by Joan Hess
“Call them from here,” I ordered.
He blinked at the telephone, then picked up the receiver and held it to his ear. “Nothing. Line’s dead.”
“Then it’s been cut,” I said grimly. “I’ll help you out to the car, Jody. You don’t have a plumbing problem; you’ve got a prowler who doesn’t object to using force. Are you sure you didn’t catch a glimpse of anyone?”
“You know what?” he muttered, screwing up his face so that he resembled a Pekingese. “I could almost swear I smelled something, something sweet like flowers. Does that make sense?”
“If it was perfume … Is there any way Bobbi could have returned without your knowledge?”
“I was in here with the door shut, calling those girls and waiting for you. If she was real quiet, she could unlock the front door, creep across the front room, and hide out in the ladies dressing room, and I might not have heard her. But why would she want to do something stupid like that? All she had to do was tell me she was here.”
“I suggest the police take up the question,” I said, watching the door. “The receipts, my purse, and we are out of here.” I opened my purse to find Joanie’s car key, then looked up at the sound of his sudden inhalation.
Jody stared at the potassium bottle. “Why’s that in your purse?”
“I took it from Maribeth’s garbage this afternoon. Shall we go?”
He continued to stare at the bottle, and I could tell from his wrinkled forehead that he was doing his best to think. A delay of that magnitude was inopportune, so I said, “I’m not sure what’s going on, but Bobbi may have substituted steroids for the potassium in order to cause Maribeth’s heart attack.”
“Why?” Jody said, his eyes riveted on the bottle.
“Let’s talk about it in the car, shall we?” I found the car key and held it up, noting that my hand was trembling like a cloud of gnats.
“Why would Bobbi do that to Maribeth?”
“How should I know? Maybe she thought she could blame it on Candice and end up with Sheldon,” I said irritably.
He sat back down, which did nothing to encourage me, and in a stunned voice, said, “That’s not why she did it, Claire. Have you noticed that jerk she hangs around with—the kid with the red car who’s all the time scowling like he needs to pee and knows it’s going to sting? His name’s Marcus.”
“He was here the first time I came, and was parked outside a few nights ago. We haven’t been formally introduced.”
“He’s her boyfriend, and he’s a real loser. He used to bug me about getting him steroids and corticosteriods and all those illegal drugs. He wanted enough to supply the entire athletic department. I finally kicked him out and told him he couldn’t even show up at the center, much less work out, but I know Bobbi was seeing him after work almost every day. What if he put the screws on her, and she sweet-talked Winder into helping her get the drugs to pass along to him? Winder’s in shaky financial shape; he probably wouldn’t mind a little cash flow on the side.”
Ninety percent of me was eager to leave, but the remainder was entranced by Jody’s narrative. The minority ruled. “But why would she give Maribeth steroids?”
“Maybe Maribeth saw something, some transaction between them after her aerobics class.” He banged his fist on the desk. “It makes my blood boil to think about Bobbi doing that to Maribeth. It came damn close to killing her, especially since Maribeth had that heart problem from when she was a kid.”
“Some of your theory works,” I said slowly, “but how did Bobbi get into the Gallestons’ house. to replace the steroids with innocent potassium? Gerald keeps the house locked. If we add him to the group, we’re up to four conspirators.”
“That wimp? He couldn’t conspire to piss in a pot. Bobbi must have taken Maribeth’s key from her purse and had a copy made of it. The cops’ll find it.”
“Speaking of which, we need to get out of here,” I said, having finally remembered the wisdom of a timely exit. Bobbi was petite, but she was in excellent condition from countless aerobics classes. Her brutish boyfriend was not someone I wanted to encounter in a dark alley—or a dark dressing room.
“I’m not going to let anyone chase me out of my own place of business,” Jody said as he bent down to open a drawer. When he sat up, he had a small yet unpleasant gun in his hand, and a decidedly unpleasant expression on his face. “Not Bobbi, not Marcus, not anybody in the whole damn world. You go call the police. I’m going to see if someone’s still hanging around.”
