A Body to Die For (9 page)

I
PICKED UP
the phone and called Danny in her office. I mentioned what I’d discovered on Anna’s application and asked if Piper had played
a role in securing Anna the job.

“She might have,” she said. “I just don’t know—Josh does all the hiring for the spa.
Why?
”

“Piper told me earlier today that she barely knew Anna. And then lo and behold, I see her name on Anna’s application.”

“Perhaps the two of them worked together once but weren’t necessarily friends,” Danny suggested. “You don’t have to like a
person or think of them as a friend to consider them a good therapist. Why would it matter, anyway?”

“I’m just following up on what seems like an odd discrepancy,” I said. “If Anna and Piper were in cahoots with Josh on some
bad business in the spa, they might have chosen to play down how well they knew each other.”

After I signed off, I pulled down Piper’s folder from the pile again and slid out the résumé, laying it next to Anna’s. I
couldn’t see where the two of them could have met. At no point, at least according to their résumés, had they ever worked
together, nor had they even lived in the same city. Piper’s massage experience, all seven years of it, was concentrated mostly
in hotels in Los Angeles and Lake Tahoe and at a spa in New Jersey, whereas Anna’s only experience had been in New York City.
The only thing worth noting was that part of the year Anna had been in New York, Piper had been working in New Jersey.

I jumped from the bed and pulled a black-and-white composition book out of my tote bag. Whenever I take on an article assignment,
I use a composition book to scribble notes and questions to myself. Though I always write the actual article on my computer,
there’s something about putting down my initial impressions in a composition book with a number two pencil that jump-starts
my thinking and helps me develop an angle. I intended to use the same approach with the case. I cracked the spine and jotted
down notes about the murder, Bud’s insights, my brief conversation on the path with Piper, the small discovery I’d made about
Anna and Piper’s connection, plus various questions that had formed in my mind about the murder. I didn’t end up with any
brilliant insights, but at least felt I was doing
something.

It wasn’t quite time yet to meet with Josh, but I wanted to try room 17 again. I strode down the hall and rapped on the door.

This time a woman called out, “Who is it?” in a voice that suggested a trace of anxiety.

“It’s Bailey Weggins,” I said as the door opened a crack, the chain still on. “I work with Danielle Hubner, the owner of the
inn, and I was anxious to see how you were doing.”

She swung the door open, and with the kind of haughty smile she might offer a salesgirl at Louis Vuitton, she motioned for
me to enter the living area of the suite.

It was the woman I’d seen earlier with Beck. She was about sixty, handsome looking, with hair the same shade as one of those
blond ranch minks women wore in fifties’ movies. Her skin was beautiful, almost porcelain-like, but she’d already had a face-lift
or two, and her eyes were slanted upward slightly and pulled back too far. If she kept going under the knife, she’d end up
looking just
like
a mink, with an eye on each side of her head.

“As you’ve probably heard,” she said, pulling off a pair of reading glasses that had been perched midway down her nose, “we’re
checking out as soon as the police tell us it’s fine to leave. I certainly don’t expect to have any trouble getting our deposit
back.”

“None whatsoever,” I said. “We’re so terribly sorry you had to find yourself in the middle of this. How did everything go
with the police?”

“You were there, too, weren’t you? I saw you when Walter and I were coming out.”

“That’s right,” I said. She took a seat in one of the armchairs, and I perched on the edge of the couch. “I had to give a
statement myself. One of the other therapists and I found the body.”

“My goodness, how
dreadful,
” she exclaimed. “Do you know how she died? The police wouldn’t tell us a thing.”

“I’m not sure. Just that it must have happened shortly after you went back to your room. There wasn’t anyone still in the
spa when you left, was there?”

“Not that I was aware of. There was one other appointment at the same time as mine—I saw the woman earlier in that waiting
room with the dripping water—but it appeared she left ahead of me. Some women will go upstairs wearing just a robe, but I
refuse
to do that. I’d sooner be caught dead than sashay around a hotel in nothing more than a housecoat—though I suppose that’s
a terrible thing to say right now.”

“Did you see Anna again before you left?”

“Anna?”

“The one who was murdered.”

“Yes, she let me out. And you know what’s strange? Right before I went upstairs, I suddenly felt nervous down there.”

“How do you mean?” I asked. In a split second I was back in the spa that night—the dark, silent halls, the faint hint of green
tea, the ominous chink of light in the hallway.

“After I finished dressing in the changing room, I went looking for the girl—this Anna—because the door to the inn was locked
and I wasn’t sure how to turn the bolt. She wasn’t in the main reception area or anywhere else I looked. Most of the lights
were off, and it seemed
spooky
to me. Finally I went back to the changing room, and that’s where she was—sitting at the counter. She was out of her uniform
and into her street clothes, and I didn’t recognize her at first. She nearly gave me a stroke when I saw her. Generally at
a spa you don’t find the employees hanging around the guest locker room.”

“Maybe she was waiting for you,” I suggested.

“No, because she apologized when she saw me. She said she assumed that the other therapist had already let me out. She walked
me to the door, unlocked it, and said good-bye. That was the last I saw of her. You know, Walter and I just spent two weeks
in South Africa, and I was a nervous wreck the whole time—needlessly, as it turns out—and then we come here and
this
happens. Who would have imagined.”

“What about the other therapist—the one who’d worked on the other nine o’clock appointment? Did you see him around?”

“I didn’t see any sign of him after I got dressed. I assumed he was gone. As I said, it was all very quiet and spooky down
there.”

