by Rick Copp
“Oh, well, let’s have a look. What are their names?”
“Tamara and Spiro.”
She perused the slips of paper that were neatly lined up across the desk. Each one contained the name of a guest and what treatment they were currently enjoying, along with a line for them to sign when it was completed and another line highlighted with a yellow marker, where they could write in a tip for their therapist. She picked up one of the pieces of paper and studied it for a moment.
“Here they are. Tamara and Spiro are having a couple’s mud bath right now. They’ll be done at 2:30.”
“Thank you.”
I raced back up the stairs and hurried to the south side of the property where the mud baths were located, which I knew from my previous visit.
There was no one to greet me as I entered the open-air reception area, which struck me as odd. Two Bunch prided itself on making everything as easy as possible for their guests. If I had been here for an appointment, I wouldn’t have known what to do.
I waited for a few seconds before a slight commotion in the back drew me through a curtain made of thin strands of bamboo. I saw several employees, all marked by their Two Bunch t-shirts with soft, muted colors and white nametags. They were clustered outside one of the mud bath rooms. There was a panicked buzz in the air as I made my way towards them. With each step, my heart sank a little more. I was too late. The traffic jam had delayed me too long. Tamara Schulberg was already dead.
“What’s wrong?” I asked one of the employees. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail giving me a full view of her pale, shocked face. Her hands were trembling.
“Sir, please step outside.” Her voice was quivering. Needless to say, it did nothing to stop me.
“I have some friends here,” I said as I blew past her. “I want to make sure they’re okay.”
She was too upset to stop me. And as I pushed my way through the throng of Two Bunch attendants, I was able to get a peek inside the mud bath room.
Sitting in a large wicker chair was Tamara Schulberg, shaking and near hysterics. She was caked in dried muck, and looked like an African tribal woman straight off the cover of National Geographic. She clutched a fistful of Kleenex and kept dabbing her eyes.
I breathed a sigh of relief. At least she was alive. I watched her for a few moments as she chattered incoherently to the staff that formed a half circle around her. She was manic, her arms flailing as she spoke.
Where was Spiro, I wondered? Searching the room for any sign of him, my eyes fell to the blue tiled bath that was filled to the brim with a gooey, dark, and filthy mixture of white clay, peat moss and hot mineral water.
I never go in for mud baths. The health benefits everybody raves about are lost on me. I tried it once and spent the next few weeks scrubbing it out of cracks I never knew I had. But it’s a luxury for a lot of rich folks, so who am I to deny them the pleasure?
I stared at the dull brown sludge, trying to figure out what was going on, why Tamara was so distraught, and what she was so desperately trying to explain to the tense staff. And then I saw it—a man’s arm perched just above the surface. It was sinewy and strong and completely still just resting there on the bed of moist dirt.
Two strapping Two Bunch attendants reached down, one grabbing the arm and lifting while the other reached down to get a grip on the torso. They hauled a man’s hulking mud stained body out. That’s when I recognized the naked corpse of Spiro Spiridakis, his tortured eyes wide open and staring lifelessly at me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A bulked-up officer squeezed into a tan cop’s uniform stepped over to me and with a stern voice said, “Please, sir, this is a crime scene. You’re going to have to leave.”
“But I know Mrs. Schulberg . . .”
He wasn’t going to ask twice. He clamped his hands on both my shoulders, and shoved me forcefully back out the door. I could hear Tamara’s sobbing voice as she spoke with the other officers gathered around her.
“But it was self-defense. I had no choice . . .”
One of the officers, a woman, with dyed blonde hair and a shapely, curvy body, unhooked a pair of handcuffs from her belt and locked them on Tamara’s wrist. She reminded me of Angie Dickinson, who played sexy forty-something Pepper Anderson on TV’s Police Woman in the seventies. Another officer began reading Tamara her rights.
“You’re not listening to me,” Tamara cried. “Please, he tried to kill me.”
“Tamara!” I yelled just as the door to the cabana was closing on me.
She looked at me, her face a mask of confusion.
“Jarrod?”
I smiled at her sympathetically. I could tell she was trying to figure out what the hell I was doing there. I noticed another officer slip on a pair of plastic gloves and pick up a gun that had been dropped by the side of the mud bath. He sealed it up in a bag.
“What . . . what are you doing here, Jarrod?”
“I was at the gym this morning . . . I overheard Spiro talking to a friend . . . they thought they were alone . . .”
Suddenly her face was full of hope. And for the first time, Willard’s mother was relieved that I had once again horned my way into her life.
“He was planning on killing you,” I continued. “I came here to try and stop him.”
Tamara looked at the officers, who didn’t know what to make of my sudden appearance, as if we were all characters in the third act of a Hercule Poirot mystery.
“Oh, Jarrod, thank God,” Tamara said as she nearly collapsed, held up by the strong arms of the officers on both sides of her. “They’re trying to arrest me for what happened.”
“What did happen?” I asked.
“We came here for a romantic weekend. Everything’s been so tense since Willard’s death. We just needed to get away, even if only for a couple of days. We were scheduled for a mud bath treatment, but once the therapist left us alone, Spiro went crazy. He tried shoving me under. I started choking on the mud. He was suffocating me. I just couldn’t believe . . . he was capable of doing such a thing.”
