Dutch Me Deadly

disappeared after the police arrived, but I wouldn’t mind getting him alone so I could ask him a few questions. The bicyclist might have thought Charlotte stumbled into the street, but how do we know she wasn’t pushed?”

“By the grouchy guy from Maine?”

“Or by some of the other Mainers. They’re all old high school classmates, so they could be covering up for each other.”

“Do you think they’re so fond of each other as to risk becoming accessories to a crime?”

I gnawed my lip as I watched the indicator needle glide back toward the first-floor lobby. “I don’t actually know that any of them like each other. In fact, I think the opposite is true. A few of them really despise each other. Or at least, they used to. Popular kids versus nerds and wallflowers. Bruised feelings. Emotional scarring. Youthful insecurities. The whole nine yards.”

“I have another call coming in on line one, Emily. Could I trouble you to hold for a moment? I think it’s important.”

Yeah, but … my call was important, too, wasn’t it?

The elevator dinged open again.

“This is the lobby, you morons! Are you going to get off this time?”

“You’re standing on my foot!” snapped Margi.

“I can’t move until Bernice moves,” whined Helen.

“Can anyone see Marion?” George asked desperately.

They were jammed in the car like college kids in a VW Beetle, hips bumping and arms tangling into knots as they struggled to squeeze through the door at the same time.

“Press the button to keep the door open!” yelled Alice.

“I can’t see the selector panel,” fussed Tilly.

“That’s ’cuz Dick’s stomach is squashed against it,” cried Nana.

Osmond’s voice rose to a fever pitch. “Well, yank him outta there before his stomach hits the button for the fourth floor again.”

Amid a cacophony of frustrated grunts and grumbles, Dick got catapulted out the door and into the lobby. With the human log jam broken, everyone else staggered into the lobby behind him, massaging the kinks out of their necks and shoulders like the survivors of a train wreck. I shook my head, wondering if I should declare their phones a health hazard and demand they hand them over to me. One inattentive step in Amsterdam and splat! They’d either be bobbing in a murky canal with the rest of the swill or flattened on the pavement like Charlotte. But they’d never give them up willingly.

As I watched them bend their heads over their phones again, I made up my mind. If they were to survive Holland, they needed to get rid of the things. I could convince them. I knew I could.

I just had to figure out how.

“Sorry, bella.” Etienne came back on the line. “That was your mother.”

“You ditched me for my mother?”

“She needed to tell me what time she and your father are picking me up in the morning.”

Alarm bells began ringing inside my head. “You’re going someplace with Mom and Dad?”

“Fishing,” he said in a pained voice. “In the wilds of Minnesota. Away from Main Street, cable television, and cellphone towers.”

“Fishing?” I paused. “Why?”

“Because your mother set off the sprinkler system when she flambeed lunch for me in the office yesterday, so while the cleaning crew squeegees the water out of the carpet, I’m going fishing with your parents, at their insistence, to help me cope with the stress of the situation.”

I sat frozen in place, my stomach sliding to my knees. The sprinkler system? “How much damage did—”

“Another call coming in, Emily. Forgive me.”

Outside, our tour bus pulled up by the revolving door at the entrance to the hotel, its engine roaring powerfully enough to rattle the window glass. My guys, however, remained in cellphone comas until they noticed a steady stream of Mainers meandering into the lobby from the stairwell, and then they pounced, approaching the newcomers, engaging them in conversation, acting unnaturally friendly.

Whoa. This was a little weird. My guys never volunteered to break the ice, so what was up with all the spontaneous schmoozing?

“I’m back,” said Etienne, “but I can’t talk. Our insurance adjustor is on the other line. But tell me quickly. What are the Passages people doing about your tour director issue?”

“The company is sending us a replacement. We’re expecting him to arrive either late this evening or early tomorrow morning. He’s on holiday at the moment, so he probably won’t be too happy about having his vacation interrupted. Keep your fingers crossed that he’s not another Charlotte. I don’t think any of us could handle an instant replay of that fiasco.”

“Promise me you’ll contact the authorities if the man from Maine gives you reason to suspect him of something untoward.”

“I promise.”

He sighed. “I miss you, bella.”

“I miss you more.”

“I’ll call you the minute I return to civilization.”

“You better! Happy fishing. I love you.” I disconnected.

Fishing? Etienne? I shook my head. This could turn out to be an even bigger disaster than the Hindenburg.

“Emilyyyyyyy!”

I looked up at a woman so tall, she could have played the lead

role in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Her hair was long and glossy—

the kind that men imagine seeing fanned over a satin bed pillow. Her complexion was flawless, her makeup so artfully applied that her face could have hung in the Louvre. She was dressed in a leather skirt the size of a man’s handkerchief and a cropped leopard-print jacket that hugged her curves like plastic wrap. A gargantuan designer bag hung over her shoulder—metallic bronze, to match the stiletto-heeled boots that caressed her legs all the way to her thighs. Her name was Jackie Thum. Before she’d acquired breasts and a passion for handbags the size of Delaware, she’d been a guy named Jack Potter, and I’d been married to him.

“Give me a hug!” she squealed, yanking me off the sofa-bench and hoisting me into her arms like a weightlifter executing the clean and jerk. “I thought we’d never get here!”

“Where’ve you … been?” I choked out as she bear-hugged the air out of me.

“Sitting in Kennedy Airport, waiting for the weather to clear.” She set me back on my feet and boxed my shoulders to straighten the lines of my jacket. “I thought we’d never get out of there. And of course, no one met us at the airport this morning, so we had to hire a taxi. Do you know why the Dutch ride bicycles, Emily?”

“I think it’s be—”

“Because they can’t afford to pay freaking cab fare. I about blew my whole budget to get to the hotel, only to discover that the tour bus had already left for the day. If we’d known you guys were going to skip out without us, we’d have walked from the airport and saved ourselves forty Euros. So we had to wander the streets of Amsterdam by ourselves, sampling the local pastry products.”

I scanned the lobby in search of a face. “You keep saying, ‘we.’ Is Tom here with you?” Following my annulment and her gender reassignment surgery, Jackie had moved to upstate New York, where she married a New Age hair stylist who was fast becoming an industry phenomenon despite one prominent distinction.

He wasn’t gay.

“Tom is in Binghamton,” she said in a breathy voice, her eyes twinkling with excitement. “I brought someone else.” She fisted her hand on her hip and perused the lobby. “If I can find her.”

My eyes froze in their sockets. “Her?”

“She’s the surprise I e-mailed you about, Emily. Wait ’til you meet her. You’re going to love her! I sure do. She’s changed my life so much. There she is. Yoo-hoo!” She waved her arm. “We’re over here!”

Unh-oh. After two years of marriage, Jack had left me for another man. Now that