Murder at the Spa

by Stefanie Matteson

  Charlotte peered in. It was quite different from the tunnel through which they had just passed. High, broad, and clean, with cement block walls, it had the feeling of a high school corridor. The WPA architects had designed the spa for quality. Otto closed the door and shined the flashlight on the other door. “That there tunnel leads to the Bath Pavilion.”

  “Do these tunnels underlie the entire spa?”

  “Yep. You can walk all the way around. On the other side, there’s a linkup with the tunnel that leads to the hotel.”

  With that, he turned back toward the door to the old tunnel, signaling that the tour was at an end.

  “Could we go a little farther, please?” asked Charlotte. She still wanted to check out the route Sperry would have taken and to see whether he could have made it to the Bath Pavilion and back in thirty minutes.

  Otto checked his watch and shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ve got to be gettin’ back.”

  “Then could I borrow the flashlight and continue on my own?”

  “I wouldn’t want you traipsin’ through these tunnels alone. You might get hurt or somethin’ and I wouldn’t want to be held responsible.”

  Charlotte could see from the stubborn look on his simple face that it was no use arguing with him. “That’s okay,” she said.

  Now that she knew the layout, she could make her own way. Regie had said there was an entrance in the basement of each building.

  From the power house, Charlotte headed directly for the Health Pavilion. She decided to start where Sperry would have. If her memory served her right, there was a door at the end of the basement corridor that probably led to a tunnel. From there, she would follow the tunnel around to the Bath Pavilion, timing how long it took her. As she descended the stairs, she found herself feeling smug. She had figured it all out: why Sperry had murdered his victims, how he had murdered his victims, and now, how he had done it without being seen. She was anxious to tell Jerry.

  In his office, she found his secretary, Andrea, typing dictation.

  Spotting Charlotte, Andrea removed the headphones. “Can I help you?”

  “Is Jerry around?”

  “He’s at lunch,” she replied with a smile. “Any message?”

  “No. Just tell him I was here.” She was disappointed. She would have liked some company.

  “Miss Graham, right?”

  “Right. By the way, do you have a flashlight that I could borrow for an hour or so?”

  “Sure,” said Andrea. She located a flashlight in a filing cabinet drawer and handed it to Charlotte.

  “Thanks.”

  Yes, she was smug—sort of, Charlotte thought, as she headed toward the door at the end of the corridor. But she knew that smug was a dangerous way to feel. She didn’t trust smug. It was just when you were feeling smug that you flubbed a line or tripped over a prop. If Frannie were to analyze it, she would no doubt say that such mishaps were karmic retribution for the sin of pride. Charlotte’s mother had called it cruising for a bruising. Her intellect told her she had the case neatly wrapped up, but her intuition, which she had learned to trust implicitly, told her otherwise.

  Like the door at the power house, the door at the end of the basement corridor was posted with the CD logo. She checked her watch. It was now twelve forty-seven. It would have taken Sperry only a couple of minutes to get from his office to here. Having established the time, she opened the door and stepped into the tunnel. After closing the door behind her, she switched off the flashlight and held her palm up to her face. She couldn’t see a thing. It was as dark as the pit from pole to pole. And as silent. For some reason, the corny words of “Invicta” always came to her in moments like this. She supposed it was because she had once had to recite them in a movie in which she had played an intrepid Englishwoman marooned in New Guinea. The words of the final stanza now ran through her mind: “I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.” Switching the flashlight back on, she took a deep breath—the odor was of damp concrete—and set off, following the steam pipe into the darkness as if it were the white line on a night-blackened highway.

  She walked at a brisk pace, almost a jog. Sperry wouldn’t have lost any time. His goal would have been to get to the Bath Pavilion and back as quickly as possible. Unlike the floor of the old tunnel, which was caked with mineral, the floor here was dirt and gravel. Occasionally there was a damp spot where a pipe had leaked, but on the whole it was easy going. And cool—there was no pipe carrying the heated mineral water to the Bath Pavilion. Shining her flashlight on the ground, she noticed fresh footprints in the damp spots, narrow footprints—proof that she wasn’t the first to have entered the tunnels in recent weeks. Judging from the distance between them, they were the prints of a tall man. They could have been a workman’s or Sperry’s or the Mineral Man’s, but she suspected the latter because of their shape, which fit his build, and because of their presence in this section of the tunnels, between the Health Pavilion and the Hall of Springs.

