Dutch Me Deadly

nature: it was mind-numbingly scary to be threatened by a six-foot Barbie doll with Darth Vader’s voice.

“Pervert,” Jackie sniped. Wheeling around, she motioned for me to follow her down the alleyway behind us.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I chased after her.

She stopped in front of a gaggle of seniors who were huddled near a brick building, making strange animal noises and laughing giddily at each other. Jackie swept her arm toward them. “I did what I could. They’re all yours now.”

I did a sudden double-take. Oh, my God! It was them! I took a quick head count. Onetwothreefour—

“Look, everyone,” giggled Margi as she pointed at me. “It’s—You know. Her. The girl who’s on the tour with us.” She swayed against Tilly in super-slow motion and giggled some more.

Fivesixseveneight. EIGHT? That couldn’t be right. Onetwo-threefour—

“Are we on a tour?” Bernice twirled in a slow circle, head back and mouth open, as if she were trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue. “I was wondering what we were doing here.”

Fivesixseven … eight. Nuts!

“Ewwww,” said Alice, hugging George’s prosthetic leg to her chest and gazing skyward. “Look at the pretty colors.”

“Who’s missing?” I cried at them.

Osmond raised his hand. “I am.”

I looked left. I looked right. No Dick Teig. No Dick Stolee. No—. My heart stopped in panic. “Where’s Nana?”

They regarded me stupidly with their glassy eyes and goofy smiles.

“Why is there a bird sitting on your head?” asked Helen, tilting her head to view it from another angle.

Eh! Somewhere between the hotel and here, Helen had apparently lost both her eyebrows and replaced them with adhesive bandages that she’d colored with permanent black marker. Not the best fix, but in comparison to what everyone else around here looked like, it was actually quite attractive.

Tilly stared trancelike at my bare head. “That’s Pteroglossus torquatus,” she whispered in awe, “found only in the tropical rainforests of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras—”

“Ewwww,” cooed Alice, eyeing me in a similar manner. “Look at the pretty feathers.”

“—Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia—”

“There is no bird on my head,” I shouted.

“—Equador, Venezuela.” Tilly swung her walking stick into the air. “Do you want me to knock the damn thing onto its keister?”

“No!” I ducked as her cane whirled toward my head.

“Why is the pavement shaking?” asked Grace, squatting low and riding out the tremor like a surfer riding a wave. “Weeeeee!”

“That’s enough!” I yelled. “Grace, stand up. There’s no earthquake. Alice, give George back his leg.” I narrowed my gaze as my brain caught up to my eyes. “Alice, why are you holding George’s leg?”

Jackie snatched Tilly’s walking stick off the ground and handed it to me. “They decided to play croquet,” she said under her breath. “George’s leg was the mallet. Alice was supposed to be up next.”

My jaw came unhinged. “What were they using for balls?”

She shook her head. “You don’t wanna know.”

Oh, God. “Eyes on me, everyone! One last time. Where? Is? Nana?”

“I had to go potty,” she called out as she shuffled up behind me in her little size-5 sneakers.

I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and wrapped my arms around her. “Stop doing that! You scared the bejeebers out of me.”

“Emily, dear, what a nice surprise. I wasn’t expectin’ to see you here. Listen, everyone,” she enthused as she turned to the group. “If anyone’s gotta go potty, I found a real nice one in that corner buildin’ over there. Only thing is, I think I was in the wrong section ’cause a fella poked his hand under the partition while I was sittin’ there doin’ my business. He didn’t speak no English, but I figured he didn’t have no toilet paper, so I helped him out and give him a big wad. Poor fella. God only knows how long he’d been holed up in that stall before I come along.”

I hung my head. Maybe it was time for me to switch careers to something less stressful—like, say, bomb defuser.

“Where’s that bird, Helen?” Margi squinted in my direction. “I can’t see it anymore. I think there’s something wrong with my glasses.”

Osmond removed his wire rims. “Here, try mine.”

“Stop that!” I scolded. “You can’t wear each other’s glasses.”

Nana’s shoulders slumped as if weighted by concrete shoulder pads. “You don’t know the half of it, dear.”

Why did I not want to know what that meant?

“Everyone is here except for Dick Teig and Dick Stolee,” I said, raising my voice several decibels. “Does anyone know where they are?”

Jackie snorted. “Good luck with that one.”

“My Dick is missing?” Helen studied the faces around her with sudden interest. “When did that happen?”

Yup. It was going to be a long night. I rephrased my question. “When is the last time you saw the two Dicks?”

“September twenty-first, nineteen-fifty-nine,” said George.

Osmond raised his hand. “Why is Helen missing her dick? Did she have a sex change?”

“See what I mean?” taunted Jackie.

“What is wrong with all of you?” I cried.

“It’s on account a the chocolate cake,” Nana blurted out. “The pastry shop what Jackie sent us to was closed, so we found another one. But while we was sittin’ there, eatin’ our pastries, everyone’s eyes started goin’ berserk.”

I frowned. “Define berserk.”

“Well, the Dicks was complainin’ about lightnin’ bolts flashin’ in front of their eyes. George swore he seen giant flies attackin’ him. And Bernice said she could make me look a whole lot more like Winston Churchill if I’d let her move my nose closer to my eyebrows.”

“Hmm. Ocular migraines can cause symptoms like that, but I don’t understand why all of you started suffering the same effects at the same time. That’s really weird.” I tilted Nana’s chin up so I could examine her eyes. “Are you seeing anything unusual?”

“I seen Dick Stolee pull out his wallet to pay the taxi. That was pretty unusual.”

“So, everyone’s eyes went berserk except yours?”

She nodded glumly. “It was pretty disappointin’. Everyone else was seein’ fireworks and insects. All I got to see was George swattin’ kamikaze flies.”

I shook my head. “Why do you suppose you were the only person not affected?”

“I think it’s ’cause I didn’t eat no chocolate cake. They run out by the time I give ’em my order, so I got a poppyseed muffin instead and it tasted so bad, I give it to the Dicks. They didn’t notice it tasted funny on account of they eat so fast, they don’t know what they’re chewin’ half the time.”

“So everyone who ate the cake displayed symptoms?” This was becoming less of a medical enigma and more of a no-brainer. “Are you absolutely sure you went to a pastry shop?”

“It wasn’t a pastry shop,” Tilly called out. “It was a coffeeshop.”

I sucked in my breath with horror. “A coffeeshop? You were supposed to avoid coffeeshops. Remember? I told you at all three group meetings. I handed out special memos. I made a notation on the bottom of your itineraries.”

“We knew you talked about ’em,” Nana confessed. “We just couldn’t remember what you said.”

“To reiterate,” I announced pointedly, “Dutch cafes serve light meals. Dutch coffeeshops serve bakery items laced with marijuana and God only knows what other drugs!”

They exchanged sheepish looks with each other before dissolving into giggles again.