Paper Bullets

by Reed, Annie

  Stacy, the fashion-model thin receptionist at the gym where Melody had worked, apparently wasn’t happy with me either. Her professionally pleasant expression hardened when she saw me walk through the gym’s front door.

  “Can I help you?” she said, but her tone made it clear helping me was the last thing she wanted to do.

  Stacy had more than a couple of inches on me, and that was in tennis shoes. Still, I could see the puffiness around her eyes that her makeup couldn’t quite mask and the tension lines at the corners of her mouth. The pictures I’d seen on Melody’s Facebook made it clear that Stacy and Melody had been friends. Coming to work, knowing that Melody wouldn’t be there—would never be there again—I’d come close to that kind of pain when Ed died.

  I could relate to Stacy’s pain. I just hadn’t expected outright hostility, which made me wonder what Melody had said about me. Had she complained to Stacy about Ryan’s shrewish ex-wife? Stacy hadn’t known who I was when I came in yesterday. She knew now. This conversation was going to be harder than I’d thought, if she’d even talk to me.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said.

  Her eyes welled up for a moment, and she gripped the edge of the black granite countertop so tight her knuckles turned white. She was holding herself together—barely. The last thing I wanted to do was make her break down while she was supposed to be the public face of the gym.

  “Is there somewhere we can go to talk?” I asked.

  Her chin rose just enough that she looked down her nose at me. The attitude adjustment must have been her way of holding back the tears. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I can’t imagine what we’d have to say to each other.”

  I nodded, agreeing with her. “That’s true. The only thing we have in common is Melody.”

  “You didn’t have Melody.” The words came out clipped. Angry.

  I knew that anger was a part of grief. I’d just had my own bout of anger not that long ago. By showing up here today, I’d given Stacy a convenient target for hers. I could take bearing the brunt of her anger if she’d talk to me, but it would be easier on us both if I could find a way around it.

  “She was part of my extended family,” I said. “She was a part of my daughter’s life. My daughter will never forget her.”

  “Your daughter didn’t even like her. She told me your daughter quit talking to her after...” Her voice caught, and her eyes grew shiny again. I pretended not to notice.

  “After Ryan proposed,” I said. “He could have handled that a little better, I admit, but most children of divorce harbor a hope that their parents will quit being stupid and get back together. Samantha’s no different. She didn’t realize that was never going to happen.”

  Stacy gave me a sharp look. “Because Melody got in your way? Well, she’d not now.”

  What had Melody told this woman? Did she actually think I’d do something to Melody just to get Ryan back? And if she did, had she told the cops the same thing?

  No wonder Archulette and Squires thought I was involved. It wasn’t just because I’d been tailing Melody to find a stalker.

  I couldn’t defend myself. I’d be contradicting her friend, and her friend was dead.

  “No, she isn’t,” I said. “And she should be. She should be alive to have the wedding of her dreams and long years of having fun with her friends and maybe having a few kids of her own. She should be taking all those fabulous trips with Ryan that he always used to talk about, see all the places in the world he wanted to visit only things always got in the way and he never had the time to go anywhere fabulous. I think he would have wanted to do that with her because she was young and energetic and beautiful, and he always seemed to have so much fun with her. Did I like that he had more fun with her than he’d had with me? Was I jealous? Yes, I was, but the fact of the matter was that Ryan loved her. She should have lived to have the life with him she wanted, but she won’t, and I want to know why. Don’t you?”

  I hadn’t intended for all of that to come spilling out, but I couldn’t have stopped once I got started. I was still too angry myself.

  By the time I was done, tears had spilled down Stacy’s cheeks. She swiped at them with the back of her hand, then gave a quick sideways glance at the door to the workout rooms.

  “Give me five minutes,” she said. “I need to get someone to cover for me. Wait for me outside, and I’ll come talk to you.”

  It took her ten minutes, and I’d almost thought she’d changed her mind.

  I watched other people head into the gym—pony-tailed women who drove into the parking lot in BMWs and Lexus sedans and big Escalade SUVs, their gym clothes color-coordinated with their duffel bags or oversized purses; college-age jocks in sleeveless tee shirts and shorts, muscles bulging on their shoulders and arms and thighs, trying to keep themselves in shape for whatever college sport they played; even a few businessmen who wanted to work off the stress of their mornings. A group of young women came out, their hair still wet from showers, and I heard them chatting about daycare and potty training, and did they want to grab a skinny iced mocha before picking up the kids?

  My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t had much to eat so far today. Or drink, for that matter.

  The gas station across the parking lot was one of those gas station/mini-mart combination stores so popular these days. I could almost taste the iced tea I was sure they had in their self-serve machines.

  The day had turned out to be another scorcher like the morning had promised, and I was beginning to regret that I hadn’t worn a hat. The front of the gym faced south, and there was absolutely no shade to be found. I could feel my scalp burning along the part in my hair, to say nothing of my nose, and my deodorant had waved the white flag after the first couple of minutes of unrelenting sunshine.

