“I’m not talking to anyone, including you.” I locked the door, then pushed past him and started up the street. I figured he’d follow me, and he did, trotting along on pudgy legs while steadying his camera with one hand.
“Two bodies in two days,” he said, panting a little. “Isn’t that some sort of record for you?”
I turned on my heel to face him. “Lester, back off. This is personal. My boss is a decent guy. Unless you’re interested in finding out the truth, stay out of my way. And this is off the record,” I added, alarmed that he’d whipped out a pad of paper and was taking rapid notes.
“Too late. You have to start with that.”
Great, just great: my outburst would be featured in the daily rag Lester printed on cheap stock and distributed all over town.
“Sounds like you have a theory.” He licked the tip of his pencil.
“I have nothing. Zip. And you can quote me on that.” I started walking again.
“Two deaths,” he said, right on my heels. “With Sweet behind bars, do you expect a third?”
“Maybe there’s already been a third.” I stopped, horrified. Me and my big fat mouth.
“Whoa. Breaking news. C’mon, Sam, spill.” He snapped my picture as I fended him off like a fly. We’d reached my VW, and he took a few more shots as I scrambled into the driver’s seat.
“Get lost,” I said, and drove away, leaving him on the sidewalk.
—
I drove six blocks, making frequent turns and checking to see if the Channel 4 van was on my tail. When I was sure I wasn’t being followed, I drove to Arlinda Fitness and parked in the lot, resting my head against the steering wheel. I closed my eyes, and my phone rang.
“Thought you might be free for a late lunch,” Bernie said.
“Nope. All booked up.”
“How about a midafternoon snack?”
“Can’t. Priorities.”
“Priorities?”
A single ray of blinding sunshine had burned its way through the bank of summer fog that hung over Arlinda. “In case you weren’t aware, you’ve got my boss locked up. That means I’m out of a job until you kick him loose. Which you will, because the guy wouldn’t hurt a fly. You heard about the second finger, I trust?”
“I heard.” There was a pause. “Double chocolate walnut cookies from Ramona’s. That’s my final offer.”
“No can do, Aguilar.” But, like the shift in the weather, I felt a smile breaking through. It was weird and unsettling to feel so lighthearted all of a sudden, when things were so bleak. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Count on it.” He hung up. My heart was going double time. Focus, I told myself. No distractions. Not even the best kind.
Chapter 22
The fitness center was a sprawling concrete building just east of town, sharing a parking lot with the community center, a kiddie playground, and a couple of Little League fields. Sweaty Arlindans were on display through the plate glass, spinning furiously and going nowhere fast, or mounting a Sisyphean peak on the stair-climbers. I checked the rack out front for Max’s bike and didn’t see it, which was both a disappointment and a relief. He might get the impression I was checking up on him, and I didn’t want him thinking that. Though maybe I should be.
The young woman behind the check-in counter looked up with an automatic smile, which seemed to catch in her teeth. “Oh! Hi, Mrs. Turner.” She blushed.
I smiled back. “Hi, Alison.” We’d met once before, but she had been one of a group then. She was a pretty Latina, short and sturdy, with beautiful clear skin, plump cheeks, and warm dark eyes. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she wore a white tee with ARLINDA FITNESS printed across the front.
“Max isn’t here,” she said, as if reading my mind.
“That’s okay. I’m actually looking for someone else.” I pulled the ad for Atherton & Woods from my pocket. “Do you know if Bill Atherton is around?”
She studied the picture. “Mr. Atherton? Gosh, this must be an old photo. Sure, he’s here.”
“Would it be okay if I talked to him for just a minute?”
Her brow furrowed. I could tell she really wanted to help. “Of course, Mrs. Turner. It’s just that—he’s in the sauna.”
“Oh.” Hmm.
She glanced around, then reached under the counter and brought out a folded white robe, dropping it on the counter between us. “Don’t worry, it’s coed.”
“I’m not a member. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“It’s fine.” She gave me another warm smile. I could see why Max was smitten. “The ladies’ locker room is just down the hall on the right. And the sauna’s off the pool area. You can’t miss it.”
