Death (and Apple Strudel) (A European Voyage Cozy Mystery—Book 2)

by Blake Pierce

  She heard a familiar voice echo her words.

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea either.”

  London spun around and saw Amy Blassingame standing in the doorway.

  “Amy!” London exclaimed.

  The concierge must have used her own key to enter so quietly that neither London nor Bob had noticed.

  Amy crossed her arms and glared back and forth at London and Bob.

  “We thought you were playing bridge,” Bob said.

  “I was,” Amy said to Bob. “But your text message mentioned London, and I knew the two of you must be up to something. And since you wanted me to keep an eye on Letitia, it was pretty easy to guess where I might find you. This isn’t the first time I’ve caught London poking around someone else’s room.”

  London stifled a groan of despair. It was true that Amy had burst in on her once before when she’d been searching a passenger’s room, but back then London had been looking for clues to the woman’s murder. London resisted the temptation to point out the rather serious mistakes that Amy had made in regard to that situation.

  “Amy, please get back up to the game and keep an eye on Letitia,” she said.

  “Why should I do that?” Amy said. “Why do you always try to keep me in the dark about what’s going on? And why are the two of you sneaking around Letitia’s room, anyway?”

  “I, for one, am doing my job,” Bob grumbled. “And my job is investigating criminal activity aboard the Nachtmusik. London here is along for the ride, I guess. Or for the lesson.”

  London felt a flash of anger.

  Along for the lesson!

  Now she really wished she’d found a way to talk him out of this whole cloak-and-dagger operation.

  Right now, he was showing Amy the silver saltshaker.

  “Does this look familiar?” he asked.

  Amy’s eyes widened.

  “Is this from the Habsburg Restaurant?” she said.

  “You bet it is,” Bob said.

  Gesturing toward the other objects, London said, “And she stole that pen from Mozart’s Birthplace. And she stole that napkin from a restaurant back in Budapest, and that cream pitcher from a café somewhere. In fact, this lady is an international thief.”

  Amy looked simply amazed.

  “But … how did you know to look here?” she asked.

  “Hah!” Bob said, pointing to his forehead again. “A crack investigator like yours truly doesn’t miss a trick. My synaptic superconducting ultra-fast feedback loop of a brain is in full gear.”

  Amy simply stared at him as if she had no idea what he was talking about.

  London explained, “He snapped a picture of Letitia stealing the saltshaker.”

  “Oh,” Amy said. “Do you think she stole the musician dolls too?”

  Bob drew back a little.

  “How did you know about the dolls?” he asked.

  “I don’t miss a trick either, Mr. Turner,” Amy said with a scoff. “I keep my ear to the gossip mill. Everybody’s talking about two things—the murdered man and the missing dolls.”

  Bob shrugged.

  “And if you’ll just let me do my job,” he said, “I’ll solve both of those mysteries before I leave this room.”

  Amy gasped.

  “Do you mean you think Letitia …?” she began.

  It was Bob’s turn to scoff.

  “A good detective doesn’t say what he’s thinking until he’s come to an ironclad conclusion. But if you’d like to make yourself useful, you can help find the missing dolls—and maybe something more sinister while we’re at it.”

  To London’s alarm, Amy now seemed eager to pitch in. With a nod, she turned and walked over to a closet door, pulled it open, and started probing among the shoes on a rack.

  “Guys, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” London said to them. “Let’s at least talk to Letitia and let her tell us her side of the story.”

  “Her side of the story? Hah!” Amy snorted, rifling among the clothes in the closet. “The woman is obviously an all-out klepto—and maybe something a whole lot worse, if Mr. Turner is right.”

  London tried to calm herself with a long slow breath.

  Now I’ve got two loose cannons to deal with, she thought.

  But what was she going to do about it?

  She only knew one thing for certain—that Letitia Hartzer was at the very least a thief.

  Maybe I should call the police, she thought.

  But she quickly thought better of it. Crimes that took place aboard the Nachtmusik weren’t within the jurisdiction of the Salzburg police. And as long as Polizeidirektor Tanneberger suspected anyone in the tour group—including London—of murder, bringing up the stolen objects would only make things worse. It was bad enough that the Nachtmusik was already going to be delayed yet again. She wouldn’t want to throw the whole tour in doubt if these little items were the extent of Letitia’s misdeeds.

  Before she could think everything through, the room door opened again.

  Turning to face the new intruder, London was stunned to find herself face to face with Letitia Hartzer herself.

  “Letitia, we’ve got to talk,” London said.

  But Letitia didn’t seem to hear her. The stout woman’s face had gone white as a sheet.

  With a slight cry, she fell face first to the floor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  Letitia Hartzer was a big woman, and her fall was hard and loud.

  As Amy let out a shriek, London rushed to check on the stout, prone figure.

  “Is she dead?” Amy cried, wringing her hands.

  For a moment, London wondered that herself. But when she knelt down to put her finger to Letitia’s neck to check for a pulse, the woman let out a groan and brushed her hand aside. London breathed a sigh of relief.

  “No, she just seems to have fainted,” she said.

