A Body to Die For (4 page)

“Oh, Bailey…” She sighed. “I’m so sorry you got caught in the middle of this.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’m glad I can be here to help. You’ve just got to let me know if I can
do
anything for you.”

Dry, crackly leaves charged across the parking lot in our path, like a stampede of wildebeests. From behind us I could hear
the voices of the cops and the paramedics and the bursts of static from their radios. The noises must have flipped a switch
in my brain, because suddenly I recalled the thud I’d heard when I’d first gone looking for my watch. Had it been the sound
of a struggle, I wondered, of someone holding the dead woman down as he tried to wrap the paper around her? Or was it her
flopping on the floor, trying to free herself after he’d fled? I felt a wave of guilt roll over me. At the time, I’d told
myself the thud might be from someone cleaning up—but then I’d discovered that the spa was empty. If only the sound had raised
more of an alarm in me, if only I’d informed the front desk about it. If I’d
done
something, the woman in the massage room might still be alive.

D
ANNY UNLOCKED THE
front door of the inn with a key from the pocket of her jacket. As soon as we stepped inside, Natalie hopped up from the
desk, sending her chair rolling into the hallway behind her. She’d put through my urgent call to Danny, she’d probably seen
the police cars and ambulance go by, and now she was wide-eyed with expectancy,.

“What’s the matter?” she blurted out.

“Dear, there’s been a death in the spa,” Danny said. “We’re not actually certain who it is. The police are here, and they’re
taking care of things. Are there any guests who are still out tonight?”

“Uhh, gosh, I don’t think so. Let me see.” She fumbled nervously around on the desk until she located a sheet of paper that
appeared to be a guest log. “No, everybody’s in,” she said, sweeping her eyes over it.

“You’d better give that to me,” the young cop said, holding out his hand for the sheet of paper. “The detectives will want
to see it.” It was the most I’d heard him say all night.

Danny suggested that Natalie join us and then led the group of us behind the front desk to a suite of several small offices.
There was also a sitting room with a love seat and a small round conference table. She told Piper to try to rest on the love
seat. Natalie volunteered to sit with her and also to listen for any guests who might come downstairs because of the commotion.

The rest of us traipsed into Danny’s office. As I settled in a small armchair, Danny announced that she was going to make
tea in the kitchenette across from the office. The young cop parked himself by the door. He’d clearly been instructed to keep
an eye on us and make certain we didn’t discuss the case or make phone calls.

Tucking my legs underneath me, I began replaying in my mind everything that had happened from the moment I’d left my room.
I didn’t want to be fumbling for the info when I finally talked to the police. Two things made me nervous. First, the whole
deal with my watch. I was sure the police would view it as odd that I’d insisted on retrieving it. Cops take an immediate
dislike to stuff that sounds illogical or out of the ordinary—and making someone open a spa in the middle of the night fell
into that category. Second, they were going to be extremely unhappy about how much I had disturbed the evidence. If there’d
been fingerprints on the Mylar paper or tape, I’d surely smeared them—and by removing and handling the tape, I might have
mucked up their chances of tracing the roll it came from.

But I couldn’t fault myself for unwrapping the body. The foil was still warm when I’d touched it, and as far as I knew at
the time, the person inside might have been alive. I did the math in my head: The spa supposedly had closed around ten. Piper
and I had discovered the body just before eleven-thirty. I’d heard the thud at around ten-thirty. That meant it easily could
have been the sound of someone being overpowered or perhaps struggling to free herself.

The question, of course, was who could have committed such a gruesome crime. There hadn’t been any sign of a break-in; plus,
why would a burglar go to the trouble of wrapping the body? Most likely someone had gone to the spa intending to kill the
woman inside the Mylar. It might have been a stranger, some sort of psychopath who’d been stalking her. But an enraged and/or
jilted lover was the strongest possibility. Whoever he was, he certainly hadn’t been expecting anyone to come barging into
the spa after hours. I felt a chill as I considered how close I’d come to bumping into him as I’d headed across the parking
lot earlier that night.

Danny returned, carrying a tray with cups and a teapot. She had made some lemony kind of thing that I knew didn’t have a single
molecule of caffeine in it, but I accepted a cup anyway just to give myself something to do. The cop declined. He looked more
like a Dr Pepper man.

Danny parked herself at the desk and announced she was going to check out the spa’s schedule for the night.

“We had only two nine o’clock appointments tonight,” she said after she’d turned on the computer and found the place. “Both
were female clients. Anna was scheduled to do one. A therapist named Eric had the other.”

“Were the women guests at the inn?”

“Yes. We don’t take day spa guests after seven.”

The cop shot us a look that said we shouldn’t be gabbing with one another about the case. I went back to my thoughts, replaying
the evening over and over in my mind. A half hour had passed and there was no sign of anyone coming to talk to us. I fought
off the growing urge to doze and closed my eyes just to rest them. The next thing I knew, I was being roused from sleep.

A strange man stood over me, saying my name. He was about five ten, trim, in his mid-thirties, I guessed, though his hair
was nearly all gray—as if it belonged on someone in his forties or fifties.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” he said. “I’m Detective Supervisor Beck. I’d like to ask you a few questions now.” He was dressed
in gray pants, a gray wool crewneck sweater over a white shirt, and a brown suede jacket, a little bit dressy, suggesting
that he’d been off duty tonight and called to the scene. I realized suddenly that he was probably the guy I’d noticed earlier
climbing out of the car in the parking lot. At the time, I’d assumed, because of the hair, that he was middle-aged.

“Of course,” I said, pushing myself to a sitting position as I tried to unstick my eyes. “Where is everybody, anyway?” Neither
Danny nor the uniformed cop was in the room.

