From Bad to Wurst

by Maddy Hunter

  I gaped at the chaos. “Are we looking at the aftermath of a burglary?”

  “Hell, no.” Otis fisted his hands at his waist, his eyes hooded and unreadable. “Tidiness wasn’t one of Astrid’s virtues—or time management. When the two clashed, the result often looked like this.” He shrugged. “The place actually looks pretty good if you consider she was running late this morning.”

  Etienne remained anchored to the spot, surveying the scene with doubt in his eye. “Was ripping her bed apart an integral step in her morning routine?”

  “You bet. Bed bugs. She’s been terrified of them ever since she got bitten on one of our overnight gigs a couple of years ago, so she’s been a little obsessive about hunting them out no matter how nice the hotel. You wouldn’t believe how long it took for those bites to disappear. She kept scratching them. They got infected. It was a mess.”

  “So you’re saying that this”—Etienne gestured toward the disarray—“is perfectly normal?”

  “No. I’m saying that in Astrid’s world, this”—Otis tossed out his meaty hand in a gesture that mimicked Etienne’s—“would be considered House Beautiful.”

  Etienne arched his brows. “If you say so.”

  “I’ll—uh…I’ll pull up the bed covers so we can have a place to fold her clothes.” I crossed the floor, snatching up her nylons and underwear as I went. “Have you spied your trifle yet, Otis?”

  “Nope, but don’t you folks pay any attention to me. I’ll just snoop around the room for a minute and hope for the best.”

  “If you tell us what you’re looking for, we might be able to help you find it,” I insisted.

  He slid the closet door all the way open and poked his head inside, moving hangers and sorting through the shelves. “It’s kind of a book thing.”

  “A novel?”

  “Uhhh…poetry.”

  Otis read poetry? Aww. Apparently there was a romantic disguised beneath that bushy beard of his. “What’s the title?”

  He stepped into the bathroom. “Title?” His voice echoed out to us.

  “Of your book of poetry.”

  “Oh.” I heard the zzzzzt of a zipper being opened and closed. “I—uh, I can’t remember.” He stepped back into the room. “I’m not very good with titles.”

  “Large book or small book?” asked Etienne as he removed clothing from the dresser drawers.

  “Uhhh…average size.”

  I was beginning to think that Otis knew less about this book than Prissy knew about birthin’ babies. I exchanged a curious look with Etienne. “It’s not a library book, is it?”

  Otis regarded me with bright eyes. “That’s it exactly! A library book. So if I don’t find it, I’ll be looking at a pretty hefty fine.”

  Why did I feel as if I’d just given him an out? “When did you give it to her?” I asked as I began to fold the sweaters and tops that Etienne placed on the bed.

  Otis searched the drawers that Etienne had just finished emptying and scratched his head. “At the airport?”

  I smiled. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

  “I guess I gave it to her at the airport.” He went down onto his knees to look under the bed.

  “Maybe she stashed it in her handbag.” I glanced around the room. “Has anyone seen it?”

  “She was carrying it with her this morning, bella.”

  “I know. It was a huge high-end designer bag that probably cost a small fortune. Hard to hide something that big. So…where do you suppose it is?”

  Etienne’s voice grew soft. “Her accordion case is apparently indestructible, but the only personal item of Astrid’s that the police could salvage from the explosion site was the badly damaged photo page of her passport. Her handbag didn’t fare well in the blast. I’m afraid there was nothing left of it to recover.”

  “Oh.” Obviously, my brain was still a little addled because I sure hadn’t connected those dots. Of course her handbag had been obliterated; that’s what bombs were built to do. Obliterate things.

  “So if she was carrying my book with her, it’s gone?” asked Otis. “Destroyed?” He pulled open the drawer of the nightstand to find it empty.

  “That would be my guess,” said Etienne.

  Otis looked oddly pensive before heaving a disappointed sigh. “Maybe the librarian will go easy on me if I explain what happened.”

