out of the jungle."
"And you never woulda seen the real survival show on CBS." Nana gasped her horror. "Think what you woulda missed."
"I once took a taxi ride with a cabbie who didn't speak English," Ethel volunteered. "I thought that was pretty heroic. I didn't know if I'd ever get to the place I wanted to go."
"That surprises me," Etienne said to her. "I've discovered that cabdrivers in foreign capitals sometimes speak four, maybe five languages. Where were you traveling?"
"Manhattan."
"Pretty stupid, huh?" hooted Ernie. "She ends up in Newark and I gotta fight rush-hour traffic to pick her up. I ask you, who's dumb enough to get in a cab with a guy who don't speak English?"
Ernie obviously traveled exclusively by subway these days.
"Are you starting with me?" Ethel fired back. "I'm warning you, don't start with me because I got stories to tell too."
"You got a short one?" asked Nana. "The food's not here yet."
Ethel boosted her elbows up on the table. "Heroic? You want to hear heroic? I'll give you heroic. I get up last night to use the toilet. I hear someone crying in the hall. I peek out and I see wet footprints all over the carpet."
I came to attention. Wet footprints in the hall? Wet, not bloody? Oh, my God. The other ghost. I'd seen footprints in the dungeon that I knew belonged to Michael, but how could I have missed the ones in the hall? Had Michael made those too? Busy guy, being able to be in two places at the same time. I wonder how he did that.
"I run back to the bed to get Ernie," Ethel continued. "I drag him out to the hall. I point at the footprints. 'There's something not right here,' I says to him. 'Look at these footprints. There's something real odd about them.'"
Uff da. I bent forward to catch Ethel's eye. "Were they webbed?"
"No. They were big. Really big. Abominable Snowman big."
"Had to be at least a size eighteen," Ernie conceded.
I swallowed slowly. I knew the footprints in the dungeon belonged to Michael, and they hadn't been that big. So if the supersize prints in the hall didn't belong to Michael, who did they belong to?
Ethel went on with enthusiasm. "So Ernie opens an eye and looks at the footprints and says,'This guy has flat feet, a narrow heel, and probably stands seven foot tall. You see someone like that, let me know. I'll be in bed.' Some hero, huh?"
The ghost was a giant? A ghost, I could believe. A giant seemed a little over the top. "Did you notice any smell in the hall when you were studying the footprints?" I asked Ethel.
"I sure did. It about knocked me over."
Ta da! Michael Malooley.
"It smelled like lavender. And lots of it."
Lavender? As in lavender bubble bath? Uh-oh. Not Michael Malooley. I swung my head around to slant a look at Jackie. She slanted a look back. Oops. We both slumped in our chairs and tried to look invisible.
"What's the most courageous thing you've ever done, Emily?" Tilly asked in her professor's voice.
"Umm..." No-brainer. Sitting between Etienne and Jack and worrying what was going to happen next, but I couldn't really say that. "I don't know if I've ever done anything really courageous," I admitted.
"That's not true," Nana objected. "She rescued a hair-piece from the River Reuss last year," she announced to the table.
"She saved my leg from sinking to the bottom of Lake Lucerne," George proclaimed.
"She faced a maniacal killer single-handedly," Etienne said softly, holding my gaze to his, lifting my hand to his lips, warming my flesh with his mouth. Unh. Excuse me while I melt. "Emily is the bravest woman I have ever known."
I blushed at their flattery. They were making me sound pretty good. Etienne had even remembered about my facing the maniacal killer. What a good memory he had. It was nice to be in love with a man who could remember what you were like on your good days.
"I didn't hear anyone crying in the hall last night," said Gladys Kuppelman. "Why didn't I hear anyone crying?"
"It's your snoring," accused Ira. "Who can hear anything over that racket?"
"Oh, sure, and I suppose if I'd heard something, you would have run right out to investigate, you being so heroic and all. Bugger you."
Gee, Gladys was really picking up the language.
"I always thought Ira was pretty heroic to agree to the number of operations he's been involved with," said Ethel.
Ira froze in place. Gladys