The Last Resort (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (6 page)

BOOK: The Last Resort (A Kate Jasper Mystery)
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“Tell me about it,” I ordered. Now we were getting somewhere.

“But Suzanne was hypercritical of everyone,” Craig continued, ignoring my order. He looked into my eyes; then suddenly he was looking through me again.

“It’s hard to explain Suzanne,” he said softly. “Her father walked out on her and her mother when Suzanne was thirteen. He went back to Sweden. Then Suzanne’s mother proceeded to drink herself to death. When her mom died, Suzanne came up from L.A. to San Francisco. To live with her mother’s brother, Uncle Eli. Sometimes I wonder if Suzanne’s arguing and criticizing and complaining was really a bid for attention. Or for love. Acting out the adolescence she never had.” His eyes came back into focus slowly.

“That’s why I couldn’t just walk out on her,” he said, looking for sympathy in my eyes. “For all the garbage she threw at me, I-I still felt sorry for her. Can you understand that?”

I nodded. I was beginning to feel sorry for her myself. As well as for Craig, mired in ambivalence. But I wasn’t there to sympathize.

“Tell me how the people here at the spa felt about her,” I demanded.

“She wasn’t a big hit,” he said sourly. “She flirted with that poor kid Paul, drove him crazy. She made fun of Terry’s political idealism, told Bradley Beaumont he was a ‘loony’ to his face, called Jack on his ‘rock-promoter’ pose, drove Jack’s girlfriend nuts by flirting with him, and generally bitched and moaned to everyone who would listen.”

“About what?” I asked.

“About the food. About the inadequate company at the spa—meaning everyone here. About me. About her job. About her uncle. You name it.” Craig smiled a very tired, self-mocking smile. “This from the woman who was impressed by my positivism. Needless to say, I wasn’t very happy with her either.”

Just how unhappy had he been? I shook the question from my mind and asked a different one. “So, who did she really get to?”

He rested his chin on his hand and thought for a while before answering. “No one person more than anyone else,” he said finally. “No one that she made mad enough to kill her. Not that I could see.”

But someone must have. Craig saw the look in my eye.

“Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew? If I even had a suspicion?” he asked bitterly. “Let’s face it. The only other alternative is me.”

“But Bradley—” I began.

A whirring sound came toward us. I looked up and saw Don Logan in his wheelchair. Damn. Craig and I exchanged frustrated glances. With all the paths that webbed the spa grounds, how come everyone came down this one?

“Where can we talk in private?” I whispered, once Logan had passed.

“My room, or yours,” Craig said. His voice was soft and wistful.

“Does your room have paisley wallpaper?” I asked brusquely.

He shook his head.

“Yours,” I said.

“Nice room,” I commented a half-mile later. And it was. Craig’s new room was white with subtle peach and aqua accents. A framed poster of Monet’s restful “Poppy Field” was the only decoration. It even smelled fresher than my room. I sighed with envy.

On the long walk to his room Craig had advised me to get the history of Spa Santé from Fran. According to her, the psychedelic paisley in my room had been installed by the last owners, a cult that had restored most of the spa in 1970 and whose precepts included vegetarianism, spiritual practice and group sex. The usual formula for the early seventies. They had lasted close to three years before going under.

I sat down in a softly upholstered aqua easy chair and sighed once more.

“You could stay here,” Craig whispered. I looked at him and saw his puppy-dog eyes filled with longing. And pleading. Was he simply yearning for human companionship? Or was he pleading for the old conjugal pleasures?

“You mean we could switch rooms?” I asked, filling my voice with innocence. “I wouldn’t mind that.”

Hurt replaced the longing in his eyes. “Kate, you know what I—”

I cut him off. “Tell me about the body.”

“What?” said Craig, his head bouncing back as if he’d been slapped.

“Suzanne’s body. You found it. What did it look like?” Cruel, but effective. All vestiges of pleading were wiped from Craig’s face. The lines of tension had returned.

