Bree took a long pull of her milk shake, then lifted the straw and licked it clean. “So?”
“Well, it reminded me that the night of the luau, Finn was giving me the skinny on what was going on at the party. He said JoAnne Simms called Brittanie a little whore.”
Bree swirled her straw in her shake. “Do you think Brittanie had an affair with Garrett Simms?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“That’s sort of gross.” Bree scrunched up her nose. “Garrett Simms is kind of gross.”
I winced at the mental image of Brittanie with Garrett Simms, an oddly pear-shaped man with a wild thatch of curly red hair that crept down his neck and peeped up all the way around his shirt collar, like an Elizabethan ruff. I hated to be unkind, but the man was a yeti.
“Gross or not, he’s JoAnne’s husband. And JoAnne is the alpha-bitch of the Junior League set.” Her parents had run the jewelry store on Dalliance’s downtown square for years, and they left their lucrative business to their only daughter. JoAnne had grown up privileged, was still filthy rich, and unlike most of the women in her circle, she held the purse strings in her family.
“I imagine JoAnne is used to getting her own way,” I added, “and it sounds like she didn’t take kindly to some little chippie poaching her husband.” I spooned up a little Black Irish. It slid down my throat like frozen silk, the alcohol leaving a glowing warmth in its wake.
Bree propped an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. Her eyes sparkled with wicked mischief. “Oh, my,” she purred. “You know, I’ve been to a mess of Wayne’s Weed and Seed picnics, and they were never any fun at all. Then this year, you leave me to mind the store, and all hell breaks loose. I can’t believe I missed it.”
I licked my spoon clean. “I promise you, it’s only interesting in retrospect. That night, it was just the usual petty bickering. Boring. It only seems exciting now because of, well, what happened after.”
Bree waggled her fingers and made spooky woo-woo noises. “Because it was Brittanie Brinkman’s last night on earth,” she said in a deep midnight-movie voice.
I covered my face with my hands and groaned. “Yes,” I said through my fingers. “But let’s show a little respect for the dead.”
Bree chuckled humorously. “Why? It’s starting to sound like Brittanie didn’t show a whole lot of respect for the sanctity of holy matrimony. Like maybe her relationship with Wayne wasn’t a fluke.”
And, I thought, like maybe JoAnne Simms had a motive for murder.
“Hey, Bree,” I said, “any chance you could open the store tomorrow morning?”
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I suppose so. Why?”
“Because tomorrow I’m going to dig that free pass to the Lady Shapers gym out of the pile of junk mail and use my sweatpants for their God-given purpose.”
While most strip malls are as socially stratified as high school lunchrooms, Lantana Plaza offered a hodgepodge of businesses that ran the gamut from designer to discount. One of Wayne’s associates once described the shopping center as “in transition,” though it hadn’t grown noticeably more upscale or downscale in a good fifteen years. Lantana Plaza seemed stranded in some sort of retail limbo.
The Lady Shapers Fitness Center, Lantana Plaza’s most recent newcomer, nestled between the rich people’s Albertson’s grocery store, which sold individually shrink-wrapped onions and boasted an olive bar, and a giant Hobby Lobby, filled with wood-burning kits and scrapbooking supplies. I had shopped at both the Albertson’s and the Hobby Lobby, but I’d never braved the Lady Shapers.
Tinted film emblazoned with the Lady Shapers logo—a curvy goddesslike silhouette with a tape measure draped around her impossibly narrow waist—covered the shop-front windows, providing privacy to the center’s customers. The privileged women of Dalliance didn’t pay more than a thousand dollars a year in membership fees to let other people watch them sweat.
I hitched my duffel bag up on my shoulder and took a steadying breath before pulling open the glass door and entering the plush, carpeted lounge. Inside, fiber-art wall hangings in shades of gray and rose softened the stark white walls behind the chrome-and-glass reception desk. The high-end-hippie scent of aromatherapy massage oils almost completely masked the smell of fried chicken from the Albert-son’s deli.
Were it not for the zippy instrumental version of a Motown hit blaring over the speakers and competing with the rhythmic squeak of churning elliptical machines, I might have thought I’d stepped into a spa rather than a gym.
