The Case of the Unhealthy Health Club

by David Staats

  His annoyance at the junk and disorder burst into sudden anger. He grabbed the can he was touching, and at the same time thrust his posterior against the treadmill with all his might. It tilted away from him, there was a crash on the other side of it, but at least Culler now had room to move. He came out from where he was, circled around the room using his clear pathway, and peered into the chaos and jumble. Dark and shadowy was his view. At least, however, that groaning no longer sounded. Whatever was causing it wasn’t worth investigating any further.

  He went out of the storage room and began spraying the perfumed disinfectant in the open area, waving the can around with his arm held high. A moment later there was a boom like soft thunder, and cool air began to whoosh out of the round vents in the ceiling. Culler moved over a few steps so as to be in the direct path of a stream of cool air, which felt nice; but as often occurs when the system first starts up after having been off for some time, there was a stale note in the air. He worked his shoulders to loosen his shirt and feel even cooler, and as he did this, he checked himself out in the wall of mirrors across the room. He was not one of those muscle-bound body builders, but a fit, athletic-looking guy. Yet he was proud of the fact that he could press his weight, 185 pounds, over his head and do ten reps.

  Shifting his gaze just slightly, he observed in the mirrors the young woman who was jogging on the treadmill behind him. The way her hair swayed and her glutes pumped made a pretty little symphony of motion. Letting go of his enjoyment of that kinetic music, he sprayed the air some more, but left off this also after a short time. With the air conditioning running, freshening the air was less needful. It seemed as if for the moment, everything that needed doing had been taken care of. The club was not crowded, the AC was going, and there were no urgent problems. Culler took advantage of the quiet moment to go out and move his car. He could not leave it where it was for his whole shift or he would get a ticket.

  When he re-entered the health club, the little bald guy was standing at the sign-in counter. “Where were you?” he said in a tense voice. “You need to come and look at the sauna.”

  “It’s working okay, isn’t it?” said Culler. The bald guy just stared at him stupidly and repeated, “You need to look.” Culler started off towards the men’s locker room. The bald guy followed right behind him. “Doin’ okay?” said Culler brightly to one of the businessmen who was resting between sets.

  Culler opened the door to the men’s locker room and stood back to let the bald guy precede him, but the bald guy stopped short and shook his head. Culler shrugged and went through the doorway, stretching his well-muscled left arm back and pressing the door to keep it open for the bald guy.

  In the locker room, the AC had not as yet dispelled much of the peculiar odor that had hung in the air that morning. A few quick strides brought both men to the sauna. It was a smallish sauna, designed for two persons, about four feet wide by three and a half feet deep. A tiny window in the door at eye height allowed one to peep inside, but nothing could be seen because the interior light was not on.

  Culler first looked at the power switch on the side of the sauna. Of course it was on; he’d forgotten to turn this one off Friday afternoon, too. The temperature gauge read 190 degrees, which was maybe a little high, but not out of the range of reasonableness. “Temp’s okay,” said Culler.

  The little man said nothing, but pointed with his forefinger at the door to the sauna. Culler reached to the side of the sauna and flicked on the light switch. He opened the door. A flood of strong odor rolled out of the sauna like water through a dam burst. It was the smell that was pervading the fitness center, a smell, pungent and slightly sweet, of roast meat. Sitting on the bench in the sauna, slumped over and leaning against the wall, was the apparently cooked, naked corpse of a man. Its skin was drawn, as if the skin and what had been inside it had shrunk; its color was reddish-brown, except that the face had a bluish tinge. It had some resemblance to an enormous turkey that had been left in the oven hours too long. Culler immediately drew back and shut the door.

  “Oh, my God,” he said. “It’s Richard Hargrave.” Culler kept his eyes fixed on the little bald man, who had a small, ironical smile of satisfaction on his face.

  “I think you’d better call somebody,” said the bald man.

