Swiss Secrets Page 5

  “Franz wouldn’t forget. Not when he’s in so much trouble,” George was saying now. “Where do you think the Frères Haussman offices are, Nan?”

  Nancy glanced quickly up and down the rue du Rhône. “Over there,” she said, pointing across the street to a building whose bronze and glass facade managed to combine the best features of an elegant townhouse and a skyscraper. The first floor appeared to be a showroom for the company’s watches.

  “Looks pretty impressive,” George observed. She squinted at the brass plaque next to one of the building’s revolving doors. “Yes, you’re right. That says Frères Haus—”

  Suddenly George stiffened. “Nancy, look!” she whispered. “Over in that alley.”

  A small alley in deep shadow ran alongside the building. Stepping out of the shadows was a tall, bearded man, who stared furtively at the entrance to the Frères Haussman offices, before ducking back again.

  “Hey, that guy looks awfully familiar,” Bess said. “Where have I—”

  “In the newspaper,” Nancy said, jumping to her feet. “On the front page, being punched in the face by Franz. That’s Yves Petiau!”

  “What’s he doing lurking around the Haussman building?” George wondered aloud.

  “I don’t know,” Nancy replied, tossing some money on the table, “but I bet it’s nothing good. Come on, we’ve got to talk to him!”

  Chapter

  Seven

  DON’T LET PETIAU know we’re following him,” Nancy said in a low voice. “Pretend to be window-shopping and move closer gradually.”

  “Cuckoo clock window-shopping,” Bess said. “The shop is right next to that alley.”

  As casually as possible, the girls crossed the street to the store window Bess had pointed out. Yves Petiau had no reason to suspect them, Nancy thought. He couldn’t possibly know they knew who he was, nor that they suspected that he might be behind the threats to Franz.

  “That’s a nice clock,” Bess spoke up in a bright, artificial voice. She pointed to a wooden clock high in the window—a gesture that let her turn toward Yves Petiau. “He’s still there,” she whispered to Nancy and George.

  George rolled her eyes. “He won’t be for long if you keep acting so weird,” she muttered. “Tone down the drama a little, okay?”

  “Oh—sorry.” Blushing, Bess stared into the shop window. Suddenly Nancy realized that a mirror set in one corner of the window display gave her a strategic view of Yves Petiau. She bent forward and pretended to smooth her reddish blond hair in the mirror, keeping an eye on Petiau all the time.

  As Nancy watched, Petiau checked his watch and stepped forward again. He seemed to be trying to spot something—or someone—inside the Frères Haussman showroom. Then he darted back into the shadows. Finally, after checking his watch, he started to leave.

  “Come on,” Nancy said quietly. “We’ve got to follow him and find out what he’s up to.”

  “Monsieur Petiau!” she called out.

  Startled, the tall, bearded man turned around.

  Now what am I going to say? Nancy wondered frantically. She smoothed back her hair and smiled at Petiau. “I’m an American, and I couldn’t help but notice your picture in the newspaper the other day,” she said. “Do you really think your watches are better than the Haussman watches? Because I’d like to buy a watch to take home, and—”

  “Of course mine are superior.” Yves Petiau had the deepest voice Nancy had ever heard. “Haussman watches are overrated.”

  “You seemed awfully interested in the Haussman showroom just then,” Nancy pointed out in an innocent voice. “Can you show me which of the watches in there is overrated—just so I’ll know what to avoid?”

  Petiau glowered at her. “I don’t have time for this,” he growled. Spinning on his heel, he stalked down the alley next to the showroom.

  The girls followed as fast as they could. The narrow, cobbled alley led out onto a pretty street filled with tiny shops, sidewalk vendors, and cafés—but there was no sign of Petiau.

  “I don’t believe this,” George groaned. “Where would he have gone?”

  “There!” Bess cried, pointing. Petiau was walking briskly into a newspaper shop down the block. The girls followed as fast as they could, dodging passersby and stepping around the café tables. When they reached the newspaper shop, Petiau was no longer inside.

  “The man who was just here—did you see which direction he went in?” Nancy asked the woman behind the counter.