“Welcome to Lady Shapers. May I help you?” The perky girl behind the reception desk was torqued a little too tight to be a spa employee. She sat ramrod straight, her taut body thrumming with barely leashed energy. The blond ponytail high on her crown bounced as she stood, clipboard in hand, ready to tackle whatever I threw her way.
“I have a coupon for a free trial membership.”
“Awesome! Did that come in the mail or in the Sunday supplement of the News-Letter?”
“The mail,” I answered, handing her the post-card.
“Awesome! I just need you to fill out these little forms here and have you sign the liability waiver, and then we’ll get you set up.” She clipped a sheaf of papers to the clipboard and handed it to me. “Just fill out what you can and sign by all the yellow sticky flags. I’m Ashley, if you need anything!”
By the time I got done releasing Lady Shapers and FitFab, Inc., from responsibility for everything from heart attack to fungal infections to something called “body dysmorphic disorder,” Ashley had donned a telephone headset and was chirping animatedly to someone named Heather.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh, awesome! Yeah. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah. Awesome! Oh, totally!” She scrunched up her nose and held up a finger to let me know she’d be just a moment.
While I pretended to study a flyer about personal trainers to avoid the appearance of eavesdropping, I sent up a silent thank-you to whatever divine force had spared me and Bree from a bubblehead like Ashley. Alice Anders might be a raging mass of angst and anxiety, with a smart mouth and a stubborn streak wider than a mile, but at least she could carry on an adult conversation. If I had to listen to syrupy proclamations of awesomeness all the live-long day, I would have to kill myself.
“Awesome. Yeah, last weekend was lame. There was nothing going on. I spent all weekend updating my profile. Superboring.”
I had no idea what sort of profile she might be updating, and I made a mental note to ask Alice. But I knew all about boring, and a “superboring” weekend sounded like pure heaven.
“So let’s totally do something for Halloween. Awesome. I gotta go. Awesome. Bye.”
The peppy receptionist slipped her headset off and took the clipboard from my hands. She flipped through the papers before smiling up at me. “Well, Mrs. Jones, welcome to Lady Shapers. Let me show you around.”
She sprang up from her chair and trotted ahead of me. I followed at a more sedate pace, marveling at the bare legs extending from the bottoms of her tiny Lycra shorts. Muscles popped from her calves with startling definition. Her legs were sculpted, rounded with muscle, but without an ounce of spare flesh on them. Never in all my born days had I had legs that perfect.
As we moved into the first room full of exercise equipment, I caught a glance of my own pudgy form in the mirrors that lined the walls. I tugged my fleece hoodie closer around my body and crossed my arms over my chest.
“So, Mrs. Jones, what can Lady Shapers do for you?”
I shrugged. “I guess I’d like to get a little more fit. You know, just get in shape.”
“Awesome! No matter where you start, we can help you achieve your goals. And at Lady Shapers, we always say it’s never too late to get in shape.”
Apparently the Lady Shapers staff didn’t emphasize tact in their staff training. I might have kissed my twenties good-bye when Ashley was still in grade school, but I was hardly old. And I was certainly younger than a lot of the carefully pruned and proc
essed ladies I saw huffing away on the bikes and stair-steppers that lined the perimeter of the room.
In fact, there was one knot of women—JoAnne Simms, Jackie Conway, whose husband owned the big Chrysler-Pontiac-Jeep dealership off the interstate, and Trish Paolino, a wealthy widow who moved home to Dalliance after her octogenarian husband passed—who were in their thirties or early forties, but the handful of other women huffing and puffing were significantly older.
“As you can see, this is our cardio room. We have the very latest machines, with digital readouts of your heart rate, calories burned, the works.” She paused so I could adequately appreciate all the gym had to offer.
“We strongly encourage our clients to stay hydrated while they exercise,” she continued. “You can bring water, of course, but we recommend Vigor, our own house brand of sports drink. It comes in a bunch of flavors, it’s got zero calories, and it’s loaded with electrolytes and vitamins. We have a vending machine”—she waved in the direction of a brightly lit machine filled with bottles in all the colors of the rainbow—“and our members can order it by the case for home consumption. You can’t buy it in stores, so that’s a real perk of membership.”
