A Body to Die For (26 page)

At that moment the office door was shoved open with one thrust, and I glanced up to find Cordelia standing there. Her smile
for Eric morphed quickly into surprise at spotting me and then into the tiniest of frowns.

“Excuse me,” she said, more to Eric than me. “I thought you were in here alone. Do you want to run down to the Anvil for lunch,
Eric? Before the spa opens?”

“Thanks, but I have to take care of some things in my room.”

“Just asking,” she said. She reiterated her annoyance by pulling the door closed hard behind her. Piper had been right—Cordelia
did seem to have the hots for Eric.

“I better be going,” Eric said before I had a chance to toss out another question. “I have a brochure in the spa on Ayurveda
treatments. I’ll find it once we get back in there and leave it at the front desk of the inn for you.”

“Thanks, I’d appreciate that,” I said, rising along with him. He indicated with an outstretched hand that I should go first.
Cordelia had vanished, and so had the woman who’d been working the desk.

After a survey of my room and a shower, I went down to Danny’s office feeling frustrated. Eric had said nothing of significance,
except that one charged comment about Anna. It had been difficult to know exactly what he was feeling, other than the fact
that he’d not been president of the Anna Cole Fan Club.

Two people were leaving Danny’s office as I arrived, both dressed in one of those white restaurant jackets. Neither one bothered
making eye contact with me.

“Everything okay?” I asked as they headed down the corridor.

“Kitchen staff complaints,” Danny said with a brave smile. “But it’s such a refreshing change from everything else that’s
been going on, I really don’t mind.”

“Any news about the mousetrap?”

There was. The head maintenance man had called just moments before to inform her that a trap actually
was
missing. He’d just assumed a mouse had gotten a leg caught and had limped off with it. I nearly gagged thinking of someone
taking the dead mouse from the trap and wrapping it up to send me.

I was about to maneuver my way into a discussion about George’s revelation, but before I had a chance, Danny took my arm.

“I was just about to come and find you, by the way. This would be a good time to go over to the spa. The first appointment
there isn’t until three, so the staff is still at the salon. Josh has been there for several hours, but he just ran out to
get lunch.”

“Perfect,” I said. My conversation about George would have to wait.

I followed her out to reception and through the lobby, then along the corridor that ran to the side entrance of the spa, the
one I had stood at the night of the murder, the same spot where I’d heard the thud. From the pocket of her mauve-colored sweater
she pulled out her keys. She struggled for a moment with the lock, and as I glanced down I noticed that it was new. We stepped
inside and I found myself experiencing a wave of déjà vu and then dread. This wasn’t going to be any fun at all.

“I need you to give me a little tour, okay, Danny?” I said. “Let’s start with the room I found her in. I can show you which
one it is.”

“It’s room four,” Danny said. “Piper told me.”

Following behind her, I retraced the steps I’d taken Friday night, past the room where I’d had my own massage toward the room
where Piper had discovered Anna. The curtains poofed silently as we walked by them, just as they had that night. But now there
was no scent of green tea in the air.

I knew I wouldn’t go to pieces when I saw the spot where Anna’s body had lain, and I didn’t, yet the knot that had begun to
form in my stomach tightened. I stood in the doorway, with Danny right beside me, staring at the putty-colored tiles on the
floor.

“I still can’t believe she was murdered,” Danny whispered.

“Can you show me the room that she did her last massage in?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s this way,” she said, leading me down the corridor in the direction opposite from where we’d come. It was eerily
quiet, though I could hear what I thought was the sound of dripping water from another part of the spa. Danny reached the
end of the hall, turned left, and proceeded a few feet to another corridor that ran parallel to the one we’d just come from.
There were three treatment rooms on either side of this hallway. Danny pointed to the middle room on the north side of the
hall.

“That one,” she said. “It’s treatment room eight.”

“I keep wondering how Anna ended up in that other treatment room,” I said. “I know she’d already left this room, because she
walked her last client to the side door and unlocked it for her. So perhaps she was heading back to the front of the spa or
was about to clean up when someone surprised her and dragged her into the other treatment room. That would mean it was someone
with a key—because all the doors were locked after the last client left and there was no break-in.”

Danny listened with a pained expression on her face but said nothing in reply. I wondered if her mind was taunting her with
the possibility of George in the scenario I had painted.

“Another possibility,” I continued, “was that she let the person in herself. He knocked on the door and she opened it, not
expecting him to harm her. It may have been someone who worked here—like Eric—saying he’d forgotten something or that he wanted
to talk to her. Or maybe a client who said he’d forgotten something—just like I had.”

Even as I said it, though, I found it hard to believe Anna would have given after-hours entry to someone in her release massage
club.

“Of course,” I said, “there’s a remote possibility she was killed by someone who’d been here for an appointment and hid out
until everyone but Anna had gone. I take it the police looked at the schedule for the day,” I said.

“Yes, I gave them a copy,” said Danny. “And I looked it over, of course. There were several male clients around lunchtime,
including one for Anna. But from four o’clock on, it was all women, and most of them were guests at the inn.”

“It’s definitely a long-shot idea. Let’s walk over to the main reception area,” I said.

There was still one other slim possibility—that Anna heard a knock at the door and let a total stranger in. But as soon as
I saw the front door again and was reminded of its design, I realized it just couldn’t have happened. Two narrow windows ran
vertically on either side, and Anna would have seen anyone standing there. It was highly unlikely that she would have opened
the door at night for someone she didn’t know—despite how much she had liked living on the edge.

