Festive in Death (3 page)

“Gwen?”

“Gwen Rollins, one of our instructors.”

“Were they traveling together?”

“No, no.” She paused, nearly did an eye roll before she caught herself. “No.”

“Didn’t get along?”

“Didn’t
not
get along. Jesus, what happened to Trey?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out. Did anyone have a problem with him?”

“Not a murder problem. Give me a sec, okay?”

She sat there, pressed her fingers to her eyes, took long slow breaths. “He’s somebody I worked with, saw every workday, and sometimes off days if he came in. You get to be part of each other’s lives, you know, in a way. We weren’t tight outside the work, but he was part of my life. Now he’s dead.”

She lowered her hands, met Eve’s gaze directly. “He’s—was—a good trainer. He tapped into the client really well, knew how to motivate. Better at the one-on-one than group—he couldn’t spread his attention out to a group very well, so I didn’t use him as a Group-X instructor unless I was squeezed. Damn good massage therapist. I used him a few times myself for that.”

She pushed her hands through her hair again, huffed out a breath. “And he was kind of an asshole.”

“Which kind?”

“With women. He was a user. Didn’t see any problem juggling them. Liked the attention, and he bragged about his sex life. I had to tell him to chill there more than once.”

“Did he hit on clients?”

“Sure, and vice versa. But he was careful there, I mean careful not to screw it up. Lose a client, lose money, and he liked money as much as sex. So he’d keep it light with the clients if it went in that direction. He’d been living with somebody for a few weeks, but that broke off. Sima Murtagh—but she wouldn’t hurt anybody. Best thing that happened for her when he cut her loose. He’d been playing around on her the whole time.”

“Did she know?”

“I don’t think so.” Lill sighed. “She’s a sweet kid. She works at the salon just down the block. Ultra You. I know he was tapping a couple clients when they were together. He leaned toward older women there with disposable scratch. The kind who’d book a hotel suite for a few hours or a night, buy him dinner or gifts and not get emotional about the whole thing. And, shit, he was rolling with Alla again, I’m pretty sure.”

“Alla Coburn?”

“Yeah, yeah. She owns Natural Way—it’s local, too. They were a thing for a while, then he ditched her, or she ditched him depending on who’s telling it, and he went for Sima. Alla’s a member, and I walked in on her and Trey in a clutch just the other day. He got a big laugh out of it.”

She looked down at her hands, miserably. “You’ve got to understand. The guy had the looks, the body, the charm when he wanted to use it, and from the reports, knew what to do in bed.”

“Did you ever test that one out for yourself?”

Lill’s head came up again, and again her eyes were direct. “No, and two reasons: I’m his supervisor, and I like my job. I’ve got a kid to think about—which actually makes it three reasons and Evan’s number one. And the last? I was married to a Trey Ziegler–type for four years. I don’t repeat myself.”

“But I bet you could put together a list of names who tried him out.”

“Yeah.” Lill huffed out a breath, pressed her fingers to her eyes again. “Yeah, I could. You think it was a jealous thing or sex thing that did him? I get that. I wanted to drop-kick my ex out a twelve-story window plenty before we were done. Still do now and then.”

“But you took a tire iron to his car instead.”

Lill winced. “Yeah, I did. Look, I come home sick one afternoon—crappy cold. Things weren’t great, but we had a kid and I wanted to try to stick it out. He’s supposed to be writing some freelance travel article, watching Evan, and I come home. Evan’s in his crib, crying, soaking wet, and the asshole’s in bed, banging our next-door neighbor. I took Evan straight to my mother’s, got him changed, fed, settled, then I went back, gathered up all of Evan’s stuff, my stuff, I could carry while the asshole’s saying, Hey, don’t get so wound up. She’d come on to him. I haven’t been putting out much anyway. He needed to relax, and he wasn’t a fucking nursemaid.”

“He’s lucky you didn’t hit him with the tire iron,” Peabody commented.

“Oh yeah, he is. Me, too, I guess, but I had a kid to think of first. I was going to take the car—hell, it was half mine—and he’s yelling out the window how if I’m going I’m going on foot with what’s on my back. If I take the car, he’s calling the cops saying it was stolen. So I lost it. I got out the tire iron, beat the living crap out of the car. Ended up getting arrested. It was worth it.”

