Death of a Second Wife

by Maria Hudgins

  * * * * *

  By late afternoon, I was going stir-crazy. I had to escape. From the living room windows, I spied Brian and Patrick heading eastward and over the crest of a hill. Lettie, nestled in the sofa with her feet tucked into the crack between the seat cushion and the back, fiddled absently with her cell phone.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” I suggested. I tramped up the stairs to our room to get my jacket and ran into Juergen, coming down.

  “Put on a warm coat if you’re going out, Dotsy. The temperature is falling again. It’s going to be a cold night.”

  “That’s the warmest I have,” I said, pointing to the new jacket I’d draped over the post at the foot of my bed.

  “Come with me.” Juergen led me to a coat closet on a lower level and pulled out a zip-up parka and a pair of yellow galoshes. “Keep these. You’ll need them whenever you go out.” He scrambled through the closet floor and located a smaller pair of galoshes for Lettie.

  Lettie and I headed out and eastward, away from the off-limits crime scene. Breaking new snow as we went, our progress was slow, but it didn’t matter because we had nowhere to go. I only wanted to get away from the house. “Your thoughts, Lettie. What happened here?”

  “My head is spinning! Nothing makes sense.”

  “You’re right. What could possibly have possessed Stephanie to grab a gun, shoot the cook, and then shoot herself?”

  “All I can think of is that Gisele knew something that threatened Stephanie. Scared her. Something she couldn’t let get out.”

  “If so, it must have been a whopping big threat. Stephanie was not the sort to scare easily. She thrived on conflict. Trust me—I know. Stephanie’s reaction to a threat would be, ‘Bring it on! You want a fight? You got one!’ ”

  “And to kill herself! It makes no sense.”

  “And what I heard her say, ‘If you don’t tell him, I will,’ sounds more like she was the threat.”

  We reached a spot that looked like the place where Patrick and I had turned left. The trail we had followed yesterday lay covered by the blanket of new snow. I nudged Lettie toward the left. “I have an awful feeling,” I told her, “the police will decide this isn’t a murder-suicide but just plain murder. A double murder. And if so, who is the most logical suspect?”

  Lettie stopped and looked into my face but said nothing.

  “Me, Lettie. Me! The woman scorned—staying in the same house as her ex-husband and the woman who stole him from her!”

  Lettie blinked and her head jerked. “What about Gisele? Why would you kill her?”

  “She saw what I did.”

  “Oh, dear. I have to admit it has a certain logic to it.” Lettie resumed her path. “Do you have an alibi?” She said this in the same tone she’d have used to ask, “Do you have a tissue?”

  “I was in the living room with the others for most of the time between ten-thirty and midnight and after that I was with you. Erin, Babs, Juergen, can all vouch for me. Plus you and Patrick came in later.”

  “That’s all right, then.”

  “But there was the time when I went to the kitchen and brewed the coffee. That’s the only time I can’t be vouched for, and it would hardly have been time enough to kill two people.”

  Lettie held up one finger and moved it around as if she was scanning an invisible time line. “Time enough to grab a gun, run to the bunker where you already knew Stephanie was because of the phone call, shoot her, run back out, see Gisele getting ready to scream her head off, shoot her, toss the gun inside the bunker, slam the door, run back to the house.”

  “That would take,” I muttered, “maybe two or three minutes.”

  “If you knew where to get a gun.”

  “Right. Who would ever think I’d find a gun in a World War Two bunker? In a country where gun ownership is mandatory?”

  “Don’t talk like that. You’re scaring me.”

  We had come to the boulder where Patrick and I sat yesterday. The Matterhorn dominated our eastern horizon and the cedars, their branches covered with snow like white lace, skirted the slope below us. Sweeping the snow off the top of the boulder, we sat and bandied other possibilities about. Who, other than myself, had a motive? Chet might have felt dominated and emasculated by Stephanie. Juergen might have a financial motive, depending on how much money their father had and what was in his will. Gisele had probably been smarting from Stephanie’s verbal attacks.

  “Gisele is out, Lettie. She’d have had to shoot herself after she shot Stephanie, but the gun was in the bunker beside Stephanie.”

