by Elaine Viets
“She could have hired someone, Gus,” Phil said. “She’s got the money. She wanted this to look like a break-in.”
“My sister would never do that.”
“Look, Gus, you’ve reopened Mark’s death investigation. Your sister wants to forget her past. It’s possible she contacted Ahmet Yavuz and he got someone to do the dirty work.”
“You’re full of shit!” Gus said, pounding the table. “My sister has had nothing to do with that drug dealer. You’re ruining her name. First you tell me Mark had to rescue her from Ahmet’s house. Now you’re telling me she vandalized my home. This is my little sister. My brother died to save her.”
“So he did,” Phil said. “And your sister became a model citizen, just like Ahmet.”
“She wouldn’t betray her own brother,” Gus said.
“Your brother is dead,” Phil said. “In her eyes, he can’t be hurt anymore. She can. What if her husband finds out about her past—drug dealers and mental hospitals? Ahmet doesn’t want his past unearthed either. They have that in common, and they’ll unite to save themselves. You’re in danger.”
“I can handle it,” Gus said. He sat up straighter and tried to suck in his gut, but that only made him look older and more out of shape. The circles under his eyes were as dark as his gray work shirt.
“I don’t like you accusing my sister,” Gus said, his eyes narrowing. “She was a little wild when she was young, but Bernie’s a respectable executive’s wife.”
“Who wants to stay that way. She knows all about blood,” Phil said. “Real and fake. Your brother’s death has been forgotten for twenty-five years.”
“Not by me,” Gus said, stubbornly.
“Exactly. That’s the problem,” Phil said. “Your sister wants Mark to stay buried as a suicide. You think Mark’s death was murder. You got us to investigate, and now we agree with you. We’re looking for proof.
“If you’re right, that means there’s a murderer out there who wants us to stop. Someone with a lot to lose. It could be your sister, Bernie. It could be Ahmet Yavuz. It could even be Mark’s old buddy Danny Boy.”
CHAPTER 33
The baby wouldn’t stop crying. His angry, urgent howls sliced through Fantastic Fitness. The child’s screaming drowned out the clanking exercise machines, the thumping basketballs and the pounding music. It disrupted workout rituals and assaulted eardrums like a hot spike.
Finally, Heather, the lushly curved gym member with the red hair, had enough. She climbed off her stationary bike and marched to the reception desk. “Helen, what’s wrong with that poor baby?” she asked. “The kid’s been crying for twenty minutes. I can’t concentrate.”
“Me, either,” Helen said. “I’ll see if Jen needs help in Kiddy Kare.”
“Kid’s giving me a headache,” Carla said. “I’ll watch the desk while you check with the sitter.”
The gym’s playroom was painted in bright colors—yellow, blue and green. The baby in Jen’s arms was a raging red. The frazzled babysitter was white with worry. Her hair had escaped its ponytail, and her shirt slid out of her jeans. She walked the little boy up and down, rocking him and trying to soothe him. It didn’t work. The baby continued yelling.
Helen was no expert on babies, but this one looked about eight months old. She could see hot tears running down the little guy’s face. He stopped, took a deep breath and shrieked again.
“Shhh,” Jen said, patting the sturdy little back. “It will be okay, Adam. Mommy will be back soon.”
Adam’s sobs went up another ten decibels.
“I’m getting worried,” Jen said. “Adam has a fever. His mom dropped him off and promised to be right back after she toured the gym. Logan just signed her up as a member. You know him?”
“He’s the super salesman with two Testarossas,” Helen said.
“And too much testosterone,” Jen said. “Logan and Mommy—her name is Megan—went off to see the gym. She’s a tall blonde with tanned legs and a ponytail. They’ve been gone twenty minutes. Adam won’t stop crying. Megan needs to get this baby to a doctor. He’s burning up.”
“I’ll go look for them,” Helen said.
Logan wasn’t at his desk in the sales area, and there was no leggy blonde, either. Helen ran upstairs. She saw two guys playing a brisk game of racquetball and a lone man lifting weights, but no couple touring the gym. No sign of Logan and Megan downstairs. Bryan and “What a Waste” Will were running side by side on the treadmills, sweating manfully. Helen ducked into the women’s locker room to see if Megan was checking out the facilities and ran into Beth.
