Toured to Death

Book 1: Amy's Travel Mystery

by Hy Conrad

Genres: Cozy Mystery; International Crime & Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

“Fast-paced, entertaining, and a mystery-lover’s treat.” —John Clement, co-author of the Dixie Hemingway series Book a ticket with this all-new mystery series featuring Amy and Fanny Abel, a spunky mother-and-daughter duo of travel agents who find their mystery tour becoming all too real… While Fanny takes care of the business end of Amy’s Travel in New York City, Amy is traipsing around Monte Carlo, managing their first mystery-themed excursion, a road rally in which guests compete to solve a fictional murder along the way. Amy still has reservations about partnering up with her mother. But both women, having lost the men in their lives, need a fresh beginning. The trip starts off without a hitch. Clues quickly mount, the competition is lively, and just when the suspense is peaking, the writer they hired to script their made-up mystery is found murdered in his New York apartment. Suddenly, on top of running a new venture together, mother and daughter must solve a real-life case of foul play, while trying not to drive each other bonkers. But Amy and Fanny are ready, willing, and Abel to track down a clever killer with some serious emotional baggage, one who will go to any lengths to keep dark secrets from seeing the light of day…

Release date: February 1, 2015

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 321

Sample

“How can you dictate my menu?” Emil Pitout snatched the printed card from Amy’s hand and inspected it. “You are a chef perhaps?” The doughy man in the apron smirked—a needless smirk, since his tone was expressing it nicely. “Do you have a Michelin star you neglected to tell me about, eh? My apologies.”

Amy didn’t take offense. She was too busy mentally translating the rapid stream of French and trying to phrase her own response. “I’m not a chef, Emil.”

“You must be. Perhaps you wish to cook tonight? I don’t want to jeopardize your menu with my clumsy efforts.” Or at least Amy thought the word meant jeopardize. Something close.

Emil stopped to read the card. “Not bad,” he said grudgingly, as if he’d never seen it before. “But why must the dishes be just so?” The menu slipped from his fingers, drifting to the white tile floor. The entire kitchen was white and chrome and shining, like a surgical theater.

Amy hated arguing. She wasn’t good at it, even worse in French. Her usual ploy was to surrender. It tended to cut short the inevitable bloody defeat. Only this time she couldn’t.

“Because they must,” she ventured, bending down to retrieve the menu. “Emil, you’ve had this for a week. If there was a problem, you should have e-mailed me. It’s a simple dinner, nothing out of season. A fish soup, coquilles Saint-Jacques d’Étretat . . .”

Emil snatched at the menu again, but Amy pulled it back. “You have been to the market? I came late this morning—five o’clock—so I probably missed you. The haricots verts were perfection. They would have thought me mad if I didn’t buy them.” He pointed to a basket of the greenest green beans Amy had ever seen.

She was finally getting the point. “You want to substitute a vegetable.”

“The other, it was passable.” Emil shrugged, pointing to a basket of equally green broccoli heads. “But to take these poor fellows and then to pass up the haricots verts . . . What is the problem with one substitution?”

Amy honestly didn’t know, but she had her instructions. “Emil,” she pleaded. “We are occupying sixteen rooms. And we paid a good deal extra to reserve the whole restaurant.” She was sounding like a pushy businessman. Even worse, an American.

“You think this is about money?”

Well, yes. “Of course not.”

“It’s not about money.”

“I’m sorry. No artist likes being told how to perform. The green beans look fantastic.”

“Look? Ha.” And in a smooth motion perfected over years of stuffing capons, he slipped a bean between his adversary’s teeth.

“These are American tourists,” Amy mumbled as she crunched. “Which is not to say they don’t appreciate food. Mmm, delicious. But they won’t mind something not quite so perfect.”

“You think it matters who I cook for? You think I walk out into my dining room and say, ‘Oh, these people, they won’t appreciate my food. I will serve them crap’?” Actually, Amy had been to Paris bistros that made this scenario sound plausible. “Americans come in, and they ask, ‘How is this cooked?’ ‘What vegetable comes with that?’ ‘Can I have this instead?’”

“Well, they are the ones eating.”

“They get the vegetable I decide goes best. It is part of the whole.”

