Toured to Death (5 page)

A
my arranged the chair on her balcony to face the western sky, where the evening sun was playing in the trees at the far end of the grounds. Soon it would hit the ivy-covered wall, giving the garden its own premature sunset. Determined to enjoy the last rays of the day, Amy squeezed herself, laboriously squeezed herself, into the wooden chair and reached for her end-of-the-road Campari and soda.

Hers was a ridiculously small single, barely more than a closet. It had been the only accommodation left after she'd reserved the fifteen suites for her guests. The room's one saving grace was that it opened onto the rear garden, with a balcony just large enough to hold a chair, if one took the trouble to move the potted geraniums into the room, which was what she'd done.

The Doloreses, the last of the teams, had checked in five minutes ago, not at all discouraged by their placing. In fact, they'd been flushed with pride at just getting here without having to resort to the phone number.

The one all-male team—the Stew Boys, as they called themselves—had won the first day's leg and was celebrating in a small raised area outside, a
pétanque
court, sandwiched between the garden proper and the western stone wall. The foursome was boisterous as only winners could be as they played their own version of the French bowling game, which was itself a version of the Italian game boccie. From what Amy could see, they had also mixed in elements of shuffleboard. The result seemed to work well enough to keep them happy.

The air was loud with birds and dry, still warm from the lingering sun. It had been an exciting, exhausting day. Amy had managed to stay a few minutes ahead of the teams, hiding the clue packets at one site before driving on to do it again at another.

The last clue was a note from Daryl, saying he would be spending the night in a nearby town. Attached was a custom-made crossword puzzle. Once you filled in the blanks and stared at it long enough, you would realize that nearly all the entries were synonyms for other entries. Only three answers in the finished puzzle didn't have synonymous matches. Old capital, Hugo, and Cézanne. Once this discovery was made, the rest was simple. A check of any tourist guide would show that in the old capital of Aix-en-Provence, there was a small luxury hotel called Hotel Cézanne, located on avenue Victor Hugo.

Amy had arrived to find the desk clerk holding a packet of clues and instructions from Otto Ingo. Tomorrow's itinerary. Amy had read them over, to make sure there weren't any surprises, then had ordered a drink.

As she sipped her Campari, the teams mingled around the bar that had been set up two stories beneath her minuscule perch. Soon enough she would have to play the host and join them. But for right now she was content to sit in the fading sunlight and listen to the birds and the rich, soothing babble of her clients.

The sound of a Harvard-bred honk alerted Amy to the presence of Burt Baker. She readjusted her cramped knees and her red Versaces and peered down through the iron bars to catch a view. “It was Holly who thought to look it up on Wikipedia,” Burt was explaining to an audience of middle-aged Bitsys.

“We wound up following the Fidels,” the Bitsy captain whispered, then exploded into a giggle. Martha Callas was not the sort of person one would imagine giggling at anything. Martha was tall, as was her hair, tall and silver and firmly lacquered. Like so much about her, the giggles were an affectation. Something about her reminded Amy of Georgina Davis. The two women were worlds apart, of course—a Palm Beach heiress versus a Dallas decorator. But both were dramatic and larger than life, each a shameless promoter of her own version of femininity.

The main difference, Amy felt, was that Martha tried too hard. Georgina's drama was effortless and amiable, the result of a lifetime of privilege. Martha's was forced, the drama of a second-rate actor who doesn't quite believe in the role. Perhaps that had evolved out of the necessity of a freelance living, Amy mused, always having to impress clients with your taste and style.

“Following the Fidels?” Burt gasped. “Ladies, I'm shocked.”

The other Bitsys tittered or smiled guiltily. All were either single like Martha or, for some other reason, traveling alone.

“What exactly was that first clue?” asked Martha in a stage whisper. “We never did see it.”

Burt recited the clue verbatim, then took great pleasure in explaining. “It seems that after the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene, her brother Lazarus, and a few assorted others were set adrift in a boat. Somehow they wound up landing in France.”