  In a few minutes she had reached a door opening into a square room identical to the one Otto had showed her. It was the basement of the pergola at the northeast corner of the spa. From there, she headed west toward the Hall of Springs. At the tunnel’s end, she opened another door into the well-lighted basement corridor of the Hall of Springs. To either side were rooms filled with junk: broken chairs and tables, cast-off kitchen equipment, old-fashioned light fixtures. Along one wall stood a dusty stack of High Rock water crates dating from the era of state stewardship. She could see why the state-bottled water hadn’t sold. The dark green bottle with its ugly red and black label had about as much appeal as a bottle of laxative. The resemblance may in fact have been deliberate—it was as a laxative that the waters had originally been prized. Overhead, the steam pipe was joined by a pipe carrying Union water to the fountain at the east end of the Pump Room. As she proceeded along the corridor, she picked up first the pipe carrying High Rock water, and then the pipe carrying Sans Souci water to the fountains on the floor of the Pump Room.

  At the end of the corridor, another door led back into the tunnels. On this side, there were no footprints, which led her to conclude that the footprints on the other side were the Mineral Man’s. If they were Sperry’s, they would be here as well. But the fact that there were no footprints didn’t exonerate Sperry; he might simply have gone around the other way, to the south. She was beginning to get a feel for the tunnels now: overhead, she could imagine the guests strolling under the colonnades, exchanging biological ages. She soon reached the basement of the northwest pergola, where she had been with Otto. Here she rejoined the pipe carrying the heated mineral water to the Bath Pavilion. She checked her watch: only six minutes had elapsed. Passing quickly through, she turned left into the tunnel leading to the Bath Pavilion. More confident now—she had yet to run into a rat or a bat or a tarantula or any other of the disagreeable creatures she had half imagined to be lurking in the tunnels’ dark corners—she picked up her pace.

  A few minutes later, she arrived at the door to the basement of the Bath Pavilion. Leaning up against it, she bent over to catch her breath—the brisk walk had left her winded. She checked her watch: twelve fifty-four. It had taken her only seven minutes to get from the basement of the Health Pavilion to the basement of the Bath Pavilion. Double it, add a few minutes for going up and down the stairs at either end, and a few more for doing away with the victim and you had twenty, twenty-five minutes. And she had been walking—a fast walk, but a walk nonetheless. Sperry might have cut another minute or two off his time by jogging, although he didn’t seem the jogging type. In any case, within the space of half an hour he could have drowned Adele or Art and made it back to his office in time for his next appointment. He might even have had a few minutes to spare to run a comb through his silver-gray hair.

  Part one of her mission was complete. Now for part two: how close were the basement stairs to the cubicles in which Adele and Art had been killed? In other words, could
Sperry have reached the cubicles without being seen? Opening the door, Charlotte entered the basement. The part in which she was standing appeared to have been a laundry: a row of old washtubs stood on a platform against the front wall and drying racks hung from the ceiling. Like the structure above it, the basement was laid out in a U, with the sides formed by the women’s and men’s wings. Passing through the laundry area, Charlotte entered the area under the women’s wing. Piled in the center was a stack of old wicker furniture, most of it painted an ugly hospital green. At the far end of the stack of furniture was another staircase. Charlotte climbed it and opened the door. She emerged directly opposite Adele’s cubicle and face-to-face with Hilda, who was lumbering down the hall with an armload of laundry.

  Hilda stared at her, at first in surprise and then in consternation. “Miss Graham!” she said. Her yellow Tartar eyes narrowed with suspicion as she took in the flashlight in Charlotte’s hand. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was looking for someone,” she lied.

  “Who?” demanded Hilda.

  Charlotte ad-libbed. “Mrs. Jacoby. Mary Jane Jacoby.”

