I didn’t know when I’d be able to salsa dance at our favorite club again, but whenever it was, I’d make sure Jack was right there with me.
Ten minutes later, all thoughts of him were relegated to the back of my mind. I was out on the court going through the dance routines and listening to the chisme about Jennifer’s death. I tried to pick up any bit of information that might help me with my investigation. Any inkling that anyone—besides Selma—knew about Jennifer’s other life.
By the time practice was over, I’d found out from some of the girls that Jennifer had grown up in a tiny rural town just outside of Sacramento, that she’d been married and still used her ex-husband’s last name—both things I already knew—and that while she loved lemon meringue pie, she was a health nut, she had a standing appointment with the team nutritionist, belonged to a local gym and went religiously, and had less than 17 percent body fat, something the other dancers had been envious of.
The one thing none of them mentioned was her being a nudist.
After we’d all showered and changed, I tried to catch Selma’s attention, but she’d already scurried out of the arena. Heading for Cuerpo y Alma, no doubt. For once, the arena was nearly deserted. Time to sleuth around the Royals’ locker room.
I waited until the coast was clear, then I strode down the wide, cavernous hallway, on the hunt for some clue that would show me how Jennifer Wallace’s two worlds had collided.
…
As I rounded a corner, the sound of men’s voices bounced off the walls and came at me. I slung my workout bag over my shoulder and plowed on with sure footsteps. As long as I acted like I knew where I was going and that I belonged, no one would question me.
The hallway curved. The locker room was just around the next bend, but the voices were growing closer. My goal was to search the locker room—specifically, to scour the lockers of the ballplayers Jennifer had broken the rules with. It was possible one of them was the mysterious boyfriend from Cuerpo y Alma.
I didn’t hold out much hope for the theory—six-foot-five-plus inches of naked man would surely attract attention. Selma had caught a faraway glimpse of the guy and she hadn’t mentioned those stats, so it felt like a long shot. But I had to try.
My other theory was that one of the trophy wives had had a hand in Jennifer’s death. Jealousy was a powerful motivator.
I followed the hallway around the last turn before the locker room and froze. The two men I’d heard were suddenly in front of me. I immediately recognized one as the Royals’ trainer, Steve, and the other as his brother, Larry.
“Hi,” I said. They appeared exactly the same as they had when I’d first met them. Not exactly pudgy, but not super-fit, either. Slightly receding hairlines. Ruddy cheeks. And talking sports.
“The new dancer, right?” Steve asked, pointing at me and then snapping his fingers. “Can I help you? This area’s off-limits to you girls.”
I bristled at the dismissive way he said “you girls,” but I kept my expression innocent. “Oh, I didn’t know. It’s so cool to be down here. I was just taking it all in.” I pointed to the locker room behind them. I upped my innocent act, gave a little flip of my hair. “Is that where you work on the players?”
“That’s right.” Steve glanced at his brother, then at me, giving a shrug. His cheeks lifted as his lips curved up. “It’s Lola, right?”
“Good memory.”
“I make it my business to know everyone. This is my brother, Larry.”
Larry plunged his hands into his pockets and shuffled his feet, dipping his chin in acknowledgment.
“Let’s give you a quick tour, shall we? It’ll be our secret,” Steve said. He maneuvered himself between Larry and me, draping his arm around my shoulder as we walked toward the locker room. “Larry’s a big fan of the Royals. Pays to know the trainer,” Steve said in an almost conspiratorial tone. “Never miss a game, do you, Larry?”
Larry uttered a quiet mmm-mmm as his brother dropped his arms from our shoulders and opened the door to the locker room. He ushered me inside, talking in a low voice to Larry before falling into step beside me again.
I was a black belt in kung fu and could take care of myself. Part of that meant paying attention to the niggling feelings I got in my gut. And right now my gut was telling me that something didn’t feel right. A wave of unease coiled through me and I suddenly knew I was being manipulated. A tour of the locker room from Steve in return for what?