  “I’m gonna call an ambulance,” said Culler. “You’ll have to stay, since you discovered the body. Everybody else has to leave.” He went out to the exercise area and as he was proceeding to the reception desk and its telephone, shouted that the club was closing.

  He called 911 and when the operator answered, hesitated. He found that he wasn’t sure what to ask for. An ambulance would be useless, and the idea of involving the police made him nervous. “Sorry!” he blurted, “my mistake,” and he hung up. He called his boss, Elizabeth MacCreedy.

  “Hello. Is that you, Blake?”

  Caller ID must has shown her that the call was from the health club. “Yes,” he said. After the briefest pause, he gave her the news bluntly. “Richard Hargrave is dead in the sauna.” There was silence on the other end of the line, much longer than he had expected. “I’m not sure what to do,” he said finally.

  “Richard’s in New York,” she said. “If this is a joke, it’s in very poor taste.”

  “It’s not a joke. I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I’m coming right down. Have you called 9-1-1? Call 9-1-1.” She hung up.

  Now he had to call 911 again. They probably had caller ID, too. They would know that he had just called, and his calling again to report a death would appear strange. His boss wouldn’t get there for some minutes. He walked away from the sign-in counter and walked around the various machines in a labyrinthine path.

  Clenching his jaw, he returned to the sign in desk and made the call. Instead of asking for an ambulance, he simply reported that a dead body had been found. Gave the address. Hung up.

  Two minutes later, a police officer came in. As he opened the door, the distant wail of a siren could be heard.

  “Got a report of a dead body,” said the officer to Culler, who was sitting on the high stool behind the sign-in counter.

  Culler took him back to the sauna. “Has the body been disturbed?” asked the officer. Culler shook his head. “Has anything been moved?”

  “No,” said Culler.

  “That large silver bowl – was that there?”

  “Nothing has been touched,” said Culler.

  The officer spoke into a squawk box he wore on his right shoulder. He took out a small notebook and began to question Culler.

  “Was the the sauna on when you first discovered the body?” asked the policeman of Culler.

  “Yeah. It must have been on all weekend. At least I didn’t turn it on, and I opened up the place.”

  Two emergency medical technicians (EMT’s) arrived. They and the policeman had a debate about whether the EMT’s should examine the body to confirm death. They decided that the man was so obviously dead that it wasn’t worth having the EMT’s disturb the scene. They would wait until after the police photographer had documented the scene.

  The policeman turned his attention back to Culler. “How about the lights, in the locker room, in the sauna?”

  “I turned on the lights in the locker room when I opened up. I was in a hurry and didn’t check the sauna. When that guy brought me to it, the light in the sauna was off,” said Culler.

  “What guy?” asked the policeman, appearing surprised.

  Culler told him about the man who had brought the body to Culler’s attention.

  More policemen arrived.

  Elizabeth MacCreedy came in. The policeman stopped her. “He’s my ex-husband,” she said.

  “You can look through that little window in the door,” he said, but don’t touch the door. She peered in, standing on her tiptoes. “Oh my God! He looks horrible,” she said. “Is that really Richard?”

  “Are you not sure, Ma’am?” asked the policeman.

  “No,
it’s Richard,” she said. “He just looks horrible.”

  “Alright, Ma’am, let’s stand back and clear the scene.”

  Altogether it took two and a half hours for the ambulance personnel and the police to complete their work. The police questioned Blake Culler, Elizabeth MacCreedy, the man who had found the body, and Vanessa Hargrave, who, as the dead man’s wife, had been notified by an officer, inasmuch as Elizabeth hadn’t wanted to do it.

  In leaving, the senior officer, who identified himself as Lt. Wisdom, told Elizabeth that there were no signs of foul play, and the medical examiner had found no external injuries to the body. It appeared to have been a natural death, a heart attack. There would be an autopsy and a check of Hargrave’s medical history, but for now, it was being treated as a non-suspicious death.