  “You’re right. I can’t believe we’re calmly talking like this.”

  “There you are.”

  We both turned and spotted Babs picking her way toward us, Erin in tow. Babs wore a mint green knit cap with a matching scarf and a navy pea coat. Erin’s coat was brown and black checked. Her little face peeked out between a cable-knit cap and several wraps of an incredibly long, rainbow-striped muffler.

  “What a day. What an awful day.” Babs said, in a flat tone. “Poor Chet must be devastated. Erin and I are just back from LaMotte. We had to talk to Father Etienne. He’d already heard about poor Stephanie and poor Gisele. I don’t know how he’d heard about it, but news travels fast in a small village and the Merz family is well known around here. I assured Father Etienne that this tragedy wouldn’t change our plans for Thursday’s wedding, and I’m very glad we stopped in when we did! He thought the wedding was postponed!” The pitch of her voice rose but her eyebrows, thanks probably to Botox, did not. “Anyway, we assured him it wasn’t. I mean, after all, Stephanie wasn’t the mother of the groom. You are. She had no official role. And Gisele—she was invited to attend, but she wasn’t part of the actual wedding party. I explained that the whole family was here for only a short time and we all have to fly home soon.” She shook her head. “Of course, we can’t postpone the wedding!”

  I’m sure my mouth was hanging open as widely as Lettie’s was. While her mother was talking, Erin stood with her back to us, swirling arcs in the snow with one boot. I suppose I must have thought about Thursday’s wedding a couple of times that morning and assumed it would be postponed. How could they think of going on with it as if nothing had happened? I was appalled. The wedding hadn’t been mentioned all day except to explain to Detective Kronenberg why we were all here.

  “Babs, have you and Erin talked this over with Patrick?”

  Erin turned and peaked at her mother through her wraps.

  “We haven’t been able to talk to him about anything! He and Juergen have been busy with that little detective all day.”

  Little detective. Those two words told me more than anything else she had said. Kronenberg was about six feet-two and two hundred pounds. Little was Babs’s assessment of Kronenberg’s importance, not his physical size.

  “Babs, we’ve had two deaths today. Two people who were at dinner last night won’t be there tonight. Or ever again. Even though Stephanie and I weren’t best of friends, and even though I hardly knew Gisele, I’m saddened by their deaths. I can’t imagine celebrating a marriage right now. Can you, Lettie?”

  Lettie raised her chin, looked down her nose at Babs. “No. And before you go any further with your plans, you should talk things over with Patrick.”

  “But by Thursday, surely, this will be behind us.”

  “Thursday’s only three days away.”

  “Busy, busy! You realize, don’t you, that everything Gisele and Stephanie were planning to take care of—the bar, the wine, the coffee—all of that will have to be done by the caterers now. Unless you and Lettie could take over.”

  I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t. I elbowed Lettie and mumbled, “Get me away from here before I hit her.”

  * * * * *

  Back at the house, I found Brian and Patrick in the pool room. Patrick, fully clothed, sat on the side of the pool, pant legs rolled up and his feet on the top step in ankle-deep water. Brian was swimming laps. I wondered where he had
found the swim trunks. In my heavy wool sweater I was uncomfortably warm in the room’s balmy atmosphere. Condensation dripped down the windows in rivulets, and the whole room smelled of chlorine.

  I told Patrick he needed to talk to Erin as soon as possible. “Babs is assuming the wedding will come off as planned on Thursday. Do you really think that’s wise?”

  “The wedding? Thursday?” His head jerked around. “No! Not with all this!” He stood up and stepped out of the water. “I’ve hardly had time to . . . what I mean is, I don’t think it’s a good idea now. This Matterhorn thing was cool before, but now it’s not. I’m thinking a wedding back home, maybe later in the summer, would make more sense.”

  “I agree. More of our family and Erin’s would be able to attend. And your father needs time to mend.”

  Patrick, his pant legs still rolled up, grabbed his shoes and padded across the tile floor to the stairs. Brian, meanwhile, had climbed out and grabbed a towel. He scrubbed his hair, draped the towel around his shoulders and pulled up a deck chair to face the one I had taken.