I didn’t see how the opportunity to give Lady Shapers even more money was a perk. But apparently the women who joined did, including Brittanie Brinkman. Finn had told me that Wayne had given Brittanie a bottle of electric green Vigor the night she died, and it sounded as though that might have been how she drank the poison.
If the cases of Vigor were distributed through the Lady Shapers, that meant that the staff, and maybe the members, would have access to the stuff. Any of them could have poisoned Brittanie’s bottles.
I looked over at JoAnne Simms. She wore a body-hugging dark green tracksuit, and her shiny mahogany hair, held away from her face with tiny jeweled clips, looked freshly set despite the sheen of perspiration she was blotting from her face. Her tiny hips swung from side to side as she strode purposefully on the treadmill, her arms pumping vigorously, as she listened to Trish Paolino gabbing away from the machine next to her.
As I watched, JoAnne reached out to pluck a bottle of electric green Vigor from the cup holder on her treadmill, twisted off the cap, and took a deep drink.
JoAnne Simms. Motive? Check. Means? Check. Opportunity? Maybe. But a strong maybe.
chapter 12
“Let’s go check out our strength-training equipment,” Ashley said, breaking me from my study of JoAnne Simms. She bounced up a short flight of stairs, and I trudged along behind her. “I saw you checking out the personal trainer information. Our trainers are the best,” she gushed. “You should really think about setting up some sessions. They can help you with your form, and you’ll get results a lot faster.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.” About the same time I strut through the streets of Dalliance buck naked, I thought.
“Oh, geez. How many times . . .” Ashley stomped over to a mess of huge inflatable rubber balls littering the floor between the massive white weight machines. With a dramatic sigh, she picked one up and racked it on two low parallel bars that ran the length of one wall. “Sorry about this. Clients and staff are supposed to rack the ab balls after they use them. It’s not usually so messy in here.”
“Don’t worry about it. Let me help.”
As Ashley and I both bent down to pick up balls, I caught a glimpse of something shiny at her throat. A pendant on a delicate gold chain. Three Greek letters stacked one atop another.
I didn’t go to college, but I lived in a college town most of my life, and I recognized that particular trio of letters. Zeta Eta Chi, Brittanie’s sorority.
Before I had a chance to talk myself out of it, I pounced. “Are you a Zeta?” I asked.
Ashley looked up at me with wide, vacuous eyes. “Huh? Oh, yeah.” She smiled, the first genuine expression I’d seen from her. “Are you a Zeta, too?”
“Me? No. But one of my friends was. If you’re a student here at Dickerson, you might have known her. Brittanie Brinkman?”
I held my breath as I waited for her reaction.
One thing I can tell you, Little Miss Ashley from the Lady Shapers shouldn’t play poker. A series of emotions flitted across her face in rapid succession, each one as clear as the October sky.
Her eyes widened to the point you could see the whites all around her irises. Then her brows came crashing back down, and her upper lip twitched, before her mouth flattened and widened. Ashley knew Brittanie, but she didn’t like her very much. And she felt guilty for thinking ill of the dead.
And then it was gone. The real Ashley disappeared again behind a bland mask of polite, professional concern.
“Yeah. Miss Brinkman was a member here and really active in Zeta alum events.” She racked another ball. “But she was a few years ahead of me, so I didn’t know her well. She was totally awesome. It’s a real tragedy.”
Right. Maybe Ashley would make a better poker player than I thought, because she told the lie like a champ. Brittanie wasn’t just a distant sorority sister. According to my intel, Brittanie spent hours every day at the Lady Shapers. Ashley had to know her.
Rather than call her on the lie, though, I decided to play along.
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t have known her well. I was trying to think if I’d seen you at the funeral, but I couldn’t place you.”
Ashley grimaced at me over the top of a massive fuchsia orb. “No. I wanted to go, of course. We’re all sisters in Zeta Eta Chi. But I had a big family thing last weekend.”
