Murder at the Spa (33 page)

Another twenty-six, according to the Instrument, Charlotte thought.

M.J. continued: “By the way, you never told me your biological age.”

“That’s right,” said Charlotte. “I never did.”

It was the next morning—Charlotte’s last at High Rock. She was sitting in Crowley’s cubicle at the casino with Jerry and Jack. Crowley was filling them in on what had happened. Jack had been dispatched to the meeting by Paulina, who claimed to be too busy to take the time to hear what the police had to say. In truth, she probably didn’t want to. If Charlotte knew Paulina, she was already well on her way to forgetting that an attempt had ever been made on her life. She had an amazing ability to block out the negative events in her life. If it was bad, it hadn’t happened—it was that simple.

Crowley sat behind a desk piled high with papers, among them the gruesome souvenirs of two murders and one murder attempt. Among the papers, Charlotte could see a copy of Adele’s reading, a photo of Art’s nude corpse lying on the tiled floor, and a police sketch of the VIP suite.

He was explaining that Dana had been picked up last night after locking Nicky in the sauna.

“Did he confess?” asked Jack.

“Sort of,” Crowley replied. “He really had no choice. We had the reading and we had the tapes”—he nodded to Charlotte—“thanks to Miss Graham—and we’d caught him more or less red-handed. His excuse was that he was acting as the Instrument of this Supreme Source.”

“The devil-made-me-do-it defense,” said Jerry.

Crowley looked disgusted. He also looked pale and worried, despite the fact that he finally had a murderer behind bars.

“How’s his wife?” asked Charlotte.

“Okay,” replied Crowley. He explained that a policewoman had been sent out to the LaBeaus’ house after the arrest to stay with her until her sister arrived. At first, she’d been stunned. She hadn’t said anything. But she was now talking, which was a good sign.

Jerry took over: “She thinks he might have come under the influence of an evil spirit guide. She said that you have to be careful when you’re dealing with out-of-the-body experiences, that all of the spirits you encounter in the etheric plane aren’t necessarily good ones.”

Charlotte remembered what she had said about opening yourself up to an entity: you never knew what might come jumping in.

Crowley addressed Jack: “Back to your question. He admits to killing Mrs. Singer and Mr. Dykstra—that is, he admits to being the Instrument—but he swears up and down that he had nothing to do with the attempt on Mrs. Langenberg’s life.”

“Did he have an alibi?” asked Jack.

Crowley nodded. “Ironclad. He was minding the reception counter in the Bath Pavilion while the receptionist took a break. At least half a dozen people saw him there. Including Miss Graham and Mrs. Langenberg.”

“Which means what?” asked Charlotte. “That there’s another murderer?”

Crowley looked grim. “It looks that way.”

Another murderer! Another murderer would explain a lot. Why there was no reading for Paulina. Why Paulina didn’t fit the profile of the other victims (the murderer couldn’t have known about the cancer and it wasn’t something she had brought upon herself anyway). Why a different technique was used. Crowley was right: there had to be someone else. Her mind was racing. Knowing that the police had a suspect—that much had been in the newspapers—Paulina’s assailant had probably counted on her murder being blamed on the suspect. But what he couldn’t have known was
how
Adele and Art had been killed. In trying to kill Paulina by holding her head under, he’d given himself away. She was reminded of Diamond Jim’s quote: “Never play another man’s game.” It was advice he could have benefited from. But who would have wanted to kill Paulina? A business rival? With Paulina out of the way, Gary would retain control of his company and hers. But he had planned on Paulina’s taking over his company, or so she had said. A relative? By killing Paulina before she could change her will back, Leon would remain her heir. A vindictive employee? Paulina’s habit of firing people (or rather, having them fired) was bound to have provoked resentment. Maybe this time the killer
had
been Sperry.

“What about Sperry?” she asked. “Is he still around? I heard from one of the guests that he’s going to open a clinic in Mexico.”

“He’s in L.A.,” said Crowley. “He flew out yesterday. He’s staying with one of his clients. The L.A.P.D. is keeping an eye on him.”

“Jack, when did you fire him?”

“Monday morning.”

“Jack fires him on Monday morning, and someone tries to kill Paulina on Monday afternoon.”