“Emil.” Amy pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “If it were up to me, I would love green beans. But these are my instructions. People must sit in certain places and do certain things. I don’t know why. Will this be a clue? I don’t know. Will something be poisoned?”

“Poison?” Emil gaped in mock horror.

“You know what I mean.”

“You are going to poison my food?”

“Emil, please.”

“I call the police.”

How do you say ‘get off it’? “I have told you over and over. This dinner is part of a murder mystery game. I can’t change a thing.”

“Even pretend poison, I will not allow. . . . That thing that tastes of bitter almonds?”

“Cyanide. No. No pretend cyanide.”

Emil huffed. “You should not play games with food.”

For Amy, the ensuing compromise felt like a victory. At least she hadn’t caved completely. The haricots verts, they agreed, would be a side dish, in addition to the broccoli. She just hoped that Otto Ingo’s entire mystery didn’t hinge on the absence of green beans at the opening night banquet.

It was a few minutes past noon on a cloudless day in mid-September. Amy Abel had changed into a crisp white blouse, lime-green clam diggers, and her favorite white and green espadrilles. Taking a deep breath of sea air, she strolled down the front steps and turned left onto avenue Saint-Martin.

The small luxury hotel had been hard to find. According to Otto’s specifications, it had to possess a terrace opening directly onto the dining room and should, as much as possible, resemble a private home. Deluxe accommodations in Monaco tended to be large affairs. The smaller, homey hotels were generally of a lower grade, something that might have been all right with Otto but that would not have suited Amy’s clients.

Salvation had come in the form of the Hotel Grimaldi, an eighteenth-century mansion on the spit of land known as Monaco-Ville. Halfway between the oceanographic museum and the cathedral, the Grimaldi was in a district filled with ancient squares and serpentine alleys, hardly the center of jet-set action. But this tiny gem was positioned right next to the seaside cliffs. And the view from the terrace was as good as you’d find at the Fairmont Monte Carlo.

Amy had left her to-do list back in her room. This was meant to be a break. Perhaps lunch at an outdoor café, she thought as she wandered away from the crashing waves. Emil was in his kitchen; the guests were all checked in; the actors would be needing her for the rehearsal in the dining room, but that wasn’t until three. Before she knew it, Amy had mentally re-created the to-do list.

She’d barely traveled at all since Eddie’s murder. Could it be almost two years? Time had glided by in a haze of despair. It had all been so senseless, so random. Hundreds of times she had gone over—still went over—the events of that Saturday night in early November. If only they hadn’t had that fight. If only Eddie hadn’t gone out for a walk. If only he had stormed out five minutes earlier or later or hadn’t turned down Minetta Lane. All the millions of little forks in the road, the inconsequential moments you never gave a second thought to until they heartlessly, mechanically clicked into place and destroyed your world.

Amy knew this was all part of not letting go. But how could she let go? It had been the beginning for them, a burgeoning world of inside jokes, of quiet, cuddly mornings, and little traditions. . . all gone in an instant.

Amy tried to focus on the modest glories of the neighborhood, on the neat rows of window boxes, on the brass railings glowing richly in the sun. Which was worse? she wondered. Thinking about Eddie or obsessing over the game?

This rally had been her brainchild, combining her two great loves, travel and mysteries. The idea had come to her fully formed after she’d read a New York Times article about a mystery event at the Guggenheim.

Mystery parties were not new. They had been around for decades and usually consisted of a poorly written mystery, two hours of half-drunken role-playing in someone’s living room, and a disappointing solution that didn’t quite make sense.

But what if you could make it bigger and better? What if you fully immersed the players, took them on a journey, and made the mystery last for weeks, not hours? This Otto Ingo, barely mentioned in the Times article, seemed to be just the kind of man to approach about her idea.

Amy had assumed there were others like her, but with money: mystery lovers willing to pamper themselves to the tune of two weeks and many thousands of dollars. So she’d gone out on a limb, getting in touch with Otto, arranging the tour, creating the brochure and the Web site, all on her own. Well, not quite on her own. Her mother had been loyally at her side, to complain and tell her they were headed for disaster.

The rally had filled up quickly, much to Fanny Abel’s amazement. If everything went right, the Monte Carlo to Rome Mystery Road Rally would put their little agency on the map, giving it a distinctive niche in the cutthroat travel market.