Except I had just heard Ashley tell the mysterious Heather that she’d been “superbored” and spent the whole weekend “updating her profile.”
“Ashley, honey, leave one of those big ol’ balls out for me.”
Ashley and I both yelped in surprise.
Deena Silver, resplendent in a turquoise jogging suit and blinding white athletic shoes, her voluminous auburn curls held away from her face with bejeweled hair clips, stood by an elaborate weight-lifting contraption. A hot pink MP3 player no bigger than a book of matches was clipped to the collar of her jacket and the leads for a tiny pair of ear buds hung around her neck. She braced her hands against the machine and stretched up on her tippy toes, loosening her leg muscles.
“Sure thing, Miz Silver,” Ashley said. She chuckled nervously. “You gave me quite a start.”
“Sorry, sugar. I just finished suiting up.” Deena jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of another doorway, where the durable indoor-outdoor carpeting and grass-cloth wall coverings gave way to antiseptic white tile on the walls and floors.
“Hey, Tally.” Deena raised one elbow up near her ear, twisted the other arm behind her, and waggled the fingers of her two hands as though she were trying to get them to meet up in the middle of her back. “I didn’t know you were a member,” she said through a grimace of effort.
“I’m not,” I answered. “I’m just checking the place out. Ashley was showing me around.”
Deena relaxed and gave me a big smile. “Well, why don’t I finish the tour, and we can let Ashley get back to business.”
I smothered a sigh of frustration. I wanted to learn more about Brittanie, and Ashley—who knew her and was lying about it—seemed like a good lead. But I could hardly decline Deena’s offer. “Sounds great,” I said.
“You heard the woman, Ashley. Scoot!” Deena playfully waved the younger woman away.
Ashley narrowed her eyes and looked back and forth between us. She looked as though she thought we might be tricking her somehow. But finally she flashed us a tight smile. “Let me know if you need anything, Miz Jones. Enjoy your workout.”
Deena watched Ashley go, then strolled over to a stretch of floor mat. With a groan, she lowered herself to the ground. “Ooof. Hope you don’t mind being saved.” She waved me toward a padded weight bench, where I took a seat, letting my duffel bag fall by my feet. “Ashley’s welcome tours usually end with sweat and calipers.” She gave me a saucy wink. “Y
ou don’t look like the caliper type.”
I shuddered. “No, I’m definitely not. Thanks.”
She stretched out flat on her back. “No reason you can’t learn from my mistakes.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I hate it here.”
“So why did you join?” I asked.
One lushly lashed eye popped open. “My husband gave me the membership as an anniversary gift last summer. Sweet, huh? He said that he’d take me to Cabo for our anniversary next year if I spent an hour at the gym three days a week.” She grunted. “He’s a real ass sometimes, but I do love the beach.”
She heaved herself onto her side and pulled the last remaining ab ball toward herself, then flopped back into a supine position. “I come like clockwork, three days every week. But I lay here with an ab ball between my knees and just chill. If someone comes through, I make a show of raising the ball with my knees.”
I found myself liking Deena Silver more and more. “Don’t you get bored?”
She chuckled. “Sometimes I fall asleep. We call that ‘meditating in a corpse pose.’ I’m very spiritual, after all.” She raised her hands and used the fingers of her right hand to point out a piece of red yarn tied around her left wrist. I’d seen something about that in one of Bree’s fashion magazines. Lots of stars wore them as mystical lucky charms.
She fixed me with a penetrating gaze. “You won’t tell, will you?”
I held up my right hand in a three-fingered salute. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
She laughed again, a sound as rich as warm dulce de leche. “Something tells me you were never a scout, Tally Jones.”
“Nah. No one gave me merit badges for sewing my clothes or cooking my food. Besides, my mama didn’t raise any fools. I wasn’t going to sell anything door-to-door unless I got a cut.”
Deena stared at me wide-eyed for a moment, and I thought maybe I’d gone too far. After all, I barely knew the woman. Heck, for all I knew, she’d been a scout her whole life and had a keepsake album full of merit badges. But then a deep, rolling wave of laughter sputtered to the surface, and pretty soon, we were both howling.
I Scream, You Scream Page 9