The Bride Wore Dead

by E M Kaplan

  Tammy stood about a head above Josie, which meant the masseuse was just a little north of average height. But she was bulky and muscular in a high school softball star kind of way. She was very pretty, too, with corkscrew red curls and a smile that lit up her whole face. She held out her hand to Josie, who shook it. Kind of weird, two women shaking hands with no one else around to see it. Tammy’s hands were strong and oddly scaly, as if she’d washed a thousand dishes. Her nails were cut down to the quick, which made her fingertips look squared off. She handed Josie a terry cloth wrap and gestured to a dressing room.

  “Where is everyone?” Josie asked, pointing behind her at the empty fitness center. She was just stalling, making conversation, trying to relax about the idea of getting a massage.

  Tammy’s eyes widened. “Everyone pretty much left after the accident,” she said. “It’s just you, me, Mr. Bigshot-Movie-Star, Petey, and the rest of the staff. All the other guests pretty much took off or postponed their plans to come. It sucks because I lose tips when no one is here. Not much business, not much cash flow for me, if you know what I mean.”

  Josie figured that the crack about the movies referred to Patrick and his so-amazing acting career, the only other guest that she’d met so far. “Who’s Petey?” she asked.

  Tammy’s eyes widened again, just her way of being attentive and concentrating on Josie’s question. “That’s just what I call him—Peter Williams. I’ve known him for a couple of years now, you know.”

  “Ah,” said Josie. Well that was weird. Josie had never heard him called by that nickname before. She went into the dressing room and stripped off her shorts, top, and bra, leaving her underpants on. She went back into the room where Tammy was waiting and climbed on the massage table and lay on her stomach when Tammy gestured. Tammy set a timer, dimmed the lights, and pressed a button on her CD player. Some Enya music started up with its lulling, mesmerizing chords.

  Tammy started by placing a hand in the center of Josie’s back. She didn’t do anything else for almost a whole minute. In an odd way, it calmed Josie. This isn’t so bad, she thought, but Tammy was just waiting for the massage oil to heat up. She had a large squeeze bottle of oil in a portable baby bottle warmer. When it was warmed up, Tammy applied some of it to her hands. Josie inhaled a warm pine, floral scent. Not bad, she thought. And then Tammy went to work.

  “God dang, you got a lot of knots back here,” she remarked. She started some circular motions, moving slowly up Josie’s spine, and Josie felt her muscles begin to release their tension. On the surface, Tammy’s leathery hands felt like fine grit sandpaper, smoothing out the skin, sloughing off dead cells, refinishing her with warm oil. Underneath, the fibers of Josie’s muscles were being stretched, teased into elongating, sliding back into their rightful tracks.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “I guess so,” Tammy said and Josie couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or just humoring her.

  “Are you from here?” Josie turned her face. She’d been only minimally successful with the other people on Mr. Obregon’s check list so far. Her efforts weren’t paying off as much as she hoped. She might as well try to enjoy the massage.

  “No,” Tammy said. “Not Puerta. But I grew up in Tucson.”

  “That’s what I meant,” Josie said. She didn’t know if anyone was actually from Puerta—or if they all had just been there so long that they considered themselves natives. No one had been there long enough to say otherwise. “I went to high school in Tucson,” she added.

  Tammy stopped kneading her. “Hey, me, too. Which one did you go to?”

  Josie told her just the name of it, not the years she had gone there—probably a good ten years before Tammy had gone to hers—and definitely not the reason why Josie had been shuttled to Tucson in the first place. Nobody wanted to hear that as a teenager, she’d left her mother in a nursing home and come out to live with distant relatives. Total downer.

  “I had some friends who went there. That was a tough school,” Tammy said. She explained that she had gone to the “snobby, rich, white” high school, as if Josie had forgotten all the old local truisms. But in her crowd, Tammy explained, she was one of only a couple of her friends who had actually graduated. “Sports is what got me through,” she explained. “Then I got to college and I wrecked my knee, so I dropped out and became a massage therapist full-time. I’d already been working here on the side to pay my tuition, but I didn’t like college much. Too much studying, if you know what I mean.” She sounded like she was grinning although Josie couldn’t see her face.

