by Joan Hess
“She was addled because of your damn diet, Winder. Now she’s in a coma, and you may find yourself explaining the details of the program to a jury.”
“Oh, Shelly,” Bobbi said. She looked at the floor and shook her head.
One of the clients, a middle-aged woman with a weathered face and spiky hair, popped loose from the pew and marched down the aisle. “Sorry about the accident, Dr. Winder,” she said gruffly, holding out her hand. “Candice was a nice woman and a fine nurse. I wouldn’t have lost thirty-seven pounds without her support.”
“Ms. Koenig, how very kind,” he mumbled. After a moment, he was surrounded by the clients, each competing with the others to claim Candice was responsible for his or her weight loss. Numbers were being flung out rather loudly, considering our locale, and Sheldon was looking increasingly panicked by the unruly mob. Gerald, Jody, and Bobbi availed themselves of the golden opportunity to leave without further conversation with the chief mourner.
Caron nudged me and said, “Isn’t he kind of young to be an aerobics teacher?”
I could see all kinds of insidious things floating behind her guileless eyes. “He’s not as young as he looks. Furthermore, he enjoys making his victims sweat like iced tea glasses on a hot day. He revels in it. He shouts things about kicking higher and doing sit-ups faster and getting your knees up to your chin. Then, when you think you’re home free, he sends you into the innermost circles of inferno to be boiled and baked.”
“How old is he?” Caron said, twisting her head to catch a last glimpse of the sadist. “He can’t be that old.”
“He’s old enough to escort a college girl to a funeral.” I did not mention he also was old enough to pursue a twenty-nine-year-old married woman. I grabbed the back of the pew to pull myself up. “I’m going to of fer my condolences to Dr. Winder,” I added with a wince. “Why don’t you and Inez wait in the car?”
The two scurried away, no doubt hoping to catch another glimpse of Jody in the parking lot. Joanie said she’d stop by in the evening with a casserole, then followed the girls out of the chapel. I was aware Peter was still glued to his pew, but I refused to acknowledge it and made my way down front, where Sheldon had beaten off all but a couple of the Ultima clients.
As I approached they drifted away, and he gave me a bland smile. “I’m glad to see you’ve recovered from the dreadful accident, Ms. Malloy. It was unfortunate that you were present when it occurred, but fortunate that you had your back turned.”
“Fortunate,” I murmured. “I regret Candice and I hadn’t gone into the office, where we’d have been somewhat protected from the glass, but we were by the door, trying to decide what to do. Maribeth’s behavior was”—I gave him an equally bland smile—“so odd that we were alarmed. Today I heard a rumor that she had a severe potassium deficiency.”
“Impossible. After you mentioned it to me, I looked over her file. According to Candice’s notation, Maribeth was taking the standard three hundred milligrams daily; she was given a seven-day supply every Monday. The day before the accident she was instructed to take an additional one hundred fifty milligrams daily, just to be safe. I believe Candice sent the bottle home with Maribeth’s husband.”
“Could the potassium caplets have been so old they’d lost their potency?” I asked.
“Absolutely not. They were ordered less than three months ago from a reputable pharmaceutical company. I’ve got the invoices to prove it, and I don’t appreciate this insinuation that Ultima Diet Center would give its clients anything but the newest and best dietary supplements.”
I moved closer, hoping it might induce him to lower his voice. “Where are they stored? Are they kept in a locked cupboard?”
“Ms. Malloy,” he said, aggrieved and not one decibel quieter, “vitamins and supplements do not fall into the same category as controlled substances such as codeine and morphine. Diet centers are not plagued by junkies in search of a fix; there is no black market for calcium. We keep our supplies in a cabinet in the office, so they can be dispensed with a minimum of delay.”
“Then someone could have tampered with the potassium?”
“Ms. Malloy,” he said again, almost shouting now, “your veiled accusations are untenable. The only people with access to the office were Candice, Bobbi, and myself; we did not run off spare keys and distribute them on street corners. And why would someone desire to tamper with a bottle of potassium caplets? As a practical joke? As a way to cause a driving accident? What are you intimating, Ms. Malloy?”
