Alpine for You (18 page)

"I've changed my mind," I heard Lucille say. "I'd rather have sprinkles than nuts."

Her husband plopped the sundae in front of her. "If you change your order, everyone else's order gets messed up. You ordered nuts, you eat nuts."

She skated the bowl back at him. "I don't want nuts."

"There's no keeping you happy, is there? Too damn bad. Nuts is what you're getting." He shoved it back in her direction.

"Excuse me?" she snapped. "I don't remember anyone making you emperor. Does someone else want my nuts?"

"I'm kind of a cherry man myself," said Dick Teig.

"Me too," Dick Stolee added quickly.

I suspected both Dicks preferred nuts over cherries but were too homophobic to admit it.

"Jane?" Lucille implored.

Jane shook her head. "I'm allergic to nuts."

"So's Lucille," said her husband. "At least
my
nuts. She didn't seem to have a problem with Andy's though."

Gasps all around the table. "That was uncalled for," said Helen.

Lucille propelled the sundae back at Dick. "I wouldn't eat that now if you
paid
me, you miserable lowlife."

"Two-timer."

"Skinflint."

"Slut."

I watched the sundae shoot back and forth between them and wondered what was going to break out first: a fistfight or a food fight.

Lucille shot out of her chair, causing it to crash backward onto the floor. "Slut? How dare you!" She picked up the dish of ice cream. She glared at her husband. Okay. My money was on the food fight. Dick Stolee reached for his camcorder.

"Press one button on that camcorder, and I'll break your arm," Grace threatened. She got to her feet to join Lucille. "It's bad enough Dick Rassmuson has to air his dirty laundry in public, but you're not going to encourage him by getting it on tape!"

"The hell you say," said Dick, who whipped the camera up to his eye and aimed it at his wife. "No one's going to tell me what I can or can't record. This is Grace under pressure. Boy, she looks like she's gonna blow."

Grace picked up her coffee cup and fired the contents at the camcorder. "Grace!" screamed her husband as he sloughed coffee off his face. "You idiot! If you've ruined my camera, I'm going to be
so
pissed! Napkins. I need napkins!"

"Why don't you use your toupee?" said Lucille. "It's the closest thing to a mop around here."

Grace gave Lucille a high five. Helen and Jane stood up in a show of force. "I saw a pharmacy a few doors down," said Jane to the ladies. "I recommend we wander over and check out the prices."

Lucille dropped her dish of ice cream back onto the table. "I don't know who you think you're going to sit with on the trip back to Lucerne," she spat at her husband, "but it's not going to be me. Come on, girls."

"Don't flatter yourself!" Dick Rassmuson raved, as the women huffed away from the table. "I'd rather
walk
back to Lucerne than sit on the bus beside you!"

Unh-oh. Wally was
not
going to be happy about the change in seat assignments. The Dicks, on the other hand, looked thrilled about the sudden change in seating. Or maybe they were just happy about all the unclaimed ice cream in front of them. Before the women were out the door, they'd divvied up the seven sundaes among themselves and began scarfing down sprinkles and cherries. They weren't completely out of touch. Even in Iowa, soft-serve tended to melt fast.

Dick Rassmuson caught my eye and held up the odd bowl. "Last one. You want it?"

I waved him off. "Couldn't eat another thing."

He shrugged and ate it himself. When they got up to leave, he caught my eye again, clutched his chest, and hung his tongue out the corner of his mouth. This was getting old
real
fast. "You need another schtick," I called out. "Go away. Leave me alone."

With the group in fragments, I didn't feel so impelled to keep my eye on them. I suspected they were too annoyed with each other to implement their plot against me. A successful murder attempt would require both cooperation and coordination, and cooperation wasn't what was happening with the Dicks and their wives this afternoon. Gee. What a shame. I guess I'd be forced to fritter away the rest of my day in some of the little boutiques that lined the main street.

A half hour later, armed with a stack of postcards and some souvenirs for my nephews, I found my way onto the lawn of the spa and dug my camera out of my shoulder bag. No sense letting the sun go to waste. I put a bead on the lake and the surrounding mountains. CLICK. The sightseeing boat that was docked at the pier. CLICK. The base of a hooped barrel that looked as if it might be used for outdoor baths. CLICK. Three men sneaking around the corner of the spa with cameras at the ready. Hmm. I lowered my camera. What a surprise. The three Dicks. I could imagine the headlines of the
Windsor City Register
should someone catch them--"Snoopy Dicks Branded Peeping Toms in German Spa Town."