  Tammy went on, “I can’t see myself working here forever of course. It’s a great place, don’t get me wrong. I can work out between appointments. Do some P.T. on my knee. Use the pool if I want. But I could see myself doing more.”

  “Like what?” Josie asked her.

  Tammy’s hands stopped. “I don’t know. Nursing school, I guess. I think I’d be really good at that. Taking care of people. Giving them I.V.s. And I hardly need any sleep. I function real good without it. Or maybe an EMT. Like, one of those guys in helicopters. That’d be a blast. Get my own uniform and some heavy boots on. That’d rock.” Her hands went back to work. “This is a pretty good job, considering I didn’t go to college. I get paid good. And I get to meet some nice guys. It has its perks, you know.”

  “Except for times like this when no one’s here, right?” Josie asked.

  “Yeah. Stuff like this doesn’t happen very often. People don’t die here a lot. We did have this one guy who croaked because of a heart attack last year, but he was old. He didn’t exercise until it was too late. You can’t live like that.”

  “I guess not,” Josie said. She decided not to bother pointing out that it was pretty much hard to live when you were dead.

  “But what I don’t get was that this was an accident—just like that old guy with the heart attack. She got stung by a bee, right? Swelled up like a balloon. Choked on her tongue or whatever. Why is everyone staying away? It’s not like she was mugged or attacked. Why were the police here? You know what I mean.”

  “The police were here?” Josie said mildly.

  “Yeah, they were here asking all kinds of questions. They had Petey in a room for a long time. I mean, it was obvious to me that he was in bad shape and feeling really bad about the whole thing. He should have had some space to work some things out, you know. But they never let him alone.”

  “So, what happened?” Josie asked.

  “With Leann?” Tammy paused, thinking it over. Then she worked on the backs of Josie’s thighs, having lifted her towel up to her butt. Tammy used the palms of her hands to work at one of Josie’s hamstrings in a cross-directional pull. Her fingers grasped the inside of Josie’s thigh—the last person to explore her that intimately has been that rat-bastard Joe Armstrong. Josie attempted to detach from her body, to stay in her mind. Tammy would probably feel it immediately if she tensed up, thinking about her former lover. “I think she just got stung by a bee. I mean, she wasn’t a really healthy person, you know. She was always sick.”

  “Was she?” That was news to Josie.

  “She got a lot of migraines. Instead of going swimming or hiking with him, she stayed in their room taking a nap. And she always wore sunglasses and a big hat. I think she was allergic to sunlight or something.”

  “Then, why did they come here for their honeymoon?” Josie couldn’t help but ask.

  “Petey’s been coming here for years. Then, when they started dating, he would bring her sometimes.” Tammy went on, still riding her single train of thought, “She had really bad muscle tone. Anemic, too—not enough iron. It makes you bruise at the slightest touch. And I mean, she always had bruises on her legs and arms from running into stuff.”

  “I’ll bet she never got undressed for a massage,” Josie said.

  “Hey, you’re right about that,” Tammy said. “I wouldn’t do it either if I looked like that. Seriously, I don’t know what Petey saw in her.
She didn’t seem like his type at all. I couldn’t believe it when he said he was getting married to her. That was a surprise. I mean, a big surprise.” Her tone got a little subdued, confirming Josie’s suspicion that Tammy felt a massive attraction to Peter Williams. An old-fashioned, head-over-heels, unrequited—

  Blood suddenly rushed to Josie’s head. “You knew him before they were married?” The familiarity with which Tammy talked about Peter Williams, the contempt with which she described Leann, combined with the fact that she’d known Peter before made Josie think maybe Tammy’s attraction wasn’t one-sided at all. She was young, pretty, athletic—almost everything that Leann was not. Not as sharp as a Boston-bred socialite. Not as educated. Not as serious a relationship. And therefore, perhaps, a safe one.

  “Oh yeah,” Tammy said. “Petey and I go way back. We’ve been friends for a long time.” Josie could hear the smile in her voice again.