“I suppose you want it from the start,” he said.

I nodded. He sighed deeply, like a tired dog.

“Better you than Chief Orlandi again,” he muttered. Then he sat down on the end of the bed and took a big breath.

“The last time I saw Suzanne was around eight o’clock last night. Before that, we had eaten dinner in the dining hall. Everyone was there. Suzanne was complaining—same old stuff. If she had wanted health food, we could have stayed home. Where was the room service? And the wallpaper—we had one of the paisley rooms, they’re cheaper—why couldn’t I put out the money for one of the nicer rooms? She said she was sick of her job. Sick of uncontested divorces, DUI’s, adoptions, et cetera. Sick of Uncle Eli. Sick of me.”

“So, what did you say?”

Craig flushed. “I told her I was getting sick of her, too.” He looked down at his lap. “I may have yelled a little.”

Damn. I could imagine what he called yelling “a little.” When we were married, things would fall off the walls from the volume of his voice before he even noticed he had raised it. But he had never struck me. He wouldn’t have considered it. His violence had been limited to his mouth. It was heartening to remember that.

“Then what?” I asked.

“Then we came back to our room,” he answered glumly. “And argued some more.”

“About what?”

“Same old stuff. I told her she ought to be nicer, stop antagonizing people. She told me I wasn’t the man she had thought I was. I may have told her to…” His voice trailed off.

“To what?”

“To go fuck herself,” he answered in a small voice. He looked up at me, his eyes begging for understanding.

“Did you yell that too?” I asked.

“I suppose.”

Great. Had someone heard him? “So then what happened?”

“She got dressed to go jogging. She had already run her six miles that day, but she wanted to run some more. I offered to go with her. It was dark by then. But she said, ‘Don’t bother. You can’t keep up anyway.’ Which was true. I had never developed her speed. Or stamina. She put on her Reeboks and left.”

“And?”

“And…that was the last time I saw her alive. God, I wish I hadn’t yelled at her,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. “But she really was impossible. I didn’t know…” His words trailed off into a sob. He put his head into his hands and wept loudly, tears leaking through his fingers.

I went to the bathroom and found a box of Kleenex. I came back and handed it to Craig. He blew his nose loudly. Then he went on as if he had never stopped.

“So, I got out my
Computerworld
and read for a while. After a couple of hours had passed I began to worry, but I figured she was just staying out to bug me, so I pulled out
Inc
magazine and read it cover to cover. It was almost twelve o’clock by the time I finished it. I wasn’t sure whether to be mad or concerned. Suzanne hadn’t pulled this particular stunt before.

“I went out to look for her. The moon was almost full, so I could see fairly well. I walked the perimeter of the spa on the path that she usually ran. Nothing there. Then I went up and down all the paths, calling her name—not very loud because I knew I’d feel like an idiot if she was with someone else. The second time I passed this one open-air mud bath, I circled around and looked in the entrance. And I saw her. Her blond hair was shiny in the moonlight.

“I called out ‘Suzanne,’ and wondered what she was doing there. Then I noticed that there was something wrong with her body. It was face down…and crumpled. I moved closer. She looked…She looked like a cat had dragged her through gravel. Her shirt and shorts were shredded and dirty. Her legs had little cuts and scrapes all over them. Her neck looked wrong. And she wasn’t breathing.

“Then I bent down and touched her arm. Her skin wasn’t warm enough.”

He stopped speaking and stared into space with glassy eyes. I shivered.

“Craig,” I said gently after a few endless moments had passed.

His eyes came slowly into focus.

“Sorry,” he said softly and resumed his story. “I guess I panicked after I realized she was dead. I ran and knocked on the doors of the main building. You know the rest.”

“The police,” I prodded.

“Orlandi,” he whispered. He shook his head violently, as if clearing it of bad thoughts. Then he continued. “By the time it was daylight the coroners had taken Suzanne’s body away. Then Orlandi questioned me again. It went on forever.”

Craig looked up at me with a grey face. “Is that enough?” he asked wearily.

