Last Resort of Murder (A Lacy Steele Mystery Book 9)

by Vanessa Gray Bartal

“So?”

  “So it doesn’t look good that you argued with her a few hours before she was killed.”

  She laughed mirthlessly. “If everyone who argued with Jill yesterday is a suspect, that list must be endless.”

  “What did you argue about?”

  Uma shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably what we always argued about. She cheated and pushed me to help her.”

  “How did she cheat? What does that mean?”

  “There’s a big board in the back room that keeps track of client pounds lost, an incentive for the trainers. The winner gets bonuses. Jill always won, Sven came in second, and Rodney third.”

  “Who is Rodney?” Lacy asked.

  “The other trainer. He’s on vacation.”

  Lacy scrubbed him from her mental list of suspects. “How did she cheat?”

  “Any way she could—extra workouts, supplements, extra time in the steam room.”

  “How did she ask you to help?”

  “She wanted us to do whatever we could to help push the clients for her.”

  “And did you help her?”

  “Sometimes, if she threw me a big tipper.”

  Lacy couldn’t get a read on her. Her delivery was deadpan, not like someone who was seething with anger. But maybe she was a good actress. Or maybe she was a sociopath who lacked all emotion. Lacy’s muscles leaned toward that explanation of things.

  “Can you think of anyone who had reason to kill her?”

  “Everyone,” Uma said.

  “Anyone specifically?”

  “Sven. He was always behind in the competition, and Jill liked to rub it in.”

  “Anyone besides Sven?” Lacy asked.

  “She was always having problems with clients who didn’t mesh with her style,” Uma said.

  “Anyone specifically right now?” Lacy asked.

  “Mrs. Van Uppity.”

  “Who?”

  “Some clients get a nickname. That’s the one for her. Her real name is, uh…” she closed her eyes and thought, taking a deep drag from her cigarette. “Charlotte Hester.”

  “Thank you,” Lacy said then, “Do you have a nickname for me?”

  Uma’s eyebrow rose as she took another hit of nicotine.

  “We’ll take that as a yes,” Kimber said. “Time to back away slowly now.” She took Lacy’s arm, and together they retreated back to the resort.

  “Do you think she did it?” Kimber asked when they were safely back inside.

  “My ruined legs say yes, but my heart isn’t sure. It’s clear she didn’t like Jill, but nobody did. I didn’t sense any sort of deep hatred coming from her. Did you?”

  “Toward you, maybe. You sure rubbed her the wrong way somehow.”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s the one who rubbed me the wrong way.”

  “Really, Lacy, you’re going for the obvious bad joke at a time like this?”

  “It would have bugged me if I didn’t. Let’s find Mrs. Van Uppity.”

  “How are we supposed to do that?”

  “Sven.”

  “Is he still here, too?”

  “No, but he gave me his number,” Lacy said.

  “But we don’t have our phones,” Kimber pointed out. The rooms were equipped with phones that only worked onsite and couldn’t dial out. There was no Wi-Fi either, part of the resort’s “unplugged” policy.

  “We’ll have to find a phone,” Lacy said.

  “I don’t like the look in your eyes,” Kimber said.

  “I’m brainstorming a solution,” Lacy said.

  “That’s what scares me.”

  “No, it’s simple. All we need to do is get behind the desk. There are loads of offices back there. One of them has to be empty and unlocked. I only need a minute,” Lacy said.

  “And how do you propose doing that?”

  “You create a diversion, and I’ll sneak my way in.”

  “Create a diversion? No problem, I’ll use that stick of dynamite I stuffed down my pants earlier,” Kimber said.

  “It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Talk to whoever is on duty. Distract them so I can sneak through.”

  “What if more than one person is on duty? It’s a huge place; it has to be fully staffed.”

  “Cry. A crying woman attracts all sorts of attention,” Lacy said.

  “Okay, I’ll cry on command then. Actresses win Oscars for being able to do it because it’s so hard, but I’m sure I can manufacture some tears, no problem.”