I moved ahead of the brothers, casually opening random lockers, oohing and aahing at the contents of each one. I’d already done this with the ball boy, and nothing new had materialized since then. Big surprise. This place was devoid of clues. But there had to be something. Anything. Jennifer didn’t die for no reason.
Steve and Larry were both quietly watching me, Steve with overt curiosity and Larry with a sad intensity.
Maybe behind the closed door…
“My office,” Steve said, spreading his arm toward the room I’d seen him in during my brief tour with the ball boy.
He opened the door and I poked my head inside. The huge room held a massage table; a gooseneck light; two vinyl-covered beds; privacy screens; cabinets; and the biggest, tallest stainless steel bathtub contraption I’d ever seen.
“This is a lot of equipment,” I said, coming back to the giant bathtub. “That’s huge.”
“Has to be able to cover the extremities, hips, and backs of pro athletes, and you know how big they are.”
“I didn’t before I got this job.” I laughed. “But now I do.” The height of the pro players made Steve, Larry, and any other Joe off the street seem positively tiny.
As I tried to figure out how to bring up Jennifer without it coming out of the blue, Steve prattled on. “Lots of turmoil right now.”
Boo-ya. The perfect opening. “Right. Really sad. Did you know Jennifer?”
Steve cleared his throat as Larry dug his hands deeper into his pockets and stared at the ground. “Everyone knew Jennifer,” Steve said after a loaded pause.
I blinked, playing the part of innocent dancer rather than private investigator. “I thought she was married?”
“Where’d you hear that?” Steve asked, waving away the very idea. He moved to the counter, absently tossing tubes of ointment into a drawer, moving a canister of protein powder into one of the cupboards, and throwing a soiled white towel into the laundry bag sitting in the corner. “She had boyfriends. Lots of ’em. Heard the police found some interesting things at her apartment.”
I wondered if he had been one of her boyfriends, so I watched him with eagle-eye attention as I fished. “I actually heard she dated one of the players?”
Steve scoffed. “One?”
“What do you—”
“Stop.” The word snapped from Larry’s pursed lips like a bullet from a gun.
Steve’s eyes pinched together. “Larry,” he said, a heavy warning in his voice that piqued my curiosity.
“I know you didn’t like her, but she’s dead.” Larry’s chin still pointed toward the ground, but he raised his eyes to Steve. “Even she deserves respect.”
Ay, caramba, the brotherly love was strung tight right now. I got the feeling that Larry was the voice of reason to Steve’s strong personality. Maybe he’d reveal more about the late Jennifer Wallace.
I tried to melt into the shadows, except there were no shadows in the all-white trainer’s room. So I took a step backward, listening, hoping they’d forget I was there.
“I know she’s dead, Larry—”
Larry’s voice dropped to a low, menacing level. “Murdered. And she was—”
“What?” Steve flung his arms up, frustrated. “She used you, man.” He patted the air in front of him, placating his brother. “She used me. She used everyone. Surely you can understand that.”
But apparently Larry didn’t see things the way Steve did. He shook his head, his ruddy cheeks turning blotchy. “Uh-uh. She didn’t—”
“She didn�
�t what?” I slapped my hand over my mouth. Had I said that aloud?
Yep, I must have, because the team’s trainer suddenly stood ramrod straight and whipped his head around to stare at me.
The niggling feeling in my gut intensified. My mind scrambled. There wasn’t any love lost between Steve and Jennifer, that seemed clear. And if the trainer thought Jennifer had wronged his brother, could he be the one behind her death?
Or what if he’d been one of Jennifer’s conquests?
Oh boy.
Steve took a step toward me and I suddenly felt like a trapped animal. I raced through my options. I could take him down with a quick upward thrust of the heel of my hand against his chin, followed by a knee to the groin. But while that was something Dolores Cruz, P.I., would do, it was not something Lola Cruz, Royals Courtside Dancer, could pull off without raising some serious eyebrows.
