The door to the yoga center was held ajar with a chunk of brick, so we walked right in, finding ourselves in a small square room with no one to greet us. There was a class schedule posted on the wall, and a metal box for self-service payment on a little wooden table. We pushed through a curtained entry into a mudroom filled with jackets hung from hooks and slipped off our shoes in obedience to a posted sign.
A second set of curtains a few steps down led into a big, bright space, and we found ourselves in the yoga studio. A dozen students in tights and shorts had positioned themselves on thin mats rolled flat on the pine floor. The room was stiflingly hot, smelling of incense and acrid, curry-infused sweat. A row of tall, narrow windows allowed a wash of light into a vast space that otherwise lacked illumination—of the electrical kind, at any rate. Sitar music played softly in the background.
A slender thirtyish man faced the class, dressed in a robe of coarsely woven blue and green madras. His hair, sun-bleached and gleaming like corn silk, was twisted into a man bun. He exchanged a few whispered words with one of his students, then glanced at the clock on the wall.
I grabbed Gail’s arm. “That’s our guy. Let’s catch him before class starts.”
We threaded our way through the bodies on the floor until we reached him. He now stood quietly, eyes closed, hands pressed together at his breastbone, his breathing deep and even.
“Neville Woods?” I said, my volume low in keeping with the whole mise-en-scène.
He opened his eyes a crack. “Shanti,” he said, in a voice soft as dandelion fluff. “That’s my name here.”
“We need to talk to you. About your stepmother.”
“There’s nothing I can tell you.” He inhaled gently through his nose, exhaling in a long sigh that barely fluttered his lips.
“Please. It’ll just take a minute.”
He stretched his hands toward the ceiling. The sleeves of his robe slid to his elbows, revealing tanned forearms covered with downy golden hair, soft as a baby chick’s. Sweeping his arms down in a wide circle, he let them drop by his sides, fingers pointed at the floor. “Class is about to begin. There are a couple of spare mats there in the corner. We might be able to talk during Reflection.”
“I don’t—” I stopped, because Gail was standing on my foot.
“Fine,” she said.
As we retrieved the mats, I whispered, “I don’t get why people keep pushing frickin’ yoga on me.”
“Because you’re so uptight. I took some postnatal classes when the girls were babies. Nothing to it. Just wait. You’ll feel like a new woman.”
“We’ll look like idiots.” Again.
“Speak for yourself. You want to talk to this dude, or what?”
I shot her a desperate look. She, at least, was dressed for the part in soft, stretchy cotton pants and an oversized T-shirt. I wore my usual jeans, freshly shrunk in a hot dryer and covered in dog hair. But what the hell. I gave in.
We found a vacant patch of floor for our mats at the back of the room. Neville—no, Shanti—turned up the sitar music and dropped his robe. “Namaste,” he said.
“Namaste,” the class echoed, their hands pressed together at their breasts like little church steeples.
“Surya Namaskar. The sun salutation.”
Everyone closed their eyes. That is, everyone but me and Gail. Shanti was wearing nothing but a pair of formfitting black knit boxers, with a knot in front as though he had a statuette of the Buddha secreted in there. He was lean and well-muscled, with a nicely tapered chest covered in blond curlicues through which two small dark nipples peeked. Gail’s eyes started to glaze over, and she may have moaned.
“Hey!” I hissed. “Salute the damn sun!”
She snapped her hands together. “I think I just found enlightenment.”
“You’re married,” I muttered, as we raised our arms over our heads.
“Married doesn’t mean dead.”
We stumbled through a few basic moves, copying our neighbors in a clumsy attempt to keep up. The room grew steamy with heat and sweat, Shanti’s body glistening as he took us through Tree, Bird in Tree, Stork, Stork Taking Wing, and a host of other poses whose names I quickly forgot. My jeans clung damply to my legs, and Gail’s beet-red face was bathed in perspiration.
“I don’t feel so hot,” she whispered.
“Suck it up, Nancy Drew,” I hissed back. Hot was all I could feel. I was melting.