  Amy shrugged and said, “Well, I guess the bridge game is definitely off.”

  “Come on, give me a hand with her,” London said.

  It took all three of them—London, Amy, and Bob—to get Letitia slowly to her feet and onto the bed, where she lay stretched out and murmuring semiconsciously.

  “I can’t believe this is happening … I can’t believe this is happening … I can’t believe this is happening …”

  I’m having some trouble believing it myself, London thought.

  Suddenly Letitia sat bolt upright and pointed to the saltshaker.

  “That’s not mine!” she exclaimed.

  Then she pointed to the pen and the napkin and the book.

  “And those things aren’t mine either!” she said.

  “No kidding,” Amy said. “So what are they doing in your room?”

  “I—I have no idea,” Letitia stammered. “Somebody must have put them here. Somebody must … want to do me harm.”

  With a dramatic flourish, Bob produced his cell phone with the picture of Letitia stealing the saltshaker.

  “Perhaps this will refresh your memory,” he told her.

  At the sight of the picture, Letitia let out a moan of anguish, her voice faded, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she lay back down again. London suspected that this second fainting spell was at least partly feigned.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” she murmured again.

  In the meantime, a small group of people had clustered in the hallway and were peering curiously into the room.

  Great, London thought. Everybody on the boat must have heard Amy scream.

  Bob walked over to the door and waved the spectators away with a growl.

  “There’s nothing to see here, folks. Just routine investigative stuff.”

  Then he shut the door and strode back to his companions, who were who were still hovering by the bed.

  London pulled up a chair to sit at the side of the woman. She made her voice as mild and nonthreatening as she could.

  “Letitia, there’s no point in lying to us,” London said.
“We know what you did.”

  “You’re not going to call the police?” Letitia asked.

  “Huh,” Bob grunted. “I say we throw you in the brig.”

  “We don’t have a brig,” Amy told him.

  “No brig?” Bob snapped. “What the heck kind of a ship is this? What are we supposed to do if there’s a mutiny?”

  A mutiny? London thought.

  She quickly decided, Don’t ask.

  In answer to Letitia’s question, London said, “No, we’re not going to call the police. But we do have to make all this right somehow. And it would help if you explained what this is all about.”

  Letitia sat up slowly and sighed.

  “What’s there to explain?” she said. “I like souvenirs.”

  Amy scoffed, “Can’t you afford to buy them like everyone else?”

  “Of course,” Letitia said. “But they just don’t seem as … well, special that way. As keepsakes, I mean. This way they bring back more memories.”

  London, Amy, and Bob looked at each other with perplexity.

  “So you do this sort of thing whenever you travel?” Amy asked.

  Letitia nodded.

  London’s mind boggled at the thought. Letitia seemed to be a seasoned traveler. How many stolen items must she have on display at home? London wondered if maybe her stash would dwarf the legitimately obtained collection in Kirby Oswinkle’s room.

  “How much other stolen stuff have you got around here?” Bob asked gruffly.

  Letitia took a quick look around.

  “You’ve found all of it, I think.”

  “You think?” Amy asked incredulously.

  Bob pointed to his forehead again.

  “You can’t fool me, lady,” he said. “Not with all these super synapses of mine working in overdrive like they’re doing right now. You’ve got two more stolen objects, and we both know it.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Letitia said.

  “I’m talking about a music conductor and a drummer,” Bob said, jabbing his finger at her.

  Letitia gasped aloud.

  “You think I’m the one who stole those?” she demanded.

  “What else are we supposed to think?” Amy asked.

  Bob was pacing now, and there was a note of rising triumph in his voice.

  “Oh, you were clever, ma’am. I’ve got to admit you were clever. You pretended someone had stolen your little trumpet player. And if it hadn’t been found, you might have gotten away with this whole haul. But Sir Reggie the wonder dog thwarted your little scheme, didn’t he? He found the trumpeter where you’d hidden it—under the table where the other musicians were on display.”

  Letitia’s eyes widened with disbelief.

  “That doesn’t even make any sense!” she protested.

  No, it really doesn’t, London thought.

  The idea of Letitia stealing her own trumpet player as some kind of distraction seemed unlikely enough. But if she had snatched it, she’d surely have found a better hiding place for it than right under the table where somebody was sure to find it. London felt perfectly sure that it had been knocked off and kicked under the table purely by accident.

  But Bob seemed very sure of his conclusions.

  “Are you going to come clean and produce the stolen dolls or what?” he growled.

  “I can’t produce something I don’t have,” Letitia said.

  “Then you leave us no choice, ma’am,” Bob said. “We’ve got to search the room. We’ll turn everything upside down if we have to.”

  London realized she had to put her foot down before this whole situation got out of hand.

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind, Bob,” she said in an authoritative voice that startled even herself. “We’ll find a better way to resolve this situation.”

  Bob looked at her with surprise and said nothing.

  Meanwhile, Letitia seemed to be regaining her composure.

  “The very idea, that I would steal the musicians!” she said huffily. “What kind of person do you think I am, anyway?”

  “A thief, for one thing,” Amy said.

