Chill Factor

by Chris Rogers

  She arrived to find most of her students already stretching in front of the mirrored walls. Curbing her peevishness, Dixie walked beside the blue mats, murmuring encouragement.

  “Looks good, Ruth, but keep it smooth. Don’t bounce. Nice, Janice, now this time twist harder. That’s it, that’s perfect.”

  The good turnout lifted her spirits. Dixie’s only compensation for teaching this class came from seeing the women take control of their own safety. When they failed to show up, or put forth less than their best effort, she could think of a dozen ways to make better use of ninety minutes. Today her students were in good form. By the time Dixie approached the end of the room, her irritability had nearly vanished.

  Then she saw Joan’s face, marked with fresh bruises.

  “You went back to your husband,” Dixie said. Not much of a guess. Joan’s marriage was a series of close encounters with a mean fist. Dixie’d seen the woman messed up worse than today, and with even more makeup covering her injuries.

  Joan glanced away, caught her own image in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, and lowered her eyes.

  “We went to dinner. You know, just to talk. I can’t help loving him, Dixie.”

  “Talking doesn’t bust your lip.”

  “After dinner, I went back to the house with him, to get some of my things. Have some coffee.”

  “Just coffee?”

  “You know, some brandy in it. I was so nervous, he said a little brandy would relax us both.” She smiled with one side of her swollen mouth. “He’s the doctor, I told him.”

  Joan was not a stupid woman. Dixie didn’t understand why smart women made stupid moves when it came to dealing with the men in their lives. But she needed to understand, to get past her own anger before they began practice. Seeing that busted lip, knowing Joan had gone back to the bastard again, made her itch to slap some sense into the woman. Where was the logic in that? The guilt phantom cackled at her even thinking it. Is that what Joan’s husband did: try to batter his own brand of sense into his hardheaded wife?

  “I just wanted him to, you know, hold me a little. It’d been so long. I needed him to hold me.”

  Dixie felt the ghost of a tingle where Parker’s hand had touched hers last Friday during dinner. In the past three months they’d spent a lot of time not touching. Some mornings she awoke with a mangled pillow and her arms aching with emptiness.

  “Did you talk with a counselor?”

  “She’s not in yet.” The relief in Joan’s voice suggested she might conveniently disappear if a counselor did come in today. Why had Joan even bothered to show up for defense class?

  “Are you planning to see your loving husband again tonight?”

  “We have to work this thing out between us, Dixie. He promised he’d go to counseling.”

  “Did he promise that before or after he hit you?”

  Joan’s torn lip quivered. “He can be so sweet” Tears slid from her eyes, and she wiped them away roughly with the back of her hand. “You just don’t know. I’ve never met a man more thoughtful, when he’s not … you know, stressed out. An anesthesiologist is under so much pressure. Why, he’s more responsible for a patient’s life than the almighty surgeon.”

  Or so he tells his wife repeatedly. Dixie was getting in deeper here than she wanted to be. She hadn’t the training or the patience to be a psychologist. All she could do was teach Joan how to defend herself physically and pray the woman used that knowledge before her husband beat her to death.

  “Stretch,” she told Joan. “We’ve got a hard workout today.”

  Most of the other students had started horsing around, shadow-kicking the mirrors and each other. Time to focus that energy.

  Lureen came in from the changing room, went straight to the heavy bag, and threw a battery of jabs without warming up first. Working off a load of frustration, Dixie figured, all too familiar with the feeling. She ambled over to talk.

  “What’s up?”

  Lureen struck the bag with a backfist. “Some mofo out there sold my kid shit.” Another fierce volley of jabs.

  Dixie slipped behind the bag to steady it. Up close, she could see the woman’s puffy, bloodshot eyes. “Your oldest boy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Found it in his effin’ drawer, stuffed in a sock.”

  “Any other signs he might be using?”

  “Using, dealing, alla same in the end. What I been working my ass off for? So he can kill hisself wit’ shit? Kill his bro wit’ shit?”

  “How deep is he in?”

