The Case of the Unhealthy Health Club

by David Staats

  Golden was Chief Technology Officer of the Technology Licensing Office, second in command under Richard Hargrave. Subject is married. He and his wife, Heather, had a daughter who was killed in a car accident six years ago. After daughter’s death, subject quit attending church. Wife became withdrawn, stays mostly at home, except when subject travels out of town and she accompanies him. Lives in an upscale neighborhood. Volunteers as teacher of English as a second language.

  Lastly, there was the sheet on Blake Culler:

  Grew up in Canterbury. Family well-to-do. Attended and graduated from Martel University. Several sources say he was wild during high school, and was a playboy during and after college. Lots of old girlfriends around town. Has two DUI’s, will probably lose his license if he gets a third.

  I had read the last two sheets very quickly and wasn’t sure that I had taken in everything, but I did not want to keep Mr. Dure waiting, so I laid down the last one and looked up. He seemed to be expecting a comment from me. Instead of saying something subtle and insightful, I blurted, “It’s interesting, but I don’t see anything that makes a difference.”

  Mr. Dure nodded slowly as his fingers massaged his lower lip. After a moment he said, “Alright, let’s go talk to Mortimer Golden, find out how much the net estate is worth, and see if he’ll corroborate the story which Ms. MacCreedy told us about Vanessa feeding extra champagne to Mr. Hargrave.”

  * * *

  Sloan Hall, where the Technology Licensing Office of Martel University was located, was only nine blocks from Mr. Dure’s office, and on this warm Wednesday afternoon he had decided that we should walk there. I can do a walk of nine blocks. He had not had Kara make an appointment because, he said, he wanted a candid view of the place where Mr. Hargrave had worked and the people he had worked with. If he was going to seriously look into this suicide theory, the workplace would be a good place to get some hints as to Mr. Hargrave’s mental state in the weeks before his death; and he particularly wanted to talk with Mortimer Golden, who also worked there.

  Sloan Hall was an old building, but the university had fixed it up. Inside there were new wooden doors with modern lever handles and glass panels beside them.

  We entered the Technology Licensing Office unannounced. Mr. Dure walked coolly to the receptionist’s desk and handed her his card. I hadn’t noticed him taking his card out. “I’d like to see Mr. Golden,” he said.

  The receptionist was a heavy-set elderly woman. “Have you an appointment?” she asked in a foreign accent.

  Mr. Dure shook his head. “No.”

  “I will check if he can see you.” She got up and, taking Mr. Dure’s card with her, went down the hallway that was behind her desk. She was wearing pumps with thick, inch and a half heels, and her heavy treads made audible thuds despite the carpeting. I could see her enter an office to the left.

  I tried to hear what was said, but only a vague, indecipherable mumbling echoed down the hallway. Mr. Dure stood with his hands behind his back, looking about, moving only his head and his eyes.

  She came thudding back down the hallway, her movements surprisingly energetic. “Ja, he will see you.”

  She led us down the hall to Mr. Golden’s office.

  A placard next to the door said, “Mortimer Golden Chief Technology Officer.” We entered a not-too-large office to see a man just getting out of his chair. The man was just about my height. He had a constrained manner as he reached across his desk to shake Dure’s hand, and then mine.

  “Please, please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing with an open hand towards the chairs in front of his desk. He waited until we sat before he sat also. “How do you like our offices?”

  “Well appointed,” said Mr. Dure. He introduced himself, told Mr. Golden that he was defending the health club in Vanessa Hargrave’s suit. “This is where Richard Hargrave worked?”

  Golden’s face lost its smile momentarily, and he acknowledged that, yes, Rich had worked here, too bad he’s gone, his office is the one just next door, a larger office. It’s very sad. His face brightened again. “But we’ll carry on. Rich would have wanted us to.”

  I noticed a bright, colorful porcelain vase on the bookcase just opposite me against the wall. “That’s a really cool vase!” I said. I hadn’t meant to interrupt, it just kind of popped out.

  “Oh, that,” said Mr. Golden. “Do you like it?” He got out of his chair and went to the bookcase. “A Chinese company we did a deal with gave me that.” He took it from its stand and brought it to me. “They told me it’s from the Ch'ing Dynasty, but it’s probably a fake.”

