Another baffling fact was that Paulina’s assailant had tried to kill her by holding her head underwater instead of jerking her ankles. But Charlotte decided to let Crowley worry about that. The case was in his hands now. She had done what she could and now felt for the first time since Jerry had confided his suspicion that Adele’s death might be something other than a simple overdose that she could relax, which was what she’d come to the spa to do in the first place. After leaving Crowley, she and Jerry headed directly for Lillian’s, where they celebrated with a drink—Charlotte indulged herself in a prohibited manhattan—and dinner. After Jerry dropped her off, she went to bed and slept for a solid eight hours.
Her alarm went off at the crack of dawn. She had resolved to devote the entire morning to her spa routine. Although she would be staying over—she didn’t want to miss the outcome of the drama that was being played out—it was still the last day of her program and she wanted to make the most of it. Her follow-up Fitness Appraisal, which would show what improvements her stay had brought about in her physical condition, was scheduled for late morning. Then lunch and a bath and her spa stay would be over. She would be leaving the next day. She had lost six pounds, but she didn’t know what that translated to in terms of inches. In any case, she couldn’t count her stay as much of a bargain. Per pound, it had cost close to seven hundred dollars. Besides which, they were pounds that would creep back on again in a matter of weeks. Experience had taught her that dieting was futile. She always reverted to her original weight, which couldn’t be called slender, but which was okay with her. She was of the minority opinion that a little extra flesh never hurt anyone, especially at her age.
But the weather hadn’t cooperated with her good intentions. The day had broken cold and rainy. She had begun on the right foot, with a visit to the High Rock Pavilion for two glasses of mineral water followed by Awake and Aware with Anne-Marie, which had been held in the Health Pavilion instead of on the esplanade as usual. But Terrain Cure had been canceled, leaving her with some extra time before her follow-up. She decided to visit Jerry. She wanted to find out what had come of the surveillance of Dana and Frannie. But his office was vacant. A janitor (she wondered if he was an undercover cop) directed her to his new office on the second floor.
“Hey, I like your digs,” said Charlotte as she entered. It was Sperry’s old office, complete with dove-gray leather chairs and vertical blinds.
“Quite the ritz, huh? Have a seat.” Coming around to the front of the big teak desk, he pulled out a swivel chair for her.
Charlotte sat down. “What happened to the previous tenant?”
Jerry shrugged. “All I know is, he’s been given the sack and I’m living in luxury. But I suspect it’ll be back to the basement for me as soon as the boss lady gets a new medical director.”
“Think positively,” said Charlotte. “What are you going to do with the casting couch?” she teased.
“Oh, that.” Jerry smiled. “Actually it’s kind of an embarrassment. If I took the legs off one end, I could use it as a slant board. I hear they’re very good for the complexion. What do you think?
“That’s an idea. Or you could use it for doing sit-ups.” She switched the subject: “I came to check up on what’s going on.”
“A lot,” replied Jerry. “We’ve got our boy. We were on the right track—it was the sauna. One of our men spotted him doping out the temperature control last night. He’s scheduled Nicky for a session on the machines tonight. Presumably he’ll suggest that Nicky take a sauna afterward.”
“When everyone’s gone home.”
“Exactly. If I’d been on the ball, I would have figured it out. We reserve time in the machine room at night for the disabled, the obese—people who might be self-conscious about working out with the group. Just getting some of these fat people onto the machine is a major production.”
“So the time wouldn’t have aroused anyone’s suspicions.”
Jerry shook his head. “It helps that he’s Nicky’s exercise advisor. After the workout, he recommends a sauna to soothe Nicky’s tired muscles. Then he turns up the heat, locks him in, and waits. For someone with blood pressure, as high as Nicky’s, it wouldn’t take long.”
“And it would be written off as an accident.”
“Easily. There wouldn’t be any clues. He’d just reset the temperature control and unlock the door once Nicky was done for.”
“Have you told Nicky?”
“We had to. He’s going to play along. He’s a spunky kid. By the way, do you remember the tape we didn’t play?”
“Something was on it?”
“Crowley went down to the fallout shelter this morning to listen to it. He made sure Dana was busy doing something else first. Nicky wasn’t the only one who was scheduled for disincarnation.”
“Who else?”
“Someone you know.”
Charlotte couldn’t think of anyone. “Come on, Jerry. Who?”
“Frannie.”
Charlotte stared at him, her large eyes awash with the gray light that streamed through the windows. They were a pale gray, almost white: a dove-gray. “He would have killed his own wife?”
Jerry nodded. “She was scheduled for disincarnation for next week. The mode of disincarnation was air. Suffocation, maybe. A little pillow talk and then the lights go out—for good.”
“But she doesn’t fit the profile. Her limp was something she was born with. She didn’t bring it on herself. In fact, she was supposed to be discharging her bad karma by helping others become more fit.”
“Neither did Paulina.”
“Was there a reading for her?”
“No. That was one of the things Crowley was looking for. But actually, Frannie does fit, sort of. According to her reading, she was born with a gimpy leg because she laughed at the cripples in ancient Rome.”
