Fatally Flaky (24 page)

“Jack wanted to know about Doc Finn,” Isabelle whispered. “Jack knew Doc Finn had been out here last week. Jack wanted to know every single thing Finn had done while he was at Gold Gulch. How much time Finn had spent, with whom, and what had happened. I did tell the cops all this,” she concluded.

I thought of Jack’s scribbled notes: “Fin.” I said, “I heard that when Finn was here, he had a big fight with Billie Attenborough.”

“He did.” Isabelle’s voice was barely audible.

“She told me Finn was mad at her for losing weight so fast.”

Isabelle waited a moment and then shook her head. “Their argument,” she whispered, “had nothing to do with weight.”

“What did it have to do with?”

“Her wedding.”

“Losing weight for her wedding?”

Isabelle shook her head. “I don’t know, because at that point, they went into her room. That’s what I told Jack, and that’s what I told the cops. Jack asked me if Billie, in one of her many visits to the spa, had been seeing anyone else. Like a guy,” she added, embarrassed. “I told him Billie had been here once when Lucas, Jack’s son, was here. Jack shook his head, but I wasn’t sure if he was disappointed in Lucas or in Billie.”

“Did Lucas enjoy being here?”

“Hard to tell. He consults for Victor, but I don’t think Victor pays him much. Lucas complained that the spa was too expensive. But he’s back this week, so he must have found some money around somewhere.”

No kidding. I said, “So go on about Jack.”

“Well,” Isabelle said, “there just isn’t anything. Still, I figured Doc Finn must not have won the argument with Billie, because Billie and Craig Miller are here, enjoying one of the three suites. And talk about weird, Billie’s mother is here, too. They sat together at the intake meeting last night. Around the staff room? Our theory is that Billie’s mother wants to know if the wedding’s been consummated.”

I said, “I sort of wondered that same thing when Billie showed up in the dining room this morning, without her new husband.”

“They brought food when they checked in,” said Isabelle. “Two coolers’ worth.”

“Based on the menus I saw, I don’t blame them.” But I was puzzled. “What difference would it make if the wedding is consummated?”

Isabelle grinned for the first time since we’d begun talking. “The staff is taking bets on it. Our theory is that if Billie and Craig have consummated their union, then Craig can’t give Billie back to Charlotte and say, ‘No thanks.’”

“A wife is not something you can return to the store if you don’t like her,” I said.

Isabelle’s lips quirked into a mischievous smile. “There’s a first for everything.”

“How about a second for everything?”

“What?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.

“I need you to get me into that Smoothie Cabin.”

Isabelle said, “Victor will fire me.”

“Do you know how to disable the security cameras?”

Isabelle looked at me as if I’d asked her to fix the transmission in a Korean sports car. “Uh, no way.”

“Do you have any spray paint?” I asked. “We can do it the old-fashioned way.”

J
ulian and Boyd kept watch. I set up a ladder near the outside camera, the one that pointed into the Smoothie Cabin. Isabelle handed me a can of gold spray paint that they kept for when the clients made Christmas crafts. Then she buttoned a catering jacket onto my head, as a makeshift mask. When I said I could see through the front gap, I stepped up the ladder, pointed to the camera lens, and sprayed. Once Isabelle had let me into the Smoothie Cabin, I repeated the process. Then Isabelle joined Julian and Boyd in monitoring the door. Isabelle told me I probably had no more than five minutes, as Victor kept a close eye on the feed from the cameras in his office, near the reception area.

“You need to be methodical,” Boyd had told me beforehand. “I wanted to go in with you, but I can’t. I don’t have a search warrant, so
you’re
going to have to take samples of everything you find. If
I
take anything out of there, Schulz will have my badge.”

