How I Spent My Summer Vacation

by Gillian Roberts

  “Quite amazing, is she not?” the statuesque blond woman behind the desk said. “She does that a few times every day.”

  I tried to squelch my guilt at still not getting around to a regular exercise program. Each day, I devise another plan. I’ll walk to school and back, I’ll jog there extra early and shower in the girl’s gym, I’ll go to the Y three times a week, and so forth. And each day, the plan that wins consists of sleeping that extra hour and promising to begin the next day.

  Anyway, today my back hurt too much to climb that imaginary staircase. I expressed my need for a massage. Anytime at all, I said, but soon. “My back is killing me.”

  “Have you been under any tension lately?” she asked sympathetically. I nearly laughed, but it hurt my back. I thought about the last three days, and my ligaments twisted and double-knotted themselves. “I’m a schoolteacher,” I said, instead of even trying to explain. “Finished the term last Friday.”

  “Ah.” She stood up. “That explains everything. And you’re in luck. I’ve been sitting out here for twenty minutes, waiting for my four o’clock. At this point, I consider her a cancellation, wouldn’t you?”

  It wasn’t really a question, but I nodded agreement anyway, and probably, in my mean-spirited and selfish way, would have considered it a cancellation one minute after the hour.

  “If you’ll accept forty minutes instead of a full hour, I’ll reduce the rate.”

  Her name was Greta, she told me as we walked down a door-lined hall. We passed several women having tune-ups—one in red stripes on the treadmill, one in a tropical print leotard on the StairMaster, one in gray sweats doing leg lifts. The wardrobe demands of exercising are an additional hurdle. Do I really need one more area in which to be poorly dressed?

  We passed a cubicle in which a woman was having a pedicure. Then we were at the door that said MASSAGE. And all would be well, all would be well.

  And all was, until we opened the door. Because the table was already occupied by someone—something—its head covered by a bloody towel. A free weight—not particularly large, probably ten pounds at most—was on the floor, along with a dark puddle.

  Greta’s four o’clock.

  Greta screamed and screamed. She was so solid-looking, her hysteria came as a shock. The women in the other section stopped their machines and came over and then they, too, screamed. The pedicure woman walked in like a duck with cotton wads between her splayed toes. She screamed, too.

  The body on the table was silent. Its small, bare feet poked out of the sheet covering the rest of its torso.

  A large white hook on the wall held the clothing that had been discarded in anticipation of a massage. A pink sweat suit—unremarkable except for the square brass rivets that accented each leg and arm. A brass-topped pink cane lay on the floor.

  Poppy’s last fashion statement.

  I, too, would definitely consider this a cancellation.

  Nineteen

  MY THOUGHTS PILED ONE ON top of the other, clashing and competing. I needed an auxiliary head to hold the overflow.

  Women crowded at the doorway, their numbers ever-increasing. I watched with remote horror as a green mudpack cracked and fissured with its wearer’s screams. We surged and withdrew. The massage room was tiny to begin with, and we were all huddled as close to and as far from the table as possible, trying to be near, but to avoid even proximity with the corpse.

  For what felt a very long while, I let my thoughts accumulate without trying to sort them. But she…echoed between my ears. But she’s the murderer. I shook my head. She was the victim. But that doesn’t make any sense. I couldn’t fault that one.

  Why was she dead? Who killed her? Her partner? How would he have gotten into or out of this all-female enclave?

  Wigs. Sweats.

  But the police had the wig. Anybody can get a wig! In that case…who?

  For a second I felt too tired to even consider possibilities. I nearly wept. My back hurt. I wanted to lie down and have somebody press out the pain. I looked at the figure on the massage table almost enviously.

  “Should I call an ambulance?” somebody behind me asked. “Has anybody called?” After a lot of consultation, it appeared we were all better at gaping than at doing something. The questioner was delegated to phone.

  “The police!” I roused myself long enough to call after her. “Call them, too!” I stared at the remains of Poppy Reese again and tried to connect a few synapses.

