by Joan Hess
Maribeth was hooked up to tubes, and an oxygen tube was taped across her nostrils. A broad strip of adhesive tape across her nose and cheeks and a misshapen purplish bruise on one side of her face attested to the force with which she’d hit the steering wheel. Her eyes were closed.
Joanie sat on the unoccupied bed. She gave me a pinched smile and said, “I’d about given up on you. Was there a crowd in the gift shop, or were you too busy chasing doctors down the hall to find it?”
“How’s Maribeth?” I whispered. “Is she asleep?”
“She said she’d had several visitors in the last hour. They must have been too much for her.”
Maribeth opened her eyes, and in a hoarse, nasal voice said, “Claire, how nice of you to come. I’m not a very good hostess, but sit down for a minute.”
I sat on the arm of a chair, wishing I had the nerve to ask her some questions but aware of Joanie’s protective presence. I settled for an innocuous, “How are you feeling, Maribeth?”
“Not good. I’ve got a broken nose, two cracked ribs, and enough needles stuck in me to make a pine tree. Then again, it’s nice to be alive.” She turned her head to one side, and swallowed several times. “Poor Candice. When I first woke up, the whole thing seemed like a nightmare, just a horrible fantasy someone had whispered in my ear while I was unconscious. Then this afternoon Jody showed up with flowers, and I made him tell me what happened. I almost killed you, too, Claire. You must be furious at me.”
“No,” I said sternly, “and you can’t blame yourself for the accident. A freak accident, Maribeth. You can’t hold yourself responsible for a heart attack that made you lose control of your car. It wasn’t your fault”
“That’s right,” Joanie added.
“But it was my fault,” Maribeth said. “I should have said something about my heart condition, but I didn’t because I wanted to go on the Ultima program. I assumed they wouldn’t take me if they thought I was a high-risk client.”
“So you told them that you’d been examined by your personal physician?” I said, avoiding Joanie’s dark look. “No one at the Ultima Center had any idea you’d had rheumatic fever as a child, and that there was a second occurrence in college?”
She stared at the ceiling for a moment, her eyes unblinking and her mouth slack. “I didn’t tell anyone at Ultima. Gerald might have mentioned it to Candice, I suppose, but nobody said anything to me about it.”
“And therefore you were allowed to stay on the program,” I said with a sweetly inquisitive smile.
“Of course she stayed on the program,” Joanie snapped. She crossed her legs and began to jiggle her foot up and down in an irritated way, as though she were visualizing making contact with someone’s fanny. “I think we’d better let Maribeth rest. Visitors can be tiring—and tiresome.”
“I did stay on the program,” Maribeth continued. “Bobbi came by earlier and asked me a lot of questions about those overly emotional outbursts. She implied that I’d skipped the potassium, but I took caplets three times a day. The only time I missed any was the day before I fainted in the Book Depot, and that scared me.”
“The police found three full bottles at your house,” I said.
“Gerald brought me some, didn’t he?” she said, sounding confused. “I thought it was just one bottle, but maybe he had others. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.” She put her hand on her forehead, then let it slide down her cheek, tracing the border of the bruise. “Aren’t Jody’s flowers beautiful?”
Joanie clucked admiringly. “They’re quite beautiful.”
I made a similar noise, then said, “He’s been terribly worried about you. Bobbi said earlier that he’s been calling the hospital every hour since the accident.”
“He told me,” she said in an amazed voice. “He said he’s been skipping lunch because he misses our little picnics in the office.” She gave me a secretive smile that seemed to imply complicity between the two of us, although one of us was decidedly on the far side of the moon. “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to Jody. You understand, don’t you? We’re pretty much still in the same boat.”
I’d heard it before, but I had yet to figure out if the boat to which she kept referring was the Andrea Doria or the QEII. I resorted to inanity. “Certainly.”
“The same boat,” she repeated. “Joanie may not understand, but we do. Right, Claire?”
“Right,” I said with admirable conviction.
