Kronenberg said, “If you would like me to make flight arrangements for all of you, I will be happy to do so. You’ve all been put through hell. I can explain this to the airlines and get you on the earliest flight possible. They always have a certain number of seats set aside for hardship cases. I assume you will all want to fly from Geneva?”
“Oh, no!” Lettie cried, taking a step backward. “Not me! I can’t leave from Geneva . . . that is, I don’t want to leave just yet. I want to go to Florence with Marco and Dotsy. Spend a few days seeing things I didn’t get to see the last time we were there.”
This, of course, came as a complete surprise to Marco and me. We hadn’t invited her, and frankly, we wanted to be alone.
“You can’t leave from Geneva? Why not?” Babs asked.
“Because they told me not to ever come back.”
“Aha! The airport fiasco! I forgot all about that.” Patrick laughed.
I remembered that evening when Lettie arrived at Chateau Merz. I went to the kitchen to make coffee and when I returned, everyone had been laughing at some story Lettie had told. Something about an airport adventure. “I forgot to ask you about that, Lettie.” I said. “What happened at the airport?”
Lettie blushed, looking around at Babs, Erin, and Patrick, all of whom were laughing. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, glancing quickly toward Detective Kronenberg.
“Whatever it is, Lettie, it will go no farther than this room,” Kronenberg said. “I promise.”
“You know how uptight everyone is these days about airport security,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. We’re all uptight for good reason. I have no problem with all the new security measures, and I completely agree that when you’re standing in the line waiting to go through the metal detector you should not make jokes.”
“Uh-oh,” I whispered under my breath.
“The woman standing in front of me said that her feet were killing her because they had confiscated her gel insoles in Washington, and I . . . well, I suppose I was trying to sound like the young people do today. I hate to sound like I’m behind the times, you know. So I said, ‘bummer!’ The security guards were French, I think.”
“And?”
“They thought I said ‘Bomber’ and they evacuated the whole terminal!”
About the Author
Maria Hudgins, a former high school science teacher, lives in Hampton, Virginia, with her two Bichons, Holly and Hamilton. Her previous novels in the Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery series are: Death of an Obnoxious Tourist, Death of a Lovable Geek, and Death on the Aegean Queen.
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