The room was really like a large closet, about eight feet by eight feet. There was a small, humming refrigerator filled with yogurt, ice, strawberries, blueberries, and three tall bottles of what looked and smelled like jam, except they were labeled smoothie mix. I extracted the plastic bags Boyd had given me and quickly spooned in samples of mango, strawberry, and pineapple. Across the two counters, bunches of bananas were carefully arrayed between three blenders. A sink, a bottle of dishwashing liquid, and a drain looked innocuous enough. The first cupboard I checked held plastic glasses and spoons. The second contained about two dozen plastic canisters with healthful-sounding labels like protein powder, ginseng, echinacea, vitamin powder, chamomile, and the like. Each canister contained powders of various colors.

“Take samples of everything you find.” Boyd’s words echoed in my ears.

I was about halfway through when Julian knocked quickly on the door. “Boss!” he whispered urgently through the door. “He’s coming!”

“Have Isabelle waylay him,” I whispered back.

“Give me the samples,” Boyd ordered me through the door. “I’ll make my way to the van out the back door of the kitchen. Meet me there.”

I did as directed. I stuffed the bags into a large grocery bag I’d brought expressly for this purpose and handed them to Boyd. Then I walked quickly through the cabin door, raced across the kitchen, and hauled myself out the kitchen’s back door. There, I scooted around a half-full cart of dirty table linens and towels, and ran to where we had parked the van. Thank God Boyd had insisted we put the vehicle behind the spa’s garage, where it could not be seen.

Boyd was already there. He’d placed the grocery bag in the back. He told me to walk calmly around the corner and start toward the dining room. He’d be right behind me.

In front of the Smoothie Cabin door, Isabelle was explaining to Victor that she had no idea who could have picked the lock to the Smoothie Cabin and vandalized the cameras.

When Victor saw me, he held up his hand for Isabelle to stop talking. He narrowed his eyes at me and said, “I don’t suppose you know anything about this.”

I said, “Anything about what?”

“If I find spray paint in that kitchen, you’re done here.”

I said, “Spray paint? For what?”

“Isabelle,” Victor said loudly, “give me back that key I gave you to the Smoothie Cabin.” When she sheepishly handed it over, Victor said she was done helping him with smoothies. Now, he concluded, he was on his way to the hardware store to get a padlock for the Smoothie Cabin door.

Somehow, we got through the rest of the day. I didn’t discover anything else, and none of the food seemed to have anything odd about it. When Victor returned from the hardware store, he went straight to the Smoothie Cabin. I prayed that the clean-up job I’d done would convince Victor not to destroy any evidence, if indeed there was evidence to be had there. I hadn’t found any vials, which wasn’t encouraging. What
was
encouraging was that Victor hadn’t fired Isabelle on the spot, or thrown me out of the spa altogether.
He must be desperate for cooks and aerobics instructors,
I thought.

I saw Lucas only briefly at lunch, and Charlotte, Billie, and Craig Miller for a moment at dinner. I didn’t have a chance to speak to any of them, which was probably just as well. Boyd, meanwhile, hovered over me, which made me feel crowded. But I’d agreed to his being there, so I was compliant. Plus, I simply could not wait for him to get those samples analyzed.

The one time I saw Marla, Boyd instructed Julian to watch over me. Then Boyd sauntered off to go talk to Marla. Marla rummaged in her gym carrier and, as unobtrusively as possible—not easy if you were Marla—gave Boyd the plastic bags he’d given her that morning.

I was so tired by the time we finished cooking dinner that I wanted to go have a soak in the hot springs pool before heading home. I knew if I did, Victor would fire me for sure. I
was
still worried about those broken plates, though, and thought we should check on the status of the clean up.

The spa servers were washing the dishes—their job, they insisted—while the clients were settling in for an evening of karaoke, which I’d always thought was a singularly foolish activity. But nobody was asking me.

“Let’s go up and see if the hot pool has been reopened,” I suggested to Boyd. It was half past seven, and the twilight air smelled delicious. Shreds of sulfurous mist from the hot springs were unraveling overhead. There was a hint of fall in the breeze. Boyd, who was still tagging along beside me, lifted an expressive eyebrow.