Suddenly tears began to spill down Maribeth’s cheeks, and her voice grew so painfully hoarse that I could barely understand her. “You know what I was? I was a weapon. It was as though someone had loaded me with a bullet and pointed me at Candice’s heart. I never would have hurt her. I didn’t even care that she and Gerald were—you know.”
“You must rest now,” Joanie said abruptly. “Our visit has upset you, and I’m sure you’re exhausted. Come along, Claire.”
We murmured good-byes and left the room. As we approached the elevator, Joanie said, “There you are. She was taking the caplets regularly. Either someone at Ultima was giving her placebos, or her rotten husband was switching them.”
“Placebos or something a bit stronger. The doctor I spoke to in the lobby said her symptoms sounded like they might be the result of anabolic steroids.”
“That’s absurd.”
“I agree, and we still don’t have a solid motive.”
“You haven’t discovered it.”
I acknowledged the veracity of her accusation with a sigh. My purse thudded against my hip, and I heard, or imagined I heard, the rattle of a lone caplet. I realized I couldn’t tell Joanie about it, because she would demand to know how it came to be in my possession. Those of us without transportation needed to tread very carefully, if we didn’t want to trudge home in the dark. “Okay, we’ll presume she took the caplets as prescribed by the Ultima staff. Candice, Sheldon, and Bobbi were the only ones who could have made the substitution at the center. Gerald could have done so at home. But she lied when she said she was losing steadily.”
“Not Maribeth Farber Galleston,” Joanie said, punching the elevator button so hard I could almost hear a minute electronic squeal of agony. We drove home in an uneasy silence, and I was relieved when I could say good night and go upstairs. I was not relieved when I discovered Caron was not home. I checked her bedroom, which was in its usual state of artful chaos, and found no indication she’d been there in my absence. Bobbi had told me Caron and Inez had waited for me, then accepted a ride with a friend. What friend?
I called Inez’s house, but no one answered and I remembered Inez had mentioned that her parents would be at a meeting. The girls could have gone to the college library, one of their favorite places to analyze male behavior in a relatively safe (no one ever noticed them) environment, but Caron would have eaten spiders before setting foot outside in the ragged gym shorts and T-shirt she’d been wearing.
And they didn’t know anyone in the aerobics class, except Bobbi, who was still there when I arrived and therefore hadn’t given them a ride. Jody had gone to the hospital to visit Maribeth. I found the telephone directory, looked up Bobbi’s number, and dialed it. No one answered.
My fingers felt numb as I found the number of Delano’s Fitness Center. I let it ring half a dozen times, and was about to give up when a male voice answered with an impatient “Yes?”
“This is Claire Malloy,” I said. “Is Bobbi Rodriquez there?”
“Hey, this is Jody, Claire. Bobbi’s not here. Is there something I can help you with?”
“I don’t think so. I was half an hour late to pick up Caron and Inez, and Bobbi said they’d accepted a ride from a friend. That was almost two hours ago, and they haven’t come home. I wanted to ask Bobbi who offered the ride.” I tried to laugh, but it came out a shade too high. “I’m sure everything’s fine. Mothers do worry, though.”
“I should say so. My mama used to whack me if I was one minute late for supper. Bobbi said she had so
me kinda appointment tonight, but she didn’t say where she would be. I know what I can do. There are only half a dozen girls in that class; how about I call them and see if any of them gave your daughter and her friend a ride someplace?”
“That would be great,” I said. He promised to call me back, and after I hung up, I poured myself a shot of scotch and waited on the sofa, determined not to allow myself to entertain ghastly thoughts of perverts, kidnappers, or misogynists. I told myself over and over that at that very minute one of the girls in the class was telling Jody she’d dropped Caron and Inez at a movie theater—or, more likely, a pizza joint or the ice cream parlor on Thurber Street. Perhaps they’d stopped by Inez’s house and Caron had borrowed more presentable clothes for the evening. Caron had been too irritated by my tardiness to bother to call or come by to leave a note.
The telephone rang. I grabbed it and said, “Yes?”