  Lureen finished another twenty jabs before answering. “Let the effin’ cops figger it out. I turned the little pissant in.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  On her way to the shower, Dixie heard familiar music coming from Mike’s class and peeked in. About thirty women, varying sizes and ages, sat in the lotus position.

  Bach’s “Air,” wasn’t it? Baroque music, anyway. Soothing. The same music Dixie used for meditation, which she hadn’t done now in far too long. At one time it had been part of her daily routine. After Kathleen died, especially. Meditation and hard physical exercise helped her deal with the loss of her adoptive mother. Why had she stopped?

  New priorities, probably. Six months after Kathleen’s death, while Barney moped around, not eating, Dixie had moved into her old bedroom on the pretense that she was short of cash—no longer on the State’s payroll after quitting the DA’s staff. She devoted her days to Barney, trying to jolly him out of his misery. But he’d died anyway, a year later. Dixie managed to get in enough physical exercise now, but she’d never gone back to meditating.

  Easing into the softly lit room, she took a place in the back row and assumed the lotus. Maybe what she needed right now was some of Mike’s touchy-feely crap. And maybe after the class, she’d ask what he’d noticed about Edna during the time he worked with her.

  Closing her eyes, she let the music enter her body … felt the rhythm like soothing hands stroking her … let all the tension of yesterday flow out like water whirling down an endless drain.

  Breathe … two … three … four … five. Hold … two … three … four … five. Relax … two … three … four … five.

  When the music ended, she’d been sitting twenty minutes, muscles limp as wet string. She opened her eyes, saw Mike watching her from the front of the room. He grinned. His Mel Gibson hair curled around his sharp-nosed full-moon face. Admittedly not handsome, that face was still easy to look at, oddly expressive, and enormously friendly. She grinned back and began stretching. She’d needed that bit of relaxation. And the movement felt good, too.

  The lights brightened. Mike faced the mirror and led the class in basic warm-up routines. His lean body had been through the moves so often he made it look as effortless as breathing. Dixie followed the pace, enjoying it.

  The music’s tempo increased to about seventy beats a minute, and he led them through some slow aerobic movements. Dixie hated aerobics. But leaving now would seem rude. At least these weren’t the silly dance steps she associated with span-dexed airheads. She gritted her teeth and kept moving.

  A few minutes later, the tempo increased again, then again. Some of the older students appeared visibly taxed.

  Mike signaled a woman on the first row—the same blonde who’d called to him in the hall on Tuesday—to take his place. Trim and tanned, wearing white shorts, an abundantly filled tank top, and a faint sheen of perspiration, she eased her gorgeous body into place beside Mike without missing a beat. Her moves had the supple agility of a teenager’s. A scrunched white scarf held her glossy hair high off her face. Dixie wished she had a scarf like that to keep her own hair from slapping around.

  As Dixie had done earlier in her own class, Mike began walking the room, observing. He stopped beside each student, touched her shoulder, and murmured something. With the ones struggling most, he spent extra time.

  As he drew nearer, Dixie heard some of his coaching.r />
  “Excellent, Julie. Good work. Bend deeper, now. Once more, but still lower … good.”

  “Almost perfect, Myra. With your strong back muscles, you can do better. That’s it. Watch the mirror, see how fine you look? Now do it again, with even more stretch.”

  After each brief encouragement, his students looked more confident. Good technique. Dixie tucked away a few ideas to use later. When he stopped behind her, he said nothing. Just watched.

  Unlike the room Dixie taught in, this one had mirrors only on the front wall. She could see him, leaning back, studying her movements. Couldn’t tell by his expression what he thought. What the hell did it matter? She was a visitor. But his scrutiny disconcerted her.

  “Welcome, Dixie Flannigan.” He had a rich, sexy voice, and her name, the way he said it, sounded almost lyrical.

  They were doing high kicks, now, the music at maximum beat.

  “Higher,” he told her. “You can do it.”

  Fat chance. As limber as she was, her leg was already almost vertical. But she stretched the kick anyway, feeling the pull in her hamstrings. A river of sweat snaked down her ribs. Her lungs started to seriously resist, when suddenly the music slowed, the lights dimmed, and they began some cooling-down stretches.