  Then, the timer went off. “God dang, I’ve just been flapping my jaws this whole time. I’m not usually like this,” Tammy exclaimed. “I didn’t even get through the whole program. You want to stay extra? There’s no one here, so I won’t really charge extra.”

  Josie declined. “I feel great. Really.” She sat up slowly, clutching her wrap. She rolled her head experimentally on her neck. “Best I’ve felt in months.”

  Tammy was wiping her hands on a towel trying to get some of the excess oil off. “I can’t believe how much I was yammering.”

  “You must have had a few things on your mind,” Josie said.

  “Well, I hope I didn’t bore you to death. Geeze, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe because you’re so quiet.”

  “Not a problem,” Josie said, moving her neck from side to side. “I feel good. Seems like we both got a little therapy today.”

  Tammy’s eyes widened. Then she got the joke and laughed.

  CHAPTER 16

  Josie, feeling momentarily loose from head to toe, and stupidly emboldened by it, found Patrick under the patio by the pool. “Getting a shade tan,” he called it.

  “Hey,” she said giving him a little nod with the tip of her chin. “I need your help.”

  He was all ears with his feet over the side of the lounge chair. “Shoot,” he said, poised for action.

  “You’ve crawled all over this place. You found the fax machine, as we know.” She gave him a smile as if to show she didn’t harbor any grudges. Yeah, right she didn’t.

  “So sue me,” he said. And if he said it one more time, she was going to tweak the pretty nose right off his Noxzema face. Damn, I’m a grouch, she thought, and stuffed her irritability back where it’d come from, which was the general direction of her stomach.

  “Here’s what I need—”

  “Are we going sleuthing, Nancy Drew?”

  “Here’s what I need,” she said again.”Can you get me into the other guest rooms?”

  He looked confused. “But there’s no one else here. They’re empty.”

  “I don’t want to rob the place. I want to see the rooms where Leann was staying.”

  “Sick,” he said immediately with a shiver. He was silent as he thought about it, realizing she was serious. “Yeah, I can do that. Kind of weird, but okay.”

  “Great. Can we do it right now?”

  “In broad daylight?” He looked aghast.

  “Sorry, I didn’t bring my black ski mask and night goggles. Yes, right now.” She clenched her jaw.

  He hemmed and hawed. Then, he leaned to one side and dug a beat up leather wallet out of his pocket. He handed a key card to her. “Here. This will work.”

  She turned it over in her hand. “Your room key works for all of our rooms?”

  “No, not my room key. It’s one off the housekeeping cart. It’s a master.” He stood up. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like I’m going to come sneaking into your room in the middle of the night. For Christsakes, if I had wanted to do that, I would’ve done it already. I wouldn’t be telling you about it.” She glared at him, now totally aghast herself. “Fine. Believe what you want to believe. But if you really want to know, I’m kind of afraid of you. I’m pretty sure you sleep with a gun in your nightie. There may be a small chance that you don’t, but I’m sure as hell not going to take the risk of finding out.”

  She made a mental note to shove something heavy against the door before she went to sleep that night. What a freak he was, thinking he could just go where he pleased without any regard to people’s privacy. So much for his moral high ground. He’d probably already rifled through her room that morning. Not that she had that much with her, but it was her stuff. And who wanted someone’s aftershave-soaked hands pawing through it? “Come on, let’s go break into her room,” she said.

  “It’s over there.” He gestured to a bungalow on the opposite side of the pool from Josie’s room. When she took a step toward it, he said, “Will you just stay here a second and let me see if anyone is coming? Jesus. In the middle of the day.”

  She watched him slouch his way around the pool. He leaned against the stucco wall of Leann’s bungalow and idly picked at his cuticles. Not bad. Very casual. Except for the fact that he was in the sunlight, which anyone who’d been watching him for the last couple of days would know that he hadn’t been in for weeks. Count Dracula, himself. She waited for his skin to start smoking. He made eye contact with her and gave her a barely perceptible nod.

  She shouted across the pool to him, “If the coast is clear, you don’t need to be so James Bond.”

  “Shhhh!” he shout-whispered back.