“I found out something,” Jody said in a strained voice. “One of the girls, Bettina, said the two left with a man, an older guy who was working out on the machines in the back room. I wasn’t here, so I didn’t see him, and Bettina had never seen him before. I keep those records in a separate file, so if you want, you can come look through the file and see if you recognize any names.”
“Bettina didn’t describe the man?”
“Nah, she said she just noticed them leaving and didn’t think anything about it until I called her. There’s not more than a hundred names. You’ll recognize one of them, call from here, and he’ll say that he took the girls to the movie theater or whatever. If that doesn’t work, Bobbi’s car is parked out back, so she must have hitched a ride earlier. She’ll hafta come back to pick it up.”
I agreed, but after I’d hung up, I remembered that my car was in the shop. Damn. I put on a jacket, grabbed my purse, and went downstairs to knock on Joanie’s door and further my career as a world-class liar.
She came to the door in a bathrobe, her gray hair wound tightly around spongy pink catepillars. “Yes?”
“I need to borrow your car.”
“It’s nearly ten o’clock, Claire. Wherever are you going at this hour?”
I couldn’t admit I’d lost Caron and Inez because I had been delayed in Gerald’s foyer. “Caron left something at the fitness center. Her math book.”
“I certainly don’t want to live below a math failure, so I’ll get the car key for you. Something occurred to me while I was eating dinner, and it’s been bothering me ever since. If the doctor Betty Lou overheard in intensive care did numerous tests on Maribeth, wouldn’t he have informed Peter that there were steroids in her system?”
I was too worried about Caron and Inez to do more than shrug, but as I drove toward Delanon’s Fitness Center her question echoed over and over again.
TWELVE
The front room of the fitness center was gloomy, but I could see a sliver of light under the office door. Feeling like a feverish woodpecker, I rapped on the glass with the car key until the office door opened and Jody crossed the room to admit me.
“Guess you haven’t heard from them?” he asked as we went to the office. “Kids these days don’t think about their parents, don’t think anyone worries when they stay out late. Here’s the membership forms on all the guys that use the back room. Most of them are bodybuilders, but we get some yuppie types, men and women both, who’re trying to fight off middle age.”
I wasn’t capable of conversation, so I sat down behind the desk and began to thumb through the forms, some yellowed with age and others so fresh the ink might be wet. The names seemed relentlessly unfamiliar, but I’d never desired to meet people who want their bodies to bulge in unnatural ways and glisten as though they’d bathed in sunflower oil. I was nurturing some unnatural thoughts when I spotted a name I recognized.
“This one,” I said, flapping the form. “He’s a professor in the English department. I don’t know if Caron’s seen him in five years, but he might remember her.”
Jody took the form and squinted at it. “Naw, look here where I record the monthly charges. He hasn’t been an active member in six months.”
I deflated back into the chair and resumed my search. The names were in no particular order, and they began to blur as I battled with a panicky urge to sling them down and burst into tears. Ridgway. Nehr. Hart. Montgomery. Mertz. Baxter. Jorgeson. Adamson. Harrington …
Jorgeson.
I dropped the forms in my hand and very carefully went back through the ones I’d discarded until I found Jorgeson. As in Sergeant Jorgeson. As in Peter’s minion. I licked my lips until I felt able to speak, then said, “May I please use your telephone?”
“Did you find the guy?”
“I believe so.” With admirable control, I called the station and asked to speak to Peter Rosen. When he came on the line, I maintained the same level of control and merely inquired if he had seen Caron and Inez.
“They ought to be home by now. They talked Jorgeson into going out for hamburgers, but that was more than an hour ago.”
“Did Jorgeson consider the possibility that I might be wondering where they’ve been for the last three hours, that I might be entertaining thoughts of seedy men in raincoats with pockets full of candy?”
There was a long silence. “I’m afraid it’s my fault. Jorgeson brought them to the station right after you and I had our chat. I was under the impression you were coming here, so I let them fool around my office until I could no longer bear it, then slipped Jorgeson ten bucks to take them away. I’m really sorry if you were worried about them.”
