Murder at the Spa (31 page)

“If anyone’s likely to fit your theory, it’s this kid,” said Jerry.

The date of the reading was June sixteenth—only two days before. “Yes, the Instrument has the records here,” said Dana’s voice. “The Instrument has isolated the vibration of the entity by the name of Nicholas Makriannias in the skein of time-space. In the composite of the latent or astrological and the material sojourns, we find these influences: the entity has failed to develop the spirit with regard to brotherly love, forgiveness, and understanding. In its other appearances in the earth plane, it has consistently chosen to sit in judgment of its fellow travelers. In the land of its present nativity at the beginning of the present century, the entity worked as a doctor at Ellis Island. In this position, it allowed only the healthiest immigrants to remain in the New Land. As a result, many were deported, and some died on the return journey. In ancient Greece, the entity was responsible for choosing youths to participate in the Olympic Games. As the entity judged others, now it is judged; this is the swing of the karmic pendulum. The entity’s current incarnation offers many lessons to be learned in the exercise of the will, which is the greatest faculty of the soul. But because the entity has continued to selfishly indulge its appetites, its condition has not improved. Instead of progressing in this material manifestation, the entity is regressing. The deterioration of the physical envelope is a reflection of the deterioration of the soul. All illness comes from sin the body is the Temple of the Living God. In order to progress to the next stage in the cycle of rebirth, disincarnation is recommended. In its next incarnation, the entity will have another opportunity to apply the will to spiritual growth that it may emerge from the darkness of disease and anxiety into the light and freedom of unity with the Supreme Source. This is the Universal Law of Evolutionary Progress. The Instrument is losing its energy, it must revitalize. If we perform right action, we will build good karma. Life is God: that which is constructive grows; that which is destructive deteriorates. We are born alone, we die alone. There is but one Source.”

This time, the words were on the tape: “Disincarnation scheduled Tuesday, June nineteenth.”

“That’s tomorrow,” said Jerry.

Charlotte nodded.

And then: “Mode of disincarnation: fire.”

15

Charlotte and Jerry emerged from the basement of the Bath Pavilion feeling as if they were emerging from some twilight world of the psyche where black was white and vice versa. The women’s wing was deserted, but the door to the VIP suite was being guarded by a police officer who stood with his back to the corridor, taking notes. Inside, another police officer was measuring the anteroom and a fingerprint officer was dusting it for fingerprints. At the other end of the hall, a guard had been posted to prevent unauthorized access to the scene. Charlotte and Jerry headed in his direction. When they reached him, Jerry asked to speak to Crowley. If the guard was curious about where they’d come from he didn’t show it. He simply asked them to wait with the others in the women’s lobby. As in the case of Art’s death, those who had been present at the scene were being held for questioning. They sat around in chairs that had been brought in, looking put out, scared, or bored. Paulina was not among them. She had probably been taken to the hospital for a checkup. In front of the building stood three police cars, one with its lights still flashing, and a van displaying the call letters of the local television station. A camera crew was unloading its gear. Paulina wouldn’t welcome the publicity. “Bad for business,” she would say.

“Here comes the press,” Charlotte whispered. She reminded herself to slip out a side door after their interview. When it came to the press, she was as experienced at surveillance and evasion as a guerrilla warrior.

“No talking, please,” admonished the guard.

She had forgotten: the police didn’t want their sources influencing one another with their accounts of events.

After a few minutes, the door to the room that was being used as an office opened and Dana emerged. As a member of the staff, he would have been among the first to be questioned. Charlotte had to muster all of her self-control to avoid staring at him, this pleasant-looking young man with the nice southern manners and the deranged soul dating back to the Big Bang. He passed through the lobby, taking no notice of them or of anyone else. The thought crossed her mind that he might try to escape before it dawned on her that he was still unaware that they had found him out.