  Ray Palford’s smooth, newly shaved face intruded.

  Yes, I decided. He was the one. The accomplice who decided to use her and lose her. Or maybe Poppy had never been his accomplice. Maybe Ray Palford and a small buddy had killed one and then the other of the detested Reeses. With both of them gone and no children to challenge his claims against the estate, he’d most likely get what he wanted.

  It made sense, if murder can ever be said to make sense.

  Outside the room, across the hall, thumping music still pounded, encouraging imaginary women to work those muscles. It reminded me of the aerobics class near the entryway. Somebody had to tell Holly.

  Greta suddenly advanced to the table and reached out, lifting a corner of the towel.

  “No!” I said. “Don’t touch anything until the police get here.”

  Greta’s hand opened and the stained terry cloth once again camouflaged the victim. “How is this possible?” she screamed. “In my room! I was here with my last—minutes ago! I was just here! And I never saw her! The police, are they going to think that I did this?”

  “No, of course not,” I said, but I did notice that the rest of the group remained silent and became even wider of eye.

  “I think I know who that is.…” The manicurist, small and curly-haired, had edged to the side of the clump of women. “I could be sure if I could see her fingers.” She walked up to the table, bent over and studied one of the dangling hands. Then she straightened up, smoothed her pink smock and nodded. “Royal Raspberry. Acrylic refills. Just like I thought. My three o’clock.”

  “Holy God,” another pink-smocked employee said. “I gave her a cleansing facial at two. She said she was having her nails done and then a massage.” She backed up, her hand to her mouth.

  Another pink smock spoke. “Her? The red crew cut?” Crew cut? Red?

  The manicurist nodded. “No wig today. I think—I thought the crew cut was kinda kicky. She liked short hair with workout clothes. Always matched hair color and style to her ensemble, she told me. Part of her fashion philosophy.” She blew her nose.

  A crew cut. Then both her hairdos and colors had been wigs. The big dark hair Sasha described in the bar Monday night and the brassy ’do I’d thought a bleach job the next day. The big dark wig in the hotel room on Monday… But she was so short, never to be confused with Sasha.

  “Ohmigod.” One of the bright leotards had now made it to the front of the little crowd. “I thought maybe somebody had a heart attack, and I know CPR, but…ohmigod! What’s that towel…ohmigod! It’s all stained, and that dumbbell, there, it looks smeared with…ohmigod!”

  The free weight’s brushed aluminum surface was gory. It was relatively small and would normally be innocuous-looking, not that difficult to lift and very easy to swing. We didn’t have to search for a Schwarzenegger.

  I heard her from out in the hall. “That’s crazy,” Holly insisted in her deep voice. “I just saw her an hour ago.” She sounded like a very untough child convincing herself that nothing lurked in the night closet. “Had her nails done and wanted me to see the color. She was perfectly—” Then Holly Booker pushed her way through the women and gasped.

  “Are you sure?” I whispered. “Don’t rush to any conclusions. It might not be…” After all, we only had a similar body size and wardrobe in front of us. Until the police arrived, the face and definite identity of the dead woman would remain speculation. Maybe Poppy’s rivets were popular in these parts.

  “Poppy!” Holly cried out when she spied the pink swe
ats on the wall. She walked over and turned them around. “Oh, Poppy! She just showed me this new design. Watermelon Workout, she called it.” And, indeed, on this side there was a big green-edged slice of fruit with brass sequin studs for seeds. “It’s a prototype,” Holly whispered. “One of a kind.” She ran out of steam and stared at her sister, then back at the floor. She pointed down and sobbed.

  For the first time, I noticed a pair of pink gym shoes halfway under the table.

  “See those socks? They match the sweats. She was a genius!” Holly’s voice softened, became almost reverent and definitely heartbroken. “And there’s a gym bag option that—that”—her voice cracked as she sobbed out—“looks like a gigantic watermelon slice!”

  “Everybody stay where you are!” The voice was male and gruff. “Hotel security,” he said. “Police on the way, meanwhile, what’s the problem?”