“I was worried,” I admitted, sighing. I put my hand over the receiver and said to Jody, “They’re both safe at home.”
“Thank God,” he said. He cocked his head. “I think I heard something in one of the back rooms. The way the plumbing is these days, it could be a busted pipe. I’d better check it out.”
I waited until he left, then removed my hand and said, “Just what was Jorgeson doing at a fitness center?”
“Getting in shape for the annual physical exam. I could use some exercise myself, although I’d rather wrestle something soft and warm than a cold, heartless barbell. Meet me at my apartment?”
“You lied to me earlier today,” I said.
“I did? Then you must allow me to make it up to you in some way. How about a bottle of burgundy and the first fire of the season?”
“Well, it was more of an omission,” I said, lecturing myself not to be distracted by the image of wine and the cozy sofa in front of the fireplace. “Of course you forgot to have Caron call me from the station, so perhaps you also forgot to mention that Maribeth had steroids in her system.”
“Where’d you hear that?” he said quickly.
I leaned back in the chair and propped my feet on Jody’s desk. Permitting an edge of modest triumph in my voice, I said, “Oh, here or there. I hear so many interesting things these days that I muddle my sources. Maribeth wasn’t taking them on purpose; she thought she was taking potassium. Someone made the substitution without her knowledge, which means it had to be one of the Ultima staff or her husband. Did anyone fingerprint the bottles found in her kitchen?”
He began to rumble at me, but I was too busy staring at my purse to listen to him. A muffled thud from somewhere in the fitness center jarred me out of the trance.
“I’ll call you when I get home,” I said into the receiver and replaced it soundlessly. I eased the chair back and crept across the office to the doorway. “Jody?” I called softly.
There was no response. Light coming through the front window lay in angular paths across the carpet, and the plastic plants were silhouettes of ludicrous insects frozen in time and space. My feet were merely frozen.
“Jody?” I repeated, forcing myself to move out of the perceived protection of the office. Something moved against the wall. I toyed with the idea of a heart attack until I realized it was my reflection in the mirror. I made it across the room and went down the short hallway lined with doors t
hat led to the dressing rooms, sauna, and Jacuzzi. It had been several weeks since I’d attended the aerobics class with Maribeth, and I wasn’t sure which door was which.
I told myself it was not the classic lady-tiger dilemma, nor was I apt to intrude on someone stepping out of his jockey shorts. However, I couldn’t bring myself to open any of the doors, and had decided to return to the office and call Peter for assistance when the door behind me banged open and Jody stumbled forward. I grabbed his arm to prevent him from crashing into the concrete-block wall and hung on to him until he regained his balance.
“Claire?” he grunted, rubbing his head. “You okay?”
“I’m in better shape than you. What happened?”
“I don’t know. I was checking the rooms, and all of a sudden something comes down on the back of my head. Help me to the office, will you? My knees ain’t working too well.”
“I think we’d better get out of here,” I whispered, slipping my arm around him to steady him. “We can drive to the nearest pay phone and call the police.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what I’m saying. Lemme get the cash receipts out of the office and we’ll split like bananas, okay?”
It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but he was heading for the office and I was afraid to remove my arm. Looking over my shoulder with every step, I managed to get him to the office and close the door behind us. Once I’d helped him to the chair behind the desk, I said, “Did someone hit you?”
His face was pale and his breathing loud and uneven. He cautiously explored his head, then looked at his hand and said, “No blood. Blood scares me like I was a girl. No offense meant. You were real cool and collected back there. Thanks for keeping me from flattening my nose on the wall.”
“You’re welcome,” I said nervously, wishing the office door had a nice, sturdy look. “If you’ll get the receipts, we really ought to leave the building and call the police.”
He groaned. “I don’t know if I can make it to the car. I’m seeing stars, and we’re not exactly in a planetarium. Let me get hold of myself for a minute; it won’t do us any good if you have to drag me all the way to the door.”