Murder at the Spa (24 page)

“Controlling interest.”

“Aunt Paulina,” said Leon. Again he was sitting up.

“What?” she asked impatiently.

He spoke slowly: “High Rock Waters owns thirty-four percent of Paulina Langenberg. You own twenty percent of Paulina Langenberg. That’s fifty-four percent. Which means that by acquiring controlling interest in High Rock Waters, you’ll be recapturing control of Paulina Langenberg.”

Silence. Paulina was at a loss for words. After a moment, she spoke: “He just realized. I don’t believe it.” She raised an arm. “Leon, that’s the whole idea.” And then she added, on a sourer note: “If you hadn’t been worrying so much about your inheritance, you’d have caught on sooner.”

Leon leaned back in the chaise, grinning. His yellow-green eyes gleamed with vengeance. “Brilliant,” he muttered. “Brilliant.”

“Thank you,” said Paulina. Pushing herself up on one elbow, she raised herself to a sitting position. “Now I’m going to get up,” she announced. “I have work to do. Jack, get my slippers, the red ones.”

Jack opened the door of Paulina’s closet, turned on the light, and retrieved the slippers—spike-heeled mules with red angora pompoms—from a disorderly pile of shoes and clothing. Carrying them back into the bedroom, he stooped before Paulina and slipped them onto her tiny feet.

Her business completed, Charlotte rose to leave. But Paulina wouldn’t let her go without giving her the roses Elliot had sent. She didn’t want to be reminded of her traitorous son, she said. In the same breath, she complained that she hadn’t received a bouquet from him yet today.

“Maybe he’s on a trip,” offered Jack diplomatically, to which Paulina responded, “So he can’t send flowers when he’s on a trip?”

Paulina dismissed Innis with a lipstick and orders to get to work. Then she marched over to the closet and angrily flipped off the light switch. “How many times do I have to tell you to turn out the lights,” she scolded Jack. “Do you think I own the electric company?”

“Who knows?” he replied. “Maybe the electric company will be next.”

“Don’t be a wiseacre,” chided Paulina with a good-natured grin.

“I have the distinct impression you’re feeling better, Mrs. Langenberg,” said Jack fondly.

Paulina’s brown eyes sparkled.

After Charlotte was sworn to secrecy, she was escorted into the living room by Jack, who then disappeared into the kitchen to wrap the flowers. As she awaited his return, Charlotte looked out over the spa. On the esplanade, Anne-Marie was leading the
corps d’ aerobics
in alternate toe touches. She stood with arms and legs outstretched like Da Vinci’s vitruvian man. The class followed in strict unison as she touched first one toe, then the other. Except for Nicky, who failed to even touch his knees. On the distant terrace of the Hall of Springs, the Mineral Man was wrapping up his act. The audience was smaller now. He was getting to be old hat. After packing up his knapsack, he disappeared into the Pump Room. To either side of the Hall of Springs, guests strolled under the colonnades. Charlotte was fascinated by the spa’s architecture. Its balance was restful, but it was also unnerving. She was reminded of the phrase from Blake’s poem: there was something fearful about its symmetry. Every column had its mirror image. Looking out, you couldn’t distinguish the Bath Pavilion from the Health Pavilion. Unless you looked at the power house, whose brick stack rose from behind the Bath Pavilion like a lighthouse on a foggy sea. Charlotte was reminded of the ancient Persian carpet weavers who believed that a perfect carpet design trapped the evil spirits, bringing bad luck to the owner. To keep out the evil spirits, they deliberately introduced a mistake into each design, a disruption of the pattern, a dissymmetry. The chimney of the power house was like that.

Jack returned with the bouquet of roses and showed Charlotte to the door. In the foyer, she pressed the elevator button and waited. The silence was punctuated by a familiar melody from
Oklahoma
; the string quartet had begun its morning concert. As she gazed out of the long windows overlooking the spa, her thoughts dwelled on Leon: if it had once been Leon who basked in Paulina’s favor, the tables were now turned. He was finding out there was a heavy price to pay for being heir apparent to the Langenberg fortune.

