Murder Strikes a Pose (5 page)

“And she’s a smart one, too,” he continued. “It only took me

twenty minutes to teach her to ‘say hello.’” Bella looked up expectantly at the familiar command. “But I
am
worried about her, and people have started to harass me about her weight. They assume

I’m intentionally starving her or that I can’t afford to feed her. A couple have even threatened to turn me into the Humane Society.”

He scowled, clearly offended. “As if I’d ever hurt Bella!”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Thanks, but I don’t think so. I’m taking her to the free vet

clinic by Southcenter next weekend. Hopefully they’ll figure out

what’s going on.”

“Next weekend?” From what George described, I was afraid

Bella might not make it that long.

“I’d like to take her in sooner, but they’re only open one week-

end a month.”

I hesitated, vacillating between idealism and realism. A true

friend would offer to pay for an earlier appointment. But I had my own money issues. “I wish I could help but—”

30

George responded with an insincere smile. “Don’t you worry,

ma’am. Bella likes the folks at the free clinic, and they’re good with her. I wouldn’t take her anywhere else.”

“How are you going to get Bella all the way to Southcenter?” I

could at least offer him a ride.

“It’s pretty easy, actually. Bella loves riding the bus. The drivers even keep a stash of cookies for her. We’ll get there, no problem.”

I guiltily counted the days until that fateful appointment. Bella got alarmingly thinner, and George’s face grew more concerned.

The angry words outside my door changed from “Control that

beast!” to “If you can’t afford a dog, you shouldn’t have one!”

I wanted to throw open the door and tell those obnoxious

strangers what they could do with their rude opinions. I stopped

myself only by imagining the headline: “Yoga Teacher Starts Fist

Fight Outside Studio.” I even tried practicing loving-kindness

meditation. But instead of feeling waves of love flow from my

heart, I felt white-hot daggers of indignation shoot from my eye

sockets. Buddha needn’t fear for his job any time soon.

Saturday finally arrived. I waved goodbye, sent George posi-

tive energy, and waited, hoping for good news. I looked for George Saturday evening, to no avail. Saturday turned into Sunday, turned into Monday, turned into Tuesday. Although I searched for him

every day at eleven, he failed to show up for his route.

Unaccountably depressed and fearing the worst, I went on with

my life. What else could I do?

31

four

“You have
got
to be kidding me,” I muttered. I punched the numbers in again, but the studio’s calculator stubbornly refused

to change its mind. “This can’t be right. How can we possibly be

down to $300 in the studio account?

“No new candles this month, I guess. Maybe I’ll ask students

to reuse paper cups and bring their own toilet paper.” I tossed the traitorous device to the side. Grumbling felt good, but it didn’t change the bottom line. My bank account gave the phrase
going for
broke
a whole new meaning.

For the 937th time, I wondered what malfunctioning brain syn-

apse compelled me, of all people, to open a yoga studio. The day

I got my foot behind my head would be the day I chopped it off

at the ankle,
and my short, stubby legs hardly merited the cover of
Yoga Journal
. As for achieving yoga’s supposed blissful state of samadhi? Well, let’s just say that I had yet to discover the path to enlightenment.

But in life’s toughest times, yoga kept me going.

32

So when my father passed away and left me his house and a

small inheritance, the choice seemed obvious. I quit my stable,

good-paying, full-benefits job and opened Serenity Yoga.

I started by designing the studio’s layout and décor, naively ag-

onizing over every detail. I shopped for hours at New Age stores

all across Seattle, looking for the perfect selection of door chimes, water fountains, meditation cushions, and Tibetan singing bowls.

I replaced the carpeting in the studio’s single practice room with solid maple flooring and strategically placed colorful pots filled with tropical plants all around the reception area. I even hung motivational artwork that implored my students to “live well, laugh often, and love much.” At the time, I thought every detail was crucial. At the time, I thought I was creating a sanctuary of physical and emotional healing.

