“So the bus driver dropped us off at our hotel about a half hour ago, and we’re supposed to leave again in twenty minutes for a dinner cruise on the canal. Not that anyone can think about food right now. But our driver informed us, and I quote, that ‘the show must go on.’ Why are Europeans so fond of American clichés? Don’t they have any of their own?”
I waited a beat for him to answer. When he didn’t, I figured the call had been dropped despite the good reception. “Hello? Etienne? Are you there?”
“Your tour director is dead?”
I winced. This wasn’t exactly the kind of event we could highlight in our travel brochure. “She warned us about the bicycles, but she apparently forgot to heed her own warning.”
“Your tour is one day old, and already you’ve transported a body to the morgue?”
“C’mon, sweetie. You’ve visited Holland. You know what bicycle traffic is like around here. An accident like that could happen to anyone.” I paused. “I guess.”
He muttered something in French, or Swiss-German, or Italian. I couldn’t tell which.
“Here’s the thing,” I explained. “Charlotte was a terrible tour director. No one liked her. Actually, that’s an understatement. Everyone hated her. She was controlling, and petulant, and treated us like children.”
“So you think the accident happened on purpose?”
“You bet I do.” Etienne had hung up his Swiss police inspector’s badge only a short time ago, so his law enforcement genes were still easily stimulated.
“Did any eyewitnesses step forward?”
I cupped my hand around my mouth and lowered my voice. “That’s the really weird thing. The sidewalk was absolutely choked with tourists, but not one person claimed to have seen anything. How unbelievable is that?”
“Not as unbelievable as you might think, bella.”
The lobby elevator dinged open to reveal the entire Iowa contingent staring mindlessly at their cellphones, heads down, shoulders hunched, and thumbs flying.
“Any number of crimes can be committed in crowds where people are preoccupied with window shopping, talking on cellphones, listening to iPods, text messaging. We’re allowing crimes to happen in plain sight because we’re no longer aware of our surroundings. Too many other distractions vying for our attention.”
I rolled my eyes as the elevator door slid shut with my guys still crammed inside. “Ya think?”
“Do you know if the police are continuing to investigate the incident?”
“According to the woman who was translating the blow-by-blow for me, the bicyclist involved in the accident swore that Charlotte stumbled into the street right in front of him.” The indicator needle over the elevator drifted to the first floor, second floor, third floor … “The police discovered a broken paving stone near the curb, so they put two and two together and decided that she probably tripped over it, stumbled off the curb, and never saw what hit her. Nice, neat, and tidy.”
“A reasonable explanation.”
“Not if you consider the ill will she’d stirred up with the guests. She’d already had one serious run-in with a grouchy guy from Maine who just happened to be in the vicinity when she took her spill. He conveniently disappeared after the police arrived, but I wouldn’t mind getting him alone so I could ask him a few questions. The bicyclist might have thought Charlotte stumbled into the street, but how do we know she wasn’t pushed?”
“By the grouchy guy from Maine?”
“Or by some of the other Mainers. They’re all old high school classmates, so they could be covering up for each other.”
“Do you think they’re so fond of each other as to risk becoming accessories to a crime?”
I gnawed my lip as I watched the indicator needle glide back toward the first-floor lobby. “I don’t actually know that any of them like each other. In fact, I think the opposite is true. A few of them really despise each other. Or at least, they used to. Popular kids versus nerds and wallflowers. Bruised feelings. Emotional scarring. Youthful insecurities. The whole nine yards.”
“I have another call coming in on line one, Emily. Could I trouble you to hold for a moment? I think it’s important.”
Yeah, but … my call was important, too, wasn’t it?
The elevator dinged open again.
“This is the lobby, you morons! Are you going to get off this time?”
“You’re standing on my foot!” snapped Margi.
“I can’t move until Bernice moves,” whined Helen.
“Can anyone see Marion?” George asked desperately.
They were jammed in the car like college kids in a VW Beetle, hips bumping and arms tangling into knots as they struggled to squeeze through the door at the same time.
“Press the button to keep the door open!” yelled Alice.
“I can’t see the selector panel,” fussed Tilly.
“That’s ’cuz Dick’s stomach is squashed against it,” cried Nana.
Osmond’s voice rose to a fever pitch. “Well, yank him outta there before his stomach hits the button for the fourth floor again.”
Amid a cacophony of frustrated grunts and grumbles, Dick got catapulted out the door and into the lobby. With the human log jam broken, everyone else staggered into the lobby behind him, massaging the kinks out of their necks and shoulders like the survivors of a train wreck. I shook my head, wondering if I should declare their phones a health hazard and demand they hand them over to me. One inattentive step in Amsterdam and splat! They’d either be bobbing in a murky canal with the rest of the swill or flattened on the pavement like Charlotte. But they’d never give them up willingly.
As I watched them bend their heads over their phones again, I made up my mind. If they were to survive Holland, they needed to get rid of the things. I could convince them. I knew I could.
I just had to figure out how.
“Sorry, bella.” Etienne came back on the line. “That was your mother.”
“You ditched me for my mother?”
“She needed to tell me what time she and your father are picking me up in the morning.”
Alarm bells began ringing inside my head. “You’re going someplace with Mom and Dad?”
“Fishing,” he said in a pained voice. “In the wilds of Minnesota. Away from Main Street, cable television, and cellphone towers.”
“Fishing?” I paused. “Why?”
“Because your mother set off the sprinkler system when she flambéed lunch for me in the office yesterday, so while the cleaning crew squeegees the water out of the carpet, I’m going fishing with your parents, at their insistence, to help me cope with the stress of the situation.”
I sat frozen in place, my stomach sliding to my knees. The sprinkler system? “How much damage did—”
“Another call coming in, Emily. Forgive me.”
Outside, our tour bus pulled up by the revolving door at the entrance to the hotel, its engine roaring powerfully enough to rattle the window glass. My guys, however, remained in cellphone comas until they noticed a steady stream of Mainers meandering into the lobby from the stairwell, and then they pounced, approaching the newcomers, engaging them in conversation, acting unnaturally friendly.
Whoa. This was a little weird. My guys never volunteered to break the ice, so what was up with all the spontaneous schmoozing?
“I’m back,” said Etienne, “but I can’t talk. Our insurance adjustor is on the other line. But tell me quickly. What are the Passages people doing about your tour director issue?”
“The company is sending us a replacement. We’re expecting him to arrive either late this evening or early tomorrow morning. He’s on holiday at the moment, so he probably won’t be too happy about having his vacation interrupted. Keep your fingers crossed that he’s not another Charlotte. I don’t think any of us could handle an instant replay of that fiasco.”