  Mike made the rounds again, saying a word or two to each student. Then the beat slowed to a largo, the class almost over. The unusual mix of meditation and movement was obviously Mike’s own innovation. When the music ended after the cool-down, Dixie felt a hell of a lot better than she had an hour ago.

  “Dixie … could you spare me a few minutes?”

  “Sure. After I shower.”

  “Before … if you don’t mind.” Mike’s green eyes, so remarkably attractive in his homely face, held her captive. He smiled. “Gotta dash out of here in about ten minutes.”

  The room emptied swiftly, everyone headed for showers. Dixie nodded, and she and Mike sat facing each other, cross-legged, on a single exercise mat. After the long workout, she felt deliciously exhausted.

  He folded his hands together, steepled his forefingers, and pointed them like a pistol.

  “After so many weeks of asking, I finally rate a visit. I’m delighted, but also intrigued.”

  She shrugged. “Right time, right mood.”

  “I see. Dixie …” He raised his eyebrows, as if struck by a wild idea. “Why do I think that’s not the name your mother gave you?”

  “It’s the name I prefer.”

  “I watched you during the workout. Your quiet strength tells a lot about your discipline and commitment, but something’s troubling you, Dixie … a problem, a fear—a disturbance, let’s say, in your psyche.” His voice resonated, low, mellow, and soothing.

  Dixie said nothing. These touchy-feely guru types all wanted to get inside your head. At least this one was easy to take, and her head did feel absolutely relaxed for the first time in weeks.

  He grinned and crossed his eyes, comically, as if aware of her thoughts. “Would you tell me something?”

  She shrugged, feeling so damned contented she might lie down on the mat and take a nap. After Mike left, of course. Meditation definitely would return to her daily regimen.

  “Your given name, the name on your birth certificate. Tell me.”

  Dixie rarely gave anyone her real name, except on legal documents. Carla Jean must’ve come straight from seeing Gone With the Wind when she chose it. But what the hell.

  “Desiree Alexandra.”

  “Perfect …” he said softly. “It’s beautiful! It suits you.”

  Sure it did. “Now, let me ask you something. When Edna Pine was in your class, how did she seem?”

  Mike frowned, as if searching his memory. “For a woman her age, obviously not accustomed to physical exercise, she shaped up fast and caught up with some of my long-time students. I’d say she seemed driven.”

  “Anything else you can tell me? How she found you? Who her friends were?”

  “She didn’t buddy with anyone, though she seemed friendly enough. And how she found me … I don’t know, but my flyers are everywhere.”

  Dixie’d seen them posted: Michael J. Tesche, The Winning Stretch, stretch to win.

  “Did Lucy Ames attend your classes?”

  “The other woman robber?” Amusement flickered over his face—then he must’ve realized this was important to her and grew thoughtful. “Not as a regular student, Dixie, or I’d remember the woman. She might’ve attended briefly at one of the facilities on my rotation schedule. The gym managers sign up all beginners—but we can find out, I’m sure. Why did you want to know?”

  “I’m wondering where she and Edna met.” Assuming Edna didn’t merely copy Lucy’s MO.

  “Take one of my flyers. It lists all the facilities and the phone numbers.” He stood and offered a strong hand to help her up. “You won’t forget the Sundown Ceremony this weekend.”

  “I don’t know if I can make it.”

  “I’ll keep asking until you do.” He winked and turned to walk away.

  Nice muscles, Dixie noticed once again. Not as bulky as Parker’s but compact and well defined.

  Nice body. Nice buns.

  Damn, woman, you’re just horny.

  Chapter Twenty

  Terrence Jackson Associates occupied a penthouse office in a modern building about five minutes from the women’s center. A wide elevator rose silently to the top floor, stopping without a hint of bounce. Dixie stepped out onto luxurious, custom-designed carpet.

