The Case of the Unhealthy Health Club

by David Staats

  He jotted something down on the legal pad that was on his desk. “I’ll call Kurt,” he said, more to himself than to me. He looked me in the eye with his serious, funereal expression. “Thank you for your help, Ms. Bonneville,” he said. I saw in his eyes determination, and an indescribable other-worldly look.

  As I walked the short distance back to my own office, I tried to recall the interview Mr. Dure had done with Blake Culler. At the time, I wasn’t suspecting him of murder. No, at the most I might have been looking for hints that he and Vanessa Hargrave were having a relationship that wasn’t quite right. I sat up straight at my desk and rested my forearms on the desktop. I replayed a movie of the interview. But the movie was skippy. I couldn’t get it to play straight through from the beginning. Parts of it were lost. But I did remember that he said that he had gone over next door to the sports bar. So, one, he was for a time outside the observation of anybody else, at least anybody else in the health club. He could have been doing anything during that time. I suppose he did in fact go to the sports bar because he came back with the champagne … on a cart … champagne bucket – but then he said it wasn’t the bucket that had been found in the sauna …. What else did he do while he was out of the health club? Suddenly, the movie went out of control. He bent down and lifted me up from the bench and kissed me hard and squeezed me and I panicked and shut down the movie and shook my head and quickly took up a stack of documents I was reviewing and started to look through them.

  * * *

  “The idea that Vanessa Hargrave is responsible for her husband’s death is a bust, I think,” said Dure, talking on the telephone with Kurt Kniffe. “What’d you find out about that meeting in New York?”

  “At present, we have no reportable results,” said Kniffe. “It’s the proverbial dry hole. If I had, perhaps, some better lead, I might be able to find something out.”

  “You’ve got what I’ve got,” said Dure.

  “A meeting supposed to have been arranged for Saturday morning, July 4 in New York City leaves me a pretty big hay stack to sift through.”

  Dure could not dispute the point. “Keep trying,” was all he could say. He knew it was weak. “If I find out anything that might give you a better hint, I’ll let you know.”

  “That would contribute to an increased probability of satisfactory results,” said Kniffe dryly. “By the way, I do have some information about Mortimer Golden,” he said.

  “Come on over,” said Dure.

  * * *

  I started to walk in through the open door to Mr. Dure’s office, but stopped short. This made an audible stomp which drew the attention of the two men in the office. “Oh!” I said, with an embarrassed laugh, “I’ll come back.”

  “No. Come in, Ms. Bonneville,” said Mr. Dure. “It’s just as well that you hear this, too.”

  Because Mr. Kniffe was sitting in the right hand client chair where I usually sat, I limped to the left hand client’s chair where I had never sat before. The two men were silent as I did this. The sound of my dress rustling as I sat was conspicuous, and I felt self-conscious.

  “The results of our inquires about Mortimer Golden,” said Mr. Kniffe, seeming to continue something that he had been saying before. “Married. Forty-eight years old. Key fact: six years ago his only daughter was killed in an automobile accident. She was eighteen.”

  Mr. Dure interrupted. “His only daughter or his only child?”

  “Both,” said Mr. Kniffe. “Golden’s wife – Heather is her name – apparently, from what we could find out, has never come out of her grief. She is withdrawn and morose to this day. Golden, on the other hand, after mourning for a time, became the proverbial bon vivant. Drives a 5 series BMW, likes to go out to clubs and high end restaurants. You’ve seen him. He dresses expensively. But … he’s not entangled with any women that we could learn of. Seems to have plenty of money. I’m speculating: he’s been spending down a college fund that they had for their daughter that obviously is no longer needed for that purpose. But, maybe he has an inheritance. We don’t really know much about his finances, except that he lives high.”

  “Six years ago,” said Mr. Dure. “When did he start working at the university?”

  “Six years ago,” said Mr. Kniffe. “Hargrave brought him on board about six months after Hargrave himself started there.”