The guard then signaled Charlotte and Jerry to enter. Crowley was seated at Mrs. Murray’s desk. Another officer sat next to him, notepad in hand. Charlotte retold her tale, starting with her discovery of the tunnels. Crowley listened impatiently—clearly, he thought there were more pressing matters at hand. But by the time she got to Adele’s reading, he was sitting on the edge of his chair. The tapes were the icing on the cake. It was a tribute to his professionalism that he didn’t take Charlotte to task for interfering, but acted immediately on her findings. By that evening, two undercover policemen were working at the spa as janitors. Others were assigned to watch the LaBeaus’ house and the hotel. Both Dana and Nicky would be watched around the clock. In addition, a policewoman was assigned to watch Frannie on the chance that she was in league with her husband. At the first sign that Dana intended to put his plan into action, he would be arrested and charged with the attempted murder of Nicky and with the murders of Adele-and Art.

For the time being, Crowley decided to leave the reading and the tapes alone. He didn’t want to risk tipping Dana off. But one thing about their account baffled him: the reference to fire. It baffled Charlotte and Jerry as well. Why wouldn’t Dana plan to kill Nicky in the bath as he had the others? It was Charlotte who came up with the answer: Nicky wouldn’t fit. Jerry cited the case of a visiting group of Japanese sumo wrestlers, all of whom had been too big for the tubs. Like the sumo wrestlers, Nicky had used the whirlpool bath instead. The fire mode might refer to the whirlpool, Jerry speculated. Dana could be planning to turn the thermostat up so high that Nicky would die of a heart attack or heat stroke. Perhaps he was planning to drug him first. Such “hot tub deaths” were not uncommon, particularly in California: too much to drink, the thermostat turned up too high, and the partiers are found floating like dead fish the next day, an empty pitcher of piña coladas at their sides. With Nicky, high blood pressure played into the picture: five of Anne-Marie’s jumping jacks were enough to turn him beet red from exertion, let along the cardiac workload of coping with a soaring body temperature.

Another baffling fact was that Paulina’s assailant had tried to kill her by holding her head underwater instead of jerking her ankles. But Charlotte decided to let Crowley worry about that. The case was in his hands now. She had done what she could and now felt for the first time since Jerry had confided his suspicion that Adele’s death might be something other than a simple overdose that she could relax, which was what she’d come to the spa to do in the first place. After leaving Crowley, she and Jerry headed directly for Lillian’s, where they celebrated with a drink—Charlotte indulged herself in a prohibited manhattan—and dinner. After Jerry dropped her off, she went to bed and slept for a solid eight hours.

Her alarm went off at the crack of dawn. She had resolved to devote the entire morning to her spa routine. Although she would be staying over—she didn’t want to miss the outcome of the drama that was being played out—it was still the last day of her program and she wanted to make the most of it. Her follow-up Fitness Appraisal, which would show what improvements her stay had brought about in her physical condition, was scheduled for late morning. Then lunch and a bath and her spa stay would be over. She would be leaving the next day. She had lost six pounds, but she didn’t know what that translated to in terms of inches. In any case, she couldn’t count her stay as much of a bargain. Per pound, it had cost close to seven hundred dollars. Besides which, they were pounds that would creep back on again in a matter of weeks. Experience had taught her that dieting was futile. She always reverted to her original weight, which couldn’t be called slender, but which was okay with her. She was of the minority opinion that a little extra flesh never hurt anyone, especially at her age.

But the weather hadn’t cooperated with her good intentions. The day had broken cold and rainy. She had begun on the right foot, with a visit to the High Rock Pavilion for two glasses of mineral water followed by Awake and Aware with Anne-Marie, which had been held in the Health Pavilion instead of on the esplanade as usual. But Terrain Cure had been canceled, leaving her with some extra time before her follow-up. She decided to visit Jerry. She wanted to find out what had come of the surveillance of Dana and Frannie. But his office was vacant. A janitor (she wondered if he was an undercover cop) directed her to his new office on the second floor.

“Hey, I like your digs,” said Charlotte as she entered. It was Sperry’s old office, complete with dove-gray leather chairs and vertical blinds.

“Quite the ritz, huh? Have a seat.” Coming around to the front of the big teak desk, he pulled out a swivel chair for her.

Charlotte sat down. “What happened to the previous tenant?”

Jerry shrugged. “All I know is, he’s been given the sack and I’m living in luxury. But I suspect it’ll be back to the basement for me as soon as the boss lady gets a new medical director.”