If things went wrong . . . For a woman who hated risk, who had moved back in with her mother rather than live alone, Amy was taking the risk of a lifetime. She was painfully aware that there was no other tour operator sharing the downside. And that was the reason why she kept reviewing her mental checklist.

Amy turned down a narrow pedestrian lane. The air was balmy, with that distinctive resort smell—coconut oil and citrus and aloe. Strolling in the welcome shade, she was jostled by the amiable tide, a couple here, a trio there, a small roadblock of Germans hovering around a particularly cheap postcard rack.

This scent, so suggestive of languid, half-forgotten vacations, was it seeping out of the rows of plastic bottles in the souvenir shops or evaporating straight off the tourists? Perhaps it was part of the atmosphere, the result of so many decades of slathered, half-naked bodies leaning against porous limestone columns or dripping their fragrant sweat onto the cobblestones.

The late summer sunlight met her at each corner, teasing her with its heat, only to retreat once she ventured on to the next block. Farther down, at the end of the block, Amy could see the shadows disappear, and knew that she was approaching a square. Good. She hadn’t forgotten.

Dominick’s was one of several cafés that poured their tables and umbrellas out onto place Saint-Nicolas, a picturesque square whose centerpiece was a statue of the somber Christmas saint. The old man peered down from the top of his lazy fountain, the water barely dribbling from the four lion heads that sprouted just below his feet.

They had eaten lunch at Dominick’s on their very first trip, a three-week extravaganza fueled by sex and excitement and next to no money. How many more places would she find from their travels? Not that she was looking.

Amy settled into a white plastic chair at a red plastic table. She asked the waiter for a croque-monsieur and an Orangina and was surprised at how quickly the order arrived. That was the one advantage of coming here in high season. The cafés did their best to churn the tables.

Amy took her first bite, then turned her chair to get the best view. Only gradually did she become aware of a couple, an older woman and a younger man, staring at her from under an umbrella of the adjacent café.

Amy didn’t consider herself the type to draw stares. True, she was tall and slim—not model slim, but close—with a five-foot-ten frame inherited from her father. In all other ways her looks were remarkably unremarkable. In her early thirties, an ordinary age, she possessed brown, slightly wavy hair cut to shoulder length and pulled back into a chignon. Her nose, mouth, ears, and brown eyes were equally ordinary. Eddie’s best friend had once described her as the prettiest girl in the office. And although Amy had never worked in an office, the description rang true.

Her one extravagance was the eyeglasses. She loved them and felt they added some much-needed definition. A visual signature, with unlimited variety. Since childhood she had thumbed her nose at contact lenses. And the very idea of LASIK surgery . . . Her current favorite was a pair of Lafont sunglasses, with round tortoiseshell frames, and she was wearing them now.

Amy tried not to stare back but couldn’t help glancing their way. And then it came to her. “Ms. Davis,” she said in a flash of recognition. No wonder they’d been staring. “Excuse me. I was daydreaming.” She tucked fifteen euros under her ashtray, took her plate and glass, and went to join them.

“Oh, you didn’t recognize us. Admit it,” the woman purred.

“No, I did.”

“I forgive you.” Georgina Davis flourished an outstretched hand, as if to embrace her approach. “I barely recognized you myself. Your glasses are different.” She laughed in a pleasant, self-deprecating way. Her gold bracelets jangled as she moved an elegant crocodile purse an inch closer to her iced tea, her best effort to make room at the small table.

A British friend had once suggested that while some cultures might be obsessed with birth, education, or other barometers, in America things were more elemental. Beauty, youth, and money. This was how a democracy judged its people, he’d said, which explained why most U.S. magazines printed photographs of their subjects, found a way to mention their age, and always gave some hint of how well off they were. Amy had been appalled by the observation but now found herself using it to evaluate the two people seated around the curve of the table.

Georgina Davis was third-generation money, granddaughter of Davis Buttons, Inc., and worth a comfortable hundred million. A well-preserved sixty, Amy estimated, and probably ready to deny it.

In the final category, Georgina lost more of her democratic prestige. A soft aurora of strawberry hair did its best to soften a jaw that could be unkindly called lantern and a cleft in the chin too deep and heroic to be labeled a dimple. On a man it might be considered a strong face. A man at least would have had the option of cloaking it with facial hair. On a sixty-year-old woman, however, all you were left with was the odd impression that you were always catching sight of her from the wrong angle.