  After showering at the center, she’d changed into a black suit brought from home, suitable for attending Lucy Ames’ funeral later that day. Then, considering how infrequently she wore a skirt and panty hose, she’d decided to make the most of the occasion and drop in on Terrence Jackson, the first name on her list from Edna’s records.

  The company logo, sculpted in shades of green pile, embellished a twelve-foot expanse of carpet approaching the receptionist’s desk. The desk itself appeared to be solid marble, greenish black, with the company name engraved across its curved front and underscored with a fine gold line.

  A rich, exotic scent, soothing after the choke of exhaust fumes outside, reminded Dixie of an oriental rug salon where she’d once dropped more money than she could afford on a carpet she didn’t need. The receptionist might’ve stepped straight from a Neiman Marcus catalog. Sniffing the air, Dixie asked her, “What is that wonderful smell?”

  “Ylang-ylang, an imported oil.” The woman’s gaze flicked candidly over Dixie’s clothes. “Did you have an appointment?”

  Feeling abruptly penniless, not to mention dowdy, though her black suit had been fashionable and a shade pricey five years ago, Dixie pictured the expensive oriental rug in her home office. The image bolstered her daunted self-esteem.

  “Not yet. Is Mr. Jackson in?” She handed the receptionist a business card from a box she’d never gotten around to tossing out. It read: D. A. “DIXIE” FLANNIGAN, ATTORNEY AT LAW. “I’d hoped he might have a minute between appointments. One of his clients referred me.”

  “That would be …?”

  “Edna Pine.”

  “Oh!” The red lips remained shaped in the exclamation for a second or two. “If you’ll take a seat, I’ll see if Mr. Jackson can squeeze you in.” She picked up the phone, touched a button, murmured something Dixie didn’t quite catch, then nodded. “It’ll be a few minutes, Ms. Flannigan. Would you like something to drink? Coffee, tea, juice, water?”

  Hell, why not? She’d skipped breakfast. “Tea sounds good.”

  “Earl Grey, Oolong, Apple Spice, or Chamomile?”

  Dixie hadn’t a clue, but only one sounded like it might have caffeine. “Earl Grey.”

  “Lemon, milk, sugar? Artificial sweetener?”

  “Plain.” Dixie tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice. Did the woman always offer four choices?

  When the receptionist rose and slipped through a swinging door, Dixie scanned the opulent reception area. A large Miró
—an original?—hung on one wall. In a corner, a stylized bronze horse rose to the ceiling. Four identical side chairs, upholstered in black-and-cream-striped silk, faced an apple-green Italian sofa.

  On a wall near the desk, Dixie spotted an eight-month-old framed Financial Times article touting Jackson as “Houston’s Millennium Midas.” The excerpt was titled “Seen Any Rich Monkeys Lately?” with a subhead: “Financial Wizard Terrence Jackson Warns PC Investors to Beware of Gambler’s Euphoria.”

  In an accompanying photograph, the silver-haired wizard leaned across a gleaming desktop, head well in front of his custom-tailored shoulders: the power pose. “Handsome” didn’t even come close.

  After a quick summary of the stock market’s fluctuations over the past year, the writer presented the Jackson interview in Q&A style. Apparently, several of Jackson’s clients became overnight millionaires because of his astute investments. His success in picking undervalued stocks had inspired investors all over the country to follow his lead. One of the stocks mentioned was an importer of exotic oils. Jackson’s success had also piqued the interest of the Securities and Exchange Commission, “who walked away scratching their heads,” Jackson claimed.

  His message, however, was aimed at cautioning neophytes that investing on-line with their own money could be as perilous as tossing it on a craps table. “The word out there is that even a monkey can get rich in today’s market. I haven’t seen any wealthy monkeys, but I’ve counseled a number of unhappy investors after they lost a bundle on speculative stocks.”

  Questioned about the investment clubs cropping up around the country, Jackson said, “So, all these ladies get together, read The Wall Street Journal, listen to a few TV experts, and pool their capital. It’s like playing Bingo-for-Broke. I tell them, ‘Go ahead, have fun. Just don’t risk more than you can afford to lose.’”