I asked Danny to show me around the rest of the spa quickly before Josh returned. I wanted to see the back door, as well as
the closet where the Mylar paper was stored. Once again she led and I followed. I was struck again by how eerie it was here,
how rooms that could seem relaxing and comforting when people were around were spooky when you had them all to yourself. That’s
more or less what the client Babs had told me. The empty spa had given her a creepy feeling. I flashed suddenly on something
else she’d told me.

“Danny, before we continue, can I see the women’s changing area?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s right behind reception,” she said.

I had just recalled the remark that Babs had made about finding Anna sitting in the locker room. It had always seemed odd
to me, and I had wondered what she could have possibly been doing there.

The space was pitch dark, and my breathing quickened as Danny fumbled for the light switch.

I’d been in here only briefly last Friday night. There was a small anteroom and then a larger room lined on three walls with
wooden lockers and another with the counter Babs had said she’d seen Anna sitting at. Adjoining the space was another area
with sinks, changing rooms, toilet stalls, and a couple of showers. I turned toward the counter. The wall above it was covered
with a large mirror, and stools were tucked under it. On the countertop were a variety of complimentary toiletries—brushes,
combs, lotion.

Anna had been using the mirror, I suddenly realized. She’d been primping, fixing herself up. Because Anna had been expecting
someone the night she was murdered.

B
AILEY, IS EVERYTHING
all right?” Danny asked, clearly worried.

“Yes, I’m just thinking,” I said. “Does the employee locker room have a mirror in it?”

“No, I don’t think so. At least not like the one in here, if that’s what you mean. I think the girls keep small ones hanging
in their lockers. I can show you if you want. It’s near the back door.”

“Yes, show me, will you?”

“What in the world are you thinking, Bailey? Please tell me.”

“Something just occurred to me. I’m wondering if Anna might have been planning to meet someone the night she was killed. I
had a chance when I was up here before to speak to Anna’s last client, and she told me that before she left the spa that night,
she found Anna sitting at the counter in the changing room, dressed in her street clothes. I just realized that it’s the vanity
counter here. And it seems odd that she would have checked herself out in a mirror and maybe fixed her hair or put on makeup
if she was planning to go straight back to the barn.”

“The therapists aren’t supposed to use this room,” Danny said, “unless they’re helping to collect towels or something like
that.”

“Well, it was basically after hours, and—and she broke that little rule because she needed to use the mirror. Piper said she
switched places with Anna because she had dinner plans and Anna was staying in. But that had been earlier in the week. Things
could have changed. Someone might have called and made arrangements to see her. But since she was in charge of closing up
the spa, she was forced to make it a late rendezvous: around ten-fifteen, ten-thirty.”

“Who could it have been?”

“A guy would be my guess. I’ve tried to find out if she was seeing someone new, but I haven’t had any luck. Yet I bet she
was. That might have been why she blew off Eric.” What I didn’t mention was what Piper had told me this morning, that Anna
had wanted to make another switch with Piper—in their final departure dates from the Cedar Inn and Spa. Maybe Anna had wanted
to delay her departure because there was a new love interest.

“And you think that person could have killed her?”

“It’s a possibility. I suppose she could have had a date that night and someone
else
killed her. If her date was around ten-thirty, he might have come by and found the place empty, just as I had. But it seems
like an awfully big coincidence.”

“And if that was the case, wouldn’t the man have come forward by now?”

“Well, he might not want to once he found out she was dead. He’d be an automatic suspect.”

“Shouldn’t we tell this to the police?” Danny asked eagerly. “This could help them stop focusing on George.”

“Not yet. There’s not enough evidence, and they’d only scoff at my little theory. Besides, Beck would be pissed that I was
butting in. Let me pursue it on my own for a bit.”

“All right,” she said with little enthusiasm. “If we’re going to finish looking around, we’d better hurry. Josh will be back
any second.”

We headed down another corridor toward the back of the building. We passed the room with the famous
sento
baths and also a treatment room with a massage table and what appeared to be a large chrome hose on the wall.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“This is one of the two rooms we do wraps in. The hose is used to wash the mud off the client after the wrap is done.”

“You mean the wrap the Mylar paper is used for?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Danny said solemnly.

“Are you really all wrapped up when you have it?”

“No, not exactly,” she said. “You lie on the Mylar paper and they fold it over you.”

As we walked I noted places someone could have hidden. Though I had just about talked myself into believing my theory about
Anna having a date the night she was killed, I had no proof. There were still other possibilities, including that small one
that she had been killed by someone hiding in the spa. I realized that a client or stranger could have slipped into a treatment
room or one of several storage areas. Yet it was hard to imagine someone managing to pull that off for long with so many employees
around.

As we reached the back of the spa, I saw that the entire addition was actually smaller than it seemed, designed so efficiently
and with so many interesting twists and turns that it gave the illusion of going on forever.

The employee locker room was right next to the rear door, and there was no need for much inspection. It was a tiny room with
a row of half lockers and a small wooden bench to sit on. There was a sink and above it a five-by-seven mirror hung with wire
and a pushpin. It was clear why someone would choose to use the mirror in the guest changing area, especially if she was applying
makeup.

I took a quick look at the back door before we left this part of the spa. There was a chain lock and two dead bolts, one new
in bright, shiny brass. I asked Danny if the chain was new, and she explained that it had been on since the addition was built.
So if someone had slipped in on Friday night with the help of a key, chances were he had used one of the two other entrances.