Death of a Second Wife (A Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery) (7 page)

“What do you think she meant by that?”

“I don’t know. I’m just repeating what I heard, as well as I can remember.”

“It sounds rather . . . threatening, doesn’t it?” Kronenberg paused, as if he wasn’t sure “threatening” was the right word.

From where I stood, I could see Patrick’s face beyond Kronenberg’s back. I glanced at Lettie,
now sitting on her bed with her hands clasped under her chin, her eyes narrowed in concentration. Lettie is blessed with an amazing memory. She remembers license numbers from her childhood, the color of her children’s third grade lunch boxes, and how many pairs of black socks her husband currently owns. When there’s confusion, it’s good to have Lettie around.

Patrick paused before answering Kronenberg’s question. “Stephanie, my
stepmother, was a direct sort of person. She could be very confrontational, and there are those who thought she was too controlling.”

“You did not like her.”

“Oh, no, no, no! I liked her.” When Kronenberg said nothing in response, Patrick added, “If I didn’t like her, would Erin and I have decided to have our wedding here?”

Kronenberg tossed a casual arm over the back of his chair. “When did you leave the house to pick up Mrs. Lettie Osgood?”

“It must have been around ten.”

“And when did you return?”

“Maybe, eleven? I was gone about an hour, because I had to wait at least a half-hour for Mrs. Osgood’s cab. I drove Juergen’s little cart down to the road so it would be easier to bring her and her luggage back here.”

“Did you see anything out of the ordinary? Either on your way down or on your way back?”

“No. Nothing.”

Lettie whispered to me, “Of course, we wouldn’t have seen anything unusual that early. Juergen talked to Stephanie on the phone after I got here and everything must have been normal then, because they were very calmly discussing Italian wine.”

“That’s right. So Stephanie was definitely alive after eleven. But what about Gisele?”

“Juergen thought she might be in the kitchen, remember? He asked you to go down and tell Gisele to make a pot of decaf.”

“
If
she was there, but she wasn’t.”

Lettie put the back of her hand against the side of her mouth and whispered, “I seriously doubt that Stephanie would shoot Gisele and then call her brother to discuss Italian wine!”

* * * * *

I sneaked across the landing and down the stairs to the living room, then tried to figure out how to get to the kitchen without letting Detective Kronenberg hear or see me. I liked the idea of eavesdropping from my own bedroom, and I didn’t want to call attention to its proximity to the dining room. By winding down, around, and through the swimming pool room, I found a way. The pool room was warm. A wispy layer of steam drifted on the surface of the water.

In the kitchen, I slapped mustard and a bit of ham on some pumpernickel bread, added a couple of pickle wedges to two plates and balanced a glass of water on each. I had no appetite, but it was lunchtime and Lettie said she was starving. She claimed to have eaten nothing since breakfast on the plane yesterday.

Under the telephone on the kitchen wall, a note pad caught my eye. I recognized Stephanie’s handwriting and the sort of morphing figure-eight doodle I had seen her trace absentmindedly. With a jolt, I flashed on a memory of the same doodles she drew all over the margins of a letter in the lawyer’s office while Chet and I banged out the terms of our divorce.

I tore off the top sheet and tucked it in my pocket. Since these notes turned out to be important, I reproduce them now:

Back in our room, I handed Lettie one of the plates and checked on the scene in the dining room. Erin had replaced Patrick in the hot seat. Lettie waved me to a corner of the room out of the line of sight from the door.

“He asked Erin if she knew anything about those things you heard Stephanie say. You, know, ‘I know what you’re up to,’ and ‘If you don’t tell him, I will.’ Remember?” Lettie took a bite of her sandwich and swiped a bit of mustard from the corner of her mouth with the back of her wrist.

“And?”

“And she said she didn’t know anything about either of those comments, but Dotsy, she sounded funny when she said it. I think she was lying.”

Six

Kronenberg and his assistant climbed the stairs to interview Chet in his own bedroom. I supposed Chet didn’t feel up to coming downstairs. Meanwhile, Lettie and I descended to the living room where Juergen soon joined us. He’d been on the phone for the past hour. I’d seen him pacing the porch outside the living room, a cell phone to his ear. Awkward. If I’d known him better, I would have hugged him. Words were hopelessly inadequate to comfort a man who has just lost his sister and his—his what? His employee? Why did I feel as if she was more than an employee? Had they been lovers? Babs told me he was single, but as far as I could recall, Juergen himself hadn’t said anything about his marital status. Gisele kept a bedroom here. Juergen’s reaction to finding Gisele in the snowy meadow had been painful to watch. And then when he came into the bunker and saw his sister—the sister he’d grown up with and known all his life—lying there, her head a mass of blood.

A gust of cold air swept in with Juergen as he slid the glass door closed.
He nodded to Lettie and me, jammed his fists in his pockets, and cleared his throat. “I need to go to Zurich.”

The announcement startled me. “Now? Have you told Detective Kronenberg?”

“He’s with Chet at the moment. I don’t want to interrupt them.” His eyes darted toward Lettie, then me, then back to Lettie. “I suppose I should ask him first.”

“Yes, I think you should,” I said.

“I’m not in the habit of asking permission to drive to my own home.” He said this, not angrily but as if he was struggling to sort out a new order. Things had changed. New priorities. New demands.

“These are not normal times,” I said, with as much kindness in my voice as I could muster.