“It’s a possibility,” said Jerry.

“Did the fingerprints show anything?” asked Charlotte.

“No,” said Crowley. He and Jerry exchanged looks.

“What is it?” asked Charlotte.

“It’s just that they rarely do.” It was a procedure, Jerry said, that was usually performed more for its public relations benefit than in expectation of any results. “The public expects a detective to scatter a lot of black carbon around and go over it inch by inch with a magnifying glass,” he said. But there were lots of reasons why fingerprinting was rarely helpful. First, any criminal with half a brain either wore gloves or wiped his prints. Second, getting unsmudged prints was difficult, and when you did, they usually belonged either to the victim or to the others at the scene. Third, even unknown fingerprints were no use unless you had some idea who they belonged to. The idea of a central file through which fingerprints could be identified was a myth. Not only did fingerprints submitted to a central file have to be accompanied by a list of names of the people whose prints they were to be compared with, the people whose names were on the list had to have been arrested on a federal charge; otherwise, their prints wouldn’t be on file. “Footprints,” he went on. “Now footprints are another story.”

Footprints! As Jerry said the word, a bell went off in Charlotte’s head. Something about the idea of footprints was important in this case. She imagined herself back in the tunnel. The long, narrow footprints between the Health Pavilion and the Hall of Springs, the Mineral Man’s footprints. No, that wasn’t it. The footprints between the Bath Pavilion and the fallout shelter—that was it! Part of it. The other part was the soles of the running shoes on the marble counter in the reception lobby.

She addressed Crowley: “Was Dana wearing sneakers when you arrested him?”

“Yes. Running shoes, I think.”

“The kind with waffle treads?”

“I think so. Why?”

“There were two sets of footprints in the tunnel. One was a sneaker, a running shoe, with waffle treads. The other was a regular shoe. But the second set was pretty unclear.”

“And you think the other set might belong to the second killer?”

Charlotte nodded.

“We’ll look into it.” He nodded to his assistant, who made a note. “Well, I guess that’s it,” said Crowley. He rose from his seat, signaling that their meeting was at an end. He turned to Jack. “We’ll keep you informed of any new developments. Please give my regards to Mrs. Langenberg.”

“I will,” said Jack. Jerry stayed behind to compare notes with Crowley. But she didn’t go directly back to the spa. After declining Jack’s offer of a ride, she struck off toward town in search of a hardware store.

Fifteen minutes later, she was headed back to the spa on the minibus, a newly purchased flashlight in her bag. She would be driving back to New York after lunch, but there was something she wanted to check before she left.

Back at the spa, she headed directly for the Bath Pavilion. The baths weren’t open in the forenoon, but she was able to get in through the unlocked door to the sun terrace and enter the basement unobserved. She quickly made her way past the stack of wicker furniture and through the laundry area to the tunnel. Inside the tunnel, she switched on the flashlight and shone it on the earthen floor. She had wanted another look at the footprints. What she saw looked like the mud at the edge of a desert watering hole. The ground had been so tracked up by Crowley and his men that it was impossible to distinguish one print from another. No matter—if the killer was Sperry, he’d have left some prints on the other side. Passing through the fallout shelter, she turned left into the unexplored tunnel. The ground here was muddy from seepage. And in the mud there were footprints. Their imprint was as clear as that of a signet ring in a drop of sealing wax. Kneeling, she shined the light on the one closest to her. And then on another. Just to make sure. She now knew who had tried to kill Paulina. It was someone who knew about the tunnels. Someone who stood to lose if Paulina changed her will. He had been running. She could see where his feet had slid in the mud. Walking to, and running back. So she hadn’t imagined the pounding footsteps. Step by step she followed them—through the tunnel to the basement of the pergola where she’d taken shelter from the rain, and from there into another tunnel, where a dark opening midway along the south side marked the junction with the tunnel leading to the hotel. Like the tunnel between the power house and the spa, the tunnel leading to the hotel appeared to be low and narrow and encrusted with mineral.

