A Body to Die For (24 page)

By eight the next morning I was on my way out of the inn, ready to pay Piper a visit. As I’d stared at the ceiling through
the darkness the night before, I’d worked out my strategy: 1) I needed to strike early before she had a chance to leave her
room and disappear into the day; 2) I had to convince her that if she told me the truth, I wouldn’t betray her confidence.

It was freezing outside, and a light puff of smoke appeared each time I exhaled. The dead-headed flowers in the garden were
covered with a film of crystallized frost. Had it been this chilly when I’d been with Beck last night? I had no recollection.
I’d been in such an infatuated stupor, my body had been immune to cold.

As I circled the back side of the building, my eye caught the silhouette of a man walking quickly toward the rear door of
the inn, his hands stuffed into his tan jacket pockets. It took me a second to realize it was George.

He stopped abruptly when he saw me, started to lift his hand in a wave, and instead hurried across the grass in my direction.
As he strode closer to me, I could see that he looked drawn and pale, as if he’d just slept off a three-day bender. But his
fake black hair gleamed brightly in the hard sunlight.

“Good morning,” he said, pulling his hand from his pocket to shake mine. It was sweaty again, despite the chill in the air.
“Danny told me you’d come back to help her.”

“Yes, I came back as soon as I could. This must be a very tough time for you.”

“The police have this all wrong, you know—though I shouldn’t be talking about it. My lawyer
insists
that I not say word one about it.” His eyes, magnified by the lenses in his glasses, were doing a little jig as he talked,
like two butterflies attempting to mate.

“I can understand that,” I said.

“You can also probably imagine what a strain this is putting on Danny and me,” he said.

Strain was not a word Danny had used.

“I got the feeling Danny was being very supportive,” I said.

“Of course, Danny’s always—I—I’m not sure what you know, but Danny and I have had our ups and downs. There was one very poor
indiscretion on my part. But I assured Danny it would never happen again, and I’m a man of my word. You have to help convince
her of that. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

I was flabbergasted by his revelation but fought not to show it.

“That’s really not my role, George.”

“You can’t find it in you to help me?” he asked almost frantically, grabbing my arm. “Danny trusts you.”

“You need to talk to her yourself about this.”

“
When?
She’s avoiding me.”

A door slammed in the direction of the outbuildings and George whipped his head around, looking for the source. His hand was
still gripping my arm, and I tugged it away.

“You don’t like me, do you,” he said. “It’s like you’re jealous of me, because I’m closer to Danny than you are.”

Before I could answer, he hurried off toward the back entrance of the inn and, using a key, let himself in.

I was so discombobulated that I stood for a few moments on the path, rolling over in my mind what had just happened. His agitation,
his comment about my being jealous—he seemed like a guy who was about to lose it. And then there was his confession. When
guys of his generation used the word
indiscretion,
it didn’t mean they’d divulged their salary to a colleague or broken a confidence. It meant they’d been humping some honey
who wasn’t their wife.

I started up the path again and made my way to the barn. It looked as deadly quiet in there as it did in the inn these days.
In the vestibule, I found Piper’s name next to one of the buzzers on the panel and pressed. I waited. Nothing. I tried again.
This time a sleepy, sullen voice asked, “What is it?”

“Piper, it’s Bailey Weggins. I need to talk to you. It’s pretty important.”

“It can’t wait? I’m not even dressed yet.”

“No, it can’t wait.”

The buzzer that released the door sounded as annoyed as she had. I realized as I walked through into the ground floor that
I had no idea where her room was, though I remembered that last weekend I’d seen her coming down the flight of stairs. I climbed
the stairs and discovered five doors along the corridor on the second floor. I’d stood there stupidly for a minute before
she quietly opened one of the doors, wearing a red kimono.

Her room was slightly larger than a dorm room, with a single bed, dresser, small table and chair, sink, hot plate, and compact
fridge. On nearly every foot of the floor were messy piles of clothes with wire hangers poking out of them and scattered books
and papers. Two empty duffel bags gaped open on the bed, indicating that the packing process was soon to begin.

