A Real Basket Case (17 page)

EIGHTEEN:
DEATH THREAT

Claire grunted and fought.
She struggled to push something heavy off her body, but her hands couldn’t grab hold, getting tangled in the sheets. Panic welled up as the weight crushed her chest, making it hard to breathe.

Her eyes flew open, and she gasped for air. Frantically, she glanced around. The early-morning sun streamed in the bedroom window, highlighting the yellows in the new bed linens.

She clutched her chest.
Oh, God. It was all a nightmare
.

She swept a quaking hand over her damp forehead and took a deep breath to slow her racing heart. Below, a chair slid on the kitchen floor. Her heart pounded again. What was that?

Then she remembered Roger was home. He must have awakened and gone downstairs. She got out of bed, splashed cold water on her face, and threw on a robe.

When she walked into the kitchen, she inhaled the rich aroma
of fresh-brewed French roast coffee. She noticed Roger had al
ready poured himself a bowl of cereal. “You should have wakened me. I wanted to make you breakfast.”

The words sounded strained to her. The whole situation felt awkward. Normally his getting out of bed would have awakened her.

Roger looked up from the newspaper. He seemed uneasy, too, his eyes reluctant to focus on hers. “I didn’t want to disturb you, but I almost did when I had a hard time figuring out the newfangled pot that grinds the beans.” He cracked a goofy, unnatural smile.

That pot was over a year old. Claire realized she had made coffee for him every morning since then. She returned his smile,
trying to put them both at ease. “I guess it’s about time you learned how to use it.”

She poured herself a cup and sat across from Roger, who
re
turned
to reading the paper. At first, she felt shunned, isolated by the wall
of newsprint. Then she chided herself for being selfish. If he needed solitude now, she could give it to him. She sipped her coffee and watched him read, back home where he belonged.

Finally, he glanced at her. “Sorry about last night.”

“I understand. For most of the week, I’ve been sleeping in Judy’s bed. Even so, I had a nightmare last night.”

With a look of concern, he laid down his spoon. “About the murder?”

A memory of Enrique’s bloody body lying across hers popped unbidden into her mind and she shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about it. How did you sleep?”

He folded the paper. “Not well. I had a lot on my mind. Ned told me to come back into the office today. Probably so he can do the equivalent of firing me.”

“Don’t go, then.”

Roger ran his hand through his already mussed hair. “What do you mean, don’t go? I can’t just blow him off, even if my whole career is flushing down the toilet.”

Claire cringed. “I’m sorry.”

“Might as well throw myself in the toilet, too.” He blinked hard a few times and picked at the newspaper. “I don’t have much of a life left. My marriage and career are in shambles.” His other hand lay on the table, clenched tight.

She covered the hand with hers and tucked her fingers inside the fist. “I’m here. We’ll get through this together.”

Roger didn’t look convinced.

“Did Ned set a time for you to come in?”

“I assumed he meant at the start of the day.” His tone conveyed puzzlement with her question.

“Then wait.” Claire got up and paced the kitchen. “I have aerobics class today, so I can find out more about the women who had affairs with Enrique. And Deb should be able to come down from Denver. We three can go see Detective Wilson with the new evidence I’ve found. She can help us convince him to expand the investigation.”

“What new evidence?”

“About Brenda, Patti, Karla, Jill, and Ellen.” Claire ticked the names off on her fingertips.

Roger shook his head. “You have suspicions, Claire, not evidence.”

“Then I’ll dig up more information today.” She faced him with her hands on her hips, trying to sound more positive than she felt. “Don’t go into the office until after I get home.”

“I don’t think what you’re doing is going to make a whit of—”

“Just wait until I get home.” She glanced at the clock. “I’ve got to hurry if I’m going to make it to class.”

She headed for the kitchen door then whirled to face Roger. “Promise?”

Morosely, he shrugged. “Unless Ned calls—”

“No, promise.”

“Okay, okay. Go get dressed.”

___

When Claire arrived at Graham’s Gym, she caught a glimpse of a young Hispanic woman who looked like Condoleza from the back. The woman was towing a mop bucket into the pool area. As she disappeared through the door, Claire shook her head.
I’m getting paranoid.
Condoleza couldn’t work at the gym. Enrique wouldn’t have wanted her around.