“That’s crazy, Jody. You don’t know how many people are out there, or whether they’ve got guns too. You’ve got to leave with me.”
“After what they did to Maribeth, they’re going to answer to me, Joseph Delano. Now you go call the cops; I can take care of myself.”
I picked up my purse and moved hesitantly toward the door. “I don’t like this. We’re not at the O.K. Corral and it’s long past noon. You’re not in any shape to skulk around in the dark, playing some macabre game with a party or parties unknown.”
He rose and crossed the room, took me by the shoulder, and shoved me out into the main room. “Go call the cops,” he said in an insistent whisper. “The quicker you call, the quicker they’ll get here.”
It was the first sensible thing he’d said. “All right,” I said crossly, then watched him melt through the door that led to the workout machines. In lieu of a bulletproof vest, I clutched my purse to my chest and waited for a sound, any sound, that would give me an idea of what was happening. Jody was dazed from the blow to his head. It seemed as if it might have been Bobbi who had attacked him, but only because he’d thought he smelled something sweet, and olfactory flashes are not dependable when one is bashed. And what could have provoked her into the attack?
I’d mentioned the potassium deficiency several hours earlier, and Bobbi had said she was planning to go by the hospital. If she’d hitched a ride, she would need to return for her car. But why come inside the fitness center and creep around in the dark, then hide in a dressing room and bash Jody? It seemed more practical to pick up her car, drive home, pack a bag, and leave town.
It seemed equally practical for me to leave the building, find a telephone, and send in the cavalry, but I continued to hesitate by the door, straining to hear a voice or a footstep. I had not been in the back room, so I had no idea how large it was, or if it had doors to the dressing rooms, et al.
Something wafted across the doorway, but so quickly I wasn’t sure I hadn’t worked myself into such a nervous dither that I’d seen the Phantom of the Weight Room. I decided to take a quick look for Jody to warn him; if I couldn’t find him, I would get myself out of there as quickly as possible. I went to the doorway. There was less light and no sense of movement. The machines were glinting metallic skeletons, some tall, some squat, and all contorted and bizarre. A graveyard of dinosaurs.
“Jody?” I whispered. Recklessness overrode terror, and I edged into the room and whispered his name again. I moved around what I deemed to be a Pectoralsaurus, avoided a Tricepstopis, and crept to the door I saw in one corner. As I eased it open, I heard a loud explosion. A gunshot.
Terror overrode recklessness, and I backpedaled into a machine that ripped at my leg, then turned and blundered into a second that caught me just above the knees and sent me head first onto the floor. My purse flew out of my hands and the contents scattered into the darkness. I opened my eyes in time to see the potassium bottle roll under a machine and disappear.
It was the only evidence that linked the Ultima Center with the scheme to kill Maribeth. I got to my knees and crawled in the direction the bottle had rolled. It was not lodged under the bench contraption. I continued on my mad hunt, aware that someone had fired a gun in the building. Had Jody shot Bobbi? Had Bobbi shot Jody? Had Bobbi’s boyfriend shot one of them, and did he still have a bullet or two to spare?
A fluorescent light came on overhead, brutally bright. I scrunched under the bench, trying my best to be invisible, but two
feet came across the room and stopped a few inches from my nose.
“Claire? I thought you went to call the police?”
“Jody,” I said with a whoosh of relief, “thank God you’re all right.” I rolled out from under the machine and stood up. “I heard a shot fired, and I was afraid you’d been hurt. What happened?”
He rubbed his face with his hands, his shoulders hunched as if we were in a blizzard rather than a room filled with equipment that looked strange even in the light. “Bobbi was in the storage room all the way at the back, stuffing bottles and packages in her bag. I guess that’s where she was keeping the drugs. Anyway, I showed her the gun and told her we were going to the office to wait for the police. Halfway down the hall, she jumped me. It was my fault, but I was having a hard time with her being a drug pusher and using my center. She’s been doing an aerobics class or two for a couple of years.”
He sat down on a particularly torturous-looking machine and stared numbly at the floor. I sat down beside him and touched his arm. “Then what happened?” I said.