“Everyone but Mrs. Hubner has been escorted home. She’s lying down next door. She wanted to wait for you.”

“Gosh, I must have been out to the world.”

“Do you need a minute?” he asked, though he didn’t sound as though he cared to wait that long.

“No, no. I’m fine.”

“Let’s get started, then,” he said crisply. “You’re a guest here?” He pulled a straight-backed chair from against the wall
to the area in front of me and sat down, making me feel like a shrinking Alice in Wonderland in the armchair.

I explained my friendship with Danny and the reason for my trip up from Manhattan. As I spoke, he pulled a notepad from the
pocket of his leather jacket. The jacket lifted slightly, and I noticed that when he’d belted his pants, he’d missed a loop.
Maybe he’d actually been in bed when he got the call about the murder.

“So what were you doing in the spa at eleven-thirty at night?”

I knew he’d gone through all of this with Piper, but he wasn’t going to let on to me that he knew anything. He would want
to hear my own version of events, step by step. I told him about my massage, missing my watch, talking to Natalie, her calling
Piper, and Piper coming over to let me into the spa.

“And this couldn’t wait till morning?”

Okay, here we go, I thought, just as I’d expected. I took a breath and urged myself not to overexplain.

“Well, it’s a watch with a great deal of sentimental value,” I said, “and I knew I couldn’t sleep until I found it.”

“So take me through what happened in the spa—from the beginning. Did you and Piper go in together?”

“Yes, we went in the side entrance, the one in the inn. But actually, that’s not really the beginning.”

He’d been taking notes, and he looked up, surprised. “Yes?”

“I need to explain something,” I said. “Before I even called the front desk to see if anyone could let me in, I ran downstairs
to double-check whether the spa might still be open.”

He didn’t say anything. Just stared, with eyes the dark blue shade of wet slate. The gray hair had thrown me off so much initially,
I hadn’t noticed how staggeringly good-looking he was.

“And?” he said finally. There was a slight edge to his voice, as if I had begun to try his patience.

“It wasn’t. Open. It was dark inside. I tried the door, and it was locked. But I heard something that might be significant.”

Pause.

“And what was that?” he asked. Boy, his interviewing style was making me squirm. There was a chance that by the end of the
night,
I’d
confess to the friggin’ murder.

“I heard a thud,” I explained. “I can’t describe it any more specifically than that. Just a thud. Now I’m wondering if it
was the woman who died moving around on the floor.”

“At what time was this?”

“Around ten-thirty.”

He flipped back through his notes and reread something I’d said. “And when you heard the sound, did you do anything?”

“Well, no,” I said defensively. “At the time, I didn’t think the noise was any cause for alarm—if that’s what you mean. I
just thought it meant someone might still be in the spa. I went out the side door of the inn and over to the front of the
spa.”

He offered no reaction, but I noticed his eyes widen at this new detail.

“Keep going,” was all he said.

I described crossing the parking lot in the dark, seeing the spa locked up for the night, turning around, and going back into
the inn.

“This is very important,” he said, his voice as flat as lake water on a windless day. “Did you notice any movement inside
or out, anything at all suspicious?”

“I didn’t see anything worth reporting.”

“Let me decide what’s worth reporting. Tell me everything you saw.”

“There was no sign of
anyone,
anywhere,” I insisted, annoyed at the brusque tone he’d used. Apparently satisfied that I wasn’t keeping some monumental
detail to myself, he directed me back to where I’d left off. I described walking down the corridor, Piper seeing the light,
finding the body.

“Whose idea was it to take off the paper?”

Okay, here we go again.

“It was mine. Totally mine,” I revealed. “I should also tell you that I performed CPR on her—so you’re going to find my saliva
in her mouth.”

“You thought there was a chance you could resuscitate her?” he asked, apparently incredulous.

“No, I just thought it would be fun to go around saying, ‘I kiss dead people.’”

I shouldn’t have said it, but I couldn’t help myself. The guy was seriously annoying me with his no-nonsense, borderline-grouchy
interrogation style. I half expected him to slap some cuffs on me as a result of my insubordination, or at the very least
say he was going to revoke my Red Cross lifesaving certification, but instead he looked slightly—and I mean slightly—bemused.

“Look, I know in hindsight it was a bad idea,” I told him, not giving him a chance to say anything. “But the foil was warm,
and as far as I knew, she might still be alive.”

Really big pause this time. More staring with those dark blue eyes.

“You did the right thing, of course,” he said finally. “There are plenty of people who would never have been as quick thinking
in a crisis—or as competent.”

I felt relieved. I also felt stupid because I’d experienced a kind of goofy rush when he’d complimented me.

He still had a few questions left, stuff like what I’d touched in the room other than the body, what I’d handled in the reception
area, a few questions, too, about doors and lights. He also asked for my address and phone number in New York. Then he told
me that I’d need to come down to police headquarters the next day and make a formal statement. He drew a brown leather wallet
from his back pants pocket, pulled out a business card, and, before handing it to me, scribbled his cell phone number on it.

“Call me if you think of anything else,” he said, suddenly warmer. “I believe the sound you heard is significant. I want to
know if you recall
anything
else, even the most minor detail. Is that clear?”

“It is. And I will. But I don’t want to get your hopes up. I didn’t see anything.”

“You’d be surprised at what comes to people.”

He rose from his seat, and I pushed myself awkwardly out of the armchair.

“I have a question,” I said as he turned to go. “Was—was she alive when she was wrapped up in that paper?”

“That’s our concern, not yours.” I don’t think he meant for it to come out as curtly as it did, so he softened the impact
with a small smile. “Look, we’re going to do our best to find the person responsible. Why don’t you get some rest now? You’ve
had a long night.”