Murder — His and Hers

Dead and Breakfast

Laura sat in the front on the rider’s side of the white Transport mini-van in the Holiday Inn parking lot, waiting for her husband to come out of the lobby.

In the back seat, their son, Andy — a dark-haired, round-faced, eleven-year-old boy with glasses — was hunched over, peering into the small screen of his Turbo Express, moving the expensive video toy back and forth in his hands to catch the last fading rays of the sun.

Even with the volume turned down, Laura could hear the frantic tune of the game he was playing: Splatterhouse — a particularly violent one she didn’t approve of (and wouldn’t have allowed her husband to buy for the boy, if she’d been along on that shopping trip). She mentally blocked the sound out, gazing toward the horizon at the picture-postcard sunset descending on lush green trees.

Wisconsin was a beautiful state, and the weather had been perfect; but now dark, threatening clouds were moving quickly in, bringing to an end a memorable summer-vacation day.

She spotted her husband, Pete, coming out of the lobby. He’d only been in there a minute or so... not very long.

It wasn’t a good sign.

“We’re in trouble,” he said, after opening the van’s door and sliding in behind the wheel. The brow of his ruggedly handsome face was furrowed.

“No room?” she asked.

“No room.”

“Let’s try another.”

Pete turned toward her. “Honey,” he said, his expression grave, “according to the desk clerk, there’s not a vacancy between Milwaukee and Minneapolis.”

“But that’s impossible!” Laura said, astounded. “What’s going on?”

Pete started the van. “A country festival, for one thing,” he replied. “And this is the tourist season...”

“Aren’t we staying here?” Andy asked from the back seat.

“No, son,” his dad answered, as he wheeled the van out of the packed hotel parking lot and toward the Interstate ramp. “We have to go on.”

“But I’m tired,” the boy whined, “and there’s not enough light anymore to play my game!”

Annoyed — more with their current predicament than with her son — Laura picked up a small white sack on the seat next to her and threw it to Andy, hitting him on the arm. “Here... have some fudge,” she said flatly.

“I don’t like fudge!” the boy retorted, and threw the sack back at his mom, smacking her on the head.

“Andy!” Pete said sharply, looking at his son in the rearview mirror. “That’s five points! When you get to ten, you lose your Turbo-Express for a week, remember?”

“Well, she started it!” he protested.

“Six,” his father said.

The van fell silent, the air tense and heavy with more than the humidity of the on-coming storm. Big drops of rain splattered on the windshield. The sky was crying, and suddenly Laura felt like crying, too. She stared at the dark highway before her, upset that their wonderful day had turned sour.

“We shouldn’t have stopped at the Dells,” she sighed.

It had to be said, and it might as well be said by her, because she was the one who first suggested the detour to the expensive touristy playground...

A sign on the road advertising the Oak Street Antiques Mall had caught her attention, but Pete and Andy had just groaned.

Then Andy saw the gigantic 3-D billboard for Pirate’s Cove — a 72-hole miniature golf course set in tiers of sandstone and waterfalls that overlooked the Wisconsin River. Quickly he defected to his mother’s side.

Pete, reminding them both of their agreement to make it from Illinois to Minnesota, by nightfall — where a coveted condominium at Kavanaugh’s Resort in Brainerd awaited them — held firm... until he drove over the next hill on the highway.

There, among the trees, was a pretty blonde braided billboard fraulein wearing an alluring peasant dress; she beckoned to him with her wooden finger, teasingly, tempting him to taste the homemade fudge (sixteen flavors) at the German Candy Shoppe.

“Well,” Pete had said, slowly, “maybe we can stop for just a little while.”

But “just a little while” turned into all afternoon, because there was much more to the Wisconsin Dells than antiquing and golfing and rich gooey fudge — like river rides and go-carts, wax museums and haunted houses...

“Let’s try that one,” Laura suggested, as a road-side motel materialized in the mist. Three hours earlier, she wouldn’t have dreamed of ever stopping at such a scuzzy place; but now they were desperate, and any bed looked good, even this biker’s haven.

Pete pulled off the highway and into the motel — a long, one-story, run-down succession of tiny rooms. The lot was full of pick-up trucks and motorcycles, so he parked in front of the entrance, and got out of the van, leaving the engine running.

Laura locked the doors behind him, and waited. Rain pelted the windshield. The van’s huge wipers moved back and forth spastically, like gigantic grasshopper legs, grating on her nerves. She leaned over and shut the engine off.

