Alpine for You (13 page)

We lay in bed shoulder to shoulder--me, staring at the darkened ceiling, Nana, snoring like a lumberjack. I turned to look at her in the shadows and shook my head at the toilet paper she'd wrapped around her head. She said the toilet paper was a better alternative than a hairnet because it cushioned her hair without flattening her curls. As she slept, however, the tissue kept creeping down over her face, so as the night progressed, she was beginning to look more like Lon Chaney in a twenties version of
The Mummy.

I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about Shirley Angowski and the way she'd looked at the bottom of the precipice and wondering if the police had recovered her camera bag from the ravine. What if she
had
plummeted to her death accidentally? If that was the case, I was wasting a lot of energy worrying about who was where and when. But if someone had pushed her, I wanted to know who, and I wanted to know right now. What person who had access to dimethyl sulfate also had a grudge against Shirley Angowski?

There were only three people I could cross off my suspect list. Me. Nana. And Louise Simon. Even if Louise had had the opportunity to poison Andy before he left Iowa, she hadn't been on top of Mount Pilatus, so she couldn't have pushed Shirley. Although, after I thought about that for a minute, I frowned at my logic. The fact that Louise hadn't killed Shirley didn't mean she hadn't killed Andy. What if someone else had killed Shirley independently of Andy? What if there were
two
killers?

I rubbed my throbbing temples. If there
were
two cold-blooded murderers, at least I could take comfort in the fact that one of them was on a boat in Alaska.

"EHHHHH!"

The shriek had me jackknifing into a sitting position in a fraction of a second. I swung my legs over the bed and landed on my feet.

"EHHHHH!"

A woman's scream. Coming from the room next door. Oh, no. Not again. I HATED people saying death happened in threes.

"STOP IT! GET AWAY!"

I jumped as something
thunked
into the wall. I hoped it wasn't a body. I groped for a weapon. My shoe.

"EEEEEEEK!"

I thought about my shoe. Was this wise? This was the mate to the only pair I had left. If I ruined this shoe, I'd have to go barefoot.

I dropped the shoe and grabbed my pillow instead. More thunks against the wall. More screams. Footsteps pounding across the room. A scream echoing in the hall. I raced to the door and threw it open.

Grace Stolee was in the hall jumping from foot to foot and screaming like a madwoman. The door to her room was open wide and she kept jabbing her finger toward it in utter hysteria. Oh my God. Had someone tried to kill Grace?

I ran toward her. "Who attacked you?"

She pointed toward the door again. I spun around to follow her gaze.

A man stood within the shadows of her room. He was big, and hulking, and lumbering straight toward us. When he came into the light, I saw his face. Kind of. His forehead and nose and mouth were hidden behind a mask that fit over his head so that only his evil little eyes were visible. Oh my God! It was Hannibal Lecter.

"EHHHHH!" I screamed.

"EEEEEK!" Grace screamed.

He had something in his hand. A gun? A knife? I didn't wait to find out. I rushed at him and whammed him in the midriff with my pillow. He doubled over with a loud, "OOHFF!" My pillow burst. Feathers sprayed everywhere. Hannibal dropped his weapon. Onto my foot.

"OW!" I cried.

"EEEEEK!" Grace screamed like a banshee. She jabbed her finger toward my room. I turned around. A hideous dwarf with toilet paper tacked to its face charged at us with the ferocity of an avenging angel. "It's the Mummy!" shrieked Grace. BOOM. The floor shook as Grace went down like a ton of bricks.

PSHHHHHHT! "Take that, sucka!" yelled Nana as she power-blasted Hannibal with a shot from an aerosol can.

"Get him again," I yelled. "He eats people!"

PSHHHHHT!

Hannibal waved his arms through the air. He coughed. He wheezed. He dropped to his knees. I stuck my nose into the air and took a whiff.

"What kind of hair spray is that? It smells really good."

Nana peeled a layer of toilet paper off her face and held up the can. "They didn't have hair spray in an aerosol so I had to get room deodorizer. Alpine Meadows. You like it?"

I inhaled again. "That's really nice. You suppose they sell that back home?"

Hannibal groaned, gasping for air. Returning to the task at hand, I found the snap on the back of his mask and ripped it off.

The guy was bald, red-faced, and weeping uncontrollably. Oh my God! It was Dick Stolee! Had he been about to kill Grace? Was the mask his signature? Did he always don it when he attempted to kill people? Had he been wearing it when he poisoned Andy? When he pushed Shirley off the cliff? Just like Jason in the
Friday the 13
th movies. Or was Jason the one in the
Halloween
series? Whatever. Filled with indignation and rage, I grabbed the aerosol can out of Nana's hand and conked him on the nose. He crossed his eyes stupidly and collapsed onto the floor.

Nana looked at Dick. She looked at his mask. She looked back at Dick. "Hmm," she said.

