A Body to Die For (8 page)

The next thing to check out was the converted barn. It loomed at the top of the incline amid a cluster of smaller outbuildings,
and I found a path that took me right to the front. It was a bark-colored, weathered structure that looked as old as the inn,
though it now sported a dozen windows and a large glass door. Through the door I could see a small vestibule and staircase.
As I paused on the path, scanning the building, a person came tripping down the staircase, very much in a hurry, and pushed
open the door. It was Piper.

She was wearing a limp, puckered brown leather coat over her uniform, and she had pulled her mass of red hair back in a low
ponytail. She still looked shaken. When I called out her name, she jumped about a foot.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said. “How are you doing? I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you today.”

“Lousy,” she said, advancing toward me. “And I can’t believe they expect me to work today.”

“That’s got to be tough,” I said. “Have the police been over here? To Anna’s room?”

“Yeah, they’ve got it all taped off.” She glanced over my right shoulder toward the back of the inn, as if something had caught
her eye, and I turned instinctively to follow her glance. But there was no one there.

“Have you been to the police station to give a formal statement yet?” I asked.

“First thing this morning,” she said. “That guy needs to take a chill pill, if you ask me.”

“Could you tell from his questions what angle they’re pursuing—do they think it could be someone who works at the spa?”

“They didn’t tell me
anything,
” she said, shaking her head.

“The room we found Anna in. You mentioned that you’d turned the light off in that room before you left last night. So that
wasn’t the room Anna did her last massage in?”

“No,” she said distractedly. “She was scheduled to use another room.”

“When you left last night, were all the doors locked?”

“Yes, yes. I told the police that. I would never be careless about something like that.”

“Danny told me that you were originally supposed to work last night, but Anna agreed to switch nights with you.”

“And your point is?”

“I’m not being accusatory. I’m just curious about what Anna’s plans might have been.”

“She’d told me she was planning on staying in Friday night. That’s why she was willing to switch nights with me.”

“I’d heard she’d been dating another therapist—Eric.”

“What? Oh, that was over weeks ago.”

“Was she seeing anyone new?”

“I have no idea,” she answered quickly. “We weren’t what you’d call buddy-buddy. In fact, I hardly knew her.” Another glance
over my shoulder. This time I didn’t turn to follow it. In the flat light of the day, I could see that her white skin was
marred slightly by tiny acne scars.

“You seem worried, Piper,” I said. “Do you think that the killer is someone who works here?”

She didn’t answer, just pulled a long breath and let it out anxiously in a gust.

“Can I help in any way, Piper?”

“No, no,” she said irritatedly. “There’s nothing anyone can do that will make it any better. Look, I’ve got to get over there.
I’ve got a client in a few minutes.”

I watched her head down the path to the inn, her ponytail swishing like a horse’s as she walked. What had caught her eye a
few minutes ago? I wondered. I remembered suddenly how she had frozen when she had seen the wedge of light under the door
to the treatment room last night. In some regards she had seemed more startled than you might expect over what could easily
have been nothing more than an act of forgetfulness. I flashed back too on how distracted she’d seemed when she’d massaged
me—pausing at odd moments. It was as if she’d been anticipating something, not danger necessarily, but
something.
Had Piper expected some kind of trouble last night?

I hurried back to the inn myself, keeping a distance from her. The lobby was empty, though a few people sat in the lounge,
chatting in hushed tones before the fire. As I approached Danny’s office, I caught the sound of her voice, raised slightly,
agitated. I picked up my pace, worried something was wrong. Not bothering to knock, I shoved open the half-shut door.

I knew instantly that the man Danny was talking to—or
had
been talking to, since she stopped in midsentence as I burst through the door—was George. At about six feet two, he towered
over Danny as she sat at her desk chair. He was fairly slim, though soft looking, and his face was jowly. He wore dark green
pants, a beige Banlon golf shirt, and dated, dark-framed glasses, kind of Austin Powers style. The one thing he’d done to
beat back the clock was dye his hair jet black.