  “Where’s Detective Kronenberg?” I asked.

  “Gone. Helicopter took off a half-hour ago.”

  “How’s your father doing?”

  “It’s hard to tell, isn’t it? He’s gone all broody, but that’s getting to be his norm.”

  “So you’ve told me.”

  “This makes no sense, Mom. Stephanie’s the last person I’d expect to kill herself. There must have been something going on that we don’t know about.” Brian blew a drop of water off the tip of his nose and wiped his face with the towel.

  “What about the business? What shape is the John Deere franchise in?”

  “Aha! Damn you, Mom. You’re always a step ahead of me! That’s exactly what I’m worried about.”

  “Tell me.”

  “There’s money missing. I’ve been chalking up the sad state of our balance sheet to the economy. Sales are off. Farmers are hurting. They can’t afford to float any more loans so they can’t buy new equipment. That’s part of it, but not all of it. We haven’t actually been selling that much less than we were five years ago, but—” Brian folded one hand inside the other and cracked his knuckles, then gazed out a fogged-up window.

  “Go on.”

  “I had another accountant, a friend of mine, take a look at our books. As a favor to me. I don’t understand all the little conventions and devices those guys use, but he told me there’s money missing.”

  “How much?”

  “Maybe a couple million.”

  “Ouch!” That sounded like big money to me, but in the heavy machinery business one tractor can cost a couple hundred thousand, and most of the money on the books is in a sort of revolving credit account they call a floor plan.

  “Our business is basically bankrupt. We’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

  “I assume you’ve discussed this with your father.” I searched Brian’s face, his eyes, the tightness of his jaw line. My sweet baby’s forehead was developing deep lines.

  “Sure. But he doesn’t want to talk about it. You know how he is.” Brian glanced at me, then looked away.

  “What are you not telling me, Brian? There’s something else, isn’t there?” I knew my son. I could read his face like a billboard. “You told Detective Kronenberg you spent last night in Geneva because you didn’t want to walk in here too late, but your flight was supposed to get to Geneva at ten in the morning. What happened?”

  “How do you know what I told Kronenberg?”

  “I overheard.”

  He stood up, snapped his wet towel against a supporting column. “I didn’t spend last night in Geneva. I was in LaMotte. I stayed at a hotel there.”

  I waited.

  “I had an appointment with a guy who’s been looking into the Merz family financial position. Particularly Stephanie’s share of the family holdings.”

  “I didn’t know she had any.”

  “Oh, she has—had—a lot. Importing, exporting and banking. Old man Merz is super-rich, although it’s practically impossible to find out how rich. Juergen and Stephanie both have minority shares in the family enterprises.” He exhaled loudly and sat back down. “Anyway, that’s what I was doing last night. I was in LaMotte talking to this guy who’s been checking into things for me. I had to lie to Kronenberg because I don’t want Dad or Juergen to know about this.”

  “You may have made a bad decision, kid.” I had never before had to criticize Brian’s common sense. It didn’t feel good. “What’s going to happen when Kronenberg finds out you lied to him?”

  “Why would he find out? He isn’t interested in me. I had nothing to tell him about why Steph would have done what she did. End of story.”

  “I have a horrid feeling it isn’t the end of the story.” I watched his face for a minute. “What did this guy—spy—whatever—come up with? What did he tell you?”

  “It’s hard to find out anything for sure, Swiss banking regulations being what they are, but it seems their import-export enterprise is worse off than our John Deere business. In fact they’ve already declared bankruptcy, gone through a re-organization thing and reopened.”

  “Under new management?”

  “Not really. Seems like old man Merz is still, nominally, the chairman of the board but with Juergen actually making the decisions. He and Stephanie are both theoretically equal in terms of their voting shares.”

  “I thought you said old man Merz was super-rich. Now you’re telling me he’s bankrupt.”

  “I said their import-export business went bankrupt. Old man Merz still lives in a castle, he still has banking interests—artwork probably worth millions.”