The lawn to the east of the quadrangle was dotted with sunbathers who’d been unable to find a place at the edge of the pool or who simply preferred the grass. As Charlotte watched, a lanky young man in a T-shirt and shorts emerged from the rear of the Health Pavilion and threaded his way among the blankets and chairs to the parking lot. She suddenly realized from his ectomorphic build and loping gait that he was the Mineral Man. Her suspicion was confirmed by the knapsack that he carried over his shoulder. In the parking lot, he got into a little red car and drove away. What puzzled her was how he had gotten from the Hall of Springs to the Health Pavilion. He hadn’t walked under the colonnades—she had been looking right at them. Nor had he crossed the quadrangle. He had simply popped up like a jack-in-the box at the rear of the Health Pavilion.

Her thoughts were still toying with this puzzle when the elevator arrived. Riding in a glass elevator was the kind of simple thrill she never tired of. Before her lay a panorama of mountains and of blue sky as hard and clear as porcelain. The clarity of the sky was marred only by a wisp of white condensate floating upward from the stack of the power house, where the mineral water was being heated for the afternoon baths.
Where the mineral water was being heated for the afternoon baths
. It suddenly dawned on her how the Mineral Man had gotten to the Health Pavilion. At the same moment, she realized how Sperry could have gotten to the Bath Pavilion. According to Regie Cobb, the water for the baths was pumped from the springs under the golf course to the power house, where it was heated. From there, it was pumped to the Bath Pavilion. Pumped—through tunnels. There
must
be tunnels. Regie had said the volume of water was sufficient to supply the water for a small town. Large pipes must be required. And Hilda had talked about the pipes getting clogged with the mineral precipitate. They must require constant maintenance. Any sensible architect would have put them in tunnels. Otherwise they would have to be dug up every time they needed to be repaired. And what about the water for the drinking fountains? In the Hall of Springs alone there were fountains for each of three mineral waters. To say nothing of the fountains in the Bath Pavilion and the Health Pavilion. The entire complex, she concluded, must be underlaid by a network of pipe tunnels. She went on to conclude that the tunnels must lie under the colonnades. It made perfect sense: provide a sheltered pathway linking the buildings and a conduit for the pipes in the same structure. So! The symmetry of the architecture was not only the product of a quest for a visual unity, but of a quest for practicality as well.

The elevator settled gently into the shrubbery around the foundation of the hotel. Charlotte emerged into the lobby, and, after dropping off the flowers at the desk with instructions to deliver them to her room, headed out through the revolving doors. On the pillared porch she found Regie Cobb just where she had expected to, sitting on a bench reading a newspaper, his feet propped up against the suitcases of the new arrivals and his eyes shaded by a Panama hat. The minibus stood at the curb awaiting its next load of passengers. Before retiring to the job of minibus driver, the television newscaster had said, Regie had been chief of maintenance. If anyone could tell her about the tunnels, it was he. As she approached, he stood up and, setting aside his newspaper, tipped his hat: a quick touch of his fingers to the brim in an old-fashioned expression of deference to the opposite sex.

“Mr. Cobb?”

“That’s me.”

“My name is Charlotte Graham.” She extended her hand.

“I’m honored, Miss Graham,” he replied, pumping her arm. “I’m a fan from way back. I recognized you on the bus the other day.”

Charlotte smiled. “I had a question about the spa that I thought you might be able to answer.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“The other day, you said that the water for the baths comes from a grid of springs underlying the golf course.”

“That’s right.”

“And that the water was pumped to the power house.”

“Yep.”

“Here’s my question: how does the water get from the power house to the Bath Pavilion?”

He eyed her speculatively, wondering why she was asking the question. Then, shifting his gaze to the spa, he raised an arm and pointed. “You see those colonnades there. Well, under each of those colonnades is a tunnel. The tunnels house all the pipes.”

“How would someone get into the tunnels?”

“There’s an entrance in the basement of each building.”

Charlotte then remembered something else. When she had asked Hilda if there were any other entrances to the Bath Pavilion, she had mentioned the cellar. She addressed Regie: “So that someone would be able to go from the Health Pavilion to the Bath Pavilion through the tunnels.”

“Yep.” He nodded. “If you knew your way around.”

“Would you be able to show me? It’s very important.”

He looked directly at her. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the two people who died over at the Bath Pavilion, would it?”

“Maybe.”

“I can’t. I have to stay here. But Otto could. Otto Klepper, he’s the power house custodian. He knows all about the tunnels. He’s off today, but he could take you through tomorrow. I’ll call him and make arrangements.”