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” scolded Hilda. She pursed her lips in disapproval and waved a gnarled finger in front of Charlotte’s nose. “I’m going to have to report you. You’re going to get into trouble.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Charlotte. “I didn’t know.”

  “Come,” said Hilda, gesturing for Charlotte to follow. Turning around, she shuffled down the corridor, her corduroy slippers flapping from side to side. Charlotte followed sheepishly in her wake.

  “Where are we going?” asked Charlotte. It was clear, that Hilda had orders to be on the lookout for unauthorized persons.

  “To see Mrs. Murray.”

  Charlotte felt like a fourth grader being summoned to the principal’s office. She put the flashlight away in her pocket.

  At the end of the hall, they found Mrs. Murray at her desk.

  Hilda presented Charlotte: “I caught her snooping around in the cellar.” She added, “She said she was looking for Mrs. Jacoby.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t have bath appointments until after one,” Mrs. Murray said curtly. “I thought all our clients were aware of that.”

  “I’m sorry. I understood from Mrs. Jacoby that she had an appointment at noon,” lied Charlotte.

  “If you’d checked at the reception desk in the lobby, I’m sure someone would have been able to tell you the time of her appointment.”

  “No one was there.”

  “Oh. And when was that?” Mrs. Murray folded her arms across the stiffly starched surface of her bosom and fixed Charlotte with an icy blue stare.

  “About—about five minutes ago.”

  “I’ve been at the desk for the last ten minutes. Now, if you’d like to follow me to the lobby, I’ll check Mrs. Jacoby’s appointment for you.”

  Mrs. Murray led Charlotte out to the lobby, where she looked up M.J.’s appointment, which was for three-thirty that afternoon.

  “I hope you’ll understand, Miss Graham, that we cannot allow our guests to wander around the Bath Pavilion,” Mrs. Murray said. “Our security precautions are necessarily strict, but they have been especially so in recent days for reasons with which I believe you are familiar.”

  Charlotte nodded agreeably.

  “Unfortunately, one of the problems we have to contend with is guests who believe that their fame”—here she paused for effect—“or their connections”—she stared at Charlotte, her eyes narrowing with the full force of authority—“give them special privileges. I hope that you …”

  But Charlotte didn’t allow her a chance to finish. Giving the loathsome Mrs. Murray her most daunting look, a look that had wilted leading men and commanded armies, Charlotte spun regally around on her heel and strode out.

  “Bitch,” she muttered under her breath.

  She emerged from the Bath Pavilion into the light of midday feeling like a mole emerging from its burrow. With her jaw firmly set, she shrugged her broad shoulders in an insouciant gesture that was the product of her many years before the cameras. Oh, well, she thought. She was too wise to take offense at the insults of a minor-league martinet like Madeleine Murray. She had accomplished what she had set out to: she knew Sperry could have made it to the Bath Pavilion and back in the thirty minutes between patients. And she knew that the basement staircase in the women’s wing would have given him access to Adele’s cubicle. She wondered why the police hadn’t investigated the tunnels. There were no footprints on the Bath Pavilion side, or any other evidence that they had been down there. Probably sheer laziness. Finding the lights, out, they had probably decided to skip it. She had the feeling they were just going through the motions anyway.

  Suddenly realizing that she was hungry, she set off across the quadrangle toward the Hall of Springs, her thoughts still on Sperry. How had he known which cubicle was Adele’s? she wondered. She supposed he could have checked the appointment book beforehand. He certainly hadn’t paraded out to the lobby to check it at the time of the murder. That is, if Sperry was the murderer. His guilt was far from a foregone conclusion. Anyone who knew about the tunnels might have come and gone without being seen, including the mysterious Mineral Man. The image of the corridor of offices in the basement of the Health Pavilion popped into her mind. For someone with an office there, for instance, it would have been a cinch to dash over and back. Like Jerry—not that he was a likely suspect. Or Frannie.

  By now it was one-fifteen. The terrace was crowded with guests eating lunch. Charlotte threaded her way among the umbrella-capped tables to the bronze doors. She always dreaded crowds for fear of being approached by fans, but so far the guests had gone out of their way to respect her privacy. Such courtesy was one benefit of a place that attracted celebrities. Inside, she headed across the Pump Room to the High Rock fountain.

