Murder at the Spa (7 page)

“Okay.” It sounded wonderful. “Where are you from?” she asked.

“Budapest.” Hilda explained that she was a refugee of the 1956 revolution, one of many to whom Paulina had given jobs. For twenty years, she had worked as a maid at the Chicago salon. But when the spa opened, she had moved east. She came from a long line of bath attendants. In Hungary, she explained, spa jobs were passed along from mother to daughter.

Raising herself onto one knee, she gestured for Charlotte to step into the tub. Above her hemline, Charlotte could see the bulge of flesh that overflowed the thickly rolled top of her cotton lisle stocking.

Charlotte removed her robe and gingerly dipped a foot in the water. Hilda supported her, gripping her tightly by her upper arm.

“Your arms are strong.”

“Ja,”
said Hilda. She flexed her biceps like a body builder. “Very strong. In Budapest, the spas are used for physical therapy—cripples, amputees. The attendants have to be strong to lift them in and out of the tub. Is too hot, the water?” She checked the bathometer that bobbed on the water’s surface. It read ninety-four point five. She explained that the temperature of a mineral water bath is lower than that of an ordinary bath because the water feels hotter. “The bubbles are insulation,” she said. “If you want, I can adjust.”

“No, thank you,” said Charlotte, gently lowering herself into the water. She liked her bath water hot. “It’s fine.”

The tub was recessed a foot or more below the level of the floor. Sinking into it, she found herself up to her chin in the warm, effervescent water.

Hilda had disappeared into the bathroom. She returned momentarily with a white plastic pillow, which she placed under Charlotte’s head, and a linen hand towel, which she floated on the water under Charlotte’s nose.

“What’s the towel for?”

“The gas,” replied Hilda. “The carbon dioxide; it can make you woozy.” She revolved her head in a circle, her eyes rolled upward. Then she leaned over to dip her hand in the water. “The temperature, is okay?”

Charlotte nodded.

“Would you like a glass of mineral water? Is good to drink the mineral water in the bath—you don’t get dehydrated.”

Charlotte replied that she would, and Hilda shuffled off to fetch a glass of High Rock water from the fountain in the lobby.

The bath was incredibly soothing. The waters of High Rock spa were unique, she had read. Not only were they among the most highly mineralized in the world, they were also the most effervescent. The waters emerged from the earth supersaturated with carbon dioxide gas. During a bath, the carbon dioxide penetrated the skin, dilating the capillaries and relieving pressure on the heart. The result was supposed to be a deep feeling of relaxation.

Hilda returned with the glass of water and handed it to Charlotte. “I come back in fifteen minutes,” she said, and left.

Charlotte leaned back, glass in hand. Her body was totally sheathed in tiny iridescent bubbles; they made her skin tingle. She felt like the swizzle stick in a giant champagne cocktail. Every time she moved, clouds of bubbles floated to the surface. The water was unexpectedly buoyant. Her hands and feet floated as if they were made of rubber. Noticing a toe hole at the end of the tub, she tucked her toes under it to keep them from rising. Then she set down her glass and surrendered herself to the waters. For a while, she thought about the spa, then about her work, and finally about nothing at all. Sounds too faded from her consciousness. At first, she heard the sound of splashing in the next cubicle. Then the dull thud of a door closing and the light tread of footsteps. After that, only the gentle murmur of bubbles breaking on the water’s surface and the soft sough of her breath.

She dozed off, soothed by the massage of a million tiny bubbles.

It was the sensation of cold that awakened her. Fifteen minutes had surely elapsed, but Hilda hadn’t returned. She waited awhile, and then decided to get out of the tub. She was drying herself when she heard a door slam. The slam was followed by the sound of someone running down the hall. And then more footsteps, a general commotion. From the next cubicle came the anxious murmur of voices. She heard someone in the hall ask: “What happened?” And then other voices: “Is she all right?” and “Has someone called a doctor?” She quickly threw on her robe and opened the door. A small cluster “of white-uniformed staff members and white-robed guests stood solemnly outside the cubicle adjoining hers. At the front was Hilda, her yellow Tartar eyes gleaming with the thrill of calamity. A worried-looking Mrs. Murray stood with her arms outstretched in front of the door like a school crossing guard.

