“Don’t you have to work today, Martha?” Loretta asked, straining to remain pleasant while hoping Martha Lee would fall in a hole. She was wearing a pair of skin-tight black bike shorts and a snug-fitting fuschia T-shirt tied in a knot at her waist.
“I’m taking the morning off,” Martha Lee said. “I thought I’d work out a little. I’m feeling a little fat today.”
Loretta glared at Martha Lee’s shapely little butt as she walked ahead. If she was feeling a little fat today, what was Loretta supposed to be feeling? A little global?
Loretta’s stomach growled, and not just because of the paltry breakfast—a quarter of a cantaloupe, two wafer-thin slices of toasted bagel with WeightAway fat-free cream cheese (which looked and tasted like Spackle), and a half-cup of the dishwater they called coffee. She still couldn’t figure out whether Martha Lee was on to her or not. If she was, she was taking her time doing something about it. The woman had shown up at Loretta’s bungalow early this morning, taken her to breakfast, and then arranged it with the body Nazis to get Loretta released from the boot-camp schedule that all the guests were supposed to follow. Martha Lee said she wanted to give Loretta a personal tour of Rancho Bonita, so that she could “take advantage of everything the spa had to offer.” Martha Lee was sticking to Loretta like glue, but Loretta couldn’t figure out why. If she’d figured out that Loretta wasn’t here to lose weight, wouldn’t Martha Lee just sic her boyfriend on her? Unless Laplante had ordered Martha Lee to stay close, so Loretta couldn’t go snooping around the cube again.
Across the gym someone started counting out loud, and instinctively Loretta stopped and turned away, fearing that it was that goddamn Lance. She listened for a second, then realized it wasn’t him, but that was no relief. The little pest could pop out of nowhere, and he’d already remembered too much about her. All she needed was for him to show up with Martha Lee around. He’d start in with his guessing-game crap, blabbing about her being in Corrections. That’s all Martha Lee needed to hear. She’d be out of here in a heartbeat, and that would be the end of that. Unless her boyfriend the killer ended it first.
“Loretta?”
“Hmmm?”
Martha Lee had her hand on Loretta’s forearm. “Honey, you look like you’re a million miles away. Is something wrong?”
“No. Nothing.” But Martha Lee was still staring at her, obviously not believing that there was nothing wrong. “I. . . I just don’t think this will work for me,” Loretta added with a sigh.
“What won’t work for you, honey?”
“You know. All this.” Loretta waved her hand at the exhausted exercisers. “I know WeightAway works for some people, but I just don’t think I can . . .” Loretta let her words trail off.
“You don’t think you can what, Loretta?”
Loretta wanted to smack that concerned look right off Martha Lee’s face. She didn’t want to say it.
“You don’t think you can what, honey?”
Loretta gritted her teeth. “Lose weight.”
“Oh, sure you can. I did it. So can you.”
Loretta’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t know what she hated more—bullshitters or cheerleaders.
“What you need is to change your frame of mind. You’re thinking of this as an ordeal, and that’s bad. You need to think of this as a vacation. A vacation for your body.”
“Hmmm . . . maybe. . . .”
“You know what would be good for you?”
“What?”
“A full-body salt scrub.”
“Really?” Loretta tried to keep from making a face, but on the inside she was screaming at Marvelli for not rescuing her. A full-body salt scrub sounded like state-sponsored torture.
“Yes,” Martha Lee said with a sharp nod. “A salt scrub and then a Dead Sea mud bath. That is the most soothing thing.”
“I don’t know, Martha____”
But then she heard a loud voice behind her, and this time she was certain it was Lance. “Okay, people, are we motivated today?”
“YES!!!”
Loretta looked over her shoulder. Lance was standing on a treadmill, facing a small band of the brainwashed, all of them on similar treadmills. Unlike the others struggling with machinery around them, this group looked like they wanted to be here.
“Are we going to burn away some of that nasty old fat?”
“YES!!!”
“We’ve got one empty treadmill here,” Lance shouted across the gym. “Who wants to join us? Who wants to walk all over their nasty old fat? Anybody?”