“Think positively,” said Charlotte. “What are you going to do with the casting couch?” she teased.

“Oh, that.” Jerry smiled. “Actually it’s kind of an embarrassment. If I took the legs off one end, I could use it as a slant board. I hear they’re very good for the complexion. What do you think?

“That’s an idea. Or you could use it for doing sit-ups.” She switched the subject: “I came to check up on what’s going on.”

“A lot,” replied Jerry. “We’ve got our boy. We were on the right track—it was the sauna. One of our men spotted him doping out the temperature control last night. He’s scheduled Nicky for a session on the machines tonight. Presumably he’ll suggest that Nicky take a sauna afterward.”

“When everyone’s gone home.”

“Exactly. If I’d been on the ball, I would have figured it out. We reserve time in the machine room at night for the disabled, the obese—people who might be self-conscious about working out with the group. Just getting some of these fat people onto the machine is a major production.”

“So the time wouldn’t have aroused anyone’s suspicions.”

Jerry shook his head. “It helps that he’s Nicky’s exercise advisor. After the workout, he recommends a sauna to soothe Nicky’s tired muscles. Then he turns up the heat, locks him in, and waits. For someone with blood pressure, as high as Nicky’s, it wouldn’t take long.”

“And it would be written off as an accident.”

“Easily. There wouldn’t be any clues. He’d just reset the temperature control and unlock the door once Nicky was done for.”

“Have you told Nicky?”

“We had to. He’s going to play along. He’s a spunky kid. By the way, do you remember the tape we didn’t play?”

“Something was on it?”

“Crowley went down to the fallout shelter this morning to listen to it. He made sure Dana was busy doing something else first. Nicky wasn’t the only one who was scheduled for disincarnation.”

“Who else?”

“Someone you know.”

Charlotte couldn’t think of anyone. “Come on, Jerry. Who?”

“Frannie.”

Charlotte stared at him, her large eyes awash with the gray light that streamed through the windows. They were a pale gray, almost white: a dove-gray. “He would have killed his own wife?”

Jerry nodded. “She was scheduled for disincarnation for next week. The mode of disincarnation was air. Suffocation, maybe. A little pillow talk and then the lights go out—for good.”

“But she doesn’t fit the profile. Her limp was something she was born with. She didn’t bring it on herself. In fact, she was supposed to be discharging her bad karma by helping others become more fit.”

“Neither did Paulina.”

“Was there a reading for her?”

“No. That was one of the things Crowley was looking for. But actually, Frannie does fit, sort of. According to her reading, she was born with a gimpy leg because she laughed at the cripples in ancient Rome.”

“Yes, she told me that. She was a member of Roman royalty. She also told me I was a desert hermit in my last life, very spiritual and pure. I subsisted on nothing but dates and water.”

“Dates, huh?”

“Go on,” urged Charlotte.

“Well, according to the Instrument, she had already paid her karmic debt by her good works. Therefore, it was cruelty to keep her on the earth plane any longer. She was ready to return as a more advanced being.”

Charlotte wondered why he really did it. In marrying Frannie, she speculated, he might have been marrying the sickly self he despised, and by killing her, he might have been killing the cripple in himself. In any case, she was sure the shrinks would have some explanation or other.

“She was supposed to wait for him on the other side,” Jerry continued. “Once he was disincarnated, they would be reunited in the etheric plane and then reincarnated together in another life. Soul mates, you know.”

“I guess that proves she wasn’t in on it. I suppose he didn’t say how long she’d have to wait around for him out there.”

“As a matter of fact, he did. About forty years or so—you see, he still had a lot of bad karma from his past lives to work off.”

“By helping people disincarnate? He’s going to have to change his approach. How does making license plates sound?”

“I wouldn’t count on it. He’ll walk—they all walk. He’ll cop an insanity plea—a year in a rubber room and he’ll be back on the streets along with all the other maggots who’ve beat the criminal justice system.”

“Maggots, huh?”

“Yeah. You know, those little white worms that feed off garbage. It’s a constant tide of maggots out there. They’re coming at you all the time. No matter what you do, there’re always more of them.”