I let fly a whistle that spun them around and had them scampering across the lawn toward me like wayward puppies. Stolee and Teig arrived first. "How's the scenery down there?" I asked. "Finding a lot of Kodak moments, are you?"

Dick Teig spoke under his breath. "Look, Emily, it's not every day you stumble across naked babes like this. The guys back home won't believe it. So if you could keep it under your hat until we show them the pictures."

"What about your wives?"

Dick Rassmuson pulled up the rear. He must have seen something that scared him because his hands were trembling. "What about our wives?" he asked.

Duh? "What do you think they're going to say about your extracurricular activities?"

"They'll never find out," he rasped. "Not unless you tell them. You're not gonna do that, are you? Man, is it hot out here or is it just me?" Dick Rassmuson was sure out of shape. A little jog like that had gotten him all out of breath.

Dick Teig elbowed him in the ribs. "Probably the scenery that has you so worked up. Hubba hubba."

I gave them my sternest schoolmarm look. "Okay, you guys, if you leave right now, I won't tell your wives. If you don't, all bets are off."

"Party poop," said Dick Teig.

"Might as well go," groused Dick Stolee. "My camcorder's not working right anyway."

Dick Rassmuson urged the two along. "Go on without me. I'll catch up as soon as I catch my breath." He placed his hand over his heart. "My chest's really pounding, Emily."

"You suppose it's the big one?"

"I need to sit down. Maybe I need a cigar."

The man never gave up. "You do that. But you better not stay long because I'll be back to make sure you're not doing any more snooping."

He sat down on a nearby bench and massaged his abdomen. "I don't feel so good. I could use some serious mouth-to-mouth."

How gullible did he think I was? Did he think I'd been born yesterday? "Nice try, Dick. You might want to consider some daily aerobic exercise though. It might help with the shortness of breath thing."

I spent the next forty-five minutes in a ladies' boutique named Toni Heim, trying to convince myself not to buy a cute little boiled wool jacket that cost more than the national debt. In the end I bought it anyway. The exchange rate made it cheaper than it would be back in the States, so I reasoned it was more like the national debt of Liechtenstein than the United States. Liechtenstein was a small country. I could afford Liechtenstein.

I practically had a head-on collision with Nana when I walked out the door of the boutique. I grabbed hold of her so as not to knock her down. "You're going someplace in a hurry," I laughed.

"I'm headin' back to the bus for a nap. I'm all used up. But I can't figure what did me in--sittin' in the hospital waiting room 'til the wee hours a the mornin', or those three Shirley Temples I knocked back at the chateau last night. Don't tell your mother about the cocktails. She don't think a woman a my advanced years should be drinkin' ardent spirits."

I made a gesture of buttoning my lip. "It'll be our secret. But, Nana, a Shirley Temple is nonalcoholic. It's not that potent."

"At seventy-eight, strawberry Ovaltine can be potent."

"I'm not sure the bus will be open if you head back to the parking lot." I yanked my Swiss Army knife out of my coat pocket to check the time. "We still have another hour before we leave. I'm going to head over to the spa grounds, sit on a bench, and write out a few postcards. You're welcome to come with me and take a nap on the bench."

"Lead the way."

"Where's Bernice?"

"She's staked a claim on a table at a little outdoor cafe where she says she's gonna stay 'til just before the bus leaves. She's been doin' too much walkin'. Her bunions are killin' her."

We dodged tourists and scurried out of the path of strollers as we headed toward the lake. When the spa came into view, I noticed a man on the bench where Dick Rassmuson had been sitting when I left. As we drew closer, I realized my lecture had fallen on deaf ears because the man sitting on the bench
was
Dick Rassmuson. He'd probably been getting an eyeful for the last forty-five minutes and acting like a real jerk.

I stomped in front of him. "Okay, Dick. Hand over your film." I was probably overstepping my bounds as an escort, but it was worth a try. Maybe I'd catch him in a weak moment.

Dick didn't respond. His head was hanging forward on his chest, like he was taking a nap, but his eyes were wide-open. Unh-oh.

Nana bent down to look at him. "You s'pose he knocked back one too many Shirley Temples last night, too?"