“Okay,” Loretta quickly muttered to Martha Lee. “The mud bath sounds great.”
“All right!” Martha Lee said. “I’ll take you over right now. I’m sure they can fit you in,”
“Great, let’s go.” Loretta headed toward the nearest door without waiting for Martha Lee. She had to get out of there before Lance spotted her.
Marvelli, where are you? she screamed in her head.
Martha Lee stood over Loretta, who was on her back and up to her neck in hot mud, a towel wrapped in a turban around her head. She was smoothing the last few glops of cucumber-avocado masque over Loretta’s forehead with a wooden tongue depressor. It was like icing a cake. But for all the pampering, Loretta did not look happy. She was frowning bright green through the masque. They were the only ones in the terra-cotta-tiled mud room. Most guests waited till the end of the day for their mud baths, after they were through working out.
Martha Lee could feel the weight of her pistol in her fanny pack, her pulse racing, wondering how she was going to do this. She could do it now, she thought. Shoot Loretta in the tub, smooth over the bullet holes, put some cucumber slices over her eyes, and just leave her. It would give Martha Lee at least an hour, maybe two, before anyone tried to wake Loretta up. Everybody falls asleep in these yucky things. If anybody saw Loretta, they’d just think she was catching some z’s. It would give Martha Lee time to wire the money to Luis and head for the airport. If Roger didn’t get in the way.
Loretta looked like she was sucking on a lemon, her face was so puckered. “This is incredibly icky.”
“Relax, honey. You’re not letting yourself enjoy this.”
“I thought dirt was bad for your skin,” Loretta said. “What am I doing sitting in mud? I’ll get blackheads in places I can’t even look at.”
“No, no, no. This cleans out your pores.”
“Are you sure?”
“Trust me, sweetie. Now I’ll be right back.”
Martha Lee went into the next room where Ida, the Jamaican lady who ran the baths, kept her supplies. Ida didn’t get in for another hour or so. Martha Lee opened the refrigerator and looked for a cucumber, so she could cut some slices for Loretta’s eyes. The shelves were full of all kinds of creams, lotions, and masques, but the two vegetable drawers were full of lemons and cucumbers. She pulled out a cucumber that was already cut open and went looking for a knife, thinking she better not leave any fingerprints on the knife. Or the cucumber for that matter. She put the waxy vegetable on the counter. Shit. Now she was going to have to wipe it down. And the refrigerator-door handle. And the drawers. Shit! she thought again, getting more nervous than she already was. She should’ve worn gloves. Why didn’t she think of that?
She used the tail of her T-shirt to open counter drawers, looking for a knife, telling herself that this wasn’t impossible as long as she didn’t panic, this could be done. But in her gut she wasn’t sure she could go through with it. She’d been around a lot of guns, but she’d never fired one, not once. Tom Junior used to tell her all kinds of weird stories about guns jamming and bullets missing from just a couple of feet away. Real guns don’t always behave the way they do on TV, he’d told her, and now she couldn’t stop thinking about that. What if she tried to shoot Loretta and the mud sent her bullets off course? She could miss Loretta completely. But what if she did shoot her, and blood started gushing out of the bullet holes in the mud, and she couldn’t plug them up? She’d be found de
ad too soon. Then what?
Maybe it would be better to strangle her? Martha Lee thought. Might look like she died of natural causes, a heart attack, something they wouldn’t call the cops for right away. Christ, that’s all she needed—a bunch of cops all over the place when she was trying to get the hell out of there.
But no matter which way she figured it, she still didn’t like the idea of killing Loretta herself. Just thinking about it was making her queasy. If goddamn Torpedo Joe weren’t under the influence of that little witch Ricky Macrae, he’d have already done it by now. Martha Lee had promised him fifteen grand, and he’d believed her. He didn’t know she intended to stiff him. And he’d never think of looking for her in Costa Rica after she disappeared. But goddamn Ricky, she had Joe out gunning for her, and unless Ricky had changed a whole lot since Martha Lee had last seen her, Joe would do whatever she wanted because if he didn’t, she’d bug him to death. Ricky was real good at bugging people.