“It’s got to be irritating, having someone like your ex on staff.”

“God.” She rubbed her hands over her short crop of hair again. “Okay. It makes me jittery, but I get where you’re coming from so I’ll tell you straight. The first couple of times I saw him playing one of the instructors, I gave them the word. You know, you want to be careful. And got told to mind my own. So I minded my own, even when I lost a few instructors. I laid it out to Trey. I lose another, I’m going to find a way to lose you. He didn’t like it, but I’m the freaking manager, and I’d have gotten rid of him—professionally,” she added. “He stopped hitting on coworkers because he knew I could and would cut him loose. What he did outside BB? It’s not for me to say.”

“Rumor is he was thinking about starting his own place.”

Lill laughed. “He wouldn’t be the first to have the dream. Trey got pretty grand recently from what I heard. But it was just talk. Look, he targeted women like Sima and Alla because they were hard workers, because they’d pay the rent or the bulk of it. He could live off them and blow his pay on clothes and sports equipment. He’d never have put enough scratch together to finance a place like this.”

“I’m told he was doing some after-hours work around here.”

“I work days—I’ve got Evan—but yeah, he’d been coming in off-hours. Staff’s allowed to use the facilities off their shift, or adjust their schedule to suit a client. We run six
A.M.
to ten
P.M
., and I noticed him swiping in pretty regularly after ten on the log. He said he was using the comps to program some new training sessions, getting a late workout in when the place was quiet. He brought in the clients, earned his pay and commission. I didn’t make a thing of it.”

“Okay. He has a locker here.”

“All the staff have lockers.”

“We’d like to get into it. I can get a warrant.”

“No need for it. If he doesn’t want the cops to have all the information they can get on finding out who killed him, he’s too stupid to live anyway.”

Intrigued, Eve nodded. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

Lill took them down to the staff lockers—a tight little room with wall units, two narrow benches, a toilet stall and a skinny shower.

“We have another staff locker room on the third floor. Mostly the guys use this one, the women use that, but they’re coed. He put a second lock on his a couple weeks ago. People do, sometimes—clients and staff. Which is why I have a universal master because half the time people forget their codes.”

Lill ran it under the first lock once, then twice. Frowned, ran it under the main lock.

“It’s not reading.”

“Let me try mine.” Eve stepped in, repeated the process with the same results. “He’s gone to some trouble here. That’s interesting.” She glanced at Peabody. “McNab.”

“On it.”

“I’m calling in someone from our Electronics Detective Division. He’ll access and confiscate anything in the locker. You can be present if you want.”

With her hands on her hips, Lill frowned at the locker. “I kind of do just because I want to know what the hell he’s got in there.”

“Meanwhile, why don’t you give me a list of names. People, you know, who might have wanted to take a tire iron to his car.”

Lill laughed weakly, said, “Crap.”

While they waited for McNab, Eve had Peabody do a run on Alla Coburn and the names Lill listed while Eve talked to the instructors and trainers on duty.

She broke off when she spotted McNab.

He stood out among the hard bodies, the six-packs, the oiled guns.

Then again, he stood out anywhere.

In his long red coat and bright green watch cap he looked like a skinny twig in a forest of sequoias. The long tail of his hair bounced sunnily at his back as he pranced in on gel boots the same color as the cap. A line of silver rings glittered on the curve of his ear.

She watched his pretty face light up, followed the direction of his gaze to Peabody.

Love, Eve thought, came in all colors, shapes, and sizes.

She cut across his path before the EDD ace and her partner did something embarrassing like lock lips on duty.

“Double locks,” she said without preamble. “One factory installed, one add-on, both reprogrammed to block master access.”

“Got your bypass right here.” He patted one of the half dozen pockets of his coat. “Some sweatbox,” he added with a glance around. “Your DB work here?”

“He did.”

“Guess he died fit. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Eat rabbit food, sweat daily, die anyhow. Hey, She-Body. You forgot your toe warmers this morning.” He pulled a pair of thin gels out of one of his pockets.

“Thanks. Aw, you activated them.”

“Can’t have my girl’s tootsies cold.”

“Don’t say
aw
again,” Eve ordered, anticipating. “And never say tootsies. You’re wearing badges, for God’s sake. This way.”

She knew damn well they did their little finger tap behind her back.

