A Body to Die For (32 page)

“Gosh, Danny, I don’t know what to say to make you feel better about this. It sounds as if he has some sort of problem. But
that doesn’t mean he killed Anna.”

She rose from the couch and began to walk back and forth across the room, her arms clenched tightly around her.

“I know this sounds awful, but what difference does it make? I can’t stay married to him one way or the other.”

“Look, Danny, it
does
make a difference. He’s still your husband, and if he’s arrested and found guilty of murder, it could be extremely detrimental
to you and your business. I’m not going to give up on trying to prove that it wasn’t George who did it. I found out some fascinating
information today, by the way.”

She stopped pacing. “What?”

I urged her back to the couch, and over the next few minutes I shared with her the story about Anna that I had learned in
Wallingford. I also told her about Rich and the fact that he had known Anna in a previous life.

“I can’t even begin to digest all of this,” she said, her face wrinkled in worry. “Do you think Anna’s death might have been
an act of
revenge?
”

“It’s a long shot, but I still need to look into it. I’m trying to track down where the two brothers ended up. What I feel
most strongly about, though, is what I realized yesterday over at the spa with you: that Anna probably had a date scheduled
the night she was murdered. I just spoke to Piper, and she remembered that Anna had worn her street clothes rather than her
uniform to work that day, something she wouldn’t ordinarily do if she were going straight back to the barn.”

“What about Rich—where does he fit into all of this?”

“I’m not sure. His being here might be just a coincidence.”

“Shouldn’t you tell the police what you know?”

“If they try to arrest George, absolutely. Until then I feel it’s best to wait until I have something concrete. Otherwise
I’d be spanked and banished back to New York for playing amateur sleuth.”

“When
do
you have to go back to New York?”

“Tomorrow,” I said, thinking of Jack. “I have something tomorrow night that I—that I really don’t want to miss. But I’ll keep
at it until then. I feel like I’m inching closer to the truth.”

Of course, as I’d been sharing all this new and fascinating information with Danny, I’d once again left out any mention of
one of the juiciest tidbits of all: the release massage that had been added without her knowledge to the spa menu. I was going
to tell her at some point, cross my heart and hope to die. But this wasn’t the right moment. Not with her so distraught about
George.

I glanced at my watch. I needed to find out why the intern at
Gloss
hadn’t called me back, and I also didn’t want to miss Rich. I told Danny I had a few more leads to follow up this afternoon
but asked if we could spend time together later. She said that since it was Friday night, the dining room would be open and
suggested we meet for dinner there at eight.

As soon as she’d repaired her makeup and left my room, I did a quick look around, checking again for evidence of snoopers.
Then I phoned the intern. No answer. If she’d left for the day, I was going to throttle her on Monday. But as I was about
to open the door of my room, she called back on my cell phone.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said. “I was having some computer trouble. I found one of the guys you were looking for, but not the other.”

“Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

“Okay, there’s a Carson Ballard in Irvine, California. His birth year is one year off from what we talked about, but I figured
this has got to be the guy. I also checked the whole U.S. and there’s not another one anywhere else.”

While she was speaking, I’d upended my purse in search of a notepad. I asked for Carson’s number and scrawled it along with
his name onto a piece of paper. I asked if she’d had any luck with Harold.

“There’s just one Harold Ballard, but he’s like a hundred or something. That’s all I found.”

I told her that I appreciated her efforts but I wasn’t done. I’d need her to research one more name for me, which I hoped
to have within an hour. I could practically hear her stifling a big fat groan.

As soon as I hung up, I tried the number for Carson Ballard. I got an answering machine and heard a message from one of those
little men with the high voice that comes with the machine. I didn’t leave a message.

I left the building a few minutes before Rich’s lesson was due to end, just so there was no chance of missing him. It had
grown colder outside, and the western half of the sky was churning with dark clouds. As I neared the court, I spotted Rich
hurriedly popping balls into the hopper. I couldn’t help but feel anxious about speaking with him. I was going to have to
press him—to find out what his real connection had been to Anna and what he might know about her past. But there was a chance
he might be the killer, and I didn’t relish being alone with him. I was relieved when I saw a groundskeeper on the far side
of the tennis court, chasing leaves away with one of those handheld blowers.

