A Body to Die For (3 page)

I
FROZE, JUST
like Piper. It felt as if I were in one of those dreams where you think you’re awake and you try to move, but every inch
of you, even your eyelids, is paralyzed.

“Is—is it a customer?” I asked stupidly, stumbling over my words. For a split second I actually wondered if someone had been
wrapped up like that for a type of spa treatment and accidentally left behind at the end of the day. But of course it couldn’t
have been a type of treatment. There was no way to breathe.

“I don’t know who it is,” Piper said hoarsely. “I can’t tell.”

I forced myself toward the body and, leaning down, lightly laid my palm on it. Warmish. Like something that had been taken
from the oven and covered with aluminum foil. I patted a larger area with my hand, feeling for movement or breathing. I couldn’t
detect anything. But since there was warmth, it meant whoever was inside
might
still be alive.

“Is there a phone in here?” I snapped, turning back to Piper.

She seemed dazed, as if she’d been kicked in the head by a horse. “Uh, no, not in here,” she said, aimlessly swinging her
eyes around the room.

“Okay, run down to the reception area and call 911,” I told her. I looked right into her eyes as I spoke, attempting to keep
her focused. “Can you do that?”

“What do I tell them?”

“To send an ambulance—and the police. That it’s a life-and-death matter. Then come right back and help me. And—and bring scissors.
Hurry. Go.”

As she blundered out of the room, I knelt next to the body. Based on the size and the length, I was pretty sure it had to
be a woman. Frantically I ran my hands over the surface of the head, hunting for where the silver paper ended. I knew better
than to tamper with a crime scene, but if someone was alive in there, I had to take action. I quickly realized that the paper
had been secured in place by gray duct tape, which I hadn’t noticed earlier in the dimness of the room. Even through the tape,
though, I could feel the outline of the face, and my stomach turned over as my hand found the nose and mouth.

I took a deep breath, willing myself to stay calm and my hands to stop trembling. Slowly and carefully, as if I were reading
Braille, I fingered the surface of the tape, searching for the end piece. It wasn’t until I’d lifted the head and let my fingers
explore in the back that I found it. Holding the head up, I began to unwrap the tape, wadding it up as I worked. There were
three revolutions’ worth, and as I yanked it away, section by section, it made a sound like someone laying rubber on the road
with their car. Once it was off, all balled up in my hand, there was still the silver paper to contend with. It appeared as
if it had been wrapped around the head several times and then continued around the body. Unwrapping it, I realized, would
take forever. It might be smarter to try to create a hole where the nose and mouth were.

“Hurry, hurry!” I yelled to Piper, hearing her footsteps in the corridor. As she stumbled into the room, I felt a rush of
relief seeing that she’d remembered to bring the scissors.

“How long, did they say?” I asked anxiously, reaching for the scissors.

“No, I don’t know. They wanted me to stay on the line but I couldn’t bring the phone down here.”

With the scissors opened in a V, I tried to wedge one of the blades under the edge of the silver paper, but I could see there
was a danger I’d cut the person inside.

So instead I began gently scraping the blade back and forth over the material in the spot where the mouth should be. I made
a small hole finally, not much bigger than the kind you get when you use a pen to stab at the seal on a bottle of painkillers.
But it was a start. I then alternated between making tiny cuts with the scissors and using my fingers to peel back the paper.
At last I could see flesh—part of the lips. I made my fingers go even faster, peeling back more of the paper until most of
the mouth was exposed.

I lowered my ear to it, listening for a breath. There wasn’t a sound, though my heart was beating so loudly, it was hard to
tell.

I attacked the material again, trying to peel away the area around the nostrils. For a second I glanced back at Piper. She
was just standing there, mouth agape, watching and running her hands up and down her arms.

“You gotta help me, okay?” I told her. “There’s tape around the body. See here? Get down and try to unwrap it. If you run
your fingers around it, you can feel where the tape ends.”

She still had that stupefied look on her face, as if she hadn’t heard a word I said, but before I could repeat myself, she
knelt down and began to tap around the torso area, as if she were testing to see if a plate was hot. I couldn’t take the time
to help her do it any better.

I returned to my work, cutting and peeling. Soon I had a big enough flap of material to hang on to and slit it like a piece
of fabric. As I cut away, the nostrils appeared, then the rest of the nose, and the left eye, which was closed. Behind me
Piper moaned, but I didn’t take time to turn around. I turned my ear to the face again, listening for a sound. Nothing. I
took a breath and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The lips were cool, like night crawlers fresh from the ground on a rainy
evening, and my stomach somersaulted as I realized that she had to be dead. But I tried anyway, forcing breaths into her mouth.
There was no response. After around twenty breaths, I gave up.

“She’s dead,” I said, light-headed, glancing toward Piper. She was leaning back on her heels, wide-eyed, mouth slack.

“Oh God,” was all she could manage.

“Do you know who it is?” I asked.

“I think—I think it’s Anna Cole.”

“She works here?” I remembered that the desk clerk had mentioned someone named Anna.

“Yes, she’s a therapist.”

“Was she here when you left tonight?”

“Yes. I left after I finished with you, but Anna and this other therapist—they both had nine o’clocks. Anna was supposed to
lock up—at the end of the night. Oh God, how could anyone
do
this to her?”

“I don’t know, but we need to get out of here. We should go to the reception area and wait for the police.”

She looked confused but followed my instructions. She lumbered out of the room first, heading down the hallway in the opposite
direction from where we’d come in, toward the main reception area. I was at her heels providing momentum, like a border collie.

The reception area was all lit up. Piper had obviously flicked on the lights when she made the 911 call.

