Missy DeMeanor Cozy Mysteries Boxset

by Brianna Bates

“Missy, I am a private investigator. I take pictures. I need to get all of these guys on film.”

  That might have been true, but she suspected he had other motives in mind too. No doubt she and the other women training inside WiredFit would miraculously appear in the pictures too, in various suggestive poses.

  She shuddered. “I have to get inside.”

  “Hey, wait.” He grabbed her arm, which made her skin crawl. “Better give me your cell phone number.”

  “Can you let go of my arm?”

  He did and took his phone out. “This way we can stay in contact at all times, even if we get split up.”

  “Uh…”

  “Missy, one of these guys might have killed Anne Baxter.”

  As much as she didn’t want to give him her number, that last point struck home. She read off her number and he typed it in.

  When he was done, he did that weird gesture of nodding while sticking his lower lip out. “Nice choice of outfit, by the way. Especially the lemons.”

  She frowned, thinking he was making some kind of innuendo. For a brief second, she thought about challenging him but she really had to get inside. She knew from Lee that class started in a few minutes, and she’d need that time to talk to Lee’s trainer first.

  “I’m going in.”

  Paul stayed where he was. “I’ll be right here. Watching you the whole time. Don’t worry.”

  She wanted to throw up for a lot of reasons.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Missy entered WiredFit, it was like a scene from a movie: literally everybody stopped what they were doing to take in the newbie. There were about twenty-five people, and surprisingly the genders were evenly represented. She recognized half of them, including a few of the cops, and did a little wave. The people that knew her waved back.

  Overhead, big dome lights kept every square inch of the interior bathed in light. Under the glare of the lights that left nothing to the imagination, she squirmed. After a few uncomfortable seconds of awkwardness, one woman peeled away from the group and hustled over to the front desk where Missy was.

  “Hello.” The woman smiled pleasantly enough, but she had so little body fat on her that Missy could literally see every muscle in her face when she smiled.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Anastasia?”

  “You must be Missy.” She extended an arm.

  Anastasia Monroe, Certified Health Professional, extended a ripped, muscly arm that most men would have died for. Missy couldn’t help but be stunned by the veins that stood out against her taut, tanned skin. Warily, Missy offered her hand, expecting Anastasia to crush it in a vise-like grip. But the woman gently took her hand.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Anastasia said. “Lee gave me the heads-up. Come in, make yourself at home.”

  Missy couldn’t stop staring at the woman. She was wearing skin-tight stretch capris and a sports bra. She didn’t have a six pack—she actually had an eight pack. Her hair was dirty blond and her eyes were a warm green. Missy instinctively sucked in her tummy.

  Every inch counted tonight.

  “I hope you’ll join.” Anastasia put a hand on her arm. “You’d be amazed at what is possible. At what you can do. We don’t just exercise here. We change our perspective. We actually change our brain chemistry.”

  “Sounds transformative.”

  Anastasia smiled again, her facial muscles pressing against her skin. “I’m going to use that word on the next customer, thanks.”

  Missy looked around the room. Now that the initial shock of entering a place like this and seeing a woman like Anastasia was wearing off, she had to admit that WiredFit was a pretty cool-looking exercise facility. It was basically one big open floor plan with tumbling equipment, treadmills, rowing machines, and row after row of barbells, benches, and squat racks. She also saw some very intimidating boxes that ranged in height from one foot to at least five feet. One man with a crew cut and muscles that strained against his fitted black shirt was leaping, from the floor, onto the tallest box. The place and the people looked like something out of a Bond movie. There was no doubt in her mind that the FBI or CIA probably had training facilities like this.

  “So does everybody kind of do their own thing?” Missy asked, because everybody was beginning to congregate in the middle of the room between one row of squat racks and a line of barbells on the floor. She hoped everybody did their own thing.

  “We have a workout of the day,” Anastasia said, then looked at her wrists. “Where’s your FitBit?”

