Toured to Death by Hy Conrad

the grounds. Soon it would hit the ivy-covered wall, giving the garden its own premature sunset. Determined to enjoy the last rays of the day, Amy squeezed herself, laboriously squeezed herself, into the wooden chair and reached for her end-of-the-road Campari and soda.
    Hers was a ridiculously small single, barely more than a closet. It had been the only accommodation left after she’d reserved the fifteen suites for her guests. The room’s one saving grace was that it opened onto the rear garden, with a balcony just large enough to hold a chair, if one took the trouble to move the potted geraniums into the room, which was what she’d done.
    The Doloreses, the last of the teams, had checked in five minutes ago, not at all discouraged by their placing. In fact, they’d been flushed with pride at just getting here without having to resort to the phone number.
    The one all-male team—the Stew Boys, as they called themselves—had won the first day’s leg and was celebrating in a small raised area outside, a pétanque court, sandwiched between the garden proper and the western stone wall. The foursome was boisterous as only winners could be as they played their own version of the French bowling game, which was itself a version of the Italian game boccie. From what Amy could see, they had also mixed in elements of shuffleboard. The result seemed to work well enough to keep them happy.
    The air was loud with birds and dry, still warm from the lingering sun. It had been an exciting, exhausting day. Amy had managed to stay a few minutes ahead of the teams, hiding the clue packets at one site before driving on to do it again at another.
    The last clue was a note from Daryl, saying he would be spending the night in a nearby town. Attached was a custom-made crossword puzzle. Once you filled in the blanks and stared at it long enough, you would realize that nearly all the entries were synonyms for other entries. Only three answers in the finished puzzle didn’t have synonymous matches. Old capital, Hugo, and Cézanne. Once this discovery was made, the rest was simple. A check of any tourist guide would show that in the old capital of Aix-en-Provence, there was a small luxury hotel called Hotel Cézanne, located on avenue Victor Hugo.
    Amy had arrived to find the desk clerk holding a packet of clues and instructions from Otto Ingo. Tomorrow’s itinerary. Amy had read them over, to make sure there weren’t any surprises, then had ordered a drink.
    As she sipped her Campari, the teams mingled around the bar that had been set up two stories beneath her minuscule perch. Soon enough she would have to play the host and join them. But for right now she was content to sit in the fading sunlight and listen to the birds and the rich, soothing babble of her clients.
    The sound of a Harvard-bred honk alerted Amy to the presence of Burt Baker. She readjusted her cramped knees and her red Versaces and peered down through the iron bars to catch a view. “It was Holly who thought to look it up on Wikipedia,” Burt was explaining to an audience of middle-aged Bitsys.
    â€œWe wound up following the Fidels,” the Bitsy captain whispered, then exploded into a giggle. Martha Callas was not the sort of person one would imagine giggling at anything. Martha was tall, as was her hair, tall and silver and firmly lacquered. Like so much about her, the giggles were an affectation. Something about her reminded Amy of Georgina Davis. The two women were worlds apart, of course—a Palm Beach heiress versus a Dallas decorator. But both were dramatic and larger than life, each a shameless promoter of her own version of femininity.
    The main difference, Amy felt, was that Martha tried too hard. Georgina’s drama was effortless and amiable, the result of a lifetime of privilege. Martha’s was forced, the drama of a second-rate actor who doesn’t quite believe in the role. Perhaps that had evolved out