Under My Skin (6 page)

And the instant she said it I realized how it must look to her. After all, she didn’t know I was a private eye. From where she was standing I was just a regular guest who had waxed lyrical about her fingers, colluded in a certain humor
and provocation, and then, seeing it for what it was, gone to some considerable trouble to get myself back for more. For my part, I’d been so busy with my own agenda I’d obviously missed hers. Courtship rituals. Fact is, I’ve always been a miserable failure at them.

Except … Except maybe it hadn’t been such a total misunderstanding. Maybe I’d been giving out some ambivalent signals of my own without realizing it. I felt again her hands on my stomach; how tense and then how good they had made me feel. How easily they had triggered memories of matters sexual. I saw her almost coy smile as we parted and then her face in the night, flushed and open, confident in both the giving and the taking of pleasure. Oh, my, Hannah. What a great moment for sexual ambiguity to raise its mischievous little head. I took a deep breath, cuffed it soundly about both ears, and got on with the job in hand.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Martha,” I said quietly. “I haven’t come for a massage.”

“Oh,” she said. And she was bright enough to register the depth of my retreat. This time her voice had a touch of defiance in it. “Why are you here, then?”

“I need some information,” I said. “And I think you’re the one who could give it to me.” And then I told her who I was.

She listened in silence, standing very still with her hands deep in her uniform pockets. When I was finished, she bit at her bottom lip and laughed a little. “Christ, how stupid. I ought to have guessed when you asked so many questions. So, I tell you what I know, and in return you don’t tell them. Is that it?”

“More or less.”

She shook her head, then walked past me over to the door. For a moment I wasn’t sure, for a moment I thought she was actually going to leave. Instead she flicked the
catch below the handle, tested to see it was locked, then turned to face me. “Seems I don’t have much option, do I?”

And from there it just fell into my lap, really. She was a smart cookie, of course. Somebody looking to be a manager herself. When it had become clear that Carol Waverley was getting her knickers in a twist about something, it hadn’t taken Martha long to work out what it was, particularly since she’d been one of the girls assigned to the retinting of the Marks & Spencer’s buyer. It had just been a question of using her ears and eyes. Especially her eyes.

“You want a name, I suppose. Let me tell you about her first. She’s not happy here. Not that that’s enough to convict her on. Half the girls in this place have had a run-in with management one way or another since Waverley took over. But her problem is a bit more basic. She’s got a kid, an eighteen-month-old daughter by some guy who walked out on her. The baby lives with her mother in Swansea. She goes up there every third weekend. There are no jobs there. She needs the money, but, of course, she doesn’t want to be separated. She tried to persuade the piranha to let her work longer one week and then have extra days off the next, but Waverley said no. They had a bit of dingdong about it.”

“Jennifer Pincton,” I said, my mind racing through the files, putting facts to images. “Tall, dark-haired girl, quite big.” She was the one who had given me a hard time for being in the heat area yesterday afternoon. She’d also been in all the right places at the right times. “But this row with Mrs. Waverley. That’s not on her file.”

“No, well, it wouldn’t be, would it? Not worthy of note, I expect.”

“I still don’t see why you think it’s her.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. Because she’s recently become very flush has our Jennifer, flashing around a lot of unexplained cash. I noticed it the night after the steam room incident, although I didn’t think about it much then. A few of us
went out to the local that evening, had a game of darts and a few drinks. She didn’t usually join in that kind of thing. Too careful with her money, sending everything she had home to Mama. But not only did she come that night, she also bought a round, and paid for it with a fifty-pound note. I’d been to the loo and was coming back when I saw her at the bar.

“A week later she had a new pair of trainers on. Label ones. Must have set her back fifty or sixty pounds. And on Saturday when one of the girls was going into Reading and she was on duty, she gave them a package to post for the baby. It was heavy. The postage alone came to seven quid.” She paused. “I was curious. So, last week I searched her room.”

I must say her timing was immaculate. She left another pause, then glanced up and registered the amused admiration in my eyes.

“You took a chance,” I said.

