"I shoulda mentioned it wasn't waterproof."

Probably wouldn't have helped.

The phone rang. I answered. "Etienne's waiting for me in the lobby," I said when I hung up. "Keep your knife close to you this evening. Okay? Do you have any big plans?" I slipped into my raincoat and stashed my new Swiss Army knife in the outside pocket.

"Don't know yet. I might try out the Jacuzzi. Or I might set up my laptop and send some E-mail to your mother. If her mailbox isn't full, she can go into a full-blown depression. I'm afraid I created a monster when I give her that computer last Christmas. She's sufferin' major addiction."

"You think she does chatrooms and forums and things like that?" I'd once hit the wrong key and landed in a chat-room with "Stud Master" and "Power Prick." Obviously, too many men were spending far too much time at Home Depot these days.

"I don't think she's advanced beyond E-mail yet, but we was talkin' at one of our Legion a Mary meetin's about how people was havin' electronic romances these days. Imagine." She shook her head. "Time was, a fella come to your front door with candy and flowers and courted you real proper. Now he types a couple a sentences into a computer and that's s'posed to be good enough. There's no hand holdin'. No smoochin'. Where's the romance? When I grab a man by his gonads, I wanna see his face while I'm doin' it."

Eh! If my tongue hadn't been attached, I would have swallowed it. "How often did you grab men by their gonads?"

"I only did it with your grampa. And only when I was feelin' frisky."

That was a relief.

"In later years I never did it more than a couple a times a day."

"A couple of times a day?"

"I slowed down some when I hit seventy."

I wondered if I'd inherited Nana's nymphomaniac gene. I hadn't seen any evidence of it yet, but who knew? Maybe I'd be a late bloomer.

I left Nana locked up safely in room number 5111. I suspected she was going to be perfectly fine by herself. After all, the death squad wasn't after her. They were after me.

The Hotel Chateau Gutsch sat like a castle high above the city of Lucerne, clinging precariously to the side of a mountain. Trees and darkness hovered at its outer edges while floodlights illumined its turrets and whitewashed stone. After parking his car, Etienne led me through a carpeted vestibule beyond which I could see small, candlelit tables set with white linen and gleaming china. For the first time since the incident in Spengler's dressing room today, I felt safe. No one in the tour group could ever get to this place without a car, so I could let down my guard and relax.

At the end of the vestibule, Etienne ushered me through a glass door and into the bar area. It was a cozy room with floor-to-ceiling windows, round tables, a grand piano, and ice sculptures perched on a table with bowls of munchies. He pulled out a chair for me at a secluded table for two in the corner. "Shall I take your coat?"