How I Spent My Summer Vacation (26 page)

The women murmured. Our group was taking on the tenor of a camp meeting, but before we canonized St. Poppy of the Rivets, her sister was summoned for her session with the detectives.

I wondered whether Sis had much to gain from the recent deaths. Somebody should check whether she was heir to the Reese money. I was warming to that when I suddenly stopped dead. There was no way to commit murder while leading an aerobics class in a fishbowl of a room.

I worried about my turn with the police, gnawed at what might happen, and thereby missed what was actually going on until the leotard twins cleared their throats. “—count you in?” the jungle-printed one asked me.

“For what?”

“For Holly’s sister. I mean, we can’t have been here and not do something, act like we don’t know.”

“Flowers?” her companion said. “From all of us?”

They looked eager and enthusiastic, so I obviously was the only one who found it somewhat bizarre. Greetings and consolation from the strangers who found your sister’s corpse. “Sure,” I said. Probably, in the face of such random cruelty, we all needed to do something, anything, to feel a bit more in control. Besides, perhaps any comfort, however bizarre, would be welcome.

“Holly’s a gem,” Greta said. “A treasure. And very close to her sister.”

“A
large
bouquet,” the candy-striped leotard said.

I extracted my share from my ever-thinning wallet. And then it was my turn to be questioned.

I need not have worried. The police were only interested in one murder, even after I reminded them that the corpse’s husband had been similarly bludgeoned two days earlier.

“Not with a dumbbell!” one who looked straight out of
Night of the Living Dead
exclaimed.

“All the same,” I said, “they’re connected, don’t you think?”

“Whatever we think, we’ll think. How about you let us do it—the thinking—and you help us do it by answering our questions. Where exactly were you?”

I kept trying and they kept putting me down, shushing and patronizing me.

So, finally they knew only what they wanted to know, which was pretty much nothing. “Don’t leave the area yet,” the older one said. “We might need more information.”

What a laugh. I decided that the indoor plumbing was part of the area, and I made my way to the john. The security guard I’d seen earlier was stationed by the exit near the combination changing room, shower, and bathroom.

“I just figured out who you are,” he said. “What’s with you and your friend? Some kind of grudge against the Reeses? The police are going to be very interested. You’d better be careful, young woman. Watch your step.”

“Thanks for your concern. I really appreciate it, but right now, I’d appreciate the ladies’ room even more.” Having further offended him, I left.

I was tossing the paper towel into the wire basket when I became fully aware of how large and excessively empty the tiled space was. It wasn’t surprising, given the situation, but still, it felt unnatural and chilling, as if the absence of sound could also echo off the white tile walls. The facility was probably never crowded, even when the police hadn’t rounded up the few attendees. People did not come to Atlantic City for a healthy getaway. The spas were entertainment centers for wives bored with their husbands’ gambling. Still, the changing room wasn’t meant to be a ghost hall. The showers were empty, the blow dryers still, the benches unoccupied, and the lockers closed.

It had the drained and unnatural silence of a school at night. And the trash, too. The only sign that life had ever been in here was in the wicker container brimming over with used bath towels. It looked like the wastepaper baskets at Philly Prep each night, another phenomenon that confused me. Our students write so little and yet produce so much trash.

Maybe those kids grew up to be the people who don’t exercise, but produce countless used towels.

I am not fond of things that do not make sense, mostly because when investigated, they do make sense, only not the way you wanted.

I poked a finger into the towels and stirred. A bit of black fabric appeared. I pulled off the top few towels, and then the overlarge pile made sense. It was boosted by a discarded and empty workout bag, plus a warm-up suit. Black, so the dirt didn’t show.

Basic sweats—was it what the exercise sisters outside had considered a masculine workout ensemble? Worn by the person who was not
feminine
?

I held up the pants. I could have worn them. Ditto for the top.

Not that I was thinking of taking them, you understand. Particularly not after I noticed the wet splat on the front, or after I’d touched it, to find out what it was, and found out that it was blood.

