Murder at the Spa (21 page)

“Now grab my ankles.”

Reaching into the warm water, he took hold of her ankles.

“Now pull.”

Jerry pulled her ankles gently. She slid forward.

“No good,” she said, returning herself to her former position. “You’re being too gentle. Let’s try it again—this time for real. Jerk my ankles, hard. And then push them up into the air so that my head is forced underwater. As if you were forcing me to do a backward somersault.”

His hands tightened around her ankles. “Okay, here goes.”

Charlotte felt her legs being yanked forward. Then she felt her hamstrings stretching as Jerry pushed her legs over her head. The warm, fizzy water rushed into her nose, her mouth. A hand was holding her head under. Try as she might, she was unable to get her head above the surface. Then she felt nothing.

She had blacked out.

10

“Reflex vagal inhibition,” Jerry said. “I should have known,” he added, talking as much to himself as to her.

“What?”

He looked over at Charlotte. “In the blood vessels in the neck”—he took his hand off the wheel to point to the side of his neck—“there are sensors that regulate blood flow. When the head is jerked back like that, it sets the sensors off. The sensors send a message along the vagus nerve to the heart—that’s the nerve that regulates the heartbeat. That’s why you blacked out: reflex vagal inhibition.” He shook his head. “Jesus!”

Charlotte glanced at him. The expression on the face that looked out over the wheel was uncharacteristically grave.

Her experiment had been a success. She was unconscious for only a few seconds, but it was enough to prove her point and to give Jerry a scare. He had been ready to start CPR. She felt fine, but Jerry was still shaken. He had suggested a drink and dinner in town. He was batching it, he explained. His wife and children were visiting her sister in Albany. Charlotte had readily accepted. Delicious as it was, she was sick of spa food.

After they left the Bath Pavilion, Charlotte had gone back to her room to change into civvies—her sweat suit was beginning to feel like army issue. Jerry had picked her up in his car a few minutes later. They were now heading down the Avenue of the Pines. A haze of humidity hung over the golf course and the pink of the evening sky was tinged a peculiar shade of yellow. It looked as if they were in for a thunderstorm.

Jerry continued: “I used to see it all the time. Especially with husbands. They’d put their hands around the wife’s neck in an argument—you know?” He took his hands off the wheel briefly to demonstrate. “The next thing they know, she’s gonzo. It works the same way as a karate chop to the neck. I used to feel sorry for some of those poor guys. They didn’t mean any harm. I remember one guy saying, ‘She just went limp, she just went limp.’”

“Didn’t mean any harm?” said Charlotte cynically. Unlike Jerry, her sympathies didn’t lie with the poor husbands.

“Well, you know. They didn’t mean to kill anyone.” He looked over at her. “So you’re one of those, huh?” Charlotte gave him one of her withering looks, to which he responded with a show of dimples. “Good thing I didn’t drown you. I just thought of something else,” he went on. “The CO
₂
level just above the surface of the water can get pretty high. It can make a person woozy.”

“Meaning what? That they wouldn’t be as alert?”

“Yeah. That it would be easy for someone to sneak up on them. Occasionally clients actually pass out—that’s why the attendants are supposed to check up on them every ten or fifteen minutes.”

So she had been right, Charlotte thought. Hilda wasn’t being evasive—she just hadn’t wanted to admit to not checking up on her client as often as she should have.

Jerry continued: “In the old days, the bath attendants used to hold a chicken headfirst over the tub to demonstrate how much carbon dioxide was in the water. It was a promotion gimmick: the chicken would pass out. Then they’d take it away and it would start flapping and squawking again.”

“It doesn’t sound like much of an advertisement to me,” said Charlotte with a grimace.

“In those days it was. The CO
₂
was the big attraction. But it was different then: the clients didn’t just come here for a bath—they came for the cure. It was supposed to be good for the heart.”

The car pulled out onto the highway. They were following the same route that the jitney bus had taken the day before.

“What was the cure exactly?”

“A series of baths at increasing temperatures and CO
₂
levels,” replied Jerry. “We don’t offer it anymore—it’s too time-consuming and nobody believes in it anymore anyway—except the boss lady. She takes the complete cure every June—three baths a day for six weeks.”

