Dial Om for Murder (2 page)

Was there some reason Nicole couldn’t get her cute little gluteus maximus down to the studio and pick up her overpriced cell phone herself? Why didn’t she send Bryn Tierney, her long-suffering personal assistant? A.J. opened her mouth, but her gaze fell on the photo of Aunt Di on her desk. Just a little over eight months ago, Diantha Mason, a legendary yoga instructor and lifestyle guru, had bequeathed her beloved Sacred Balance Studio to A.J., and she took that trust seriously. As she studied Aunt Di’s enigmatic photograph-smile, she quashed her irritation at Nicole’s arrogance. Nicole didn’t mean any harm, really; she was just oblivious and totally self-centered. A few years in Hollywood could do that to a person.

“Do you know where you left your phone?” she asked.

“At the studio!”

“
Where
at the studio?” A.J. hung onto her temper with an effort.

“Oh. I’m not sure. Maybe the shower.”

“ The shower!” She closed her eyes. Granted, for three thousand dollars, Nicole’s cell phone ought to, at the very least, be waterproof.

“Not
in
the shower, but that’s the last place I remember seeing it. It rang when I was blow-drying my hair. I picked it up and I must have set it down on the counter.”

Maybe it was time for some kind of crack down on cell phone use during classes? The use of phones and pagers was gently discouraged during sessions, but maybe A.J. needed to take this one to the mat. And take it to the mat she would have to, because anything that offended big-name clients like Nicole or Barbie Siragusa was going to send her co-manager Lily skidding right off the eightfold path and on a collision course with A.J.

“Okay, I’ll have a look for it. If it’s not there—”

“If it’s not
there
?” shrieked Nicole, and A.J. held the phone away from her ear. “Why wouldn’t it be there?”

“It probably is. I just meant—”

“No, you’re right!” Nicole exclaimed. “ That bitch Barbie probably took it!”

“Whoa!” A.J. said. “I never said anything like that. I’m sure your phone is right where you left it. I’ll just run upstairs and find it and bring it out to you.”

“Oh, A.J., if Barbie took my phone, I’ll kill her. I’m not kidding. That would just be
so
typical of her. And don’t let her tell you that it’s an accident or a mistake, because she is out to
ruin
me.”

“No, no. Really,” A.J. soothed. “I’m sure your phone is right where you left it. Let me go check.”

“Call me back
immediately
!”

“I will.” A.J. made more reassuring noises, cutting off Nicole’s threats and promises and entreaties, and hung up.

A three-thousand-dollar cell phone was floating—maybe literally—somewhere on the premises. Terrific. Leaving her office, she started down the hall to the front lobby.

As she passed Lily Martin’s office, Lily called peremptorily through the half-open door, “A.J., I want to talk to you!”

A.J. bit back her instant aggressive response. Although she owned Sacred Balance, per the terms of her Aunt Diantha’s will, Lily was A.J.’s co-manager—for as long as they both could bear it. Lately A.J. had come to think that her pain threshold had been breached.

“What did you need?” She forced a smile and pushed wide the door to Lily’s office.

Lily sat at her desk, clicking away at her laptop. She looked up, unsmiling, a petite, forty-something woman with a razor-sharp black bob and severe eyebrows. Her nod at the chair in front of her desk was not so much in invitation as command.

And though A.J. told herself again and again that she needed to make a greater effort to understand Lily, her reflex was one of resistance.

“I’m on my way over to Nicole’s,” she said. “Can it wait?”

“I suppose it’ll have to if you’re taking off early.”

A.J. managed to hold on to that pleasant smile—mostly because she knew that would irritate Lily more than giving into her own ire. “Actually, I’m just playing errand girl. Nicole left her cell phone here. I’ll talk to you when I get back.”

The severe brows raised. Maybe that
had
sounded more like a threat than a promise, but oh well. A.J. summoned another one of those artificial smiles and continued to the front lobby. Suze, looking actively unhappy, was busy on the phone. Her blonde hair stuck up in agitated tufts reminiscent of Crackle, one of the elves on the Rice Krispies box.