“Sorry,” I blurted out. “I just wanted to be sure everything was okay.”

“Oh, Bailey, yes. Uh, everything is fine,” Danny said, fumbling. “We were just rehashing everything that’s happened. This
is George. George, this is Bailey, who I’ve told you so much about.”

“Of course,” he said, all debonair as he stepped out from behind the desk to take my hand. “I’m so sorry we have to meet this
way.”

His handshake was strong but clammy, as if his sweat glands had been keeping busy this morning. He also gave off a slightly
smarmy vibe. I had the distinct impression that if I didn’t keep my guard up, I’d end up buying a Honda from him or a time-share
for a south Florida condo with walls made of two-inch-thick particleboard. Danny had raved about George at our lunch in New
York, but my instant take on him wasn’t positive.

“Well, I’d better go over to the salon and see what I can do to help,” George volunteered. “I hope I get a chance to talk
to you later, Bailey.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will,” I said. “I’m here till Monday.”

He pecked Danny on the cheek before he left, but she stood there motionless, as though she were playing a game of freeze tag.
As soon as I heard George’s footsteps at the far end of the corridor, I asked her gently if everything was okay.

“I don’t want to burden you, Bailey,” she said. “You’ve been dragged into this mess enough.”

“It’s not a burden, Danny. Please.”

“It’s just… well, George didn’t stay near Boston last night. He drove back and spent the night at
our
house. He was there during this whole terrible mess. After you left this morning, I called the house to leave a message for
him, and I almost died when he picked up the phone.”

“Why did he change his plans?” I asked evenly, trying not to reveal that the hairs on the back of my neck were now standing
at attention.

“Apparently dinner fell through at the last minute, and he decided to just get in the car and drive straight back. He got
in around eleven, and he says that since I’d told him I had the start of a headache and was going to turn in early, he was
afraid to call and wake me. I know he was simply thinking of me, but the whole thing just upsets me.”

I didn’t like what I was hearing. For starters, I’d learned the hard way to react with alarm whenever a man overexplains or
uses the expression “I was afraid to….” George’s rationalizations might bug me even on an ordinary day, but this was no ordinary
day. A woman had been murdered last night, and George had been missing in action. Yet I didn’t want to say anything that would
freak out Danny. I’d have to keep my eye on George and let my gut guide me.

“You’re going to need George big-time over the next weeks,” I offered. “Why don’t you just chalk up last night to crossed
signals and move on?”

My words of semi-reassurance appeared to calm her instantly, and she relaxed back in her chair. I asked her if she was up
for digging into the financial records. She insisted that she was, and I went through what Bud had told me, suggesting that
we start by looking at all the vendors used by the spa. If we saw anything suspicious, we’d pull out the actual bills.

While she accessed the computer files we needed, I pushed the office door shut and dragged an extra chair back around next
to hers. For the next half hour, we reviewed the list of all the vendors used by the spa and how much they’d been paid. There
were suppliers of everything from massage tables and oils to candles and heating pads, and Danny was familiar with many of
them because she’d been intimately involved in the initial setup of the spa. I asked her how the billing process worked, and
she explained that when an invoice came in for something used exclusively by the spa, it was given to Josh for his authorization
and then initialed by the business manager.

“It sounds to me like you’re pretty on top of this,” I said.

“Yes and no,” she replied. “I’m a good businesswoman. But I’ve gotten sloppy looking at things related to the spa because
Josh has done such a great job. I used to initial the bills, but I don’t anymore.”

In the end we spotted no red flags. There were at least a dozen vendors Danny
didn’t
recognize, but she said it was perfectly reasonable that Josh would have added new vendors over time, based on the needs
of the spa. And as she pointed out, none of the checks cut to the new vendors were for an excessive amount.

“It’s still worth investigating,” I said. “Is it possible for you to glance at these bills today and see if they look kosher?”

“The business manager is off Saturdays, but I can go through the bills in his office. It’s all pretty organized.”