“It's just a legend,” Holly interjected. “It never happened.”

“Who knows about legends! Anyway, after arriving here, the Magdalene went off by herself and set up house in this cave in the mountains.
Supposedly,
” Burt added to appease his niece. “For over twelve hundred years French peasants have been making pilgrimages to the cave at Sainte-Baume.”

“Well, it certainly was a beautiful drive,” Martha drawled.

“If you follow someone else's car, that's cheating,” said Holly.

“Yes, dear. But you have to realize it was quite in character—following our handsome Fidel, I mean. Oops.” The other Bitsys glared as Martha clamped a hand over her mouth. “I suppose I shouldn't have said that.”

“Well, well. Our haughty TV star has the hots for Fidel,” the judge deduced with a sly grin. “What else has Bitsy been up to?”

“Don't listen to her, Uncle Burt. She's trying to throw us off.”

Martha slicked a manicured hand back over her hair. “Yes, dear. I'm just trying to throw you off. Pay no attention to anything I say.”

Martha and the Bitsys, their drinks refreshed, wandered away, probably in search of a less critical audience. Burt and Holly wandered in the opposite direction, replaced at the bar by Georgina and the Dodos. Amy was surprised by how, for the most part, the teams were sticking together. She supposed there was a kind of bonding going on, which she supposed was good.

If only Otto could be here to see his game in action. Amy considered violating the rules and putting through a call to New York. The peculiar little man had insisted on not being contacted except in a dire emergency. But Amy was sure that any writer would like to hear a flattering report.

“Third place is certainly respectable,” Paul Wickes said hesitantly to his Dodo teammates. The headmaster of a Virginia prep academy, Paul was as prim and contained as Georgina wasn't. “Besides, it's not the daily times that decide the winner. It's solving the mystery.”

“We may have an advantage there,” Georgina said in an uncharacteristic whisper. She glanced around for possible eavesdroppers but didn't think to glance up. Taking a few steps out of the traffic pattern now placed her and her cohorts directly under Amy's balcony. “I think this mystery is based on a real crime.”

“No!” Paul said, letting his mouth hang open. Two stories up, Amy's jaw also dropped.

“It's much too corny to be actually true,” a third Dodo observed. “What makes you think . . .”

“Well . . .” Georgina cleared her throat. “The real story didn't take place in the south of France.” She raised a hand to her cheek, as if to ward off a blush. “But there was an heiress involved. And she did have a few divorces behind her—none of them totally her fault, mind you.”

“No!” Paul repeated. “You're the real Dodo?”

“I think so, yes.”

“That's unbelievable,” said Paul.

“I can hardly believe it myself.”

“The odds against that must be astronomical,” the third Dodo objected.

“I don't know about odds,” Georgina said. “But I saw the similarities from the beginning. Even the menu, at least I think. It was five years ago at a weekend party. And there was the host getting up halfway through dinner and walking out. And then the disappearance—except we called in private detectives, of course.”

“What happened?” Paul demanded, his primness disappearing. “Was he ever found? Was he killed? Who killed him? This is so macabre.”

“Hey, Amy!”

The words were shouted and startling. Frank Loyola and his
pétanque
/boccie/shuffleboard-playing teammates had finished their game and were walking down the steps back to the garden. Amy and her third-story balcony lay directly above their line of sight, and it hadn't taken much of an effort for Frank to see her.

The captain of the Stew Boys was a large man with a voice that carried. “You look like some bird in a cage. Why don't you come down and join us?” At least half the crowd had heard Frank's initial greeting. Now the entire tour was glancing up at her postage stamp–size balcony. A scattered few waved.

Amy smiled wanly and looked everywhere but at Georgina. She had to be staring directly up. Was it a friendly stare or a hostile one? Amy didn't dare risk finding out. “I'm coming,” she said to everyone but Georgina and reached for her drink.