I can only plead temporary insanity.

As my accountant had told me several times since, anyone with

half a brain would have realized that I was constructing a 1500

square foot money pit. Forget dining on caviar and sipping Dom

Perignon. At the rate I was going, Top Ramen and tap water would

soon become unaffordable luxuries.

Now that I was lucid again, one thing was brutally clear: teach-

ing yoga was the most rewarding way to go broke on the planet.

Yoga was a six-billion-dollar-a-year industry, so someone out

there was obviously making money. Maybe the millionaires all op-

erated those mega “hot box” yoga studios popping up everywhere.

Or perhaps the riches were found in producing DVDs and selling

designer yoga duds. Yoga’s megarich certainly weren’t getting that way running small neighborhood studios.

Fortunately, I had a full schedule of private clients the rest of the week. If none of them canceled and I timed things perfectly, I 33

might not have to raid my personal savings account again. Alicia

arrived right on time, as usual.

“Hey, Alicia. It’s great to see you.”

My words were true, for multiple reasons. Alicia was one of my

favorite students, and I always enjoyed spending time with her.

But more relevant to my current predicament, Alicia was also the

studio’s landlord.

Landlord or not, broke tenant or not, I hesitated. Today wasn’t

one of Alicia’s good days. She looked pale, tired, and significantly older than her true age of thirty-three, and her normally perfectly tailored clothes hung on her frame like hand-me-downs from a

heavier sister. I gritted my teeth and plunged ahead anyway. “I hate to ask this, but money’s a little tight this month. Can I give you the rent check a few days late?”

I expected at least token resistance, especially since this was the second time I’d asked in four months. But Alicia smiled and said,

“Sure. Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to my bookkeeper and let him know. And I’ll make sure he waives the late fee again.”

I sighed in relief. “Thank you. I’ll get the check to you as soon as I can. I hope I’m not causing you any problems.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said as she rolled out her mat. “Waiting a

week or two for your rent money is the least of my concerns. I’m

happy to help.”

She was right. About money being the least of her concerns,

that is. Calling Alicia rich would have been an understatement.

But as Dad used to say, money can’t buy everything. In her case,

money couldn’t buy time—at least not enough of it.

Alicia was diagnosed with stage IV malignant melanoma last

February. She celebrated her thirty-third birthday hooked up to

an intravenous cocktail of immunosuppressing, hair-destroying

34

experimental drugs at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research

Center. Chemo or not, the survival rate for her condition was so

low that her doctors didn’t even talk about it, except in hushed

tones when they thought she couldn’t overhear.

I looked at those statistics myself. In most cases, Alicia’s doctors were probably right. In her case, however, those highly schooled, super experienced medical professionals might just be mistaken.

Alicia was determined to fight. And I’d seen too many miracles to completely discount her.

She used to love strong yoga practices, and I envied her ability

to do complex balance poses with seeming grace and ease. Now

she practiced yoga in an attempt to find that same grace and ease in the balance of her daily living. From what I’d seen, her inner strength put her former physical capabilities to shame.

I led her through a gentle restorative sequence designed to sup-

port her struggling immune system. We began with a few cycles of

Nadi Sodhana—a breath practice also known as Alternate Nostril

Breathing—to balance Alicia’s energy system and focus her mind.

After a few minutes, we added some simple, gentle movements.

Our first pose was Cakravakasana, loosely translated as Sunbird

Pose.

Alicia had done this posture dozens of times in the past, but I

verbally coached each repetition anyway, hoping my voice would

drown out any worries that might be echoing through her mind.

“Please come to hands and knees.” She folded a blanket and placed it under her kneecaps, then positioned her palms on the floor underneath her shoulders. “As you inhale, extend your spine, lengthening it from the crown of your head to the tip of your tailbone.”

Alicia’s spine grew subtly longer. “As you exhale, pull in your belly and move your hips back toward your heels.” She moved her hips

35

toward her feet, bent her elbows, and rested her forehead on the

floor in a position called Child’s Pose.