"What?" I dangled the mask from two fingers and gave it the once-over. Some mask. It looked more like a jock strap to me, which made me wonder where else it had been. Yuck. I flicked it off my fingers.

"You remember me sayin' Dick Stolee has sleep apnea?"

I searched my memory banks. "Yeah. Kind of. You read it on his medical form."

"You s'pose that mask could be the sleep apnea mask he has to wear at night so's he won't stop breathin'?"

I looked at Dick. I looked at the mask. I looked back at Dick. Unh-oh. "But Grace was screaming. She yelled at him to get away. He had a deadly weapon in his hand. He was going to attack us!"

"What kinda deadly weapon?"

I did a visual search of the floor and plucked it out of the feathers. I held it up as evidence. "A curling iron. Looks like one of those travel models."

"Where's the cord?"

"This one's cordless."

"No kiddin'?" She lifted it out of my hand for a better look. "I could use one a these."

Doors finally started to fly open up and down the corridor. Heads popped out. Slippered feet wandered into the hallway.

I scratched my head. "This makes no sense. Why was Grace screaming if Dick wasn't attacking her? What was she so afraid of?" I caught sudden movement from the corner of my eye and ducked as something
whooshed
out of the Stolee's room straight past my head. "EHHH!" I screamed, swatting my hands through the air.

Nana watched the thing wing its way down the corridor. "Well, would you look at that. It's a little bat. You s'pose that's what was causin' all the ruckus next door?"

A bat? I looked at Dick lying unconscious on the floor, a welt already starting to form on the bridge of his nose.

Oops.

"M
r. Stolee says if you'll agree to move to a room that isn't adjacent to his, he won't press charges."

The next morning, I was seated in the now-familiar office of the Grand Palais Hotel, wiping fingerprint ink from my hands. Ever the fashion plate, today I was wearing Nana's best Sunday sweatshirt--a lemon yellow pile pullover with lace at the collar and cuffs. Lace. Oh God. Etienne leaned against the office desk with the grace and elegance of a leopard. He looked very Swiss in his black suit and black turtleneck, but with his black hair falling rakishly onto his brow, he reminded me of one of my childhood fantasies. Zorro. I'm not sure if I'd been more enamored with Zorro's mask, cape, or sword, but the result was that to this day, men in black still make my hormones jump.

"I'm not sure why he doesn't appreciate my efforts," I objected. "I was only trying to help." I wadded the paper towel into a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket.

"I take it you haven't seen Mr. Stolee's nose."

I winced. "Did I break it?"

"It's the color of a zucchini and twice the size it was yesterday. You didn't break it. However, if I were you, I might accept his invitation to move to another floor."

"He probably wishes I'd move to another planet." I threw my hands up in surrender. "All right. I'll go quietly."

"Just for the record," Etienne said, a smile hitching up the corners of his mouth, "you hit him with a can of room freshener?"

"Our first choice was hair spray, but room freshener was the only thing Nana could find that didn't come in a pump."

He shook his head. "If Mr. Stolee had been the real killer, it could have gone very badly for you last night, Emily. I cringe to think what might have happened had he been wielding a knife instead of a curling iron. Your bravado was admirable, but I fear, foolhardy."

Etienne had me all wrong. I wasn't brave. I was only a hapless victim of circumstance who was having a hard time getting a good night's sleep.

"The next time you hear someone screaming in the hall, will you promise me you'll call the front desk instead of handling the situation by yourself?"

"I wasn't handling it by myself. Nana was helping."

"Which is even more reason why you need to pick up the phone. Think how bad it makes us look when seventy-eight-year-old grandmothers are taking down guests in the hall."

"What happened to the bat?"

"Apparently, Mr. Stolee only stunned it with the curling iron when it was inside his room, so it flew down the hall and got away."

Which was exactly what was happening with our killer. "Do you have any more word about what happened to Shirley Angowski?"

"We recovered her body late yesterday afternoon and autopsied her last night. There's no indication she died from causes other than falling."

An unwelcome chill crept down my spine. So we were no closer to answering the question of whether she'd been pushed or not. "What about her camera bag?"

"We haven't found it yet, but we've assembled a climb team to search the ravine below the ledge. Weather permitting, they should begin their search today."

"Weather permitting." I glanced at the gray, rainy mist outside the window, feeling tired and a little depressed. "Does the sun ever shine in Lucerne?"

"Occasionally." Then in a low seductive voice, "But I find the mist and rain quite tolerable...especially when it allows a man to engage in more provocative indoor activities." He drilled me with a look that sizzled all the way to the back of my skull.

A delicious sensation tingled all my erogenous zones. I even tingled in places that hadn't been zoned yet. Not only was the man gorgeous, he was good. I mean, he was
really
good. This would have been the perfect time for him to drop to one knee and kiss my palm again, but my hands were totally black with ink, so I figured it wasn't going to happen. Unh. I could really use a kiss right now.

