Murder at the Spa (30 page)

She shined the flashlight around the room, but there were no other clues: a crumpled candy bar wrapper, an empty can of Coke. She decided to see Jerry. By now, he would be at the Bath Pavilion. She decided to take the reading with her and then changed her mind. The Instrument might get suspicious if it returned and found it missing. In fact, it probably wasn’t such a good idea to hang around. She had been down here a little too long for her own good. The Instrument might come back, although it was a better bet that it wanted to get as far away as possible. Again, she fought down a wave of panic. What if the Instrument had come along while she was wandering through the tunnels? She carefully put the reading back in place and then shined the flashlight around the room in a last check for clues. As the beam swung past the door, her heart jumped into her throat. She was sure the door had closed behind her, but it now stood slightly ajar. Mesmerized by fear, she dumbly riveted her flashlight on the opening and watched as it slowly widened. The hunting knife! She grabbed it and quickly removed it from its holster. Then she switched off the flashlight and backed up toward the other door. The room was suddenly bathed in light. The intruder had switched on a flashlight. Then she saw it nudge its way through the opening: the shiny, black muzzle of a gun. She wanted to scream, but nothing would come out. She was gulping for air. Then she screamed.

Screamed, and turned to flee through the other door.

“Charlotte!”

It was Jerry’s voice. He was standing there in front of the door, the gun hanging loosely from his hand. The sight of his bull-necked figure was as reassuring as that of the neighborhood cop walking the beat on a deserted street. She breathed a sigh of relief. “Jerry,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said, putting the gun away in his belt. “Hilda gave me the message. I thought I’d better take this along. Did you see, anyone?”

“No. If he came this way, he got away. But, Jerry, I’ve discovered something else.”

“Hey, are you all right?” he said, looking at her more closely. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She must have looked frazzled. “Yes,” she said. But even to herself, she sounded not quite sure. “It’s not you—I mean”—she looked down at the gun—“that. It’s what I’ve found out.”

Jerry nodded at the knife that she still brandished in her hand. “I don’t think that would have done you much good.” He shined his flashlight around the room. “Hey, what is this? A fallout shelter?”

“Yes,” replied Charlotte. She put the knife back in its holster and returned it to the shelf and then pointed to the collection of butts on the sandy ground. “One that’s being used as a hippie hideaway.”

“So I see,” said Jerry. He looked up at her. “Okay, what’s up?”

Charlotte proceeded to tell him the whole story, starting with how she’d seen the Mineral Man from the seventh floor of the hotel. From there, she went on to Regie’s confirmation of the existence of the tunnels, her meeting with Otto, and her exploration of the tunnels on her own.

Jerry listened intently, interrupting only to say that he’d always known about the tunnel at the end of the basement corridor in the Health Pavilion, but that he’d had no idea the entire spa was underlaid by tunnels.

Charlotte nodded and went on to explain how she’d clocked the time it took her to get from the Health Pavilion to the Bath Pavilion.

“So then it could have been Sperry. He could have made it across and back between appointments.”

“Yes, he could have. But he didn’t. He isn’t the murderer, Jerry.” She sighed. “Or at least, I don’t think he is.”

“Who is?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Frannie.”

Jerry blinked in surprise.

She handed him the reading.

“‘Life Reading on the Entity by the Name of Adele B. Singer,’” read Jerry. “Another Brooklyn kid.” He proceeded to scan the health information.

“It’s some sort of mystical accounting of Adele’s past lives,” Charlotte explained as Jerry turned the page. “It was written by someone who calls himself, or herself, the Instrument. At the end, it says, ‘In order to prevent further spiritual degeneration,
disincarnation is recommended
.’”

Jerry took his time reading the document. After a minute, he said, “I see it. ‘Disincarnation is recommended.’ In other words, the Instrument killed Adele at the direction of this Supreme Source.”

“It looks that way to me. But there’s more.” She pointed to the handwritten note at the bottom of the second page.

“‘Date of disincarnation: June eleventh. Mode of disincarnation: water,’” read Jerry. “June eleventh. That’s the day Adele was killed.”

Charlotte nodded.

“So this wacko who calls himself the Instrument kills Adele in the belief that he’s doing her a favor.” He shook his head. “Some favor. Why Frannie? I know she’s a little looney tunes, but that doesn’t make her a killer.”

