Tuesday Tales: From the Word FUSSY

Well, winter may officially still be almost six weeks away, but it flexed its muscles last week where I live. Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Tales. I’m continuing with The Case of the Missing Prince, an Evie Chambers mystery. Our word prompt this week is FUSSY.

Enjoy.

“Good for the bottom line as well.” I bent over to examine the appointment book. “What’s the skinny on Novak and Horvath?” I pointed to the names she’d penciled in at eleven.

“Do you recall that I mentioned that the Drulivic family heir was missing?”

“Drulivic as in Zobora Copper and Fine Metals?”

“The same, only he’s more than an heir. After they called Friday to make an appointment, I did some digging. It seems that Stanislav Drulivic isn’t your ordinary billionaire. He’s the crown prince of Zobora, a Duchy in the Carpathian Mountains that borders on Poland and Slovakia. He came here last June to do some hiking and rock climbing with four others and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. They’ve tried tracking the GPS on his phone, but nothing. There was a rockslide. As far as the authorities have determined, only one person was killed, but a lot were injured. One of the men in his party was in bad shape, but he’s recovering. The others had relatively minor injuries, all things considered, but there’s absolutely no sign of the prince.”

“What do you mean no sign? Either he was there or he wasn’t.”

“That’s just it. Apparently, just after they left the starting point, he got separated from the others and then the slide happened. Those with him can’t be positive that he still was when it happened. As sad as that is for the family, there’s a question of succession. Without a body … They want us to find him—dead or alive.”

“Where and when was the rockslide?”

“Near Bow Glacier Falls, near Banff, Alberta. I watched a YouTube video of the landslide. I’ve sent you the CTV link so that you can see for yourself.”

“I heard about that one. It happened just before I went out there last summer.” Just before I had my identity stolen, but then if that hadn’t happened, I would never have met Al. “Well, if he’s dead, there has to be a body someplace. I was under the impression they’d recovered all the bodies.”

“The authorities claim they have, but royalty, especially when it’s next in line for the throne, doesn’t just disappear.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying that there might be foul play involved?”

I wasn’t fussy about getting into the middle of a political situation, but I couldn’t imagine a family not knowing what had happened to their son.

Don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.