“Yes, she told me that. She was a member of Roman royalty. She also told me I was a desert hermit in my last life, very spiritual and pure. I subsisted on nothing but dates and water.”
“Dates, huh?”
“Go on,” urged Charlotte.
“Well, according to the Instrument, she had already paid her karmic debt by her good works. Therefore, it was cruelty to keep her on the earth plane any longer. She was ready to return as a more advanced being.”
Charlotte wondered why he really did it. In marrying Frannie, she speculated, he might have been marrying the sickly self he despised, and by killing her, he might have been killing the cripple in himself. In any case, she was sure the shrinks would have some explanation or other.
“She was supposed to wait for him on the other side,” Jerry continued. “Once he was disincarnated, they would be reunited in the etheric plane and then reincarnated together in another life. Soul mates, you know.”
“I guess that proves she wasn’t in on it. I suppose he didn’t say how long she’d have to wait around for him out there.”
“As a matter of fact, he did. About forty years or so—you see, he still had a lot of bad karma from his past lives to work off.”
“By helping people disincarnate? He’s going to have to change his approach. How does making license plates sound?”
“I wouldn’t count on it. He’ll walk—they all walk. He’ll cop an insanity plea—a year in a rubber room and he’ll be back on the streets along with all the other maggots who’ve beat the criminal justice system.”
“Maggots, huh?”
“Yeah. You know, those little white worms that feed off garbage. It’s a constant tide of maggots out there. They’re coming at you all the time. No matter what you do, there’re always more of them.”
“That’s a comforting thought.”
Jerry grinned.
Charlotte knew it would be Frannie who would conduct her follow-up, but she nevertheless felt a lump rise in her throat as she saw Frannie waiting for her in the lobby of the Health Pavilion, her ears sticking out from between strands of lank blond hair and her game leg tilte
d out at a peculiar angle. Seeing Charlotte, she smiled crookedly. She seemed naked, defenseless, too frail to take the blow. Her marriage, her future, her beliefs, would all be shattered, maybe even ridiculed. Again Charlotte thought of the baby mice: blind, pink, unprepared for exposure to the harsh world outside their nest. What would she draw on to see her through? But perhaps she had unexpected reservoirs of strength. People often did. At least she had the day-to-day routine of a job she loved to depend on. It was a strange and monstrous feeling, being able to see Frannie’s future being played out like this. Sitting there, in the heart of the dusky, columned lobby, her slight figure seemed unreal, a murky image floating deep within a crystal ball.
Frannie rose to greet her. “Are you ready for the verdict?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Again they climbed the staircase to the diagnostic room. Again they went through the twelve stations. To Charlotte’s surprise, several of her fitness parameters had improved. Her lung capacity was better, as was her resting pulse—a result, said Frannie, of the “training effect.” She had also lost eight inches, most of them from her hips.
“See, it pays off,” said Frannie, recording the inches lost.
“I guess so,” Charlotte concurred, rather weakly.
“You’re auric field is brighter than it was too—more energetic, more shimmery. That means you’re more balanced. The aura reflects the changes in your spirit. When you don’t take care of your body, your spirit suffers, and when you do, your spirit is more radiant.”
“Frannie?” interjected Charlotte. “Remember when you said that Mrs. Singer would be better off starting over in another life?”
“Yes.” Stepping back, Frannie raised a pensive knuckle to her chin and gazed intently at Charlotte. Her attention was elsewhere. “But we still have a problem,” she said. “A big problem.”
“What?”
Moving around to Charlotte’s back, Frannie placed her hands on Charlotte’s shoulders. “Your spine is like a steel cable,” she said, digging in her fingers. She spun Charlotte around. “Look at your shoulders.”
Charlotte looked in the mirror. Her shoulders were hunched up around her neck. The tension was obvious.
“We can’t have you going home like that,” said Frannie. She instructed Charlotte to sit on the lifecycle and lean over the handlebars.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” continued Charlotte as Frannie worked the back of her head and her neck. “Does that mean that the person who killed Mrs. Singer did her a favor?”
“Oh, no. I probably shouldn’t have put it that way. She wasn’t making any progress, it’s true; but that’s not to say she wouldn’t have. The only route to enlightenment is through the karmic experience on the earth plane.”
“So if you take someone’s life, you’re robbing them of their opportunity of reaching enlightenment.”
“Exactly. If you take someone’s life, you’re robbing them of the vehicle of experience, the body. A favor—never. To interfere with someone’s karmic destiny is the worst kind of cosmic crime.”
“I see,” said Charlotte. Even within the context of Frannie’s strange beliefs, there was no way of justifying what Dana had done.
Frannie finished by raising and lowering Charlotte’s arms a few times. “Now look in the mirror.”
Charlotte obeyed. It was remarkable: her shoulders now sloped naturally and felt much more relaxed, all as a result of applying pressure to a few small points. “Thanks,” she said. “I needed that.”