“I take it this has something to do with Anna,” Piper said without even so much as a good morning to me.

“Yes, it does,” I said. “I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but it’s urgent.”

Before I could say another word, she crossed to the table and hit the button on a blender, pulverizing what appeared to be
a fruit, yogurt, and ice. When she’d finished she poured the pink contents into a glass and took a large swallow.

“Well, what is it?” she asked, licking the foam from the drink off the top of her lip.

“I figured out what was going on at the spa,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

I could tell from her insolent tone that she didn’t suspect what was coming next.

“I said I figured out what you were doing at the spa—you and Anna and the other therapist, the one who apparently left in
search of the world’s biggest wave.”

Now I had her attention.

“I have no idea what—”

“I’m talking about the release massage. I know you’ve been doing it here. But I also have no intention of reporting this to
the police.”

“No?” she said, looking half-angry, half-freaked. “Why not?”

“Because it could destroy everything for Danny if the police came in here and busted everyone. And I don’t even want
Danny
to know—at least right now. What I want to do is help Danny and figure out who killed Anna. I’m wondering if one of Anna’s
special
clients might have done it.”

She sighed and pressed in the sides of her temples with her palms as if trying to relieve pressure on her brain.

“I don’t think it was anyone like that,” she said, releasing her hands and plopping onto the bed.

“Why not?”

“Because there was never any sign of trouble. Nothing seemed odd. There were no weird guys.”

“Did Anna have any brand-new clients recently?” I asked.

“No. She hadn’t taken anyone new in weeks.”

“What about Josh? Were there any problems with him lately? He wasn’t demanding a bigger cut and she resisted or anything like
that?”

She looked startled, but I wasn’t sure why.

“
Was
there a problem with Josh?” I urged.

“Josh wasn’t in on this,” she said.

“Josh didn’t
know?
” I exclaimed.

“Oh, he knows
now,
” she said with an ugly smile. “He found out about two months ago. And needless to say, he’s been in a rage over it.”

“I’m finding this very hard to believe,” I said. “How could Josh not have been in on it—or at the least not known it was going
on?”

Piper rose from the bed and picked her way through the piles of junk on the floor toward the table, refilling her glass with
the sluggish remains of her smoothie. She took a sip and, uninterested, set the glass back on the table.

“Josh has been preoccupied this year,” she said. “He’s been in a tizzy about getting a line of Cedar Inn and Spa products
developed, and he’s in and out all the time. Besides, it’s not like this has been going on forever.”

“When did it start up?”

“Look, how do I know I can trust you?”

“Because if I were going to tell the police, they’d be here talking to you right now instead of me.”

“Okay, it started after Anna came,” she said wearily. “She’d done it before and suggested it as a way to make extra money.
I’d met her when I was living in New Jersey and doing some freelance work in Manhattan. At first I thought it was a bad idea
to get started up here with it, but we get paid next to nothing. Besides, what’s the real harm in it? In some foreign countries
it’s standard to do this as part of a massage.”

“Weren’t you ever afraid of getting caught?”

“Well, Anna certainly wasn’t,” she said with a smirk. “She seemed to enjoy life most when she was living on the edge of it.
I
worried about it—sometimes. But we were discreet. It was just the three of us. And we kept our business small.”

“How did Josh find out, then?”

“He started going through the records this past summer—looking at what clients went to what therapists and when. He put two
and two together.”

“Was this after William Litchauer died?”

She hesitated, sweeping her fingers through her thick red hair. “Yeah,” she said finally, sitting on the straight-backed chair
next to the table. “Anna had given that lard-ass his massage. After he died and the police started snooping around, she got
jittery. Josh could smell something fishy. When he went through the records and saw how many regular male clients she had,
it all finally came together for him.”

So to speak, I was tempted to say.

“What
about
Litchauer?” I asked. “Was he here for release massage?”

