Crime (and Lager) (A European Voyage Cozy Mystery—Book 3)

by Blake Pierce

  After all, she didn’t see herself as the least bit aggressive or hostile. But even so, yesterday Forstmann had goaded her into nearly losing her temper, maybe almost coming to blows with him. From what Audrey had just said, Forstmann had humiliated Schilder in a worse and very public way.

  Had this year’s Katers Murr done something very rash?

  And yet she remembered what she’d heard others say about him—for example, what Helmut had said just a few minutes ago.

  “He’s nothing more than a cowardly, untalented großmaul—the English word is ‘loudmouth,’ I believe.”

  Then Helmut had added, “Don’t give him a second thought.”

  “So what do you think?” Audrey asked.

  “I don’t know, Audrey. I’ve overheard people saying Schilder is more like a mouse than a cat.”

  “Maybe even a mouse can be pushed too far,” Audrey said.

  London shook her head and said, “I find it hard to imagine a murderous mouse. And we don’t know Schilder as well as anyone else in town. He seems to be pretty far from anyone else’s suspicions.”

  Meanwhile, as they neared the ship, Audrey asked London, “What happens now?”

  “I’m taking you right to the captain’s stateroom,” London said. “Detektiv Erlich is waiting to meet you there. You should mention to him the stuff you overheard, just in case he thinks it’s important.”

  “OK, but only after I go to my room and change out of this ridiculous outfit.”

  London felt a prickle of worry.

  “Um, Audrey, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  London didn’t know how to reply. The truth was, she wasn’t sure just why she was worried about giving Audrey a chance go to her room to change out of her costume. Maybe, after going to so much trouble to find her, she was afraid to let her out of her sight even for a few minutes.

  But then, maybe London wouldn’t have to lose sight of Audrey for long. Maybe Audrey would let her come into her room while she changed.

  While London was trying to think of some way of broaching this topic, her phone buzzed.

  She took the call and heard Captain Hays’s voice again.

  “Are you and Ms. Bolton on your way?”

  “We’re almost there,” London said.

  “Good,” the captain said. “Detektiv Erlich is getting impatient. We mustn’t keep him waiting a moment longer than necessary. Come directly to my stateroom. No detours, please.”

  Captain Hays ended the call.

  London said to Audrey, “We don’t have time for you to change. We’ve got to go to the captain’s stateroom immediately.”

  “But London—”

  “I’m sorry, I really am,” London said firmly. “But we really have no choice.”

  They went up the gangway to the reception area, where other passengers stared at Audrey with understandable curiosity. Then they took the elevator down to the Allegro deck and headed directly to the captain’s stateroom.

  Captain Hays opened the door to let them in, and Detektiv Erlich rose from his chair.

  Standing there with the chicken headdress under her arm, Audrey stood as if at attention as she spoke to the detective with all the dignity she could muster.

  “Sir, I assume that you are the investigating detective. My name is Audrey Bolton, and I believe you wish to speak to me about the unfortunate events of yesterday. I apologize for keeping you waiting. And I don’t want to give you the impression that this is my normal state of dress.”

  With an understated tilt of an eyebrow, Detektiv Erlich said, “I make no such assumption. Please sit down.”

  The detective then gave London a silent look, which clearly signaled that she should leave. London nodded obediently and left.

  She and Sir Reggie headed straight to her stateroom, where she plopped herself down on her bed with the dog on her lap.

  “Reggie, my head is spinning,” London said. “What am I supposed to think about that woman?”

  Reggie tilted his head as if he wondered the same thing.

  London continued, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m really touched that she trusted me enough to talk so openly about her … well, her issues, but …”

  She paused and scratched Sir Reggie on the top of his head.

  “Do you suppose it’s possible … that she’s simply out of her mind?”

  Reggie tilted his head the other way.

  “I just don’t know, pal,” London said. “I hate to even consider the possibility, but … how can I be sure that she didn’t kill Herr Forstmann? Maybe even she doesn’t know what she really did. I mean, suppose she’s simply insane? What do you think?”

  Sir Reggie, of course, didn’t reply.

  “But no, I just can’t see it,” London said. “She’s got personality problems, and it sounds like she’s doing everything she can do to get over them, which is actually kind of brave of her. I’m even starting to like her.”

  She squinted thoughtfully and added, “But if she didn’t do it, I can’t imagine that anybody else aboard the Nachtmusik did. What would they have had against him, anyway? Which means the killer is somebody who lives right here in Bamberg.”

  Sir Reggie let out a little grunt of apparent agreement.

  “But since just about everybody here hates his guts, how can anybody narrow down the number of suspects? Detektiv Erlich sure has his work cut out for him. But then, I guess I do too. I don’t know how I keep getting stuck doing the ‘Nancy Drew’ thing, but that’s the way it seems to go.”

  Sir Reggie sighed as she kept scratching his head.

  “There must be a way of finding out who really hated him most …”

  London’s voice trailed off as a plan started to take shape in her head. She tilted up Sir Reggie’s chin and looked him in the eye.