“No wonder she’s so hard-boiled.”

Jerry laughed.

In a few minutes they had reached their destination, a restaurant named Lillian’s after Lillian Leonard. Jerry described it as a steak and brew joint and a local favorite. Inside it was paneled with weathered barn boards and decorated with old photographs. Many were of Lillian, whose face had been the most photographed of her day. Among the crowd, Charlotte recognized several of her fellow inmates. She concluded that Lillian’s must rank right up there with Mrs. Canfield’s as a destination for the weak of will.

To avoid being recognized, Charlotte sat with her back to the dining room. Her face had also been one of the most photographed of her day and she still looked much as she had then. Even to young people, her face was familiar from her recent string of movies. But she would have attracted attention in any case. Her exquisitely tailored suit and dignified bearing stamped her with a distinction that was not often to be found among the blue jean-clad clientele of an upstate tavern.

But although she was the object of a few curious stares, she was not approached. Taking her seat, she found herself facing a portrait of Lillian, the amplitude of whose figure was a testimony to changing styles. Her bosom overflowed her dress, her upper arms bulged over the tops of her long kid gloves, a succession of delicate chins festooned her lovely face. It was as if the flesh that had been displaced by her tightly strung corset had been forced upward like toothpaste from the bottom of the tube.

Noticing her glance, Jerry turned around to look at the portrait. “Those were the days when men liked an armful.”

“Times have changed,” Charlotte replied. She found it ironic that so-called liberated women should despise the womanly curves that distinguished them from the opposite sex. She was reminded of what Hilda had said, that to starve yourself to thinness was to deny your womanhood.

“Not for me, they haven’t,” said Jerry with a wide smile. “Italian men still like a little extra flesh to keep them warm at night.”

“Thank God for Italian men.”

He smiled. The dimples were back.

The waitress brought their drink order—a foamy pitcher of cold draught beer accompanied by a bowl of pretzels. It was a sultry night, the kind of night for drinking beer in the air-conditioned, yeasty-smelling interior of a local gin mill. And beer and pretzels certainly beat what was being offered at the spa: a weak white wine punch and a trayful of crudités. Charlotte took a long draught and settled in. She liked the company too.

“I have a toast to propose,” she said. She hoisted her mug and smiled. “To the new acting spa director.”

Jerry stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Who?”

“You. The One with the Muscles.”

“The boss lady is making me acting spa director?”

Charlotte nodded.

He leaned back, silent. “Jesus,” he said finally. “That’s a surprise. I was wondering who she was going to get to replace Elliot, but I thought she’d move Sperry back up—for the time being anyway.”

“Sperry’s out too. Now that Anne-Marie’s fallen from grace, she’s decided there’s no reason to keep him around anymore. Jack’s supposed to be giving him his pink slip on Monday.”

“Aha, the chief executioner,” said Jerry. He shifted his attention from Charlotte to the room behind her. “Speak of the devil.”

Turning around, Charlotte saw Leon sitting in a booth, engaged in earnest conversation. Sitting opposite him, recognizable only by the back of his head and by the hand-sewn loafer with the worn sole that protruded from the side of the booth, was Jack.

Jerry returned his attention to Charlotte. “I’m impressed by your intelligence,” he said. “Now that I’m going to be a big executive, I’ll need some spies. If I ever want to find out what’s going on in the front office, I’ll remember to give you a call.”

“Anytime.”

“Acting director,” he repeated. “Translation: not for long. I’ll bet thirty to one that Elliot’s reinstated within six months. But at least I’ll get a break from the toilet repair routine for a while. What does she call me, ‘The One with the Muscles’?”

Charlotte nodded and smiled. “It’s better than ‘My Mistake,’ which is what she calls Sperry.”

“I guess,” said Jerry.

The menu arrived. Charlotte decided on steak—after all those vegetables, she was raving for red meat—and corn on the cob, which was Lillian’s specialty. Lillian Leonard was reputed to have been able to put away a dozen ears at a sitting. Neither was exactly Cuisine Minceur.

The waitress took their order and left.

“Do the police have any leads yet?” asked Charlotte, returning to the subject uppermost in her mind. As she had foreseen, the police had been pressured by the press to upgrade the case to a homicide investigation on the basis of the similarity in the positions of the bodies.