“I appreciate your help.”
She waved away my thanks and began to polish the counter industriously as an older woman in a matching shirt walked by. I gathered up the robe and headed off to change.
It was only after my clothes had been stuffed in a locker that I began to wonder what I was doing. Grilling a man about murder in the health-club sauna? What if he was au naturel? I tied the sash securely, reminded of a recurring nightmare where I suddenly found myself naked in a public place. Already a fine sheen of moisture covered my face. Between the day’s impromptu yoga class and now a stint in a hot room sweating out my indiscretions, I’d be toxin-free for years.
I followed the scent of chlorine to the pool area. Half a dozen people were doing laps, their arms moving like fan blades through the water. A man and a woman lounged in a sunken whirlpool tub, steam and bubbles rising all around them. Just past the tub was a door marked Sauna.
“Here goes nothing,” I said to myself, and pulled open the door.
I found myself in a tiny anteroom with benches and hooks for extraneous clothing. Cinching my robe a little tighter, I opened the next door. A blast of dry heat hit me. I was in a dimly lit space about fifteen feet square, with three tiers of cedar-slatted benches going up the wall. A brazier full of glowing rocks was positioned against the far wall. The air was searing and shimmery, making everything blur around the edges.
Three people, a woman and two men, reposed on the benches, with a respectable amount of personal space between them. The woman was wrapped in a towel; her eyes were closed, her face bathed in sweat. One of the men, a big, bald, flabby guy, was sprawled on an upper tier, his towel like a dainty handkerchief across his wide lap. The second fellow was lean, with muscular shins and neatly trimmed facial hair. Bingo.
I took a seat on the slats a body width away. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said in a low voice. “I know this is a little weird. But I didn’t want to take a chance on not catching you before the weekend.”
He flashed me a look. “I’m intrigued.”
So far, so good. “I suppose the questions I need to ask you are kind of personal. There’s no sense my beating around the bush. Can you give me a few minutes?”
“Baby, you got my full attention.” He leaned forward, and I swear I saw the towel move independently of his hands.
I scooted back so fast I almost lost my balance. “Eeeuww! I didn’t mean—aren’t you Bill Atherton?”
“I can be anyone you want.” He leered.
The big guy stirred. “Over here.”
I looked up. He was pale and fleshy, almost two of the lean man pictured in the Dispatch. “You can’t be.”
He sighed. “But I am. You wanna talk, you got three minutes. I’m cleansing.”
I edged over until I was within whispering distance, keeping half an eye on the creep in the towel in case he followed me, and popped up to the top row so I wouldn’t catch any of the full Atherton from below. “You don’t look much like your photo.”
“Why should I? It’s all about marketing. So maybe my picture’s a little out-of-date. It won’t be for long. The club’s got me on a fitness plan that’ll have me lean and mean in no time. Thirty minutes on the elliptical, fifty laps in the pool, then I come in here and let the heat work its
magic. I can feel the toxins just melting away.”
Melting was right—he smelled like a hot brisket on the grill. Keeping my eyes averted, I introduced myself and said, “I wanted to ask you about your partner, Marian Woods.”
“Why?” He threw out the question lazily, without rancor.
“My boss is a suspect in her death. I’m trying to help him out.”
“Loyalty. That’s refreshing in this day and age. I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if it was my boss. That’s why I’m self-employed.”
“So what can you tell me about Marian?”
“May she rest in peace.” He struggled to a sitting position, propping himself up on a dimpled elbow. “Marian was a first-class bitch, pardon my French. She would have ruined me at the rate she was going.”
“Doesn’t that, um, make you a pretty good suspect?”
He waved his fingers. “Not at all. I already talked to the police. I got nothing to hide.” That was undeniable. “She left a paper trail a mile long. Whatever she was up to, I had no part in it.”
“What, exactly, was she up to?”
