Death of a Second Wife (A Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery) by Maria Hudgins

ordered.” He looked at the receipt more closely. “ Ja . Apple strudel.” Juergen slung the straps of the canvas tote over his shoulder and stepped back inside the elevator.
    On the ascent, I asked, “So when you want to order food, you call a restaurant and they bring it to the tunnel?”
    “Ja. All the local restaurants know us. They bring the food to the elevator entrance, buzz us, and we let them in to deposit the food. The door outside the tunnel is well disguised, so you’d never notice it unless you knew what you were looking for.”
    “Another reason not to invade Switzerland. You have a thousand ways to escape.”
    Trekking homeward again, we both fell silent and the only sounds were the crunch of snow beneath our feet and the crack of branches heavy with ice. Juergen stopped me when we came to the clearing and
    pointed upward. “Orion,” he said. “It gives me great comfort to see the stars. They never change.”
    * * * * *
    Erin slipped into my bedroom after dinner when everyone else was downstairs. I put aside the page of Stephanie’s notes I’d torn from the pad near the kitchen phone, and patted the bed beside me. Instead, she chose to sit on the side of Lettie’s bed, facing me.
    Erin’s round, gamin face was paler than I’d ever seen it, her eyelids pink and puffy. As she sat, her feet left the floor and her black flats slipped, one hitting the floor and the other dangling from her toes.
    “Don’t you think you could wear a couple sizes smaller, Erin?” I said, smiling. I inte nded this as a good-natured tease, not a criticism. When Erin came to know me better, she’d learn how to take my oblique sense of humor.
    “These are Mama’s shoes. I only brought wedding shoes and hiking boots. Mama said my boots didn’t go with slacks.” She let the other shoe fall and folded her legs, yoga-style on the bed.
    “I see.”
    “Have you talked to Patrick today? About the wedding?”
    “We discussed it.”
    Erin’s eyes seemed focused on a spot to the left of my head. “You want us to postpone the wedding , don’t you, Mrs. Lamb? Please! Patrick listens to you. Please tell him it’s okay to go ahead with it!” She laced her fingers so tightly together, they turned white and red. “We’ve planned this for so long, and Mama has spent everything she can afford on this wedding. I know it’s going to be odd, so soon after Stephanie’s and Gisele’s deaths, but don’t you think they’d want us to go on with it? This was something Stephanie looked forward to and helped me plan for. Surely she wouldn’t want to know she’d caused it not to happen!”
    “Think, Erin. When will the funerals be held? And where? Gisele’s will be here in LaMotte, I’m sure. Probably on Wednesday or Thursday. Stephanie’s also. I overheard Chet and Juergen discussing it this afternoon. Juergen doesn’t want his father to discover Stephanie is dead because his health is so fragile. Chet couldn’t possibly attend his wife’s funeral and his son’s wedding in the same town and, very likely, on the same day. That’s unreasonable. For Patrick it would be bury your stepmother and go get married . Boom, boom. Hopefully, with time enough to change clothes between services.”
    “But everything is planned! All our old friends are coming!” she whined. Erin and Patrick had met at a summer retreat near LaMotte and had stayed in touch with the young people they’d met there, most of whom were from this part of Europe. The majority of the attendees were to be those friends, our family being few in number.
    “If money is the problem, I’m sure Chet and I can both help her out. Wouldn’t it be nice if you two could get married, perhaps later in the summer, at home where our friends and family could also be there?”
    Tears ran down Erin’s cheeks. She swiped at them with the palm of her hand. “You don’t understand! I knew you wouldn’t.”
    I yanked a tissue from the box on my bedside table and handed it to