“Because she’s so involved with reincarnation. She talks about it all the time. And she teaches those courses, Other Lives/Other Selves and You and Your Aura. Look.” She showed him the aura pamphlet.

“I see what you mean,” said Jerry, studying the pamphlet. “Crowley should be here by now. I think we’d better let him in on this.” He grinned. “Looks like you’ve done it again, kid.”

“Only because the Instrument tried to kill Paulina,” said Charlotte. “Should we show Crowley the reading?”

“No, we’d better let him come down here and get it. I don’t want to tread on his turf any more than necessary.”

As they got ready to leave, Jerry ran the beam of his flashlight up and down the stacks of shelving. They spotted it simultaneously: a black object nestled among the cans of string beans and peaches that was an obvious anachronism in a fifties-era fallout shelter.

“A tape recorder,” said Charlotte. “Jerry, maybe the Instrument recorded the reading. Didn’t you get the feeling that the reading had been dictated while the Instrument was in some kind of trance? Remember, it said at the end that it was losing its energy?”

“Yeah. In which case, the voice on the tape would be the Instrument’s.” He checked to see if the recorder held a cassette, but it didn’t. He then started searching the shelves. Before Charlotte could offer her help, he had discovered two cassettes stashed in a flour canister.

“That was quick work,” said Charlotte admiringly.

“Practice. Here,” he said, passing her the tapes, which he held with a handkerchief to prevent smudging the fingerprints. “You do the honors.”

“Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.” She slipped the first tape into the tape slot, rewound it, and pushed “Play.” The voice on the tape said: “Life reading on the entity by the name of Adele B. Singer. Born April eleventh, 1944 in Brooklyn, King’s County, N.Y.”

She had expected to hear Frannie’s voice. But it was a man’s voice—a man with a soft Carolina accent. Not Frannie, but her husband, Dana. She pictured him: a handsome young man with a thick black beard and a graceful brow. Of course. It didn’t make sense that a lame Frannie would have traipsed down to the fallout shelter for a joint. Besides, Frannie operated out of the Health Pavilion; it would have been a hike for her. Dana operated out of the Bath Pavilion, which was only a short distance away. One of her first thoughts had been that the killer worked at the Bath Pavilion. If anyone was likely to have figured out the best way of killing someone in a bathtub, it was someone whose job was getting people in and out of one. Maybe it had even happened accidentally once or twice: a slip in the tub—the feet fly into the air, the head is momentarily forced underwater … Or maybe, as a karate instructor, he had somehow deduced that forcing the head backward in such a way would have the same effect as a karate chop to the neck.

“LaBeau,” said Jerry. “No wonder you didn’t run into him—he probably went through the basement and back up the stairs to the men’s wing.”

“Yes,” said Charlotte. But what about the footsteps she had heard in the tunnel? She wrote them off to her imagination. As Dana’s voice droned on, images came to her mind of Dana running to Adele’s aid with the resuscitator, of Dana notifying Jerry of Art’s death.

“He was one of the first on the scene—in both cases.”

“That should have told us something right there.”

“Do you know him at all?”

“A little. He’s as nutso as she is.”

“Why did he do it, do you think?” Frannie had said he was working off the karmic debt he had incurred in a previous incarnation in ancient Rome when he fed the Christians to the lions. Was this the way he was doing it? If so, he hadn’t made much progress in close to two thousand years.

Jerry shrugged. “I’ve given up trying to figure out why people do the things they do.” But he did offer the fact that Dana had been a sickly child who’d been spurned by his sports-minded father in favor of his more athletic siblings. As a result, he’d grown up to be a very fitness-minded adult.

Perhaps, theorized Charlotte, his childhood experiences had left him with a pathological hatred of the unfit.

“Then why did he marry a cripple?” asked Jerry.

“Good question.” And if he did hate the unfit, why had he suddenly felt the compulsion to start killing unfit guests? Charlotte wondered if Frannie knew. She remembered seeing Frannie typing dictation in the office next to Jerry’s. Was it she who had typed the reading?

They returned their attention to the tape. When it came to the part about the human pillbox, Charlotte was reminded of Art, the self-described devotee of the electric pencil sharpener. Maybe he had also been killed because his physical envelope was degenerating.