As they stood there, a young man in a white lab coat appeared at the far end of the hall. Charlotte recognized him as Frannie’s husband, Dana. Behind him came two other men in white lab coats. They were carrying an olive-green metal case of the type used for storing oxygen equipment. All three were walking rapidly, almost running. As they reached the end of the corridor, their pace slowed and the onlookers parted silently to let them through. Then they disappeared into the cubicle with Mrs. Murray.

Spotting Corinne’s pale profile, Charlotte edged her way through the crowd to her side. “Do you know what’s going on?” she asked.

“It’s Adele,” she replied. “They think she’s drowned.”

4

Charlotte found out what the Terrain Cure was the next morning. It was a series of walks at increasing gradients. The idea was to start with the most gradual grade and move up to the steeper grades as your spa stay progressed. The Terrain Cure route began on the esplanade and headed down a wooded path to the Vale of Springs, a gorge that followed the fissure in the earth’s crust through which the mineral waters escaped to the surface. At the base of the gorge, the route joined a winding stream and followed if for some distance before turning back up the hill toward the esplanade. It was on the ascent that the Terrain Cure routes varied. The most difficult route ascended via a steep ravine nicknamed Heartbreak Hill after the famous hill in the Boston Marathon. All three groups began with the easiest route, the difference being the pace at which they took it—the A’s at a run, the B’s at a jog, and the C’s at a brisk walk. At regular intervals, participants paused to take their pulses at benches that were provided in scenic spots for this purpose. The aim was to reach, but not exceed, a target heart rate. When a certain fitness level was achieved, participants moved up to the next grade, an accomplishment that earned them a merit pin for the lapels of their sweat suits.

The idea of the Terrain Cure was explained by a muscular young man named Jerry D’Angelo, who then jogged his charges slowly around the esplanade in close-order drill formation (it was this that Charlotte had witnessed the day before) before sending them off down the hill. Charlotte had risen at six in order to drink two glasses of High Rock water at six-thirty, take Awake and Aware at seven, and eat breakfast at seven-thirty. By the time Terrain Cure rolled around at eight, she felt as if she’d already put in a day’s work. As did Art, her comrade in white. They brought up the rear of the two-by-two formation. By now they were fast friends, having shared a table at dinner the night before, glum meal that it was. They had both been shaken by Adele’s death. Dr. Sperry, who had arrived on the scene shortly after Charlotte, had unofficially attributed the cause of death to drowning subsequent to a drug overdose. He had tried unsuccessfully to revive her. As had the ambulance crew that arrived not long afterward. Her body had been taken away, and that was that. Where had the body been taken to? Would there be a funeral? Who would make the arrangements—the friend who had paid for her spa stay? Charlotte knew next to nothing about Adele—not even where she was from. Her death was strange in that respect; it was as if she had just been spirited away in the night.

With Adele gone, the only other C left (she didn’t count Corinne, who hadn’t shown up yet anyway) was Nicky, who’d already fallen so far behind the group that he might as well be considered a dropout. As the group headed down the path toward the Vale of Springs, they had left Nicky circling the esplanade for the first time. “At least,” said Art, “we’re not D.F.L.” It was, he explained, with apologies for the language, a sailing term for dead fucking last. Charlotte smiled; without Nicky, they would have been D.F.L. for sure. They were walking briskly along a broad flagstone-paved path bordering Geyser Stream, a winding, boulder-strewn ribbon of green that gurgled under bridges and through pine glades to its terminus at Geyser Lake. Ahead was the spring from which the stream took its name: the Island Spouter, a geyser that spouted twenty feet into the air from the center of an island formed of the same mineral as the rock at High Rock Spring. Drawing near a bench overlooking the geyser, they stopped to take their pulses. Or rather, Charlotte stopped to take her pulse, Art sat with his head hanging between his knees, gasping.

Charlotte hadn’t realized he was in such bad shape. His appearance was alarming. “Are you all right?” she asked.

He removed his baseball cap, revealing a bald spot like a monk’s tonsure. “I will be in a minute. Jesus,” he said, his voice tense with frustration. “I can’t even take a damned walk.” After a minute, he went on: “Every time a pain hits my chest, I think it’s the big one. But do you think I’ve done a damned thing about it? Nope. I’ve just been sitting around on my fat ass.”

“You’re here,” said Charlotte. “That’s doing something about it.” Charlotte herself was, as Anne-Marie had put it, communicating with her body. If communication with her body had been only intermittent before, it was now all too continual. Her legs ached and her lungs felt as if they were on fire.