  He handed it to me. I wasn’t expecting that, and as I took it it slipped and fell. My left arm is uncoordinated sometimes – it’s not like my leg, but just a little weak. The vase fell into my lap and fortunately, my dress caught and cushioned it, so no harm was done. I was embarrassed, and just pretended to admire it quickly and then with both hands carefully handed it back to him.

  He smiled. “No worries,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it’s a fake. You know how the Chinese operate.”

  I think he was telling a fib to be polite, because I noticed that he took the vase back carefully using both hands. He replaced the vase on its stand and sat again.

  “Fortunately,” he said, “we’re doing okay now. Especially as I’m taking over the CEO position on account of … what happened to Rich.” His voice trailed off. He kept his left hand below the desktop, out of sight. “The lawsuit,” he said. “That’s been a difficult matter for me. The beneficiaries of the estate had differing interests. John and Stephanie didn’t want to, in effect, sue their mother, whereas Vanessa was definitely going to pursue the claim. So the question was, should the estate join the suit? Put me in a tough spot.”

  “I can see,” said Mr. Dure.

  “Vanessa, as the residuary legatee, would have gotten whatever the estate got, but, as plaintiff in her own name, she could get the whole recovery anyway, so the estate’s joining the suit would have just been extra expense and delayed the final distribution. The estate decided not to join.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Dure. “I heard there’s a life insurance policy.”

  “Another headache,” said Golden. “The insurance company is investigating whether they can deny paying on the policy on account of the suicide clause. Even though the estate is not a beneficiary, the estate is the policy owner, so I have to get involved with this as well.”

  “Apparently Mr. Hargrave bought this policy shortly before he died. Would you know why?”

  “Yeah, sure. He was going on this big trip to Europe. Thought it could be dangerous, airplanes, terrorist attacks, general hazards of travel.”

  “When the police came to the health club that Monday when Mr. Hargrave’s body was discovered, they impounded a champagne bucket that was found in the sauna. Would you know anything about that?”

  Golden laughed good-naturedly while shaking his head. “You got me. I know nothing about it.” He tossed both hands in the air, palms up, and let his wrists fall back onto the arm rests of his chair.

  “I understand that you were the one who ordered the champagne.”

  “Correctamundo. I sent that young fellow, what’s his name? Blake! Right. I sent him next door for the champagne for our little celebration.”

  “And he brought over two bottles in a champagne bucket?”

  “Right.” Golden dipped his head in a confirming nod.

  “Did you keep track of the whereabouts of the champagne bucket?

  “Pfft! Why would I?”

  “Yes, you’re right. When was the last time – strike that – where was the champagne bucket when you last saw it?”

  “To the best that I can recall,” Golden closed his eyes and tilted his head back, then addressed Mr. Dure again, “Elizabeth was closing up, and she sent that Blake fellow to do something, and to help out, I wheeled the cart up to the front door. The champagne bucket was on that cart when I left.”

  “Could there possibly ha
ve been two champagne buckets?”

  “I didn’t see two. I suppose there could have been a dozen around the club somewhere, but I only saw the one.”

  “What kind of work does this office do?”

  “We license technology to business and industry, technology that our faculty develop.”

  “Ah! I see. So you probably have a legal background.”

  “No, not really. I’m the technology guy. I understand – more or less! – the technology and I try to imagine practical applications for the various inventions made here and search out potential licensees.”

  Mr. Dure said, “You seem quite knowledgeable about legal matters concerning Mr. Hargrave’s estate.”

  “Entirely second hand. I hired Joe Cordrey to represent the estate and I rely on him for the legalities. Joe knows you, by the way. Speaks very highly of you.”

  “That is kind of Joe. He is a good lawyer. In connection with that suit that Vanessa Hargrave has brought against the health club owned by Mr. Hargrave’s former wife. I have to look into the suicide question because if that were to have been the case, then the health club would not be responsible for his death.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Golden, nodding.

  “I understand that you had known Mr. Hargrave for some time.”

  “That’s right. We worked together for a number of years.”

  “What do you think? Could he have committed suicide?”