  “My what?” Missy asked.

  “Lee didn’t tell you?” Anastasia shook her head. “That man might be one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, but details are not his thing.”

  Missy said nothing. It sounded like she was supposed to bring something but had no idea what it was.

  Anastasia bent at the waist to look inside the front desk. Missy watched as the muscles in her stomach and flank twitched and shifted under the skin. Did this woman have any fat on her?

  Anastasia stood back up and held out a watch for her. “We keep a few spares around here because the members sometimes forget. Here you go.”

  “What do I—’

  Anastasia held her arm out. “On your wrist, just like a watch. This way you can make sure you keep your heart rate in the kill zone.”

  Missy’s stomach twitched with butterflies. “The kill zone?”

  Anastasia laughed. “Just one of our little jokes, ha. We go hard here. We want to make sure our heart rate is high enough to shred fat.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.” Missy decided to go for a little self-deprecating humor and patted her tummy. “Anything more intense than a walk is probably my fat-burning zone.”

  Anastasia shook her head. “It’s not, actually. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “And what do you weigh?”

  Missy looked at her sideways. She knew exactly how much she weighed, but that information was given out on a need-to-know basis only. And nobody needed to know.

  “I don’t know.”

  Anastasia narrowed her eyes. “We need to know that to calculate where your heart rate should be.”

  Missy really didn’t want to tell her. “Look, you can tell I’m embarrassed by my weight, okay? How about you just tell me how to do the calculation so I can figure it out myself.”

  “Don’t ever be embarrassed by your weight. It’s no reflection of you as a person.”

  Missy had said the same thing to herself so many times, but for some reason it struck home when Anastasia said it to her. Somehow, hearing it from someone that looked like the fitness trainer gave the words a profundity she’d never felt before.

  Anastasia told her how to do the calculation and Missy did some quick mental math to figure out her target heart rate had to be between one hundred forty and one hundred fifty beats per minute. She slipped the FitBit around her wrist.

  “Alright.” Anastasia came out from behind the desk. “I’ll work directly with you on the compound movements, because you might not know how to do them. But everything else is self-explanatory—if in doubt, use your body’s natural motion. Okay?”

  Missy didn’t know what a compound movement was, but there wasn’t time to ask. Anastasia was walking toward the group. She stopped, a few feet away from the desk, to look back at Missy.

  “By the way, nice lemons.”

  Missy felt her face get hot. Paul had uttered the same word outside and considering the source, she figured it was a sexual innuendo. But now that Anastasia had said the same thing to her, she wasn’t so sure. Unless the woman just spoke whatever came into her mind and actually admired Missy’s breasts.

  “I respect a woman that’s confident,” Anastasia said. “Now come on. This class is going to rock your world.”

  Before Missy could ask what she meant, Anastasia walked at a clip toward the middle of the room where everybody was huddling. Missy followed her, feeling the eyes of the members on her the w
hole way. Why were they staring at her so intently? Were they really this judgmental of someone overweight? She wanted to die. Short of that, she wanted to run screaming out of the building.

  “Everybody, this is Missy!” Anastasia projected her voice like a drill sergeant. “She’s come to change her life. Let’s welcome her.”

  One by one, each man and woman came up to either high-five or fist bump her. The men smiled. Most of the women didn’t, except for the last one, a short blond that looked about Missy’s age and had a little padding on her body too (but not as much as Missy).

  “Nice. I’m Marie.” The woman looked her up and down. “It takes guts to wear lemons.”

  They fist-bumped and before the woman could turn back around, Missy held up a hand. “What are you talking about?”

  The woman frowned. “Your yoga pants. They’re lemons.”

  “What does that mean?” Missy was really confused now.

  So was the woman. “You’re wearing the pants, you don’t know?”

  Missy shook her head. “What about these pants?”

  The woman leaned in and lowered her voice. “Lululemons? That’s the manufacturer.”