"Forgive me, Emily. It wasn't my intent to make you blush. Swiss women never blush."

"They never blush. They never kid. They never smile."

He laughed aloud at that, a wonderfully soothing sound to my ears. I couldn't remember Zorro ever laughing with so much animation. "You're quite right. Perhaps that's why I prefer American women. You're much more given to laughter than the Swiss. And you do smile more." He zeroed in on my mouth. "You smile a great deal more."

Okay. MAJOR erotic thoughts going on here. I didn't want to get ahead of myself, but I wondered if that confident look in his eye meant he was even more skilled with his blade than Zorro. Hmm. One could hope.

"This is going to be a long day for me," he said. "I'm not even sure I'll have time to eat dinner, but if you'd be willing, I'd like to take you out for a drink later on this evening at the Hotel Chateau Gutsch. It's a wonderfully romantic spot with a belvedere that affords a superb view of the city at night. If the fog lifts, you might even be able to see it; although, I find there's something incredibly intimate about the fog. The way it envelops your body. Caresses your face. Dampens your skin. It's almost like--" He stopped short, seeming to remember himself. "If I planned to pick you up at nine, would you be free to accompany me?"

"Yes." I wanted to keep things short and to the point to avoid any cultural miscommunication between us.

"Yes? That's splendid. I hope you won't be disappointed."

If he was planning to demonstrate his prowess with his sword, I didn't see any possible way I could be disappointed. From where I was sitting, even the sheath looked pretty spectacular.

"And now for the more tedious part of our interview. You know most of the people in your tour group, Emily. You've had a chance to observe them since Mr. Simon's death. Is there anything you can tell me that might shed some light on who might have wanted both Mr. Simon and Ms. Angowski dead?"

I guessed it was time for me to fess up about all the theories I'd formed. "How much time do you have?"

I ticked each item off on my fingers. Helen Teig's suicidal niece. Louise Simon's affair with another man and her rumored divorce from Andy. Lucille Rassmuson's affair with Andy. Dick Rassmuson's herbal supplements to keep him potent and his wife interested. Dick Stolee's run-in with Shirley Angowski on Mount Pilatus. The dimethyl sulfate connection to everyone on the tour. When I finished, he ran his knuckles along the curve of his jaw and gave me a long look.

"In other words, there's circumstantial evidence to support
everyone's
guilt."

I shrugged. "That's my guess."

"Lovely. And, Emily?"

"Yes?"

"Nice sweatshirt."

After breakfast I hurried back to the room to scrub the rest of the ink off my hands, all the while trying to ignore a pain that had started to throb around my temporary crown. It wasn't too bad though. I could live with it. We were scheduled to take a boat tour of Lake Lucerne at eleven, so I had a little time to myself before I headed down to the lobby. Probably just enough time to throw Nana's things back into the suitcase before we moved again.

As I repacked her slacks and pullovers, I realized with sudden horror that unless my suitcase showed up, my attire for my romantic evening with Etienne would consist of my black wool pants and any of a number of Nana's tops that were appliqued with cuddly animals. I could see it all now. The intimate bar of the Hotel Chateau Gutsch. Candlelight. Soft music. The Swiss patrons dressed in their dark Italian suits and close-fitting black sheaths. Me, in a pastel blue sweatshirt with a litter of kittens frolicking on my chest.

I shivered at the thought. I needed my stuff.

I glared at the phone, picked it up, and dialed the front desk. "This is Emily Andrew in room number--" What room was I in now? Nuts. "Just one moment please." I opened the door, checked out the number, and returned to the phone. "This is Emily Andrew in room number 2248. Have you found my suitcase?"

"We're still working on it, Madame."

"I
demand
you find my suitcase. And if you haven't found it by five o'clock today, you will cut me a check that will cover loss of goods, inconvenience, and mental distress."

"That's not hotel policy, Ms. Andrew."

"Then change your policy! I've been invited out this evening by Inspector Etienne Miceli of the Lucerne police department. If I have to appear at the Hotel Chateau Gutsch with him wearing
pastels,
I guarantee you, heads will roll. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

"We've never known Inspector Miceli to wear pastels, Madame."

"No.
I'd
be the one wearing pastels. Not him."

"That's not what you said. You misplaced your modifier. It would have been more correct for you to say--"

"Well,
you
misplaced my luggage and I want it back! Today!" I slammed down the receiver and smiled to myself. All those years of phone solicitations for Playgrounds for Tots had really paid off. I'd sounded downright fearsome just now. And what about that ultimatum?
If you don't have my luggage back by five o'clock...