  “My opinion? It was a heart attack, just like the medical examiner said. I think the insurance company is trying to avoid paying out three million smackers.”

  “In the weeks or months before he died, did Mr. Hargrave seem to be worried or depressed?”

  Mr. Golden emitted a thin, high-pitched laugh. “Depressed! Who’s depressed? Not Rich – that I could tell … but who knows?”

  Mr. Dure thanked Mr. Golden for his time and we left.

  * * *

  The next day, we drove over to see the county medical examiner, a Dr. Myron Crenshaw. Dr. Crenshaw was the one who had examined the body at the health club. Because the death was an unattended death occurring in a public place, Dr. Crenshaw had ordered the body to be taken to the medical examiner’s office, and there he conducted an autopsy. We visited him not at the medical examiner’s office, but at the doctor’s private practice.

  Dr. Crenshaw was in his early 50’s and super skinny. He must have been about five feet, eleven, and only about 140 pounds! His elbows looked like bulges in the middle of skinny sticks.

  “Come in, Walter,” said the doctor, when Dure appeared in the doorway of his office. “Just take that stuff and put it over on the window sill,” he said, as Mr. Dure approached the chair in front of the doctor’s smallish, gray metal desk. There was no other chair for me. Dr. Crenshaw wheeled his chair around the desk and gave it to me. I protested, but he insisted, saying he sat too much anyway. He stood at his desk and raised one leg to rest his foot flat on the top of his desk, and he wrapped his skinny arms around the tightly folded leg and rested his chin on his kneecap, staring at Mr. Dure intently. He looked like an India-rubber man.

  “Yes, that was an interesting specimen!” said the doctor when Dure had broached the examination of Richard Hargrave’s body. “‘Precocious mummification’ it’s called in the literature. I hadn’t seen a case like that before.” He put his leg down and took a fat volume from a bookcase. He consulted a page, then tossed the book on top of a file cabinet behind his desk.

  “I’m interested in the cause of death and how certain you are of it,” said Mr. Dure.

  “Myocardial infarction, 99%,” said the doctor. He straightened up and gestured with his arms. “Ninety-nine percent only because I never say one hundred percent.”

  “I understand there was no evidence of trauma or external injury,” said Mr. Dure.

  “Nope. None.”

  “How about poison, drugs … ?”

  “Ah! I had those tests run. It was a bit of a challenge because the blood had substantially coagulated or congealed. But there was enough blood in the heart and liver that we could do tests, and there was remaining vitreous humor, probably because the eyelids were closed. We checked for all the common illicit drugs, and, based on his medical records, for his prescriptions. There was nothing remarkable.

  “So how do you know it was a heart attack?”

  “Okay, his age and general physical condition. The purplish discoloration of the face and neck. The fact that he was in a sauna, which would have stressed the heart. And … the absence of any other cause. That’s basically it.”

  “Was there evidence of coronary heart disease?”

  “Very little plaque build-up. There was some. In fact, except for the unusual, desiccated condition of the corpse, this was an unremarkable specimen.”

  “You didn’t find evidence of a clot obstructing a coronary artery?”

  “No. Probably the heart attack was caused by an arterial spasm brought on by the stress of the sauna on an older body.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nope. Everything was consistent with a myocardial infarction, and nothing was inconsistent with a myocardial infarction.” That was the doctor’s last word on the case.

  “What do you think we should do next in this case?” Mr. Dure asked me. I had by now figured out that when he would ask me such questions, he wasn’t trying to get information from me; he was trying to give me instruction in how to practice law. First, he summarized the state of the case.

  He could win this case by showing that Mr. Hargrave died of natural causes – but that would entail the difficult task of proving a negative: that no negligence on the part of his client could be considered the trigger for those natural causes. He could win the case by showing that Mr. Hargrave had committed suicide – but that would cause his client’s children to miss out on $2 million in insurance proceeds. He also could win the case by showing Mr. Hargrave had been murdered. To my mind, he then got carried away. As long as he was toying with remote possibilities, he said, he might win the case by showing that Hargrave wasn’t dead, that the mummified thing found in the sauna wasn’t Hargrave, and that Mr. Hargrave could be found sipping a daiquiri on a beach in Rio. It would be a neat insurance fraud. Maybe he should suggest the possibility to the eager beaver Benton Wright. He began to toy some more with that last idea. Maybe Hargrave actually had left the health club when Vanessa said he had. Maybe Hargrave and Vanessa were working a scam together. Stranger things had happened, he said … . but I think he was just joking with all of this.