I wanted to say yes, but I had to know one more thing. “What killed Suzanne?” I asked.

He stared at me. “I don’t know. Nobody told me. She just looked…destroyed, that’s all.”

Craig stood up abruptly. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Let’s walk.”

So we left his nice room and went for a walk. Craig led the way up one path, then down another, with furiously pounding footsteps. I had to trot to keep up with him. Finally he stopped.

He pointed to a low circular brick wall, surrounded by yellow tape and crime-scene warning signs.

“This is the mud bath where I found her,” he said. “Maybe it will tell you something I can’t.”

I walked around the brick structure until I saw an opening. I could just see the top of the stairs that led down into the mud. The yellow tape kept me from getting close enough to see anything more. Even so, as I stared down my skin began to crawl. Suzanne had died here.

“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. For
death
is but a dream,” crooned a voice behind me.

 

FIVE

FOR ONE FRIGHTENING MOMENT I thought the singing behind me was Craig’s—that despair had finally driven him over the brink into madness.

But when I turned to look behind me, I saw another man. He was tall, slender and handsome, his face lit up by large, glowing eyes. The kind of eyes you sometimes see on movie stars. Eyes where the whites show beneath the irises, as if to highlight their radiance. Eyes that can look incredibly erotic. Or insane, depending on the circumstances.

“Or is life a dream? And death merely the awakening?” he asked the air whimsically. No, his eyes did not look erotic.

I didn’t answer his inquiry. It didn’t seem to be directed at me. Instead, I looked a question at Craig, who had circled around the mud bath after me.

“Bradley Beaumont,” Craig mouthed soundlessly, and tapped his head in the age-old gesture indicating insanity. Nice timing. Now he admits Bradley is insane.

“Maybe we aren’t even the dreamers, but the dreamed,” Bradley commented. He smiled. “Have you ever wondered?” His luminous eyes looked directly into mine with the last question.

“No, I haven’t given it a lot of thought,” I answered. Years ago, working in the mental hospital, I had acquired the habit of answering such questions honestly.

“That’s okay,” he assured me. “They only act out my dreams anyway.”

“Ah,” I said. True, the border between sane and insane is not always clear. But Bradley’s reference to the all-knowing “they” stamped his border pass as far as I was concerned.

Bradley Beaumont bowed slightly, like a proper Japanese businessman, then walked away. As he walked away, he let out his high-pitched cackle.

I fixed my gaze on Craig. “Does he act like that all the time?” I asked.

“Most of the times I’ve met him,” Craig admitted. “Though I’ve seen him act normal. More than normal. Charming, intelligent, witty. Perceptive, even. He seems to change from day to day.”

“You could have told me all this before. Bradley is more than ‘a little bit strange,’ damn it.”

“I don’t think he’s actually crazy.” Craig said defensively. “Not the violent type, anyway.”

He had a point. If all crazy people were murderers, there would be a hell of a lot more murders. But still, Fran’s husband, Bradley, was a possibility in my book.

“So what did the police think of Bradley?” I asked hopefully.

“How would I know?” Craig whined. “They don’t tell me what they think. Remember, Bradley can act pretty together when he feels like it. They probably don’t even realize.”

“Someone must have told them about his loon routine,” I argued. “Ruth Ziegler, if no one else. Isn’t she a psychologist or something?” Craig nodded. “She would have to have noticed. And I can’t imagine her not telling the police. Or Terry—though maybe not. Informing isn’t politically correct. But Jack might have. He’s got a big enough mouth.” I looked into Craig’s worried eyes. “Don’t you see? Even if Bradley isn’t our murderer, his lunacy has got to squeeze you down a slot on the police suspect list.”

“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully.

Then I remembered. “Didn’t you say Suzanne called Bradley a loony to his face?” I asked.

Craig nodded.

“Well,” I prodded. “How did he react?”

BOOK: The Last Resort (A Kate Jasper Mystery)
3.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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