Her companion, Marcus—from her time with the travel documents, Amy recalled an Hispanic last name—rated much higher in the two less critical areas. He was about Amy’s age and perhaps an even six feet, not tall enough for her to wear decent heels in his company, but . . . Why was she even thinking that? His face was long, with largish features—an aquiline nose and oversize ears partly covered by hair. He had a wavy, shiny jet-black mane, which complimented his olive complexion. Good hair and a killer smile.

“Marcus Alvarez,” he said, flashing a smile and extending a hand. “I’m Georgina’s companion.” His accent was American.

Amy’s brow furrowed at the old-fashioned term. She had thought Georgina was traveling alone. “Companion as in friend?” The hand shaking hers was strong; the skin tanned and nearly hairless.

He laughed. “As in that’s my job.”

“Marcus, honestly!” The heiress’s face reddened, the color clashing momentarily with her hair.

“Sorry, Georgie.” He turned to Amy. “Back in Palm Beach I’m Ms. Davis’s personal assistant. But ever since we got here, people have been asking what she’s up to that she needs a personal assistant.”

Amy felt vaguely disappointed, the same way she would be to learn that a gorgeous man was a model or a well-built man a personal trainer. Marcus’s charm and style didn’t seem to count for as much when they were part of his job description.

“I’ve always had someone travel with me,” Georgina said, “ever since the age of chaperones—which was not that long ago.” A pout caused her stretched hairline to inch down toward her plucked eyebrows. “Why can’t we settle on friend? Aren’t we friends? Or am I some pathetic crone, forced to hire a companion? Is that what you want people to think?”

“I’m sorry.” His apology sounded sincere, if still playful. “From now on we’re two dear friends.”

“Thank you.” Georgina sighed dramatically. “Now, hunt down the waiter, pay the bill, find me a couple of aspirins, American made, and get hold of a cab. Please,” she tossed in for friendship’s sake.

Marcus curled his lips in a grin that only Amy could see, then did as he was told.

Georgina settled back into her plastic chair and smiled warmly. “All right, tell me. What exactly is a mystery race? I know it’s all in the brochure. But who reads?”

“It’s not a race. It’s a rally,” Amy explained. “Getting to the finish line is only one part. You’ll play in teams, with every team representing one suspect in the story. One team plays the victim’s wife, one plays his son, et cetera. Six teams, four players on each team. Every morning you get clues, and then you start racing.”

“Like that TV show,” Georgina said. “The Fabulous Race.”

“The Amazing Race, yes. Except it’s not just about getting there first. As you go along, you pick up clues to the mystery. It’ll become clearer as we go along.”

“I’m sure it will.”

A minute later Marcus emerged with a glass of water and a travel-size bottle of Bayer scavenged from his camera case. “The waiter is getting a taxi for us. Are you all right? Did you want to go back to the hotel?”

Georgina nodded as she gulped down three aspirins and sipped the water. “I’m a little tired from the flight. And I do want to be at my best for the banquet.” Even though the table was just a few inches away, she handed the glass to Marcus. “You don’t have to come with me, dear. If you and Amy wish to go off and see a little of Monaco . . .”

“Yes, I think so,” Marcus said, accepting what was only a begrudging offer of freedom. “That is, if Amy isn’t too busy.”

“Oh, Amy must have dozens of more important things . . .”

“As a matter of fact, I’m free.” Amy couldn’t resist contradicting an entitled heiress. “I’d love to show Marcus around. It’s just about the only country that lends itself to a walking tour.”

“Good.” Georgina pushed herself to her feet, wobbling ever so slightly for effect. “I’m sure I’ll be all right.”

“Of course you will,” Marcus said.

They remained firmly oblivious to Georgina’s manipulations, walking her through the café, depositing her into the taxi, and waving her on her way.

“It does her good now and then,” Marcus whispered, his breath tickling Amy’s ear. “So, where are we going?”

The Exotic Garden was a short walk away, occupying a cliff-side block not a hundred yards from the nation’s western boundary with France. Exotic might be too exotic a word, Amy half apologized. It was a cactus garden.