  Silently, everyone except Greta, who stood mourning the sanctity of her room and her table, stepped back and out, allowing security a free view of precisely what was wrong. I watched his head pivot from the inert form on the table to the bloody free weight, then back up. The gray-brown fabric of his shirt strained across his back as he took a deep breath. He was the man who’d been stationed outside the ill-fated Eastern Suite when I came to retrieve my clothing. I hoped his short-term memory was bleared and that he didn’t remember me.

  He cleared his throat and turned to face the gaggle of women.

  “Everybody here who was here?” he asked. “I mean, nobody left, correct?”

  My eyes roved over the one who knew about the hair, then the manicurist and her client, toes still splayed around cotton. The duo in leotards, the candy cane and the jungle print. The green face and she who applied the gunk to her client. Holly and her aerobics student, both of whom appeared to be in shock. Greta the masseuse.

  “Where’s the one, you remember?” The candy-stripe leotard elbowed the other. “The one doing stretches.”

  “Stretches. Geez, I’ll never get to that now, and I’m so tight. Geez.” She patted her nonexistent stomach.

  “Wasn’t there somebody on the mat?”

  “I was,” a slightly rounded woman said. She wore gray sweats and I remembered having watched her lift her legs.

  The second one nodded rather dubiously. “Yeah, but before you. Somebody else. I remember because I wanted to use it after her, so I was watching how long she took, but my time wasn’t up on the treadmill, so you started. I think she left just before we heard the ruckus.”

  “What did she look like?” I asked.

  Both leotard women’s mouths opened slightly. “Look like?” the one in the red and white repeated, as if it were an incredible question.

  I nodded. I knew they’d get the concept eventually.

  “She needed work. More than leg lifts. I mean she wasn’t gross, but still…”

  “She had dark sweats, plain. Like guys wear, you know?” her friend said.

  “How about age, or hair color, or height?” I suggested.

  They looked surprised and challenged by the questions. “Faded blond, maybe?” candy-striped said. “Maybe not, though. I don’t know. She wasn’t eye-catching. Not feminine. Nothing special.”

  Nothing special and gone. A depressing combination.

  * * *

  The police came, looking perturbed. They herded us into the exercise room so that the forensics team could work on the crime scene. It was surprising how chilly the room felt in the absence of vigorous movement. Getting someone to raise the temperature was our first big challenge.

  Controlling postmurder politics was another problem. Both Greta and Holly claimed stage front. “I found her. My room,” and the like from the former, and, sadly, “My sister,” from the latter. The manicurist and skin care specialist had their moments as well.

  Since the crime appeared to be no more than twenty minutes old, we were all questioned, whether or not we had something to say. I waited my turn with the others. We all seemed to have a postdisaster need to discuss what little we knew of recent events.

  “She was right on the brink of fame,” Holly said. “So excited about the store. Signed the lease yesterday. Just this morning, she said, ‘Everything’s going to be all right from now on, Sis.’”

  Since nobody else seemed to know that the deceased had been a recent widow—so recent that her husband had not yet been buried—nobody else appeared to find her optimistic outlook and time of lease-signing as inappropriate and suspicious as I did.

  “Brave,” Holly added. “Good things were going to happen to her, and she deserved it. She worked her whole life to get somewhere, and had so much bad luck. Her first husband was such a…and this second one…” She shook her head. Mere words could not convey what Jesse had been. “And the accident, too, of course. But now, everything was going to be different. She had a dream and it wouldn’t quit. I ask you, how many people have a vision? A whole look that is theirs? This is given to very few.”

  The women murmured. Our group was taking on the tenor of a camp meeting, but before we canonized St. Poppy of the Rivets, her sister was summoned for her session with the detectives.

  I wondered whether Sis had much to gain from the recent deaths. Somebody should check whether she was heir to the Reese money. I was warming to that when I suddenly stopped dead. There was no way to commit murder while leading an aerobics class in a fishbowl of a room.