Fresh blood that I bet would test out to be Poppy’s type. I dropped the sweats and took several deep breaths. I looked around, double-checking that my impression of emptiness was accurate. I tiptoed toward the bathroom stalls and checked the open portions at the bottom of each. And then stood sideways and looked through the slats for shadows crouching on toilets.

There were none. There was nobody in the showers. I was alone. I breathed slightly more easily.

A shower and dressing room is not often provided at the scene of a murder. How convenient this one was. And it was standard operating procedure to arrive with a change of clothes as well. He must have been in the exercise room, on the mat, the leotards had said, then gone into the massage room for murder, then into here until everyone was in a group elsewhere—until the police came in, passing the ladies’ locker room—until it was safe to strip, wash, change, and leave. Which brought us up to just about now.

I knew I could rush in to the police and tell them about my find—and face a forever of questioning and then a jail cell for two.

I was too easy a suspect—in collusion, I was positive they’d say, with Sasha. I could be, with a stretch of the imagination and a shrink of my torso and hair, the still-missing shorter partner. Case closed.

I took deep breaths to quell a flurry of panic—and knew I wasn’t going to offer myself to the police like an unsanctified sacrifice.

Besides, the unfeminine, sweat-suit-shucking, freshly washed Ray Palford was very possibly still in this building, but not for as long as it would take the police to question me.

I opted to run now, talk later, to hit his trail before he disappeared. Catch the culprit before the police caught me.

I opened the locker room door and looked right and left. The security guard was off telling the cops of my guilt by association. Very soon the law would be aimed my way, in search of half of a murderous duo. It was a theory they’d love. High-concept. All the makings of a movie of the week or an Oprah special. Girlfriends who kill. Could yours?

I was getting out of here not a second too soon.

I REALLY MISSED SASHA. I pushed the lobby button, breathing hard. I needed her nearby, saying, “Are you out of your mind? Get back in there and tell the police about the sweatpants. It’s their job to find the person who wore them.”

Sasha and I are a good balance because our forms of insanity differ. She’s berserk when it comes to men, but is otherwise fairly rational. I tend to veer off track in matters civil, and at such times I need a monitor.

Speaking of which, I missed Mackenzie, too, even though when he monitored me, I found it oppressive and annoying. In any case, I had neither of my brakes on hand, and about when I realized that, I arrived at the lobby and there was too much to do to waste time wondering if I should do it.

The one thing I was sure the leotard women would have noticed—even on an otherwise completely forgettable person—was an ensemble that didn’t fit properly. So despite the little man’s description of the tall woman who’d killed Jesse Reese, if she’d actually been as tall as Sasha, those sweats would have looked like knickers and note would have been made. Unless, of course, we had a tall but anorexically thin murderer, on whose frame fabric drooped, but that, too, the leotards would have noticed.

I didn’t realize how much I wanted to discover Ray Palford trying to blend into the crowd, wending his no-fuss, non-noticeable way to the exit with the kind of cool deliberation it had taken to murder, shower, and change—until I absolutely couldn’t find him. Every time I saw a brown-haired man his size, I speeded up as much as my still-aching back allowed and scanned, but Palford must have been a common variety of man, because there were dozens of almosts, but no Ray.

I peered into the casino, where the light was dark and bright at the same time. Tricky. A great place to disappear, and I certainly couldn’t find Ray Palford. Instead, I gaped at what appeared to be a seven-foot man with a tiny head hobbling above a row of slot machines.

“Don’t stare,” my mother had taught me. “It’s rude.” I tried not to—besides, I didn’t have time for staring—but the man was so very odd. And then, he really appeared—all of him this time, and I realized the figure, or at least its topping, was Lucky, my tough-talking, self-sufficient five-year-old former companion. At the moment, he’d dropped precocity and reverted to his rightful childhood. His face was puckered and fuchsia, and he was sobbing, “Mommy!” My former homeroom student, Eric, had the boy riding on his shoulders. I could see a rip in Lucky’s jeans and what looked like a bad bruise.

How had they gotten in there? The casino was absolutely off-limits, and Eric was already skirting the law with his job permit.

“Lucky!” I called. “Eric!” But Eric was playing hero at the moment, carrying the wounded to safety, his step sure and forward-moving and not about to be deterred.