“She’s pretty strong for a girl—no offense intended. She grabbed my wrist, and I tried to jerk free, and we both crashed through the door into the Jacuzzi room. The gun just kind of went off of its own accord.” He broke off and took a deep breath, then said in a low voice, “She took it in the gut. She gave me this godawful look, then fell back. I grew up in the Bronx and I’ve seen enough street fights to know there wasn’t anything I could do for her, so I was heading for the front door when I heard a noise in here.” He gave me a perplexed look, as if he’d just realized my presence. “I thought you went to call the police, Claire. It seems like forever, but it must have been five or ten minutes ago.”
“I was too worried about you, but I think I’d better call them now.” My knees were as sturdy as tomato aspic, but I managed to stand up and gather the contents of my purse, including the pesky potassium bottle that had rolled all the way to the wall. I followed Jody into the main room.
The window was ablaze with blinking blue lights and the glare of flashlights shining in our faces. More blue lights were speeding through the parking lot, and shadowy figures darted in front of the window like commandos on a midnight maneuver. A fist pounded on the door, and an imperious voice shouted, “Open up! Police!”
Jody opened the door to admit several uniformed officers, and one grim lieutenant in a three-piece suit. Jorgeson followed his boss. When he saw me, gave me an apologetic smile.
The lieutenant was less cordial. “Are you all right?” he snapped at me, looking as if he wanted to grab me by the arms and shake me with the fury of a bulldog (which I presumed he did).
“I’m fine. Bobbi Rodriquez, on the contrary, is not. She attacked Jody, and they got into a struggle over his gun,” I said. “Down that way, in one of the back rooms.”
“She had hold of my wrist,” Jody said miserably. “I can’t believe it. She was a nice kid, a little bouncy at times, but a nice, clean kid—until she met that football jerk. She’s in that first room on the left.”
Peter gazed stonily at me, then stalked down the hall, pushed open the door, and flipped on the light. I’d trailed silently after him, but I let out a gasp as I looked over his shoulder.
Bobbi floated facedown in the Jacuzzi, her arms spread as if she were lazily observing marine life through a mask. The Jacuzzi was on, sending streams of bubbles from each side and making small waves that made Bobbi’s body drift lazily. But a ribbon of blood curled from under her, then dissipated into swirls of pink. It looked exactly as if she were drifting in a pool of fizzy pink champagne.
I stepped back, leaned against the wall, and let myself slide to the floor. I’d never had a fondness for champagne, pink or otherwise. Now I doubted I could be in the same room with it—ever.
THIRTEEN
Shortly thereafter the hallway and Jacuzzi room were swarming with the investigative team, and Jody and I were escorted to the office to wait until Lieutenant Rosen had time for us. A uniformed cop watched us from beside the door, his hand resting on his weapon and his expression icy.
It was approaching midnight by now. I hadn’t left a note when I dashed to Delano’s to find a clue to Caron’s whereabouts; now she was at home and probably worried about me. I picked up the receiver and was rewarded with a dial tone. I called my house and braced myself for an onslaught of accusations.
“Hello,” Caron said in a thick voice.
“Hello, dear, I’m glad you made it home safely.”
“Yeah, well, Jorgeson gave us a ride.”
“So I learned after worrying about you for four hours,” I said, frowning at the telephone. “Didn’t you think about letting me know where you were all that time?”
“I didn’t know where you were all that time. You’re the one who forgot to pick us up. Anyway, can I go back to sleep now? I’m sort of tired from the aerobics class.” She loosed a yawn of epic proportion to melodramatize her point.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Don’t you want to know where I am?”
“Not especially, but if you insist, I’ll write down the number on something. Hold on till I find a pencil.”
I waited until she announced she’d found one, then told her I was at Delano’s Fitness Center and apt to be there for several more hours. This seemed to wake her up, and she demanded to know what was going on. I explained as best I could.
“This is totally terrible,” Caron said. “I just saw Bobbi a few hours ago. She can’t be dead. Not someone like her. She doesn’t even sweat—she glows. Or glowed, anyway.”