“I’m not propositioning you,” I insisted. “Don’t give me that look.”

“I’m not allowing you to go into any body of water. If I did, I’d lose my job.”

I laughed so hard that my fatigue abated a bit. By the time we reached the top of the path that led to the steaming pool, I’d told him in no uncertain terms I only wanted to see if the mess I’d made had been cleaned up. He was visibly relieved that there was still a no entry sign by the pool. I was disappointed, as ribbons of hot mist floated invitingly our way. But still. Presumably, the remains of a couple dozen broken cups and plates lurked on the slimy bottom. Once again, I wondered where Victor Lane was putting all his money from running the spa. Not into handymen and cleaning crews, clearly.

“Tough luck,” I said, trying hard to sound sincere.

“Yeah.” A man of few words, was our Boyd. We turned back down the path.

“Can you help me?” asked a large, fleshy blond woman as she toiled up the path. She stopped to gasp for breath. “I…I followed you from the kitchen.”

Boyd, ever watchful, stepped in front of me. “Help you with what?”

“I’m starving.” She put her hands on her waist, bent over, and panted. She was about sixty, and her thin blond hair had dark gray roots. “I…I’ve been here before, and…Yolanda always gave me”—here she blushed—“gave us, some of us, that is, extra food. After dinner, at the back door to the kitchen.” She straightened and wheezed. “We paid her,” she added, then reached into the copious pocket of even-more-copious pants and pulled out a wad of cash. “I can pay you.”

Boyd turned to face me, so that his back was to the woman. He gave me a
what-the-hell
bug-eyed look.

“It’s all right,” I said soothingly to the woman. “I don’t have anything right now, but I can bring you something tomorrow.”

“Oh, thank God,” said the woman, who made her way back down the path while we waited behind.

“Didn’t she come here to lose weight?” Boyd asked, once the woman was out of earshot. “Why sabotage yourself like that?”

“It’s probably like being able to get drugs in rehab. Those clinics are one of the best places to score. So if she wants a dessert, I’ll bring her one.”

“Kee-rist,” said Boyd. “And I thought cops were the most cynical guys in the world.”

A
T HOME,
T
OM
was upstairs taking a shower. I checked our voice mail: there was nothing from Bogen the jeweler about Jack’s clock, and that irritated me. Finally I went upstairs, and on impulse, joined Tom in the shower. That proved more rejuvenating than any old hot springs pool.

“I’m hungry,” Tom whispered in my ear, when we were embracing, afterward, in the steamy bathroom. “You?”

I nodded assent. We put on pajamas and trekked down to the kitchen.

“How was the spa?” Tom asked. He was ladling spoonfuls of Chilled Curried Chicken Salad onto glass plates.

“Exhausting.” I opened bottles of imported beer—what I’d been told was the proper drink to go with curry—and placed cold glasses on our table. I told him about Isabelle’s revelations, which were more puzzling than eye opening. I then said I had gone into the Smoothie Cabin to hunt around.

Tom closed his eyes and shook his head. “Yeah, Boyd confessed to me. Did you find anything?”

“Don’t get mad at Boyd, okay?” I told him about Boyd suspecting that he saw “something” in the fruit cocktail, and how I had taken samples from jars of preserved fruit and powdered supplements.

“If Boyd comes back with anything,” Tom said matter-of-factly, “we won’t be able to use it in court. You know that, right?”

“I know, I know,” I said, although I wasn’t convinced. Plus, we still had Marla’s smoothie and fruit cocktail to get analyzed. It had been served to her, so she had the right to have it analyzed, correct? I said, “Lucas was up there. It looks as if he’s already starting to spend Jack’s money.”

“He’s not going to be able to spend it until the coroner’s office gives him a death certificate, and there won’t be any death certificate until we know more—”

He stopped talking when he saw my eyes pooling. The day had been so bone-crushingly busy, I’d somehow put the fact that Jack was dead on the back burner of my mind. But now Tom’s use of the term “death certificate” gave Jack’s premature departure from this life a finality I wasn’t ready to face.