  “Pardon?” she asked, obviously bewildered.

  Nancy realized that the woman spoke no English. She would have to try again in French. “Le gentilhomme,” she began carefully. “Avezvous—”

  “Le gentilhomme? The gentleman?” repeated the saleswoman. Smiling triumphantly, she reached down the counter to a stack of magazines. With a flourish, she pulled one out and showed it to Nancy. It was a copy of Gentleman’s Style.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” muttered Nancy under her breath. “Thank you very much,” she told the saleswoman politely. “But we’re looking for a real person, not a magazine.” The woman smiled and nodded. Obviously she hadn’t understood a word of what Nancy had said.

  Back out on the sidewalk again, the girls paused uncertainly. On a narrow, twisty street like this, they might take off in twenty different directions with no guarantee of finding Petiau. He might be shopping; he might have caught a bus somewhere; he might be taking a stroll on the next block, for all they knew. In any case, he would probably refuse to talk to them any more.

  “I hate to say it, guys,” Nancy said with a sigh, “but I think we should give up. Anyway, we’re due to meet Mick in a few minutes. I’ll try to check Petiau out later. Maybe his address is in the phone book.”

  The Cathédrale de Saint-Pierre was located on Geneva’s Grande Rue, only a few blocks uphill from the Haussman showroom. Bess read aloud from their guidebook as the girls walked along, and Nancy learned that the Grande Rue had just as distinguished a history as the cathedral itself. It was lined with impeccably preserved seventeenth-and eighteenth-century stone buildings.

  “Hey!” Bess exclaimed as they passed one especially imposing baroque structure. “The Red Cross was founded here.”

  “And there’s the cathedral.” George pointed to an imposing building at the top of the hill.

  As the girls approached the columned stone facade, Bess paused to look at it. “Let’s see—my book says the inside of the nave was built in the twelfth century, and the front was built in the eighteenth century. The altar inside is Gothic, but the steeple was built at the beginning of this century—”

  “And Mick’s not around to hear any of this,” George interrupted, glancing around them. “Boy, everyone’s standing us up today. First no Franz, and now no Mick.”

  “Oh, well, at least it’s a nice spot to wait,” Nancy said. She walked to the stone steps leading up to the cathedral’s entrance. “Let’s park ourselves here for a while. Mick’ll turn up.”

  It was nice sitting on the steps, anyway. Tour groups came and went, and the organ music floating out from inside the cathedral added its own charm to the scene. About twenty minutes had passed when Nancy’s gaze lingered casually on a dark blue Mercedes that was drawing up to the cathedral.

  Suddenly her blue eyes widened. “Hey, isn’t that—Yes, it’s Mick! Who’s that driving him?”

  A middle-aged man was in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes. Nancy could see him speaking intently to Mick. Then both of them burst into laughter. Clapping the older man on the shoulder, Mick alighted from the passenger side of the car and closed the door. He gave the man an affectionate wave, then turned toward the cathedral as the car pulled away.

  “Here we are, Mick!” Nancy called.

  Mick’s face lit up when he saw them. “Hi!” he said, loping up the steps toward them. “Been waiting long?”

  “Just a few minutes,” Nancy told him. “I didn’t know you knew anyone in Geneva. Who was driving you?”


  Mick’s face went utterly blank. He looked away and cleared his throat. “Just—someone who gave me a ride,” he mumbled. “The Swiss are nice to strangers, I guess.”

  To strangers? Nancy was positive that Mick knew the man in the car. Why was he trying to hide that fact now?

  In the next instant Mick’s expression lightened. Grabbing Nancy’s hand, he pulled her toward the cathedral door. “Come on, you three,” he said excitedly. “Let’s climb one of the towers. You won’t believe the view.”

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Mick said into Nancy’s ear a few minutes later. They were standing in one of the cathedral’s high towers, gazing down at the steeples and tiled, turreted roofs that made the city almost medieval. Bess and George must have wandered around to the other side of the tower, Nancy suspected. At any rate, she didn’t see them anywhere.