  When Stacy finally came outside, she was wearing wrap-around sunglasses, and she’d pulled a pair of short-shorts over her hot pink spandex leotard and leggings. She nodded her thanks to an older man who’d held the door open for her and another couple of women, all of them leaving the gym. The older guy had on dark glasses and a Reno Aces baseball cap, and he was the first one I’d seen dressed in a sensible plain white tee shirt and lightweight workout pants.

  Something niggled at my brain about the older guy, but then Stacy walked over to me and I shifted my attention to her.

  “Thank you,” I said when she got close to me. I’d decided to wait off to the side of the gym. I didn’t want to look like I was lurking, and besides, I thought Stacy might not want anyone inside to see who she was talking to.

  “I only have a couple of minutes. We’re short staffed today, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

  The lenses of the sunglasses she wore were so dark, I couldn’t see her eyes at all. It meant I wouldn’t be able to read her expression as well as I could inside, but at least the sunglasses weren’t mirrored. I wouldn’t have to look at my sweaty, wilted reflection while I talked to her.

  She sighed. “It feels wrong to be at work today.”

  I knew how she felt, but I wasn’t going to say that. I’d managed to create a tenuous connection with Stacy by focusing on Melody, and that’s where the focus needed to stay. And while I didn’t have a lot of time, I couldn’t just come right out and ask about the roses. I had to build up to that.

  “About work,” I said. “Did Melody ever have any trouble with anyone at the gym?”

  Stacy shook her head. “The cops asked that. I told them no, and they looked at me like they didn’t believe me. Everybody liked Melody.”

  I wondered if the cops who’d talked to her had been the same detectives who’d interviewed me. I hadn’t come away with a very good impression of them either.

  “What about the guy yesterday?” I asked.

  “The guy who left his lights on?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s okay. Kind of intense sometimes. Melody’s helping... she was helping him develop a personalized workout routine. Guys like th
at who’ve been out of shape for a while, when they get the workout bug and decide they want a better body, they can overdo it. He was in here all the time, doing free weights, riding the elliptical. She was trying to get him to cut back, get him into a routine that would be better for his body.”

  She looked down at her feet. Her tennis shoes looked brand new. I couldn’t remember the last time my tennis shoes had looked that clean.

  “I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this about a client,” she said. “Melody said you’re an investigator. Is that what you’re doing? Investigating what happened to her? Working with those cops?”

  “I’m not working with the cops, but I am going to find out what happened.”

  “I guess that means you don’t trust them either.” This time when she raised her head, I knew she was looking at me. “Good.”

  No, the cops hadn’t made a very good impression on her at all.

  “Anything else you can think of about this guy?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “He flirted with her. I mean, a lot of the guys flirt with us. We’re supposed to sell the sexy part of getting in shape, that’s why we have to wear these.” She gestured at her tight outfit. “And I thought being a cocktail waitress was bad. At least here I don’t have to walk around in heels.”

  “Anybody ever try to get serious with the flirting?”

  “Like what, try to date her?”

  “Like that.”

  “She didn’t cheat on Ryan, if that’s what you’re asking.” The defensive tone had crept back into her voice.

  “That’s not what I’m asking. I’m just wondering if any of the guys who flirted with her saw the engagement ring as a challenge.”

  “Sometimes. Plus sometimes they didn’t know she was engaged. She couldn’t wear the ring when she was working with a client one-on-one. We can’t wear jewelry then. It’s against the rules. Nothing except a plain wedding band or simple stud earrings.”

  The ban made sense. I’d seen Melody’s engagement ring. It was bigger than the ring Ryan had given me, but then again when we got married, he was still a struggling college student not a successful attorney.

  “Any guy in particular you remember?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer right away. Either she was trying to remember or trying to decide whether to tell me. I didn’t push her.

  “Yeah,” she finally said. “There was this one guy. Worked in a bank, I think. He only came in a couple of times, but he got real interested in Melody. Kept pestering her to come in and open an account.”

  Justin Sewell? “You remember his name?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “He never signed up for a membership. We offer free passes. It lets people see if they’d like it here, plus people always like free stuff. The passes get them in the door, then it’s up to the rest of us to give them a reason to want to come back.”

  That sounded like what I used to hear from Ryan about his website. It was all about image. I didn’t do that with my own business. I’d always thought that doing the best job possible was what mattered, and word of mouth would keep me in business.

  “He had a couple of passes. We usually only honor one per customer, but Melody let this guy use both of them.” Stacy frowned a little at the memory. “He hit on her right away. She flirted back, but it was just to keep him interested in signing up for a membership.”

  I wondered if the people who worked at the gym got incentives for signing up new memberships. It wouldn’t surprise me. A lot of service jobs were really sales jobs in disguise. Like personal bankers.

  “Do you think he just wanted her to open an account or...”

  I didn’t think I had to spell it out. I didn’t.

  “Oh, he wanted her to open more than just an account.” Stacy wrinkled her nose. “He was one of those kind of guys who thinks he’s way more charming than he really is and can’t understand why we all don’t just jump into bed with him.”

