I slipped my coat off and felt that familiar tingling in my stomach when he did a slow look up and down my body. "Nice." His voice washed over me like warm honey. "Very nice."

Okay. So I'd be paying off my credit card bill for the rest of my life. It was worth it to see that titillating look in his eye. I sat down and opened the wine and cocktail list. Whoa! Twenty francs for a daiquiri? Twenty-two francs for the house wine? I wondered what the incidence of alcoholism was in Switzerland. Probably zero percent. At these prices, a person would fall into bankruptcy before he ever had a chance to fall off the wagon.

"Have you decided what you'd like?" Etienne moved his chair close beside me. Our legs touched casually beneath the table in some kind of unannounced foreplay, and then his pant leg brushed my knee so intimately, I thought my kneecap would have an orgasm.

"I'll have whatever you're having," I said, trying to keep the quiver out of my voice.

He ordered two martinis, then returned his attention to me. "You look lovely tonight, Emily. Absolutely lovely. The dress is exquisite. The hotel must have found your suitcase."

"It's still lost. But the staff collected thirteen dollars and fifty-four cents to see me through until they find it."

He smiled. "Generous of them. That should be just enough to buy yourself more contraband room freshener."

"We're not doing room freshener anymore. We found something better."

"Dare I ask what?"

Since I didn't know if the Swiss had laws against carrying pocketknives concealed, I decided not to press my luck. "I'd prefer not to tell you."

"I hope this doesn't mean you've graduated to something more lethal."

"How do you define lethal?"

He stroked the shimmery cloth at my shoulder then feathered a lazy finger down my inner my arm. "An M-16 is lethal, but in your hands, I suspect a wand of lipliner could become deadly."

Only if it was in a color I didn't like. "I hope you're not laughing at me, because I know for a fact that I'm the next victim on the list. They're going to pop me. And I got the impression it was going to be sooner rather than later."

"Who is 'they?'"

"The Dicks and their wives, and maybe Bernice. They're all in cahoots with each other. They killed Andy, and now they're going to kill me."

"You're making some serious charges, Emily."

"I know. But I'm not making it up. Something happened today in the changing room at Spengler."

"Is that why your nose is blue?"

I shook my head. "That happened when a deckhand hit me in the face with a life preserver."

His demeanor suddenly screamed "Inspector Miceli" rather than "Etienne." "Did you report the assault? Do you want to press charges?"

"He didn't mean anything by it. It was just a lucky shot. He thought I was trying to kill myself. But that's not important. I overheard a conversation between Grace Stolee and Helen Teig in the fitting room today, and they practically announced they were going to kill me."