His skin looked kind of purple and waxy, his lips were really pale, and his hands were tinged blue. I tapped him on the shoulder. "Dick?"

No response. I was getting a very bad feeling about this. I pressed my fingers to his neck. His skin was still warm, but he had no pulse. I stepped back from the body and grabbed Nana's hand. "I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but what does this look like to you?"

"Looks like a dead Dick."

"T
hat's what it looks like to me, too." I sucked in a resigned breath and struggled to remain calm. "He's dead." When I said the words aloud, the full impact of the situation hit me. "OH MY GOD! HE'S DEAD! This is all my fault! He said he didn't feel well. He said his chest was pounding. He said he needed mouth-to-mouth. I didn't believe him! I could have saved him! Oh my God. I killed him!"

"The man dropped dead, Emily. We're old. It happens."

She had a point. But still, "You don't think I'm to blame?"

"I think all those cigars he smoked was to blame."

That made me feel a little better. I cocked my head to look at him from another angle. "What do you suppose killed him?"

"Looks like he had the big one."

Nana was probably right. There was no blood. No visible bruising. No obvious gunshot wounds. He had a heart condition. He'd probably suffered a heart attack. I mean, according to Shirley Angowski, he'd already been playing with fire by taking pills for impotence with his heart medication. That made him a prime candidate for a heart attack. Unless...

I sucked in my breath again. Unless someone had poisoned him with the same dimethyl sulfate that had killed Andy and made his death
look
like a heart attack. Oh my God! Was Dick Rassmuson the killer's third victim?

Okay. I was really creeped out now. "I need to find Wally," I said in a rush of breath.

"He had lunch at the same outdoor cafe that Bernice and me ate at. Maybe he's still there."

"You want to come with me?"

"I better stay here with the body."

"Are you sure you want to do that?" It wasn't like Dick was going anywhere, and guarding a corpse wasn't one of the highlighted activities on Nana's holiday itinerary.

"I'm the Legion a Mary's official representative for visitations at Heavenly Host Funeral Home, so I'm pretty used to hangin' around dead people these days."

I dumped my purchases onto the other end of Dick's bench. After getting directions from Nana, I sprinted down the street toward the cafe. Wally was seated at a table drinking cafe latte. He was sporting what looked like a new green alpine hat to keep the sun out of his eyes. I grabbed him by the arm and urged him to his feet. "Nice hat. You need to come with me. We have a crisis."

"What kind of crisis?"

"You need to come now. Leave some money for the bill."

He slapped some coins onto the table and stumbled behind me as I dragged him into the street. "This had better be good," he complained. "I was only halfway through that cafe latte."

"Dick Rassmuson is dead."

"WHAT?"

"Can you walk a little faster?"

"How do you know he's dead?"

"Because he's not breathing!"

"Shit," he said, doubling his pace. "SHIT!"

"It looks like a heart attack."

"Great. This is just great. We'll never get him out of Germany if he's dead."

"Why not?" I hurried him toward the spa grounds.

"Because it's Germany! They don't like foreigners dying in their country. You wouldn't believe the paperwork. This happened to one of my colleagues a few years ago. An elderly man died, and the authorities kept the whole tour group confined for over a week asking questions, administering polygraph tests. It was a disaster. Triangle Tours lost a lot of money on that one because they had to reimburse everyone for the inconvenience plus pay for their lodging in Germany. If the same thing happens to us, Triangle is out a lot of money again, and I'm probably out a job. Shit."

It seemed this information might have warranted a footnote in the brochure.
Triangle Tours strongly suggests you not die while visiting a foreign country, Germany in particular.
Of course, there was no guarantee Dick Rassmuson would have heeded the warning, especially if it had been written in fine print.

Nana was sitting on the bench beside Dick when we arrived, shooing away flies with her handbag. I admired her courage for daring to sit that close to him. "I thought if we both sat here sayin' nothin' to each other, people would think we were married and wouldn't pay us no never-mind."

Wally felt for a pulse.

"Well?" I asked.

"Shit. He's dead."

"So now what do we do? Call the police?"

"NO! No police. We gotta get him out of here. We gotta get him back on the bus."

I thought about that for a full millisecond. "ARE YOU CRAZY?"