  “The drink’s on the house,” said the young man who served up a fresh glass of the fizzing water. She drank, it down quickly. Her expedition had left her thirsty. As she drank, she imagined the path the water had taken to reach her glass: upward through a fissure in the earth’s crust to the spring on the esplanade. From there, through the pipes to the Pump Room, where it was served up to spa guests whose digestive systems had been brought to a standstill by too much rich food. The thought of the pipes brought her back to the problem at hand: after lunch, she would return to the tunnels to see if the staircase on the men’s side was a mirror image of that on the women’s. She would bet it was, given the spa’s symmetry. If so, it would have brought Sperry out next to Art’s bath cubicle. She also wanted to check out the tunnels on the southern side on the chance that Sperry had gone around that way.

  Having finished her drink, she headed toward a table. She took a seat and studied the menu. She sighed. She wasn’t in the mood for zucchini pancakes. She settled on cucumber bisque (sixty-four calories), an omelette au frontage garni (two hundred calories), and whipped cauliflower (fifty calories). After giving the waitress her order, she took the flashlight out of her pocket and settled back, glad to be off her feet. In doing so, she felt the piece of mineral Otto had given her press uncomfortably into her side. Taking it out, she held it up to the light. Its reddish brown crystals shone like mica. Running a finger across the surface, she discovered that it was as rough as sandpaper. It would make a good paperweight, a souvenir of the spa.

  A voice interrupted her thoughts: “Is that a piece of mineral?”

  Charlotte looked up. Her exercise teacher, Claire, was standing at the side of her table. She was wearing a long skirt of an Indian cotton print and a full white peasant blouse over a lavender leotard. With her long, curly, reddish hair, she looked like a young woman from a Botticelli painting.

  “Yes. It’s from one of the springs,” she lied. She didn’t want to confess to having explored the tunnels.

  “You might get in trouble if they catch you chipping off pieces of the mineral,” said Claire with a
gentle smile. “You’re not supposed to.”

  Oh, damn, thought Charlotte. In hot water with the authorities again. “I just picked it up,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

  “May I join you?” asked Claire. Sensing Charlotte’s puzzlement, she added: “I’d like to talk with you. About a private matter.”

  “By all means,” said Charlotte. She gestured to the seat on the other side of the marble-topped table.

  Claire sat down. The waitress reappeared and took Claire’s order—for an iced herb tea and a bowl of yogurt with fruit topping.

  For a few minutes, they chatted about exercise class. With the arrival of their orders, Claire’s tone turned more serious. “I have a favor to ask,” she announced. “I’m sorry to intrude on you like this, but I didn’t know who else to go to.” She paused for a moment, picking up her spoon with slim, white fingers sprinkled with freckles the color of the mineral.

  As she dipped the spoon into the yogurt, Charlotte noticed a small diamond on her left ring finger, an emerald cut, simple and neat like its wearer. The gold band was still shiny. She suddenly had an intimation of what Claire was about to tell her.

  Noticing the direction of Charlotte’s glance, Claire held up her left hand to display the ring and smiled. “Yes, I’m engaged to be married,” she said. “To Elliot Langenberg.”

  “Congratulations!” said Charlotte. She didn’t know what Elliot’s last wife, the fashion model, or the one before her had been like, but she was sure he couldn’t go wrong with Claire. And she suspected that Claire would be happy with him as well. She had the feeling he was a kind and gentle man.

  Claire continued: “That’s what I wanted to talk with you about. Elliot feels terrible about this rift with his mother. I didn’t know anything about it—the scheme to sell his Langenberg stock to High Rock Waters. But even if I had, I don’t think I would have discouraged it. It’s been a good experience for him. He didn’t want to go behind his mother’s back, but he had to demonstrate that he’s capable of running his own life. I know that sounds strange to say of a forty-seven-year-old man, but he’s a forty-seven-year-old man who’s never stood up to his mother. Don’t misunderstand me, I have great respect for her—she can be very kind—but she can also be very domineering.”