I noticed the skeptical looks on the police officers’ faces. I had to admit, it sounded far-fetched to me too. How could Spiro be so stupid as to do the deed during a mud bath treatment, with a gaggle of nosy spa employees right outside the door? The whole thing sounded completely preposterous. But here I was, backing up Tamara’s story. I knew what I heard. Spiro had every intention of offing his wife sometime during their weekend getaway.
“So how did you manage to get away?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He held me under by the throat. His hands were so tight, I couldn’t breathe, the mud was filling my lungs. But I remembered he always carried a gun, and his tote bag was at the edge of the tub . . . I was able to reach it, I felt for the gun and . . . and . . . I just started firing.”
While Tamara recounted her story, a pair of paramedics arrived on the scene and lifted Spiro’s lifeless body up onto a gurney. I looked down at him as they wheeled him away. He was covered in blood and mud, his eyes still open in surprise. I felt nothing. Spiro Spiridakis got what he deserved. I only wondered if Tamara was telling the absolute truth.
The officer who pushed me out of the room earlier was now interested in hauling me back inside. A few spa employees poked their heads in to see what was happening as the officer slammed the door on them.
He stood in front of me. “So you’re saying he planned to kill her?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “Sometime this weekend. That’s what I overheard.”
“So you believe her story?”
I nodded again.
The officers looked at me, perplexed. Before my entrance, they had figured out the entire scenario. Tamara and Spiro got into an argument. Tamara knew Spiro carried a .38 pistol. And when the fight spiraled out of control, Tamara reached for the gun, and in a blaze of anger, blew six holes in him. But now my sudden arrival threw a wrench in their whole theory, and they weren’t too pleased about it
.
There was a long silence before Angie Dickinson spoke. “I think we should all go downtown and talk this out some more.”
Two Bunch Palms was located in Desert Hot Springs, about fifteen minutes east of Palm Springs. But when the staff of the spa called the local police department to report a shooting on the premises, the “big guns” from Palm Springs were called in, still small potatoes if you live in a teeming metropolis like Los Angeles. But this, after all, was the desert, and not much excitement happened out here. So everybody who carried a badge within a twenty-mile radius was hell bent on showing up.
The officers escorted me to the four squad cars parked in front of the spa’s dining room. The flashing red lights managed to stir up a crowd of guests to watch all the commotion. They were decked out in their terrycloth bathrobes with the Two Bunch Palms insignia and their leather sandals, the proper attire for any guest of the spa, day or night.
I was sweating profusely as I was led towards the cars, the scorching sun a relentless reminder of our desert surroundings. We stood waiting for Tamara, who had been allowed to shower off the mud in one of the private cabanas and put on some clothes. When she finally arrived, she looked a bit more relaxed. I think my presence was giving her peace of mind. Who would have thought I of all people could be a comforting presence to her?
We were placed side by side in the back of one of the squad cars and Angie Dickinson got behind the wheel and off we went.
I immediately turned to Tamara. “I’m not sure these cops believe me, but I’ll do whatever I can to help you, Tamara.”
She threw her arms around my neck and hugged me tightly. She began to cry again. “I’ve never been so scared, Jarrod . . . I loved him . . . I thought he loved me . . .”
With Tamara at her most vulnerable, I knew this was my best opportunity to try and get her to open up a bit. Her guard was down, her mind was reeling, and we were still a good ten minutes from downtown Palm Springs.
“Tamara, do you know a Theodore Phelan?”
“Who?”
“I think he might have had something to do with Willard.”
“No, I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“What about Spiro?”
“No, I don’t think so. But then again, I guess I didn’t know anything about Spiro after all, or who he might have known.” The tears welled up again, and she was crying again. “Oh God, how could I have been so stupid?”
I rocked her in my arms gently, trying my best to be supportive.
Tamara clawed at my shirt as she sobbed. “I should’ve seen this coming.” Then she laughed wryly, and spit out, “She should’ve seen this coming.”
“She? Who’s she?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Never mind.”
“Tamara, anything you tell me could help. Even the smallest thing.”
“It’s silly. I went to this psychic reading yesterday. She warned me about Spiro. She kept talking about his dark energy. But she never said he would try and kill me. Guess she’s not so good.”
I couldn’t be this lucky. I kept my voice steady. I didn’t want to tip her off that I was about to burst.
“I didn’t know you were into that kind of thing.”
“I’m not. Willard was always trying to get me to go. He kept giving me this woman’s card. And finally, last week, I was feeling so lost and helpless, and I found the card Willard gave me, so I finally called.”
I didn’t need the psychic’s name. I knew it was the same one Willard suggested to me all those years ago when I felt so lost and helpless. Tamara Schulberg had received a psychic reading from my beloved Isis. And if anyone could fill in the blanks at this point, it would be her.