  “My mom works in a library. Would you like her to write you a note?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll wing it.” He circled the bed, peeked behind the drapes, and checked under the barrel chair before scratching his head again. “Must have been in her pocketbook because it’s sure not here. Okay, then. I’ll get out of your hair now and let you finish up what you’re doing. Thanks for helping me out.”

  “No problem,” said Etienne as he escorted him to the door. “I just wish the outcome had been better for you.”

  “Me too. Me too. But at least I tried.”

  Etienne walked back to the bed with Astrid’s lime green spinner suitcase in hand and set it on the mattress. “I know the man is grieving and might not be feeling himself, but did he seem a bit disingenuous to you?”

  “A bit? What I’d like to know is, if he wasn’t actually looking for this book that he knew nothing about, what was he looking for?”

  “Whatever it was, he didn’t find it. I’ll clean out the bathroom.”

  As I placed a couple of stacks of folded clothes into the suitcase, I noticed a bulge in a side pocket. Peeling the Velcro strips apart, I dug out a household storage bag filled with a dozen truffles that were so badly squished, the interior of the plastic was a dark smear of melted chocolate. “Astrid was a chocoholic,” I called out to Etienne before depositing the bag in the wastebasket and heading for the closet.

  Every hanger had something dangling from it. Ankle-length dresses in assorted colors for her beer hall performances. Crisply starched aprons. White blouses with short puffed sleeves and low-cut ruffled bodices. And at the end of the row, a frothy display of femininity in pastels as pale as butter mints. “Aww.”

  Etienne emerged from the bathroom with an armful of zippered toiletry bags. “Aww what?”

  “Look at these nighties. They remind me of something TV housewives wore in the boudoir a few decades ago, in the days when they scrubbed floors and vacuumed carpets in high heels and pearls.”

  Lace. Silk. Nylon. Spaghetti straps. Ruffles. Feathers. Ankle-length confections with see-through cover-ups as delicate as gossamer. “Peignoirs. I didn’t think women wore peignoirs anymore.”

  “Astrid Peterson obviously did.”

  I fingered the bodice of one nightgown, noting how the lace design was missing several strategic threads and the satin ribbon was frayed at the edge. “Do you suppose these were part of her wedding trousseau? Trousseaus and hope chests were a must with brides in my mom’s generation. Women embroidered little flowers on pillowcases and collected pieces of their good china and bought provocative intimate apparel for their honeymoon. These days brides-to-be register at Home Depot and ask for gas grills and nail guns.”

  “Her lingerie does look a bit tattered.”

  “I remember my mom wearing a peignoir once when I was little. I thought she looked like a princess, so I asked her if she was going to a ball. I never saw her wear it again. I think she traded it in for flannel pajamas and wool socks.” I grinned. “The closest thing I’ve come to a peignoir was one Halloween when I bought a French maid outfit. It had a flirty little short skirt, an apron, a lace choker and cuffs, and a lace garter belt with black fishnet stockings. I was the most popular girl at the party that year.”

  A slow, seductive smile worked its way across his mouth. “No doubt.”

  I removed her nightgowns from their hangers and returned to the bed, folding them neatly into her suitcase before emptying the closet of her folk costumes. Wh
en I’d compacted all her belongings into her spinner, Etienne made a final sweep of the room and gave me a thumbs-up. “I think that’s everything.”

  I closed the lid, checked to make sure that none of her costumes were poking out the sides, and zipped it shut. After hoisting it to the floor, Etienne preceded me into the hall. “Would you get the light, bella?”

  I cast a final look back before I flipped the switch. I had no logical reason to doubt Otis, but why couldn’t I shake off the niggling feeling that the room hadn’t been carelessly cluttered by Astrid? Why did I get the feeling it had been ransacked?

  Once back in our room, I lingered in the bathroom, applying Tilly’s shaman-approved restorative compound to the lesions on my face. I didn’t expect miracles, so if the cream did nothing more than fade the redness, I’d be a happy camper.