Shanti sank gracefully into a sitting position, hands resting lightly on his knees, and the class followed suit. “Let your breath be as the tides of the ocean, flowing in, ebbing out,” he intoned. “Seal your practice on the exhale.”
“Ommm,” the class chanted. I chimed in just a hair too late, and thought I heard a snicker from the far corner of the room.
As one, we ebbed, flowed, chanted. Between tides, I peeked at Gail. She’d gone from pink to pasty, one hand clutching at her stomach. Her mouth moved on the exhale, but I could tell she was lip-synching her Om.
“Br-e-a-th-e in. That’s right. Now exhale deeply. Feel the tide of your breath carry away any tension, negativity, fear. See them go beyond the edge of the horizon. You’re in a safe place. Now inhale. Deeply, all the way to your coccyx.”
“Not there,” Gail whimpered.
“Shhh!” I focused on inhaling all the way to my coccyx.
“Reflection,” Shanti said. “You are the sand of the shore, watching the water flow and recede around and over you. Close your eyes and let your mind be calm, your inner thoughts filled with peace and serenity.”
Gail squeezed her eyes shut. As she did, a spasm distorted her face, and I actually heard the discordant symphony of her innards, like an orchestra of deranged woodwinds. I closed my eyes, but not all the way. Through my lashes, I saw Shanti making the rounds through the field of bodies, touching one gently here, whispering encouragement there. He was headed our way.
Gail clutched my arm. “I gotta find the ladies’ room.”
“Don’t go yet. Our suspect’s approaching.”
“Shit!” she said. The man next to her shot us a dirty look.
Shanti circled behind us and leaned down low to whisper, effortlessly balanced on the balls of his feet. “My stepmother and I were estranged.”
I opened my eyes. “But she left everything to you in her will.”
He grimaced. “Everything of nothing is still nothing. My dad says she’s cleaned out her assets, and whatever of his she could get her hands on, like she was getting ready to blow town. Now she’s dead. They co-owned the house, so he still has that, but it’s mortgaged to the hilt. He’s hardly been in touch with her since they split.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“Christmas. Just for an hour or two. I couldn’t be around her negative energy. Her chakras were, like, totally fucked up.”
“Any idea who killed her?” Gail said.
He shook his head. “All I know? She was in a dark place, man.”
He rolled to his feet in one easy motion. “Be present now,” he said to the class as a whole, making his way to the front of the room. “Shift your minds and bodies to Tabletop.”
Everyone moved to their hands and knees. Gail and I scrambled off our butts and did the same.
“Feel grounded in the pose, as an extension of the earth. A-n-d reverse your arch into Marjaryasana, the Cat.”
We arched like cats.
“Now bring your pelvis forward as we transition to Adho Mukha Svanasana, Downward-Facing Dog. Gentle movements, like flowing lava. Palms and heels to the floor.”
The woman in front of me, clearly an overachiever, was already on her hands and heels, her butt in the air, her body a perfect inverted V. Her flowered yoga pants were so formfitting that I might have been three feet from a Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit. I struggled to elevate my posterior, but my knees were pathetically bent. Sweat dripped from my nose and landed on the mat.
“I’m stuck,” Gail squeaked, sounding a little panic
-stricken. She’d achieved a precarious position wherein the broad mesa of her backside could easily have accommodated four place settings.
“You’re doing great,” I said.
“Hold your poses,” Shanti said. “Feel the empowerment from the heels to the buttocks.”
I thought I heard Gail cuss under her breath. My arms were starting to tremble. I fought it as long as I could, but finally collapsed to the mat in a heap of sweat and failure.
“Loser,” Gail gasped. She’d locked her elbows and looked ready to kick Downward Dog’s ass all the way to the pound.
Shanti’s voice floated above the sticky studio air. “Feeling empowered? Then drop your head and work your way to Cacasana, the Headstand. Let your body be your fulcrum as you shift your center of gravity forward.”