“My father—our father—Stephanie’s and mine. He’s ninety-five and in poor health. Very poor. In fact, he could die at any time. He’s bed-ridden and he has a nurse with him around the clock.”

“I didn’t know your father was still alive.”

“He hasn’t much more time. But this will be on the television news by evening. I can’t keep it off the air for long. Our family is well known. This will be big news in Zurich.”

“Don’t they have to wait until the next of kin is notified?”

“Stephanie’s next of kin
has
been notified. Chet.” He nodded at the stairway. “He’s upstairs. Gisele’s parents have been notified as well.” Juergen shifted his meaty frame to the sideboard and poured himself a couple of fingers of scotch. He held up his glass to us, offering.

I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

“My father’s nurse will turn on the evening news in his bedroom. She always does, but whether he pays attention to it or not, I don’t know. I could call her and tell her to leave the TV off, but that won’t work for long, will it?”

“Juergen, are you sure he should be told at all?”

His head jerked toward me.

“He’s ninety-five and in poor health,” I said. “The death of a child is absolutely the worst pain a parent can endure.
Could
he endure it? Might it kill him?”

Juergen walked back to the windows, turning his back on Lettie and me. For a long time, he said nothing, and then, “You are right. I’ll call his nurse and alert her. He must
never
be told.”

* * *
* *

I had forgotten all about Brian. He was due to arrive that morning, and if I had thought about him at all
, I would have wondered why we hadn’t heard from him. He found his own way up the mountain. Lettie and I, still sitting in the living room, heard his voice.

“Dad! Stephanie! Where is everybody? What the hell’s going on?”

I dashed toward the sound of his voice and found him in the kitchen. I hugged and kissed him, then held him at arm’s length. “Awful news. Horrible. Let’s go to the living room. You need to hear this sitting down.” With one arm around his sturdy waist, I steered him to a chair. He had seen the helicopter and the crime tape so I started with the worst. As I told the story, Brian’s face reflected a tumult of emotions.

“Where’s Dad? I have to see him.”

“He’s talking to Detective Kronenberg in his room—upstairs, on the top floor.”

Lettie interjected, “Maybe he shouldn’t just barge in.”

“He’s Chet’s son. He can barge in.” I stood and gave Brian one more hug before he headed up the stairs to locate his father. Brian, my stalwart son. Just having him here buoyed me up. In the last few years, I knew, Chet had shoveled more and more responsibility for the John Deere dealership onto Brian’s shoulders. Stephanie, as their accountant, maneuvered relentlessly to take over the policy-making end of the business, and Chet couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up to her. Brian told me about this during the Sunday dinners we always shared. He told me that Stephanie’s ideas for business models in general weren’t so bad, but the problem was she didn’t know a thing about farming or farm machinery. He’d had to be rather blunt with her a couple of times. I pointed Brian toward the correct stairway and moped back to the living room.

* * *
* *

I heard Kronenberg and Brian in the dining room above us. It sounded as though Brian had taken the same chair at the table the rest of us had occupied—the hot seat. It was hard to hear from this distance. I caught only bits and pieces of Brian’s answers and nothing at all of Kronenberg’s questions.

“Actually, I spent last night in Geneva—United flight—from Washington. It was late, you know and I didn’t want to barge in after they were all asleep. . . . I’m devastated, of course. . . . Of course not.”

I motioned to Lettie, pointing up the stairs. As quietly as possible we climbed the stairs to the landing and slipped into our bedroom, casually, so that if either Brian or Kronenberg saw us, we wouldn’t seem to have been sneaking. I left the door open half-way, then moved around the room until I found the spot that afforded the clearest reception of voices from the dining room. I heard:

“I have never met Gisele Schlump, in fact, I’ve never been to Switzerland before.”

“Do you know who she was?”

“I’ve heard Patrick mention her. She lived here, didn’t she? She was their cook. I may have heard Stephanie, my stepmother, mention her a time or two as well.”

“Did Stephanie and Gisele get along?”

“I don’t know! Really, I’m not even sure I ever heard Stephanie mention her.”

“Can you think of any motive she might have had for wanting to kill Gisele?”

“Absolutely none.”

“Can you think of any reason Stephanie might have had for wanting to kill herself?”

“Absolutely not! Stephanie is the
last person in the world
I’d expect to kill herself.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Stephanie was confident. Sure of herself. Those sorts of people don’t kill themselves!”

I turned to Lettie and whispered, “Those sorts of people
do
kill themselves, I’m afraid.”

* * *
* *

By late afternoon, I was going stir-crazy. I had to escape. From the living room windows, I spied Brian and Patrick heading eastward and over the crest of a hill. Lettie, nestled in the sofa with her feet tucked into the crack between the seat cushion and the back, fiddled absently with her cell phone.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I suggested. I tramped up the stairs to our room to get my jacket and ran into Juergen, coming down.

“Put on a warm coat if you’re going out, Dotsy. The temperature is falling again. It’s going to be a cold night.”

“That’s the warmest I have,” I said, pointing to the new jacket I’d draped over the post at the foot of my bed.

“Come with me.” Juergen led me to a coat closet on a lower level and pulled out a zip-up parka and a pair of yellow galoshes. “Keep these. You’ll need them whenever you go out.” He scrambled through the closet floor and located a smaller pair of galoshes for Lettie.