“Is it safe here?” Piper asked in a desperate whisper. I was wondering the same thing, of course. Whoever was responsible
was probably gone, but I couldn’t be certain. I listened for a second, for any sound deep within the spa, but the only thing
I could hear was Piper’s anxious breathing.

“I think we’ll be okay if we stay right here, in reception,” I said.

“God, I think I’m going to be sick,” she announced suddenly. Her face was a ghastly white.

I took her arm and led her to one of the khaki-colored armchairs, forcing her to sit.

“Put your head between your legs and just let it hang there for a minute,” I told her.

As I stood there with my hand resting gently on her back, my eyes roamed the room. There didn’t seem to be any signs of a
break-in. I kept listening, too—making sure there were no sounds coming from anywhere in the spa.

Her breathing quieted after a minute, and that gave me a chance to call Danny. After explaining it was an emergency, I asked
the desk clerk to put me through to the room she was staying in. Danny answered groggily, and there was no doubt I’d roused
her from a deep sleep.

“Danny, it’s Bailey. I’m sorry to wake you like this, but there’s an emergency down at the spa.” I spoke slowly, trying to
give her a chance to fully awaken.

“What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

“I came down to the spa with Piper. We found a dead body down here. Someone all wrapped up in silver paper.”

“Mylar,” Piper interjected, raising her head. “It’s Mylar paper.” I ignored her for now.

“Omigod—who
is
it?” Danny asked.

“We’re not a hundred percent sure. Piper thinks it may be Anna Cole.”

I explained that we had already phoned the police and that we were in the main reception area. She said she would be right
down, and I urged her to use the main entranceway.

“What were you saying?” I asked Piper as soon as I’d hung up.

“I said it’s Mylar. It’s used with the mud wrap. First they rub this stuff over you, and then they wrap a piece of Mylar around
you.”

“Do they ever put the Mylar around the face like that—I mean, with openings left to breathe?”

“No, no. It would be awful. The mud gets hot and starts to bubble.”

“Was Anna doing a wrap tonight?” I knew I shouldn’t be questioning Piper—that was for the police to do—but I felt overwhelmed
by the need to know what had happened to the woman I had fruitlessly tried to save.

“No, the wraps are usually done by these two European women. And we don’t schedule wraps at night.”

“Was Anna’s client—”

There was a pounding then on the door, and we spun around in unison. Through a front window we could see Danny. Piper jumped
up, but before she could reach the door, Danny had pushed it open. A gust of wind burst with her into the reception area.

“Did you just use your key?” I asked hurriedly.

“Yes, the door was locked—why?” she demanded. Her short blond gray hair was frizzy from having been slept on, almost as if
it had been teased. She was still wearing her pajamas, though she’d thrown a quilted pale blue coat over them.

“I’m wondering how the person who did this got in.”

“Where
is
she?” Danny asked desperately. “Where’s Anna?” As she spoke, I detected the scent of sandalwood wafting from her. It seemed
incongruous that she could smell so good at a time like this.

“I’m not sure it’s her, Danny,” Piper said. “I couldn’t see her whole face.”

“The body’s in one of the massage rooms,” I explained, “but you can’t go back there now. We should wait for the police.”

“Then—then at least explain to me what’s going on here,” she said. “What are you two doing in the spa at this hour? And Bailey,
for goodness’ sake, why are
you
here?”

I took her quickly through the story. Just as I was finishing, a police car pulled up outside, its blue lights dancing a jig
on top of the car. Two uniformed cops jumped out, sprinted up the front steps, and pushed open the door.

One, a baby-faced guy of no more than twenty who had obviously graduated from the police academy earlier that morning, had
a bug-eyed expression on his face that suggested he’d been told by the dispatcher to respond to a possible alien spacecraft
landing. His partner was a woman at least ten years older, pretty, but tough looking, with her hair all tucked under her cap.

“What have we got here?” she asked tersely.

Danny took over, introducing herself and recapping what I had told her. As the two cops then strode down the hallway toward
the room with the body, the female cop barked into her radio. Calling for backup. If the town was big enough, the police force
would have detectives who would handle the case. If not, the state police would be called in.

The next few minutes were a whir of chaotic activity. The paramedics arrived fairly quickly. A few minutes later, two guys
who were obviously plainclothes detectives showed up, snapping on latex gloves as they hurried down the hall. My guess was
that the most exciting thing that generally happened in Warren on a Friday night was a barroom fistfight between two guys
with mullets. This was going to be a big, big deal.

Through all of the commotion, the three of us just sat there sadly in the reception armchairs, with the junior patrol cop
as our baby-sitter. Danny looked worried as hell, Piper looked as if she’d had most of the blood drained from her veins. I
spent the time thinking of nothing but Anna—or whoever it was—wrapped up in the other room. Had she been killed first? Or
wrapped up alive so that she’d suffocated to death?

When the two detectives emerged from the crime scene about ten minutes later, they asked for our names and a brief account
of the night. Then they told us they wanted us to wait back in the inn until someone had a chance to interview us.

The young cop was given the job of escorting us, and we were instructed not to discuss the situation among ourselves. As we
left the spa, the female patrol officer was beginning to wrap yellow crime scene tape around the front.

When we’d dragged ourselves halfway down the parking lot, a black car drove by us, and I turned to see it jerk to a stop next
to the ambulance. The driver was obviously middle-aged, because as he climbed out of the front seat, his silvery gray hair
glinted in the light from the spa. He paused for a second, appearing to take a mental picture of the front of the building.

Piper had fallen aimlessly in step with the cop, and Danny and I walked behind them. I cupped her elbow in a supportive gesture,
realizing that we had never even had a chance to say hello to each other.