  Mick laid an arm casually across Nancy’s shoulders and pointed off toward the horizon. “You can almost see our hotel from here.”

  “Look at all the window boxes,” Nancy said, marveling at the festive bursts of color that decorated so many of the old stone and stucco homes. Mick’s closeness was making her heart race, but she tried to keep her voice light. “People love flowers here, don’t they?”

  “Genevans love everything beautiful. I wish I could swoop down and pick you a flower from one of those boxes, Nancy. I’d pin it right here.” Mick touched her hair gently.

  “Too dangerous,” Nancy said with a nervous laugh, though she wasn’t sure exactly what she meant.

  “Bess? George? Where are you?” she called suddenly. “We should probably be getting back for lunch!” She turned to Mick. “Thanks for showing us the cathedral,” she said in a voice that sounded too bright. “It’s been one of the high points of the trip so far.”

  Once again Nancy wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but she was definitely thinking more about the handsome, blond Australian next to her than about the view of Geneva.

  Mick seemed to be perplexed, but he didn’t say anything as they rejoined Bess and George and left the cathedral. They had a quick lunch and then found a bus stop down the street from their café. They didn’t have long to wait before a double-decker bus pulled up in front of them.

  “He really likes you, Nan,” whispered Bess when the four of them had boarded the bus.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Nancy said uncomfortably. She was glad Mick was out of earshot, a few seats back.

  “Well, I do. And I’m never wrong about these things,” Bess insisted. “He’s definitely gorgeous. Are you going to—you know—pursue the matter? I mean, what about Ned?”

  Nancy sighed. What about Ned? After the way they’d parted, she had no idea where things stood with him. To Nancy’s relief, the bus pulled up across the street from their hotel just then, so she didn’t have to answer Bess’s question.

  The instant the girls and Mick alighted from the bus, Nancy saw Erich Haussman rush across the street toward them. “I’ve been waiting in your lobby for over an hour!” he said frantically. “Where have you been?”

  “Just doing a little sightseeing,” Nancy told him. “What’s the matter, Erich?”

  “The matter? The matter?” Erich took a deep breath. “The matter is that Franz has disappeared. I know something terrible has happened to him!”

  Chapter

  Eight

  ERICH APPEARED more distraught than Nancy had ever seen him before. “Try to calm down,” she said.

  There was a small stone bench next to the front door of the hotel, and Nancy led Erich over to it. Bess, George, and Mick followed. Erich collapsed onto the bench and buried his head in his hands.

  “I should have paid more attention,” he mumbled. “That attack at the club—and the boat accident. Someone was sending Franz a message!”

  Nancy was relieved that Erich finally recognized the seriousness of the situation. “When did you notice Franz was missing?” she asked.

  “He went out after the concert last night and didn’t come back until after I was in bed,” Erich told her, “if he came back at all. I never saw him this morning. I usually wake up earlier than Franz, so I was surprised when I passed his bedroom door and he wasn’t there.

  “I dressed and drove to the office,” he continued. “Franz’s office is next to mine, but he wasn’t there, either. We were supposed to have had an important meeting with a client at ten o’clock, but Franz never showed up.”

  Bess glanced worriedly at Nancy. “And he was supposed to meet us at eleven this morning, but he didn’t show up there, either,” she blurted out.

  “He was supposed to meet you?” Erich frowned. “He never mentioned that to me.”

  “I just wanted to ask him some questions about Geneva,” Nancy put in quickly. Erich apparently didn’t know about Bart’s blackmailing his cousin, and she didn’t want Franz getting into even more trouble with his family. “It was only going to take a few minutes. And, as Bess says, he never came. We wondered what had happened to him.”

  Erich rubbed his temples wearily. “I called home from my office. He wasn’t there. I’m afraid he must be hurt somewhere. If I could only think what to do next,” he said with a sigh. “My brain doesn’t seem to be working today.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Nancy told him. “You’ve been under a lot of strain.” She stared off into the distance for a minute, thinking. “Let’s see, it seems to me that the first thing we should do is call Monique to see if she knows where he is. Then we’ll check Franz’s bedroom for clues.”