He shot a glance over at the other two occupants of the sauna, then lowered his voice. “Between you and me, financial investing is a bit of a magic act. Smoke and mirrors. You convince the client you have a crystal ball, and they give you money on faith that you’ll leverage it into more money. Marian was terrific at the convincing part. She was pretty decent at the leveraging, too.”
“And the faith?”
“That was the issue.”
“She was embezzling.”
“We don’t call it that.” He pointed a sausage of a finger at me. “In the investment world, it’s necessary to keep a number of balls in the air at the same time. So long as you end up with the same or greater number of balls in the end than you started out with, that’s acceptable business practice. Just over the last month or so, Marian must have slipped a ball or four into her pocket. A couple of early payouts would’ve brought her whole act crashing down. But I suspect she’d have been long gone by then.”
A bead of sweat rolled down my nose, and I caught it with my terry-cloth sleeve. “Suppose she’d managed to cut and run. Where would that leave you?”
“Smelling like a rose,” he said, rather untruthfully I thought. “I already told you, my books are in order. We had a partnership of convenience. Separate clients. Maybe some bad press for the firm, but you know what they say: any publicity is good publicity.” He checked the Rolex stretched around his fat wrist. “Time’s up. I have a massage with Belinda next. I don’t like to keep her waiting.” He began to elevate himself from the bench, a leviathan breaching the surf. His towel teetered.
“I appreciate this,” I said. Two seconds later, I skidded across the floor and was out the door.
Alison was busy helping a dues-paying member as I escaped through the lobby, so I gave her a big wave on the way out. She flashed me that bright smile and waved back. Really, my son was a lucky guy.
Thinking of Max made me think of Wayne, and a slow, furious burn started in my chest. I’d been heading back to the office on autopilot, like a homing pigeon returning to its nest. Instead, I steered onto the 101 and took the Front Street exit, curving back toward town with the waste-treatment plant on my left.
The lower end of South G was a depressing mix of shabby multifamily housing and sketchy industries, many of them boarded up. Grower’s Delight Indoor Lighting and Water Systems was open for business, with a couple of diesel trucks idling in the lot; from the back of one, a brindle pit bull watched me drive by. But Sheffield’s Building Supplies was dark, its glass door papered over with newsprint, and Esme’s House of Crystals had a four-by-eight rectangle of plywood reinforcing the plate-glass window. A trio of two-story apartment buildings enclosed a small courtyard with a swing set and slide anchored in crumbling asphalt. Front Street branched off just beyond it, zigzagging back toward the freeway and bordering a sweeping expanse of marshy grasslands filled with the rusting hulks of abandoned RVs.
The second house on the right was a down-at-the-heels Victorian with missing roof shingles and peeling farmhouse-red paint. There were six mailboxes on the street, the end one tilting at a crazy angle. I pulled onto the shoulder and hopped out.
The wooden steps groaned under my feet, and the sagging porch was booby-trapped with splintered gaps I was careful to avoid. I pressed the bell, then banged on the door.
After about sixty seconds, a bleary-eyed woman in a pink housedress opened the door, a cigarette dangling from her lips. Brittle blond hair streaked with gray stuck out from beneath a wool beanie. She had a filthy apron tied around her waist and a towel over one shoulder. A bowl of something that looked like muffin batter was cradled in the crook of her arm while she worked it around with a wooden paddle. “Yah?”
“I’m looking for Wayne Briggs. He rooms here, right?”
She took a minute to process my question, one eye wandering up the street while the other fixed me with a sharp look. “Room five, around the back.”
I made as if to head that way, but she called me back. “He ain’t there.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
She thought hard. A small finger of ash from her cigarette fell into the bowl and was incorporated into the batter. “Couldn’t say. People come and go. I don’t keep tabs on ’em.”
I had started down the steps when she said, “He weren’t here yesterday, either. Missed dinner.”
“Is that unusual?” When she looked confused, I said, “Has he missed dinner before?”
“No one passes up Mama Jean’s good food.” She took a deep drag off the cigarette, then was overcome with a racking cough that shook her frame. She caught her breath and took another drag.