  She walked straight up to the door and slid the key card in. He was at her side in an instant, peering in. “What do you see? What’s there?”

  “What? You haven’t been in here yet?” she said as the door closed behind them.

  “No. Too creepy.” He followed her slowly as their eyes adjusted to the darkness. The curtains were drawn. She trailed her hand along the wall and flicked the overhead light on. “Hey!” Patrick said, “Turn that off. Someone’s going to see us.”

  “The curtains are closed,” she pointed out, handing him back his key card. “No light coming in, so no light going out.”

  “Just don’t touch anything, all right? Don’t put your fingerprints on anything.”

  “This isn’t a crime scene, Patrick.” For that matter, officially, there wasn’t any crime. Except her trespassing. She made her way around the room slowly, starting at the left, going clockwise. The bungalow was larger than hers, a double suite. Passageways flanked either side of a king-sized sleigh bed, leading to his and hers bathrooms. Not much on Peter’s side of the room. But Leann’s things were partially unpacked, as if she’d just left—stepped out to grab an early dinner from the dining room. Eerie.

  Two pieces of matching luggage—floral tapestry—were open, one on top of a chest of drawers, the other on the carpet. Josie peeked into each one. Long-sleeved cotton shirts. Full length cotton pants. Several hats. Not exactly sun lover’s garb, confirming some of Tammy Roberts’s earlier descriptions of Leann. In one of the suitcases, Josie spied some neatly folded grandmotherly-looking long nightgowns, floral print, buttons up to the collars. Not exactly honeymoon garb.

  She edged aside the nightgowns using one finger. Wadded up in the back corner of the suitcase was something small and black. Using her finger to catch a loop, she pulled it gingerly out of the case. The fabric rolled out into a black lace teddy with garter strap attachments. Crushed and balled up tightly in the back of the suitcase—not exactly honeymoon behavior. She dropped it back into the suitcase and glanced around.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked Patrick. He was still standing right inside the door, exactly where he’d been when she’d first turned on the light. Stock still, eyes zipping left and right.

  “This feels bad to me. I don’t like it in here.”

  “We’re just looking around. We’re not disturbing anything,” she said. Had she always been such a liar?

  “
I don’t want to stay in here,” he said breathing rapidly, his pale nostrils flaring. “I can’t handle this. It’s just wrong.”

  She stood up and looked. “You go outside then. It’s okay. I’ll just be a few more minutes.” Before she had time to add, Don’t worry about me, he said, “Okay. Don’t forget to lock up on your way out.” He gave her a funny little wave and was out the door.

  “Sure, I’ll be fine,” she told the door. Beautiful.

  She finished poking through Leann’s clothes without finding anything else significant. Then, she turned her attention to the bathroom that had been Leann’s. Josie found two more matching tapestry bags—one garment bag hanging in the alcove that served as a closet and a large toiletry bag, rectangular with a zipper around the top.

  Josie started with the toiletry bag. Like the other bags, it was open…its contents no longer anyone’s private possessions, sadly. Using the back of her finger, she moved around the makeup. There was a lot of it—sun block with SPF 84, creams and single-use cleansing cloths, tweezers of various kinds, eyelash curlers, and myriad run-of-the-mill types of makeup like foundation, lipstick, and mascara. Leann had been kind of a pancake face at the wedding. At the time, Josie had chocked it up to wedding nerves, stage greasepaint for the wedding photos, but now she suspected Leann had more than just skin blemishes to cover up. Like bruises from angry fists.

  In the side pockets of the toiletries bag, Josie found a pink packet of birth control pills, several of which had been taken—up until the day of the week Leann had died—and a two-pack of Epi-Pens, only one of which had been removed. Josie froze, staring at the pack. A two-pack? With a full one left? If Leann had been stung outside the dining hall but had died inside the dining hall…even if her Epi-Pen was faulty or lost, why hadn’t she asked someone to get the extra Epi-Pen? Her room was just steps away from poolside, which was steps away from the dining hall. Had she forgotten about the spare Epi-Pen? But how could she forget a thing like that? Fatal forgetfulness?