“I dare you,” I said to Gail.
“Oh, yeah? Watch and learn.” She began to ease her feet toward her hands.
The woman in front of me had already achieved a striking headstand, her palms secure to the mat, knees resting on her elbows, toes pointed, expression smug. I could count every crease in her lady area. Gail planted her purple curls on the floor and bent her arms. Tentatively, she moved one knee to the nearest elbow.
“C’mon, Gail, you got this,” I exhorted in a hoarse whisper. “Halfway there. One leg to go.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. On three. One…two…”
The other foot left the mat. “I’m doing it,” Gail squealed. Her bottom was skyward; her feet pedaled the air. “Sam! Look at me! I’m—oh, God. No, no…Aiieeeee!”
Chapter 21
“That was the most embarrassing experience of my entire life,” Gail said.
“The part where you went over backward? Or the part where you let one rip?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It was epic,” I said. “ ‘The Fart Heard ’Round Arlinda.’ I bet anything it moved the needles up in Redwood State’s seismography lab.”
“Stop it. You—you sabotaged me with that chili.”
“Me? What about your iron stomach?”
She took a hand off the wheel and leveled a finger at me. “Laugh all you want. At least I achieved Cacasana. You weren’t even close.”
“True. It was like you were impelled by a higher power.”
“Shut up.”
“Yoga’s not for me. I don’t have the bent for it, get it?”
She didn’t reply. I stared out the window a minute or two before saying, “Maybe it would be a good idea to talk to Marian’s partner. Atherton.”
“I’ll leave that to you. I have an appointment to keep.”
“Cancel it.”
She glanced at me. “Sam, I can’t. If I lose this listing, I might as well get out of real estate altogether. Jim and the girls are counting on me.” She bumped over a pothole so large the minivan’s traction-control system kicked in. “They’re cutting hours at Muffler Pros. So far they haven’t talked to Jim, but the writing’s on the wall. We have expenses. A mortgage. College funds. I have to get serious. And maybe, well, maybe—”
“What?”
She steered around another crater in the road. “Maybe Everett did it.”
“I’ll forget you said that.”
“Suit yourself.” We drove back to the office in silence.
Gail retreated to the bathroom to freshen up. I tidied my half of the desk and dusted my fake plant. With those two tasks accomplished, I was at a bit of a loss. I played three rounds of solitaire on the computer and lost them all. Not a good omen.
I was contemplating a quick nap when there came a tap at the front door. I jogged down the hall and threw it open. Wanda Davis stood on the step.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “The door was locked. Are you closed?”
“No, not at all. Come in.” I ushered her into the lobby. She was dressed in business casual: dark skirt, pale green stretchy shirt, dark pumps with wedge heels. A linen jacket was folded over one arm. Her dark hair was tied back, her face expertly made up. She looked like a woman who could afford a home in the best part of town.
“I hope you haven’t forgotten about me,” she said with a little smile. “How about that showing?”
“The showing? Oh—the showing!” I had forgotten. “Of course I haven’t. The house has been, um, unavailable.” I decided to skip over the part about the two bodies and the fact that I’d lost my license. “Here, have a seat.”
“That’s okay. I only have a minute. Are you free tonight?”
“Tonight?” I realized I was stupidly repeating everything she said. “Actually…well, I’m not. How’s Saturday? I could meet you there anytime.”
“I was hoping to do it sooner.” Her eyes roamed around the cheaply decorated lobby and down the hall. “I’ve thought it over. I like the location, and I think that lower level could be made into a studio apartment with just a couple of modifications. So the numbers work. Especially if we can negotiate the price down.”
“Maybe. Though it hasn’t been on the market very long.”
“You mean the sellers aren’t desperate yet? I hear you there. Still, that kitchen needs a major remodel. I’m not crazy about the carpets, either, though I suppose they could be cleaned. I guess Saturday would work. Unless you can make it today.”
“I’d love to, but—but my sister is visiting from out of town, and, well, you know how it is.”