Martha Lee kept looking through drawers for a knife, but she couldn’t find one. To hell with the cucumber slices, she thought in frustration. Maybe a wet washcloth over Loretta’s eyes would do just as well. But where the hell were the washcloths? She looked around the room, her heart thumping, ready to forget about the whole thing—at least the killing Loretta part—when suddenly she spotted a magnetic knife rack on the wall over the counter. Right under her goddamn nose, she thought. Jesus! She wasn’t thinking straight. She was gonna screw this up. She knew it.
She reached over the counter to take a knife down, and suddenly she realized something else. She was leaving fibers all over the room—her fuscia T-shirt, her bike shorts, her socks. And her hair. The cops would find her hair all over the place. People got convicted on this kind of stuff all the time. Cops didn’t need fingerprints. She backed away from the counter and crossed her arms tight, afraid to touch anything now.
A handwritten note taped to the refrigerator door caught her eye. “MORONS!” it said in big block letters. “DO NOT GET THE SALT WET. IT GETS LIKE ROCK. TOO HARD TO USE!” At the end of the note an arrow pointed to the other side of the refrigerator where an open twenty-pound bag of rock salt was on the floor, propped against the wall. Martha Lee bent down and took a closer look. The salt had hardened so badly she couldn’t break the crust with her fingers. She stood up and kicked the bag with the toe of her Reebok. It was as hard as dried cement. This was the kind of salt Ida used for the salt scrubs. Martha Lee kicked the bag again. A stack of twenty-pound bags sat on a wooden pallet in the corner. She went over and kicked one of the bags on the pallet. It crunched.
She stared down at the stack of salt bags, thinking.
“Martha? Did you forget about me?” Loretta called in from the mud room.
“Nope,” Martha Lee called back. “I certainly have not.”
“I thought you might have abandoned me.”
“No, no, no. I’m gonna fix you up with something special.”
“What’s that?”
Martha Lee went back to the counter to get a knife. “You’ll see, honey.”
18
Loretta woke with a start. She must’ve dozed off, she thought. This mud was so warm and relaxing—actually warm verging on hot. The cucumber-avocado masque had dried tight on her face, and the cucumber slices were still on her eyes, right where Martha Lee had put them. She turned her head from side to side. Neon squiggles drifted behind her shut eyelids. She felt a little lightheaded from the heat.
“Hello,” she called out. “Martha?”
No response.
She wondered how long she’d been asleep.
“Hel-lo-o.”
Silence.
Lying prone in the thick mud, Loretta worked her hands to the bottom of the tub. She tried to push herself up, but she had almost no energy. She tried again, but she couldn’t budge herself.
“Hello.” She cleared her throat and raised her voice. “Martha. Anybody.”
Nothing.
She worked one hand through the mud, intending to take the cucumbers off her eyes, but she couldn’t break the surface. She tried again, but it was solid. Suddenly her heart started to pound.
Loretta shook her head back and forth and wiggled her brows until the cucumbers fell from her eyes. The light blinded her for a second as she kept trying to break through the hardened mud. But it was no use. She was stuck.
When her eyes finally adjusted to the light, she could see an expanse of tiny white salt crystals spread before her. It had hardened to an impenetrable crust. She looked around the room, puzzled by the wooden plank walls and the rows of wooden benches. The room she had been in was tiled. How’d she get here? Then she noticed the smell. She knew that smell. It was like hot baked underwear. She was in a sauna.
“Hello!” she called out. “Is anybody there? Hello!”
A single naked lightbulb glared down at her from the ceiling. To her right was the door, but the tiny window had been covered over with a piece of newspaper. She could hear music on the other side—that nouveau disco stuff they played at all the aerobics classes around here.
“Hello! Hello!” she yelled.
Sweat was pouring off her face, melting the masque and getting into her eyes. The more she squirmed, the hotter the mud felt. She turned her head as far as she could and strained to see the thermostat on the wall. It was too far away for her to make out the temperature setting, but the timer was set for the maximum, whatever that was.