Claire entered her usual row of lockers and found Ellen and Jill preparing for class. They glanced at her and then averted their eyes. Ellen slammed her locker door shut and scooted out of the row, heading for the toilet stalls.

Frowning, Claire stuffed her gym bag into a locker. “Ellen’s still miffed at me, I suppose.”

With a wounded look in her eyes, Jill peered at Claire. “She told me you think one of the women in the class killed Enrique. She said you even included the two of us on your list. Is that true?”

Claire placed her hand on Jill’s arm. “As I told Ellen, the more women I have on the list, the better case I can make to Detective Wilson. He needs to investigate Enrique’s life. Then maybe he can find the person who really killed Enrique.”

“I can understand you wanting to defend Roger,” Jill whispered, with a glance around the crowded locker room, “but how can you accuse Ellen and me of murder? We’re your best friends.”

Claire sat on the bench and pulled Jill down beside her. She
knew what she was about to say was lame, but she hoped her
friend would buy it. “I’m not accusing you two of murder. I’m compiling a list of people who had a reason to want Enrique dead. You told me yourself that you didn’t miss him.”

Jill drew back, her eyes flashing with anger. “That’s a long way from wanting to kill him.”

“I know. Maybe no one on my list killed him. Maybe it’s someone totally different. But the list will show that Enrique had enemies, and those enemies should be checked out.”

“Did you even think about the consequences of your actions? Karla’s told most everyone what you’ve been doing. If you thought you were persona non grata before, just see how these women treat you now.”

Having to find another gym was a minor sacrifice, thought Claire. “I’ll deal with whatever comes,” she said. “I’m determined to take this information to the police, no matter what anyone else thinks or whose feelings get hurt. Sorry, Jill, but that’s how I feel.”

Claire glanced at the clock. She stood. “Class starts in a few minutes. You coming?”

Her expression dark and brooding, Jill bent down to lace her shoes. “You go ahead.”

Claire went alone to class and stood in the last row. The room fell silent as the others studiously avoided her gaze or glared at her. The woman next to her wrinkled her nose in distaste and moved to the other end. When Brenda entered, she nodded solemnly at Claire but took a position in the first row.

A moment later, Ellen and Jill walked in and stood beside Claire. Grateful they didn’t avoid her, Claire smiled at them. Neither returned the smile. Claire felt like the lowest chicken in the barnyard’s pecking order.

During the class, a couple of women bumped her at different times, one almost knocking her off her feet, but neither offered an apology. Claire felt sure the actions were deliberate, but chose not to make an issue of it.

Toward the end of the class, as they stretched their legs, Jill whispered, “What’s your next move?”

“I need to talk to Patti, the one with the limp.” Claire spied the woman at the other end of the second row. “I want to catch her after class. Do you know anything about her?”

Jill followed Claire’s gaze. “No. Why do you need to talk to her? She didn’t have an affair with Enrique.”

“But she was a customer.”

“Customer? What do you mean?”

On the other side of Jill, behind her back, Ellen caught Claire’s attention. She pursed her lips and shook her head.

Jill didn’t know about Enrique’s drug dealing and Ellen didn’t want her to know, Claire realized. Maybe Ellen believed that Jill would feel even worse if she knew that Enrique had dealt drugs, too.

Claire glanced at Jill, who waited for an answer. “Enrique was a massage therapist remember?” Awkwardly, Claire looked away as she lifted her arms overhead, avoiding Jill’s puzzled gaze.

At the end of class, Claire hurried toward the locker room but got stuck behind two wide, slow-moving chatters. She darted from side to side until she could move around them. She wanted to shower and dress quickly so she could invite Patti to lunch. Claire only hoped she could penetrate the fog of hostility in the class and convince Patti to talk to her.

Once Claire arrived at her locker, she shucked off her shoes and reached for her lock. A sheet of paper folded like an accordion stuck out from one of the vents in the top of the door, as if it had been pushed through.

Claire glanced around the locker room.

Karla stood watching, her eyes narrowed in speculation. When Claire caught her gaze, the redhead turned away and grabbed a towel from her locker.