“Oh. Your sister.” Her voice had an odd inflection, like she figured my sister was fictional. If only.
“Believe me, if I could get away I would.”
“I guess family comes first, right? Let me give you my card.” She groped around her jacket pocket.
Gail emerged from the bathroom with her hair teased into a tall mound of frothy curls. “Sam, I—oh, excuse me.”
Wanda stared at her. Then she shrugged. “Let’s say two o’clock Saturday. That work for you?”
“Perfect. See you then.” I escorted her to the door and locked it behind her, belatedly realizing she hadn’t given me her card. I pictured her speed-dialing another agent as soon as she got out of sight. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d lost a client.
“What was that all about?” Gail said.
“That was my commission walking out the door.”
“Exactly my point. We need to be working.”
“Soon,” I said, vowing to have a valid license by Saturday.
Gail left a few minutes later. I sat at my desk, suddenly chilled. Goosebumps broke out on my arms and crept up my shoulders. I shook off the feeling of sudden panic. All I had to do was get my house in order by Saturday.
I tapped my fingers on the desk, then reached for the phone book and looked up Atherton & Woods, Investment Counselors. No time like the present.
A nasally voiced woman answered on the second ring. “Atherton and Woods, your premier North Coast investment company, Darla speaking.”
“Bill Atherton, please.”
“Mr. Atherton is out of the office. I can put you through to his voicemail.”
“Do you expect him back soon?”
“May I ask what this is regarding?” A note of caution had crept into her voice, as if I might suddenly start pitching her a time-share in Hoboken.
“It’s just a little issue with my annuity,” I said.
“That’s all been settled by the class-action lawsuit,” she snapped. “Didn’t you get the letter from the attorney general?”
I gave a little tinkle of laughter. “You misunderstand me, Darla. I want to invest some of it. Maybe all of it. A friend of mine recommended your firm.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, of course we’d love to help you with that. Mr. Atherton is taking a couple of personal days, but he’ll be back in the office on Monday. I’ll just pencil you in. Your name?”
“Vanderbilt,” I said without thinking. “No relation. At least, really distant.”
“Very good, Ms. Vanderbilt. Shall we say eleven o’clock?”
“Hold on,” she said. “You might be able to catch Bill at his gym. Do you know where Arlinda Fitness is?”
Did I ever. “You don’t think he’d mind?”
“Absolutely not. Just tell him you spoke to Darla already.”
“You’ve been so helpful. I really appreciate it.” I hung up while she was still calculating her referral fee.
There was a stack of old newspapers by the back door. I leafed through the business section of the Grovedale Dispatch and found a full-color ad for Atherton & Woods on the back page. Marian smiled back at me, her eyes full of life, and I remembered how the woman in the mulch had seemed vaguely familiar to me. She may have been playing a low-down game with Everett’s reputation, but she didn’t deserve to be killed. No one did. Except, perhaps, Wayne.
Her partner, Bill Atherton, was lean and alert-looking, with a full head of dark hair and a trim, Vandyke-style beard. I studied his appearance, then tore out the ad and stuffed it into my pocket.
I was preparing to slip out the back when I heard a commotion out front. I crossed the reception area and flung open the door.
The Channel 4 news team was staked out on the front steps. I recognized the plus-size blonde seconds before she thrust a microphone in my face.
“Everett Sweet is being held on a murder rap,” she said. “Did you know about his relationship with the first victim?”
“No comment,” I said. The cameraman swung around to get us both in the frame.
“How does it feel to be working for a killer twice over?” she said, eyes gleaming, lips parted.
“Go to hell.” I pushed the camera away and retreated through the door, locking it behind me, then hustled down the hall to make my escape through the back. When I stepped out onto the rear deck, Lester Duschane, the editor, publisher, and entire staff of the Arlinda Shout, was standing there.
“Talking to Channel 4, Sam?” he said. “I’m disappointed. I thought you and I had something special.” He gazed at me soulfully through his dark plastic eyeglasses.
A Killer Location Page 13