They entered from the top, stopping to take in the landscape of succulents laid out below, a palette of greens and grays in every imaginable shape—round and spiked, flat and tall, modest and extravagant. A series of wooden footbridges wound through the cacti, making the steep ground passable and eventually leading down to a single exit onto the boulevard below. The winding paths constantly broke off, then wove back on themselves, giving access to every part of the sloping garden and making it all seem much larger than a single residential block.

Down below, a German guide led a small cadre of tourists. As they walked, he pointed out plants of interest, speaking in slow, heavily accented English, which carried up the slope. His charges nodded in response, occasionally breaking off to talk among themselves in fast bursts of Spanish. Amy had seen this before, the use of English as the new Esperanto, the common language of a shrinking world.

“I wonder what the story is there.” Marcus leaned into her with pleasant familiarity.

“They couldn’t find a Spanish-speaking guide.”

“Hmm. A bit like Madame Butterfly.”

“Madame Butterfly?”

“You know. The opera. Japanese girl and American boy. Somehow they find a common language in Italian.”

Amy chuckled. “You’re right. I never thought how illogical that was.”

“Well, not for the Italians.”

They wandered away from the tour group, down the leftmost path. Nearly the entire principality lay nestled at their feet, a neat, flower-bedecked world. At the foot of it all was a yacht basin flanked by two ribbons of thin sandy beach. And just beyond the harbor and the beach was the blue-green Mediterranean, sparkling merrily in the sunny distance. Amy imagined she could hear the rhythmic surf.

The moment seemed perfect. The weather, the view, the slightly salty breeze. “What do you think of Monaco?” she asked, distrusting the quiet perfection.

“It’s nice.”

“Nice?” She remembered being here with Eddie, just a few blocks away, looking at real estate windows, gasping at the prices as they fantasized about living in the Mediterranean principality.

“A bit artificial, don’t you think? Like Epcot Center. Everything so controlled and condensed, but with the illusion of size.”

Amy was a bit thrown. “Well, you have to admit it works. I mean, as a country.”

Marcus turned from the view. “It’s a tax haven the size of a few dozen football fields. Of course it works.”

He was smarter than she had given him credit for. Opinionated and educated . . . and sexy. She phrased her next statement carefully. “You’re not the kind of man I would imagine as . . . you know, a companion.”

“We’re not sleeping together, if that’s what you think. And I’m not gay. Most people think one or the other.”

“It n-never crossed my mind,” Amy stammered. “Why do people think you’re gay?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because I don’t drink beer or watch sports.”

“Plus, you have great hair and a good fashion sense.”

“That’s an anti-straight cliché, Ms. Abel, but thank you.”

With a lazy, comfortable shrug, he turned back to the view. Below them, the German and his Spaniards had exited and were heading toward their tour bus. The two Americans were seemingly alone. Marcus had leaned his body into the railing and was in the process of pushing himself away. It was an unthinking rocking movement, almost like a stretch. And it probably saved his life.

The stone came from behind and lobbed past his face, just missing the railing as it breathed its weighty threat in a rush of air. Visually, it was a blur, a coconut-size object arching within millimeters of his hair, smashing into a nest of prickly pears two levels below.

The shock alone was enough to throw Marcus off balance. He fell to one side and back, twisting an ankle as he collapsed. “Augh.” He turned and glanced up the rocky slope. “What the hell?”

Amy’s glance followed Marcus’s. There was movement up there among the cacti, a shadow retreating through the gray and green stalks. “Someone threw a rock.”

“I’m all right. Go.”

“Go where?”

Marcus pushed her helping hands away. “Go see who it was.”

“Who it was?” Amy’s feet remained rooted, her mind numbed by the unexpected.

“Don’t confront him. Just look.”

“Umm.” Amy didn’t know what to say or do.

“What are you waiting for? Go. He’s getting away.”

With a quick pivot, Amy hurried back up the path, swinging herself around a railing, then twenty feet up another incline and around a second railing. From here she had an unobstructed view of the next few turns. Whoever had been there was gone.

Amy returned, the sound of espadrilles on gravel crunching loudly in her ears. “Maybe it was an accident,” she said. Marcus didn’t look happy. “Are you all right?” She extended her hands again.

Marcus refused her assistance. “An accident?” He r. . .