  On Mr. Dure’s forehead a few faint wrinkles were raised. “Is there any possibility of a connection between the two events: his starting to work at the university and his daughter’s being killed?”

  “As far as we have looked,” said Mr. Kniffe, with a slight shrug, “no connection is apparent. It was a one-car accident. Alcohol and a large tree were involved.”

  “What else?” said Mr. Dure.

  “We have the proverbial serendipitous oddity. An observation that may mean nothing, but I mention it just because it is odd.” Kniffe closed the folder he had been consulting, and leaned back in his chair, his relaxed arms draped on the chair’s armrests. “The investigator on this matter was dining in the Peking Fancy House – out on Route 162?” Dure nodded to indicate that he knew the place; Kniffe continued, “and just happened to see the subject having dinner there with some Chinese man. My investigators are always alert. Unfortunately, she was not able to overhear any of the conversation, but she did notice that when the waitress had cleared the dishes, the owner of the restaurant came out to speak with the men, and she heard the owner say clearly, “Oh, as always, no charge for you,” and he gave them a bow and a big smile.

  Mr. Dure made a noncommittal noise, “Hmm.” Then he said, “How do you interpret this evidence?”

  “Reference my before remark, it may mean nothing. But the word ‘always,’ seems to have implications, especially when combined with the concept of no charge.”

  “Could your investigator tell if the owner was talking to the Chinese man, or to Golden, or to the both of them?”

  Mr. Kniffe pressed his lips together in a regretful grimace and shook his head once. “Unfortunately not.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Dure. “Do this for me: dig a little more into Golden’s finances; and see if you can identify who the man was that Golden was dining with.”

  I saw Mr. Kniffe make a note on the inside left face of his manila file folder.

  “I suggest you investigate everybody on the sign-in sheet,” said Mr. Kniffe.

  “The sign-in sheet,” said Mr. Dure, “will be useful for identifying potential witnesses, but I doubt that we are going to find the murderer’s name on it. I do not think that someone going into the club to commit murder would sign in.”

  “Unless it was a spontaneous, unplanned murder.”

  “I suppose that is possible, but I regard it as a stretch. The people we want to look at are the people who were present in the health club that Friday afternoon, but did not sign in. That’s Ms. MacCreedy, Mr. Golden, Mrs. Hargrave, Mr. Culler, and possibly that anonymous New Yorker. Although he signed in, his signature is an indecipherable scribble and he is not a member and he paid with cash. We don’t know who he is,” said Mr. Dure. “That’s what I want you to do. Talk to the witnesses. Get a description of the New Yorker, and ask them if they know of anyone who was in the health club but did not sign in.”

  “Yeah, great. How would they even know?”

  “You’re right. It’s tough. You might not turn up anything, but give it a shot. Now,” continued Mr. Dure, “according to the discovery responses we got from Wakefield, no charges were made to any of Hargrave’s credit cards after noon on Friday, July 3. That would tend to indicate that he died in the health club that afternoon. For this reason, I don’t think we have to worry about wild scenarios such as, say, he went to New York, was killed there, and then somebody brought the body back and put it in the sauna. If something like that had happened, we would expect some charges in connection with his taking the train to New York, and he said he was going to have a fancy dinner in New York. Apparently none of these things happened.”<
br />
  “Well good, because I’m sure coming up with the proverbial goose egg about that supposed New York meeting. But one thing occurred to me: maybe whoever he was supposed to meet in New York wondered why he was late – that first – then later, why he didn’t show up at all. Did they send him a text, saying, ‘Hey, it’s 10:00, where R U?’ Or maybe they sent him an e-mail, ‘How come you didn’t show?’” This is what Mr. Kniffe said back to Mr. Dure.

  “I want to leave that angle alone,” said Mr. Dure. “We can’t afford to chase down every conceivable avenue. I think I’d rather focus for now, at least, on that champagne bucket. What I want to know is who put it inside that sauna.”