But first I had to endure a night of hard questions from the Palm Springs police department, and even Charlie’s reach didn’t extend to the desert. There would be no phone calls from my boyfriend to fix things. I was completely on my own. And so was Tamara. I was just curious to know if after hours of relentless questioning, her implausible story would still hold up.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Since I wasn’t officially under arrest, I was able to make more than one phone call. My first three were spent tracking down Charlie, who was busting a gang-operated car theft ring downtown. Sometimes it amazed me just how butch he was. If he hadn’t just last week surprised me with tickets to the Sound of Music sing-along at the Hollywood Bowl, I would seriously question his allegiance to the gay community.
Charlie was stunned at the revelations I had stumbled upon in the desert, and dropped everything to race out to my rescue. But even with a flashing red siren slapped onto the roof of his Ford Explorer, it would still be after midnight before he could get there.
Next I called Isis. There was no answer. I waited twenty minutes and called again. Still no answer. I was desperate to talk to her, but common sense told me she was haunting the aisles at Price Club. And if that were the case, she would be gone for hours.
I watched Angie Dickinson escort Tamara out of the interrogation room. Tamara’s eyes were red. Her face was pale. I think if she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, the shock of her appearance would have killed her. Tamara prided herself on looking stunning, even at her advanced age. She hadn’t doled out thousands on new cheekbones and fat injections in her lips to look this haggard after a harrowing attempt on her life by her loving husband.
She saw me sitting in the hall, and came over to join me.
Angie Dickinson scowled at me and said, “We’ll be ready for you in five minutes.” And then she marched off towards the officers’ break room.
Tamara plopped down in the hardback chair next to mine, and fumbled though the contents of her purse. “I know I have a hand mirror here somewhere.” I had to distract her from finding that mirror, or all hell would have broken loose.
“How did it go in there?” I said.
She stopped searching for a moment, and stared straight ahead. “They don’t believe it was self-defense. They think I’m lying about Spiro trying to drown me in the mud.”
“But what about me? I overheard him planning it. They’ll have to listen to me. I’m a credible witness. Sort of.”
“But you hated Spiro. You’ve been running around accusing him of killing Willard for weeks. They believe you’ll say anything to smear his name.”
“There’s someone else. The man Spiro confided in. He may not be the most upstanding citizen, but he did tell me you two were coming here. He cared enough to help me. Maybe he’ll back me up.”
“I hope so, Jarrod. I can’t go to jail. I’ll never survive in there.”
“I don’t understand why they won’t believe us.”
“They’re hung up on some stupid little detail.”
“What?”
“They want me to explain why there was a bullet in his back if he was facing me when he tried to drown me.”
Good question, I thought. The police had a point. For all intents and purposes, Tamara’s story didn’t make a bit of sense if there was a bullet in his back. And it would explain their frustration with me for showing up to further stack the deck against the focus of their investigation. That Spiro never tried to do her in during a mud bath treatment. That what really happened was simple: Tamara murdered her husband in cold blood.
“So what did you tell them?” I said, as non-confrontational as possible.
She shrugged. “Not much.”
She was strangely calm and serene. I found her whole demeanor a little spooky for someone who had just been through such a traumatic ordeal.
She continued in a soft, matter-of-fact voice. “I said he spun around after I shot him the first three times, fell into the mud bath, and I shot him again in my panic.”
“And what about the other two bullets? If he was face down in the mud and there was only one bullet in his back, how did the other two find him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I shot him five times before he spun around. My mind’s a little fuzzy. It all happened so fast.
God, Jarrod, you’re worse than the police.”
She didn’t have a concrete explanation of what really happened. And with me on the scene to back up her story, she didn’t feel the burning need to clarify much of anything anymore. Let them prove otherwise.
Tamara Schulberg had just been blessed with a good deal of luck. If I hadn’t sped to Palm Springs to save her from the vicious hands of her diabolical husband, her situation would be far more precarious, the probing questions from the Palm Springs police department far more troubling. There was no doubt in my mind that Spiro was planning on killing Tamara. I heard him tell Eli myself.
But what if Tamara had been planning to kill Spiro at the same time he was plotting to do away with her? What if she just happened to beat him to the punch? And this romantic getaway at the luxurious Two Bunch Palms just happened to be her crime scene of choice, too? The problem was, she hadn’t thought her plan through carefully. She had hastily concocted the story of Spiro trying to drown her, the gun in the tote bag, the whole self-defense scenario. It struck me that she might have been acting out of passion, which would explain the lack of forethought in planning his demise, and the giant holes in her story that my presence was helping to patch up.
We sat there in silence as I contemplated the reasons that might have led to Tamara confronting Spiro and ultimately riddling his body with bullets. It all boiled down to one name: Willard. Perhaps all my digging unearthed something that might have illuminated a light bulb above Tamara’s head. Perhaps she finally faced the possibility that her husband, whether he did it himself or had someone else do it, was somehow connected to her only child’s untimely end.
“Did Spiro kill Willard?” I said.
“No, Jarrod. He did not. I know you want some kind of closure, but believe me, he had nothing to do with it.”
“Then why did you kill him?”
She glanced up at me in surprise. A look passed between us. We both knew the truth. Still, for her own well being, Tamara was sticking to her story.