I continued coaching her. “On your next inhale, come back to

hands and knees. Keep your elbows soft and your belly lightly en-

gaged. Continue this motion, linking every movement with your

breath. Each inhale, return to hands and knees; each exhale, fold back to Child’s Pose.”

As Alicia moved, her breath became slower and subtly deeper;

the chemo-induced stiffness eased from her joints; the tired-looking wrinkles diminished around her eyes. I would even have sworn

that her prana—yoga’s invisible life-force energy—grew stronger.

Alicia didn’t have much stamina, so I kept our practice short.

But that didn’t make it any less powerful. By the time I rang the chimes at the end of our session, she seemed utterly transformed.

She looked lighter—softer somehow. The circles under her eyes

were less pronounced; a slight smile graced her lips. Our time together fed her in ways more powerful than food, rest, or a cabinet full of prescription medication ever could. Working with Alicia reminded me why, in spite of its challenges, I loved my profession.

We said our goodbyes as Alicia reached for the door. She

paused after opening it, looking confused.

“Didn’t you lock up before we started?”

“I thought so, but the door must have stuck. It’s been giving us

some trouble lately.”

Alicia pushed, pulled, and rattled the handle in a futile effort to lock it. “Kate, I wish you had told me. This isn’t safe. I’ll have Jake come by tomorrow to take a look.”

Oh no, not Jake.
I resisted an urge to hide behind the display of yoga blocks. Even the thought of spending time alone with Alicia’s husband, Jake the Jerk, made the hair on my arms stand up.

36

OK, so his last name wasn’t actually “the Jerk.” I added that

part. To be honest, I’d never liked Jake, or his dark brown goatee, for that matter. But until recently, I hadn’t seen him very often.

All that changed the day Alicia received her diagnosis. She quit her full-time job as property manager to become a full-time cancer

fighter. Jake hired himself as her replacement.

I had no idea what Alicia saw in Jake, but she wasn’t alone. My

female students used adjectives like gorgeous, funny, interesting, and intelligent to describe him. I used words like sleazy and used car salesman. He stood a little too close, touched a little too much, and volunteered to come by afterhours a little too often for my

comfort.

So when the toilet overflowed, the heat stopped working, or

anything else in the studio broke down, I did whatever I could to avoid calling him. I would have rather waded through waist-high

raw sewage than spend an hour alone with that man. Dealing with

a finicky front door was nothing.

“Don’t worry about it, Alicia. All you have to do is jiggle it to the right, push quickly to the left, then pull it out and snap! There it goes, right into place!” For once the gods were with me. Right on cue, the door finally latched shut.

Alicia looked skeptical.

“Honestly, it’s no trouble at all.” I fibbed. Fixing that door had been on my to-do list for weeks. “Please don’t bother Jake. I know he’s busy, and I don’t want him wasting his free time over here.”

Alicia furrowed her brow. “Well, I don’t know … I’d feel re-

sponsible if something happened.”

“Seriously, it hardly ever causes problems. Maybe it’s extra hu-

mid today.” I kept talking before she could reply. “I promise, if it causes any more trouble at all, I’ll give Jake a call. Besides, I’ve al-37

ready spoken to the other instructors. Everyone knows to double-

check the door before they leave. And if they forget, well, we don’t have anything here worth stealing, anyway.”

I gave her my most confident smile. Lying didn’t count if you

crossed your fingers, right?

Alicia wasn’t convinced, but she didn’t have enough energy to

argue, either. So I successfully avoided spending time alone with Jake, while the door continued to squeak, stick, pop open, and

otherwise annoy the heck out of me.

It seemed like a good trade-off at the time.

38

five

“Kate, are you in there?” Jake rattled the studio’s door handle

the next morning as I hid, crouched among the dust bunnies un-

der the front desk. For once, the infernal lock held. “Kate?” Alicia must have told him to stop by the studio.