She smiled. “Yes, well, I do, don’t I? It wasn’t just the money. She’d been jumpy recently, not quite herself. I spend a lot of time watching people.” And she kept on looking at me. “After a while you get a nose for who’s giving off signals.”

It was more a dig than a come-on, but a gentle one. I found myself wanting to smile. “Ever thought you were in the wrong profession, Martha?”

“No. As a matter of fact I think I’m in absolutely the right one. Don’t you?”

And despite myself I laughed. “So what did you find?”

“Cash. Lots of it. Her room is on the ground floor. She shares it with Lola Marsh….”

“Small, plump girl, quiet?”

“Yeah, that’s her. Anyway, I picked a time when they were both on duty, went round by the garden and fiddled the window lock. I found the money in the bottom drawer of
her chest under some uniforms, a big brown envelope with ten fifty-pound notes in it. Five hundred pounds. You tell me where a junior beautician gets that kind of extra cash?”

Offering night massages to the right kind of guest, I thought but didn’ t say. I played Frank for a moment. It often helps. “It still doesn’t prove anything.”

“Doesn’t it? The very next morning Kylie Chantner took a couple of lumps out of her legs testing the G-five machine. When I looked up the log, I found that Jennifer Pincton had been one of the last G-five operators the night before.”

“So why didn’t you tell all this to Mrs. Waverley?”

“Why should I? Seems to me a good manager should make it her business to check out those employees who might be tempted.”

“You really don’t like her, do you?”

She gave a little shrug. “She’s too interested in making it look good. Thinks that’s the way to keep it under control. She misses what’s underneath.”

And it struck me that Martha probably would make a good manager. As long as she could keep her hands off the clients. Back to the couch.

“So, tell me about last night.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How about starting with why you took the risk of the G-five room. You must have realized that security would have been tightened up.”

She gave it a little thought before answering. “It was Katherine’s idea. I thought it was a risk, yes, but it wasn’t one I could really tell her about. I suppose you could say I’d just got used to it.”

“How did you get in?”

“I’ve got my own key. Had it duplicated months ago before all the fuss started.”

“So when you got down there last night, was it locked up?”

“My section was.” She paused. “The beauty salon was open, though.”

The beauty salon. Interesting. A lot of tender skin going through there every day, a ripe area for damage. “How do you know?”

“Because I needed some body lotion. And I didn’t have to use my key to get it.”

“Did you see anyone?” She shook her head. “Hear anything?” She gave me a funny look, maybe yes, maybe no. “Well?”

“Maybe.”

“But you didn’t stop to look?”

She shrugged. “Katherine was waiting. I had other things on my mind.”

She was good at the insolence. No doubt there were those for whom it held its own attractions. But I could feel myself being pushed somewhere I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. I dug my heels in. “So, how much did Katherine Cadwell pay you?”

“That wasn’t how it was,” she said angrily, for the first time showing a glimmer of vulnerability. “Not at all.”

And I thought of the number of other times she must have been on that couch. And how many others she would have shared it with. “But it is sometimes,” I said quietly. “‘Thanks for helping me relax’? ‘A week was not enough’? Come on, Martha, you’re not that good at your job.”

She looked at me steadily. “Maybe not. But right now I’d say I’m better than you are at yours.”

And in a way she was right, of course. It’s been a while since I’ve been professionally and sexually upstaged in the same encounter. It seemed only gracious to admit to at least one of them. “Very possibly,” I said, getting up.
“Although it wouldn’t do either of us any good to go public about it.”

“No,” she said quietly. “It wouldn’t.”

I got up and went to the door. As I flicked the lock, I turned to her. “Well, thanks, Martha. You’ve saved me a lot of time and trouble. And don’t worry. My lips are sealed.”

She nodded. “I know that.” She smoothed out the towel on the massage table. “You know, your hour isn’t over yet, Mrs. Wolfe. I could always do a bit of work on those shoulders for you. They look awfully tense.” She let the second linger. “Straight and narrow,” she added with a quiet seriousness.

“Maybe at the end of the job,” I said, thinking about it. “Oh, and it’s ‘Ms.’”

The beauty salon didn’t open till 10:15. Carol Waverley must have been pretty pissed off when I rang to tell her that on further consideration I thought I might have heard a noise in there, too, but she was worried enough not to make a thing about it.