“Hi, Helen,” Beth said. “Remember me?”
Beth was undressing after a grueling workout. Her sweaty hair was plastered to her neck. She peeled off her wet top. Her outfit wasn’t as revealing as the one she’d worn last time. Helen would never forget Beth’s eighty-dollar bribe for information about her married boyfriend.
“Of course,” Helen said.
“Could you get more towels, please? I want to shower, and I’m half-dressed. I can’t go out to the towel closet like this.”
Helen ran down the hall, opened the closet and saw a flurry of movement—a swish of blond hair, a flash of tanned legs and a man’s bare back.
“Eeeek!” the woman screamed.
“What the—” the man shouted.
“Megan? Logan?” Helen asked.
Megan grabbed a towel and draped it over her bare top. “It’s not what you think,” she said.
“Spare me,” Helen said. “Megan, your baby is sick and needs you right away.”
Logan zipped his pants, straightened his polo shirt and slid out the door while Helen gathered an armful of fresh towels.
Megan wasted no time pulling on her clothes. Her black bra and skintight tap pants were more suitable for a Victoria’s Secret catalogue than a gym. “Look,” she said. “I’m not proud of what I did, but I don’t have much money. Logan promised me the first week free if I’d hook up with him.”
“Everyone gets the first week free when they sign up,” Helen said. “You got a scumbag as a signing bonus.” She shut the closet door and dropped off the towels for Beth.
Back at the reception desk, Helen told Carla what she’d seen in the towel closet.
“I warned you that Logan was a sleaze,” Carla said.
“Too bad I got to see it for myself,” Helen said. “Should I say anything to Derek?”
“Won’t do any good,” Carla said. “Other women have complained. Management doesn’t care what Logan does, as long as he exceeds his monthly sales quota.”
“Excuse me.” A man at the counter waved to get her attention. “My name is Nick. I’m new here, and I need help.”
Nick was twentysomething with brown hair and a boyish face. Helen couldn’t help staring at him. Nick seemed so—well—normal, after the ripped, stripped and chiseled Fantastic Fitness freaks.
“Where do I sign up for aerobics classes?” Nick asked.
“Right here,” Helen said. “There’s step aerobics at two this afternoon and freestyle aerobics at five o’clock.”
“Do I pay extra?” he asked.
“No, they’re part of your membership,” Helen said. “You realize you’ll be the only man in the class.”
“I certainly hope so.” He gave Helen a heartbreaker smile and went upstairs.
“Nick seems sweet,” Helen said.
“If I have a son, I’m naming him Nick,” Carla said dreamily. “All Nicks are hot. We’ve got another one at the gym who would make you forget Phil. Then there’s Nick Jonas.”
“The Jonas Brother? Cute, but a bit young,” Helen said.
“Nick Nolte, Nick Cannon—he’s with Mariah Carey. Nick Lachey is another one.”
“Who’s that?” Helen asked.
“He’s engaged to Vanessa Minello. She used to be an MTV host,” Carla said. “Naming a boy Nick almost guarantees he’ll be smoking hot.”
“Saint Nick may have a high body mass index,
but he never forgets Christmas,” Helen said.
“I was talking about real people,” Carla said.
“Excuse me.” The small voice belonged to a small woman. The brunette in the red Nike suit was so short, her head barely reached the top of the reception desk. She looked around uneasily, then put two tens on the counter top and said, “Has Nick arrived yet?”
“Which one?” Carla asked, stepping up to the computer. “Nick B. or Nick S.?”
“Nick S.,” the brunette said.
“Sorry,” Carla said. “He was in at six this morning. He’s gone.”
“Oh.” The brunette’s shoulders slumped and she slunk off to a treadmill. Helen noticed the two tens were gone.
The small brunette reminded Helen of another tiny gym member, Evie, who’d been branded as Debbi’s killer. “Any word about Evie?” Helen asked. “I watched that brute Ever Ready arrest her for first-degree murder. He hauled her off in handcuffs, poor little thing.”