  I started to get up and leave, but just then Mr. Wright called. Mr. Dure put him on the speaker phone, too. He motioned to me to stay seated.

  “Have you got anything for me?” asked Mr. Wright.

  Dure reflected briefly. “I suppose so,” he said, “but it’s not what you want to hear. All the testimony which I have gathered indicates that Hargrave was not depressed before his death. I realize this is not dispositive of your theory, but having the bad news with the good will keep you from being embarrassed.”

  “It’s not uncommon for depressed persons to put on a front,” said Mr. Wright. “I appreciate what you’ve said, but in light of what I’ve found out, I’m not discouraged.”

  Mr. Dure did not have to pry to get Mr. Wright to talk. He seemed like he was bursting to tell someone of his discovery.

  “So I’m interviewing people too, and I talk to this guy, Michael Wentworth, a little bald guy, he was the one who discovered the body. And he says that when he first went to the sauna, the light in the sauna was off. But Hargrave’s body was in there, right? So now, why would Hargrave sit in the sauna with the light out?” Mr. Wright gave Mr. Dure the briefest pause in which to offer an answer to this puzzle. “Because,” Mr. Wright said, “he didn’t want anyone to know he was in there and maybe discover him in time to revive him. It fits with what I’ve been saying. The guy committed suicide. He intentionally sat in the sauna with the light out so that he would not be discovered until he
was dead.”

  Mr. Dure twisted his mouth slightly and rolled his eyes. But to the phone he said, “It’s not a totally ridiculous interpretation.”

  “Oh, and,” Mr. Wright added, “Wentworth said that the health club guy … Culler, yeah, Culler’s his name, he turned the light on. So that excludes the possibility that the light burnt out over the weekend.”

  “You are diligent,” said Mr. Dure.

  “Right,” said Mr. Wright. “So, I’d say things are looking good for us to work together and present a suicide defense.”

  “At present, I still consider that a viable theory,” said Mr. Dure.

  “Good, good, good,” said Wright. It sounded like he heard more encouragement in Mr. Dure’s statement than I did.

  After hanging up the phone, Mr. Dure remained pensive for some minutes. “A different construction might be put on those facts,” he said.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, through the good offices of Mr. Kniffe, Mr. Dure had had the champagne bucket forensically examined. When the report came back, Mr. Kniffe came over and walked us through it. “This champagne bucket is silver plated. It has a large capacity, 6.73 quarts when brim full. The name ‘Dom Dormeur’ is engraved on one side. In the engraving, particles of fabric had been caught. These were of several kinds. According to the analysis, one was a cheap cotton which had been dyed brown. Then there were what they call meta-aramid and para-aramid fibers. These are apparently heat-resistant fibers. Common trade names are Nomex and Kevlar, although there are others. And lastly, there were tiny particles of silicone.”

  “Heat resistant?” I said. “Maybe that ties in with the sauna.”

  Mr. Kniffe ignored me.

  “On the smooth part of the bucket,” he said, “that is, where there is no engraving, they found – you’ll never guess – smudges of beef fat. Traces of beef fat were also found in the engraving.”

  “Plainly,” said Mr. Dure, “someone put that bucket in the sauna. It did not get there by itself. Someone handled it, yet there are no fingerprints. With this new evidence, we can discard the hypothesis that the bucket was wiped after it had been placed in the sauna. Rather, it appears that someone must have worn gloves, and apparently, rather special gloves. We need to find out what kind of gloves are made of cotton and those hi-tech fibers. It is odd, however, that some cheap cotton would be used with those expensive fibers. Probably someone first wiped the bucket with a rag, to get rid of any fingerprints, and thereafter, only handled it with gloves. Taking into account the silicone and the beef fat, I am going to propose that these were gloves made for, and that somebody actually used them for, cooking.”