The Grand Palais, a century-old hotel overlooking Lake Lucerne, had the look of a Hollywood soundstage disguised as a European chateau. Pillars of polished pink marble encircled the lobby and rose twenty feet to a ceiling that reflected the sparkling brilliance of a half dozen crystal chandeliers. Gilt-framed mirrors the size of Beautyrest mattresses lined the walls. Oriental carpets spanned the floor. Furniture upholstered in rich cut velvet and standing tiptoe on delicate scrolled feet huddled in intimate groupings around the room. And then there were the finishing touches. The vases of fresh-cut flowers. The antique gold cabinets. The dozens of cut-crystal ashtrays accompanied by silver baskets brimming with tiny matchboxes. The Swiss had obviously failed to read the Surgeon General's report on the hazards of smoking. I ranked the Grand Palais a ten on the "old world elegance" scale, but for all its opulence, the hotel had one elevator to accommodate its multitude of guests. The shaft was located near the front desk, across the room from the burgundy velvet chairs where Nana and I sat waiting for our room key. If there was a silver lining to our room mix-up, it was that by the time we received our key, the line waiting to use the elevator might be shorter. Though we'd been sitting for ten minutes, and the line hadn't moved at all.

"What's the holdup?" Lars Bakke asked every time the elevator arrived at the lobby and went up again without releasing its passengers. Lars was a tall stringbean of a man who owned and operated a grain elevator just outside Windsor City, so he knew the skinny on elevators.

"You gotta open the door yourself!" Bernice Zwerg yelled at the shaft. "It's not automatic." Decades earlier Bernice had worked as a photographic model for Iowa Living magazine, but age and hard times had taken their toll. Her hourglass figure had disappeared, leaving her with a body like a rubber chicken and a dowager's hump that ruined the hang of her clothes. She had hair like a wire whisk, a voice like fingernails scratching a chalkboard, and a bank account that was running on empty. The only highlight in her life these days was that she was the undefeated champion of the five-yard dash in the annual Senior Olympics at the mall, a title the other contestants argued was undeserved due to the fact that she removed her hearing aid for the event and couldn't hear the starting gun go off, so she always got a head start.

"This place needs a bigger elevator," Solvay Bakke complained to her husband. "How many people does that one hold?"

"Three," I said, having seen the trio who'd squeezed in earlier.

Solvay shook her head in disgust. "Who's in there now?"

I knew that too. "Dick Teig, Dick Stolee, and Dick Rassmuson." The three men had attended grammar school together, lived in the same subdivision in Windsor City, and always vacationed together with their wives, though if they had their druthers, they might have opted to leave the wives at home. They enjoyed being referred to as the three amigos. I referred to them as the three Dicks.