  “Then do something else. I can’t think of everything,” Lacy said.

  “You haven’t thought of anything. Worst plan ever,” Kimber complained, but she kept heading toward the front desk. Lacy paused before they reached it. Kimber continued forward. They were in luck; there were only two people working and the heavy wooden half-door leading behind the desk was propped open. Lacy dropped to all fours, waiting for her opportunity. As soon as Kimber began talking, Lacy took her shot, scurrying through the door like an oversized mouse. Her heart thudded, waiting to be caught, but no one said a word as she made her way haphazardly down the hall. Crawling was almost more than her muscles could take, but it had to be done.

  She shuffled down the long hall, pausing to press her shoulder to every door and test the lock. At last one moved. She lumbered inside. It was dark. She stood, searching for the light, and bashed her shin against something immovably solid. She pitched forward. Her hands shot out to break her fall, but her body got caught up on something before she smacked the floor.

  The lights flipped on. Derek stood in the entryway, mutely staring at her. She was in the bathroom and had tripped over a urinal. Her midsection was hung up on it like an errant horse that tried to jump a too-high fence.

  “Lost a contact,” she said, her fingers straining to make purchase with the floor. It occurred to her that the lie did nothing to explain why she was hung up on a toilet in a forbidden part of the resort, but it was all her panicked brain could come up with.

  “Mm,” Derek said.

  “Uh,” Lacy geared up to try again, but he preempted her before she could think of something stupider to say.

  “Are you looking for a phone?”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “I can take you to one, if you want.”

  “Okay, let me wash my hands.” Her legs were trapped behind her in a half squat position, and they were trembling. They had given all they could and lacked the strength to push her up. Her fingers couldn’t reach the floor, jammed as she was on the urinal. She rolled to the left, unhooked herself from the commode, and clattered to the floor. Still, her legs refused to do the hard work of pushing her back up again. Derek made no move to help her. He gawked at her with the same expression of one who is staring at roadkill—disgusted, yet unable to look away. She half crawled, half scooted to the counter where she could use her arms to pull herself up. Her knees wobbled so wildly that it looked like she was the sole contestant in a silent Charleston dance contest. At last she was upright. She propped herself against the sink and scrubbed her hands when, really, it was her clothes that had been pressed up against the toilet. She would have to put these clothes in a bag with the green dress that had also seen too much bathroom time. Would she try to disinfect them or take a match to them? She hadn’t decided yet.

  When she was finished with her hands, she turned to Derek, but her legs would not go. The only way she could make them move was to take shuffling baby steps so that it took twelve tiny steps to equal one normal one.

  “Sore muscles,” she explained.

  “From skiing?” Derek asked.

  “Massage,” Lacy answered. Surely other people had been this sore after a massage, right? She was afraid to ask.

  Finally they reached the front desk and Kimber who stood by a phone marked, “For Guest Use.”

  “Turns out there’s a phone right here,” Kimber said. “Did you use one back there?”

  “No, I…no,” Lacy said. Derek was still nearby and eavesdropping, prob
ably wondering what sort of explanation she might come up with. She didn’t even try. Instead she fished Sven’s number from her pocket, turned away from the desk, and made her call.

  Chapter 13

  There was no coffee at the resort. As a cop, Jason knew what a travesty that was, especially for the detective who had been there since early that morning. So he got in his car, drove until he came to a gas station, and bought a round of coffees. It wasn’t blackmail, or at least he told himself he wasn’t buttering up the cop to get information for Lacy. He was being a good guy, paying it forward.

  He arrived back at the resort and handed out the coffees. “Ah, thanks, man,” the detective said with genuine appreciation, and Jason tried not to feel like a fraud. The man’s name was Green; he was a twenty-year veteran of his force. His reaction when Jason told him he was also a detective was dismay mixed with a bit of amusement, as if he thought Jason might still be an overeager rookie. The fact that he was hanging around for hints of the investigatory process wouldn’t help that image.