  After the body had been wheeled out on a gurney, and all the police and medical people had left, only Culler, MacCreedy, and Vanessa remained. A strange, silent thrumming seemed to pervade the health club, like an invisible vibration. Culler was sitting on a bench, his shoulders slumped and his head bent, staring at the floor. Vanessa was pacing a short course, back and forth, back and forth, as if her body were an encumbrance, and she did not know what to do with it. “Oh, Richard, Richard,” she said. “I didn’t get to say good-bye to you.” She picked up a dumbbell from the rack that was near her and threw it. It landed with a thud on the carpet and skidded into a treadmill with a loud crash.

  She turned and stared defiantly at MacCreedy, who was for the moment uncertain how to respond. Getting no reaction from MacCreedy, Vanessa turned another thirty degrees and stared at Culler. He wasn’t even looking at her, but was staring at the floor. “Don’t feel bad, Blake,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Culler said, unenthusiastically, “Right.” He let out a sigh. “It was just a bad coincidence.”

  MacCreedy spoke up from behind the sign-in counter. “If you’re going to die, don’t do it unattended in a public place. The man told me if Richard had had a heart attack at home or when people were around, they wouldn’t have had to do all this rigmarole investigation.”

  “Oh, that’s what you’re concerned about,” barked Vanessa, “an inconvenience.”

  “You don’t have to get huffy with me,” said MacCreedy. “You knew when you married him that he was thirty years older. It can’t be a real shock ….” She apparently did not say all that she was thinking. After pausing, she went on, “It’s no use in tying to put blame on somebody,” said MacCreedy. “He was old … although now I think of it, I’m the same age.” She became pensive. “Maybe 58 is not that old. If you hadn’t fed him so much champagne … right before he went into the sauna, maybe he wouldn’t have had a heart attack.”

  “That wasn’t me – that was Mort Golden.” Vanessa said coldly. She turned away from MacCreedy.

  “Oh we know you,” said MacCreedy. “No matter how you have to twist things, it will be everybody’s fault except yours.”

  Vanessa seemed not to react. She sat down on the floor, facing away from both MacCreedy and Blake Culler. Her shoulders were hunched forward and she kept quiet.

  Chapter 4. Where there’s a will, there’s a delay

  I always wear dresses because my left leg is deformed. I can’t straighten it out all the way, and the leg and especially the foot are twisted outward. If I wear slacks, it’s obvious and looks really weird. So I always wear dresses, but not tight sheath dresses or anything like that, but pleated dresses that go below the knee and have lots of room for my odd, limping gait.

  Coming back home after nine months in the big city, I saw Canterbury with new eyes. After living with all that noise, sirens at all hours of the day and night, the dirt, litter, pollution, and the crime of life in the big city, I was happy to return to Canterbury. I had been born and raised here, and had attended Martel University, and yet, until I came back after having been away at law school, it was almost as if I had never seen the place.

  My grades in my first year of law school had been good, but my law school was not one of the “top tier,” and as a first-year student, I was not in demand by the big law firms in the city. But I was happy to get a summer clerkship working for Walter Dure, who had a good reputation in Canterbury. Some of my classmates couldn’t get any job in law and had to wait tables or work in construction – even one classmate who had better grades than I did. So I was very lucky to have a hometown to come back to, and I could live with my parents and save money and work for a well regarded lawyer in the town where I might even eventually practice!

  I remember my first day. My mom dropped me off at the corner of Milton and Court Streets, just a few feet from the Law Office of Walter Dure. I made my way to the door and up the two steps and paused before I opened it. It was a kind of old-fashioned door with little panes of glass so that my reflection was partitioned into sections. I got my face centered in one pane and I thought, your hair is nice and your face is clean, and you look as good as you’ll ever look, so go on in. I had got the job by mail and a telephone interview, so Mr. Dure had never met me, and of course I was nervous.