  “Well, that’s an infelicitous word for it,” Letitia said. “In any case, I would never ever take anybody’s personal possessions. I just take things that … well, don’t belong to anyone in particular.”

  “From a museum, for example?” Amy asked.

  “Or a café?” London said.

  “That’s right,” Letitia said. “Institutions. Businesses.”

  The group fell quiet for a moment.

  Finally Bob spoke in an almost admiring tone.

  “A thief with a code. I’ve got to say I respect that.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Letitia said. “Although I wish you’d all stop using such ugly language—thief, stealing, all that kind of thing.”

  Another silence fell. Nobody, including London, seemed to know what to say.

  Then Bob rallied himself and spoke again.

  “OK, then, ma’am. I’ll take you at your word—about the stolen dolls, I mean.”

  He jabbed his finger at Letitia again.

  “But there’s still a murder to solve. And what do you have to say about that?”

  Letitia’s mouth dropped open with disbelief.

  “Absolutely nothing, of course,” she said.

  “Hah!” Bob said. “I’m not so sure about that! But I’ll get to the bottom of things. You can count on that.”

  London realized that Bob actually looked rather tired.

  Maybe he needs another nap, she thought.

  As the security man strode toward the door, London got up from her chair and tugged at his arm.

  She whispered to him, “Bob, don’t say anything about this to anyone, OK?”

  Bob swiveled his mirrored glasses toward her.

  “Not a chance,” he muttered. “Do you think I’m stupid? It would only muddy the waters of my investigation.”

  He turned away and strode out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

  Letitia looked back and forth at London and Amy.

  “Does that awful man really suspect me of murder?” she asked.

  “So it would seem,” Amy said.

  “But why?”

  Amy shrugged as if she had no idea.

  As for London, she had some notion of what Bob might be thinking. She herself had briefly entertained the idea that the tour guide might have caught Letitia stealing the pen, leading to a fatal altercation. But now that she sat here in the same room with this distressed woman, the idea seemed completely absurd.

  “So what are you going to do now?” Letitia asked miserably.

  “I’m not sure,” London said. “What do you think we should do?”

  A silence fell among the three of them.

  Finally London said, “Letitia, I’d like to put all this behind us. But I have to be sure—can you stop stealing things? Even little things like these?”

  “Oh, yes, I promise,” Letitia said almost tearfully.

  That’s a pretty big promise, London thought.

  Still, she figured she had to take the woman at her word, at least for now.

  London looked at Amy and said, “Can we agree to keep this unfortunate incident to ourselves?”

  London sensed that Amy had to struggle with a decision for a moment.

  The lady does love her gossip, London thought.

  Finally Amy nodded and said, “I guess.”

  Then Amy began to gather the stolen objects in a single place on the central table.

  “We’ll have to take care of returning these to wherever they belong,” she said. “Letitia, you’ll need to tell me where you took them from.”

  London reached for the stolen booklet—a collection of photos of statues in Gyor.

  “I’ll take this one back to the library,” she said.

  With a slight gasp, Letitia got up from the bed.

  “Oh—I forgot about one more thing,” she said.

  She opened
a drawer and reached down among some clothing and took out a glass paperweight and handed it to Amy. London realized it was the same paperweight Bob had noticed her almost stealing on his first day aboard. Apparently she’d gone back and grabbed it when no one was looking.

  “This belongs on the reception desk,” Letitia said, handing it to Amy.

  “OK, now tell me about where the other things came from—and how we can give them back,” Amy said.

  As Letitia began to make her shamefaced accounting of stolen objects to Amy, London left the room with the booklet in hand. Not surprisingly, there was still a cluster of people in the hallway, anxious about the scream they’d heard earlier, and no doubt curious about Bob’s sudden exit from the scene.

  “What happened in there?” a woman asked as London shut the door behind her. “The security man wouldn’t tell us a thing.”

  For a moment, London had no idea what to say. Apparently Bob had managed to brush by the group without comment. But it was London’s job to keep passengers contented.

  “Uh, nothing happened,” she finally said.

  “Nothing!” a man scoffed. “It sure didn’t sound like nothing.”

  “I heard a scream,” another woman said.

  “It sounded like Amy Blassingame, our concierge,” another man said.

  “It was Amy,” the first woman said. “I noticed her go in there just a few minutes ago. And I don’t think she ever left. She must still be in there.”

  “So what happened to her?” the first man said.

  “Is she OK?” the second woman said.

  “Amy’s fine,” London said, relieved to be able to say something that was true. “Amy just had a little scare, that’s all.”

  “What scared her?” one of the passengers asked.

  “Was it a cockroach?” another suggested.

  “Or a mouse?” yet another demanded.

  “That must be it!” the first woman exclaimed. “Mice are the only things that would ever make me scream like that! There must be mice aboard this ship!”

  London had to speak over the group’s voices rumbling with alarm.

  “There are no mice aboard the Nachtmusik,” she said. “And no cockroaches either. Our staff takes good care to keep them away. And Amy’s fine. It was just a misunderstanding, that’s all. Please don’t let yourselves worry about it.”