Dutch Me Deadly (21 page)

Twenty-one

We dined fashionably late
in the hotel restaurant again that night.

After subjecting us to two more hours of questioning with no relevant information to show for it, Officer Vanden Boogard had thrown in the towel and released us, with the caveat that he wasn’t satisfied with our timeline, so we weren’t off the hook yet. The reunion crowd had dispersed in every direction afterward, some forming into little cliques in the lobby, some exiting through the revolving door, others crowding into the elevator for the upper floors. My gang swore to be suffering such stomach-gnawing hunger that they didn’t have the energy to dodge bicyclists while searching for a nice restaurant, so I’d ushered them into the hotel dining room, where the staff had been kind enough to set us up at a table that could accommodate all of us.

“Wasn’t it somethin’ how that Bobby Guerrette fella invented a whole new life for hisself,” commented Nana as she dug into her cinnamon ice cream.

“Probably wasn’t too hard to do back then,” said George.

Tilly nodded agreement. “There were so few forms of identification in those days. No national credit cards. No local charge cards. No photos on drivers’ licenses. And the communication highway had yet to be constructed. Most households didn’t even have a telephone.”

They bobbed their heads in silence, looking as if they were wondering how they’d ever endured the horror of such privation.

“Speaking of phones,” said Jackie, who’d elbowed out Bernice for the plum seat at the head of the table. “Could I borrow yours?” She extended her hand toward me. “If wedding plans are being batted about in Oostende, I need to start making preparations now for my big debut. This is going to be
so
fabulous, darling! I’m going to be bigger than Vera Wang. Bigger than Carolina Herrera. Bigger than—”

“Oh, put a sock in it,” groused Bernice. “If you get any bigger, you’re going to look like a giant yard ornament.”

“Spoilsport,” sniffed Jackie as she palmed my phone. She stood
up, all atwitter as she addressed the table. “I’m so fond of everyon
e here, I want you to be the first to know. I’m abandoning my life coaching career to pursue something I’m going to be really good at. Wedding planning! So if any of you are thinking about tying the knot in the near future, I’m your girl. And to show you that friendship has its benefits, I’ll even offer exclusive senior discounts.”

Nana’s eyes lit up. “Do you take AARP?”

“AARP, Triple-A, library cards. Whatever you got, Mrs. S. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Where’s she going?” Bernice asked me as Jackie exited the dining area.

“She probably wants to find a private spot to make her call.”

“How come she doesn’t talk right here?”

I offered her a sublime smile, accompanied by a meaningful look. “Because she’s trying to be polite.”

Bernice, being Bernice, didn’t give an inch. “You’re so behind the times. Didn’t you hear the conversation? Things are different now. Times have changed. No one cares about politeness anymore. Everyone
expects
us to be rude.” Her face softened with an almost beatific look. “It’s so comforting.” And as a testament to her convictions, she pulled out her smartphone and powered it up.

“You have to do that right this very minute?” I reproved.

“Yup. I’m gonna purge all those Maine people from my friends list right now. They’re all mental.”

“You can’t hold off until you get back to your room?”

“
Psssh
. I’ll forget by then.”

It was impossible to ignore her since she was sitting right beside me, so as she accessed her Facebook page, I angled my body in her direction, watching.

“Are you on Facebook?” she asked.

“Nope. I guard my privacy tenaciously.”

“You’re so nineteenth century.”

A page blossomed on her screen, filled with a cartoon of cow heads, bushel baskets of vegetables, and a lot of pictures. I squinted at a number appearing in parentheses after the word “Friends.” “Is that how many friends you have now?” I blinked to make sure I was seeing correctly.

A hush fell over the table as all eyes were riveted on Bernice.

“Yup. This trip helped me crack a thousand.”

“That’s impossible,” argued Margi. “How could you add over three hundred friends since you left Iowa? It’s only been three days. We haven’t met that many people.”

“Persistence. I won’t have quite that many when I finish with my purge, but it’ll be ten times more than the rest of you slackers.” She isolated a photo and tapped her finger to the screen, causing the number in parentheses to decrease by one.

“Was that Margi’s photo you just deleted?” I asked.

“Yup. I unfriended her.”

