The World's Finest Mystery... Page 9

  His body was on the floor of the exercise room, his neck tilted at an odd angle. She wondered what he looked like, if he still seemed like a Greek god, even in his death repose. And then she shuddered. She would never be able to go in that room again.

  She put her bag and purse in the car, and locked it. Then she took off at a run down the parking lot, not because she was frightened but because she needed to burn off the fear she had felt.

  She needed the exercise, and she had to prove to herself that she could do it without Tom.

  * * *

  She woke in the middle of the night with an ache in her heart and tears in her eyes. She wanted a piece of chocolate cake so badly that it hurt. Fortunately, she lived in a small town that didn't have an all-night grocery store, and she didn't keep cake mixes in her small apartment.

  Comfort food. She wanted comfort food because she needed comforting.

  She heard her own voice, speaking to Huckleby: I didn't know him. I just took a class from him.

  But if it were that simple, why couldn't she sleep? Her mother hadn't been able to sleep in the first few months after her father died. Neither had she, if the truth be told. The brain was busy trying to process the loss. Too busy to sleep more than a few hours at a time.

  That had been when she put on the serious weight. Chocolate cake in the middle of the night, topped with vanilla ice cream. Or Cool Whip. Or Hershey's syrup.

  Her mouth watered. She needed something comforting. Now. Never deny the cravings, she knew that much. But she couldn't afford to fall back into bad habits just because her spinning-class instructor was dead.

  She wondered what the local best-selling psychiatrist would say about this. Probably recommend therapy. Probably report her to the police. She could hear it now: She had a revenge fantasy about the man. Perhaps she acted it out. Perhaps she stalked him.

  She sat down at the kitchen table she had bought at a discount furniture store and assembled herself, then put her hands in her short-cropped hair. If she were honest with herself, she knew that she could have killed him. If her revenge fantasy had taken a different, more harmful twist. If she had gotten to the acting-out stage— which she had. She had been planning to come in that night, to continue the seduction. She had heard how willing he was to date women at the club. She had known about his preference for the sleek muscular women, the clear athletes. She had planned to use that to her benefit.

  And the cop had seen it. He had seen it, and something about her height made him dismiss her.

  But he shouldn't have. Patricia hadn't seen the body, but she knew the room, and she knew one thing: Tom liked to sit on the floor and talk to people. She could imagine how someone like her could have killed him:

  He would have been sitting cross-legged on the polished wood floor in the center of the room, holding forth on the value of good nutrition or how so many reps burn so much fat, when someone came up behind him, put him in the stranglehold, and pulled until he couldn't breathe. Then he fell back, sprawling across the floor, his neck bent at the odd angle. Simple. Easy. So simple and easy even a short person could have done it.

  She wished she could mention that to Huckleby without raising suspicion, but she couldn't. All she could do was listen for the gossip, read the local papers, and pretend that Tom's death had no effect on her life.

  * * *

  Like a woman who had just fallen off a horse, she made herself go to the gym the following night. Getting back in the saddle, she had whispered to herself, and while that wasn't entirely accurate, it was good enough.

  The owner sat behind the desk, paperwork spread in front of him. A big sign, written in black Magic Marker, announced that all classes had been canceled until further notice. He saw her stare at it, and said, "We can't have the room until the investigation's done."

  She wasn't sure if that was supposed to make her feel better or worse, so she just nodded and went into the locker room to change. Another woman was standing near the row of sinks, reading a sign newly taped to the wall. The sign was computer generated and it mentioned a trust fund, set up by the gym, for Tom Ansara's daughter.

  Patricia felt a jolt. "I didn't know he had a daughter."

  The woman nodded. Patricia had seen her around, but had never bothered to learn her name. "Sixteen. She's being raised by the mother in Seattle. But he was here, trying to earn money for her college. Now she may never go."

  Patricia almost asked what happened to scholarships, but thought that too crass. Instead she made a sympathetic noise and changed into her sweats. She went into the gym proper and used the newest StairMaster set on high for an hour, until sweat poured off her. While she worked out, she noticed that only the regulars were here. The dilettantes, the ones who showed up every January or once a month or after a particularly big meal, hadn't come at all. And that was unusual. Every night usually had one.

  As she marched up and down a make-believe flight of stairs, she was conscious of the room behind her, hidden by a row of racquetball courts and bleachers, now cordoned off by the local police. The more she marched and sweated, the more she focused on that room. She wanted to see it, wanted to know, perhaps, if he were really dead.