We went in through the back and worked fast. Hair, face, legs, hands, and feet. My, my, what a lot of bottles, creams, and ointments it takes to make a girl look lovely. Luckily, Carol Waverley hadn’t got to where she was today without knowing her way around a beauty parlor. She used her nose primarily, and when she wasn’t sure the back of her hand. So it was that when she came to a particular massage cream used for softening up the hands and wrists after a manicure bath, she inflicted a small but notable skin burn on herself.

What exactly it had been doctored with neither of us knew, although there was a faint whiff of something do-it-yourself about it. As I watched her trying to make light of the pain caused by the angry red welt, the word
acid
sprang to mind. But whatever she felt, it didn’t stop her from checking
everything else, just in case. What she lacked in intuition, Carol Waverley certainly made up for in dedication.

While she was testing, I was thinking. There were four manicures booked in for that day. The girls in the beauty salon were Margaret on hair, Flosie on waxing and feet, and the born-again Julie on faces and hands. The jar in question was new and full, sitting next to an almost empty one on the trolley. At some point during the treatments the first one would certainly have been finished and the second one opened. All Jennifer Pincton had to do was to sit back and wait for the screams.

What I had to do—if I was going to keep my promise to Martha and not expose her as my source—was to trap the culprit red-handed, if you’ll excuse the expression. Which meant finding a way to make her return to the salon to check the manicure jars.

As plans go, it wasn’t a great one, but at least it convinced Carol. We pulled another full pot of cream down from the shelf and (after checking it) put it next to the doctored one, which we marked with a large black X on the bottom. Then Carol took the young Julie aside and, swearing her to secrecy on pain of instant dismissal, told her which cream to use and which one to avoid.

I wish I could have been there to see Julie’s face, but I was already round the back of the girls’, sharpening my Abbey National cash card, ready for a little breaking and entering. With Jennifer supervising peat baths and Lola Marsh on slender tone for the rest of the morning, I had the place to myself.

It went just like the movies. I didn’t even scratch the card. Inside, the room was warm and stuffy, the curtains closed. It was also a mess. Mind you, it wasn’t really big enough for two people to live in. The beds were pushed against opposite walls. They both had stuffed toys at their head, but there was no mistaking Jennifer’s: the wall next to it was
covered with snapshots of a cute little baby; close enough to touch but not to hold. You know the problem with real life? The baddies are never quite the ones you want them to be.

Come on, Hannah, leave the bleeding hearts to the social workers. Thank you, Frank. Always there when you need him. I looked around. Two beds meant two chests. I went for the one nearest to Jennifer’s. Bottom drawer. Just as promised, there it was, stashed in between white starched cotton, a bulky plain brown envelope with a wad of fifty-pound notes inside.

The only thing different was that there were more of them now. Fourteen instead of ten. But then half a dozen carp, a pot of maggots, and a tub of hand cream separated Martha’s visit and mine.

I stuffed the notes back in the envelope and went systematically through the other drawers. I had to really look this time, but it was worth the effort. At the back of the top one, wrapped in a couple of pairs of M and S bikini knickers, I found another free gift: a small tin bottle of Nitromorse. I undid the top and the concentrated smell that leapt out triggered an instant home movie: me in my newly acquired flat, slapping coats of the stuff onto a Victorian fireplace, waiting while it burned and blistered its way through a dozen layers of paint. Rather like it had burned its way into the skin of Carol Waverley’s hand. I thought of smelling the underwear for any lingering aroma of maggots but it seemed too crude even for me.

I looked up at the window with its drawn curtains. Maybe Jennifer Pincton was worried that someone might peep in and catch her counting her money. I put my eye to the gap in between. At the end of the garden a woman stood staring in my direction. My instant thought was Jennifer Pincton. Equally instantly dismissed. She looked nothing like her. And, anyway, I already knew this woman. Although I was too far away to properly see her face, the
body spoke for itself: long legs, small waist, good breasts. Not to mention a fabulous breaststroke. I twitched the curtains closed, then peeked again. She was still there, looking straight at my window.