  By the time I finished, Etienne had returned Astrid’s room key to the main desk and was already in bed. I crawled in beside him, snuggling against the sinewy contours of his body and tingling all over as he cocooned me in his arms. “You won’t have to wake me up in the middle of the night to check my pupils or pulse or anything, will you?” I asked.

  He pressed his mouth to my ear, his lips soft, his breath warm. “Should I wake you in the middle of the night, bella, it won’t be to check your pulse.”

  I was so happy to be safe in bed beside him, I almost purred. I probably would have if a darker thought hadn’t intruded. “What did you do when you heard the bomb blast today?”

  His body stiffened involuntarily before he relaxed again. “I was disoriented initially. I couldn’t pinpoint the location of the sound because it seemed to come from everywhere. But Zola didn’t hesitate. She grabbed my arm and spun me around in the direction of the main boulevard. And she didn’t mince words. She told me it was the street with the spooky sculpture and I should go find you.” He paused. “You did say she’s a practicing clairvoyant.”

  “She told me this evening that she had a bad vibe that something was going to happen on that street, but she didn’t know that Astrid would be fatally injured.”

  “I’m not sure how this is going to play out, Emily. Depending on people’s belief systems, a psychic among the guests could either prove to be a delightful novelty or a thorn in everyone’s side. If she remains low-key, we should have no problem. If not…”

  He let me fill in the blank.

  “We’ll work it out,” I assured him. “She’s a really nice person, so if she pushes the envelope a little too far and we’re forced to ask her to tone it down, I’m sure she’ll cooperate.”

  He responded by growling softly against my earlobe and giving it a playful nibble.

  “And while we’re discussing nice people, does my dad seem all right to you?”

  “Define ‘all right.’”

  “He doesn’t play the accordion.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “No. He doesn’t.”

  “All right: to be precise, he played in grammar school and gave it up, so he hasn’t touched an accordion for decades. So what I should have said was, he used to play.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Your father.”

  “When?”

  “I spoke to him briefly after the musicians dispersed this evening. He’s never mentioned his musical ability to you?”

  I racked my brain for occasions on which Dad had voluntarily uttered a complete sentence. “You do realize that conversation isn’t Dad’s strong point, right?”

  “I’m not entirely convinced that your father is as taciturn as you make him out to be, Emily. He might turn out to be a regular chatterbox if someone would take the time to listen to what he has to say. I don’t think he lacks verbal skills. I think he lacks an audience.”

  I swallowed slowly, enlightenment hitting me like a lightning bolt. “Omigod, you’re right. The whole family does it. We ignore Dad—we talk over him, we forget he’s there, we assume he has nothing to say, so we don’t even try to engage him anymore.” I pinched my eyes shut, mortified. “What if he’s had tons of stuff to share all these years but kept it all to himself because the rest of us were talking so much, he couldn’t get a word in edgewise?”

  “Then you’ll have a lot to look forward to when you give him your undivided attention and let him talk.”

  I fell into a kind of exhausted haze as he feathered soft kisses along the curve of my ear, stirring fluttery sensations from my breastbone to my toes. “Umm…would this be a good time to tell you about Mom’s threat to fly home early?”

  “No.” He tilted my face upward and placed a long, lingering kiss on my mouth, rendering me blissfully numb. “But I do have a question. The Halloween costume you mentioned—the French maid outfit?” He whispered the words against my lips, his voice low and throaty. “Do you still have it?”

  Bam, bam, bam.

  I opened one eye to find the room still dark and the nightstand clock aglow with red numerals indicating it was 4:54.

  Bam, bam, bam. “Emily? Emily!” Bam, bam, bam.

  The door.

  Someone banging on the door.

  I shot out of bed and raced across the room. I threw open the door to find Dad in his bare feet and pajamas.

  “You gotta come quick. Your mother’s had a stroke.”

  six

  “Transient global amnesia.”

  I stared at the same trauma specialist who’d treated me yesterday, my anxiety so crushing, my heart pounding so fiercely, that I could scarcely catch my breath. “Amnesia? Not…not a stroke?”