  The room had mirrors covering three walls and a row of windows covering the fourth. The windows overlooked the free-weight area. When she got off the StairMaster and grabbed her sweat towel, wrapping it around her neck, she meandered into the free-weight area as if her movement were part of her routine.

  The windows showed a darkened room, lit only by the lights reflected in the mirrors. There was no chalk outline of a body on the floor— she had read somewhere that Hollywood made that up and the police never used it; she just hadn't believed it to be true— and the special spinning bikes were lined up against the back wall, just like usual, waiting for class members to wheel them toward the middle. Beside them were the pile of step mats, and next to that the boxy audio system that had threatened to ruin her hearing.

  Nothing was different except the yellow police tape covering the door, and the sign attached: Closed by Order of the Seavy Village Police. She shuddered, wishing, somehow, that she had never heard about his death. That she had stayed away as her weight came down, and when she came back and forgot to ask about Tom, people forgot to tell her about the murder, so that she would assume he had moved away, or lost his job, or found employment that required use of his mind. But she couldn't pretend those things in retrospect, and she couldn't drop the disappointment she felt that, somehow, she had been cheated of something.

  "Any clues?" A male voice behind her made her jump.

  She turned. Detective Huckleby was standing so close to her that he almost pressed her against the window.

  "No," she said.

  "Strange," he said. "A room is always a room, even after something awful happens in it. Unless you know, the room is no different."

  She had had that thought before. Apartments and hotel rooms always made her wonder, when she first arrived, if anyone had died in them. She had always thought she would be able to tell by some subtle vibration, something that had altered because of the death.

  But she felt no such vibration from the gym, none from the exercise room at all, and she was surprised.

  "I didn't think any of the class members would show up tonight," he said.

  "I didn't just go to class," she said. "This is my routine."

  "Routine." He spoke softly, as if he were musing.

  Her heart had started to pound again. "I lost my weight, Detective, through exercise. I have to continue that, particularly now—"

  "Now that your instructor is dead?"

  She nodded.

  "So he did have an influence on your weight loss."

  She licked her lips. "He inspired me." That much was true.

  "Who's going to inspire you now?"

  She met his gaze. Electric blue. Neon blue. Like she imagined Paul Newman's eyes would be in person. "I guess I have to," she said.

  "Always tough," he
said. "It's always better if the motivation comes from the outside."

  She wasn't sure if he was speaking of exercise now, or if he was speaking of murder. Would he be happier if the killer came from outside Seavy Village? Or outside the gym? She swallowed. She had been so focused on herself, on Tom's death, that she hadn't thought about the reality of murder. The fact that a murder victim had to have a murderer.

  "Are you done with your exercise?" he asked.

  "Do you want to interrogate me again?"

  To her surprise, he laughed. "If you thought that was an interrogation," he said, "I don't want to put you through a real one."

  She saw no humor in it. Yesterday had been a bad day, a day she did not want to repeat.

  He must have seen that on her face, for his smile faded. "Sorry," he said. "You're not a suspect."

  "At this time," she said.

  He half shrugged. "I suppose." He looked around at the empty bleachers, the slouching owner poring over the papers behind the reception desk. "I was hoping to buy you coffee and ask a few questions about the gym."

  "Me?"

  He faced her, his eyes meeting hers. "Well," he said, "actually, anyone from the class who bothered to show up tonight. You're the only one."

  "I thought you didn't expect any of us to show up tonight."

  "I figured it would only be the exercise addicts."

  It was her turn to smile, ruefully. "It is."

  He nodded once. "Coffee?"

  "Water or Gatorade. Coffee's a diuretic."

  "Hmm," he said. "And that's bad?"

  She looked at him, uncertain if that was a real joke. She supposed it was. It seemed strange to joke in front of a room where a man had been murdered.

  "There's a deli and juice bar upstairs," she said, not sure why she'd agreed.

  "Lead the way," he said.

  "Let me change," she said. "I'll meet you there."

  "I suppose you want carrot juice."

  "Actually," she said, "I want bottled water. And maybe an apple."

  "Done."

  She pushed past him and went to the lady's locker room. Her hands were shaking and she was wondering what she was doing. He was a cop investigating a murder and he wanted to talk to her a second time, informally. She felt as if she were doing something wrong, as if she should get on the phone and ask for a lawyer or not show up or go upstairs and ask what he was charging her with. But all of that seemed melodramatic and unnecessary and a bit rude.

  After a quick— very quick— shower, she put on her street clothes— a cheap cotton sweater and a pair of faded jeans. She left her tennies on, and kept her gym bag in the locker. She saw no reason to spend too much time with him.

