Under the Skin

by Vicki Lane

  “Oh, Glory …” I pulled myself around to her side of the hot tub and put my arms around her. My little sister …

  I held her tight, without saying more. Then, after a long moment, “Listen,” I said, “let’s keep an open mind about this Joss. There are ways of finding out if he’s who he says he is.”

  “I know that.” Gloria put her hands to her face. “I’ve already been thinking of who I might call. But …” She gulped, regained her composure, and began again. “But maybe I’d rather just believe he is my lost child.”

  I kept my arms around her and tried to make sense of the situation.

  “I hope that he is, Glory. But let’s go slow here. He says he was adopted at birth by folks who live near New Bern. Just think how many adoptions there are every day. And he says that his birthday is the same as your baby’s but he couldn’t even show you a driver’s license to confirm the birth date. That’s awfully convenient.”

  It had been the first thing I’d thought of. If Joss’s birth date was the same as the date Gloria’s lost baby was born—well, it wouldn’t prove a thing. But it would be a place we could begin.

  Or so it had seemed to me. Joss, however, had shrugged his shoulders and explained, all too glibly, that the doctor who’d treated him for concussion after the car crash had warned him against driving until a return visit showed that it would be safe.

  “I had a couple of blackouts—that was the problem—so I gave my license to a friend to hold for me so I wouldn’t be tempted to drive. Back in Asheville, I can ride my bike to class and to work. It’s no big deal,” he had said.

  Hmm. As Ben would say, the story about the license sounded seriously sketchy. And then there was this Nigel thing. I knew that many women saw their hairstylists as a combination confessor/girlfriend/shrink and were likely to—

  “Glory,” I asked, “did you talk to Nigel about the child? You’re a very wealthy woman and it’s just possible—”

  Gloria stiffened in my arms.

  “You have such a suspicious nature, Lizzy! How would Nigel or Joss know anything at all about my financial situation?”

  She stood and pulled herself out of the hot tub. “We need to go back to the spa. It’s almost one-thirty and the Head to Toe I’ve signed us up for takes over an hour.”

  This conversation is over was the message.

  A full-body exfoliation had sounded to me like a dire medical condition, but I had to admit that being gently scrubbed with a combination of Dead Sea salts and essential oils felt rather nice, though the warm herbal wraps that followed—lengths of some stretchy fabric saturated with more oils and herbs and wrapped around my arms, legs, and torso, and then the whole of me covered in a thermal blanket—had me feeling like a pampered burrito.

  At least my body felt like a burrito. Just now my face was receiving a hydrating treatment. Various liquids were patted on and massaged in and wiped off. There was warm stuff and cool stuff and cucumber slices over my eyes and something that smelled like honey and almonds and something that tingled and something that smelled minty.

  “You want salad with that burrito?” I mumbled to myself.

  “Isn’t this heavenly, Lizzy?” On the table next to mine, my sister was receiving the same full-body treatment. She had booked us into a “couples” room so we could enjoy the experience together but the presence of the two busy massage therapists meant that we wouldn’t be having any awkward conversations about supposed long-lost children.

  “It’s very … different,” I answered, trying to put some enthusiasm into my reply. “I feel … very … relaxed … and clean.”

  Actually, that wasn’t the whole truth. I’m not keen on having a stranger putting hands on me. I also felt a touch claustrophobic, firmly wrapped up and weighed down by the heavy thermal blanket as I was. It was a lot like being at the gynecologist’s, where odd things are done to your body and, because you know it’s in your best interest, you just breathe deep and put up with it rather than run screaming down the hall. It amazed me that people paid for this. But obviously, I was in a minority here.

  Swan, the masseuse who’d been working on Gloria, spoke. “We’re going to take a break before beginning the massage. You two just relax and let your bodies absorb the hydration. We’ll be back in about twenty minutes.”

  I could hear the soft click of the door shutting behind the two women. The clean, glorious sound of a Bach cello suite filled the room, replacing the syrupy-swoony New Age/space music that had been playing.

