Dutch Me Deadly

changed to that person’s page, complete with their personal profile and a column listing all their friends. Uff-da. I knew what Facebook was now. A pyramid scheme!

“I need a catchy name for my business,” said Jackie. “Anyone have any ideas?”

I noted the person’s current city, marital status, birthday, work information, educational background, and then I browsed through the photos of the people listed as friends, all ten of them. Doris Albert from Binghamton. William Albert from Binghamton. Tom Thum from Binghamton. Hey, Jackie’s husband! Then I ran across two names that gave me pause.

“How’s this for catchy?” asked Nana. “And the Bride Wore—”

“Omigod, Mrs. S. I love it!”

I studied the names—Matthew Albert and Sue Albert—but what really threw me was the city of residence: Bangor, Maine. Hunh. Beth Ann had never mentioned having any connection to Bangor.

“I thought you told us Wally and his girlfriend weren’t coming back ’til tomorrow,” crabbed Bernice as she skulked back to the table.

“I did,” said Jackie. “They’re taking the train.”

“Then how come I just saw the girlfriend sneak up the stairs by the lobby restroom?”

Jackie pulled a look. “What?”

“OH, MY GOD!” I knocked my chair over in my rush to get up. I threw a desperate look at Jackie. “What’s Beth Ann’s room number?”

“Two-twenty-five. Why? Where are you going? Have you paid your bill yet?

“Gimme my phone back!” yelled Bernice as I raced out the door and through the lobby. The elevator was open, but remembering how slow it was, I pushed through the door to the stairwell and took the stairs instead. I could kick myself for being so gullible. I hated being duped. I hated being made to look the fool.

I pelted up the stairs and yanked opened the fire door. Running down the corridor, I found room 225 and pounded on the door. “I know you’re in there,” I yelled. “Bernice saw you head into the stairwell.” I pressed my ear to the door.

Silence.

I squeezed Bernice’s smartphone, holding it close to my chest. “I’m looking at your Facebook page right now and noticing that you have a couple of friends who live in Bangor, Maine. Their last name is Albert. Would they be any relation to the Mr. Albert who taught math at Francis Xavier? Because if they are, I’m thinking you might be related to him, too.” I listened through the door again.

Nothing.

“Mr. Albert was your father, wasn’t he, Beth?”

The floor creaked, as if she were creeping closer.

“I heard how shy your dad was. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for him to face Paula Peavey and Pete Finnegan every day. Or to be insulted by dumb jocks like Ricky Hennessy. Or to have mean practical jokes played on him by the football team. He must have felt traumatized on a daily basis.”

I could hear her breathing on the other side of the door.

“It’s why you killed them, isn’t it. To pay them back for what they did to your dad.”

“They were so mean to him,” she uttered in a small voice. “Paula humiliated him. Pete made him feel stupid. He didn’t deserve that. He’d been such a dedicated teacher, and they ruined him. They turned him into a broken, nerve-riddled shell.”

“Were you going to stop at two, or did you have more people targeted in your master plan?”

“I didn’t really have a master plan. I just had to watch for opportunities and take advantage of them.”

“Like running into Paula on your way back from the Red Light District? Or standing next to Pete in Anne Frank’s house?”

“Or finding Wally on the stairs at the Atlantic Wall.”

It took me a half-second to process that. “YOU PUSHED WALLY DOWN THE STAIRS?”

“No one’s told you yet?”

“NO!”

“Damn.”

“Why did you push Wally? What did he ever do to you other than want to get to know you better?”

“Because I made the mistake of showing him my Facebook page the night I helped him with his computer. If he asked to friend me, and he noticed the Bangor connection, he might have asked questions I wasn’t prepared to answer.”

“So your only option was to kill him?”

“That was the idea. Hey, I didn’t want to take any chances. And then you go and screw things up by asking me to ride in the ambulance with him. Who do I look like to you? Freaking Florence Nightingale?”

I sucked in my breath. “Oh, my God. Did you lie to us about his condition?”

“Well, duh! I had to tell you something, or you would have gotten suspicious.”

“Is Wally all right?”

“How should I know? Do you think I planned to hang around until he regained consciousness? Do you think I wanted to be there when he told his doctors he’d been pushed? He didn’t see me, but why risk it?”

“You … you …”

“I didn’t really want to hurt Wally. I would have preferred to push Ricky Hennessy or Gary Bouchard … or that annoying woman with the wiry hair who wouldn’t stop hounding me until I became her Facebook friend. All three of them were next on my list. But they were never by themselves, so I had to settle on Wally.”

Oh, my God. Bernice had been on her hit list? “I can’t believe what you’ve done! And to think I believed your phony story about sucking up to Jackie because you wanted writing advice. What a cover story for you. What an alibi!”

“That wasn’t a lie. I still want to be a writer. I’ll even do e-books if I have to, but what I’d really like is —”

“Why did you come back here? When you ran away from the hospital, why didn’t you just keep running?”

“I couldn’t.” I heard an irritated scuffing sound at the bottom of the door. “I forgot my passport in the room safe.”

“A lot of good it’s going to do you. I’m calling the police.”

As I tried to figure out how to exit Facebook so I could make the call, the door suddenly opened and Beth Ann flew at me, driving me against the opposite wall with enough force to knock the wind from my lungs. My spine screamed in protest. My head slammed against the wall. Bernice’s phone squirted out of my hand and fell to the floor, where it got crunched beneath Beth Ann’s foot. I doubled over, gasping, agony exploding in my chest, while Beth Ann pounded down the corridor toward the stairwell.

Uff-da.

Inching upward, I sucked down gulps of air as I massaged my chest, kneaded my spine, and rubbed the back of my head. When I was able to breathe again without pain, I took off after Beth Ann at a half-run, picking up speed as I descended the stairs.

“You won’t get away,” I yelled down the stairwell.

I heard the ground-floor door open, then close.

I lunged recklessly over two and three stairs at a time. I hit the ground floor running, shot through the door and into the main lobby. I looked left and right.

She was heading for the revolving door.

“Stop her!” I shouted across the lobby, pointing in her direction. “Someone stop her!”

Officer Vanden Boogard raced into the lobby from the dining room.

“She’s the killer!” I gesticulated as she swooped into the glass enclosure.

Officer Vanden Boogard gave chase, but she speeded up the door’s revolutions by depressing the horizontal bar. Before Vanden Boogard could even cross the floor, she’d rushed onto the sidewalk and—

Screeeech. BAM. Thunk.