A.J. passed the cubbies, the gift shop, and went briskly up the two flights of stairs to the locker room and showers. The smell of steam and shampoo reached her as she walked through the doorway on the women’s side. Several stalls were occupied, and she could hear a couple of clients chatting—loudly—over the rush of water.

“It’s just that yoga isn’t very sexy.”

“Are you kidding me? Have you ever seen a Rodney Yee DVD?”

A third voice said, “Oh, I think it’s improved my sex life. It’s put me in touch with my body, with my feelings. And I feel sexy when I feel good about myself.”

“Now Jazzercise was sexy.”

“
Jazzercise?
”

Another woman was blow-drying her hair in front of the long mirror. On the granite counter next to her gym bag was a gold cell phone. Literally gold. Like 24K.

A.J. reached for the phone, and the woman blow-drying her hair said, “It’s been ringing and ringing.”

“ Thanks,” A.J. answered, starting back downstairs.

Who the heck spent three thousand dollars on a cell phone? Even a candy-bar form cell with e-mail, camera, Bluetooth, MP3, high-speed data GPRS, and video. Not that she didn’t understand about status symbols. And not that she couldn’t afford a gold-plated cell phone if she wanted one. Along with the yoga studio, A.J. had inherited close to eighteen million dollars in various properties and subsidiaries from her aunt. She had her own addiction to Veblen goods, but somehow a Hermès Birkin bag or a Patek Philippe watch didn’t seem so wasteful. She would receive a lifetime of wear from those items. What would a three-thousand-dollar cell phone give Nicole other than an equally horrendous phone bill—and a radiated brain? Although in Nicole’s case, who would know the difference?

As A.J. reached the second level, she found herself surrounded by a number of pregnant students filing cautiously down the stairs, indicating that Denise Farber’s Prenatal Pilates session must have just ended. Nicole’s phone began to ring.

It went through her mind to answer it—Nicole had said the call was urgent—but she heard her name. A.J. stopped on the stairs and the sea of swollen bellies parted around her.

Barbie Siragusa stood on the landing above, and A.J. started back toward her. Barbie was her other celebrity client, the wife of Jersey mob boss Sam “Big Bopper” Siragusa, now on year five of a fifteen-year prison stretch.

“What did you need, Barbie?” A.J. asked, reaching the other woman.

Barbie was fifty-one and strikingly beautiful in a sharp-featured, hard-as-polymer way. From the crown of her raven-haired extensions to the tips of her spray-tanned toes, Mrs. Big Bopper made the most of her assets.

Voice held steady with an effort, Barbie said, “Just so you know, I don’t appreciate the disrespect, A.J.”

“Uh . . .” began A.J.

Barbie’s skinny frame was vibrating with tension as she glared down from the landing. “Refusing to let my film crew into the studio. You think I don’t know who’s behind that?”

“I’m behind that,” A.J. replied quietly, only too aware of the curious looks they were getting from the women moving around and past them. “I offered to let you film after hours.”

“After hours is not reality!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s appropriate or fair to the other students to allow a film crew to disrupt—”

“No one was disrupting anything!” yelled Barbie. “ They were just going to film me in my class. It’s a reality show. They have to film everything.”

“It’s just a couple of hours out of your day,” A.J. pointed out, striving to sound reasonable.

“It’s my
reality
!”

Now this was almost touching. Someone who actually believed in the legitimacy of reality TV. A.J. said, “But it’s also the reality of everyone else in the class and the studio. The other students and the instructors.”

Barbie stared at A.J. as though she were insane. “It’s
TV
,” she said. “Everyone wants to be on TV. Everyone wants to be on my show—except that bitch Nicole Manning.”

Okay, now they were getting to the heart of the matter. A.J. glanced automatically at the cell phone she held as it began to ring again—another direct dial from Crazy Land, no doubt.

“Nicole had nothing to do with my decision not to allow a film crew inside Sacred Balance.” She added hopefully, “Why don’t we take this to my office and discuss it there?”