  I worried about my turn with the police, gnawed at what might happen, and thereby missed what was actually going on until the leotard twins cleared their throats. “—count you in?” the jungle-printed one asked me.

  “For what?”

  “For Holly’s sister. I mean, we can’t have been here and not do something, act like we don’t know.”

  “Flowers?” her companion said. “From all of us?”

  They looked eager and enthusiastic, so I obviously was the only one who found it somewhat bizarre. Greetings and consolation from the strangers who found your sister’s corpse. “Sure,” I said. Probably, in the face of such random cruelty, we all needed to do something, anything, to feel a bit more in control. Besides, perhaps any comfort, however bizarre, would be welcome.

  “Holly’s a gem,” Greta said. “A treasure. And very close to her sister.”

  “A large bouquet,” the candy-striped leotard said.

  I extracted my share from my ever-thinning wallet. And then it was my turn to be questioned.

  I need not have worried. The police were only interested in one murder, even after I reminded them that the corpse’s husband had been similarly bludgeoned two days earlier.

  “Not with a dumbbell!” one who looked straight out of Night of the Living Dead exclaimed.

  “All the same,” I said, “they’re connected, don’t you think?”

  “Whatever we think, we’ll think. How about you let us do it—the thinking—and you help us do it by answering our questions. Where exactly were you?”

  I kept trying and they kept putting me down, shushing and patronizing me.

  So, finally they knew only what they wanted to know, which was pretty much nothing. “Don’t leave the area yet,” the older one said. “We might need more information.”

  What a laugh. I decided that the indoor plumbing was part of the area, and I made my way to the john. The security guard I’d seen earlier was stationed by the exit near the combination changing room, shower, and bathroom.

  “I just figured out who you are,” he said. “What’s with you and your friend? Some kind of grudge against the Reeses? The police are going to be very interested. You’d better be careful, young woman. Watch your step.”

  “Thanks for your concern. I really appreciate it, but right now, I’d appreciate the ladies’ room even more.” Having further offended him, I left.

  I was tossing the paper towel into the wire basket when I became fully aware of how large and excessively empty the tiled space was. It wasn’t surprising, given the situation, but still, it fel
t unnatural and chilling, as if the absence of sound could also echo off the white tile walls. The facility was probably never crowded, even when the police hadn’t rounded up the few attendees. People did not come to Atlantic City for a healthy getaway. The spas were entertainment centers for wives bored with their husbands’ gambling. Still, the changing room wasn’t meant to be a ghost hall. The showers were empty, the blow dryers still, the benches unoccupied, and the lockers closed.

  It had the drained and unnatural silence of a school at night. And the trash, too. The only sign that life had ever been in here was in the wicker container brimming over with used bath towels. It looked like the wastepaper baskets at Philly Prep each night, another phenomenon that confused me. Our students write so little and yet produce so much trash.

  Maybe those kids grew up to be the people who don’t exercise, but produce countless used towels.

  I am not fond of things that do not make sense, mostly because when investigated, they do make sense, only not the way you wanted.

  I poked a finger into the towels and stirred. A bit of black fabric appeared. I pulled off the top few towels, and then the overlarge pile made sense. It was boosted by a discarded and empty workout bag, plus a warm-up suit. Black, so the dirt didn’t show.

  Basic sweats—was it what the exercise sisters outside had considered a masculine workout ensemble? Worn by the person who was not feminine?

  I held up the pants. I could have worn them. Ditto for the top.

  Not that I was thinking of taking them, you understand. Particularly not after I noticed the wet splat on the front, or after I’d touched it, to find out what it was, and found out that it was blood.

  Fresh blood that I bet would test out to be Poppy’s type. I dropped the sweats and took several deep breaths. I looked around, double-checking that my impression of emptiness was accurate. I tiptoed toward the bathroom stalls and checked the open portions at the bottom of each. And then stood sideways and looked through the slats for shadows crouching on toilets.

  There were none. There was nobody in the showers. I was alone. I breathed slightly more easily.