  Now was my chance. “Glory,” I began, ready to tackle the subject of Joss again, “don’t you think—”

  “I don’t want to think right now, Lizzy. This time is supposed to be for ultimate relaxation. I’m just going to drift away for a bit and so should you. It’ll clear our minds. I promise we’ll have a serious discussion later.”

  There was a yawn and a profound exhalation, then deep, regular breathing. My sister and I are both good at avoiding things, I thought as I pushed aside the memory of the humming and the voice that had been in my head during the séance. Not now, I told myself and allowed the music to sweep through me, the sobbing of the cello—Yo-Yo Ma?—like mental floss through my ears, sweeping my brain clear of all thoughts.

  Buried alive—the grave clothes and the winding sheet clammy with underground ooze; the coins cold on my eyes. Bleak silence but for a slow dripping of some liquid. And the smell, not of the tomb but of honey and almonds and the herbs of the embalmers.

  I twisted from side to side, trying to free myself from the grave and the darkness and the dream. The cucumber slices fell from my eyes and I was awake again, struggling to throw off the thermal blanket that had lost its heat and to divest myself of the mummy wrappings that had grown chill and slimy-feeling.

  Turning my head, I saw that the other massage table was empty.

  “Glory?” I spoke loud enough for her to hear me if she was in the little bathroom that adjoined this room.

  No answer. The cello sang on.

  Moving awkwardly in the oily wrappings, I sat up and called again, louder this time. “GLORY?”

  Still no response. Surely the therapists on the other side of the door should have heard me. Grumbling to myself, I slipped off the table, draped a sheet around my partially wrapped body, and padded to the door.

  Which was locked.

  Chapter 23

  In the Dark

  Saturday, May 26

  I grabbed the doorknob and gave it another savage twist but the door remained obstinately shut. Why in the world would it be locked? That had to be a violation of the fire code, at least. The claustrophobia began to inch its way back into my brain …

  I gave the unyielding door a few stern raps. There must be an explanation for this.

  “Kimberly? … Swan? … Hello? …”

  No answer and my knocking became pounding. In the distance I could hear footsteps hurrying toward me and I pulled the sheet a little closer. A key rattled in the lock.

  “What’s going on? Where are the therapists?”

  The manager, a sandy-haired woman who’d been behind the front desk when we checked in for our treatment, scanned the room as if expecting to find the missing Kimberly and Swan hiding under the massage tables. She shot a concerned glance at me. “Are you all right? Can I get you some water? Maybe you’d better sit down and—”

  “I’m fine,” I assured her, “but where’s my sister?”

  Again there was the sound of hurrying feet and Kimberly and Swan appeared in the doorway, disheveled and out of breath.

  “Oh, my god, I’m so sorry, Ms. Goodweather. We—”

  “Kimberly, this is completely unacceptable!” The manager’s eyes narrowed. “Why was this room locked and where have you been and where is the other client?” Putting her hands on her hips, she waited for an answer.

  “We certainly didn’t lock the door. And we were down the hall in the break room.” Swan was sputtering with righteous indignation as she tried to explain. “
We were there for fifteen minutes and when we started to come back—”

  “We couldn’t get out! We were locked in too.” Kimberly overrode her friend’s words. “Or at least, someone had jammed one of those big supply carts in the doorway and we couldn’t get past it. We ended up crawling out the window. When we were coming around the building to the door, I saw the linens truck driving off. I suppose it could have been them—the driver’s kind of a practical joker … but where’s Swan’s client? Where’s Gloria?”

  We all looked at one another. Swan ducked into the bathroom and came back shaking her head. “Her clothes are still here. So are the robes. She can’t have gone far wearing just wrappings.”

  Everyone snickered except me. Not only was I aware of how unlikely it was that my fastidious sister would be rambling around covered only by a few greasy strips of cloth, I was also aware that Gloria had a stalker. The Eyebrow. If he knew she was here and had somehow—And what about the other one, her buddy, the plastic surgeon—the one Phillip had told me about last night? Could he have—

  “I need to make a call right away.” I turned to head for the bathroom where my clothes and purse were waiting.