She pushed the
STOP
button. She had been struck by a chilling thought. “Jerry, I have a theory. Maybe Dana is killing people who are unfit, using physical fitness as a
gauge
of spiritual achievement.”

Jerry looked puzzled.

“The reading gives Adele’s medical history, including her biological age, which in her case was considerably higher than her real age. If the condition of the body is a mirror of the condition of the soul, and if the biological age is a measure of the condition of the body—”

Jerry completed the sentence for her. “—then those who don’t do well on the Fitness Appraisal are candidates for being hastened along the path to spiritual enlightenment, courtesy of Dana LaBeau.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe. But that would mean that everybody in C-group would be on his list.” He pointed at her. “Including you.”

“No. If I’ve got this guy figured out, he would only be out to disincarnate people who are in C-group because of their self-indulgence. I’m in C-group because of my real age. After all, you can’t stick a sixty-two-year-old woman in A-group with all the twenty-year-olds.”

“What about smoking dope?” asked Jerry, gazing down at the butts littering the sandy ground. “Isn’t that a form of self-indulgence?”

Charlotte shrugged. “Maybe not to him. I’m sure he can find a rationalization for it. Maybe he thinks it doesn’t matter as long as he stays in shape. Or maybe he thinks it’s all right because it’s a means of tuning into the
akashic
records.”

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” said Jerry, his brow furrowed in thought. “According to your theory, you’d be doing pretty well in his book. Your biological age is lower than your real age, which would be a sign of spiritual progress.”

“Exactly,” replied Charlotte.

“My brains are getting scrambled just thinking about it.”

“I know what you mean.” In Dana’s terms, she thought, the body perfect of someone like the Role Model would be a sign of spiritual achievement. But in her opinion, his obsession with his body bordered on narcissism. And to her, worshipping the body seemed as great a sin as doing violence to it. At least Adele and Art hadn’t considered themselves better than everyone else because of the superior condition of their
latissimi dorsi
. They were humble and kind, which should count for something—count for a lot, in fact. But although the gauge theory made no sense to her, it
did
make a crazy sort of sense. This time her intuition was telling her she was on the right track.

“But what about Paulina?” asked Jerry. “How does she fit in?”

“I don’t know.” Who knew? Maybe Dana didn’t like the way she hit him over the shins with her umbrella. She returned her attention to the tape. “Do you want to continue listening to this or do you want to see what else we’ve got?”

“Let’s go on. We might find the reading for Paulina or for someone else. We can always come back to this later.”

Charlotte pushed the
FAST FORWARD
button, stopping to listen occasionally until she came to the end of Adele’s reading. After a silent interval came the next reading, for Mary Jane Jacoby.

“Do you know her?” asked Charlotte.

“The blonde babe who fixed you up with Sperry? The one with the inch-long red fingernails and the two-thousand-dollar tank watch?”

Charlotte laughed her low, husky laugh. “I guess you do know her. She’s an oil heiress. She’s married to a producer I know.”.

M.J.’s reading also led off with the date and place of her birth, the date and place of the reading, and a brief medical history. It went on to detail M.J.’s past lives as a close friend of the Borgias during the quattrocento and at the opulent court of the Sun King. Leave it to M.J. to be where the action was, Charlotte thought. When the reading came to the description of the entity’s attributes, she had to smile. “The entity,” Dana’s voice said, “lacks mental discipline.” The reading went on to say that M.J.’s service to others made up for her failure to discipline her mind. (She was a well-known philanthropist, serving on committees for everything from blind animals to battered wives). By her charitable works, it said, she was building good karma. Her youthful appearance was her reward for correct development.

“A plastic surgeon may have had something to do with it,” interjected Jerry.

“Or Sperry’s injections,” added Charlotte.

The reading concluded with M.J.’s date of disincarnation, which wasn’t for twenty-six years. “She’s safe,” said Charlotte. By then, she would be well into her eighties.

After another silent interval, the voice on the tape resumed. The next reading was for Nicky, who had high blood pressure, diabetes, and joint problems, and who weighed over three hundred pounds, or had. Nicky, a twenty-four-year-old man with a biological age of fifty-four.