Of course, Dad was kept so busy signing autographs for the beer hall clientele that he was oblivious to all the emotional undercurrents—not that he would have been any more aware if he hadn’t been preoccupied. Dad’s social awareness radar always seemed to be happily stuck in the off position.

  “We’ve arranged for everyone to eat lunch in the Kehlsteinhaus restaurant,” Wally continued. “I’ll hand out tickets that entitle you to a discount on your meal, so hang onto them. They equal money in your pocket. Any other questions?”

  “Yeah,” Dick Stolee spoke up. “Are we there yet?”

  Though we were headed in the direction of Berchtesgaden, we bypassed the town in favor of the Kehlstein bus terminus, which was our transfer point. The building was a pretty ordinary one-story structure that reminded me of the tourist information facilities that popped up along our interstate highway systems. But this building boasted a huge advantage over state-funded American tourist bureaus.

  This building had shopping. Oh, boy!

  Wally made a final announcement as our driver cut the engine. “I’d like the musicians to pick up their instruments now so we won’t run into any delays when we board the Kehlstein bus. We have about twenty minutes to kill, so ladies, get ready to power shop. They sell all German-made products here—everything from candy and beer steins to boiled wool jackets and sweaters—so it’s a good time to add onto that Christmas list you’ve started.”

  The doors whooshed open.

  “Musicians to the outside storage bay. Everyone else, happy shopping.”

  We streamed out the exits in surprisingly orderly fashion, with no one clambering over anyone else to be first into the store. I was a little taken aback by their uncharacteristically laid-back behavior, but when I spied the Dicks interacting with their wives, I stopped to give myself a hard pinch because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  The Dicks and their wives were holding hands—and not only that, they were doing weird kissy things with their mouths and making moon eyes at each other. Omigod. They were acting like newlyweds. Like…like they couldn’t get enough of each other. Like…like they actually liked each other.

  “Emily.” Margi Swanson caught my arm and pulled me aside. “About that research project you assigned us last night. I came up empty. I didn’t see anyone who looked like Astrid Peterson, although I really couldn’t tell what any of those women looked like beneath all the makeup and hair and veils and feathers and sludge.”

  Sludge?

  A look of desperation crept into her eyes as she glanced from her hands to the store. “I need to run into that place really quick. I hope they sell hand sanitizer. I accidentally used all mine up last night when I was watching the mud wrestling.”

  Okay, negative results so far from Margi, Nana, and George, but the odds were still in my favor.

  Satisfied that Mom was in good hands as she waited by the storage bay with Dad, I hurried into the shop and caught up with Tilly in the over-the-counter travel medication section. “Do you have anything for me?”

  “A website address.” She slipped me a piece of paper. “I recall Ms. Peterson’s costume more than I do her face, so I can’t be entirely sure, but this could well be a match. I suggest you watch it yourself.”

  “Omigod, Tilly. You’re amazing.” I gave her a quick hug.

  “I’ve written lengthy monographs on the importance of romance and erotica in other cultures, but I’ve never had the misfortune of actually witnessing physical reenactments over the Internet at such close range.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and blinked myopically at the array of me
dications on the shelf. “Tell me, dear, do you see any eye drops?”

  Dick Stolee and Grace cornered me near the alpine hats. “Say, Emily, do you happen to have a picture of that Peterson woman? Grace and I wasted about three hours checking out those websites of yours before we realized we didn’t have a clue what she looked like.” He cocked his head like a puppy and lapsed into baby talk as he patted Grace’s cheek. “Isn’t that wight, honey-bunny?”

  She let out a girlish giggle and rubbed against him. “Yes, that’s wight, sweetie-weetie.”

  Was this my doing? Wow. Talk about unintended consequences. “I’m sorry, you guys, but I don’t have a photo.”

  Dick shrugged. “Well, we’re not about to leave you in the lurch. We’ll just keep looking, won’t we, princess? Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Grace giggled again and stared at her husband with doe eyes, indicating that perhaps she’d already gotten lucky.

  Knocked off-kilter by the Stolee’s metamorphosis, I was happy to see Alice in the book and tape section, looking neither desperate, myopic, nor lovelorn. “Anything to report?”

  She hung her head. “Abject failure. I’m so sorry, Emily.”

  “That’s no problem. I can’t expect miracles when I make last-minute requests like this.”

  “I couldn’t remember if Astrid was the lady with the red hair or the platinum white, so I googled oompah bands in Iowa thinking I might find a picture of her band, and that sent me to YouTube, where I ran across a video of a singing dog, and that sent me to a skiing squirrel, and from there I accessed a whole section on bloopers, and after I watched those for a couple of hours, I forgot what I was looking for in the first place, so I went to bed.”

  I nodded my understanding. “It happens to the best of us, Alice.” But my favorable odds were rapidly disappearing.

  I tracked down Helen and Dick huddled in a corner with the stuffed mountain rescue dogs, lost in each other’s eyes. “Who has the most beautiful eyes in the world?” Dick asked in a lovey-dovey voice.