Rich glanced over when he saw me coming, but he didn’t stop his efforts. By the time I reached the court, he was setting the
hopper into a small storage shed just outside the gate. He looked up as I approached, but instead of one of those phony smiles,
I was treated to a sour face, the kind he probably saved for when his students turned their backs.

“Lemme guess,” he said sarcastically. “You liked my morning lesson so much you want another—even in the rain.”

“No. I’m just wondering why you lied to me.”

“You mean when I said you had a pretty good backhand?”

“When you said you only knew Anna in passing.”

He rammed the hook of the padlock hard into the hole, holding the shed door closed with one hip as he did it. When he’d finished
he spun around toward me. A big drop of rain plopped down onto my bangs.

“Who says otherwise?” he said.

“I do. I know you went to the same high school in Milford as Anna.”

“What of it?” he said, his mouth in a snarl. “And why would I have owed
you
any kind of explanation?”

“I’m just curious as to why you would have gone to the trouble of lying about it.”

“You’re an awful little busybody, aren’t you,” he said, taking a step closer—too close. “Did the police deputize you? Are
you trying to help them solve the case?”

I leaned my body back slightly so that he wasn’t in my face. The rain had begun to fall harder now, dampening our clothes.
Glancing over to where the groundskeeper had stood, I saw that he was no longer there. An alarm began to go off in my brain.

“Nobody
deputized
me,” I said. “Someone just happened to tell me that Anna knew you a long time ago.”

“Oh yeah, who?” His dark green eyes seemed to grab hold of me.

“One of the other therapists,” I lied. I wasn’t going to admit anything about my road trip.

“Yeah, I knew Anna, but like I said, so what? She was married to a friend of mine from Camden—Tommy Cole. It lasted about
fifteen minutes.”

“And you just happened to bump into her here?”

“That’s right. I’m glad to see that you can think better than you hit a tennis ball.”

The idea of him just bumping into Anna didn’t seem so farfetched. Anna had returned to the general area of the country she’d
been raised in, and Rich had never left. But then why was he being so defensive?

“Where is this guy Tommy now?” I asked.

“What’s it to you, anyway?” he snapped.

“Look, I’m just curious. I found Anna’s body. I want to know what happened to her.”

“Tommy? He’s still in Germany. Army. He’s been there for years. Now if you don’t mind, I’m getting soaked.”

He yanked off his baseball cap, shook some drops from the beak, and slid it back on his shiny bald head. He started to move
past me, his wet sleeve brushing against my hand.

“Just one more thing,” I said. “I heard Anna had some trouble in her past. Did you know anything about it?”

“The only trouble I ever heard about was that she couldn’t keep her pants up.”

He broke instantly into a sprint, leaving me standing there alone as fat raindrops splattered onto the asphalt court. I watched
him disappear around the east end of the main building toward the parking lot, and then I broke into a jog myself, hurrying
back to the inn.

By the time I reached my room, the rain was coming down hard. My windows were foggy and streaked, and I could hear the drum
of water on the small roof outside my bedroom window. I pulled the little table against the door. Then I called the intern
at
Gloss,
telling her I wouldn’t need her help on that other name. I peeled off my sodden clothes and laid them to dry over several
pieces of furniture. After slipping into the terry robe from my bathroom, I curled up on the bed with my composition book
and jotted down notes from my afternoon conversations with Piper, Danny, and Rich.

I found Danny’s revelation about George immensely troubling. Having an affair outside of your marriage was one thing, but
surreptitiously taking pictures of women and then drooling over the prints put you in a whole different league. It was just
plain creepy.