The sensation in my back was very much as if a sliver of glass was imbedded there, and I knew whence it came. I wiped my face, his tirade having been moist, and said in a very low voice, “I wasn’t intimating anything, Dr. Winder; I was just trying to understand how Maribeth could have had a potassium deficiency so severe she lost control of her car. You prescribed the dosage, Candice delivered it, and somehow Maribeth ended up without it.”
“Then she failed to follow instructions. We at Ultima can offer supervision and support, but we can’t follow our clients home to make sure they’re adhering religiously to the program. We have plenty of clients who claim they’ve put not one illegal bite in their mouths, then find themselves admitting to a hot fudge sundae—with extra whipped cream—when faced with the scales.”
“But Maribeth told me she was taking the potassium.”
He gave me a condescending look. “People lie, Ms. Malloy. Surely you’re old enough to have learned that. If you’ll excuse me, I must settle up with the funeral director. Should you ever put on unwanted weight, please don’t hesitate to call us. At Ultima, if you don’t lose, we don’t win.” He brushed past me and went up the aisle and out the door.
Peter had made himself comfortable in the pew, his legs crossed and one arm draped across the back. His notebook lay beside him. As I attempted to sail by, he flashed all two hundred white teeth and said, “Do you have time for coffee before you go home? You look a little haggard.”
“I’d love to,” I said, my fingers crossed tightly behind my back, “but Caron and Inez are waiting for me in the car. Caron drove me over, and I’ll have to ride back with her, not matter how appalling the idea. Are you sure she’s learned anything from your driving lessons?”
He rose like a lanky old cowhand, all teeth and twinkly eyes and amiability. “Sergeant’s Jorgeson’s waiting outside. He can accompany the girls and explain some of the finer points of successful demolition driving. That way we can have ourselves a nice quiet conversation.”
I would have preferred to eat gravel. “That’s not a very nice thing to do to Jorgeson,” I said as we left the chapel. “He may have better things to do than flirt with death.”
“But I shall explain how much I’m looking forward to being alone with you,” Peter said silkily, then went over to his car and bent down to talk to Jorgeson.
I went to the driver’s side of my car and tapped on the window to gain Caron’s attention. She rolled down the window. “One of Peter’s men is going to ride home with you,” I said. “If you yell at anyone, he’ll ticket you for public obscenity. In that no one will come forward to post bail, you may find yourself wasting away in jail. On the other hand, they may serve starchy food for budgetary reasons, and you’ll be a blimp before you’re paroled.”
“You are so amusing, Mother.” She glanced at Inez. “This diet-aid candy hasn’t worked thus far, and we’re probably going to give it up. What we really need to do is just stick to a sensible diet and get lots of exercise. That way when we lose all the weight, our skin won’t hang in gross, flabby flaps that tremble when we walk.”
“Jogging? Swimming laps at the youth center? How about the videocassette you watched so diligently from the sofa?”
“Maybe,” she said, feigning consideration of my bright suggestions. “We were thinking we might join a regular aerobics class so we’d have to work out two or three times a week.”
“Try the one at the youth center,” I said. I stepped back as a very
leery Jorgeson got in the backseat and began issuing orders. Once he’d gotten them out of the parking lot, I reluctantly went to Peter’s car and eased my weary fanny into the passenger’s seat.
He reached into the back and wordlessly handed me a pillow. I wiggled around as best I could, sighing like a leaky tire in hopes of eliciting sympathy. “I’ve always heard that time flies,” he said, “but your forty-eight hours in bed must have created a sonic boom or two. I left you at about eleven this morning and saw you here at four o’clock. I’m just a plodding cop, but even I can do the arithmetic on this one.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said without rancor. “I felt as if I had to come to the funeral. The only headache I’ve had is the one you’re giving me right now. No, that’s not true—the ride over here with Caron wasn’t exactly soporific. Besides, you wrote off the death as an accident caused by Maribeth’s potassium deficiency, so shouldn’t you be at the football field looking for steroid pushers or searching lockers or ordering athletes to pee in little bottles?”