Could it be an hour? she wondered. She could slow-cook to death in that time. Murder by Crock-Pot.
She struggled again, trying to push though the salt crust, but it was no use.
Martha Lee was on to her. She had to be. This was no “special treatment.” The little bitch was trying to kill her. And she’d even had Loretta convinced that this salt treatment would help her lose a few pounds. Martha Lee had had the nerve to say that when the salt mixed with the mud, it formed an enzyme that conditioned the body for weight loss. “Passive weight loss,” she’d called it. And like a dumbbell, Loretta had believed her. How stupid! Just goes to show that people believe what they want to believe, even people who should know better, like her.
Loretta tried to punch her way through the salt crust, but she only ended up mashing her knuckles. The crust had to be at least three or four inches thick. Martha Lee had poured two big kitty-litter-size bags into the tub and spread it out nice and even before she turned a sprayer on the whole thing and hosed it down. All the while she kept yammering on about this special enzyme and passive weight loss, and Loretta was only half-listening because the warm ooze was making her sleepy. Loretta had noticed that all the mud tubs were on wheels, so that guests could be brought out to bake in the sun when the weather was nice. Martha Lee must’ve waited for Loretta to doze off before she wheeled her into the sauna. Goddamn her! Loretta thought as she punched the salt crust again.
“Help!” she shouted. “Help! I’m in the sauna!”
But the only reply she heard was the incessant beat of the mindless dance music outside.
Marvelli, you son of a bitch, she thought, fighting back tears, where the hell are you? She’d beeped him last night from her room and left the 1111 code. He’d promised that he’d come running if she beeped him. So where was he?
She pushed on the salt crust again, banging it with both fists, kicking it with her knees and feet, cutting her skin on the sharp crystals. She struggled and strained, not wanting to cry, not wanting to admit that she was trapped and that she couldn’t get herself out of this. But she was trapped, and the mud was getting hotter, and the more she thought about it, the more panicky she became. She started struggling in a frenzy, thrashing at the mud, when suddenly a sharp pain zinged through her chest. She froze, scared to death, hoping it would pass. But it didn’t.
I’m having a heart attack, she thought. No one can hear me. No one will find me. Vm going to die.
“Help me!” she screamed. “Please help me!”
She tried to force herself
to calm down, knowing that panicking would just make things worse. But she couldn’t help herself. Her mind was racing faster that her pulse. She thought about using her back to break the crust, but she’d have to pull her head into the hole and get all the way into the mud to do it. What if that didn’t work and she couldn’t find the hole again? She could drown. Even if she did find the hole, there’d be thick mud all over her face and in her nose. She couldn’t get her hands out to clear it away. She could suffocate.
Her heart started to hammer, pain throbbing through her chest, hot mud and salt chafing her neck, sweat pouring into her eyes.
“Marvelli!” she screamed through her sobs. “Marvelli, where are you? Marvelli!”
“I’m afraid we don’t have any economy models in the lot right now, sir.” The squeaky-clean kid behind the Hertz counter at the airport was very serious. He was wearing a starched short-sleeved white shirt and a yellow tie, and his pin-straight hair was plastered down and lacquered in place. “I can give you a Mustang, though, at no additional cost.”
“Fine,” Marvelli said, glancing at the clock behind the kid’s head. He was worried sick about Renée, but he was worried about Loretta, too. He’d tried to call Loretta from the airport in Newark earlier that morning, but there had been no answer at her room.
“Would you prefer a convertible, sir?” The kid had a permanent furrow between his brows.
“Sure, whatever.” Marvelli wasn’t even listening. He just wanted a car, so he could get to Rancho Bonita.
The Hertz kid put the paperwork on the counter and showed Marvelli where to sign, which Marvelli did without reading anything. He then tore off Marvelli’s receipt, laid in on the counter, and put a set of keys on top. “It’s a blue car, sir, and you’ll find it in Space 238 in the parking garage. Go right out this door, cross the street, and the garage is straight ahead. Enjoy your stay in Florida, sir.”
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