"Look, Emily. He can't stay here. We have to get him back to Switzerland and
then
we can call the Swiss police. The Swiss are much more understanding about people dying on them than the Germans. We'll tell them he died in his sleep on the bus."

"But that's a lie! We could end up in jail for obstructing justice, for perjury, for--"

"You better decide what you're gonna do fast," said Nana. "These flies are gettin' thick." She swatted Dick's arm with her handbag. He fell sideways and toppled off the bench.

"Oh geez," hollered Wally. We both seized an arm, hiked him up, and heaved him back onto the bench.

"You're lucky rigor mortis hasn't set in yet," said Nana.

Wally looked apoplectic. "Okay, Emily, here's the deal. You help me get him back on the bus, and I'll take full responsibility for the consequences. I won't mention your name. You won't even have to talk to the Swiss police when we get back. But we have to get him out of here before anyone else notices he's dead."

I didn't feel real comfortable about this, but I supposed the bottom line was, Dick was dead, and there was nothing we could do to bring him back. We wouldn't know how he died until an autopsy was performed, and since all the other autopsies had been performed in Lucerne, this one might as well be too. I just hoped we wouldn't be leaving vital evidence behind when we moved him. "All right," I conceded. "I'll help you."

"When are you gonna tell Lucille?" asked Nana. "She's bound to notice he's not breathin' at some point on the bus ride home."

Wally's eyes glazed over. "Shit. I forgot about his wife."

"Lucille won't be a problem," I assured him. "They had a big fight in the cafeteria. They're not speaking. They had no intention of sitting with each other on the way back to Lucerne anyway."

"Good. That'll buy us some time."

But it did nothing to solve our immediate problem. "Okay, how do we get him back to the bus without attracting attention?"

Wally executed a 360-degree turn, looking, assessing. He snapped his fingers. "The spa. You two sit tight. I'll be right back."

Fifteen minutes later he reappeared in a four-passenger motorized golf cart with a canopy. "I told the spa manager who I was and explained that one of my tour members was ill and needed to be transported back to the bus. They're keeping my passport as collateral until I bring it back. Okay, ladies, let's load our passenger into the backseat."

I grabbed an arm. Wally grabbed an arm. "On the count of three," said Wally. "One. Two. Three!" I yanked. Wally yanked. We clean-and-jerked him off the bench. Momentum sent him flying forward. SMACK! Face first into the canopy of the golf cart. BOOM! Flat on his back onto the ground.

"This is going well," I said.

"Shit," said Wally.

"What's this gizmo on the back of the golf cart?" asked Nana. Wally and I took a peek.

"Looks like some kind of hydraulic lift," I said. Coloradans knew ski lifts. Californians knew face-lifts. Iowans knew hydraulic lifts, especially Iowans like me, who'd been raised on grain farms around heavy machinery. I hopped into the driver's seat and fidgeted with a few toggle switches. HRRRMMMM! The lift hummed into action. Ah, the genius of German engineering. I backed the cart up to the body and we hoisted Dick onto the lift. I hit the toggle switch again and Dick levitated upward like an oversize sack of seed corn.

"All right!" said Wally.

We swung his legs around and slid him onto the backseat in a sitting position, then stood back to assess our handiwork. Nana had closed Dick's eyes, but it hadn't helped much.

"What do you think?" Wally asked me.

"It looks like we have a dead guy sitting in the back of our golf cart."

"Maybe you need to gussy him up a bit so he don't look so dead," said Nana.

I looked at Wally. Wally looked at me. I stared at Wally's new green alpine hat and smiled. He swiped it off his head and stuck it on Dick's at a cocky angle. We assessed again.

"Better," I said. "But he's still too exposed." I snapped my fingers with sudden inspiration. I dug into my shoulder bag and pulled out the sunglasses Shirley Angowski had given me atop Mount Pilatus. I slid them onto Dick's face. We assessed again. "What do you think now?"

"Perfect," said Wally. "Hop in. I'm driving."

"You're driving?" I objected. "How come you get to drive?"

"Because I'm the one whose passport is on the line if anything happens in transit."

I looked at Nana. Nana looked at me. One of us was going to have to sit in back with Dick. "You wanna flip a coin to see who gets to ride shotgun?" asked Nana.