“I got a vacancy if you know anyone,” she said, smoke dribbling out of her mouth. “Hundred bucks a week, a hot meal every night. Can’t beat it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, hoping against hope it wouldn’t come to that.
Chapter 23
Where to next? The press was still no doubt staking out the office. Besides, what awaited me there? I couldn’t sell any properties. Or log on to the multiple-listing service. Hell, I couldn’t sell so much as a doghouse without my license. I thought about our new home and felt a stabbing sensation in my stomach. A dismal picture arose of me and Max living out of the VW, or bunking in an efficiency at Mama Jean’s. Hard to say which would be worse.
My phone rang as I sat hunched indecisively over the wheel. It was Gail.
“I took the job,” she said.
“You didn’t.”
“You’re right. They offered it. I said I’d let them know Monday. Fifty-fifty split and my desk would be next to Denise’s.”
“Well, congratulations, I guess.”
“You think I’m giving up? It’s not like that.”
“Whatever you say.”
There was a silence that stretched a bit too long. “You find out anything?” she said at last.
“I talked to some people. Didn’t learn much.”
“Sam, I don’t want to work for Dettweiler. And Coastal’s a hellhole. But I need to work.”
Didn’t we all. “I know.”
“See what you can find out before Monday.” She hung up.
Starting the engine, I pulled into the street, feeling profoundly dissatisfied with my lot. Home Sweet Home was more than a collection of obsolete business machines, canned music, and Everett Sweet’s acerbic personality. It was Gail, with her mop of purple hair and bumbling enthusiasm. Though we’d worked together only a couple of months, I couldn’t imagine the place without her.
I hung a left on Fifth Street, bouncing over a string of potholes that rattled my teeth. The neighborhood had transitioned to ill-kept single-family homes interspersed with the occasional business enterprise. Across the street from the city garbage company, where I’d recently set up an account, I spotted the familiar red and blue barber’s pole of Steve’s Barber ’
n’ Brew.
I pictured Stacy with her rich mane of auburn highlights, living it up in my studio. Having her so close seemed to chisel away at my self-esteem. We shared a gene pool, but she’d somehow ended up with the lion’s share of assets: the sassy confidence that men found irresistible, the bigger boobs. I was lucky to fill a B cup, and that was only when I bent over to tie my shoes.
Then I thought of my own hair, a shaggy mass of burnt-umber spikes. I had time on my hands. Maybe change started right here.
—
Steve Sizemore had converted his freestanding garage into a one-man salon with very few frills but a loyal customer base. That was due in part to his rock-bottom prices and his practice of serving his customers cheap beer from the mini-fridge he kept well stocked. He catered mostly to men—loggers, mechanics, plumbers, and other blue-collar workers whose daily toil didn’t bring them too close to a mirror—but he condescended to style the locks of a few women. I was one of them.
I pushed open the door. The shop appeared deserted. The air inside was warm and humid, smelling of industrial-strength hair products overlaid with just a hint of weed. To my left was the big enameled sink with the half-moon cutout, where Steve tipped back his hapless clients before hosing them down with a nozzle big enough to wash an elephant, then massaging in his peculiarly scented shampoo. I generally skipped that part, not liking the look of the red and brown stains that patterned the chipped enamel. Rough shelves made from plywood boards and milk crates had been built against the back wall, and held all the tools of Steve’s trade: brushes, combs, fearsome-looking straight razors, and an assortment of mystery liquids in a variety of odd-shaped bottles that I suspected had once held sandwich condiments.
“Hello?” I said.
There was a tinkle of broken glass. Steve poked his head out of a curtained alcove.
“Shit, Sam, you scared me,” he said. “I didn’t hear you come in.” He was tall and gawky, with a limp ponytail, dressed today in a Grateful Dead T-shirt and threadbare jeans belted with a piece of string. His forearms were as hairy as his face, which was covered with a grizzled brown mustache and an unkempt beard. I spotted traces of his lunch caught in it. A cross dangled from his left ear. His eyes were rimmed with red, and as he emerged from the alcove he brought with him a waft of sweet tobacco.
A Killer Location Page 14