Art looked up. “Did that crippled masseuse give you the ‘your body is a temple, but you treat it like a hotel room’ bit?”

Charlotte nodded.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve decided she’s right. I’ve been treating my body like a hotel room, or rather a motel room: the kind that rents for fifteen bucks a night, the kind that’s out on a highway in the Southwest somewhere, with holes punched in the doors and cracks in the mirror.”

Charlotte laughed. “I know the kind you mean. A blinking neon sign out front and motorcycles riding by all night long.”

Art looked up at her with his navy blue eyes. “You’ve got it. Scheduled for demolition. New highway project coming through.”

“Maybe it’s time to move up to better quarters. Why don’t you try the Ritz? You deserve it.”

He shook his head. “The Ritz. Why not the Ritz?”

For a few minutes they sat in silence, catching their breaths. Every three minutes the geyser erupted, shooting a white plume of mineral water into the deep blue sky.

After a while, Art spoke: “The preliminary coroner’s report is in on Adele. It’s official—drowning as the result of an accidental overdose. Barbiturates—apparently the concentration in her blood was sky-high.”

Charlotte nodded. She wasn’t surprised. She remembered how Adele had looked when she left Dr. Sperry’s office.

“Apparently she was carrying a drugstore around with her.”

“Her security box.”

“What?”

“She carried around this plastic box filled with pills. She called it her security box.” She looked over at him. “How did you find out?”

“Jerry told me before class. He used to be a homicide detective—in New York. I guess he has connections with the local police. He talked with the coroner’s office last night.” He shook his head. “Poor gal.”

“It seems so unfair,” said Charlotte. “She was just getting her life pulled together.” She felt a tug at the back of her throat. “She told me that she’d licked the booze and was about to start working on the pills.”

“She was moving up to better accommodations,” said Art. He looked up and smiled, blinking away the tears that had risen in his deep blue eyes. “I hardly knew her,” he added, as if mystified at his reaction.

“Want a hanky?” She offered him a tissue from her pocket.

“Thanks.”

They were both blowing their noses when a small pack of A’s reached the foot of the path. It was their second time around. The Role Model was in the lead. He ran with the springy stride of the trained athlete.

Ignoring Art and Charlotte, the group ran past, depositing Jerry in its wake. “We were wondering what happened to you two,” he said. He was jogging in place. “Come on,” he gestured. “Up and at ’em.”

He had a wide grin, which the dimples in his round cheeks and the slight gap between his front teeth couldn’t help but make appealing.

Art groaned. “Okay, coach,” he said, rising reluctantly to his feet.

Charlotte and Art completed the rest of the course at a gentle pace. By the time they got back up to the esplanade, it was already a quarter past nine. Charlotte headed directly back to her room, where she showered and changed for her ten o’clock appointment with Paulina. At five of, she was riding the glass elevator up to the penthouse that doubled as Paulina’s office when she was in residence at the spa. Back when she was starting out, Paulina had always lived “over the shop.” She prided herself on the fact that she still did, at least part of the time. Her apartments in London, Paris, and Rome were all located above Langenberg salons, in buildings that she owned.

Upon leaving the elevator, Charlotte was accosted by a taciturn guard who allowed her to pass into the foyer, where she was greeted by Paulina’s secretary, a young man named Jack whom Charlotte had met before. Jack was the latest in a long line of handsome young protégés. He had been with Paulina for four years, an achievement that was extraordinary in light of the fact that the usual term of service was only a few months. In fact, he had more than once been banished to publicity—the gulag for out-of-favor Langenberg employees—but he always managed to work himself back info Paulina’s good graces. Tall and elegant, he wore beautiful clothes that were always a bit threadbare—Paulina was not known for her generous salaries.

The apartment was small. In fact, it was the smallest of Paulina’s residences, but it was also one of her favorites on account of the magnificent view of the Adirondacks, which today glowed like amethysts against the deep blue sky. The decoration was opulent: rose-colored silk wallpaper, an exuberantly patterned carpet in a water lily design, leopard print upholstery. The wall space that wasn’t taken up by windows was hung with art. At first glance, Charlotte recognized works of Picasso, Matisse, and Braque, as well as a stunning Bonnard pastoral and a Renoir portrait. There was also sculpture—a streamlined Brancusi bird, an abstract Lipchitz figure, and, in a bronze and glass room divider, a collection of African masks.