by Camy Tang
“Besides, the detective will see from the video surveillance that I never entered the building before walking in to ask for her.”
Well, that made her feel stupid. She looked down at her twined hands.
“How do I know you didn’t kill her?” Devon asked.
“What? Why would I kill her? Doing it in my own massage room?”
“It would make it look like you’re being framed.”
“Bringing down bad publicity on my own spa?”
Devon smiled. “Look, we’re both suspects even though I didn’t have the means and you didn’t have a motive. Why don’t we just call a truce?” He held out his hand.
He was right. “Sure.”
His touch to her skin felt like a sunburn. A very pleasurable sunburn. You idiot, it’s a handshake, not a lover’s caress. You’re so pathetic. She snatched her hand away. “I’ll see you.” She headed toward the exit doors, intent on escaping his presence even though she still had to face her father’s wrath at home.
How horrible today had been. In comparison, tomorrow would be a quiet day.
FIVE
The silence of the empty spa frightened Naomi.
It hadn’t been so bad this morning and afternoon as she’d taken advantage of the empty spa to catch up on paperwork. But now, she missed the sound of soft, slippered feet along the halls, the quiet conversation, even the soothing Asian-inspired instrumental music that normally piped down the halls from the sound system. The absolute quiet hung thick and suffocating. And, as the sun set, that mute cloud seemed dark and forbidding, too.
She was imagining things. She was just jittery after everything that had happened yesterday. And what a day it had been.
Her office phone rang, and she jumped. She picked up the phone. Hopefully the caller wouldn’t hear her heart pounding against her throat. “Hello?”
“Miss Grant? It’s David from the security desk. I just wanted to tell you that me and Ron are about to switch off with Lester and Neal for the evening shift.”
“Thanks.” For once, she didn’t object to the extra security her father had hired for the next few days.
Poor Martin. She wished he were here instead of these other security guys. But after his full day of Jessica’s tragedy in the morning and then staying late only to run into that stranger, he deserved the next few days off.
She only had a stack of job applications to go through now—and she really needed to do it, because Sarah had given her two-week notice—but the sight oppressed her. How could this be happening to the spa? Only two days ago, they’d been thriving enough to need to hire more therapists and aestheticians, and today, they might need to let some personnel go if Jessica’s murder sullied the spa’s reputation in the next month or so.
She shouldn’t be thinking of something so mundane, not when a woman had lost her life. And in her spa room. But because Jessica had been her client, she felt responsible somehow. And because Dad had put her in charge temporarily, that definitely made her responsible for what happened on her shift.
She couldn’t fail her father. Not when he needed her to take over the spa one day. Not when he was grooming her for it.
She heard the click of a door. Soft. Unmistakable.
No one was supposed to be here. The guards didn’t walk this area of the spa, just the research labs in back.
Another soft click.
She wasn’t alone.
Her throat closed up and she couldn’t breathe. A part of her screamed to do something, even while a smaller, rational part of her argued that it was probably a guard doing a more thorough check of the building than usual.
A shuffle. Several shuffles.
There was more than one person.
She jumped to her feet. Her shaking hand reached into her desk drawer even as she eyed her half-open door. The spa was completely dark except for her office. Whoever was out there would know she was here.
Her fingers curled around the solid, cool metal of the massive flashlight Dad had given to her for whenever the power went out. At the time, she’d laughed and asked him if it wasn’t overkill, since the beam was brighter than the ones used by search-and-rescue units.
She wasn’t laughing now. Thank you, Dad.
More footsteps. Still soft, as if trying to hide their presence.
She slipped from behind her desk and positioned herself against the wall, behind the door. She gripped the flashlight more tightly, and her nails scraped against the metal.
The door moved a fraction of an inch. They were right outside.
“Surprise!”
“Aieeeee!” she screamed
“Aaaaaaaah!” someone screeched.
Her flashlight dropped to the floor with a clatter.
Wide blue eyes peeked around the door at her. “Miss Grant? Are you okay?”
“Sarah, you scared ten years off my life!” She swallowed to get herself to calm down.
“We, uh…wanted to surprise you.” Haley also poked her head around the door.
To give herself time, Naomi bent to pick up the flashlight. She laid it on top of the filing cabinet in the corner and gave the top drawer a sharp shove, even though it was already closed. Yes, she was, uh, filing. Not standing behind the door lying in wait with a flashlight the size of a club.
“We saw your car in the parking lot, so we knew you’d be here.” Sarah entered the room, followed by Iona and Haley.
“We figured you were working all day.”
“And we wanted to cheer you up.”
“So we brought you dinner.” Sarah held aloft a bulky paper bag with the familiar Luigi’s logo on the side.
“That’s so sweet of you. Thanks, girls.” She took the bag from them, the scent of garlic curling up at her. “Were you out for your weekly dinner together?” It warmed her that the staff bonded with each other outside of work. It implied that the spa had created a family atmosphere where friendships formed, and not just a company of employees.
“No, we usually eat out on Monday nights.”
“But we decided to go out again tonight since we were all off work.”
“Do you know when the spa will open up again?” Iona asked.