Wait a minute. Had I said five o'clock? No! I should have said
three
o'clock. The stores all closed at five. If my suitcase never showed up, I'd have nowhere to shop for a new dress. I knocked my fist against my forehead. Brilliant, Emily. Truly brilliant. I stared at the phone. I could call the front desk to ask them if I could change my ultimatum, but that would probably gain me nothing more than a snicker from the clerk. Snickering wasn't good.

Okay, I'd simply have to have faith that they'd find my suitcase. If they didn't, I was screwed.

The pain in my tooth increased as I resumed packing. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, and peered into my mouth. My temporary crown looked like a big clump of Juicy Fruit gum planted between my teeth. Ick. I poked it with my finger. It wasn't loose or anything, so I wasn't sure why it was aching, but I knew I couldn't go through the day without getting some kind of relief. If I had my toiletry bag, I could pop a couple of Excedrin, but my toiletry bag was in my suitcase, and who knew where my suitcase was, so I was going to have to improvise.

I dug out the packet of materials Wally had given me and thumbed through the medical forms that listed the medications each tour member had taken with him. When I reached Jane Hanson, I stopped. Good Lord, she'd brought the whole pharmacy with her. Everything from Aspercreme to Zantac. Maybe a druggist's motto was like that of a Boy Scout.
Be prepared.
Looked like Jane was prepared to treat any malady from athlete's foot to brain tumors.

I scanned her list of pain relievers, called the front desk to find her room number, and hiked up to the third floor. I rapped on her door and practically did handstands when she answered.

"Emily. What a nice surprise. What can I do for you?" She was dressed this morning in a navy-and-white gingham blouse, gray polyester pants with an elastic waistband, and penny loafers. Probably a good thing she wore a lab coat at work. Poor Jane needed to spend less time leafing through
Hoard's Dairyman
and more time leafing through a
Spiegel
catalog.

"The dental work I had done yesterday. My tooth is killing me. Do you have something I can take for the pain?"

"You bet. Come on in. I'll see what I have for you. That sweatshirt is so cute! Did you buy it in Windsor City or did you order it out of a catalog?"

"It's Nana's." I guess that said it all. Her room was huge. Of course, it would have to be huge to accommodate a four-poster bed, armoire, chaise lounge, and three upholstered armchairs. She even had a window dressed with the same kind of posh velvet drapes I imagined Mammy had used to sew that gown for Scarlett O'Hara after the war. "Wow. Nice room." I could handle a room like this. "Is this a prestige suite?"

"It sure is. I didn't know when I'd ever get back to Switzerland again, so I wanted to do it right the first time."

I smiled a secret smile. "I don't have a nice room yet, but I have sources who are working on it."

"I would have preferred a room with a balcony, but the weather's been so bad, I'd probably never get to use it anyway, so why complain?"

Good philosophy. Jane Hanson might not have the best taste in clothing, but her attitude certainly gave me something to emulate.

"Let's see what I have to offer you, Emily."

She'd set up a mock pharmacy on her desk along with her Apple iBook computer in a muted tangerine color.

"Nana has an iBook just like that," I said, "only in blueberry."

"I can't be far from my computer," Jane stated as she scanned her array of medications. "I have to stay on top of the FDA alerts on recalled drugs. You know how it is. One day a drug is working just fine and the next day it's shown to have killed thirty people. That happened a few weeks ago with one of the popular cholesterol medications. I had to phone both Helen and Bernice to tell them to stop taking it." She plucked a bottle from her stockpile and read the label. "My first choice for you would be Motrin. I'd recommend twenty-four hundred milligrams a day, and if that doesn't help, we can increase the dosage to thirty-two hundred. Do you have nasal polyps?"

Gross. "No."

"Any sensitivity to ibuprofen?"

"No."

"Angioedema or bronchospastic reactivity to aspirin or other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents?"

"What?"

"I'd guess that would be no, too." She popped the cap and dispensed several pills into her hand. "I'll start you out on six eight-hundred-milligram tablets for today and tomorrow. When you need more, come back and see me. I have some snack-size plastic bags you can put these in. They're in the bathroom."

As she headed for the bathroom to fetch the bag, I crossed to the window and looked out. Her room faced the same inner courtyard our first room had faced. Yellow brick everywhere. Row upon row of windows. Service area and waste disposal unit directly below. I leaned across the sill to peer into the Dumpster but saw nothing that resembled a twenty-six-inch tapestried pullman amid the ordered neatness of black plastic trash bags. Okay, so thinking someone might have accidentally misplaced my suitcase in the trash was a stretch, but let's face it, I was desperate. Not only didn't I have a dress for tonight, the only footwear I had was what I was wearing--my clunky Nubuck walking shoes that didn't fit right unless I wore heavy socks with them. I stared down at my feet. Not exactly the ideal footwear to complement the short, clingy black dress I imagined I was going to have to buy when my luggage didn't show.