  “Your mother’s MRI and EEG show no neurological anomalies, Mrs. Miceli, so we’ve ruled out a stroke, as well as epilepsy.”

  “Amnesia?” questioned Etienne, who’d suffered his own bout with the affliction before we were married. “From the explosion yesterday?”

  Dad continued to look as shell-shocked as he had when he’d pounded on my door five hours earlier. “She didn’t know where she was when she woke up this morning, and she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here. So I told her, but five minutes later she asked me the same questions again.”

  “And five minutes after that, did she repeat her questions?” asked Dr. Fischer.

  Dad nodded. “That’s when I ran down the hall to fetch Emily.”

  Dr. Fischer swept his hand toward the table in the center of the consultation room. “Why don’t we sit down while I explain a little more about the condition.”

  Etienne pulled out a small notebook and pen as we seated ourselves. Dr. Fischer continued. “The type of amnesia Mrs. Andrew has can mimic the symptoms of a stroke, but unlike a stroke, the condition is harmless, has no lasting effects, and is usually short-lived.”

  “How short?” I asked.

  “Typically, memory functions return to normal within twenty-four hours.”

  Dad was so juiced by the prognosis that his voice cracked like a twelve-year-old. “No kidding? Come tomorrow, she’ll be her old self again?”

  Dr. Fischer massaged the crown of his shaven skull. “Typically, that’s the case, but there are always exceptions, and we don’t know yet which category your wife will fall into. Trans-global amnesia is quite rare, so few cases ever cross our path.”

  “Then how can you be so sure that’s what’s wrong with her?” I asked.

  “Because from what we do know of the condition, your mother is exhibiting classic symptoms. The onset of her memory loss was sudden. She retains knowledge of her personal identity. She recognizes her family and familiar objects.”

  Etienne was jotting down notes as fast as the doctor was talking.

  “She can follow simple directions. She has no limb paralysis, involuntary movement, or speech impairment. But she’s unable to remember what happened yesterday or the day before or a year ago. And until the episode passes, she won’t be able to form new memories and
retain them, which means that every five minutes she’ll be asking one of you how she came to be here and why. You can count on the exercise growing old very quickly.”

  “We can handle it,” said Dad. “As long as we know Margaret’ll be all right, we can handle anything.”

  “Have you any idea what caused the problem to begin with?” I inquired. “Etienne was asking about the explosion yesterday. Could the concussive wave from the blast have triggered the condition?”

  “It could, but it’s just as likely that the blast had nothing to do with it. Does Mrs. Andrew suffer from migraine headaches?”

  Dad shook his head. “She never gets headaches. But she’s been known to cause a few.”

  “There’s a notable link between migraines and this type of amnesia,” Dr. Fischer continued, “but if Mrs. Andrew has no history of migraines…” He shrugged, palms up. “The singular underlying cause of the condition is still unknown, so I’m afraid we’re left with a short list of anecdotal triggers.”

  “Which are?” asked Etienne, not looking up from his notebook.

  He ticked them off on his fingers. “Invasive medical procedures. Strenuous physical activity. Sudden immersion in hot or cold water. Mild head trauma…which she certainly might have suffered yesterday at the blast site, but the trauma might have been so slight that it was undetectable at the time. The only other trigger that’s been mentioned in the literature is acute emotional distress prompted by bad news, stress, or conflict. Has Mrs. Andrew been subjected to any undue emotional distress since she arrived?”

  Dad scratched the bristles on his unshaven jaw and shook his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary…other than being caught in a bomb blast and thinking her daughter might be dead.”

  “Point taken,” conceded Dr. Fischer. “Mrs. Andrew could well have escaped the concussion from the blast but suffered a delayed reaction from the emotional stress of the incident.”

  And that stress, coupled with her anxiety over Dad’s musical delusions, might have been what pushed her over the edge. Poor Mom. A dream holiday in Bavaria and she’d return home with no memories of it. But on the flip side, if Dad’s musical debut ended up being a total train wreck, at least she wouldn’t be able to remember the humiliation.