Dutch Me Deadly

Alice worried her lip as she checked the time. “We only have forty-five minutes left. We’ll never make it through this whole thing.”

“We’ll be left behind,” fretted Margi.

“Alice has a point,” said George. “We’re lagging so far back, all the folks who were straggling behind us are ahead of us now.”

“Even the bus driver’s ahead of us,” lamented Nana, “and he started out way behind.”

I drilled a look at her. “Which bus driver?”

“Our bus driver.”

“Which one?”

She looked confused. “We got more than one?”

“We do now.” My heart slammed into my ribcage. Acid bubbled up my windpipe. “Look everyone, I need to run ahead. Stay together. Do not wander off alone. And here—” I handed Bernice my audio guide. “Try to pick up the pace.”

I could be overreacting. I hoped I was overreacting. But why was Dietger on the Atlantic Wall when he should be in a cab on his way to banishment right now?

Anxiety quickened my step. I raced through narrow trenches and low-ceilinged tunnels, poked my head into bunkers, and checked out exterior gun emplacements. The other guests must have breezed through the site, because save for the uniformed mannequins on display behind protective glass, the place was deserted. No Peewee. No Bouchards. No Hennessys. No—

I ducked inside a darkened pillbox, pausing a millesecond for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light. The stairs were made of brick and descended deep into the earth, but it wasn’t their steepness that forced a sudden scream out of me.

It was the body lying at their base.

Eighteen

With dread knotting my stomach, I watched the ambulance tear out of the parking lot, lights flashing and siren wailing.

“He’ll be okay,” Jackie assured me. “He’s probably had a spill at every historical site in Europe. Five- hundred-year-old staircases weren’t constructed with safety features in mind.”

“The stairs back there aren’t five hundred years old. They’re not even a hundred years old.” The blaring weeooo! of the siren faded as the yellow medical van headed south.

I’d called the emergency services number on my cellphone when I’d found Wally at the bottom of the stairs, but to my horror, the operator spoke no English. “Atlantic Wall!” I kept repeating. “Ambulance!” Unsure of my success, I hung up, called Nana’s cell, gave her the scoop, then asked her to send someone to the ticket office to request an ambulance. “Your fastest runner. And don’t you dare waste time voting. Just do it. Pronto!”

The ambulance arrived sooner than I expected, which was a relief, because although Wally was maintaining a strong pulse, he hadn’t regained consciousness, and that worried me. I’d dealt with head traumas before and knew they could have devastating consequences. I’d asked Beth Ann to ride in the ambulance and remain in the hospital with him, and she’d agreed, so I felt good that we were covering that base. Jackie had even lent her cellphone to Beth Ann so she could report back to us on Wally’s progress. I suspected he might be happy to see a familiar face when he woke up.

If he woke up.

I banished the thought as the ambulance disappeared from sight.

The police car, however, was still here.

“Do you think Wally tripped?” Jackie asked as we headed back to the ticket office.

“I think he had unwelcome help down the stairs,” I told her. And I knew exactly whose hand had done the helping.

_____

“You accuse me?” Dietger railed, florid-faced and indignant. “I was one who found him! I was one who ran back here for help!”

“What was wrong with your cellphone?” I challenged. “Why didn’t you call for help from the site?”

He whipped his phone out of its holster and shoved it in my face. “I have no bars! Is it crime to forget to charge your mobile phone?”

The police officer who’d responded to the emergency call stepped between us. “You realize the charge you’re making is a serious one, madam?”

“You bet I do. Wally fired him from his job just over an hour ago, and he was supposed to be gone by now. But he didn’t leave. He decided to stalk Wally instead.”

The officer’s expression remained neutral. “Is this true?” he asked Dietger. “Mr. Peppers discharged you?”

“So he fired me. What of it? Is there law preventing me from visiting my country’s number-one tourist attraction?”

“There’s a law preventing you from pushing someone down a flight of stairs!” I cried.

“You crazy woman! I tell you already. I find him! I run back here to phone ambulance!” He stabbed his finger at the ticket clerk. “Ask him. He has landline. He make the call.”

“I did,” the clerk agreed. “I dialed the emergency number to request an ambulance for the gentleman.”

“See?” Dietger crowed.

“And then I called a taxi to pick this man up as quickly as possible.”

The officer’s eyebrow slanted upward.

“This looks maybe not so good,” offered Dietger, his voice losing its bluster. “But I can explain.”

“I’m sure you can,” said the officer, manacling his hand around Dietger’s arm. “At the station.”

“I did nothing,” Dietger fumed as the officer escorted him out the door. “I was mad, but try to kill him? No! I wanted we should talk. But he was at the bottom of the stairs, unable to talk. So what was I supposed to do? Wait until he woke up?”

A second officer took over as mayhem erupted within the room.

“He’s our bus driver!” yelled Gary Bouchard. “How are we supposed to get back to Amsterdam without him?”

“How can we take a tour without a tour director?” griped Ricky.

“This trip has been cursed from day one,” carped Sheila in a damning voice. “I’ve had it. I’m leaving.”

“Me, too,” said Mindy, “after the Belgian waffles we were promised.”

“Does anyone have an address for Wally so we can send him a get-well card?” asked Margi.

Anger. Anxiety. Agitation. With the police officer looking a little overwhelmed, I curled my lips over my teeth and let fly my signature whistle, shocking the room into immediate silence.

“There,” I announced. “That’s more like it. How can you hear anything the police officer says if you’re all talking at the same time?”

“Are you in charge?” the officer asked me.

I surrendered to the inevitable. “I guess I am now.”

We conducted a quick question and answer session between us, going over a litany of loose ends. Wally would be taken to one of the many hospitals in Oostende. Our substitute bus driver would ferry us back to Amsterdam. The officer would call me if they decided to press charges against Dietger. Could he have my name and mobile phone number? And by the way, I told him in parting, we’d lost our first tour director and two other guests on this trip already, so he might want to phone the Amsterdam police for information because at least one of the deaths was being investigated as a murder.

“Is it possible your bus driver is responsible for this other death?” he asked me.

“Now there’s a thought,” I remarked. “Why don’t you ask him?” Dietger was about the only person on the tour whose name I hadn’t connected with the other deaths.