Dutch Me Deadly

person in line to file an objection with the zoning commission.”

“Did you guys see men and women?” asked Chip. “How come the place I went only had women?”

“Der Bananenbar features women only,” Vanden Boogard informed him.

“I was at a banana bar,” Peewee told Chip. “Was it the same one you went to? How come I didn’t see you there?”

“I got absorbed into a bachelor party in a private salon, so I wasn’t in the main room. You wouldn’t have believed the raunchiness. Lap dances. Pole dances. I wanted to leave, but hell, I didn’t want to appear rude.”

My gaze bounced from one to the other as they compared the depravity levels of the shows they’d seen. And since they all professed abject horror at what the Dutch offered up as entertainment, they agreed not to tell anyone back in Bangor about their adventure. “People would only criticize,” said Mindy. “Can you imagine the gossip? People might suggest that devout Catholics like us might actually have enjoyed watching that filth.”

“Father Harvey would recommend we go to confession,” said Sheila.

“What people don’t know won’t hurt them,” said Gary. “It’ll be our little secret. Agreed?”

I stared at them, thunderstruck. Is that why everyone had run away from me when I’d questioned them about Paula Peavey and the Red Light District? Not because they were trying to cover up their complicity in Paula’s death, but because they didn’t want anyone to know that they’d sneaked into a bunch of seamy sex shows?

The atmosphere all of a sudden seemed more cordial, kind of like a room gets when its occupants discover they support the same cause, denounce the same enemy, or are trying the same diet. They laughed. They exchanged quips. They made a pact to keep their dip in the naughty pool to themselves. And as quickly as that, sworn enemies became friends, fused by their bond of secrecy.

But the fact still remained, someone had killed Paula.

I popped out of my chair. “Did your surveillance tapes show Pete Finnegan buying a ticket to any of the erotic theaters?”

“There are many tapes,” Officer Vanden Boogard admitted, “not all of which we have analyzed.”

“Pete Finnegan threatened Paula on the night she died, and just about everyone in this room heard him.”

Helen looked surprised. “We didn’t hear him. Where were we?”

“Playing croquet with George’s leg in lala land,” Jackie said under her breath.

“If Pete didn’t spend the evening in a sex club like everyone else,” I hurried on, “he would have had ample time to stalk … and maybe even kill Paula.”

Vanden Boogard made a quick notation on his papers. “Mr. Finnegan kills Ms. Peavey, and der following day, ends up dead himself ? Are you suggesting der possibility that he may have committed suicide in remorse for his actions?”

“No. Actually, I think Pete was killed, too.”

He stood statue-still, regarding me oddly, while the Mainers whispered behind their hands and gasped some more. “Could I have your name, please?”

“Emily Andrew, but my married name is Miceli.”

The door to the conference room creaked open and Nana appeared, her face lit up like Lars Bakke’s grain elevator at Christmas time. “Would you look at what the cat drug in?” she announced, stepping aside to allow Dick Teig and Dick Stolee to precede her into the room.

“Oh, my God!” I cried. “You’re back!” We left our seats en masse and descended upon them like a swarm of locusts, group hugging, smiling, sobbing, laughing.

“Where have you been?” demanded Helen after squeezing sufficient air out of her Dick to shrink him by an inch.

“Forget that,” griped Bernice. “Gimme back my glasses.”

“Why didn’t you call?” spat Grace, her voice escalating into a Palin screech. “Do you know how worried we were? Do you know how long it took us to fill out your stupid missing person questionnaires? And by the way, what’s your favorite color? Black or white?”

“I dropped my phone,” Dick Stolee explained in a contrite voice, “and not only did it fall apart when it hit the ground, it got run over by a girl on a bike.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me your phone ended up on the pavement, too?” Helen taunted her husband.

He shook his head. “Mine ended up in the canal.”

“Of course, it did,” she said skeptically. “Which one?”

“The one that had the pretty flying saucers hovering over it.”

Osmond scratched his jaw. “Now that you mention it, I think I mighta seen them, too.”

“I never should have tried taking a picture,” Dick lamented, “but I wanted to show my little lovebug that I wasn’t hallucinating.”

I didn’t know what I found more disturbing—that Dick Teig had been high enough on weed to see flying saucers, or that his pet name for Helen was lovebug.

“Why didn’t you just walk back to the hotel?” asked Grace.

“Couldn’t remember the name,” said one Dick.

“Didn’t know where it was,” said the other.

“You weren’t carrying your itineraries with you?” I scolded.

They shrugged in unison. “We don’t carry that stuff with us,” explained Dick Teig. “That’s your job.”

Helen sniffed the air around her husband. “Dick Teig! Is that cheap perfume I smell on your jacket?”

He took a whiff of his sleeve. “It doesn’t smell that bad, Helen. You have stuff that smells worse.”

“If I may,” said Dick Stolee, raising his palms for calm. “The girl on the bicycle felt so bad about running over my smartphone that she offered to take us under her wing until we got our bearings back. She was a real Samaritan, Grace. She took us to her apartment, let us sleep on her sofa, plied us with coffee and some very nice Dutch apple pastry. She’s a student at the university, studying to be a doctor. I don’t know how we would have survived without her. And today, she drove us up and down every street in the downtown area until we spotted our hotel. So, here we are.”

Helen twitched her nose. “She has terrible taste in perfume.”

“Did you offer her any money for her trouble?” asked Grace. “If she’s a student, she could probably use a few extra dollars.”

“She works a part-time job at a grocery store,” said Dick Teig, “and she says the pay is great, so she refused our money. It had a funny name. Sounded like some kind of fruit market. You remember the name, Dick?”

“The Bananenbar.” He pulled several small rectangular boxes out of his pocket and held them up. “They give away souvenir matchboxes with real wooden matches inside, so I stocked up. Chantal had a whole bowlful, so she told us to help ourselves.”

“Her name is Chantal?” questioned Helen. “A doctor named Chantal? Hildegard I could believe, but Chantal?”

Helen eyed Grace. Grace eyed Helen. Without exchanging a single syllable, they grabbed their husbands by their prospective ears and marched them to the nearest seats.

“Ow!” wailed Dick Stolee.

“What?” howled Dick Teig.

“Der missing Dicks have returned?” asked Officer Vanden Boogard, his gaze fixed on Grace and Helen.

“Call off your search,” demanded Helen. “Your department wasted enough man hours looking for these two bozos while they were holed up with Chantal.”

Stepping away from the podium, he released his mobile phone, and leaving us with an, “Excuse me for a moment, please,” disappeared into the hallway. As Nana, Tilly, and the rest of the gang jockeyed around each other to arrive back at their seats first, I regarded the two Dicks, relieved beyond words that nothing calamitous had happened to them. That they were safe. That no one had harmed them because of some heinous act they might have witnessed.

My brain suddenly hit “rewind” as that last thought sunk in, causing my synapses to light up like the bulbs in an old-fashioned switchboard.