“Nobody here has talked to her,” Carla said, “but Derek is half-crazed that Debbi’s death will hurt the gym. He overheard Ever Ready on the phone talking about the autopsy report with the medical examiner’s office. Debbi overdosed on steroids, fat burners and oxycodone. The report didn’t say if her death was an accident, suicide or murder. Ever Ready jumped to the conclusion that Debbi had been murdered. He insists Evie killed her.”
“He’s wrong about Evie,” Helen said.
“Maybe not,” Carla said. “Ever Ready bragged that he’d found out Evie’s estranged husband, Peter, had had knee replacement surgery three months ago and the doctor had given him a prescription for oxycodone for the pain. Ever Ready found twenty-one tablets left in the huge bottle. Evie’s prints were on it, as well as her husband’s. Peter couldn’t remember how many tablets he’d taken or if Evie had helped herself to any. Ever Ready is saying Evie took her husband’s tablets to kill Debbi.”
“She’s been living at the gym for three weeks,” Helen said. “Did she go back home and get the pills?”
“I didn’t say it made sense,” Carla said. “But that’s what Ever Ready says she did.”
“The only part I agree with that detective about is that Debbi didn’t kill herself. She told me she was going to compete in another bodybuilding contest.”
“She could have won,” Carla said. “Poor Debbi. She was difficult, but she had talent. Her wake is tonight. Are you going?”
“I guess I should,” Helen said. “I did find her body.”
“The funeral is tomorrow,” Carla said. “Derek will represent the gym. I’ll go with you to the wake after work.”
Helen looked doubtfully at her clothes.
“Your outfit is fine,” Carla said. “You’re wearing a white shirt and black pants. Oh, lord, look who’s coming in. Debbi’s two would-be trainers, Kristi and Tansi.”
Kristi wore an orange suit over her grotesque physique. The hyperdeveloped Tansi’s gray-green suit made her look so reptilian, Helen expected her to flick out her tongue.
“Helen and I were just talking about Debbi’s wake,” Carla said as she checked them in. “Are you going today?”
“Can’t break training,” Tansi said. “The East Coast Physique Championships are almost here.”
“Debbi would have wanted it that way,” Kristi said solemnly.
Helen wanted to heave a computer at the muscled monsters. “But you trained her.”
“She overdid it and ruined everything,” Tansi said. “She couldn’t have competed this time anyway.”
“We know she’s upstairs cheering us on,” Kristi said, looking piously at the ceiling, as if heaven were just west of the basketball court. “We have to win this one in her name.”
“Debbi believed God wants us to make something of ourselves,” Tansi said. “We are fresh canvas, waiting to become works of art.”
“You two are definitely pieces of work,” Helen said. Both bodybuilders smiled as Helen’s insult sailed over their heads.
Carla reached under the counter and pulled out a frosty liter bottle of water. “Mm,” she said, smacking her lips. “This is so good and cold. May I offer you a bottle?”
The two women looked at Carla like she’d staggered into a temperance meeting with a fifth of bourbon.
“No!” Kristi said. “Drinking water so close to the competition will bloat us. We can’t even suck ice cubes.”
“Too bad,” Carla said, taking a long drink. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
The two ran off for the dressing room as if the devil were chasing them.
“That was mean.” Helen giggled.
“They deserved it,” Carla said. “Heartless creeps.”
Helen tried to hide a yawn.
“You look tired,” Carla said. “Job getting to you?”
“Up late last night,” Helen said.
“You newlyweds,” Carla said.
I wish, Helen thought. She and Phil hadn’t gotten home from Gus and his bloody television until nearly two that morning.
“I saw Tansi the other night at Granddaddy’s Bar with a bunch of bodybuilders,” Helen said.
“What was she doing in a bar if she can’t even have an ice cube?” Carla asked.
“That may be where she gets her steroids,” Helen said. “I saw Heather there, too.”
“I don’t see any signs that Heather uses,” Carla said.
“What about selling steroids?”
Carla shook her head. “I don’t think Heather and Tansi run in the same crowd.”