“Are you trying to change the subject?”
“Damn straight. Are the feds still lurking under the bleachers?”
He continued to look forward, but a nerve twitched on his rigidly set jaw and his expression was that of a televangelist preparing to let ’er rip. “And how did you hear of that?” he said in a surprisingly normal voice for a person with lockjaw.
“I read about it in the newspaper.”
“Oh.” He drove into the parking lot of the bowling alley and cut off the engine, then came around the car and opened the door for me, all the while giving me an unfathomable look. I’d seen it before, and although I hadn’t fathomed it, I knew it did not bode well. We went into the restaurant and found an unoccupied booth. The Formica table was grimy, and the booth padded with red plastic held down by strips of silver tape. The other patrons eyed as coldly, as if we’d invaded a private sanctuary, before resuming their conversations, presumably of bowling balls and such.
A tired waitress with bleached hair and a discouraged expression dropped two menus on the table and promised to come back at some point in the future.
“So what did you learn from reading the newspaper so thoroughly?” Peter asked in a soft voice reinforced with steel rods.
I glanced over my shoulder. “What are we doing in this place?” I whispered.
“We’re having coffee. Again, what did you learn?”
“Not to let you pick the next restaurant. I merely read what was in the paper, which wasn’t very much. A football player had a heart attack caused by steroids in his system. Steroids are not only dangerous, they’re illegal. The college officials are embarrassed, and the NAACP is investigating, although I don’t know why unless the player was black.” I gave him a charmingly bewildered shrug. “Smollenski sounds like an Eastern European name.”
“The NAACP is not investigating; the NCAA, as in National Collegiate Athletics Association, is conducting the investigation. If they find any evidence that the player was supplied with steroids by anyone involved in the athletics department, they’ll bring sanctions against the college.”
“And you’ll file charges, I hope. How dreadful to think a coach or a trainer would give players dangerous drugs. The primary reason these boys are enrolled in college is to get an education, not to kill themselves for the team.”
Peter seemed to find this outburst humorous and was still chuckling when the waitress returned with two glasses of water and a pad. “What’ll it be?”she droned. “Special’s chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes, choice of vegetable. Drink’s included; dessert’s extra. Lemon icebox pie, carrot cake, or vanilla ice cream.”
I eyed the lipstick smudge on the glass in front of me and declined to order anything. Peter ordered coffee, managed to stop chuckling, and reached across the table to put his hand on mine. “Listen to me, please. We’ve got our eye on one of the backfield coaches, an ambitious young guy who’d like to spawn enough all-star players to earn a promotion. One of his protégés has indicated a willingness to talk; we’ll be able to ask for a warrant in the next few days—if the player doesn’t panic and leave town.”
“So it’s very hush-hush,” I said in a dramatic whisper. “I shouldn’t say a word to any of the football players when I have them over for tea tomorrow, right? I’ll be as quiet as a spy who stays out in the cold.” I waited while the waitress banged down a chipped cup on a cracked saucer. “If you’re still trying to nail this coach, shouldn’t you be closeted with the national whatever people and the feds? And if you’ve closed the investigation of Maribeth’s accident, what were you doing at Candice’s funeral?”
“Who said we’d closed that investigation?”
“Haven’t you written it off as caused by a potassium deficiency?”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I hear things,” I said modestly. “I think you’re wrong, of course, because you heard Maribeth say she would be more careful not to miss the prescribed caplets. Then again, I suppose you had the lab run a test on the caplets to make sure they were what they were purported to be, so you may be right after all. It’s rather difficult to give Gerald a motive; he’s very interested in Maribeth’s continued well-being until the trust comes to her on her birthday.” Peter was beginning to make rabid-dog noises, so I took a breath and continued. “But if Gerald and Candice were having an affair, then Candice might wish Maribeth was out of the picture, so she could marry Gerald. She certainly had access to the potassium caplets; maybe she substituted them with a placebo of some kind. But that might not play, if you’ve already gotten the lab report,” I gave him a bright, inquisitive look, although somewhere in my soul I knew I was teetering on a threadbare tightrope in the very top of the tent.