Behind her, Andy sighed wearily.

Please, dear God, she thought, let there be a room so we don’t have to sleep in the car. She strained to see through the rain-streaked window, trying to spot Pete. He’d been gone a long time, this time... too long.

That wasn’t a good sign, either.

Suddenly Laura saw him dart in front of the van, and quickly she unlocked the doors. He jumped inside. His clothes were soaked, hair matted, but he wore a grin.

“You got us a room!” Laura cried, elated.

Pete nodded, wiping wetness from his face with the back of one hand. “But not here.”

“Then where?”

He looked at her. “When I went in,” he explained, “the desk clerk was telling another family they had no rooms... so, naturally, I turned around to leave. Then a maintenance man gave me a tip on a place... a bed and breakfast.”

“Oh, really?” They’d never stayed at one.

“I used the payphone and called,” Pete continued. “The woman sounded very nice. They had one room left and promised to save it for us. I got the directions right here.”

He fished around in his pocket and drew out a piece of paper.

“We gotta go back about forty miles, and it’s a little out of our way, but...”

“But it’s a bed,” she smiled, relieved, throwing her arms around Pete, hugging him.

“And breakfast,” he smiled back, and kissed her.

“What’s a bed and breakfast?” Andy asked.

Laura looked at her son. “A bed and breakfast is not really a hotel,” she answered. “It’s somebody’s home.” She paused. “It’ll be like staying at your Aunt Millie’s house.”

“Oh,” the boy said sullenly, “then I gotta be good.”

“You’ve got to be especially good,” Pete said, “because these people don’t usually take children, but they’re going to make an exception for us. Okay, son?”

“I’ll try,” he said, but not very convincingly.

An hour later, as the storm began to die down, the little family drove into the small quaint town of Tranquility, its old cobble-stone streets shiny from the rain.

At a big County Market grocery store, Pete turned left, down an avenue lined with sprawling oak trees and old homes set back from the street.

They pulled up in front of a many-gabled house. An outside light was on, illuminating the large porch, which wrapped around the front of the home. On either side of the steps sat twin lions, their mouths open in a fierce frozen roar as they guarded the front door.

Laura clasped her hands together, gazing at the house. “Oh, isn’t it charming? This will be such fun!”

Pete nodded, then read the wooden sign attached to the sharp spears of the wrought iron gate. “Die Gasthaus...?”

“That’s German for ‘the inn,’Ю” Laura said, utilizing her high-school foreign language class for the very first time.

“So let’s go in,” smiled Pete.

“What’s German for ‘Splatterhouse’?” said a small sarcastic voice from the back seat.

Anger ignited in Laura — why did the boy have to ruin things? And after all they had done for him today! She turned to reprimand Andy, but her husband beat her to it.

“Shape up,” Pete shouted at the boy. “You already have six points — wanna try for seven?”

“No.”

“It’s going to be a mighty long trip without your Turbo Express!” his father threatened.

“I’m sorry,” Andy said. “It’s not my fault this place looks like a spook house...”

Pete wagged a finger at his son. “Now we’re going to go in, and you’re going to behave, and, goddamnit, we’re all going to have a good time!”

There was a long silence.

Laura couldn’t stand it, so she reached back and patted Andy on the knee. “Now gather up your things, honey,” she said cheerfully. “Don’t you know how lucky we are to be here?”

In the parlor of Die Gasthaus Bed and Breakfast, Marvin Butz sipped his tea from a china cup as he sat in a Queen Anne needlepoint chair in front of a crackling fireplace.

A bachelor, pushing fifty, slightly over-weight, with thinning gray hair and a goatee, the regional sales manager of Midwest Wholesale Grocery Distributors was enjoying the solitude of the rainy evening.

Whenever he went on the road, Marvin always stayed at bed and breakfasts, avoiding the noisy, crowded, kid-infested chain hotels. The last thing he needed in his high-pressure job was being kept awake all night by a drunken wedding reception, or rowdy class reunion, or a loud bar band...

Besides, he delighted in being surrounded by the finer things in life — rare antiques, crisply starched linens, delicate bone china — which reminded him of his mother’s home, before the family went bankrupt and had to sell everything.

He couldn’t find these “finer things in life” in a regular hotel, where lamps and pictures and clock-radios were bolted down, like he might be some common thief. (Besides which, who would want such bourgeois kitch, anyway?) And he could never get any satisfaction — or compensation — for the many inconveniences that always happened to him in the usual hotels. Whenever he complained, all he ever got was rude behavior from arrogant desk clerks.