Claire extracted the paper and opened it.

In large type, the note read: STOP SNOOPING AND DON’T TELL THE COPS ABOUT THIS NOTE OR YOU WILL DIE NEXT. I’M WATCHING YOU.

Oh, God.
Claire’s hands shook. She stared in horror as the sheet dropped to the ground. The room swayed, and she felt as if she was losing her grip on reality, tumbling to her doom like the climber in the Garden of the Gods.

Ellen rounded the corner of the lockers, saw Claire, and stopped. “What?”

Jill peeked around Ellen’s shoulder.

“Read that.” Claire put her hand against a locker to steady herself and pointed at the note.

Ellen picked up the paper and held it where Jill could see it, too. “Sweet Jesus.”

Jill gasped and held a hand to her mouth.

“Where’d this come from?” Ellen asked.

“It was stuck in the top of the door.” Claire nodded at her locker.
She looked for Karla, but the woman was gone.

Glancing around the locker room, Ellen whispered, “Some woman from the class left this note.”

Claire gulped and nodded.

“Not necessarily.” Jill crowded in close. “It could have been a staff person who snuck in while we were in class.”

A scary thought popped into Claire’s mind.
Oh, God. What if that woman I saw was Condoleza?

“Or someone in Leon’s gang,” Claire managed to add.

“What are you going to do?” Jill asked.

“Take it to the police, I guess.”

A look of horror crossed Jill’s face. “You can’t do that! Read the note. You’ll be killed.” She snatched the paper from Ellen and shoved it in front of Claire’s nose.

Claire grabbed the note. “But this is proof that Roger’s not the killer.” And that she was getting close to ferreting out the real murderer.

“And whoever the real murderer is, she or he is after you.” Ellen glanced over her shoulder toward the rest of the locker room. “Someone could be watching. If you head for the police, you may not make it.”

Jill nodded solemnly. “The risk is very real, Claire.”

Claire stared at the paper clutched in her hand. The sounds of women showering, blow-drying their hair, and gossiping swirled around her. Any of them could be the murderer, including one of the two women standing before her, waiting for her decision.

A locker door slammed, the bang not unlike a gunshot.

Claire flinched. Then she shoved the note and the contents of her locker into her gym bag. “I have to think about what I want to do.”

As she shrugged on her coat and looped the strap of the gym bag over her shoulder, she pushed from her mind all thoughts of talking to Patti. Survival was paramount now. She grabbed her purse and keys. “I’m leaving.”

Ellen and Jill stared at her, then each other.

Jill was the first to recover. “Are you just going to go home?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll drive around and think a while, but first I’ve got to get out of here.”

With her mouth set in a grim line, Ellen grabbed her coat. “C’mon, Jill. We’ll escort her out. You get behind her on the left, and I’ll take the right. Stay close.”

Jill hesitated, then threw on her coat and moved next to Claire. “Ready.”

Tears sprang to Claire’s eyes. Like the climber’s buddies who broke his fall, these two were here to support her. “Thanks, guys, but I hate to put you in danger, too.”

“We’re not the target.” Ellen whispered as she pulled Claire toward the locker room door. “You are. Hopefully, having all these witnesses will make the killer think twice. He or she can’t shoot everyone in the gym.”

“But when we get outside—”

“You have the two of us.”

Claire hurried down the hallway, with Ellen and Jill forming a human wall behind her. As they burst through the gym doors into t
he parking lot at a half trot, Claire’s skin crawled. She chided
herself for overreacting, but she kept envisioning an unseen gun sight following her progress.

Ellen and Jill each looped an arm in hers and zigzagged through the cars to her BMW, with frequent glances over their shoulders. A stiff winter breeze ruffled their sweat-dampened hair and blasted through their open coats, but neither complained.

By the time they reached her car, Claire’s teeth were chattering, from both fear and the February cold.

Ellen looked around as Claire unlocked the car and slid into the driver’s seat. “No one followed us.”

Jill reached in and squeezed Claire’s hand. “Let us know what you decide, please.” Her pinched face indicated great concern.

Mutely, Claire nodded.

Ellen peered at her. “And watch your back.” She stepped away and closed the car door.