“Nothing stood out on the run, Lieutenant.” Peabody made up for the finger tap with a brisk report. “A couple minor bumps, one with some outstanding traffic violations, but nothing that rang. Coburn’s run her business out of its current location for nearly six years.”

“Okay. Nobody liked him. Most of the coworkers don’t come right out and say so, but it’s clear he won’t be especially missed around here. Words like
arrogant
,
sneaky
,
ambitious
, and
asshole
are the most popular.”

She nodded to Lill.

“Lill Byers, the manager, will witness our access to the deceased’s employee locker. I’d also like Detective McNab to take a look at any computer Ziegler would have used.”

“Oh, man.” Lill did the hand over hair scoop. “Staff lounge on the third floor. We’ve got two minis up there. Mostly everybody brings their own pocket or tab, but we provide the two minis, full software. I don’t know his passcode.”

“I can get it,” McNab assured her.

Inside the locker room he pulled a scanner out of his pocket, ran it over the first lock.

“Changed the factory default, upgraded. Wait.” Using his thumbs he keyed in some sort of code, ran the scanner again. “Serious upgrade. Bank-vault quality on a gym locker. Huh.”

“How long is this going to take?” Eve demanded.

“He redid the works, and he’s got a thirteen-digit code on there, layered. It’s going to take a few minutes.”

Eve jammed her hands in her pockets, thought of Roarke. Her husband, the former thief, would likely slip through the damn locks like smoke. But she could hardly ask him to put a pause on his day as emperor of the business world to open a damn gym locker.

“Why would he go to all this trouble?” Lill wondered. “What the hell has he got in there?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

“Why the hell not get a lockbox at home, or a bank box?”

Eve watched McNab painstakingly work through the code. “Employee locker’s free, right?”

“Yeah.” Lill sighed, shook her head. “Cheap bastard. Shit, shit! That’s horrible. He’s dead. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Eve advised.

“Maybe I could get you all something. Some juice, a smoothie. We have some really nice teas. Why don’t—”

“Got it!”

The last number clicked, disengaging the primary lock.

“Okay, he put two layers of twelve on this one,” McNab muttered, more to himself than the room. “Total overkill, total waste ’cause all I have to do is . . . Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Numbers popped up on his scanner, glowing red as he tapped his thumbs, jiggled his hips, tapped his foot in the dance so many e-men choreographed while working.

Seconds ticked to minutes until Eve had to pace away and back again a few times to keep from nagging him to get the damn thing open.

“Nearly there, Dallas. Not such a tricky one. Just tedious. He spent a lot of time on the layers, but no pizzazz. Just takes some time.” He glanced over at her, grinned. “Watch it be empty after all this! Wouldn’t that be a bitch?”

“Don’t make me kick your ass, McNab.”

“Last sequence coming up, locking in, and . . . bam! Overridden. It’s all yours, Lieutenant.”

“Okay, let’s see what was so fricking important.”

It wasn’t empty.

Wrapped packs of bills formed neat stacks and rows. Low denomination, Eve noted, banded in thousand-dollar packs.

“Holy shit!” Lill clamped a hand on Eve’s shoulder as she leaned in, goggled. “Holy shit, where did Trey get all that money? Cash money. Who has that kind of real money anywhere?”

“Good question. Peabody, let’s get an accurate count with Ms. Byers as witness, then seal and log. He put the second lock on when?”

“Ah. God. Maybe a month ago,” Lill managed. “Maybe more like six weeks. Yeah, more like six weeks ago.”

Just what kind of side business had Ziegler launched in the past few weeks? Eve wondered. Whatever it had been, it had proven lucrative and deadly.

“A hundred and sixty-five thousand, Dallas. A hundred and sixty-five thousand-dollar stacks, and one broken stack with five thousand.
Crisp new twenty-dollar bills,” Peabody added. “Rubber-banded. Not bank-banded.”

“Seal it up. McNab, go through the staff comps here, then take his home unit, his ’link. Do the works. We appreciate your time and cooperation,” she told Lill.

“Will you kind of keep me up on things? I can’t believe Trey had all that money in there. I can’t believe he’s dead. None of this is really getting through, you know?”

“Will let you know what we can when we can.”

“Okay. Oh, listen, let me get you a bag. A complimentary Buff Bodies gym bag. You can’t carry all that money out of here in those clear bags.”