“You what?” shrieked Margi.

Uh-oh. This wasn’t good. The rest of the gang went for their phones like gunslingers going for their guns, lips compressed, eyes intent, thumbs at the ready.

“I thought you were going to purge the Maine people,” I reminded Bernice.

“I am. That was just a little unfinished business.”

“So how come so many of your photos are headshots of faceless people?” I asked.

“My friends aren’t very photogenic.”

Before she could zap another photo, the number indicating her friend count began dropping faster than Netflix stock after its price hike, leaving her with a sum total of—“Take
that
!” crowed Margi, as high-fives broke out all around the table—ten fewer friends.

In the space of two thousand years, our methods for fighting foes had switched from eliminating them from the face of the earth, to eliminating them from our computer screens. I don’t know what the military-industrial complex had to say about the new methods, but funeral home directors were really taking a hit.

Ignoring her dinner companions, Bernice called up Mary Lou McManus’s photo, touched the screen, and scrubbed her.

“Wait a minute.” I stopped her as she prepared to go on. “Go back to that generic headshot. There. Mary Katherine Fruth. Mrs. Fruth. She was my first grade music teacher!”

“Imagine that,” said Bernice, skipping ahead to another photo.

“But … why is Mrs. Fruth on your friends list? She died when I was ten.”

Margi gasped so loudly, her new Belgian lace collar got sucked into her mouth. “
That’s
why her count is so high. She’s friending dead people!”

“Could I borrow that, please?” I asked Bernice as I snatched her phone out of her hand. “Who else do you have in here?”

“Give that back to—”

I shooed her hand away. “Here’s another faceless headshot.
H. J. Saterlie. Is H. J. merely unphotogenic or stone cold dead?”

“I used to know a H. J. Saterlie,” Osmond recalled. “He ran the Esso station on the corner of First and Main. But he died about the time Prohibition ended, so I doubt it’s the same fella.”

“It’s the same fella all right,” accused Helen. “Bernice has finally hit an all-time low. She’s having séances to call up the dead, and then she’s communicating with them on Facebook!”

I stared at Helen, wondering if medical research would one day discover a link between the overuse of eyebrow pencils and a decline in cognitive thinking.

“Good news, good news,” tittered Jackie as she strutted back to the table. “Wally suffered a very minor concussion, so he’s going to remain in the hospital overnight, and then he and Beth Ann will take the train back to Amsterdam tomorrow. And what’s even more fabulous, Beth Ann says that Wally is so grateful she’s there with him, she thinks she’s starting to hear wedding bells.”

“I heard bells once,” reminisced George, “but it turned out to be tinnitus.”

Jackie flashed all thirty-two teeth as she snuggled back into her chair, her smile gradually fading as she absorbed the negative energy of her dinner companions. “What’s wrong with you people? Did someone else die while I was gone?”

“I’m outta here,” snarled Bernice, clambering out of her chair. “My water pill just kicked in.”

I craned my neck to follow her progress, and when she’d exited the room, I gave the signal. “Okay, she’s gone. Now you can talk about her. But cut her a little slack. That was a pretty clever way to game the system.”

For the next ten minutes the conversation grew heated as the gang complained about how they’d been hoodwinked.

“I bet she drug up them dead folks and give ’em all fake accounts ’cuz she needed folks to play Farmville with her,” reasoned Nana.

“What’s Farmville?” I asked as I continued to pore over Bernice’s Facebook page.

A collective gasp.

“You’ve never heard of Farmville?” marveled Tilly.

So while everyone explained how Facebookers could partake in the joys of growing fruits and vegetables on a computer screen rather than in an actual rain-soaked field, where they might have to face real mud, real bugs, and real odor from passing pig haulers, I checked out the rest of Bernice’s online friends.

“Doesn’t anyone want to hear about the exciting launch of my new business?” implored Jackie.

Even though a majority of Bernice’s friends were dead, she’d still managed to snare a few live ones. Mike McManus, Beth Ann Oliver, Gary Bouchard, Laura LaPierre, Chip Soucy, and some guests whose faces I recognized, but whose names I hadn’t learned yet. I touched the headshot of a familiar face and was surprised when the screen 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?”