“Did Anna appear apprehensive in any way?”

“Well, I don’t go around calibrating the mood of my masseuse, but she certainly didn’t seem like someone who was contemplating
being murdered. I must admit she wasn’t the most pleasant person in the world, and I’ve certainly had better massages.”

She pressed me then for what I knew about the murder, and I gave her a brief, very incomplete version of the story and then
rose to leave. I apologized again on behalf of the inn.

As I walked downstairs to the main floor, I considered what I’d just learned. Anna had been a dutiful assistant manager on
Friday night. She’d made sure that the side door to the inn had been locked at some point during the evening. So, chances
were she’d checked the back door, too. I considered all the possible scenarios: The killer could have broken in, or forced
his way in, or been let in by Anna willingly, unaware that her life was in danger. Or he could have slipped in using a key.
I shuddered as I imagined such a scene in my mind. Anna turning off the lights one by one and suddenly a man appearing from
the shadows. Her relief, perhaps, when she recognized him. Her terror when she realized that he intended to harm her.

There was something else Babs had said that intrigued me. The part about Anna sitting at the counter in the locker room. It
did
seem odd. On the occasions when I’d had massages in spas, I’d noticed how the therapists were generally careful not to overstep
the boundary between themselves and the clients. They never got too friendly, never ventured into the clients’ space. So what
was Anna doing in the clients’ changing area? I knew she didn’t store her things there because I remembered Danny saying that
Anna’s purse had been found in the employee locker room.

It took me longer than I’d expected to find the solarium. It was at the west end of the inn, diametrically opposite to the
spa, tucked away at the end of a maze of rambling corridors. As I passed several guests along the way, I tried to measure
their mood. They seemed subdued, some almost somber. Clearly everyone knew about the murder, and people were feeling less
than blissed out. When I finally found the solarium, I discovered that I had it all to myself.

I took a seat on the black wicker sofa and put my feet up on a large ottoman. Because of the drab weather, the room hardly
lived up to its name today. But I could imagine how inviting it would be on a sunny day. The large windows overlooked the
gardens and, at the far end, the beginning of the nature reserve. I pulled out a notebook from my bag and waited.

I felt a little bit more anxious than I liked. Theoretically, I was here just to talk about the spa. But if something fishy
was going on there, Josh might very well be in the thick of it, and I was going to have to test the waters carefully.

Josh strode into the solarium twelve minutes after four, just as I was wondering if one of us had our signals crossed. He
certainly hadn’t gotten less good-looking in the hours since I’d seen him last.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Needless to say, not great,” he replied, pleasant but cool. “But then this can’t be much fun for you, either.” He chose the
armchair directly across from me. He had a real smoothness to him, though I could picture him arrogant and smug when it served
his purposes.

“No, not much fun,” I said. “But Danny was hoping I could forge ahead as planned.”

“And tell me what that plan is again?” he asked, holding my eyes.

“I write a few travel articles every year, and Danny wanted my insight on how she could do a stronger pitch to travel editors.
I know business is good, but she’d love more coverage for both the inn and the spa. I’ve reported on a few spas and have colleagues
who’ve visited lots of them.”

“Let’s get started, then.”

“Great. Danny tells me you’ve done a fabulous job of revitalizing the spa and introducing some amazing services. I’d love
to hear about some of them.”

I thought that having the chance to talk about his business might warm him up, but it didn’t. He sat toward the edge of the
chair, one leg crossed tightly over the other and his hands locked over his knees. They were long, slim hands, as pale as
his face—and deceptive. Based on his handshake from earlier, they were far stronger than they looked.

“When I got here two years ago, the spa was a
mess,
” he said. “It offered a total mishmash of new age stuff. It was my idea to go the Zen route. I sensed that the Asian thing
was going to take off big-time, and it did. We renovated the interiors and then planned out a new range of treatments—Shirodhara
massage, different types of wraps,
sento
baths.”

“
Sento
baths. Are they…?”

“They’re Japanese in origin. You sit on a wooden stool and have buckets of water poured over you. Then you’re scrubbed in
total silence with a cloth called a
goshi goshi.
”

Goshi goshi.
It sounded more like a type of lapdog, the kind that fits into a purse and yaps at the sight of a dustball blowing across
the floor.

“Is it because of all these new treatments that the spa’s really taken off?”

“First and foremost, I’m running the spa far more efficiently today than it was run when I got here,” he declared. “I won’t
bore you with what a disaster Danny’s first manager was. But yes, the Zen decor and treatments have played a major role in
the success. People love it. It’s exotic, a taste of a world they might never experience. I’m sure, since you’ve covered spas,
you’ve seen what a big draw the Asian influence has been at other places.”

He made it sound like a rhetorical question, yet I could sense he was curious about what I knew.

“Sure,” I said. I was going to leave it at that, but suddenly I wanted to see what would happen if I dinged that slick exterior
just a little.

“Though there are actually a few big trends,” I continued. “There’s Asian or Zen or however you want to refer to it. Then
there’s the indigenous stuff—treatments that reflect the locale where the spa is. If the location is Colorado, for instance,
the treatments could include things like… well, I’m making this up, but something like
alpine exfoliation.
But I’ve started to hear more and more about places offering a combination of Zen
and
indigenous treatments. People say it’s good because it leaves the spa with someplace to go if the Asian stuff starts to lose
its magic.”

“Based on the business
we’ve
been doing, I hardly see it peaking anytime soon,” Josh said, narrowing his eyes.

Ah, so he did bristle if you hit the right button.