Peter sipped his coffee, wrinkled his nose, and carefully put down the cup, all the while gazing at me through impenetrable eyes. He curled a finger at the waitress, who with Houdini-ish insight came to the table and slapped down the check, then went to the adjoining booth to drone about the specials. He looked at the check, took a dollar from his billfold and tucked it under the cracked saucer, and stood up. “Shall we go?”
“I was only asking,” I muttered as we went out to the car. “If you didn’t have the potassium tested, say so, and I’ll drop the matter.”
His teeth reminded me of blunted icicles as he smiled, and his voice was of arctic origin. “You’ll drop the matter, you say?” He held the car door open for me, waited for me to snuggle on top of the pillow, then closed the door and went around the car and took his place behind the wheel. “I don’t want to cast doubts on your basic honesty, but you’ve said that before, and it hasn’t even played in Boston, much less Cleveland. I realize you’re not going to tell me the source of your information, and we broke the last set of thumbscrews last week”—he was silent until he’d turned the car around and started for the street—“but you might consider the sensation of seventeen splinters of glass in your backside.” He jerked the wheel so that we bounced over a pothole, then glanced at me as I let out a muffled groan. “Meddling can be painful.” He found an asphalt speed breaker and did not brake. “Disobeying the doctor’s orders can be unwise.”
As he aimed for yet another speed breaker, I said, “Will you please stop this, Peter? I am not a child to be punished for disobedience. I am an adult—at the moment a very angry adult. If you hit that bump, I will get out of this car and hitchhike home.”
He eased off the gas pedal and turned the car back toward the street. “I was trying to make a point, Claire. I can’t count the number of times you’ve had a gun aimed at you, and by a person who had nothing to lose by pulling the trigger. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Not that many times.” I sniffed, my fanny stinging as sharply as my pride. “When I deduced the identity of Azalea Twilight’s murderer, perhaps, and in the lobby of the Mimosa Inn during the mock-murder weekend, and that one time at the theater. I’m surprised you can’t count to three, Lieutenant Rosen; hav
e some of your fingers fallen off when you weren’t looking?” Armed with bravado. I’ll say most anything.
“Not bad for a mild-mannered bookseller,” he said as we left the parking lot. “A mild-mannered civilian bookseller who needs to mind her own business rather than meddling in official investigations.”
“Don’t you ever tire of saying that? In any case, there is no official investigation of Maribeth’s so-called mishap, so there’s no way I can meddle in one, is there? And I promise to stay out of the locker room, so you can’t claim I’m meddling in that one.”
As we stopped at a red light, I noticed my car in the next lane. The driver was exceedingly grim. The front-seat passenger was stoic but blinking several times a second. The backseat appeared to be empty.
“Where’s Jorgeson?” I gasped.
Peter stared at the car. Before he could say anything, a hand appeared from the depths of the backseat and a finger limply waggled. Caron’s lower lip shot out, and the car squealed away from the light, which, to someone’s mother’s heartfelt relief, had turned green.
As had someone’s mother.
NINE
“The police refuse to investigate?” Joanie Powell said, her fork poised halfway to her mouth. “Maribeth had a potassium deficiency, but no one’s mind is inquiring enough to wonder how it happened?” She propelled the fork the remaining inches and chomped angrily.
“That’s about it,” I admitted. I was in my bathrobe and on my sofa, both of which had done wonders to soothe fanny and pride. Joanie’s casserole was helping, too, along with Caron and Inez’s absence, in that they’d grudgingly gone to the youth center near the high school to find out about inexpensive aerobics classes. I could hardly wait to hear their opinions, and I was sure I would—at great length.