It was here that the footprints stopped. He had come from and returned to this tunnel. She stooped to get a closer look: there was even a fan-shaped mark where he had pivoted to turn. She was about to stand up when something in her brain registered a flash of white just inside the entrance to the tunnel. She had just figured out that it was a white coat when she felt a heavy object come down over the back of her head. Her last image was of something like stars floating in a void of black at the fringes of her consciousness. Not stars exactly, but rings, concentric rings, like the rings of a tree.

16

“Are you all right?”

The fuzzy blur in front of Charlotte’s face congealed into the solid, reassuring face of Jerry. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I tracked you. I’m pretty good at footprints myself. I figured you’d be too impatient to wait for Crowley.”

“What happened?”

“You tell me.”

Charlotte raised a hand to the back of her head; it felt bruised but there was no lump. “Somebody hit me over the head.”

“I figured that much out. With the butt of a flashlight, I’ll bet. If it weren’t for that thing on the back of your head, you’d be a lot sorer.”

“You mean my chignon?” teased Charlotte.

“Hey, it’s called a bun where I come from.” In one hand, he held a flashlight; in the other, an object wrapped in a handkerchief. His gun was tucked into his belt.

“What’s that?”

Jerry unwrapped the object. “A hunting knife. The one from the fallout shelter, the same one you almost used on me.”

“He was going to use it on me?”

Jerry nodded.

“What would he have done with me?” She knew it was a stupid question, but she was still dazed. She couldn’t think.

“I don’t know. Stuff you into the freezer in the fallout shelter until he got a chance to bury you somewhere.” He grinned, displaying his dimples. “Put you in cement shoes and dump you into Geyser Lake.”

“Very funny. Any other ideas?”

Jerry shook his head. “Did you see him?”

“Only a glimpse. White—a white coat.”

“That could have been anyone.”

Anyone: Sperry, but he was in California; Dana, but he was in jail. Suddenly it all came back to her. The rings, like the rings of a tree. The hand-sewn loafer protruding from the edge of a booth. He had returned to the tunnel to erase his footprints. She was the only one who knew what his footprints looked like. That’s why he’d tried to kill her.

Raising herself up on one elbow, she gripped the rock-hard muscles of Jerry’s upper arm: “It’s coming back now, Jerry. I know who it was.”

It was the next morning. Charlotte hadn’t gone back to New York as she had planned. She’d spent the afternoon at High Rock Community Hospital, waiting around for her skull to be X-rayed. As it turned out, she was fine. Not even a minor concussion. But she hadn’t been ready to leave yet either, at least not until Paulina’s assailant had been caught.

Paulina sat on the chartreuse velvet couch at the far end of her living room. She was dressed for business in a black-and-gold-checked suit and a black silk blouse. Down her bosom cascaded a half-dozen strands of Russian amber beads, which were matched by the yellow stones on her ears and on her finger. She was chewing on a hunk of Hungarian sausage.

Charlotte and Jerry sat facing her. They had been drafted by Crowley to explain what had happened. They’d just finished telling her that her assailant had been picked up on the Thruway near Buffalo at about eight the night before. He’d been heading west in her Mercedes, who knew where to.

Jerry had already explained about Dana: how he’d had an alibi and how that had led him to the conclusion that there was a second killer. He had then explained why the realization that there was a second killer had prompted Charlotte to return to the tunnels for another look.

“How did she know they were his?” asked Paulina about the footprints.

“By the imprint of the holes in his soles. Charlotte had noticed the holes on an earlier occasion. In fact, he’d pointed them out to her. He was making the point that he wasn’t in the job for the money, I think.”

Paulina snorted. “Wasn’t in it for the money.”

“Charlotte had suggested to the police in his presence that the other set of footprints might belong to the second killer. He’d gone back to the tunnel to erase them when he ran into Charlotte. He knew she would already have recognized them, which is why he tried to kill her.”

Paulina didn’t seem unduly upset at the revelation that the man who had tried to kill her was her secretary. She sat calmly munching on her sausage. In fact, she loved drama; if she was part of it, all the better. “What about the shoes?” she asked, eager for every, scrap of detail.

“They were in the car,” replied Jerry. “By the way, your car will be returned to you within the next couple of days.”

“Tell them to return it to New York. I’m leaving today,” said Paulina. But she was more interested in the shoes. “He was going to throw them away?”