  “I know how these days go,” Jason said.

  “You see a lot of murders in your precinct?” the cop asked, and the amusement was back in full force.

  “More than I’d like,” Jason said.

  “It’s getting bad all over, you know? In the old days all you had to worry about were a few stray crack heads. Now you’ve got heroin in the suburbs the way you used to have wine coolers. Kids are sneaking opioids faster than the cartels can ship them. And then there’s this mess.” He motioned toward the murder scene. “Twenty years and I’ve never seen a cherry-red corpse before. You think you’ve seen it all, then some chick gets poisoned. Not once, but twice.” He shook his head.

  “You still like the other trainer for it?” Jason asked as casually as he could.

  “It’s a done deal. In addition to the poison, we found a bruise on her chin. She’d been covering it with makeup.”

  “So someone poisoned her twice and clocked her in the face. That’s a lot of hate for one person,” Jason mused.

  “You seen this Sven guy? He’s like a walking mountain. If he’s not on ‘roids, I’ll eat my retirement.”

  Jason agreed that Sven was huge, and he agreed that it was beyond the pale to give someone poison as a recreational drug. Still, the bruise did more to make him doubt than anything. If someone were going to hit the woman before killing her, why stop at once? Why not beat her to death? Why give her one pop and then poison her? Or poison her twice and then punch her in the face? It made no sense.

  “You waiting on the physical evidence for a pickup?” he asked.

  Detective Green nodded. “We searched his place today and collected some things. As soon as the labs come back, we’ll take him in. In the meantime, we’re dotting all the I’s, you know how it goes.”

  Jason did know how it went. It was exhausting to do witness interviews, catalogue evidence, and create the ever-growing paper trail. An officer’s worst nightmare was to have his work revealed in court and be found lacking. Not just lacking, but negligent to the point where someone guilty went free. He stayed up for days while working a big case, going over and over the details in his mind to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. And he didn’t need someone second guessing him, the same way Green didn’t need him there to ask questions.

  “If there’s any way I can help, unofficially of course, let me know,” Jason said. He turned to go, but Green hailed him back.

  “Actually, your girlfriend turned up on the trainer’s client list. It would be helpful if you could talk to her and get her take on him—was he scary, did she feel threatened, that sort of thing. We’re trying to build a profile and not having much luck.”

  “I’m not sure Lacy would be much help. She liked the guy a lot, thinks he’s the big teddy bear sort.”

  Green blew out a breath. “Yeah, we’re getting that a lot. I don’t get it with women. They see a huge hulking beast of a guy and think, ‘Aw, what a sweetheart.’ It’s almost like they have no sense of self-preservation.”

  “According to Lacy, the vic was universally hated.” He didn’t want to suggest there were other suspects, but he wanted to hear Green’s take on Jill’s lack of popularity.

  “Yeah, we got that, too. But Big Guy seemed to have hated her the most. They had some sort of competition he always lost, and she took great pleasure in rubbing it in. And he admitted to giving her the poison. We’re keeping our ears open, but from where I sit it looks like a slam dunk.”

  “Hmm,” Jason said, nodding. He didn’t disagree. In police work, the most obvious suspect was usually the one who did it. Once again he turned to go. This time Green didn’t hail him back, and he felt a bit relieved by that. He wasn’t comfortable sticking his nose into another cop’s investigation. But now that he had done it, he had earned the right to stick his nose somewhere else. And despite the fact that he didn’t want to get involved in his girlfriend’s parents’ marital woes any more than he wanted to get involved in the murder, it had to be done.

  He found Frannie sitting at the juice bar having a glass of mineral water. A lime rimmed the edge. She stared toward the fire looking deep in thought. Maybe it was his imagination, but she seemed lonely and a little bit sad. He sat beside her uninvited. She looked up with a start and a smile, although a wary one.

  “Jason, how nice to see you.” Her tone lacked sincerity, but then it usually did. He wondered how often she was real, and whom she was real with. Was she like this with Clint, or did she let him see the heart of her? One thing Jason knew for sure—she was a woman with secrets and she wore her iciness like a protective layer.