  I had no doubt she’d encountered her fair share of men like that. Besides being fashionably thin, Stacy had the kind of doe-eyed, high-cheekboned beauty that was popular these days.

  It bothered me that this was the ideal that teens like Samantha aspired to. Not everyone was meant to be this trim or have cheekbones that could cut glass. On Stacy, it looked natural and normal. Even in the pictures I’d seen of her on Melody’s Facebook page, Stacy looked comfortable in her own skin just as it was. If that was true, she was a very rare woman indeed.

  I wished I had a picture of Justin Sewell to show her, but all the pictures I’d taken were on my camera, and I’d been too distracted when I left the house to remember to put my camera in my purse.

  “You remember what this guy looked like?” I asked. “White? Hispanic? Asian? Any visible tattoos?”

  “White, I remember that, and no tattoos.” She shrugged again. “He looked like somebody you’d see in an office, someplace that wants the guys in suits and ties and business haircuts, but nothing too high end that would put regular people off. He wasn’t out of shape or anything either. Pleasant enough to look at, but I’m not sure I’d recognize him if I saw him on the street.”

  I found it fascinating what Stacy remembered about people. Not so much their physical features but what kind of impression their overall appearance made on other people. My overall appearance probably screamed frumpy. I decided I didn’t want to hear what she’d remember about me.

  She turned her head to look back at the gym. Probably checking to see if anyone was coming out to tell her that her little unscheduled break was over. Pretty soon she was going to tell me she had to get back to work, and I still didn’t have everything I needed.

  “Does the gym keep records of who uses the passes?” I asked. “Anything that would have this guy’s name on it?”

  “You think he had something to do with what happened?”

  Now it was my turn to shrug. “I don’t think anything yet.”

  Which wasn’t exactly true, but most of what I thought I knew were unconnected pieces and random coincidences, nothing that formed a concrete pattern I could point to and say “that’s the guy, not Ryan.”

  “Most of what I do involves asking questions,” I said. “Sometimes the answers lead nowhere. Sometimes they lead to the next question, and if I’m lucky, somewhere down the line, I’ll stumble on the right question and get the right answer.”

  She looked at me for a long moment. “That sounds...” She hesitated while she searched for the right word. “Frustrating.”

  “Serving court papers is easier,” I said. “Unless the guy I’m trying to serve knows I’m coming and tries to duck me. Then it gets interesting.”

  Her cell phone chirped at her. She took it out of a pocket I hadn’t noticed in her short-shorts and frowned at it. “I have to get back,” she said. “Cici has a client coming in.”

  “About that name?” I asked.

  “I’ll look through the sign-in sheets, see if I can remember when he came in, but I can’t guarantee anything. If I find something, I’ll text you.”

  I gave her my cell phone number and watched while she typed it into her phone, her thumbs moving faster than I could type on my keyboard with two hands.

  She was just about to the door when I remembered I hadn’t asked the one question I really wanted an answer to. “Anybody ever send Melody flowers at work?” I said.

  She paused with one hand on the door handle. “Besides Ryan?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

  “Red roses,” I said. “A single rose a day for a week.”

  A frown creased her forehead. “She would have told me about that, or I would have heard from Cici. Unless they came from Ryan, but she still would have...” She shook her head again. “No. I’m sure she would have told me.”

  She disappeared inside the gym, leaving me with an even bigger question than the one I’d had to start out with.

  CHAPTER 20

  IF STACY HAD TOLD ME t
he truth, Melody had lied to Ryan about the roses. She didn’t get them at work.

  I’d given in to the need for a super-sized iced tea from the gas station/mini-mart. I sat in my hot car in the parking lot with all the windows rolled down and tried to figure out where to go from here.

  The roses were a dead end. The only people who knew where Melody got the roses and who they were from were Melody and the person who’d given them to her.

  I didn’t know why she’d lied to Ryan about the roses in the first place. Based on my own experience, people in a relationship lied to either spare the other person’s feelings or to hide something they were ashamed of. If she’d wanted to spare Ryan’s feelings, she wouldn’t have told him about the roses in the first place.

  Did that mean she’d lied to hide something she was ashamed of? Like what?

  Stacy was convinced Melody hadn’t cheated on Ryan, and from what Melody had shared with the world on Facebook, it looked like Stacy was her best friend. So if she hadn’t been cheating, what had she been ashamed of?

  And why tell a lie that Ryan could have discovered on his own? I doubted Ryan was a stranger to the gym, and Stacy clearly knew him enough to be at least a little protective of her best friend’s relationship with him. All Ryan had to do was mention the roses in casual conversation with someone at the gym and Melody’s lie would fall apart.

  Unless she’d wanted it to fall apart. Unless she was doing something she was so ashamed of that she subconsciously wanted Ryan to find out so that he’d make her stop, and the lie about the roses was an attempt at self-sabotage.

  Okay, I was psychoanalyzing without a license. I was hot and tired and frustrated and making stuff up because I still couldn’t see how all the puzzle pieces fit together.

  I guzzled down a third of my iced tea, concentrating on nothing but the slightly bitter taste and how good it felt to hold the cold cup in my hands.