Alpine For You Part 16

Yes! And I felt no guilt at all about the tactics we'd employed to effect the upgrade. If the Grand Palais Hotel was too cheap to buy a state-of-the-art security system for their computer, they deserved to be hacked into by seventy-eight-year-old grandmothers.

I ran into the bathroom, shedding clothes as I went. Huge Jacuzzi bath. Gla.s.s-enclosed shower. Plush towels on a heated rack. Vanity. Lighted makeup mirror. Blow-dryer. Little basket of scented soaps, shampoos, and body washes. Now this this was my idea of a deluxe room in a four-star hotel. I spun around in a circle with my arms thrown wide. Yes! I didn't care what kind of mayhem went on in the room next door tonight, I was was my idea of a deluxe room in a four-star hotel. I spun around in a circle with my arms thrown wide. Yes! I didn't care what kind of mayhem went on in the room next door tonight, I was staying staying in this room. They'd need the Swiss guard to get me out of here. I glanced toward the mirror. in this room. They'd need the Swiss guard to get me out of here. I glanced toward the mirror.

"EHHH!" My mouth dropped to my chest. That couldn't be my nose.

I rushed closer to see my reflection. Oh my G.o.d. It was was my nose. Just my luck the deckhand had appeared when he did. In an attempt to save me, he'd thrown the life preserver from h.e.l.l at me. And he'd been dead on. Clonked me right across the bridge of my nose. my nose. Just my luck the deckhand had appeared when he did. In an attempt to save me, he'd thrown the life preserver from h.e.l.l at me. And he'd been dead on. Clonked me right across the bridge of my nose.

I dimmed the light over the sink, but it didn't change anything. My nose was blue. I looked like I had a Smurf wedged between my eyes. I'd done a really good deed today. Was this fair that I should end up with a blue nose?

An hour later, shampooed, showered, and blow-dried, with a half pound of concealer on my nose, I slipped into one of Nana's plain black skirts that looked okay other than the fact that it was four inches too big at the waist. Since she hadn't packed suspenders, I rolled up the waistband and hid the lump it made beneath a white sweats.h.i.+rt with a huge photo of a thirty-pound muskie lying on a bed of ice stamped on the front. I guess I was lucky Nana had decided to take a picture of the muskie instead of a picture of Grampa at the wake. Sporting a deceased relative on my chest was even less appealing than sporting a dead fish.

I power-walked along the promenade by the lake, past the casino and the Wilhelm Tell Restaurant, across the Schweizerhofquai, Schweizerhofquai, and along the and along the Rathausquai Rathausquai by the River Reuss. My hair was starting to frizz in the drizzle, but I figured I'd wear it up tonight and plaster it with the extrahold hair spray Nana had bought on Mount Pilatus. I entered the sparkling gla.s.s doors of an upscale shop named Spengler, found women's wear on the directory, and took the elevator straight up. by the River Reuss. My hair was starting to frizz in the drizzle, but I figured I'd wear it up tonight and plaster it with the extrahold hair spray Nana had bought on Mount Pilatus. I entered the sparkling gla.s.s doors of an upscale shop named Spengler, found women's wear on the directory, and took the elevator straight up.

The little black dress was in in in Lucerne. The salesclerk showed me what was available in my size, and without noting the prices, I gathered up the s.e.xiest of the lot and scurried to the fitting room. I'd determined the first one wasn't skimpy enough and was zipping myself into the second when I heard familiar voices in the room beside me. in Lucerne. The salesclerk showed me what was available in my size, and without noting the prices, I gathered up the s.e.xiest of the lot and scurried to the fitting room. I'd determined the first one wasn't skimpy enough and was zipping myself into the second when I heard familiar voices in the room beside me.

"Do you think she suspects anything?" asked Helen Teig.

"How could she?" replied Grace Stolee. "She doesn't know any of the details."

"But I'm worried she might put two and two together. And then the jig would be up. Is that dress your size, Grace? It looks too small for you."

"I've lost weight since I've been on this trip. I'm sure it'll fit."

I stood very still, wondering who "she" was and what "she" wasn't supposed to suspect.

"Will it go just the same as we planned for Andy?" asked Helen.

"With one exception," said Grace in a sinister voice. "After last night, I think we should plan a little something extra for Emily. Something...special."

I sucked my breath in so hard, I sounded like a Hoover vacuum cleaner. I wanted to yell out, "Emily who?" But since I was the only Emily on the trip, it was fairly obvious "Emily who." Oh my G.o.d. I'd been right. I was next on the "To Kill" list!

"Help me with this zipper, Helen. I think it's stuck."

"It is. I can't get it past this roll of fat at your waist."

"That's not fat. I'm retaining water."

I could almost see Helen rolling her eyes. "My niece said that used to be Andy's favorite line. He swore he wasn't fat. He was just retaining water."

Retaining water. Right. Andy Simon had been short and stout. Just like the Little Teapot.

"How is is your niece?" asked Grace. "Is she on the mend?" your niece?" asked Grace. "Is she on the mend?"

"With the help of Prozac and therapy. It's terrible the effect a man can have on a woman. Poor girl didn't realize Andy Simon wasn't worth trying to kill herself over. But he got his, didn't he? If I'd had my way, though, he'd have suffered a lot more before he died."

I s.h.i.+vered at Helen's words. Was this an admission of guilt or just wishful thinking? Oh, geesch. What I wouldn't give for a tape recorder right now.

"So how come you went along with our idea?" asked Grace. "You should have told us how you felt. Maybe we could have altered our plans a little."

"Everyone was so enthusiastic. Besides, you're the one who'd been hurt the most, so if you still wanted to do it, I didn't want to be the fly in the ointment. And I liked Lucille's plan. She has a real knack for these things."

Lucille? Was Lucille the gang leader? It was was like like Murder on the Orient Express. Murder on the Orient Express. Everyone had a hand in killing him. I sucked in my breath again. Everyone had a hand in killing him. I sucked in my breath again.

"Did you hear something?" asked Helen.

"Sounded like a faulty vacuum cleaner," said Grace.

I slithered out of the dress I was trying on and reached for Nana's skirt. I needed to make a fast getaway before I was discovered.

"Funny thing about Lucille," Grace continued. "I didn't think she had it in her to mastermind something like this. She really surprised me."

Yeah. It was freaking amazing what a woman with no lips was capable of doing.

"So what do you think of this dress?" Grace asked.

"It's a smidgen tight, but I think it's you. Buy it."

I grabbed all the little black dresses and dashed to the register.

"Did you find anything to your liking, Madame?"

I flipped through the dresses and selected one that looked good. "I'll take this one."

"An excellent choice. And may I help you find shoes, hosiery, an evening bag, or other accessories to complement your selection?"

I slapped my VISA card onto the counter. "Just the dress. And could you speed it up. I'm in a hurry."

"Very good. Were you aware your nose is blue?"

"I missed you at supper," Nana called out to me from the bedroom. "Where did you eat?"

It was 8:45 P.M P.M. and I was in the bathroom, putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches on my makeup before my date with Etienne. "I found a little tearoom up the street from Bucherer."

"We had mushy vegetables and some kinda meat in white sauce again. What'd you have?"

"Four different kinds of luscious pastry." If I was going to get whacked, I didn't want my last meal to consist of nondescript meat in white sauce. I wanted to go out the American way--crazed out of my mind on carbs.

"I wish I'd gone with you. I could use some luscious pastry. My triglycerides could use a boost."

I checked myself out in the vanity mirror one last time, then made a sweeping entrance into the bedroom. "Ta da!"

"Well, would you look at you," said Nana. "Just like Loretta Young. She used to make them grand entrances through fancy double doors on her TV program years ago. Just once I was wis.h.i.+n' she'd get her train caught between the doors so's I could see the surprise on her face, but all the times I watched, it never happened. It was my biggest disappointment of the fifties. But now your your dress. There's not enough of it to get caught in the door. Turn around. Lemme see the whole thing." dress. There's not enough of it to get caught in the door. Turn around. Lemme see the whole thing."