  “You’re the boss,” said Mr. Kniffe. “and it’s your money. But I have to say, that even if you knew exactly who put that bucket in the sauna, I don’t see how it would help you. You’d have the proverbial bucket full of air. What I’d like to have, as an investigator, is the MO. Assuming that the man died due to foul play, how was it done? What was the foul play? Tell me that, and I’ll have a better handle on what kind of person to look for. All that said, I do have some information about the champagne bucket.

  “We communicated with the vintner, Dom Dormeur.” Mr. Kniffe opened a thin manila folder. They identified from photos we sent them, that the bucket was a commemorative bucket manufactured in 1937 for the World’s Fair in Paris that year. About one thousand were made. Eighty-eight were given away to government officials and various celebrities, and the other nine hundred some were sold at the astronomical price of 300 Francs. They are silver plated and obviously, as we can see, much larger than the average champagne bucket. They have no serial numbers.” Mr. Kniffe closed his folder.

  “Presumably, then,” said Mr. Dure, “these buckets have some value, maybe as collectors’ items?”

  “Dom Dormeur offered 500 Euros for it,” said Mr. Kniffe, “but that is only about 700 bucks. I had to tell them it was not for sale.”

  “Seven hundred is not nothing. Let’s do this: put it up for sale on e-bay. Then you check out anyone who bids on it. See what we get. Obviously, you have to put a reserve price on it so it doesn’t sell.”

  “Could be interesting,” said Mr. Kniffe. “But to return to the New York City meeting for a minute, take it for granted that Hargrave never made it to that meeting, still, knowing with whom he was supposed to meet and what the meeting was about could give us some important clues.”

  Mr. Dure looked annoyed. “You’re right. But as you said, we have no leads. We could also say that if we knew who did it and how, it would save us a lot of work.”

  Mr. Kniffe’s face was deadpan.

  * * *

  Dure was on the telephone with Elizabeth MacCreedy. ‘Is it possible,” he asked, “that someone got into the health club over the weekend? Everyone has been assuming that Mr. Hargrave was in the sauna from Friday afternoon on. But what if he really left the club like Vanessa said he did, and then came back later, or was brought back later – maybe on Saturday?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I know I didn’t go into the club all weekend. On the Fourth I drove Rich’s car in the parade and Vanessa and Blake were with me.”

  “Is there a way you can find out? Is there some kind of electronic log of when the doors are unlocked? I know we’ve checked what video is available, but is there anything else?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “You lease the whole floor, right?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And there are only the two entrances: the front door and the delivery door in the alley?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can you tell from your electric bill whether the sauna was on all weekend?”

  “Maybe … at least the bill I get at my house shows daily usage … I’ll check at the health club. I do have a separate meter.”

  “Yes, do that.”

  “Are we going to win this case?” she asked.

  “I cannot make a promise. It looks like it’s going to be a battle of medical expert witnesses.”

  “What’s worrying me is that if I lose this case, my kids will then blame me for being responsible for their father’s death. I’ve picked up on a few comments that hint at this. I don’t want to lose my kids.”

  “Would you feel better if we settled the case?”

  “It might be better. Especially if it’s not a big settlement, so that it doesn’t look like … you know, maybe it could make her suit look like a nuisance suit?”

  “I understand. I’ll bring up the topic again with Wakefield. And you understand that the best way to get a favorable settlement is to be fully prepared to go to trial.”

  “Yes. You’ve explained that.”

  “Alright, I’ll see what we can do. Good bye.” Dure hung up the telephone.

  * * *

  Two days later, Wakefield called Dure. “Walter, I noticed you were quite interested in my client’s testimony about the vitamin water. I just wanted to let you know that she has a credit card statement showing a charge for two dollars to Affendale Vending on July 3 at 5:28 p.m. Apparently the vending machine in the health club takes credit cards, because that’s how she made the purchase. I’ll send you a copy.”

  “Thank you, Cyrus, I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome… .”

