Fatal Pose

by Barna William Donovan

  As the afternoon wore on, Amy gave a call from the San Diego Freeway explaining that the road had become an indefinite parking lot after three separate accidents during late rush hour traffic. It was a quarter till ten o’clock by the time she arrived, and two of the people next door had driven off somewhere after a pizza dinner. They left with a couple of women who showed up at their door and weren’t invited inside.

  “I don’t think the hit’s going down tonight,” Gunnar commented sardonically when Amy showed up and looked in the Nikon to see two of their subjects cleaning their guns again and watching TV.

  “I’m yearning for some action,” Amy said and tossed her gym bag on the davenport. She had come from her Wednesday night training session of a UCLA professor’s wife in Westwood.

  “But it will go down. Remember!” He didn’t want the girl to get complacent.

  “I’ll expect the unexpected!” she said with a wry tone and dropped onto the recliner. “Could you make me a coffee? Strong.”

  “So, what’s the good word?” Gunnar asked as he started scooping some dark roast coffee into a filter.

  “I heard some of the word on the street. That’s the correct terminology, isn’t it?”

  “If you watch too many movies.”

  “Well, here’s the thing, Gunnar. I’m starting to wonder why exactly we care if someone did kill Brad Holt.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Gunnar had to ask and paused in the coffee preparation. “Could you just tell me again why you want to get licensed as a private investigator? To make a better living than in personal training? A better living as in having someone pay you money for a job you do.”

  “Thank you, sarcasm, sarcasm, thank you very much,” Amy said, and Gunnar saw her raise her hand in the darkness. He was pretty sure she was making a fist with the middle finger sticking up. “But I think you know what I mean. I thought I heard you mention something the other day on the phone when you were talking to Kelly about not really liking Holt. And you know why, don’t you?”

  Yes, Gunnar knew, and he knew where Amy’s sparring was going. Exactly where Laura Preston had predicted it would. “What did you find out?”

  “Well, first of all, when I brought up Holt’s name, I got these pitying stares from women weighing two-hundred pounds. They looked me over like I was some kind of a freak and asked me if I wanted to shock my system into growth.”

  “I’m sorry for your humiliation.”

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  “And the point is?”

  “Whatever kind of mini-celebrity Holt may be in the WBBF, his name seemed to imply I was looking to score some gear so I could shock my system into growth. Or drugs of any sort. Coke, heroin, crystal meth. No, let me clarify that—it implied that I was mainly interested in the hard stuff. So how about that for a WBBF hardcore hotshot making a big comeback and eyeing the Mr. Empire?”

  Laura Preston. “Well, guess what?” Gunnar said at length. “You know I got to talk to the president of the WBBF today, don’t you?”

  “Were you like, totally awed by her presence?” Amy asked with that catty sarcasm she had perfected so well.

  “Actually, I was. Because Laura Preston told me the same thing.”

  “No shit?” Amy sounded truly surprised now. “She’d drop the dime on the former WBBF star like that? Why?”

  “First, tell me exactly what you learned at the gyms,” Gunnar said and went back to preparing the coffee.

  “All right. Well, the people I talked to about the juice implied I should be on the up-and-up. If I knew what was good for me.”

  “How so?” Gunnar watched Amy’s dark form in the unlit room.

  “There was this guy at the Amazon Gym training his fiancée, and he went and pulled me aside and said he heard me asking the same questions of several people. He said he thought it was suspicious the way I appeared to be digging for information. And I’m sorry, okay?”

  “Just remember his warning.” Gunnar didn’t care about her lapse of finesse now and how she wasn’t as subtle as he had taught her to be. “What did he say?”

  “That Holt and the people he did business with are very dangerous, and if I wanted to buy their merchandise, it had better be for my own personal enjoyment, not because I wanted to pry into their business.”

  “Fascinating,” Gunnar thought out loud.

  “And this is exactly what the WBBF president of operations told you about the guy attempting to make a big comeback in the federation? I’m not getting this.”

  “No, Holt is not attempting anything. He attempted, and now he’s dead.”

  “But still—”

  “You know about the striated and dehydrated judging standards controversy.”

  “Yeah, but it’s better to let the word out that your former star was knocked off in some drug deal than let on that your judging standards are killing people? Especially when you started into that whole bodybuilding in the Olympics pipedream again?”

  “Well, Ms. Future Private Eye, pop quiz: what do you think?”

  “Brad Holt can still be worth money to the WBBF,” Amy replied without thinking twice. “You can have a bunch of sentimental career retrospective articles all over their magazines. Special editions, collector’s editions, all that stuff. I don’t think it’s better to drop the dime on him at all.”

  “So why would she do it?”

  “She knows more about his death. It wasn’t from the dehydration and diet, but it was a hell of a lot worse than getting killed by drug-dealing business partners.”

  “That’s an interesting theory,” Gunnar said in mock deliberate, pedantic tones. “What could be worse?”

  Amy didn’t reply immediately. “What could be worse?”