What
I
wanted to do, I told her, was go through the files of all spa employees.

“There’s not much in them,” she said. “Just their application, reference letters, some insurance stuff.”

“That’s okay. You never know what might jump out. By the way, this accountant source of mine said we should consider if anyone
on staff has had a big improvement in lifestyle lately. Are you aware of anything like that?”

She shook her head. “As I mentioned before, a lot of the spa staff live in the barn,” she said. “Josh lives in a town house—rented—not
far from here. He’s been living a
bit
more extravagantly lately—he just bought a new car—but then I’m paying him more.”

“Because he’s doing such a good job?” I asked.

“Well, he works partly on a bonus basis. And since he’s done such a marvelous job of growing the business, his bonuses have
been very nice.”

She spent the next few minutes gathering files for me, during which time she mentioned that she’d arranged for me to have
a hot stone massage with Cordelia at six-thirty. She’d also set up a tennis lesson for me with Rich at eleven tomorrow. As
for Eric, she was still working on it—he’d had nothing free, and she was afraid if she asked Josh to rearrange his schedule,
it might look suspicious. My meeting with Josh would be at four in the solarium.

Since it was almost two and I hadn’t eaten, I stopped off at the restaurant for a salad. The whole time I ate, I thought of
Beck. I’ve met plenty of cops reporting the kinds of stories I do, and I’d found some of them hunky. But I’d never had one
send me into a tizzy like this. I was feeling that ridiculous urge I used to get in high school when I was infatuated with
someone—I wanted to get in my car and drive by his house four or five hundred times or call him on the phone and hang up after
he answered. Maybe my crazy feelings had to do with the intensity of the situation in which I’d met him. Dead body, over-the-top
lust. It could be a bizarre permutation of the Stockholm syndrome—in which hostages bond with their captors.

Back in my room, I spread Danny’s folders on my desk. There weren’t many. I knew from previous conversations with Danny that
the core staff of the spa numbered about twenty: Josh, about a dozen full-time therapists, three receptionists to cover every
hour of the week, two women who did the wraps and baths, and several coordinators who showed people to their rooms and kept
the place tidy as appointments came and went. During the summer and over the holidays, the spa beefed up with a handful of
freelancers.

Danny was right. The folders for each staff member held next to nothing: an employment application, a résumé, and, in some
cases, reference letters. A few contained a sheet on some issue that had arisen at work. One therapist, for instance, had
accused a desk clerk last year of stealing tips.

There was nothing of significance in Piper’s file, or in Josh’s, though I was intrigued to learn that prior to getting into
the spa scene five years ago, he’d been working in Los Angeles as a so-called model/actor.

Finally I got to Anna’s file. As Danny had pointed out, she’d lived all over the place, trying her hand at a variety of different
jobs, including tour guide, restaurant hostess, and real estate agent. Until she’d landed in the world of massage, she’d averaged
about a year’s stay in each job. There were small gaps in the résumé, and a line at the bottom attempted to explain them by
stating that she had taken time off here and there to travel. I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that many of those
gaps reflected jobs of even shorter duration.

In New York City, she had been employed at the Paradise Spa, no address given. The name didn’t ring a bell with me. It’s not
that I had the money to drop regularly at day spas around Manhattan, but my boss at
Gloss,
Cat Jones, did. She preferred not to let a week go by without having some portion of her body scrubbed with sea salt or blasted
with oxygen, and I’d heard the names of most of the trendy places from her.

Anna’s letter of reference had come from a woman named Nina Lyle, manager of the Paradise Spa, and it was glowing, praising
Anna’s skills and professionalism. Knowing that the police might confiscate these files at some point, I jotted down Nina
Lyle’s phone number, which had been scribbled at the bottom of the letter. I glanced then at the application form. Filled
out just over a year ago. My eyes ran down the page, past the section on allergies (none) and health ailments (none). On the
line that inquired whom the applicant had been referred by, a small surprise awaited me. It said Piper Allyson. Piper, who
had told me, quote, she barely knew Anna.