Frannie went on to demonstrate several exercises to relieve shoulder tension. She suggested doing them daily and wrote them down in a fresh copy of the exercise prescription booklet. Then came the second part of the Fitness Appraisal: the computer interview. But this time Frannie instructed Charlotte to answer the questions according to how she’d behaved during her spa stay. If she hadn’t drunk any alcohol, she should say she didn’t drink. If she hadn’t smoked, she should say she didn’t smoke. If she had exercised daily, she should say that too. The computer would then calculate her biological age based on the good health habits she’d established at the spa.
Charlotte’s health habits during her spa stay hadn’t exactly been simon pure, but she played along anyway. To the alcohol question, she answered no (she’d only had two manhattahs and a couple of beers), as she did to the smoking question. When she finished, she rejoined Frannie, who had been inputing the results of her physical evaluation.
“I want a pledge,” said Frannie as they waited for the printer to spew out the computer’s verdict.
“Let me guess. No cigarettes?”
Frannie nodded.
“Cut back on the cocktails?”
Frannie nodded again. “One per day—that’s it.”
“Okay. What else?”
“Salt. No more potato chips. Your face is already less puffy than it was. Just because your good health and good looks are a positive karmic consequence doesn’t mean you should abuse them,” she scolded. “Your body is a temple …”
“I know, but I treat it like a hotel room.”
Frannie grinned.
The printer stopped and Frannie tore off the printout. “On to Anne-Marie,” she said, heading toward the exit. Outside of Anne-Marie’s office, she paused to rummage through the bag in which she carried her paraphernalia. She withdrew a small package neatly wrapped in red tissue paper. “For you,” she said, holding it out shyly. “I’ve enjoyed working with you.”
“Thank you,” said Charlotte, touched that Frannie would have gone to the trouble of getting her a farewell present. She opened it up. It was a gift package of plump California dates.
“For inspiration.”
“Dates!” Charlotte threw back her head and laughed. “If you think I’m going to come back as a desert hermit, you’re crazy. But thank you very much.” Charlotte was amused, but she was also sad—sad that Frannie had such a good-natured sense of humor about her off-the-wall ideas.
“Maybe as a Mother Superior in a very posh, very elegant convent,” offered Frannie with her crooked smile.
“That sounds all right.”
After bidding Frannie a fond good-bye, Charlotte took a seat in Anne-Marie’s office to await her follow-up personal consultation. Anne-Marie arrived shortly, striding into the room with the confidence of a champion tennis player walking onto the court.
“I understand congratulations are in order,” said Charlotte as Anne-Marie took a seat behind her desk.
“Thank you. Did you see the announcement in the Times?”
“Yes. Paulina showed it to me.”
“Paulina!”
“She seemed very proud. She thinks you’ve made a good match.”
“Did she? I’m glad to be back in her good graces. But I’m puzzled. She doesn’t usually forgive a grudge so readily.”
“She may be softening.”
“Paulina, never.”
“You’d be surprised. Maybe it’s because she’s going to be a grandmother. Claire’s going to have a baby.” Charlotte didn’t think it was her business to tell Anne-Marie about Paulina’s cancer, which might have been another reason for her change of heart.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” said Anne-Marie, looking up in pleased surprise. “When’s the baby due?”
“November. They’re getting married next month. Paulina’s already making all the arrangements. Starting with the engagement announcement, which she specified should be ‘bigger than yours.’”
Anne-Marie chuckled. “That sounds like Paulina. How is she?”
“I haven’t seen her today. But she seemed all right yesterday.”
“Good. Such a terrible thing. Do the police have any leads yet?”
“None,” lied Charlotte. Anne-Marie was obviously unaware that until yesterday her ex-husband had been the chief suspect. She changed the subject: “Speaking of weddings, when is yours?”
“September fifteenth. We’re leaving for our honeymoon on the twenti
eth. We’re going to Nepal.”
“Climbing mountains?”
“Yes. It will be Gary’s first major expedition, although he’s done a lot of climbing in the Tetons. We’ll be climbing Annapurna Four. It’s one of the easier summits in the Annapurna massif.” She pointed to one of the mountain photographs hanging on the wall. “That’s Annapurna there.”
The photo showed a wall of cloud-hung peaks. It looked immense. Next to it was the photo of the two people on the narrow ledge. She now recognized the sharp-pointed features of Anne-Marie’s fellow climber to be those of Gary. It wasn’t the way she would have wanted to spend her honeymoon.
“I wish you both luck.”
“Thank you,” said Anne-Marie. She picked up the printout. “Now, let’s see. Are you ready to start climbing mountains yet?”
“Heartbreak Hill is about it for me.”
“Heartbreak Hill is as good a place as any to start,” she said. She studied the printout. “Well, you’re not going to win any prizes.”
“I didn’t expect to.” The spa awarded prizes in the form of a brooch of the Indian maiden to the guests who had lost the most inches and the most pounds during the course of their program. But at least she had earned an achievement pin for graduating to a steeper grade of the Terrain Cure.
Anne-Marie continued: “But you’ll be pleased to know that if you maintain the health habits you’ve established here, you’ll cut another three years off your biological age.”
At her age, three years was beginning to look like a long time. Though she stil didn’t believe in all that biological age mumbo jumbo. “The cigarettes and the cocktails?”
Murder at the Spa Page 25