But at most bed and breakfasts, even the smallest complaint, Marvin found, almost guaranteed a reduction in his bill. Why, half the time, he stayed for free! (Charging his expense account the full amount, of course.)

“More tea, Mr. Butz?”

Mrs. Hilger, who owned and ran the establishment with her husband, stood next to Marvin, a Royal Hanover green teapot in her hand, a white linen napkin held under its spout to catch any drip. She was a large woman — not fat — just big. Marvin guessed her age to be about sixty, and at one time she must have been a looker, but now her skin was wrinkled, and spotted with old-age marks, her hair coarse and gray and pulled back in a bun.

He nodded and held out his cup. “With sugar.”

“I’ll bring you some.”

He watched her walk away. She was nice enough, he thought, but the woman would talk his ear off if he let her. When he first arrived around six p.m., she started in lecturing him about how everybody should be nice to one another, and do what they could to make the world a better place to live — if he had known he was going to be staying with a religious fanatic, he never would have come there!

He frankly told her his world would be a better place to live if she would leave him alone while he unpacked!

She had acted hurt, and scurried off, and he hadn’t seen her until about eight o’clock, when she had offered him tea.

Mrs. Hilger came back into the parlor, carrying a silver sugar bowl. She handed Marvin an unusual sterling sugar spoon with what appeared to be real rubies set into the handle.

He took the spoon and looked at it closely. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he mused.

“That’s because it’s one of a kind,” she replied.

He used the spoon to sugar his tea, then set it on the side of his saucer.

“There’ll be another party coming in this evening,” the woman informed him. “A couple with their young son.”

About to take a sip of the tea, Marvin looked at her sharply. “But you advertised ‘no children,’Ю” he complained.

“Yes, I know,” the woman said, “but this poor family is caught out in the storm without hotel accommodations.”

“So I’m to be inconvenienced because some dumb hicks didn’t have the common sense to make reservations?”

There was a brief silence. Then Mrs. Hilger said, “If that’s how you feel, Mr. Butz, your stay with us will be complimentary.”

Marvin smiled.

And Mrs. Hilger smiled back, but he wasn’t at all sure that the smile was friendly.

Mr. Hilger’s large form filled the doorway to the parlor. He looked more like a handyman than the proprietor of a bed and breakfast, in his plaid shirt and overalls.

Marvin had had a brief conversation with the bald, bespectacled man earlier, when Marvin had gone into the kitchen to admire an old butcher’s block. Mr. Hilger had come up from the basement.

“It’s from our store,” Mr. Hilger had said. “We had a little corner grocery before County Market came in and put us out of business.”

“What a pity,” Marvin had said, shrugging. “But, personally, I don’t believe anybody gets ‘put out of business’ by anybody else.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. You do it to yourself, by not keeping up. Survival of the fittest.”

“You’re probably right,” Mr. Hilger had said, getting a butcher’s apron out of a narrow closet by the pantry. The big man slipped it on and went back down into the basement.

Marvin had frowned — was food preparation going on down there? If so, he hoped conditions were sanitary.

“Those folks with the child are here,” Mr. Hilger was saying to his wife. The apron was gone, now. “I’m going to help them with their luggage.”

“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Hilger replied.

Marvin quickly finished the last of his tea and stood up. “I’ll be retiring, now,” he informed her. He’d rather die than spend one minute in boring, pointless small talk with these new people. “Please inform that family I will be using the bathroom at six in the morning. And I’d like my breakfast served promptly at seven, out in the garden.”

“Yes, Mr. Butz,” Mrs. Hilger nodded. “Good night.”

Marvin left the parlor, through the main foyer and past a large, hand-carved grandfather clock. He climbed the grand oak staircase to the second floor.

To the left was the Gold Room, where an elderly couple from Iowa was staying. They had gone to bed already, the little woman not feeling well, and so their door was shut. But behind the door was a grandiose three-piece Victorian bedroom set of butternut and walnut, with a carved fruit cluster at the top of the headboard and dresser. (He had peeked in, earlier, when they were momentarily out.) He wished he had that room, because it had its own bath... but the old farts had gotten there first.

At the end of the hall on the left was the White Room. The bridal suite. Everything in it was white — from the painted four-poster bed with lace canopy to the white marble-topped dresser. It also had its own bathroom. He’d gotten to see the exquisite room when he first arrived, and wouldn’t have minded his company paying a little extra for such fine accommodations...