He moved with such confident stride that nobody stopped him. There was a message there for all of us.

Another message, just for me, was that I had lost my killer.

“Precious! Stop!”

I half turned and saw Lala and Belle, both waving broadly. “More news!” they cried out.

“No time!” I called. There was, alas, all the time in the world now, but it wasn’t socially acceptable to say, “No patience!”

“It’s important!” Lala had changed into a new ensemble, turquoise this time. Old Tommy had better have deep pockets, because Lala was diving into that pot of gold headfirst.

Belle, still in this morning’s outfit, had relacquered against the humidity. Her hair sat on her head like a fibrous hat. “You wouldn’t believe,” she said.

“The
wig
!” I suddenly remembered. “What happened to the wig?”

Belle raised her hand to the top layer of her hair. “This is not a—I never wore a—Lala’s the one who wears wigs.”

Lala colored deeply. “You could have had the decency to say it looked funny.” She blinked hard and for a moment dropped all the effort and muscular skill that kept her face in place, and turned into a seriously old woman.

“I didn’t mean either of you,” I said. “Your hair always looks beautiful. I meant…the killer’s wig.”

“Killer? Weren’t we talking about a lawsuit?” Belle asked. “The missing money?”

If Ray Palford had been the one in the black workout suit, then surely he’d worn a wig—and where was it? Would he dump the suit and bag and carry incriminating evidence along with him in his briefcase? And what about the earring? Poppy wasn’t the sort for pearl earrings—they didn’t go with brass—but Palford was even less likely to have been wearing a pearl stud in the ear while killing. What was wrong with my brain?

“We have five more names,” Belle said, “and one of them has a nephew who’s a lawyer, and he’s absolutely going to start a class action suit, to get the money from the estate.”

“Great going,” I said. “There’s a woman named Georgette. She lives under the boardwalk. Add her name to the list.”

“Under the boardwalk?” Lala’s mouth hung slightly open. “Georgette?” All her worst nightmares were reflected on her face. All mine, too. Except for the ones about a killer in pearl earrings.

Pearl earrings. There was only one pearl-earring type out of all the characters I’d met lately. Her. Norma Evans, the barely visible woman. Perfect in pearls. Perfect all around, except for any apparent motive.

I’d worry about that later. Right now, I was thinking of Norma Evans in partnership with Poppy Reese. Tiny, wig-and slacks-wearing, cane-toting Poppy. Capable—when she took off her luxuriant brown wig and put it on Norma’s head, and when she was seen by a passing elderly gentleman—of being mistaken for a small man herself. As was Norma capable of being mistaken for Sasha.

It was all perfect, except that by now Norma would have dissolved into the wallpaper and the floorboards, never to be found if she didn’t want to be.

I couldn’t imagine her running out of the hotel, so I tried to imagine, instead, where and how she would have proceeded once she left the spa.

Where would I go if I could go anywhere, because nobody ever noticed me?

I’d go anywhere I damned well pleased, I thought. And I also thought that if I’d just killed my second victim, my former partner in crime, and I’d done it with the cool aplomb that had me showering and changing at the scene of the crime—I’d want a drink. I’d maybe need a drink. And I’d have it. Why not? I certainly wouldn’t rush outside, where, as far as she knew, the police might already be, waiting for someone who might fit the black and bloody workouts.

Belle was still talking. I heard her voice as if coming from a passing car, distant and unrelated to me. I walked toward the bar and looked in.

She was sitting almost where Jesse Reese had been two nights earlier. I wouldn’t have recognized her, and I was sure Frankie didn’t.

Norma Evans had cut her gray-brown hair and she was wearing dark red lipstick and tortoiseshell eyeglass frames. It was enough to give her an entirely new, albeit equally forgettable, persona.

She saw me and stood up, pushing so hard that her drink fell on the floor.

“You!” I said. I moved toward her. “It’s you!”

“Hey!” Frankie shouted. “Mandy, isn’t it? Have you heard any—”

And during the split-second automatic head turn at his hey! Norma Evans shot around and past me with amazing speed. I turned and ran after her through the lobby, limping and lurching with the hot spears of pain in my back.