  It was vaguely familiar. Where had she heard that word before? Statistically-speaking, she’d probably heard it from Noreen since eighty percent of Missy’s daily dialog was with Noreen.

  “They’re, you know,” Marie said, not explaining.

  Missy looked down and really looked at the pants. Really looked at them. They were black. Or at least, supposed to be. But they were stretched out. Really stretched out. The harsh glare of the exercise facility’s high-powered lights showed her a very different picture than the soft, fuzzy bedroom lamp on her nightstand.

  And she remembered.

  “Oh my God.” These were Noreen’s pants. She’d worn them over one night before the pair of them had gone out for a late happy hour at Hank’s. Noreen had changed at Missy’s house and left the pants in Missy’s drawer. That had to have been six months ago. She remembered Noreen telling her about them now.

  Missy, you think I should wear these? Noreen had strutted around provocatively in her living room, and for the coup de grace, had bent over, sticking her butt out.

  Nor, those are see-through! I can literally see everything

  Missy was in a cold sweat.

  “Are you okay?” Marie asked, putting a hand on her arm. “Don’t worry. The workout is strenuous but you’re going to ease your way into it. It’ll be okay.”

  Missy could barely speak. “I’m wearing transparent pants, aren’t I?”

  “Okay, folks!” Anastasia said. “Let’s get started.”

  The trainer turned and pointed a remote at the wall and an overhead projector came on. Digital images appeared and it took Missy a moment to realize what she was seeing.

  “Is that everybody’s heart rate?” Missy asked.

  There were names on the images, except for one, which just had a number in the corner. Sixteen.

  Missy looked down at her FitBit. The number sixteen was written in marker on the strap.

  “Is that my heart rate?” she asked, incredulous.

  Marie smiled. “Yes. We keep each other honest. Everybody sees your heart rate. It’s the Hawthorne Effect.”

  “What’s that?”

  Marie was about to answer, but Anastasia clapped and held her hands up. “Let’s get started!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  By the time they got to the third exercise, Missy was already exhausted. They’d done deep-knee lunges for two full minutes.

  “Wow, this is hard,” she whispered to Marie.

  “This is just the warm-up.”

  Missy not so quietly cursed.

  Anastasia worked them through ten minutes of warm-ups. Missy watched her heart rate climb quickly—spike would be the more accurate word—and she was already doubting she’d be able to make it through the real workout if this was just the warm-up.

  “Okay. Time for the real deal.” Anastasia waited for everybody to come up for air. It gave Missy a chance to catch her breath. While she was resting, she saw everybody else’s heart rates on the wall in front of them. For the most part, everybody else was at one hundred beats per minute, but she was already at one hundred thirty.

  Did all the work she did on the elliptical at her regular, every day gym count for nothing? She was exhausted.

  “Workout of the day. Five sets.”

  Everybody clapped and cheered. Missy thought they were all crazy. She couldn’t imagine doing one set of anything let alone five.

  “Twenty-five squats, five minutes on the rowing machine, twenty-five push-ups, three minutes jogging, box jumps, and close it out with twenty-five cleans.”

  Missy was about to leave but thought of Noreen. So far she’d been selfishly thinking about herself, what she looked like in transparent yoga pants, how she was going to complete the workout, instead of thinking about her friend, Noreen. That was what she needed to focus on. She’d read somewhere that when you stopped thinking about yourself, when you stopped worrying about being happy, that was when you were actually happy. The best way to smile was to not think about it and lose yourself in the experience. She needed to stop worrying about what she looked like and focus on Noreen.

  So Missy breathed and stood up straight and rocked back and forth on her feet like the others were doing. She let their excitement infect her.

  Marie patted her on the back. “You can do this.”

  Missy smiled. “Thanks.”

  There were enough squat racks for everybody to begin the routine at the same time. Missy made a beeline for where the cops were and claimed a station next to them as her own. Anastasia and Marie followed her over.

