"What's with all the laughter? They've never seen naked people before?"

"I'm sure it's because they've never seen a public beach before. Remember. They're from Iowa."

Sonya's voice came over the loudspeaker again. "Titisee-Neustadt is a spa town. The glass-fronted building you see ahead of you is where people are treated for obesity, asthma, chronic bronchitis, allergies, metabolic diseases, and physical and emotional exhaustion."

"Is that place coed, or do you have to get naked in a room with your own kind?" yelled Dick Rassmuson.

Sonya blew a disgusted breath into the loudspeaker and clicked it off in an obvious snit. I suspected that marked the end of her narration. I heard the engine cut as we neared the shore, and we got jostled a little as the vessel bumped against the rubber tires on the dock. The captain assisted each of us out of the boat and as we followed Wally toward the town center, I breathed a sigh of relief that the excursion across the lake had gone off without incident. All that concern for nothing. I'd become too much of a worrywart. I needed to chill out more.

Wally stopped in the middle of the pedestrian walkway with instructions. "Those of you who are interested in seeing how cuckoo clocks are made can see a demonstration with me in five minutes. The rest of you can explore the town and meet the bus in the parking lot at the end of this road at two o'clock."

I didn't want to know how cuckoo clocks were made. If I got curious, I could dismantle one of the clocks Bernice had stockpiled in my room. She'd never miss it. I did want to do some shopping, I wanted to eat, and I wanted to keep tabs on the Teigs, Rassmusons, Stolees, and Bernice. If they had any surprises planned, I wanted to be three steps ahead of them.

"Bernice and me are goin' to that cuckoo clock demonstration." Nana tugged on my sleeve to make sure I heard. "The place is probably gonna be really crowded, but we'll try to wrestle our way down front so we'll be in full view of everythin' and you won't have to worry 'bout us missin' nothin'." She waggled her eyebrows in an overstated gesture which I took to mean, There's safety in numbers, dear. Don't worry about me. And she was right, of course. She wasn't a child. I couldn't tether her to my wrist to appease my anxiety.

"You gonna be all right on your own?" she asked me.

I gave her a thumbs-up and patted the pocket that contained my Swiss Army knife. "I'll be fine." But the cuckoo clock business reminded me that I hadn't heard a word about the disposition of Andy's body. Had they shipped him back to Iowa already or was he going to fly back with the rest of us? I made a mental note to ask Etienne. It would give me the perfect excuse to call him. Maybe he'd have the fingerprint results on Shirley Angowski's camera bag today. I hoped so. All these unanswered questions were making me as cuckoo as some of the clocks around here.