“Are you going to reconsider your decision?”

“Probably not, but we can—”

Barbie made an eloquent hand gesture—kind of a cross between Queen Victoria and a Palermo cab driver. “Don’t waste my time. This is all about Nicole Manning. She openly mocks me in that crap show of hers. That whole Bambi Marciano shtick. Who do you think that’s supposed to be? That’s me! Now she’s trying to ruin my own show because we get better ratings than hers ever did. She’s a jealous, frustrated—”

“Wait.” A.J. stopped her. “We can’t discuss this here. Really. I know you’re upset. Let’s go down to my office and talk about it.”

Barbie ignored her, sweeping past as she headed down the stairs. “There’s nothing to say,” she threw over her shoulder. “Nicole Manning is dead to me.
Dead.
That’s my reality!”

Two

“ Wow , ”
said Suze when A.J. reached the bottom level. “We could hear that all the way down here. She is
mad
. She nearly ran over a couple of yummy mummies in the parking lot.”

A.J. sighed. “And it seemed like it was going to be such a great day this morning. Birds were singing. The sun was shining.”

“It’s still shining.”

“ That’s merely an illusion.”

Suze grinned. “Are you seeing Jake this evening?”

A.J. nodded. And despite everything, she couldn’t help smiling as she met Suze’s bright blue gaze. A.J. had started dating Detective Jake Oberlin eight months ago—not long after she moved to the small northwestern New Jersey township of Stillbrook. It was very casual. A.J. was in no hurry to get involved following the disastrous end of her ten-year marriage. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself. And luckily—sort of—Jake seemed to agree.

Suze leaned on the reception desk, munching yogurt-covered almonds. “Well, if it helps, I think it would be kind of cool to be on TV.”

“It doesn’t help,” A.J. retorted. Heading for her office, she called back, “Don’t forget, the camera adds ten pounds.”

“Ugh.” Suze wasn’t speaking on her own behalf. She was thinking, correctly, of the effect appearing fat on national TV would have on the morale of so many of the female patrons of Sacred Balance.

A.J. sat down at her desk and dialed Nicole as requested. The phone was busy on the other end. Didn’t Nicole have call waiting? A.J. dialed again. Another busy signal. A.J. hung up. She took a couple of slow, long breaths and focused on the calming play of the water over stones in the fountain sitting in the corner.

Yeah. Nice try, but she was basically getting more and more irritated as the moments passed. She dialed again, and again reached the annoying buzz of the busy signal. It wouldn’t be so aggravating if Nicole hadn’t specifically ordered A.J. to call her.

But whatever the reason, no one was answering the call, and A.J. finally gave up, grabbing her keys and purse.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” she called to Suze who—on the phone again—waggled her fingers in good-bye.

It was a blue and blazing May afternoon. Heat shimmered off the road and sunlight seemed to gild everything in gold as A.J. drove along the country lane. She began to relax a little, the stress from the scene with Barbie fading as the miles passed. Not so long ago she would have zipped down the road aggravated with every tractor and trailer that got in her way, but today she was content to drive the speed limit, enjoying the scenery which last year would have been no more real to her than images flashing past on the Travel Channel.

Now she not only noticed, but she even appreciated the graceful stone spire of a distant church, the gold and green crazy quilt of fallow and fertile farm land, the distant blue glitter of lakes and rivers behind trees. Despite its unfortunate reputation, New Jersey had its scenic spots, and the Skylands were some of the nicest. Rough and rural, a contrast of quaint villages, farms, and wild parkland, the “Great Northwest” of the Garden State was a far cry from A.J.’s former life in Manhattan.

In her final letter, Aunt Diantha had written:
Darling Girl, the blessings that I would bestow upon you are a joyful spirit and a heart at peace.
A.J. didn’t know if she had actually achieved a joyful spirit and a heart at peace, but she realized that she now looked forward to each day, and that she was coming to terms with the past—and that was a lot right there. Far too many people never even had that much.