Dutch Me Deadly

recite the twisted rhyme they made up about me? Lau-ra, Lau-ra, she’s so scary. Looks like a— ”

I held up my hand. “Hearing it once was more than enough. It was really mean, not to mention it didn’t even rhyme.”

“I know. And Mindy, being the master of iambic pentameter that she was, never figured out that ‘ferret’ didn’t rhyme with ‘scary.’ ‘Fairy’ would have been a better choice. Even I knew that. I’m surprised her grades were even good enough to graduate with the rest of us, but she was already planning her wedding senior year, with a bun in the oven, so Sister Hippolytus probably wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible. Not the kind of image our high school wanted to promote, especially back then.”

I shook my head. “How were you able to handle the humiliation for so many years without cracking?”

“I knew myself better than they knew me. I might have been painfully shy and geeky, but I knew that there was an attractive extrovert hiding somewhere inside me, so I just kept my mouth shut and my nose in my books and bided my time until I could head off to college.”

“Has anyone nominated you for sainthood yet?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I did my fair share of crying over having my feelings hurt, but I thought they were a bunch of loud-mouthed idiots who probably wouldn’t amount to much, so that kept me going.” Her eyes sparkled with sudden tears. “And I had a protector who always came to my defense when something derogatory was said about me. I wish I could have been so brave, but I took the coward’s way out. I simply told myself that the meanies were living the best years of their lives in high school, while I was looking ahead to bigger and better things. And see? I was right. I’m going to be on the cover of Vogue!”

“Boy, how do you resist wanting to pay them back for all the misery they put you through?”

“Believe it or not, I’ve forgiven them.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It was either forgive them or let the experience weigh me down for the rest of my life. So I chose forgiveness. It was very liberating. I highly recommend it. And it’s allowed me to direct my energy and talents toward something constructive rather than destructive. Revenge is such a downer. If you feed it enough negative emotion, it can eat you alive.”

She took my arm and navigated me away from the door as

Dietger stormed into the lobby like a prize bull stampeding through the streets of Pamplona. “Geesch. He walks the same way he drives,” she scoffed. “Like a maniac. I’m glad we’re going on foot tonight. The only thing we’ll have to dodge is bicycles. Are you coming with us? We’ll probably be treated to quite the spectacle for a measly five Euros.”

“Five Euros? Not twenty?”

“It’s probably worth five. No way is it worth twenty.”

Oh, God. I hope no one mentioned that to Beth Ann. We could be looking at a total nuclear meltdown.

“So, what do you say?” asked Laura. “Can I twist your arm? I think you and I have great friendship potential.”

“Thanks for the invite, but I’m forcing myself to do the responsible thing tonight by waiting for my group to return from their outing. They want their independence, but I need peace of mind.”

“Fair enough. I’ll catch you later then. And I can’t thank you enough for pumping up my brand at dinner. That was really sweet. I owe you.”

“No problem. It was worth the fib to see the shock on their faces. I wish I’d thought to take a picture.” As Dietger blared out orders to the assembled group, I was relieved that my guys would be safely ensconced in a pastry shop this evening while everyone else explored Amsterdam’s hellhole of live porn and illicit sex. Thank God. One less thing to worry about.

Laura scanned the crowd. “I’m trying to decide who I should hang out with on our field trip. My old friend Mary Lou or the guy who was the class clown?”

I was struck with a sudden thought. “Why don’t you hang out with your high school protector. Is he here?”

“I wish.” Sadness flooded her face. A faraway look filled her eyes. “There’s so much I’d like to thank him for. So much I—” Her voice cracked. She shook her head. “He’s not here. Bobby disappeared over a lifetime ago.”

I waited a beat. “Bobby?”

She nodded. “My protector. Bobby Guerrette.”

_____

As investigations went, I was discovering precious little about Charlotte but practically everything about Bobby Guerrette. Too bad Bobby hadn’t been our tour director. I’d gathered so much background information on him, I’d have the case cracked by now.

Once back in my room, I soaked in the tub for a half hour, slipped into something comfy, then curled up on the bed with a book and my phone. On a whim I tried Etienne at home, but when he didn’t answer, I had to satisfy myself by leaving him flirtatious kissy sounds on the answering machine.

He’d know it was me. We had caller ID, which made it impossible to make lewd phone calls anonymously anymore.

I turned the television on to an international business channel, opened my Dutch/English dictionary, slunk into a cozy cocoon of pillows and blankets, and began to peruse the section on what to order in a restaurant.

It was the last thing I remembered … until the phone woke me up.

Jackie’s voice. High and screechy. In full-blown panic. “You’ve gotta get down here, Emily! I’ve rounded up everyone else, but I’ve lost the Dicks!”

Seven

“How can they be lost?” I ranted at Jackie forty minutes later. “What happened to the pastry shop? The chocolate cake? The anticipated sugar highs?”

“Oh, the rest of them are high, all right,” she shot back hysterically. “But it ain’t from sugar.”

The taxi driver had dropped me off at an unlit alleyway with instructions to head toward the neon lights at the end of the alley and cross the footbridge over the canal. “Der place you’re looking for vill be right in front of you.”

“You can’t take me right to the door?” I objected.

He’d snorted with laughter and driven away.

I understood the laughter now, because there were so many people jammed into the strip of real estate between the city’s two oldest canals that the street had morphed into a pedestrian mall. The Red Light District was apparently closed off to vehicular traffic to accommodate the hordes of curiosity seekers who were too mesmerized by the mind-numbing debauchery to take notice of the occasional car speeding straight at them.

I’d found Jackie pacing in front of a corner building called the Cafe Bar de Stoof—a luminous white structure whose enormous windows were set up on a grid as precise as an Iowa street map. Music screamed into the night from every opened door. Lights blazed like electric rainbows—flood lights, strobe lights, flashing lights, street lights. Graffiti defiled every staircase and door stoop. Whistles vied with cat calls. Onlookers lingered in boisterous circles, crowded the hoods of parked cars, and hung from the railings of staircases and balconies, chanting and singing with drunken abandon. A carnival atmosphere prevailed, reminding me of the annual Windsor City Hog Festival, only without the Tilt-A-Whirl or the hog.

“Define ‘high’,” I asked Jackie as a tattooed guy with spiked purple hair and anchor chains dangling from his nose sauntered up to us. He swayed slightly as he eyeballed Jackie’s boots.

“Niiiice,” he slurred, sticking his tongue out as if to lick them. “My girl would look sooo hot in them. How about you slip ’em off and hand ’em over.”

Jackie stared him straight in the eye and lowered her voice to a deep basso. “How about you get lost before I rip that tongue ornament out of your head and use it to pierce what’s left of your brain?”

He turned abruptly on his heel and staggered back into the crowd, proving one of those axioms of human