  The woman at the desk in the waiting room had blonde hair and was pretty. I told her my name and why I was there. “Oh, you’re Christine!” She stood up and shook my hand. “So nice to meet you.” She was really nice, she didn’t act embarrassed about my eye or the way I walked. “I’ll take you back to Mr. Dure and in the meantime, while you’re talking with him, I’ll get your papers ready, the I-9 and all that.” She picked up the telephone. “Walter? Your summer clerk, Ms. Bonneville is here. Should I bring her back? … Okay.”

  I caught my first glimpse of Mr. Dure from the hallway, over Kara’s – that’s the name of the secretary – shoulder as she stood in the doorway, announcing me. He looked serious and severe as he listened without a smile to what Kara was saying. She turned and left and I went into the office as confidently as I could. He stood up and gestured to one of the chairs in front of his desk and told me to have a seat. I couldn’t tell whether I was making a good or a bad impression. What I noticed was that he had striking yellowish eyes, or I suppose light hazel is the better term, and that he somehow gave the impression of being as smart as, maybe smarter than, my law professors. He asked me questions. How did I like law school? what was my favorite course? He listened, not saying much, but just nodding his head. The last thing he said to me I remember quite clearly: He said, “You are either one tough cookie, or a naïf who is in for some hard sledding.” I didn’t know what he meant by that and I was too intimidated to ask.

  * * *

  On Tuesday, the week after the Fourth of July, my fifth week working for Mr. Dure, he called me into his office and told me he would be interviewing a client. He wanted me to observe and take notes. I felt excited and happy that he was letting me help with a real client. “Our client is Elizabeth MacCreedy,” he told me. “She runs a small business, the University Health Club. I helped her once before in a dispute she had with a contractor. I saw in the news last night that her former husband died over the weekend. However, I don’t know why she wants to see me today.”

  A few moments later, Kara showed a woman into Mr. Dure’s office. He stood and shook hands with her and right away introduced me. “This is my associate, Ms. Bonneville.” I was sitting off to the side where I could observe without being in the way. I smiled and said “Hello,” but I didn’t stand so as not to appear too awkward. Ms. MacCreedy gave me a dismissive nod, rather cold, I thought. Sometimes I get that reaction. But then I thought, probably she is sad because her ex-husband just died. She wore lots of jewelry: rings, bracelets, and drop earrings sparkling with diamonds.

  Mr. Dure offered condolences.

  “Well,” said Ms. MacCreedy, “he was her husband at the time he died. Although I am surprised he went off so easily. When I had him, Richard was quite a vigorous man.”

  I had seen enough of Mr. Dure by this time to recognize that he didn’t have to pretend to look sad. After a moment
of quiet, he said, “What can I help you with this morning?”

  Ms. MacCreedy took a thick envelope out of her purse and slid it across the desk. She had a set of thin golden bracelets on her right wrist, and they made a kind of clinking, scratching noise that gave me goosebumps as they rubbed against the top of the desk. When Mr. Dure picked up and opened the envelope, I could see that it was one of those legal document envelopes, made of heavy paper to look like vellum. On the front it had those fancy old English letters “Last Will And Testament.” As Mr. Dure opened the envelope and took out the document it contained, she explained. “After he remarried, he had a new will done. He gave a copy to me and one to her.”

  “You’ve read it then?” asked Dure.

  “Yes, but I want you to look at it.”

  It was amazing how quickly he read the will. He flipped over the first three pages in a matter of seconds. He read the fourth page closely, and flipped quickly through the rest. “As I read it,” he said, “you get one million dollars, as do John and Stephanie. The residual goes to Vanessa. Is that how you understood it?”

  “That’s what I thought. So, when do I get the money?”

  Mr. Dure shrugged his shoulders. “That, of course, is uncertain,” he said. “A probate estate will have to be opened, assets inventoried, debts taken care of … probably lots of things done before any cash can be distributed.” He flipped to a certain page in the will. “I see that he has appointed one Mortimer Golden as the executor. Do you know him?”