The rest of Helen and Carla’s shift was a blur of routine tasks—checking members in and out, fetching towels, refilling the water pitchers. In the mirrors, she saw Jan Kurtz put Bryan through his paces on the weight machines.
At seven thirty the evening receptionist arrived, and Helen and Carla left for Debbi’s wake. Carla drove them in her red Mustang.
The funeral home was mournfully bland. The other two viewings were for elderly people. Helen saw men and women with walkers and white hair going into those rooms. Debbi’s viewing was a bizarre oasis of color. Her mother, Susan, greeted them near the coffin. She was a generously built woman slipcovered in sorrowful black.
“We worked with your daughter,” Carla told her.
“Would you like to see her?” Susan said.
“Yes,” Carla said.
No, Helen thought, but she knew they couldn’t leave without viewing Debbi’s body. Might as well get it over with. Susan escorted them to the black coffin, as shiny as a snowmobile. Helen tried to hide her shock when she looked inside. Debbi was buried in her posing suit, the tiny black bikini with the yellow sparkles. Her strawlike hair had been smoothed into a golden cap.
“Doesn’t she look amazing?” Susan asked.
“Yes,” Helen said, truthfully. She’d never seen anyone laid out in a four-hundred-dollar bit of sparkling spandex.
Carla’s eyes bulged. She and Helen carefully avoided looking at each other.
The corpse was as bronze as a sun god. “Debbi was going to get another coat of spray tan before her competition,” Susan said. “I think the undertaker did a beautiful job.”
Debbi’s steroid acne was skillfully hidden. The cratered skin that would have kept her out of the competition was covered by the lower half of her coffin. Her jaundiced eyes were closed forever.
“She looks competition ready,” Carla said.
“I’m sure she would have won,” Helen said.
“She’s beyond all that now,” Susan said. “I’m not into bodybuilding. I guess you can tell by looking at me. But my Debbi was a champion. There’s real prejudice against pumped-up women, but my girl fought it.”
“Please accept our sympathy,” Carla said. Helen patted the grieving mother’s hand. A shadow crossed her path as a hulking bodybuilder approached.
“Aunt Susan,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, Mike! Let me take you to see her,” Debbi’s mother said. “She wanted to be just like you.”
As the couple reached the coffin, Helen heard him say, “Great abs! You don’t see many women that ripped.”
Susan started sniffling. Helen and Carla had to steel themselves not to run for the door. They were quiet on the ride back to Helen’s car. They didn’t want to laugh at Debbi, but they didn’t know how to handle that bizarre wake. Silence seemed the only option.
When they were in sight of Helen’s car on the Fantastic Fitness lot, Carla said, “Do you think Evie killed Debbi?”
“Not a chance,” Helen said. “Evie was scared of her own shadow.”
Helen flashed back to that scene in the women’s lounge while she and Evie had waited for the homicide detective. Evie had been frightened then, but not about her impending arrest. She’d gone meekly to jail.
What did Evie mean when she’d said, “I’ll be safer in jail”?
CHAPTER 34
Helen felt like a zombie in a low-budget horror movie: half-alive with staring eyes and smeared makeup. She’d spent her evening in a funeral parlor with a corpse in a spangled posing suit. Now she dragged herself through the door of Phil’s apartment at the Coronado and flopped bonelessly on his black leather couch.
“I’m so glad to be home,” she said, and sighed.
“Quick!” Phil said, grabbing her hand. “Don’t get comfortable. We have to go to Granddaddy’s Bar.”
“Now? It’s after ten o’clock,” Helen said.
“Exactly,” Phil said. “My Spidey sense says that Danny Boy won’t be sober tonight. Not when he’s at a bar with friends buying him drinks.”
“Let me sleep,” Helen said. “It won’t do any good to see him. Danny must know we’re the detectives investigating Mark’s death. His sister would have told him.”
“We’ll surprise him,” Phil said. “He’s drunk. We’ll get the drop on him.”
“Did you say ‘get the drop on him’? Have you been watching old movies again?” Helen asked. “Forget going to that bar. This dame hasn’t had dinner yet.”