And I knew from experience how hard it must be for Danny to face the facts about her husband. Of course, I had no right to
look down my nose at the situation. I’d been married for eighteen months to someone who was a closet gambler, who bet thousands
of dollars on football games and horses without my ever knowing. I could envision what Danny would go through in the months
ahead. After you find out someone you love and trust is not who you think he is, you spend hours replaying every memory, trying
to spot the warnings with hindsight. You feel as if you ought to forfeit those years of your life because you had them all
wrong. And you feel about as dumb as an eggplant for never having seen what was under your nose.

Yet as creepy as George now seemed, I really didn’t believe he’d killed Anna. I’d had such a strong vibe when I stood in front
of the vanity counter in the dressing room. Now that I’d talked to Piper, I could
see
Anna there in her new pink top, primping for her date.

And yet I’d been unable to dig up any evidence as to who the mystery man was. If Anna had snagged a new guy, wouldn’t someone
have seen her with him, wouldn’t Piper have gotten wind of it? Maybe this was a first date. But then if the relationship was
brand new, what reason would the guy have had to kill her and then gift-wrap her body?

As I glanced back over both the notes I’d written today and the earlier ones, I was struck by how often last summer turned
up. William Litchauer had died then. It was in the summer that Anna had sensed she was being watched. Rich had started freelancing
at the inn back then, bumping into Anna. Josh had learned about the release massage. I sensed that all the references to summer
were pointing to
something,
but I didn’t know what.

I’d told Danny earlier that I believed I was inching closer to the truth, and I
did
feel that way. But it was now almost seven o’clock on Friday night, the night before I was leaving, and I had no more leads
to pursue. This might be as close as I would get before I pointed my Jeep toward New York.

I let the drumming of the rain lull me into another nap, knowing I’d regret it. But I felt suddenly weary from my trip this
morning and my conversation with Rich and from everything else that had happened since I’d been back at the Cedar Inn. I had
also detected a slight, annoying tickle in my throat, a cold rearing its ugly head. For that I could probably thank Bob Kass,
who’d been spreading germs around his den like a crop duster.

When I woke an hour later, I felt even worse. I found two loose and linty ibuprofen in the pocket of my purse and took them
before changing into the one dress I’d brought, a light wool black number with a deep V neck. It was a little fancy, but I
couldn’t face my black pants one more minute. When I left the room I took a black wrap with me and stuffed my composition
book in my purse for safekeeping.

I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to meet Danny in the dining room or the lobby, but as I paused on the second-floor landing
to fix the strap of my shoe, I heard her voice from the lobby. And there was another voice I recognized: Beck’s.

I descended to the ground floor slowly, trying to pick up the gist of what they were saying. I couldn’t hear the words, but
the tone sounded contentious.

“Is everything okay?” I called out as I stepped into the lobby. It was just the two of them standing there, Danny all in lavender
and Beck towering over her in a black raincoat that gleamed with water. The lounge appeared empty, though from down the hall
I could hear music and the murmur of conversation from the dining room. Beck took me in with his eyes, and I suddenly felt
self-conscious with my boobs hanging out from the V of my dress.

“Detective Beck is looking for George,” Danny said. She’d lowered her voice, but her agitation was apparent. “I told him that
George and I are not residing together at this moment and that I have no idea where he is. But he seems to think that I’m
not being truthful.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that at all, Mrs. Hubner,” Beck said, turning his eyes back to Danny. “I simply wanted to know if you
had any suggestions where we might look.”

“And I don’t know, Detective,” Danny said crisply.

I crossed the lobby, my heels clicking on the tiled floor. As I got closer, I saw that Natalie was at the front desk, moving
papers around and trying to look busy.

“Are you planning to arrest George?” I asked, my voice low. “Should Danny be getting hold of the lawyer?”

“We just want to ask him a few more questions,” Beck said. I’d looked him straight in the eye when I spoke, but he made his
comment to Danny, not me. Something about that just annoyed me to death.

“Aren’t there any
other
angles worth investigating in this case?” I blurted out. “Piper said that the night of the murder Anna was dressed up, like
she had a date.”