  “You can use the desk phone. Sometimes cell reception is a little spotty here.” The manager was holding out a robe for me so I backed into it, dropped my sheet, and peeled off those of my mummy wrappings that hadn’t already dropped off.

  The manager rattled off commands. “Swan. Check all the rooms—bathrooms too. Kimberly, you have a look outside. I’ll call down to the hot tubs, just in case.”

  We were moving down the hall toward the front desk. I noticed that, in spite of that uneven reception, the manager was thumbing her BlackBerry. I figured she was hoping to find Gloria at the hot tubs before I called the law.

  Which was, of course, what I intended to do. Phillip. He would know the quickest way to get things rolling. If I couldn’t get him, I’d call the local police. But I had a feeling it would take a while to get their attention—and could already hear them telling me that they couldn’t file a missing person report when an adult had been missing for less than an hour.

  I was ushered behind the front desk by the manager who was still tapping away at her BlackBerry and frowning at whatever message she was or wasn’t receiving. She pointed out the phone and mashed the button for an outside line, then moved a bit away—almost but not quite out of earshot. This was undoubtedly looking like a publicity disaster in the making for the spa and I sympathized with her.

  Nonetheless, I wiped my oily hands on the fluffy robe and reached for the phone. I had just punched in the first three digits when the front door of the spa flew open to reveal a wild-eyed, sweating Joss.

  “Have you found her?” he gasped and bent over, hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. The bandage on his head had slipped and was almost covering one eye, giving him the look of a demented pirate. “Nigel had a message …”

  I put the phone down.

  “Joss, how did you know Gloria was missing? What does Nigel have to do—”

  He waved off my questions. “Later, just tell me, is she missing?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Is there a cellar or some sort of underground storage around here?” This was addressed to the manager, who had dropped her BlackBerry and was staring openmouthed at Joss. “Nigel said underground. In a box of some sort.”

  A chill ran over me. The dream I’d had back in the treatment room, the dream of waking in the tomb, buried alive—I reached out and grabbed the manager’s arm.

  “Please, just tell us—is there a place like that?”

  She looked at me as if I were as crazed as Joss appeared to be. “The spa was built over part of the old hotel’s basement. But we don’t use it at all. It’s too damp part of the year for storage and they only put stairs to it because there’s some equipment from the old bathhouse rotting away down there. The owners think they’ll eventually haul it out and use it for a display of some kind. But—”

  “Please, just show us the stairs—now.” I was begging—and yanking none too gently at her arm.

  “Okay, but I sure don’t see …” Shaking her head at the strangeness of this whole affair, the manager led Joss and me back down the hall and into a large storage room at the rear of the building. I noticed that Joss’s slight limp had become more pronounced, due, I assumed, to his having run all the way over from the inn.

  “The door’s behind that supply cart.” The manager pointed to a tall, multishelved affair on wheels. Stacks of towels and robes, as well as paper supplies and trays of various bottles and jars obscured whatever was behind the cart but as Joss pushed it aside, a wide white-painted plywood door was revealed.

  “But this door is always locked—only the owners have keys.” The puzzled manager pointed at the cheap padlock hanging open from the hasp. “I don’t understand …”

  “She’s down there—just like Nigel said!” Joss snatched off the lock. The flimsy door opened easily and a dank earthy smell oozed out into the room along with an unseasonal chill.

  The stairs that led down into the gloom were of recent construction, I was happy to see. Unpainted treated lumber, dusty but sturdy.

  “Wait.” I grabbed Joss by the shoulder. “We’re going to need some light. And we need to stay off of that.”

  There in the dust of the top steps I could see footprints—going down and, I was happy to note, coming up. While the manager was fetching some flashlights, I slid a tray of tiny brown bottles off the supply cart. One by one I placed the bottles on a nearby table, then turned the empty tray upside down and set it gently over one of the clearer prints.