“It was an accident,” I said, steeling myself not to think of the corpse in the champagne bath. I glanced at the guard, then lowered my voice. “Did she seem normal when you and Inez left with Jorgeson?”
She thought for a minute. “Yeah, I guess so. The class was normal, which means we carried on like hyperactive pom-pom girls for an hour. Afterwards, Inez and I waited forever by the door”—a hint of accusal crept into her voice—“and Bobbi came over and asked us if we needed a ride. Then Jorgeson came out from the back room, so I asked him if Peter had finally carried out his threats to arrest you, and Jorgeson laughed in a squirmy way and said he’d give us a ride to the police station so we could look in all the cells. Bobbi asked if we were coming to any more classes. I said I didn’t know and we left. That’s about it.”
“So she knew Jorgeson was a police officer?”
“I suppose so.” There was a moment of silence. “Uh, I’ve sort of got a date this weekend,” she added uncomfortably.
“You do? That’s … wonderful. Who’s the lucky guy?”
“Louis Wilderberry. He called to apologize for making that dumb remark to Rhonda Maguire. He said she had it all wrong and was just being bitchy when she repeated it to Inez. He also said that Rhonda’s thighs jiggle like Jello when she walks, and that she ought to be arrested the next time she wears a miniskirt.”
“And you’re giving up the diets?”
“Of course not. First thing in the morning Inez and I are starting this diet where you eat six little meals a day instead of three, but you have to—”
I told her to go back to sleep and that I’d see her in the morning. As I hung up the telephone, Peter and Jorgeson came into the office. Peter had a canvas bag in his hand. He unzipped it and dumped the contents on the desk.
“Is this what Bobbi was putting in her bag when you found her in the storage room?” he asked, looking at Jody.
There were at least a dozen bottles and twice that many cylindrical amber pill containers. A plastic bag held several small glass bottles with rubber across their tops. A package of disposable syringes glinted evilly. Very pharmaceutical for an innocuous canvas bag.
Jody nodded. “I saw her scooping things into her bag. It looked like that stuff.”
Jorgeson picked up a pencil and moved the plastic bag aside. “And look at that, Lieutenant,” he said with a whistle. “A shiny key with hardly any scratches. Must have been m
ade not too long ago.”
Having been studiously ignored by all, I was fairly certain I was invisible, but I decided to find out if I was also inaudible. I went around the desk to study the illicit substances. “The key to the Gallestons’ house? By the time you bothered to test the potassium caplets, Bobbi had already been there to make the switch.”
Peter looked through me at Jorgeson. “I wonder if this might be a key to the Gallestons’ front door. Have all of this fingerprinted, and send one of the uniformed officers to the house to see if the key works. Also, take a photograph of Rodriquez and run it by the places in town that make keys. Maybe someone will remember her.”
“Excuse me,” I said, “but—”
Peter flashed his teeth at me, but the dear little laugh lines around his eyes did not deepen. “Mrs. Malloy may want to mention that if the key does not work, the ladder is conveniently situated under an upstairs window. However, in that we are sworn to uphold the law, we’ll just use the front door. With the owner’s permission. Mrs. Malloy is unfamiliar with the approach.”
“I have a potassium bottle from the house,” I said. “I found it in the bottom of the garbage bag. It’s filthy, but it may have prints on it. Mine, Maribeth’s, and Bobbi’s, for instance.”
Peter crossed his arms and gave me a mildly quizzical look. “You broke into the house, carried away evidence, and failed to tell me about it? Do I have this right?”
At least I wasn’t invisible anymore, in that Peter, Jody, Jorgeson, and the guard were all staring at me as if I’d claimed to be Hitler in drag. I cleared my throat and said, “That’s an oversimplification of facts, but you have the gist of it. I was going to hand over the bottle as soon as I found out if it was relevant. It’s only been in my purse since seven o’clock.”
Peter held out his hand. I sat down and opened my purse, took out the stained bottle, and passed it over with a little sniff. He scowled at it, then put it down and said, “Anything else in your purse you’d like to share with us? A smoking gun? A basketball ticket? A junior G-man badge?”