Some newlyweds on a cross-country honeymoon were in there right now — doing God only knows what behind their closed door.

Across the hall from the White Room, was the Blue Room, the least impressive (or so he thought). It was decorated in wicker, with a Battenburg lace comforter, and a collection of old cast-iron toys showcased on the ledges of the beveled glass windows. Mrs. Hilger had tried to put him in there, but he protested (the furnishings were so informal, it would have been like sleeping on a porch!). He demanded a different room.

The door to the Blue Room stood open, awaiting the inconsiderate family that would soon be clomping nosily up the steps.

To the immediate right was the Red Room, his room, which had a massive oak bedroom set with eight-inch columns and carved capitals, and a beautiful red oriental rug on the floor. It was satisfactory.

Marvin used an old skeleton key to open his door; he had locked it, to protect his belongings, even though the other skeleton room keys could also open his door. He would have to speak to Mrs. Hilger, later, about this little breach in security.

He entered the room, leaving the door open. He was planning on getting his shaving kit and using the bathroom, which he shared with the Blue Room, before turning in for the night, but he stopped at a small mahogany table next to the door. On the table was a lovely cranberry lamp with a thumbprint shade and dropped crystals.

Marvin dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out the sweet little sugar spoon, and leaned over and turned on the lamp to examine the spoon better. Its red ruby handle sparkled in the light.

A nice addition to his spoon collection.

Suddenly, something caught his attention in the hallway. Flustered, caught off-guard, Marvin shoved the spoon back into his pocket and looked up from the light.

A young boy stood in the hall, not six feet away. How long the kid had been there, watching, Marvin didn’t know.

Marvin reached out with one hand and slammed his door in the boy’s face.

How he hated children! They were a bunch of sneaky, snooping, immature brats.

Marvin yawned, for the first time aware of how tired he was. He got his toiletries and went off to the bathroom, then came back and got into a pair of silk burgundy pajamas.

He crawled under the beige crocheted bedspread and lace-trimmed sheets. He wanted to read awhile, but his eyes were too heavy. He got out of bed, and turned off the pushbutton light switch on the wall by the door.

Then he went back to bed.

Soon, Marvin was fast asleep.

It was a deep sleep. So deep he didn’t hear the skeleton key working in the keyhole of his door. Or see the dark form of Mr. Hilger poised over him, large hands out-stretched.

But not so deep that he didn’t feel those hands tighten around his neck like a vise, slowly squeezing him into the deepest of all deep sleeps.

A noise woke Andy. It was a bump, or a thump, or something. He lay quietly in the dark on the cot Mrs. Hilger fixed up for him, and listened.

All was silent, now, except for the soft breathing of his parents across the room in that great big bed. Whatever the noise had been, Andy was glad it woke him. He’d been having a nightmare. A bad dream where he’d been sucked into the video game, Splatterhouse, he’d been playing. And ghouls and monsters were chasing him with butcher knives and stuff.

Andy reached under the cot and got his glasses and put them on. A fancy clock on a table read a quarter to three in the morning. He sat up further and looked at the window next to him. On the ledge was a row of small toys — little cars, and airplanes and trains. His mother told him they were antiques, and not to touch them.

Andy’s favorite was the train. You could actually see the conductor standing inside! He picked the heavy toy up and held it in his hand. It was so much cooler than anything you ever saw in a toy store today! He reached under the cot again, opened his suitcase, and tucked the train inside. Then he lay back down.

There were so many of the toys — thirty-two, he’d counted — that he was sure the Hilgers wouldn’t miss it. Besides, the boy thought, wasn’t his mom always saying to his dad when they stayed in hotels, “Honey, take the soap, take the shampoo, get the Kleenex...”? This wasn’t exactly soap, or shampoo, or Kleenex, but then this wasn’t exactly a hotel. So it had to be kind of the same...

And if that nasty, mean man in the room next to them could cop a spoon, why couldn’t he have the train? Andy knew the man had stolen it, because of the look on his face — there was guilt written all over it!

Andy had to pee. He remembered his mother telling him that if he woke up in the night to be sure and go, because someone else might be in the bathroom in the morning.

The boy got up from the cot and quietly slipped out of the room. He tiptoed down the dark hallway to the bathroom.