Two minutes later we were whizzing across the spa lawn at the breakneck speed of eight miles per hour. Wally shot out onto the pedestrian walkway and banged a sharp left turn. Dick lurched forward and fell over into my lap. "You wanna watch the corners!" I yelled from the backseat as I propped him back up. I straightened his hat and sunglasses and batted a few flies away. "How far to the bus?"

"Be there in a few minutes," assured Wally.

The driving was slow, with all the tourists crowding the walkway. "S'cuse me!" Wally kept shouting. "We're trying to get by here!" We spied Bernice as she hobbled in the direction of the parking lot, and when Wally slowed to let a stroller pass, she flagged us down.

"I can't walk another step. You got room for another passenger?"

"NO!" we yelled in unison. Bernice winced and grabbed her head as if she'd been zapped by chain lightning. I suspected if she wasn't deaf before, she was now.

Wally zoomed around the baby stroller and gunned the cart. Lars and Solvay Bakke were standing by a bench on the walkway and waved as we passed by. "New hat, Dick?" Solvay called as we slowed for more foot traffic.

Being dead, Dick said nothing.

"Yoo-hoo," Solvay persisted. Sweat beaded my upper lip. Sweat bathed my palms. We were about to be found out.

"Hey," Solvay shouted. "Are you too good to talk to us?"

I waved to Solvay, then slid my left hand under Dick's elbow and popped his arm up so he could wave, too. I figured Dick would have wanted it that way. He wasn't a snob. He couldn't help it if he was dead.

We found the bus at the far end of the parking lot. It was completely empty. It was also locked.

"Damn!" said Wally. "We gotta find Max before people start drifting back." He checked his watch. "We only have a half hour."

"More like two minutes," I corrected. "Remember? Iowans are always early."

Max, our bus driver, was a big bull of a man who looked as if he might have been a Gestapo commandant before he made the big career move to tour bus driver. I gave the parking lot the once-over and noticed a small group of tidily dressed men standing by one of the other tour busses. "He could be over there," I said, pointing.

Wally took off like a shot. "He'd better hurry," said Nana. "Bernice will probably wanna chew on him for not givin' her a lift, so I expect she'll be showin' up any minute."

I looked over my shoulder to find Wally and Max locked in a heated discussion as they headed back toward the golf cart. Arms flew. Spittle flew. Max unlocked the door of the bus, then headed in our direction.

"We gots to get body to hell into bus," said Max. English obviously wasn't his first language. "Man can't die here. Better he die in Switzerland." He shoved Dick's hat and sunglasses at me, then in one motion lifted Dick over his shoulder and carried him up the stairs of the bus. He made his way down the aisle to the back of the bus and unloaded Dick on the rear seat. Whew. Now that the hard part was behind us, maybe I could breathe a little easier.

"I'd better get his hat and glasses back on him," I said to Wally.

"Right. And we'll be making some hairpin turns on the way back to Lucerne, so you need to make sure he doesn't fall over too much. Try to keep him propped against the window."

"Excuse me?" My part in this was over. I'd helped get Dick back to the bus. What was this propping him against the window business?

Wally looked surprised. "You need to sit with him on the way back."

"ME? Why me?"

"Someone
has to!"

"What about you?
You're
the tour guide. I'm only the escort!"

"You've done such a good job with him so far, Emily. Can't you be a team player and follow through?"

"NO!"

"Well, you have to do it anyway because there
is
no one else. I have to sit at the front of the bus and conduct the sing-along on the way back."

"I could conduct the sing-along," I protested. "I have a good singing voice. I was in
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."

Wally smiled. "Nice try. I don't think so. You better get back there and get settled before people start arriving. I need to get the cart back to the spa."

"But it's a long drive back to Lucerne," I shouted, as Wally hopped into the cart. "Shouldn't Dick be in a cooler or something? What happens if he starts to--you know--smell bad?"

Forty minutes later, as the bus headed out of the resort town of Titisee-Neustadt, Wally made an announcement over the microphone. "Due to a malfunction in the ventilation system, I regret to inform you that the back half of the bus will be a little cool on the drive back to Lucerne. There are blankets in the overhead compartments if you need them. I apologize for any inconvenience this might cause."

A
little
cool? We weren't even on the main road yet and the tips of my ears were starting to freeze. I grabbed two blankets from the overhead compartment and tucked one around Dick and one around me. I know I'd said earlier that I needed to chill out, but this wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind.