His eyes seemed to dance in his sockets, aping the kind of reaction you might expect if you stuck a screwdriver into a live electrical outlet.
“I’m right on top of the situation though,” I chirped. “I’ve talked to the police, I have a couple of forms to fill out, and I know exactly what to do if nothing is resolved by early afternoon.”
Eye blinking. Panicked silence.
“Come on, Wally. No one has been officially in charge since yesterday. I’m just doing my best to help out in the void.”
Color drained from his face like dye from a cheap shirt.
“Would you like to sit down?” I asked gently. “You look a little—”
He held up his hand. “I’m changing the itinerary,” he choked out in a sandpapery voice. “This morning we’ll visit the Rijksmuseum. This afternoon, the Anne Frank house. And in between, I’ll be hunkered down in whatever isolated corner I can find, trying to locate our missing guests. Sound like fun?” He glowered at me. “Good thing for you my phone is fully charged. I’ll note the changes on the whiteboard.”
“I’m sure the missing guests will show up. The policewoman I spoke to sounded really confident that they’d be dragging themselves back any minute now. Her advice was simply to be patient and try not to panic.”
“Easy for her to say. She’s never traveled with you before.” He looked me up and down, as if hoping I’d disappear. “So, you’re the official escort for the Iowa contingent, are you?”
I nodded.
“I won’t ask you how many guests you’ve lost in your official capacity.”
Which was a good thing, since I’d lost count.
He threw a long look beyond me, as if he were dredging up more unpleasant memories. “Is that irritating woman with the wire-whisk hair and crab walk still part of your group?”
“Bernice? Bernice Zwerg? You remember her, too?”
“You’d better give her a hand. She just walked into the wall.”
_____
“I’m good,” Bernice snuffled when her nose stopped bleeding. “But if my pain and suffering get too overwhelming, I plan to sue.”
We’d settled her into a chair in the lobby and plied her with tissues, but had to send Margi running to the restroom for wet paper towels when Osmond keeled over in a dead faint. “Stay calm!” Alice advised as I dug his medical history form out of my shoulder bag. “He’s fine with his own blood; it’s other people’s that gives him the problem.”
“That’s a stupid place to stick a wall,” Bernice complained as we hauled Osmond off the floor.
“Right,” said George. “Contractors always make a point of putting load-bearing walls in stupid places, like … public buildings.”
“Don’t get smart with me, George,” she snapped. “This hotel has got a lot of nerve booby-trapping this place and not bothering to warn us. That wall wasn’t there last night, was it?”
This seemed to perk up Osmond, who called for a group vote despite being half-conscious on the sofa. I studied their faces as they cast their yeas and nays, and noticed something astonishing for the very first time.
“Did you know that your eyeglasses are exactly alike? How do nine people as different as you guys end up with the same eyewear?”
“It’s on account of Pills Etcetera,” Nana explained. “They was runnin’ a special—$39.95 for no-line bifocals.”
“And you all selected the same frame?”
“The special only applied to one frame,” Tilly chafed. “A detail the pharmacy failed to mention in its weekly flyer.”
My brain cells started cranking like the pistons in a steam engine. Identical eyewear? Group vision problems? Hmm. I might be onto something.
“How many of you are accidentally bumping into things this morning?” I questioned.
Nine hands crept slowly into the air.
“How many of you saw fireworks in front of your eyes in the coffeeshop last night?”
Everyone except Nana raised a hand.
“When the symptoms first appeared, how many of you tried on someone else’s lenses to see if a different prescription would improve your vision?”
No hands went up.
Nana rolled her eyes. “They was all passin’ their eyeglasses around the table—the thing is, they was so hopped up on chocolate cake, they can’t remember doin’ it.”
Disbelieving gasps filled the air.
“That’s a bunch of hooey,” accused Bernice.
“It most certainly is not,” said Tilly in her professor’s voice. “That’s exactly what happened. Now that my brain is operating on all cylinders again, I’m being haunted by colorful memories I’d rather forget.”
Nana looked frustrated. “Hold on. If I didn’t let no one try on my glasses, how come I’m blind as everyone else this mornin’?”
Tilly slid her eyeglasses off her face and offered them to Nana. “See if these help.”
“You guys!” I chided. “You have to stop doing tha—”
“I can see!” Nana exclaimed. She coaxed the frames up her nose and darted a look around the lobby. “The furniture’s not miniaturized no more! Your heads are bigger than mothballs. I can even see the scribblin’ on that whiteboard over there.”
Tilly shook her head. “When I got up this morning, I must have grabbed your glasses off the bedside table by mistake. Forgive me, Marion.” She gestured toward the discarded lenses. “Shall I take those off your hands?”
But once she’d adjusted them on her face, she shook her head. “These aren’t mine either. All right.” Giving her walking stick an imperious thump on the floor, she steeled her eyes and hardened her jaw. “I have only two things to say. First, we owe Emily a titanic debt of thanks for resolving this imbroglio, and second, one of you is wearing my glasses. I don’t know who it is, but I’m giving you notice. I want them back.”
Relieved that all nine of them weren’t about to suffer kidney failure, I sucked in a calming breath and allowed myself an indulgent sigh.
“Can anyone read the handwritin’ on that whiteboard?” Nana asked off-handedly. “I can’t figure out where it says we’re goin’, but the bus better hurry up and get here, ’cause it says we’re leavin’ at nine-thirty.”
I checked my watch. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I couldn’t leave in ten minutes. I hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet!
“Get the eyeglasses thing sorted out,” I urged as I raced toward the elevator. “I’ll see you on the bus.”
“What about Dick?” Grace and Helen shouted at me in unison.
“Don’t worry about them!” I bypassed the closed elevator door and headed for the stairs. “I’m on top of it!”
_____
The Rijksmuseum is a lumbering, red-brick leviathan that sprawls the length of two football fields. Blending the elegance of a French chateau with the ruggedness of a fortified castle, it’s an imposing jumble of gothic turrets, decorative gables, grand archways, towering windows, and cold gray stone. Skylights the size of solar panels stud its long expanse of roof, spilling light onto paintings that illustrate the domestic lives of Dutchmen in an age when their galleons ruled the waves, and their burgomeisters ruled the world in periwigs and pumps. The men responsible for creating these portraits are referred to as the Dutch Masters—a group of artistic geniuses whose masterpieces hung in the homes of seventeenth-century patricians before ending up on the lids of twentieth-century cigar boxes.
We were scheduled to meet an art historian on the first floor at eleven o’clock, so we had plenty of time to explore the ground floor exhibits before then. I power-walked through the Dutch history rooms, taking quick notice of the clocks, ships, weapons and armor, then wended my way around to the sculpture and decorative arts rooms, where I found Chip Soucy parked in front of a glass case that housed an exhibit more suited to my taste—a dollhouse.