  “Frannie, how’s it going?”

  “Fine, just fine,” she said. She sipped her water. He drew out his notebook. Since becoming a cop, he had gotten in the habit of carrying it, along with a tiny pen. One never knew when one might need to take notes.

  “Goodness, this looks official. You don’t think I killed that woman, do you?”

  “Did you?” he asked.

  She laughed stiffly. “Oh, Jason.” Another sip of the mineral water.

  “Let’s go back to high school and the time you and Clint broke up.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “I talked to the detective about Sven. My part of the bargain has been upheld. Now it’s your turn. Lacy told me you knew Bob, the mechanic who was murdered. Did he have anything to do with your breakup with Clint?”

  “Goodness, no,” she said, and now her smile looked relieved.

  She’s telling the truth, Jason thought. Still, there was something she was defensive about, something she didn’t want him to know about that time in her life. What could possibly be so secret this many decades later? According to Lacy, Frannie took everything too seriously. She tried hard to be perfect, to have other people think she was perfect. People like that took minor infractions seriously. Could it be she got in trouble during that time and did something she regretted? Did she get a tattoo? Get drunk? Fail a class? Get suspended? What would make someone like Frannie cover her tracks for thirty years?

  “But you did know him,” he pressed. “Were you friends?”

  “I suppose we were acquaintances. He called me under the bleachers once. I went out of annoyance, more to get him to leave me alone. But we ended up having a real conversation. We talked a few times, the way kids sometimes do when they’re thrown together. It was like that movie Lacy likes, about all the misfit kids who become friends.”

  “The Breakfast Club,” Jason suggested.

  She shrugged. “I suppose. I could never keep track of all those angst-ridden teenager movies and books that seemed to mean the world to her. Maybe if she had spent less time in her room and more time trying to make friends, she wouldn’t have been so unpopular.”

  He decided to let that go. Frannie would probably never see Lacy as she was; instead she was inclined to see her as who she had tried—and failed—to make her. For his sake, he was insanely glad that she had failed to
make Lacy the popular princess she dreamed of. He preferred his band geek as she was, thank you very much. “What did Clint think of your friendship with Bob?”

  “He never knew. He was busy with football while I was busy with cheerleading. My friendship with Bob—if you want to call it that—came at a time when Clint and I were having some troubles.”

  “And what kind of troubles were those?” Jason probed.

  “Typical teenage stuff. Petty jealousies, arguments. We were both tired from our many extracurricular involvements.”

  “You eventually broke up,” he said.

  “For a bit.” She withdrew her arms into herself and crossed them. He was losing her. He must be getting close to the heart of things. How much further could he push her?

  “You broke up at the end of your junior year and went away to summer camp. When you came back, you got back together.”

  “What is this about? I see no way this has any bearing on anything. It was thirty years ago. We were kids. Kids breakup and makeup. It was no big deal.”

  Her tone and troubled expression told him otherwise. Jason continued to write.

  “What are you scribbling?” she snapped.

  “I’m making a timeline, trying to sort events together to make sense.”

  Frannie shot abruptly to her feet. “I wish you wouldn’t. Some things don’t make sense.” With that, she turned and fled. Jason stared after her for a long time, thinking. Frannie wasn’t the easiest person to talk to, but it was still easier to ask a woman questions than it was to ask another man. As much as he didn’t want to, he would have to talk to Clint.

  Chapter 14

  “I still don’t understand how we’re supposed to know which one she is,” Kimber said.

  “Sven said she takes a steam bath every night,” Lacy told her. She was laboring to remove her clothes and put her robe on again.

  “I hate steam baths. Do you have any idea what it does to my hair? I just had these braids done.” She lovingly touched her braids, intricately done up in hundreds of tiny pieces. Lacy had envied those braids in college until she went with Kimber once and watched the tedious, painstaking process.