I spun around on one black stiletto heel and kicked up my other foot in an ingenue pose. Luckily, the dress I'd selected fit like a latex glove. The neckline was low enough to show cleavage. The hemline high enough to show lots of leg. And in between, it was all s.e.xy black s.h.i.+mmer. I'd bought strappy heels, black hose, and pinned my hair up into a French twist with a few wispy corkscrew curls tickling my neck. "I'm a knockout, right?" I asked Nana.

"Yup. A real knockout. Is your nose blue?"

"Unhhhh!" I ran to the mirror. "But I bought foundation. I bought more concealer. How can it still be blue?"

"It'll probably be dark where you're goin' tonight. Maybe your young man won't notice."

"But what if he does?"

"Then tell him the truth."

"The truth?" Hmm. I hadn't thought of that. Nana always had the most original ideas.

"You shouldn't be ashamed a your nose, Emily. You should be proud of it. You done a real brave thing today, and George is real appreciative. I'm sure he'll do something special for you to show his appreciation when he's released from the hospital."

Yeah. Maybe he could save me from the death squad that was out to get me.

"Are you plannin' to bring your young man back to the room with you tonight? If you are, I could make myself scarce and go visit Bernice."

Bernice. Unh. I sighed deeply. "About Bernice, Nana, how much do you really know about her?"

"She's the undefeated champ a the five-yard dash in the Senior Olympics. She's lived in Windsor City all her life. Loves to gossip. Don't have much of a sense a humor. She's treasurer a the Legion a Mary, but I'm not sure why 'cause her math's not real good. We keep comin' up short. I think we need to buy her a calculator. She was widowed real young. Would like to have some plastic surgery but can't afford it. I think she preferred the days when she modeled for that magazine. She still has old issues lyin' all over her house. They're the first thing you see when you visit her. She don't much like havin' a dowager's hump and wrinkles. She'd rather look like you, or maybe blond, like that Angowski woman. Why are you lookin' like that, dear? You look like you just seen a ghost."

Oh. My. G.o.d. Could Bernice have pushed s.h.i.+rley off the cliff out of jealousy? Was she so bitter about getting old that she'd resorted to killing women who were younger and prettier? How twisted was that? "Nana, you may not want to hear this, but I think Bernice may somehow be involved with the deaths."

"No."

"Yes. I know it may sound crazy to you, but hear me out." So I told her how distrustful I was of Bernice's always trying to make other people look bad. How she might be casting suspicion on others to cover her own tracks. How she'd had access to Jane Hanson's drug supply the night Andy died. How she might have lied about the length of the rest room line on top of Mount Pilatus to provide herself an alibi while she pushed s.h.i.+rley Angowski off the cliff. "You said yourself she's the reigning champ in the five-yard dash," I said, driving home my point. "That makes her one fast cookie."

"Only when there's a blue ribbon involved."

I gave Nana a pleading look. "So what do you think?" I still hadn't figured out Bernice's connection to the death squad, but I figured I could tackle that angle later.

Nana sucked a little on her teeth. "I don't buy it, dear."

"Why not?"

"Three reasons. Number one, I never seen her speak to that Angowski woman. Why would she kill someone she don't know? Number two, she didn't have no good reason to wanna kill Andy. What's her motive?"

I shook my head. "I haven't worked that out yet, but I have a feeling something happened between the two of them that we don't know about yet. What's your last reason?"

"Bernice is my friend. She might be whiny, and snippy, and crabby, but she's no killer. The killer's gotta be someone else."

I'm glad she could be so confident. I wasn't so sure. "Will you promise to stay away from her?"

"How am I gonna do that without havin' her put me through the third degree? She's not gonna hurt me, Emily. I done nothin' that'd make Bernice wanna kill me."

"You won the lottery."

"My money's no good to Bernice, specially if I'm dead."

I hoped Nana was right. Bernice could schedule a lot of face-lifts with seven million and change.

"I went shoppin' today," Nana said, effectively closing the door on our discussion of Bernice. "Seein's how they took away our defense spray, I figured we needed to rearm ourselves, so I got somethin' even better." She removed an object from a white plastic Casa Grande sack and held it up for me to see.

"A Swiss Army knife? Cool."