Inside, he used the toilet, which had a funny chain he had to pull to flush it. Then he washed his hands at a neat faucet where the water came out of a fish’s head. He turned out the bathroom light, opened the door and stepped out in the hallway.

That’s when he saw Mrs. Hilger coming out of the crabby man’s room. She had some wadded-up sheets in her arms.

The woman didn’t see him, because she had her back to the boy, heading toward the stairs with her bundle.

Andy stood frozen for a moment, and when the woman was gone, he walked down to that mean man’s room.

The door was wide open. And even though the only light came from the moon that shone in through the windows, he could see that the bed had been made. There was no sign of that man or his things.

Andy tiptoed to the top of the stairs, which yawned down into blackness. Below, somewhere, he could hear noises — faint pounding and the sound of something electrical, something sawing, maybe, like his father sometimes used in the garage.

Quietly, he crept down the stairs, staying close to the railing, until he reached the bottom.

Suddenly, the big clock by the stairs bonged three times, scaring Andy nearly out of his skin! He waited until he’d calmed down then moved silently along, toward the back of the dark house, through the dining room with its big, long table. He bumped into a chair, and its legs went Screech! on the wooden floor.

Andy froze. The faint noises below him stopped. He held his breath. Seconds felt like minutes. Then the sounds started up again.

He went into the kitchen.

There was a light coming from under the door that led to the basement. That’s where the noises were coming from.

Andy thought about a movie he had seen last year with his father. At one point a kid — a boy just about like himself — was going to go down in a basement where bad, evil people lived. Andy had turned to his dad and said, “Why’s he going down there?” And Andy’s father had said, “Because it’s a story, and he just has to know.”

And now, just like the boy in that scary movie, Andy reached his hand out for the doorknob. He didn’t know why — he was certainly frightened — but he couldn’t seem to stop himself!

Slowly, he opened the door to the basement, and the sound of sawing increased as the crack of bright light widened until Andy was washed in illumination. What am I doing? he thought, I don’t have to know! And as he was starting to ease the door shut again, a hand settled on his shoulder.

He jumped. Someone was beside him! Shaking, he looked back at the shape of a figure with a knife in its hand, and gasped.

“What are you doing, young man?” the figure demanded.

The voice was low and cold — but a lady’s voice.

Then there was a click and he saw her, one hand on the light switch, the other holding the butcher knife: Mrs. Hilger. The face that had been so friendly before was now very cross.

Even though Andy was trembling badly, he managed to say, “Wh-where am I? I... I must be sleepwalking again.”

There was a long, horrible moment.

Then the knife disappeared behind Mrs. Hilger’s back and she said sweetly, “You’re in the kitchen, my boy. I’ll see that you get back to your room.”

“Th-that’s all right, now I know where I am.”

He backed away from her and turned and hurried through the dining room, and when he got to the stairs, he bolted up them, and dashed down the hallway, past the man’s room who had stolen the spoon, to his parent’s room, where he opened the door, then slammed it shut, ran to their bed and jumped in between them.

“Andy!” his mother moaned. “What in the world...?”

“Can I please sleep here, Mom?” he pleaded. “I had a terrible nightmare.”

She sighed. “Well, all right, get under the covers.” Andy started to crawl beneath the sheets, but stopped.

“Wait,” he said. “There’s something I gotta do first.”

He climbed out of the bed and went over to the cot, dug beneath it and got into his suitcase.

He put the toy train back on the ledge of the window.

Pete woke to a sunny morning, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the unmistakable aroma of breakfast. He breathed deeply, taking in the wonderful smells.

He looked over at Laura, still sleeping soundly in the big bed next to him, her hair spread out on the lace pillowcase like a fan. She was so beautiful — even snoring, with her mouth open.

He propped himself up with both elbows and noticed his son sitting on the cot across the room, fully dressed, his little suitcase, packed, by his feet. The boy was staring at him.

“Hey, partner,” Pete said, still a little groggy, “what’s the hurry?”

Andy didn’t respond.

Now Pete realized something was wrong with the boy, and vaguely remembered his son sleeping with them in the night.

Pete sat up further in the bed, letting the bedspread fall down around his waist. “Did you have a bad dream?” he asked.

The boy nodded. “Sort of.”

“Well, why don’t you come over here and tell me about it.” Pete patted a place on the bed next to himself. “Most bad dreams sound pretty silly in the light of day.”

Andy stood up slowly and went to the bed and sat on it. The springs made a little squeak.