  The restaurant upstairs had gone through many formats in the eighteen months she had worked out in the gym. The first and most appalling had been the steak joint that served its meat thick and charbroiled. The next had been a vegetarian restaurant with poorly made, tasteless 1970s cuisine. Three different taverns came in after that, and now, finally, the deli, with its smoothies and juice bars. This new place was the only one that got the regulars from the gym. Sometimes they ran up the stairs, got a small sandwich and a fruit drink, and then went back down to work out some more.

  She had come up more than once with a novel, usually science fiction, and had eaten alone, most often the taco deli sandwich made with fat-free refried beans. It had flavor, and it was filling, and it didn't have a lot of calories, all of which counted in its favor. The seats were comfortable, and the staff congenial, never asking her to move when she finished her meal.

  Now she went up to find herself and Huckleby the only customers. The lights were out in the far section of the deli, and a single employee, an older woman whom Patricia had never seen before, cleaned behind the counter.

  A bottled water and the fruit plate waited for her. Huckleby had a cup of coffee and a shortbread cookie.

  "That's a lot of food."

  "You looked like you could use it."

  How many years had she waited for someone to say that, only to find it was someone she didn't want to impress. She slipped into the chair and opened the bottle of water.

  "You had questions."

  He nodded. "Tell me what you can about Tom."

  "We had this conversation yesterday."

  "Yesterday I knew less than I do today."

  "Oh?" She took a long sip. She had been thirsty, which meant she had let herself get dehydrated. Careless of her.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "Like what?"

  He broke the shortbread cookie in half, then broke a half into smaller pieces. "No," he said. "I get to ask the questions first."

  "I already told you about Tom."

  "You told me what you know. And that was official. Now I want to know what you suspect."

  Suspect. Strange word. Was she supposed to tell this man that she thought Tom Ansara was self-involved and rather stupid, that he had an eye for pretty women and no real empathy for anyone who didn't look like a perfect match for him? Or should she tell him about her suspicions of Tom's performance in bed?

  "I think he biked a lot," she said.

  Huckleby raised an amused eyebrow. "Gee. We missed that."

  She felt color rise in her cheeks. "No," she said. "I mean biked all over the city, maybe over the area."

  "That's not gossip."

  "You want gossip?"

  "Yes."

  "Talk to the aerobics instructor then. She collects it."

  He leaned back and studied her. "That was harsh. You don't like her?"

  "I don't know her."

  "It amazes me that you could come to a gym for eighteen months and not know anyone."

  "I came to work out."

  "People usually make friends in places like this."

  "Not with fat people."

  "Why? They make friends with fat people everywhere else."

  She picked up her fork and stabbed an orange slice with it, feeling a momentary victory when some of the juice shot across the table toward him. "I understand it," she said. "At least I do now. Most people who are more than twenty pounds overweight don't stay. It has nothing to do with discipline and everything to do with effort. It takes a lot of effort to move a normal weight, but add extra weight on top of it and a fat person is working twice, sometimes three times as hard as everyone else. Most can't manage it, and they leave."

  "So you don't make friends with fat people at the gym either?"

  "I thought we already established that I don't make friends," she said.

  His gaze seemed a little too sharp for a moment, as if her admission was an admission to something else as well. "I'm sure you do in your personal life."

  She had a few friends, people she talked to, but no one she confided in. She hadn't confided in anyone for a very long time. Not even her brother. They talked about casual things. She supposed that counted as friendship.

  And she had a lot of acquaintances on-line. She kept a board running behind her work at all times, and answered her e-mail when it showed up. She closed out her nightly sessions in a chat room, each night a room devoted to a different subject, just to keep her mind active.

  The silence between them had grown. Finally, she said, "I thought you wanted to hear about Tom."

  "And I thought you didn't gossip."

  She ate the orange slice. It was sour. She took a sip of water to cover the taste. "I discovered in the last twenty-four hours how little I knew about him. Like the daughter."

  "There is no daughter," Huckleby said.

  She set the bottle of water down very deliberately. "But the sign—"

  "He told people there was a daughter, and the very kind folks in Seavy Village have started a fund. But I investigated, and I can tell you, there is no daughter. No ex-wife. No acrimonious divorce. There isn't even a Tom Ansara until he came to Seavy Village."

  So there was more to this than just the gym. That relieved her somehow, made the thought of murder caused by peopl
e who frequented her safe place go away.

  "All of his relationships lasted a few weeks at most," Huckleby said, "so consider yourself lucky he didn't make a pass at you."