That evening, all through cocktails and dinner and after-dinner socializing, Amy was desperate to make a call. For someone who'd never been good at hiding emotions, she did well, smiling and pretending nothing was wrong. It was a few minutes after midnight when she was finally able to tear herself away.

The local cell service, she discovered, vacillated between spotty and nonexistent. She was forced instead to use the landline that the owners had someone managed to squeeze into her room. Several calls and several recorded messages later, Amy gave up and dialed a different number, a number she'd first memorized in preschool.

“Mom? Hi,” she said, as if they were across town from each other and not across an ocean. “Going great. Look, I'm trying to get in touch with Otto Ingo. His phone seems to be disconnected or dead or . . .”

“Dead,” Fanny said. It was dinnertime in New York, and she had just sat down to a warmed-up casserole. “Otto's dead. Not his phone. Him.”

“Come again?” Amy had heard fine. She just wanted to give it a second chance.

“Otto's dead. He was murdered Thursday, less than an hour after I wrote the check. Bad luck, huh?”

“Wow!” The air hung heavy on the line as Amy tried to process the information.

“You still there?”

Amy cleared her throat. “Uh, what exactly do you mean, murdered?”

“I mean shot dead with a gun.”

“That'll do.” Amy was still processing. “What happened? I mean, was he mugged? A family dispute? No, of course. He had no family.”

“They don't know who or why. The police were here this morning. They'd found our check in his wallet. I wonder if anyone's going to cash it.”

“His estate will, although it's hard to think of Otto with a will and an executor. Have the police contacted Otto's assistant? He should be informed.”

“I asked the detective about that. He said he would look through Otto's records for a name, but I think that's pretty low on their list.”

“We have to get in touch with his assistant.”

“I know. Oh, and his apartment was ransacked.”

“Then it was robbery. No. You said he still had his wallet.” Amy was surprised at how analytically she was taking all this. Perhaps it was the distance between them, or the fact that she'd played murder games all her life and these were the standard opening gambits. Eliminating the possibility of robbery. Narrowing down the suspects. “Do you think the killer found what he was looking for? The motive couldn't be—”

“Motive? Amy, this isn't one of your little puzzles. Who knows why people kill people in real life?”

“Mom, you don't have to tell me.”

Fanny was sobered by the reminder. “I'm sorry, dear. But then, you know better than anyone that some murders are senseless and don't get solved. They're not like your books.”

“You're right. This is real,” Amy agreed. But unlike Eddie's murder, this one did feel like a book. A man had been killed just hours after selling them a mystery game, a game that no one but an unnamed assistant knew the solution to, a game that might be based on a real-life murder. “Mom, I think we should cancel.”

She realized almost as soon as she said it that this was impossible. Too much money had been spent, money that would have to be refunded in full since there was no concrete reason why the rally couldn't continue. Everything was going smoothly, even if she didn't know much more than the players knew. At each hotel along the way, packets were already awaiting her arrival.

To Amy, the idea of blindly following clues left by a dead man was ghoulish at best and probably dangerous. But her pampered guests wouldn't see it that way. Her own mother didn't see it that way, even after she informed her of Georgina's claim.

“So?” Fanny replied, unimpressed. “A lot of fiction is taken from real life. If Otto had based the game on Jack the Ripper, would you still want to cancel?”

“Jack the Ripper is dead.”

“And so is Otto,” she countered, with logic so arcane that Amy had no idea how to respond.

“Can I at least tell them about Otto's death? Would that be acceptable?”

“Of course. But don't mention the murder.”

“Don't they have a right to know?”

Fanny's sigh was almost deafening. “Amy, dear, it would just worry them. And worrying won't do any good. Right? If Otto's assistant really does exist—”

“
If?
What do you mean, if?”

“Don't go off the deep end. But the thought crossed my mind. Otto might have made up the part about an assistant, just to placate us and hike up his fee.”