  “How did you get here, Erich? Did the chauffeur bring you?” Nancy asked after Erich told her he’d already checked with Monique’s house. She was to be away for a couple of days.

  “No. I took my own car.”

  “Then would you mind giving us a ride back to your house?”

  For the first time that morning, a slight smile appeared on Erich’s face. “Not at all. But I have to warn you—I drive a two-seater.”

  • • •

  It was a tight squeeze fitting five people into Erich’s tiny Porsche. When Erich pulled up to the house, everyone in the car sighed with relief. “My legs are asleep,” George groaned. She had been providing a lap for Bess in the passenger seat, with Nancy and Mick crowded in behind.

  Inside the house, Erich led them upstairs to Franz’s bedroom. Nancy saw that the room had been decorated in a spare, ultramodern style, with black accessories, a chrome and leather bed frame, and a high-tech workout machine in one corner. But the room was so messy that the decor looked more rumpled than anything else.

  “Franz must have left in a hurry,” Nancy commented, eyeing the pulled-out drawers and open closet door.

  Erich shook his head. “It is usually neater than this, but not much,” he said. “Feel free to go through his things, if you want.”

  Franz’s desk was littered with half-finished sketches and magazines—nothing too exciting. Crumpled in one corner, though, Nancy found a train schedule. “He marked all the trains to Zermatt,” she said, handing the schedule to Erich. “Do you know if he was planning a trip there?”

  Erich studied the train schedule with a puzzled frown. “Not that he mentioned. I’m sure he would have said something to me about it.”

  Looking over Erich’s shoulder, Nancy scanned the schedule. “It takes four hours to get to Zermatt by train,” she said, thinking aloud. “It’s possible someone made another attack on Franz. Maybe he’s on the run. I think we should head to Zermatt to search for him.”

  “I’m with you,” Mick said gravely. “Should we catch the next plane out or rent a car? It might be faster than the train.”

  Nancy sighed. “I wish we could take a plane, but we haven’t allowed for that in our budget.”

  “Besides, Zermatt doesn’t allow cars within city limits,” Erich added. “If we drive, we’d have to park miles away and take a shuttle bus in. We wouldn’t end up saving any time.”

  “The train’s fine with me,” George said
, and Bess nodded. “Me, too,” said Mick.

  “Erich, what about you?” Nancy asked. “Would you be able to leave work on such short notice? It would be great to have you come along, since we don’t know Zermatt at all.”

  Erich knit his brow, thinking. “Yes, I suppose I could,” he said at last. “There is a magazine there we might want to advertise in. I could check on it tomorrow.”

  “What’s Zermatt like?” asked Bess. “What should we wear? Should we dress up? Are we going to spend the night there, or what?”

  “Remember, guys, we can’t really afford anything too expensive,” George added.

  “There are plenty of youth hostels in Zermatt,” Erich said, smiling. “They’re perfect for someone on a budget. I shall join you—it will be an unusual experience for me.” Turning to Bess, he added, “You should bring any hiking clothes you have. We may end up doing some hiking or camping.”

  George’s eyes lit up at the thought, but Bess was dismayed. “How will we ever carry our suitcases if we have to go hiking?” Bess asked.

  “We’re not bringing suitcases,” Nancy said firmly. “We’re going to take one small overnight bag, Bess. One bag for the three of us.”

  • • •

  They just made the six o’clock train to Zermatt. It was comfortable and clean, but Nancy and her friends began to feel restless after three hours. By dusk their conversation had died out. After staring idly out the window for a while, Nancy decided to ask Erich a few questions that might help her better understand Franz’s role at Frères Haussman. Perhaps Erich might tell her something about Franz’s job that would illuminate a possible motive for Yves Petiau to attack him.

  “You and Franz basically grew up in the family business, didn’t you?” she asked. “Did you ever consider working somewhere else?”

  “Oh, no. Well—I mean, of course I had ideas when I was younger, but my father knew I was best suited for the family business. It was a struggle for me then, but now I see that he was right.”