“I’d appreciate that,” she said. “Thank you.”

12

The sign on the power house door said: “Caution: safety shoes and hard hats required beyond this point.” Opening it, Charlotte found herself on a catwalk overlooking three large, brick-enclosed boilers. Peering over the railing, she could see an alcove under the stairs where a makeshift office had been set up. A fat man in dark blue work clothes sat at the desk. His arms were folded across his chest and his shiny bald head hung over the back of his chair. On the desk lay the uneaten remains of a bag lunch. He was snoring.

“Hello,” she shouted.

Receiving no reply, she descended the stairs. At the bottom, she repeated her greeting. The man didn’t wake. Finally she approached the desk. Standing about five feet away, she said “excuse me” in a voice loud enough to be heard above the hum of the machinery.

With a violent snort, Otto Klepper jerked up his head and opened his gray eyes in a vacant stare. He looked just as she would have expected a custodian named Otto to look: round, pink, and with not enough wits to be curious, which under the circumstances was just as well.

“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Klepper. Mr. Cobb said you might be able to give me a tour of the tunnels.”

Blinking, Otto scrambled to a standing position. Despite the fact that Regie was supposed to have notified him that Charlotte was coming, he seemed confused by her presence. “Are you from the state?” he asked.

“The state?” repeated Charlotte.

“Are you here to do an inspection?”

“No. Mr. Cobb sent me. He said you’d give me a tour of the tunnels.”

“Oh,” you’re a friend of Mr. Cobb’s,” he said, a smile spreading over his sleep-dulled features. “I remember now. I thought you was from the state. I didn’t want to get caught napping on the job.”

“Oh,” said Charlotte. “Of course not.” She stated very clearly, “My name is Charlotte Graham. Mr. Cobb sent me. I’d like a tour of the tunnels.”

“Well, I guess if Mr. Cobb sent you, it’s okay.” The smile faded and a look of concentration came over his face. He stared at her intently. “Don’t I know you from somewhere? You look familiar.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Charlotte. She didn’t want to get into it.

“That’s funny. I could swear I’ve seen you somewhere before.” He shook his head in bewilderment. Then he turned to the business at hand: “I’ll be glad to take you down. Haven’t been down in a while myself.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll be with you in just a sec,” he added, raising a finger. “Jeez, you had me scairt there for a minute,” he added with a chuckle. “I thought you was from the state or somethin’.”

“So I gathered.”

While Charlotte waited, Otto checked the gauges on the boilers and recorded the readings in a logbook. Then, gesturing for her to follow, he set off down a corridor at the side of one of the boilers, flashlight in hand. At the end of the corridor, he descended another set of stairs to a metal fire door. On the door was a sign, now pitted with rust, that bore the fallout shelter logo of black triangles on a yellow ground. It had been years since Charlotte had seen one of these signs. An artifact of the Cold War, it brought back disturbing memories of air raid alerts and brinkmanship and the HUAC hearings. Remembering that the spa had once been a civil defense depot, she wondered if somewhere there was a dusty cache of canned vegetables stockpiled by some provident citizen in anticipation of the apocalypse.

Otto opened the door and flipped on a light switch. A string of light bulbs illuminated a tunnel about six feet high and too narrow for two to walk abreast. Charlotte entered behind Otto, whose bandy-legged stride put her in mind of a tugboat bobbing at its moorings. By the light of the naked light bulbs, the floor and walls glittered like a crystal cave. What had once been brick and mortar was now encrusted with the precipitate from the mineral water that had leaked from the antiquated pipes. The stale, musty air even smelled of minerals; its acrid odor made her nose itch.

“Watch your step,” warned Otto.

The floor beneath her feet was rough and uneven from the mineral deposits.

“This is the oldest tunnel,” Otto said, turning to address her. “It was built when the old Lincoln Baths went up. It used to carry mineral water from the old power house to the Lincoln Bathhouse. The Lincoln Bathhouse burned down in the fire. It used to be where the Hall of Springs is now.”

Directing the beam of the flashlight overhead, Otto pointed out the various pipes and their functions. The chief pipe was a large, insulated steam pipe that heated the spa in winter. Next to it in size was a new pipe that carried the heated mineral water to the Bath Pavilion.