I wanted to keep my cover intact so I plastered a bewitching—or what I hoped was bewitching—smile on my face, threw my hand up in a wave, and backed toward the door. “I’m so sorry about Jennifer,” I said. “She seemed like such a great girl.”
Larry’s expression softened. “She was. She didn’t deserve what she got.”
“Nobody deserves murder,” I said.
Steve stopped. “Have you always been a dancer?”
“N-no,” I said, shrugging. “I got lucky getting this gig. It’s tough to make it through auditions, but the team lost someone—”
“Another girl who didn’t get what she deserved,” Larry said, shaking his head.
She’d gotten what she wanted, if not what she deserved. “She’s engaged, isn’t she? To a player?”
“But had to leave the team,” Larry snapped. “Damn hypocrites if you ask me.”
“Yeah, maybe they should change the rules, since everyone seems to be doing it,” I said, noticing how nobody quite knew if Rochelle Nolan had been fired or had quit. It was all very vague. “Thanks for the tour. I have to go,” I said, pulling the door open.
“Lola.” Steve moved toward me, but I was already in the hallway, the door closing behind me.
Voices drifted our way and just as Steve caught the door and stepped into the hallway, Victoria and Lance Wolfe rounded the corner.
Victoria looked at me, then at Steve, then back at me. She raised her pencil-thin eyebrows, asking a silent question. Lance wasn’t as subtle. “Well, well, well. Overtime with the trainer, Lola?”
I forced a laugh. “Steve and Larry were just giving me a tour. Great equipment,” I added. “Top-notch facility.”
Victoria and Lance started walking again. I went with them, wondering who else was having an affair with a player and won-dering how Larry knew so much about the dancers.
I felt the weight of Steve’s gaze on my back until we disappeared from his sight.
“What was that about?” Victoria asked once we were in the clear.
Good question. “I’m not really sure. Larry’s upset about Jennifer’s murder. He got mad at Steve for not showing more respect.” I glanced at the dance coach. “Did you know Jennifer, um…”
She glanced at Lance before answering. “Broke the rules? Yes. I was aware.”
Lance just frowned, disappointed. In his players? The dancers? Probably both.
Not the answer I’d expected, either, Lance, I wanted to say, although it didn’t surprise me that Victoria saw and knew everything related to her girls. “If you knew, why—”
“Why did I keep her?”
She had an irritating habit of finishing my sentences, but I let it go. “Yes. Since Rochelle had to leave for the same thing.”
“Because she was one of the best. A pro. Vanessa will take her place, but she doesn’t have the same rapport with the girls. Jennifer’s shoes will be tough to fill.”
Like any good P.I., I followed the immediate line of questioning that arose. “Did Vanessa know she was next in line for captain?”
Victoria shook her head, her perfectly coiffed hair remaining perfectly in place. “We don’t have a set hierarchy on the team. She wouldn’t have known, no.”
I pondered this—and the inner workings of the dance team—as I left the arena. My direct line of questioning wasn’t leading me to any answers. I headed straight to Camacho & Associates. The whole Cuerpo y Alma thing was still front and center in my mind. I couldn’t help but feel like it was related to Jennifer’s death somehow, someway. Vanessa killing Jennifer so she could become team captain seemed far-fetched. And at this point, I had no connections between the resort and the team—other than Selma.
Chapter Nineteen
The second I set foot in Camacho’s, Reilly, in all her orange-haired glory, dragged me into the bathroom and said, “¡Ven, ven, ven!”
“¿Qué haces?” I asked her, following up with the English translation, “What are you doing?”
She let the door close behind her but quickly opened it again, poking her head into the hall.
“Reilly? What’s going on?”
“Chisme,” she said under her breath. “The best chisme ever. E-V-E-R. E-ver.”
“¿Qué?” I leaned against the sink and waited, trying not to get too excited. Reilly used to be the gossip queen, but since her clandestine affair with Neil had started, she’d gone hit or miss with dishing the office dirt.
“Remember the job I was doing for el jefe a while back?” she asked, closing the door again and coming to stand next to me.