  “I think I know what to do, pal,” she said. “What do you say—do you feel up to some more sleuthing?”

  Sir Reggie yapped affirmatively.

  “Good,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Sir Reggie trotted after her as she headed out of her stateroom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  For the investigation she had in mind, London wanted better equipment than the cell phone she normally used for searches. With Sir Reggie trotting at her side, she strode down the passageway and took the elevator up to the Menuetto deck. She knew that Emil’s workspace in the ship’s library was equipped with an especially fast and powerful large-screen computer.

  But when she got there, she found that the door was closed. She turned the doorknob and was surprised to realize that the door was actually locked. The library was supposed to be open all day for free use by passengers.

  She glanced down at Sir Reggie and saw that the little dog was staring at the door with interest.

  “Has our historian shut himself up in there?” she asked him.

  Sir Reggie sniffed at the door and gave a soft woof.

  London knew that Emil occasionally shut himself up inside the library to be alone with his books—or sometimes, she thought, just to brood in silence. At the moment, she was in no mood to indulge the ship’s historian in his scholarly hermit mode.

  She knocked on the door sharply.

  London was sure that she heard a muffled, whispering sound inside. She thought it sounded like Emil, but she couldn’t make out any words and no one came to the door.

  Still staring at the closed door, Sir Reggie let out a bark.

  The sounds inside the room stopped immediately.

  London knocked again and called out.

  “Emil, please come to the door. I’ve got something urgent I need to do in there. And I could use your help doing it.”

  This time London heard only silence.

  “Emil, I know you’re in there,” she said impatiently. “Don’t try to pretend you’re not.”

  After another silence, London looked down at her dog and said, “Maybe I should use my master key.”

&nbs
p; But now Sir Reggie was looking as though he had lost interest and would just as soon head off elsewhere. He’d never taken much interest in Emil, after all, and the feeling had been mutual.

  “Great help you are,” London told him.

  Then she again considered the conundrum of the locked door. Her master keycard could open any door on the ship, including this one. But what if she went into the library only to find Emil in the sort of foul mood that he’d generally been in lately? He’d surely be angry with her for intruding. And given how exasperated London herself had been feeling lately, they could easily lose their tempers at each other.

  She really didn’t want to ignite an open battle with Emil. Especially not one that would be so public. The ship’s library was situated at one end of the Amadeus Lounge, and a few passengers were scattered about at tables in the big room. London could see the assistant bartender waiting on several who were lined up at the bar on the far side of the lounge.

  Thinking that it could be helpful talk things over with someone with a sympathetic ear, she hoped that Elsie might also be there. But when she and Reggie walked across the big room, she didn’t see her friend anywhere.

  “Is Elsie around?” she asked the young man behind the bar.

  He grinned and replied, “Sorry, she went out again to enjoy the festival. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think so,” London said.

  She noticed that business in the lounge today seemed to be scant and slow. Doubtless a lot of passengers and even crew were going ashore to have a good time.

  London felt a twinge of envy. Elsie was surely out there having a good time, she figured. Why shouldn’t she do the same?

  But she had set out to do a certain investigation, and she was going to carry that out before she could even think about joining the party. Maybe later, Bryce would be able to get away from work and they could …

  “You sure you don’t want a drink?” the assistant bartender asked.

  London realized she’d been standing there at the bar trying to make a decision about what to do next.

  “No thanks,” she told him, and she walked back across the lounge, past that closed library door, and out into the elevator area.

  I’ll just have to do my research by cell phone after all, she decided. For that, she might as well go back to her room.

  Then, as she stepped onto the elevator, her phone buzzed.

  She was startled to see that she’d received a text message from Audrey.

  Come to my room right away.

  She read it aloud to Sir Reggie and said, “I guess Audrey’s interview is finished.”

  It seemed a short time since she had delivered the chicken-costumed woman to the captain and Detektiv Erlich. At least they apparently weren’t holding her in custody.

  Curious to find out how the questioning had gone and what Audrey wanted with her now, she punched the button for the Adagio deck instead of going all the way down to her own stateroom.

  Sir Reggie trotted along beside her as they got off the elevator and made their way to Audrey’s room. When London knocked on the door, she heard Audrey’s voice shouting out, “Is that you, London?”

  “Yes,” London replied. “It’s just Reggie and me.”

  “Good. Let yourself in.”

  London took out her master keycard and opened the door. As she and Sir Reggie stepped inside, she heard Audrey’s voice through the bathroom door, which stood slightly ajar.

  “I’m changing. I’ll be right out.”

  “Did you talk to Detektiv Erlich?” London called through the bathroom door.

  “Yes, I answered all his questions,” Audrey called back. “He asked a lot of them. Are police detectives always so nosy?”

  London felt a bit jarred by the question.

  That’s kind of their job, she almost said.

  “Pretty much,” she replied instead.

  “Well, you’d know a lot more about it than I do. You’re kind of getting to be an expert about this sort of thing, aren’t you?”

  London stifled a sigh.

  Yeah, I guess I kind of am, she thought.