"I bought two. This one's yours. See, it even has a little clock in the housin'. And it has all these cute little dinguses inside." She began flipping so many metal gadgets out of the housing, she looked like the stunt double for Edward Scissorhands. "Isn't this somethin'? All these jiggers can perform twenty-nine different functions. I don't know what they all do yet, but if this doesn't scare the killer, it'll sure as heck confuse him."

"I went shopping today, too. I picked up another cow watch to replace the one you lent me. It got a little waterlogged when I dived in after George."

"I shoulda mentioned it wasn't waterproof."

Probably wouldn't have helped.

The phone rang. I answered. "Etienne's waiting for me in the lobby," I said when I hung up. "Keep your knife close to you this evening. Okay? Do you have any big plans?" I slipped into my raincoat and stashed my new Swiss Army knife in the outside pocket.

"Don't know yet. I might try out the Jacuzzi. Or I might set up my laptop and send some E-mail to your mother. If her mailbox isn't full, she can go into a full-blown depression. I'm afraid I created a monster when I give her that computer last Christmas. She's sufferin' major addiction."

"You think she does chatrooms and forums and things like that?" I'd once hit the wrong key and landed in a chat-room with "Stud Master" and "Power p.r.i.c.k." Obviously, too many men were spending far too much time at Home Depot these days.

"I don't think she's advanced beyond E-mail yet, but we was talkin' at one of our Legion a Mary meetin's about how people was havin' electronic romances these days. Imagine." She shook her head. "Time was, a fella come to your front door with candy and flowers and courted you real proper. Now he types a couple a sentences into a computer and that's s'posed to be good enough. There's no hand holdin'. No smoochin'. Where's the romance? When I grab a man by his gonads, I wanna see his face while I'm doin' it."

Eh! If my tongue hadn't been attached, I would have swallowed it. "How often did you grab men by their gonads?"

"I only did it with your grampa. And only when I was feelin' frisky."

That was a relief.

"In later years I never did it more than a couple a times a day."

"A couple of times a day?" day?"

"I slowed down some when I hit seventy."

I wondered if I'd inherited Nana's nymphomaniac gene. I hadn't seen any evidence of it yet, but who knew? Maybe I'd be a late bloomer.

I left Nana locked up safely in room number 5111. I suspected she was going to be perfectly fine by herself. After all, the death squad wasn't after her. They were after me.

The Hotel Chateau Gutsch sat like a castle high above the city of Lucerne, clinging precariously to the side of a mountain. Trees and darkness hovered at its outer edges while floodlights illumined its turrets and whitewashed stone. After parking his car, Etienne led me through a carpeted vestibule beyond which I could see small, candlelit tables set with white linen and gleaming china. For the first time since the incident in Spengler's dressing room today, I felt safe. No one in the tour group could ever get to this place without a car, so I could let down my guard and relax.

At the end of the vestibule, Etienne ushered me through a gla.s.s door and into the bar area. It was a cozy room with floor-to-ceiling windows, round tables, a grand piano, and ice sculptures perched on a table with bowls of munchies. He pulled out a chair for me at a secluded table for two in the corner. "Shall I take your coat?"

I slipped my coat off and felt that familiar tingling in my stomach when he did a slow look up and down my body. "Nice." His voice washed over me like warm honey. "Very nice."

Okay. So I'd be paying off my credit card bill for the rest of my life. It was worth it to see that t.i.tillating look in his eye. I sat down and opened the wine and c.o.c.ktail list. Whoa! Twenty francs for a daiquiri? Twenty-two francs for the house wine? I wondered what the incidence of alcoholism was in Switzerland. Probably zero percent. At these prices, a person would fall into bankruptcy before he ever had a chance to fall off the wagon.

"Have you decided what you'd like?" Etienne moved his chair close beside me. Our legs touched casually beneath the table in some kind of unannounced foreplay, and then his pant leg brushed my knee so intimately, I thought my kneecap would have an o.r.g.a.s.m.

"I'll have whatever you're having," I said, trying to keep the quiver out of my voice.

He ordered two martinis, then returned his attention to me. "You look lovely tonight, Emily. Absolutely lovely. The dress is exquisite. The hotel must have found your suitcase."

"It's still lost. But the staff collected thirteen dollars and fifty-four cents to see me through until they find it."