  “Watch me,” Anastasia said. She got under a bar and put it on the back of her shoulders. Missy watched the sleek lines of her as she moved, the muscles pulling and stretching. It was really impressive.

  “Now you.” Anastasia came over to the empty bar in front of Missy and started putting weight on.

  “Oh, I can’t do that much!” Missy protested.

  Anastasia smiled. “That’s what everybody says the first time. It’s not as heavy as you think.” Then the trainer looked down at her thighs. “I can tell you’re strong. Stronger than you think you are. Now let’s see you try.”

  Missy got under the bar. Anastasia moved her into position, helping her put the bar in the right place. When Missy stood up, feeling the weight for the first time, it felt awkward and impossibly heavy. She wobbled a few steps backward.

  Anastasia nodded. “I told you.”

  Missy hadn’t done anything yet and the weight was insistent on her back. How could she possibly do twenty five repetitions? She’d be lucky to get one.

  “It only feels awkward because you’re not used to it,” Anastasia said.

  Next to her, Missy heard some grunting and cursing and barbells slamming. She peeked to her left to watch the cops. There were five of them, all with crew cuts of course. The first one was already done his twenty-five squats and hustling over to the rowing machines. Missy realized they were racing to get through the routine.

  “You can do this,” Anastasia said.

  Another cop reracked his barbell and ran over to the rowing machine.

  The cop right next to her cursed loudly. “Joe, you’re cheating!”

  “Twenty-five!” Joe yelled as he got situated on the rowing machine.

  “Twenty-five my ass!” the man yelled next to her. His face was bright red. “And you did less weight than last week. Cheaters don’t win, Joe!”

  “Come on, Miss,” Anastasia said.

  She was so focused on this policeman next to her she’d almost forgotten about the weight. Which surprised her. In those few seconds of distraction, her body had gotten used to it.

  Missy took a deep breath and bent like Anastasia had showed her. She got to the bottom, or “the hole” as Anastasia referred to it, and never in a million years expected to get out of i
t.

  But she buckled down and squeezed all her muscles in her lower body. Even her butt.

  And next thing she knew, she was rising.

  “That’s it!” Anastasia clapped.

  Missy kept going. Her legs got wobbly around the twentieth rep, but she managed to squeeze the rest out and complete her set. Anastasia helped her rerack the weight.

  Missy followed the others to the rowing machines. The cop that had accused the other one of cheating was angrily pulling on the rowing machine, going harder than everybody else. He was really straining.

  Missy sat next to him and got to work. She’d never used an erg before but the motion was pretty obvious so she picked it up quickly.

  The cop next to her was grunting and cursing, commenting half under his breath that he’d picked the hardest machine of the bunch. Missy didn’t understand what he meant. All the machines should have been the same.

  He had started before her so was off when Missy still had more than two minutes to go. She kept pulling, feeling the big muscles in her back and her legs working.

  “Richard.” Marie rowed on the erg next to her. “Perfect name for him.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because he’s kind of a dick,” Marie said.

  “Oh.” Missy laughed between breaths.

  Marie smiled over at her. “Why are the dicks always the ones that are easy on the eyes?”

  Missy checked Richard out as he pumped out a quick twenty-five pushups. He was done that before she’d even gotten off the rower. Richard had light blond hair and a thin, but very round face. His eyes were brown. He wasn’t really Missy’s type but could see how women would be attracted to him for his physique.

  “Push-up time,” Anastasia said, appearing out of nowhere. Marie groaned. Missy could understand. Push-ups weren’t her favorite either. The only thing worse was pull-ups. The absolute worst.

  “You can do this.” Anastasia helped them both up, a sheen of sweat glistening on her bare skin.

  Marie and Missy took their places on the floor and assumed the plank position. Missy surprised herself by pumping out a few, but her arms started shaking and her core was trembling too just trying to stay locked into that rigid position.