  After hanging up the call, Dure pondered. If somehow, MacCreedy should lose the negligence suit and the life insurance company win its suicide defense, then she would be at risk of an impoverished old age, and John and Stephanie would lose the life insurance proceeds intended for them. But that couldn’t happen. Negligence and suicide were inconsistent theories: if one succeeded, the other must fail. Or?

  Some psychiatrists had been held liable for negligently failing to prevent a patient from committing suicide. That reasoning couldn’t be extended to a health club? It would be absurd. Was Wakefield alive to the possibility? It wasn’t in his Complaint, but then at the time Wakefield had drafted his Complaint, the insurance company hadn’t raised the possibility of suicide. The longer Wakefield delayed amending his Complaint to add such a claim, the more likely it was to be disallowed for delay. Dure hoped Wakefield would continue to ignore the issue.

  Objectively considered, the least of his worries should be that of appearing a jackass in the eyes of Lt. Wisdom for having suggested a murder plot; Dure was annoyed with himself for even thinking about it. He leaned back in his chair, put his hand behind his head as a pillow, and stared at the ceiling of off-white acoustic tiles with tiny holes. If, despite all the financial motives she had, Vanessa Hargrave had not murdered her husband, then someone else must have. Unless he was entirely off-base with his theory of murder.

  Chapter 14. Wright engages Easey; Dure is Relieved

  Benton Wright had now spent four full days on this case over the past three and a half weeks. He had other cases to attend to and he had to spend generally one day a week at headquarters, but the investment in this case both in terms of time and money was starting to become substantial. He had to bring it to a successful conclusion.

  Having spent so much time in Canterbury, he was starting to become familiar with places and people. On the east side of town he had seen what might be a good place to find someone for his next task. The kind of character he was looking for would be in a bar in mid-afternoon; somebody who didn’t get up until noon and didn’t have a steady job. So a little before three o’clock he drove over to a bar called Jessie’s Place.

  Jessie’s was a single story, cinder block building, on the front of which was a facade of plywood on which narrow vertical strips of wood had been nailed, and the whole painted Tudor Brown. A small picture window was on each side of the entrance door. In the afternoon sun the red-orange glow of the neon brewery signs looked anemic. The entrance door was of the type used for private residences.

  Wright carried a draft beer to a table at the darker end of the little area in front of the bar in which eight small, square tables were distri
buted in a disorderly manner. He took out his phone so that he could appear to be looking at it while he observed the three patrons who happened to be in the bar at that hour.

  Watching and listening to the conversation, he decided on his man in fifteen minutes. Sitting at the bar was a man who could be in his mid- to late thirties, wearing a stretched out, faded black tee shirt. He had a couple of days’ beard and a paunch. Surreptitiously Wright poured the remaining half glass of his beer on the floor and went up to the bar for a refill. While waiting for the bartender to draw his beer, he said casually to his prospect, “You look like you know your way around. Where can you pick up day laborers in this town?”

  The man replied, “The Mexicans all hang out at the Lumber Depot parking lot.”

  Wright sidled onto the bar stool next to his man. “Buy you a beer?”

  “Yeah, sure.” The man had no hesitation or reluctance.

  Wright gave the bartender a fifty, making sure that the man next to him saw it. Wright slowly and deliberately took up his change, leaving a fiver for a tip. When he saw the man next to him eyeing the fiver out of the corner of his eye, he felt his judgment of the man was confirmed.

  As they took up their beers, Wright engaged the man in a few minutes of trivial conversation: sports, weather, cars. Feeling that he had a good sense of the man, he said, “Hey, you know I need a guy for some …” He paused, and drew in a breath, as if thinking how to carefully word his thought, “some, persuasive work. You know anybody around here who’s pretty quick on his feet?”

  “What is it, sales work?” said the guy.

  “Nah, not really.”

  “I don’t know nobody that likes sales work.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Wright. “But I need somebody who can corroborate me. Pay’s really good for a day’s work.”

  The guy wiped his mouth on his shoulder. He turned and looked full at Wright with an eager, yet distrustful face. “You wanna make some money?” he said.

  Wright frowned dismissively, “Never hurts to make money.”