  “Come on, give me something.”

  “Are you kidding?” Amy exclaimed. “You think she had something to do with it?”

  It was Gunnar’s turn to pause and measure his words before speaking.

  “Come on, Marino,” Amy said. “What do you think? She was in on it?”

  “I think she knows more about the truth than she’s letting on.”

  “But do you think we’re on the right track? Think this was a killing and not an accident?”

  “I need more data.” Gunnar still felt more comfortable evading. “I need more information on both of them. I have to know exactly where Holt and Laura Preston are coming from.”

  “Well, by all indications, we can be pretty sure Brad Holt was a thorough sleaze bag. Right? Your old Marine Cops buddy? You suspected this, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, going by that Girls Caught in the Buff crap he’s peddling on late-night TV, I always felt it safe to assume he’s not Mr. Upstanding Family Values Sensitivity.”

  “Now I know why I trust your instincts.”

  “Okay, but what about yours? What are you getting off Laura Preston?”

  Gunnar had to think about that one for a while. For some reason, despite the slickness, despite the callousness, there was something about her now that he was…drawn to? Did he want to say that? How could he put his impressions about Laura into words? Despite the fact that he thought she was an arrogant liar, there was, nevertheless, something about her he could like in some strange, unnamable way. He couldn’t get past how willing she was to let on to the fact that underneath all the WBBF P.R., underneath the fire-breathing feminist rhetoric at the art gallery, she still knew and admitted that at their core, most bodybuilders might really be damaged goods. He had a hard time reconciling that fact with the idea that she could be a completely cold, cunning manipulator, a killer. No, Gunnar thought, there was something more complicated going on here. There was a connection between Laura Preston and Brad Holt that controlled her as much as she tried to control Gunnar’s probings.

  “What am I getting off her?” he said at l
ength. “Something I don’t understand entirely.”

  “But you think she’s lying.”

  “She’s as slick as hell, that’s for sure. And yeah, she’s not entirely above board.”

  “Well, how about this. Do you think she’s as sleazy as Holt?”

  “Oh, I don’t think they’re anywhere in the same league.”

  “Well, unless she’s a murderer,” Amy said, flipping sarcasm back.

  “Yeah,” Gunnar said slowly. “But I somehow think they’re two entirely different creatures.”

  “And Holt is not one I would ever shed tears for.”

  “But he did die, and now we must know what really happened to him.”

  “We’re getting paid, after all,” Amy said drolly.

  “That’s right,” Gunnar said, taken by how flat the words came out of his mouth. “By his grieving sister. Who will be contacting me shortly to see how the case is coming along.”

  “And maybe to remind you that Brad did save your life?”

  Gunnar chuckled darkly. “We’ll see.”

  “Nice family,” Amy mumbled.

  Gunnar glanced at his watch and saw that it was time to go. He needed some sleep soon, and he was glad for the opportunity to change the subject. “I have to go for now, but I want something from you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Stay out of Amazon Gym tomorrow. Or better yet, take the day off from sleuthing, okay?”

  “How come?’

  “So whoever else might have thought your questions sounded suspicious can have time to forget you.”

  “Marino!” Amy called in protest as he grabbed his cooler and went for the door.

  “Oh yeah, the Beretta’s on the table. Keep it within arm’s reach, and don’t turn on the lights.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said and got off the davenport.

  “Just do as I say. Then you can go back to investigating the following day.” With that, he went out the door before Amy could debate anymore.

  CHAPTER 30

  The inevitable phone call from Diane Holt came the next day. With a growing price tag for his services being tallied at his office, Gunnar should hardly have felt uncomfortable talking to his client, he knew. But he did. The case bothered him. He disliked everything he was finding out about Brad, and he couldn’t help but transfer that same animosity onto Diane.

  “What are you finding out about my brother?” Diane asked as Gunnar leaned back in his chair and placed his steaming mug of coffee on his desk.

  He wanted to tell himself that he was annoyed at having his morning’s coffee ritual—the one Alex always had waiting for him upon arrival at the office—disrupted. But that wasn’t true. He was getting rankled at having to hear Diane’s voice.

  “Was I right?” she asked. “Do the threats have anything to do with it? Is the WBBF involved in some way?”

  Instead of replying immediately, Gunnar wondered if Diane’s voice sounded more breathy. Somehow sultrier, more intimate? Was she doing it on purpose? Was this some kind of a tease, a seduction to keep him on a case she knew all too well he would find repellent?

  A spark of anger flashed through him. It was inconceivable for this woman not to know what sort of a slime her brother had been.

  Or, then again, was she even feeling that it was an issue she had to sex her way around? She paid the money, and Gunnar had a job to do. It was as simple as that. Could she really expect him to turn around and say, “This case is over. Your scumbag brother deserved to die”? His imagination, his interpretations of breathy, seductive inflections must have been going haywire.

  “I’m finding out some things,” Gunnar said at last. “About the WBBF, some of the people working there, as well as a couple of bothersome things about Brad’s business dealings. But I do need to discuss this with you at length.”