  She tried to imagine how the interview must have gone. How had Detektiv Erlich reacted to Audrey’s peculiar and sometimes off-putting manner? Had she convinced him of her innocence, or had she made him more suspicious of her guilt—and of London’s guilt as well?

  For that matter, London was still struggling to make sense of Audrey’s mercurial personality. She couldn’t help wondering …

  How sure am I that she didn’t have anything to do with Forstmann’s death?

  Audrey came out of the bathroom wearing an ordinary outfit. London could see the chicken suit hanging inside the bathroom, looking ridiculously oversized even without a human being in it.

  “So,” Audrey said, “what brings you here?”

  “Uh. You texted me. You told me to come.”

  “Did I? Oh, that’s right,” Audrey said with a snap of her fingers. “Well, obviously, I was wondering—what do we do next? About solving the case, I mean. I mean, we are working as a team, right?”

  London didn’t know what to say. She didn’t remember Audrey and herself agreeing to work as investigative partners.

  And yet …

  If there was even the slightest possibility that Audrey herself was some kind of homicidal maniac, wouldn’t it be a good idea for London to keep a close watch on her?

  Audrey sat down at the table in front of her big window and gestured for London to take a seat on the other side.

  “Where do we start?” she asked eagerly.

  London sat down and said, “Well, I wish I knew more about who in particular might have some motive to kill Sigmund Forstmann. I thought one way to find out was to read some of the stuff he’s written about people here in Bamberg. I was hoping to use a computer to go online to do some research, but the library was closed and—”

  Audrey interrupted with a squeal of delight.

  “No problem! I’ve got a computer with a great Internet connection!”

  She rushed to her closet and pulled out a laptop computer. London sat down at the table with Audrey as she opened it up on her table and went online.

  “So what do you want to go looking for?” Audrey asked.

  “Let’s check out the newspaper in Munich that Forstmann wrote for—the Sternenkurier, I think it’s called.”

  Audrey took them straight to the Sternenkurier’s webpage. But they ran into a pay wall as soon as they tried searching for any articles.

  “I guess we need a subscription,” London said.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Audrey said.

  As Audrey set up the account, London was relieved that she was perfectly willing to use her own credit card. It wasn’t an account that London would want to show up on the card she used for Epoch World Cruise Lines business expenses, and she didn’t have her own card with her.

  Audrey sat down at the keyboard to type in searches and commands. Since Audrey seemed to like dogs all of a sudden, London set Sir Reggie on a neighboring chair so he could watch and listen. Then London stood looking at the screen over Audrey’s shoulder.

  “What next?” Audrey said, cracking her knuckles.

  London thought for a couple of seconds.

  “Search for the column Sigmund Forstmann wrote last year after the Hoffmann Fest.”

  Audrey made the search with remarkably quick and agile fingers. The headline in German shouted from the electronic news page.

  Your Beloved Critic Survives Another Bamberg Bacchanal

  Just a glance at the rest of the article was enough to assure her that plenty of people had good reason to hate Sigmund Forstmann.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  The opening paragraph of Forstmann’s column confirmed London’s suspicions. She told Audrey, “It’s pretty much what I’d expect him to write, judging from what I’ve heard people say about him. He was a big-city snob who looked down on pr
ovincial Bavarians and their customs.”

  “Not a nice guy, then,” Audrey observed.

  “Not at all.”

  She translated the passage aloud for Audrey:

  Poor E.T.A. Hoffmann! Every year his memory has to endure a public calamity held in his supposed honor. And this year was no different. Costumed and rowdy Bambergers poured into the streets to guzzle mediocre beer and pretend to be characters in stories I doubt very much they have ever read …

  As London glanced a bit farther down the column, it occurred to her that Herr Forstmann reminded her of Emil at his haughty worst.

  Except I’ll bet Forstmann didn’t even like jazz, she guessed.

  Skimming a bit more, London said to Audrey, “Run a search on the name Rolf Schilder.”

  “You mean the Cat King himself?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought you said he was too mousy to be a killer.”

  “Maybe, but let’s check anyway.”

  Sure enough, Audrey brought up a whole paragraph about him. Again, London translated aloud.

  Rolf Schilder, heir and owner of the once-prestigious Zenitbrauen brand, has committed his yearly crime against taste. He seems to have derived his latest lager recipe from some truly exotic foreign sources. Although I’ve never tasted water from a Louisiana swamp, I suspect that the taste is remarkably similar—and perhaps not accidentally so, since Schilder seems to always seek out the vilest ingredients he can possibly find. I was surprised not to have to pluck dead mosquitoes out of the murky froth on top.

  Audrey said, “From what I’ve heard, this review is pretty mild in comparison to the stuff he said to Schilder’s face yesterday. If I were Schilder, I’d sure want to kill Forstmann. Do you think maybe that’s what he did?”

  London squinted carefully at the words on the screen.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” she said. “Everybody in Bamberg seems to think Schilder was just a harmless großmaul—a loudmouth. They say he wouldn’t hurt a fly. But I wonder. After all, Forstmann has been writing awful things about Schilder’s beer for years.”