Jerry replied that they had completed all the routine tasks: checked the registers at High Rock Hotel and at the other hotels, combed the buildings and grounds, interviewed the guests and employees who’d been at the scene, checked the license plates of the cars in the parking lot.
“Nada,”
he said.

“I might have a suspect.”

“Now that you’ve told me how it was done, you’re going to tell me who did it. Is that it?”

“Not quite.”

“Who?”

“Sperry.” She went on to tell him about Sperry’s illegal cell therapy business, and how a threat to his profits could have provided a motive for murder. She also told him that Adele and Art had been his patients, and that both had had appointments on the days they died.

When she finished, Jerry said, “I knew about the cell therapy business. It’s hard to keep secrets around here. But I had no idea he made that much money at it. Good work! You ought to go into the business. I can contribute another damning bit of evidence.”

“What’s that?”

“That Art Dykstra was an undercover investigator for the FDA.”

“He was!” exclaimed Charlotte. “I thought he was a chemist.”

“He was, but he was also an FDA investigator. He was here to investigate Sperry. Somebody had anonymously reported Sperry for the illegal practice of cell therapy. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the boss lady herself.”

“Jerry, you’ve been holding out on me.”

“Not really. There didn’t seem to be any connection to the murders. Until you pointed it out.”

“Art didn’t have heart disease?”

“He did, but that wasn’t why he was here. Or it wasn’t the main reason anyway. I guess he figured he could kill two birds with one stone.” He grimaced at the unintended pun. “I mean, get some cardiac rehabilitation and find out what Sperry was up to at the same time.”

Charlotte sighed. Jerry’s news left her more confused than ever. “How did you find this out?”

“From Crowley. He’s doing a back history on Sperry now.”

“Good. I was going to ask you what you could find out about him.”

Dinner arrived—two juicy steaks, french fries, and corn on the cob dripping with butter. In her mind’s eye, Charlotte saw an invisible hand making a black mark against her name in the giant ledger in the sky. Whatever gains she, had made during her week of abstemious living would probably be wiped out by a single night of self-indulgence.

Over dinner they discussed the case. How would Sperry have gained by killing an FDA investigator? they wondered. Even if he’d gotten away with it, wouldn’t the FDA have sent someone else up to investigate? Unless Art had been on the take. Art might have offered to write a clean report in exchange for a kickback. He writes the report and Sperry kills him, not only to save the money, but also to make sure he doesn’t talk. But if Art had written a clean report, wouldn’t the FDA have said so? Besides, Art didn’t seem the type. And then there was the question of opportunity. Sperry had been nowhere near the Bath Pavilion at the time of Art’s death. Or if he had, no one had seen him.

In any case, they owed it to Crowley to fill him in. Jerry suggested they drop by the casino after dinner. Crowley was now living there, in a former high stakes gaming room that had been converted into a center for the murder investigation, which now took in both the sheriff’s department and the Food and Drug Administration. High Rock hadn’t seen so much action since the racketeering hearings in the fifties. According to Jerry, Sperry was now the chief suspect. Or rather, the only suspect. His background would be gone over with a fine-toothed comb; his movements would be scrutinized down to the fraction of a second; his colleagues and patients would be questioned for any information that might be pertinent to the case.

The waitress reappeared to clear away their plates.

“Do you miss police work?” Charlotte asked after the waitress had taken their dessert orders (two crepes suzette—another of Lillian’s specialties and the real Lillian’s favorites).

Jerry shrugged. “Sometimes,” he replied. “I always wanted to be a cop. I signed up right after high school. It sounds corny, but I got a lot of satisfaction out of it. It’s a good feeling—saving the world.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his wallet and withdrew a laminated card that identified him as Jerry D’Angelo, detective, third grade. Across the mug shot was punched the word
RETIRED
. He passed the card across the table to Charlotte. “My souvenir. Fifteen years, nine hundred felony arrests.” He added, with a proud smile, “I liked catching crooks.”

“I would say so,” said Charlotte. She studied the picture. It showed a different Jerry from the one who now sat across from her: a tough, dour-faced man with the kind of pasty complexion that comes from too little sleep and too much fast food. She handed it back to him.