  “All right,” Diane said earnestly.

  “Look, could it be possible to meet and talk in person? I don’t like talking about some things on the phone.”

  “So the police were all wrong in burying this so quickly?”

  “Maybe. But let’s talk later.”

  “All right. When?”

  “Can I call you back? And I’m off the clock until you hear from me.”

  “All right.”

  Gunnar hung up.

  He was glad to be able to put Diane off for the time being because he needed to think. Despite what transpired between them so many years ago, for all intents and purposes now, she was a complete mystery. He had a hard time believing she was as naïve about her brother’s life as she claimed to be. From what little he did recall about their superficial relationship and her personality traits, she was hardly naïve. Now, he never would have put her in the same league as her brother—he never felt that same reptilian corruption about her—but he still never read her as naïve or innocent in any way.

  “We’re off to a good start, Dr. Marino,” he mumbled to himself and reclaimed the coffee from his desk. Now he put his feet up and hoped to get some of that quality thinking time in. “So now we’re making major case decisions based on how we’re reading our own clients.”

  The main issue he couldn’t help but think about, however, was Erika. It was the second day since their dinner, and he still hadn’t heard from her.

  Maybe she was waiting for him to call.

  She did say she wanted updates on the case, Gunnar remembered as he stared at the phone. He wanted to call her right now, needing to hear her voice. Plus, he really did want to know what she thought of the case. It would have been helpful to be able to bounce his observations, his ideas about Laura Preston off Erika. And talking to her before having to talk to Diane was definitely preferable.

  Gunnar picked up the phone at last and called the hospital.

  CHAPTER 31

  “I’m going to dust a power-bar wrapper I found at Holt’s cabin and check it against his prints and Laura Preston’s prints,” Gunnar told Erika over the phone.

  What he wanted to say was how glad he was to be hearing her voice. He wanted to say that talking to her gave him a natural high. He felt like her voice was a trigger that flooded his body with endorphins, that made his head swim with euphoria.

  But this was wasn’t the right time.

  “Laura’s prints?” Erika asked. “How did you—?”

  “I made her handle a poster yesterday. Her prints should be all over it and ready to compare to the candy wrapper and a drinking glass I removed from Holt’s home gym.”

  “When are you doing this?” Erika demanded. “I want to be there.”

  Gunnar couldn’t wait. “When can you get off from work and over to my office?”

  “I’ll get out by four-thirty this afternoon.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Now he had to find a way to stall Diane.

  With that thought, he laughed and took a large swig of the coffee. Why was he treating his own client like an adversary now?

  CHAPTER 32

  “The truth is,” Gunnar said, “that I wanted to run this case by you before I talk to Diane.”

  Not only because of Erika’s intelligence but because it gave him the opportunity to be alone with her again. He wondered if she could guess all of this. He actually would have been surprised if she couldn’t. He would also have been surprised if Erika couldn’t guess any of this as early as that morning when he called her and invited her to come. She had to know…and she came eagerly.

  But he had to put all of that on hold when the door opened, and Alex let Amy in.

  “No one’s made an attempt on my life yet,” Amy said, lugging her gym bag after her and dropping it behind the door.

  “That’s because you’ve listened to me, and you’re laying low,” Gunnar replied, then calmly returned to preparing the results of the dactylographic equipm
ent he had unloaded on his desk. “By the way,” he added after a beat and looked from Amy to Erika, “this is our new forensic consultant from Bayside General.” He winked at Erika.

  As she extended her hand for an introduction, Amy said, “So, you’re the famous Erika. The doctor we’ve heard so much about. Amy McCambridge.” They shook hands.

  “Hi,” Erika replied and glanced at Gunnar. “So glad to hear my reputation precedes me.”

  “I’m part of the Foundry Gym Irregulars you probably heard nothing about,” Amy wisecracked. “Our reputation, what there is, definitely does not precede us.”

  “Stealth and invisibility are an investigator’s tools of the trade,” Gunnar said. “And I’m sure the other Irregulars will remember that when they’re taking your place in the field.”

  “Yes,” Amy said, “I got your point already yesterday. But let me just add one more thing I managed to find out for you without screwing it up before I pulled out of the field.”

  Amy would never cut him any slack, Gunnar seethed as she unspooled sarcasm again. “What did you find out?” he asked patiently.

  “Just a few bits of trivia about Mr. Holt’s character. Some info about his private life I bet his sister never shared with you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Maybe you could ask her about it when she’s cutting you a big check for the work we’re doing.”

  “I’ll be sure and do that once I figured out what I’m supposed to ask,” Gunnar found himself snapping. “What’s the info?”

  “Well, be sure and ask Diane Holt about Maria Sanches. She was a fitness contest hopeful last year. She got involved with Holt. He promised her introductions at WBBF headquarters. He was going to get her modeling gigs, the usual routine.”

  “If she sleeps with him.”