  “Let’s just be careful not to step on the tray, all right, Joss? It could be important.” As I spoke, I couldn’t help glancing down at his shoes: pretty much standard running shoes, the kind that would have a characteristic tread. The prints on the stair, I thought, had been made by a shoe with a smoother sole—but a shoe of the same size.

  As we waited for the flashlights, it occurred to me that the robe I had belted around my naked self was not exactly the best garb for descending steep stairs and exploring a long-unused cellar. It also occurred to me that it would be nice to have my gun.

  With a word to Joss, I hurried back to the little room where I’d left my clothes. Throwing off the robe, I pulled on jeans and shirt over my exceedingly wellhydrated body. I didn’t bother with underwear but shoved my feet into my sneakers, grabbed the little snub-nosed revolver out of my shoulder bag, and clipped its holster to my waistband. The loose shirt would cover it and I would be happier knowing that it was there, even if the leaver of the footprints was long gone. And that made me think of the laundry truck one of the therapists had mentioned.

  As I came through the door to the hallway, I almost collided with the manager, who was hurrying back to the storage room.

  “These are all I could find.” She thrust two flashlights at me—one, a Maglite, heavy and black—of the type cops carry—and a smaller headlamp contraption with a maze of elastic bands. “Listen, I’ve got people checking in at the desk I have to deal with. I can’t imagine you’re going to find anything down in that old cellar but you might as well have a look. Swan and Kimberly are searching the grounds for Mrs. Hawkins and I’ll call the Mountain Magnolia to see if, for some reason, she went back over there.”

  Mrs. Hawkins. I’d forgotten about Gloria’s alias and something must have shown on my face for the manager put her head on one side. “Tell me, Ms. Goodweather, is your sister mentally unstable? Because if—”

  Just then a bell rang up front and with a hasty warning to be careful on the stairs, she hurried back to the reception area.

  Though my clothing change had taken less than five minutes, Joss was almost frantic. He had gone partway down the stairs but, realizing that he really couldn’t see anything, had been forced to wait. He reached out and grabbed the Maglite from my hands.

  “I called her name but didn’t get any r
esponse. Maybe …”

  But the maybes were too many and too unpleasant to contemplate. He turned back to make a hurried descent into the old cellar.

  Okay, I thought, hesitating before following him, is this one of those Too Stupid to Live scenarios? Down into the dark basement with this admittedly strange young man in search of my sister—

  My sister. Those two words trumped the hesitation and the better judgment. If she was down there, I wanted to be part of the search. And, as the slightly uncomfortable lump at my waist reminded me, I was armed. Possibly even dangerous.

  Pulling the headlamp onto my head, I realized what a stroke of luck it was that both my hands would be free for my gun. I took it from the holster and, holding it pointed carefully skyward, started down the steps.

  Below me I could see the beam of Joss’s light, dodging crazily around, illuminating a series of brick pillars, assorted barrels and boxes, and more dusty spiderwebs than seemed possible.

  “Joss? How big is this place? Have—”

  “There’s another room back here.” His voice sounded nearby but I could no longer see the beam of his flashlight, just a dim glow beyond another row of pillars. “Look down. You can see kind of a trail in the dust. That’s what I’m following. If she’s here …”

  He was right. The floor was hard compacted clay but it was overlain with a thick layer of dust, just like all those boxes and barrels on either side of me. Keeping my headlamp trained on the trail, just barely discernible as a slight disturbance in the dust, I moved toward the pale light of the room beyond, then slowed to examine my surroundings for any traces of recent disturbance.

  The ceiling was plywood subflooring laid atop new treated-timber joists. I could hear the muffled sound of footsteps coming and going above me, as well as the rush of water in the PVC pipe just above my head. That was today’s world, up there. Down here was from another age. The brick pillars and arches, upon which had rested the grand old hotel, now supported nothing. The framework of the new building floated a foot or more above them, resting on a few utilitarian-looking concrete block columns—ugly behemoths but far stronger than the elegant brick.