Pete gazed at his son’s face... his large brown eyes, made larger by the glasses, his little pug nose, the tiny black mole on the side of his cheek... the depth of Pete’s love for the child was sometimes frightening.

“You know that man in the room next to us?” Andy said almost in a whisper, looking at his hands in his lap.

“The one who had dibs on the bathroom from six to seven this morning?”

Andy nodded.

Pete waited.

“When I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night,” Andy said, “he was gone.”

“Gone?”

Now the boy looked at his father. “His room was all made up, Dad... like he’d never been there!”

“Soooo,” Pete said slowly, “what do you think happened?”

“I don’t know,” Andy said softly.

Pete looked toward the door of their room, and then back at his son. “Do you think somebody chopped him up with a meat cleaver,” Pete said with a tiny smile, “and buried him in the garden, like in that movie we saw?”

Andy’s eyes went wide, but then he smiled. “No,” he said. “I guess not.” He paused. “But where did he go?”

Pete put an arm around the boy. “Son, Mrs. Hilger told me about that man... He was very unhappy. And unhappy adults sometimes do unpredictable things. He just packed up and left.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” Pete hugged his son. “Now do you feel better?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay.” Pete slapped Andy’s knee with one hand. “Let’s wake up your mom and get down to breakfast, so we can get on the road!”

Breakfast at Die Gasthaus was offered in either the formal dining room, outside on the patio, or in the privacy of the rooms.

The elderly couple staying in the Gold Room had decided to eat in the dining room; the wife was feeling much better this morning after a good night’s sleep.

The newlyweds, not surprisingly, were being served in their room.

Pete let Laura decide where they would eat — that was the kind of decision she always made, anyway — and she wanted to go out on the patio.

The three sat at a white wrought-iron table, with comfortable floral cushions on their chairs, surrounded by a variety of flowers.

Pete leaned toward Andy, and whispered that there didn’t appear to be any new additions in the garden today.

Andy smiled. Laura asked what the two of them were talking about, and they both said, “Nothing.”

Then Mrs. Hilger appeared in a starched white apron, carrying a casserole dish, which she placed in the center of the table. Pete leaned forward.

It was an egg dish, a souffle or something, and looked delicious — white and yellow cheeses baked over golden eggs with crispy bits of meat. Pete’s mouth began to water.

“Oh, Mrs. Hilger,” Laura said, “our stay here has been so wonderful!”

“I’m glad, dear,” Mrs. Hilger replied, as she gave each of them a serving on a china plate. “My husband and I enjoy making other people happy... people who are appreciative, that is. And we try, in our small way, to do what we can to make this world a better place to live.”

Pete, wolfing down the eggs, said, in between bites, “What’s in this, Mrs. Hilger? Is it ham?”

“No,” Mrs. Hilger said.

“Well, it’s not sausage,” Pete insisted.

Mrs. Hilger shook her head.

“Then, what is it?”

Mrs. Hilger smiled. “I’m sorry, but we never give out our recipes,” she said. “Our unique dishes are one of the reasons people come back... most of them, that is.”

Mrs. Hilger reached for the silver coffeepot on the table. “More coffee?” she asked Laura.

“Please,” Laura said. “With sugar.”

The woman reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a spoon — a silver one with red stones on the handle; she handed the spoon to Laura.

“Oh, how beautiful,” Laura said, looking at the spoon.

“There’s not another like it,” Mrs. Hilger said.

Suddenly Andy began to gag and cough, and the boy leaned over his plate and spit out a mouthful of food.

“Andrew!” Laura cried, shocked.

“Son, what’s the matter?” Pete asked, alarmed. The boy must have choked on his breakfast.

“I... I’m not hungry...” Andy said, his face ashen as he pushed his plate away from himself.

“Andy!” Laura said, sternly. “You’re being rude!”

But Pete stepped in to defend the boy. “He had kind of a rough night, Laura. That’s probably why he doesn’t have an appetite. Let’s just forget it.”

Laura smiled. “Well, I certainly have an appetite! Mrs. Hilger, I’d love some more of your delicious eggs... but I don’t want to trouble you, I can get it myself.” Laura started to reach for the dish, but Mrs. Hilger picked it up.

“Nonsense, my dear,” the woman said with a tiny smile, and she put another huge spoonful of eggs with the cheeses and succulent meat on Laura’s plate. “It’s no trouble. We at Die Gasthaus just love to serve our guests!”