“Miss G.” His voice was warm. He took my hands in his. “We shouldn’t be talking about this. Remember, Father Pete said you should take a couple of days to grieve.”

“A couple of days. Right. If I were to spend a couple of days moping around the house, I’d go stark raving bonkers. Hold on a sec.” I left the kitchen, blew my nose in the bathroom, washed my hands, and returned with a box of tissues. “Please tell me more about the case. I really want to know.”

“You know we’ve tentatively linked Finn’s death with Jack’s? That’s partly owing to the note Jack wrote you. It’s not much of a link, but it’s a link.”

“So…did the pathologist confirm that the heart attack was directly caused by Jack being attacked?”

Tom shook his head. “The connection isn’t certain. But given the head trauma that Jack did experience, it’s clear that someone tried to kill him out at the spa, and almost succeeded. Well, did succeed, in the end, because he just died later.” Tom narrowed his eyes at me. “You all right?”

“Fine. But the person who attacked Jack couldn’t have counted on Jack having a heart attack in the hospital from his injuries.”

“Exactly.”

It took me a second to understand what Tom was implying, and when I did, it chilled me to the bone. “The call Doc Finn received the night he was murdered came from within Southwest Hospital. Are you saying that someone in the hospital might have…helped Jack to have a heart attack? Might have poisoned him or…?”

“It’s obviously a possibility. Jack had a history of heart disease and he’d been badly injured, but the heart attack was still very sudden. Even closely monitored the way he was, we can’t rule out tampering. So the pathologist is checking everything in Jack’s system against the meds he was taking for his heart condition. Those meds, by the way, were in his house.”

“Right,” I said. “And remember, Lucas was already inside the house when I used Jack’s keys to get in. So maybe he planted something, or took something away.”

“We’ve talked to him, again. He says he didn’t touch anything, and we can check his house, if we want. You don’t like Lucas, do you?”

My shoulders slumped. “I’m not sure he’s a killer. But he’s like the cousin you never really got along with, the cousin you suspected was trashing your toys and stealing from your mother’s purse, but you could never prove anything.”

Tom grinned. “Your professional psychiatric opinion, no doubt.”

I shrugged. “What else have you found out?”

“Nothing. These tests take a bit of time, you know, Goldy, even when you’re doing things on an expedited schedule, which we are.”

I rubbed my forehead. “I can’t think of what to do.”

Tom knew better than to tell me to do nothing. He said, “I’ll tell you how you can help. We have all the technical expertise, the teams going out talking to witnesses, the labs doing their tests. But what you’re particularly good at is dissecting…people’s relationships. It’s not the
how
that’s really stumping us here, although we’re working on that. It’s the
why
. You want to help? Bring that intellect to bear on the reasons somebody or somebodies would want these two guys…to be gone.”

I exhaled so disconsolately that I knew Tom sensed my frustration. Finn had stuck his nose into some kind of hornets’ nest and had dragged Jack into it behind him. Had it been very odd, or even criminal, activities performed by Victor Lane at the spa, or an entirely different problem? I felt no closer to an answer than I’d been when I woke up Monday morning and learned of Jack’s death.

Tom looked around the kitchen with a thoughtful gaze. “You want to cook?”

I was so startled by his suggestion that I actually laughed. It was already after ten, and I had to get up at five. But Tom knew what would make me feel better—apart from shenanigans in the shower, that is.

Thirty minutes later, Tom had finished the dishes, and I’d made the same chocolate cookies I’d made the other day. They were so flaky, the first one I made broke off in my mouth. Hmm. While Tom was putting the dishes away, I decided not to spoon ice cream into the middle. Instead, I whipped together a buttery, extra-creamy vanilla frosting, and spread it between two of the cookies. Yum! Tom agreed.