“How could I forget?” She’d been babysitting Manny’s daughter. The daughter no one had known he’d even had. The daughter I’d seen in the back of Manny’s truck. Same olive skin, same chiseled features, and a sweet rosebud mouth that had to have come from her mother, whoever she was.
“I got some goods.”
Oooh, this had the potential of being really good chisme. “On his ex-wife? Dígame,” I said, on the edge of my seat. Gossip about Manny was something she had to tell me right this minute. He was my mentor, and a super-ex-cop-detective, but he had Javier Bardem charisma and the mystique of Amaury Nolasco—with hair.
She darted her heavily lined eyes around as if someone might materialize out of thin air. “It started last night. Neil and me, we were, um, you know…”
She trailed off, giving me time to fill in the blank.
“Got it. Moving on.” I circled my hand to keep her talking.
“He gets kinda chatty afterward, and he let it slip that el jefe and Tomb Raider Girl broke up because of the ex-wife and the daughter. Turns out she doesn’t want to be a step-mommy.”
I stared. “No, really?”
Her eyes scanned the tiny bathroom again—still no ghosts. She leaned in closer to me and dropped her voice.
“Yup.” That was it. Just yup.
“Huh.”
Reilly primped in the mirror, fluffing her Crayola-colored hair and pinching her cheeks. “That’s all I have.”
“Good chisme.” But with nothing more to gossip about, we headed back to the conference room, which was as quiet as church during Easter Mass. Who knew where the rest of the associates were? All I cared about was that Sadie was not in my business, which meant I could continue my research on any connections between Jennifer Wallace, Cuerpo y Alma, and the Royal Courtside Dancers.
…
I’d come to believe that the least likely suspect is often the one who’s guilty. I didn’t like Trainer Steve, but that didn’t mean he was guilty of murder. Rochelle didn’t have a motive. For Victoria and Lance, maybe, since they were the ones with the double standard, but not for Jennifer. I kept circling around to Selma, much as I didn’t want to ride that train.
She was the sole connection between the dancers and Cuerpo y Alma. She was the one who supposedly caught a glimpse of the mysterious boyfriend. She thought she had something to lose if her naturist habit came out.
Pero I felt like I was missing something about the big picture. Where was Manny when I needed him?
Oh right, in the midst of As Camacho Turns, a P.I.
telenovela.
I hadn’t had any real contact with the players, and nothing led me to suspect any of them. The wives were a possibility, but no one had surfaced as a likely suspect. And what about the other Courtside Dancers? They were the most unlikely suspects in my mind, but it was possible one of them had a grudge against Jennifer. Knowing women and their petty jealousies, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
Of course I had no hard evidence against any of them. Manny’s rule of thumb was to form a hypothesis, but I didn’t think an imaginary grudge between women would really fly with him as a viable hypothesis.
Which led me right back around to Selma Mann. I couldn’t believe the youngest dancer on the team and a naturist at heart could be a murderer, but I’d been surprised before.
I sat down at the conference room computer and Googled her.
And found nada. White Pages listings and Facebook didn’t give me anything. Selma Mann might be the only person in the world, besides me, who didn’t regularly update her Facebook status. I didn’t keep an active page because it didn’t really go hand in hand with being a private investigator. I wasn’t sure it went with being a nudist, either.
Selma’s last status update was from a few weeks ago. It was a quote:
“The only thing wrong with nudity is a society that says nudity is wrong.” —Bill Pacer
Whoever Bill Pacer was.
I read response after response, backtracking when I saw Jennifer Wallace’s name and her comment.
“The nakedness of woman is the work of God.” —William Blake
Ten people had liked her quote. I went down the list. Selma had liked it. So had Larry Madrino…
I clicked on his picture and leaned closer. Larry Madrino was Trainer Steve’s brother. And he liked Jennifer’s William Blake quote.
I kept reading, stopping again when there was another response from Jennifer.
Bare-Naked Lola (A Lola Cruz Mystery) Page 17