Naomi shook her head. “Soon, hopefully.” They couldn’t lose too many days of packed appointments that had to be rescheduled or canceled.
“So, Miss Grant, did Dr. Knightley kill Ms. Ortiz?” Sarah’s eyes were wide.
“What? Why do you say that?”
“We were at the receptionists’ desk when he came in, but we heard him ask for her,” Iona replied.
“And Ms. Ortiz never mentioned his name when she came to the spa before, and you know how she likes to talk to us staffers,” Haley added.
Naomi fixed the threesome with a stern eye. “Have you been spreading rumors?”
“No, don’t worry, Miss Grant,” Iona said. “We were just talking amongst ourselves at dinner tonight.”
“So, is he involved somehow?” Sarah asked.
“How does he know her?”
“Why did he ask to see her?”
“Dr. Knightley had things to discuss with Ms. Ortiz,” Naomi said. The girls’ habit of rapid-fire questions made her feel a bit harassed. How could she get out of this conversation?
“But what?”
“And why?”
“How does he know her?”
“Did he already know she was dead?”
“Do you think he killed her?”
“He didn’t kill her—he’s her ex-husband.” Naomi regretted it the moment it came out of her mouth. Aunt Becca had said it wasn’t common knowledge, but Naomi had been caught off guard by the girls’ questions.
“Oooh.” The three looked at each other in surprise and faint titillation, but not in maliciousness.
Their innocent expressions eased Naomi’s guilt over letting that tidbit slip. “Please don’t repeat that, girls.”
“Oh, we won’t.”
“We promise, Miss Grant.”
“We
want the police to catch whoever did it.”
“Oh, that reminds me.” Haley snapped her fingers. “We came up with an idea.”
“We were talking at dinner.”
“Sarah came up with it.”
“You know how Ms. Ortiz loves…er, loved to talk?” Sarah colored a bit.
Naomi nodded.
“Well, she always arrived early for her appointments so she could enjoy the Tamarind Lounge beforehand.”
“And we had several Tamarind members who had appointments at the same time or before Ms. Ortiz’s massage yesterday,” Iona added.
“She might have said something to one of them,” Haley chimed in.
“Said something?” They had a point. One of the women she spoke to might remember something, even something that might seem trivial but provide a clue about why someone would want to kill her.
But what if it was just someone who wanted to discredit the spa? If so, and they were still out there…Naomi shivered.
“We can’t exactly question the Tamarind members,” Iona continued.
“But you can,” Sarah said.
She could. Some women might have already left Sonoma, but she could pay a “goodwill” visit to some of them at their hotels, to assure them of the spa’s continued gold-standard service despite the “unpleasantness” of yesterday, and she could probe them about what Jessica Ortiz might have let drop.
“Girls, do you know who—”
“We already did it for you.” Iona smiled and handed her some printouts. “We went to the receptionists’ desk when we let ourselves in.”
“We looked up every Tamarind member who had an appointment before or at the same time as Ms. Ortiz.”
“And we got their hotel information, too.”
“You girls are worth your weight in diamonds.” Naomi scanned the sheets. There were only five women listed.
The girls giggled. “I’d prefer just one huge diamond, like Sarah’s.” Iona sighed.
“How are your wedding plans coming along?”
They chatted a few minutes more, then her phone rang.
“Bye, Miss Grant. We’ll leave you now,” Sarah said. The girls waved as they left the office.
“Hello?”
“Miss Grant, it’s Neal in security. There’s a Detective Carter who wants to speak to you.”
“He’s here?”
“Standing outside the front doors.”
“Let him in.”
A trembling started in her stomach as she sat at her desk and waited. What next? Why would he need to see her again? If he were just looking at the crime scene again, he wouldn’t have asked to see her.
A short knock on the half-open door, and his thinning red-gold head eased in. “Miss Grant?”
“Detective Carter. Come in.”
He sat in the chair across from her and withdrew his notepad slowly. The action made her twist her hands in her lap. Why was she so nervous? She hadn’t killed Jessica.
“Miss Grant, can you tell me your whereabouts at approximately ten-fifteen yesterday?”
“I had finished an appointment at ten. I think I was here, in my office.”
“For how long?”
“A few minutes. Then Aunt Becca called me into the reception foyer for Sarah’s announcement about her engagement.”
“Do you know the exact time?”
“Not really. But we were there for about ten or fifteen minutes. Dr. Knightley came in around ten forty-five.”
“Can anyone corroborate your whereabouts between ten and ten-thirty?” His eyes rose from his notebook and skewered her.
“You mean…I don’t…I don’t have anyone. I was here alone.” From a little after ten until she went to the entrance foyer at around ten-thirty. She wiped her palms on her pants legs.
“No one called you?”
She shook her head. “Why are you asking me this now? Why that time frame? Was that when…” Then it clicked. The coroner had established the time of the attack—ten-fifteen. That’s why he was asking this now.
Jessica had been alive, but bleeding when they found her. When had that been? They probably had an exact time from the 911 call.