“Yes—but he wasn’t even in the massage room when he had the heart attack. He was in the men’s locker room. The guy was a walking
time bomb, and if he hadn’t died there, he would have died the next day mowing his lawn.”

“Get back to Josh, then,” I told her. “You said he was in a rage when he found out.”

“Yeah, that’s a word that sums it up nicely. Don’t get me wrong—there was no
moral
outrage on his part. I’ve got the feeling Josh has spent his fair share of time on the dark side.”

“But you’d put his business in potential jeopardy, and that’s what angered him so much,” I said, urging her on.

“Bingo. Though he’d been happy as a clam when the bucks were rolling in and he could buy his new convertible.”

“I can guess why he didn’t go to the police. But why didn’t he just fire the three of you?”

“That would have drawn too much attention,” she said. “Everyone at the inn would have been curious about why all three of
us were out on our asses or were suddenly quitting. And even if Josh made up some decent-sounding story, Danny might have
started snooping.”

“Did he just tell you to cool it?” I was leading the witness too much, but I was impatient about the pace she was moving at.

“No, he came up with a plan he called gradual withdrawal—which is kind of cute, all things considered,” she added sarcastically.
“We were each going to hand in our resignations a few months apart. He said that if we left any sooner, he’d report us to
the police.”

“And Lauren was first? That’s why she moved to Hawaii?”

“Yes. Anna was supposed to go later this month, and me in December. Though a couple of weeks ago she’d asked if I could switch
with her. She said she needed more time to try to find another gig.”

“Do you think there’s any chance Josh killed Anna?”

“That’s the main reason I’m blabbing to you about all of this. If something happens to me in the next forty-eight hours, you
can tell them about this whole Josh business. I’ve been scared to death of him ever since Anna died. But then when I think
about it, I can’t figure out the reason he’d kill her. He’d know it would draw even
more
attention to the spa—and that’s what he was trying to avoid. Unless he’s some Jekyll and Hyde type. Which wouldn’t surprise
me in the least.”

“The night of the murder, you seemed distracted when you gave me my massage. What was up with that?”

“
What?
I don’t know. I’ve just been jittery since Josh figured it all out.”

“Is there a chance anyone else knew about this?”

“No, of course not. Do you think we’d still be here if Danny knew? Cordelia told me once, about five or six months ago, that
a guy had made a suggestion to her that she ‘finish’ the massage, and she asked me how I handled situations like that. I looked
horrified and told her I would just act indignant with any dude who did that and tell him not to show his face again.”

“I guess I was thinking more of Eric. He cared about Anna. What if he’d found out she was involved in something like this?”

She scrunched up her mouth on one side. “I never thought of that. I don’t know. We were discreet. Unless Josh told him. They
were sort of friendly.”

“Why did Anna and Eric stop seeing each other?”

“Anna was never seriously interested in Eric,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Like I said, she liked things
edgy. She liked
men
with an edge. I think in the beginning she thought there was something exotic about Eric, because of the way he looks. But
he was too much of a nice guy for her. He’s kind of old-fashioned, actually.”

“So he would really have freaked if he knew?” I said.

“Maybe.”

“Was he still pining for her?”

“I think so. He’s had a sick puppy dog look on his face for the last six weeks or so—ever since she lowered the boom. Cordelia
has been trying to distract him with her mega tits, but he wisely hasn’t turned his attention toward her.”

“And what about the tennis pro? I heard he’d been buzzing around Anna.”

“
Him?
That guy’s a jerk.”

“But could Anna have been dating him?”

“I doubt it. She didn’t like him. He got massages as part of his barter, and I heard Anna tell the receptionist that she never
wanted to work with him again.”

“Did Anna ever mix business with pleasure? She never messed around with Josh, did she?” I was inclined to agree with what
Eve had assessed about his sexuality, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

“Oh, please,” she said. “I’m sure he plays for the other team—though he keeps his private life very private.”

“And what about George, Danny’s husband?”