  “What happens when old man Merz dies? He’s ninety-five years old.”

  “Depends on what’s in his will, doesn’t it?”

  I looked around at the blue tiled room, the pristine pool, and imagined the breath-taking view beyond the fogged-up windows. If the business was bankrupt, did that mean this house would have to be sold? Juergen’s home in Zurich? Were the personal finances of Juergen and Stephanie in jeopardy, or were they separate from the business? I asked Brian.

  “The business is incorporated. The only thing Juergen and Steph lose is the value of their shares in the business. What I’m worried about is finding out what happened to the two million, more or less, that seems to have gone missing from Lamb’s Farm Equipment, Inc. I suspect Steph funneled it into Merz Import and Export.”

  “And your father doesn’t know about this?”

  “He knows we’re bleeding red ink.” Brian stood up again and stretched. “But I’m not going to tell him about this until I know for sure what’s going on.”

  Seven

  In spite of the day’s horrors, night fell on schedule.

  Lettie slipped into the living room where several of us were watching the snowy peaks beyond the windows darken and said what we’d all have said if we’d been in normal frames of mind. She said, “I’m hungry.”

  I sat up straighter, tuned in to my inner self and felt the telltale edginess that signals the onset of hypoglycemia. I’m diabetic; I have to eat regularly. “Is there anything like orange juice in the kitchen, Juergen? I need sugar.”

  “I don’t know.” Juergen also didn’t know about my diabetes and probably thought my question was prompted by a simple hunger. “I’ve ordered dinner for all of us. One of us needs to go and pick it up.” He looked at his watch with the dancing dials.

  I stood up, intending to go the kitchen, then stopped, my head spinning. I sat back down. “I’m sorry. Would somebody get me something with sugar in it? I don’t care what.”

  “Oh! I forgot your diabetes,” Erin said, jumping up and heading toward the stairs. “I’ll get you something.”

  “I beat you to it,” Lettie said. She dashed in holding a napkin under a glass of orange juice, the sweet solution to my problem sloshing over the rim.

  Within a minute or two, I rallied. Dinner. What had Juer
gen said? I’ve ordered dinner? We need to pick it up? How? We were a thirty-minute cab ride from LaMotte. Then I recalled the lift. “Did you say someone needs to pick up dinner? How?”

  “It’s in the tunnel,” Juergen, now wearing muffler, hat, and gloves, stood in the doorway. “You haven’t seen the tunnel yet, have you, Dotsy? Would you like to? Do you feel up to it? Come along, then. Lettie, would you like to come, too?”

  Lettie declined the offer. I climbed the stairs to our room and donned the parka and galoshes Juergen had lent me earlier. He led me out a side door into snow now bathed in moonlight. We’re going to the tunnel to pick up dinner. I couldn’t recall ever saying that before.

  I followed in Juergen’s footsteps, grabbing the back of his jacket now and again when I felt myself slipping. In the dark, it was impossible to know where to step next, but it seemed as if we followed the path Lettie and I had taken earlier, then veered off to the right and downhill across virgin snow. We traipsed through the cedar trees and came to the quaint little house I’d glimpsed the day before. Sided with cedar shakes and topped with slate shingles, it looked like the witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel, but smaller.

  Juergen opened the door, flipped a light switch, and waved me in.

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but a shiny, modern elevator wasn’t it. I suppose I thought it would be sort of like Willy Wonka’s “wonkavator.”

  “Oh, you crazy Swiss,” I said. “This is incredible.”

  “Just because we’re in the twenty-first century doesn’t mean we should forget our past. We’re keeping up appearances, as you Americans say.”

  “This is too much!” I pulled off one glove and touched the gleaming door. It was ice-cold. The distance from the exterior door to the elevator door was, at most, two feet.

  “It goes down through the mountain to a spot on the road at the edge of town. The residents of a couple of other houses and I”—he pointed vaguely in directions where I hadn’t noticed any houses—“own it jointly. Down below there’s a buzzer you have to push if you don’t have a key. The signal comes to our houses. So no one can use it without our permission. Shall we go?”