But it meant she’d been attacked earlier. Hadn’t Ms. Cormorand told her that some nameless staff member had come for Jessica around ten-fifteen? And she had lain there bleeding until she was found. “Was that when she was attacked? Are you asking me if I attacked her?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Miss Grant.”
This wasn’t happening. Oh, God, help me. But where was God? He wasn’t preventing this man from suspecting her of doing something so awful she couldn’t even think about it without gagging. Last night, she hadn’t slept well because she kept seeing Jessica’s face and all that blood.
“I didn’t kill her. Why would I kill her? And in my own massage room?” Her voice started rising, and she couldn’t stop it. “I liked Jessica. I’m trying to do a good job taking over the spa while Dad’s sick. This is going to devastate him. He’s still too fragile. He—”
“Detective Carter, how nice to see you again.” Aunt Becca’s words were gracious, but her tone sliced through Naomi’s panicked monologue. She was glad to see her but wondered why she’d come to the closed spa.
Naomi realized she’d risen to her feet, and she sat again. She bit her lip—maybe that would prevent more nonsense from spewing out. But it wouldn’t do a thing about what she’d already babbled.
Aunt Becca smoothly inserted herself into the room and the conversation. “I hope the guards let you into the spa without trouble? We told them they could expect you at any time. May I offer you something to drink? A glass of water?”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”
Aunt Becca laughed. “I thought you were calling me Becca.” She gave Naomi a sidelong glance as if to ask, Have you pulled yourself together by now?
Naomi clenched her hands in her lap. “Detective Carter was asking me where I was between ten and ten-thirty.”
Becca’s eyebrows rose toward her coiffed bangs. “Is that when Jessica was…” She pressed her lips together. When she spoke again, gone were her dulcet tones of a moment before. “Detective Carter, my niece had an appointment that ended around 10:05 or 10:10. She was here in her office when I called her at around ten-thirty to come into the reception foyer. She wasn’t breathless from racing from the women’s locker room after changing out of a bloody spa uniform and scrubbing blood from herself.”
He didn’t say anything, but his eyes met hers in a long, steely gaze.
“And I,” Aunt Becca continued, “spoke to more than a dozen people between ten and ten-thirty. I can give you their names if you like.” Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed a pad of paper and a pen from Naomi’s desk and started scribbling.
Detective Carter sat silent, motionless. Unfathomable.
Aunt Becca finished with a flourish, tore out the page and handed it to him. “Are you quite done, Detective?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He rose and left.
Naomi let out the breath she’d been holding. “Aunt Becca, you shouldn’t make him mad.”
“The nerve of him. You don’t have a motive for killing Jessica or ruining the spa’s reputation.”
“I guess he still has to ask.”
“There are lots of people who didn’t like Jessica Ortiz. And there are certainly several people who don’t like your father, either, who’d be happy to see the spa go out of business.”
“But were any of them inside the building yesterday?”
“I wish we had the outside surveillance tapes. We could see who had entered the spa yesterday morning.”
“I wonder if they found the man who ran away last night.”
“Exactly. Why wasn’t he asking you more about him, rather than insinuating that you’d killed your own client?”
Good thing Martin had been there. And Devon, though she didn’t want to admit it. “Do you think he’s questioned Devon Knightley, too?”
/> “Undoubtedly.” Becca stopped her pacing and dropped into the chair the detective had just vacated. “But he’s as innocent as you are.”
“Are you so sure of that? She was his ex-wife.”
“And they had a very nasty divorce. She wiped him out, which was just spiteful considering how much money her family already has.”
“She did? He’s in financial trouble?”
“Not anymore. He’s been slowly recovering from the financial devastation she caused him. He’s a very good doctor, you know. At least, that’s what his mother says.”
“And of course she’s unbiased.”
“He wouldn’t be the orthopedic surgeon of the Oakland Raiders if he weren’t good.”
That was true. “So he hated her. He had a strong motive to kill her. Why do you think he didn’t do it?”
“I know him, I know his family—”
“You said that before. But he could have found a way to sneak into the spa, attack Jessica, then sneak out, come around to the front and enter, demanding to see her.”
“Think back to yesterday. Did he look like he’d dashed from the back of the spa to the front in this heat?”
No, he’d looked calm, masculine and heart-stopping.
“And why would he walk in and announce himself to be in the same building as a woman he’d just attacked?”
“To avert suspicion?”
“Besides, the bloody uniform was female and the clothes were in the women’s locker room.”
She hadn’t thought of that. A part of her uncoiled in relief.
But why should she be relieved? Why should she care about him?
And considering how Jessica had cleaned him out in that messy divorce, he probably didn’t want anything to do with women, much less solvent women. Because of her father’s business savvy and investments, the Grants were even wealthier than the Ortizes.
“Come on.” Aunt Becca jumped to her feet. “I came to the spa to take you out to dinner. We could use a break.”
“But Iona, Sarah and Haley came by earlier and brought me dinner.” She motioned to the still-warm bag on her desk.
“That’s nice of them. But you don’t want to eat alone right now—or, rather, I don’t want to eat alone right now. Put it in the staff fridge and let’s go.”