Body on the Stage (17 page)

Cathy giggled and took the other
side, leaning around the corner and ducking back quickly. “Clear!”
she whispered.

Dennis wished he was agile
enough to try a forward roll into the passageway but decided the
sound of his weight crashing to the floor might draw unwanted
attention from the neighbours. He slid along the passage with his
back against the wall and entered the bedroom in a crouch. Cathy
moved past him quickly, pointing her ‘gun’ around the room until
she was sure it was empty. She lifted the black linen bedspread and
peered underneath but the base was solid wood. No room for bodies
or attackers there. She slid open the bedside drawer and made a
sound of disgust.

“Eeeeuuwww! Six tubes of lube
and a stack of hand towels. That’s nasty! Far more than I wanted to
know. Oh my God, there are handcuffs as well!”

“Check out the wardrobe door,”
Dennis indicated with a nod. “Bet he watched himself in the
mirror.”

They looked at their reflections
in the floor-to-ceiling mirrored doors and saw matching expressions
of distaste.

“Let’s just finish looking
around and get the hell out of here, eh?” said Dennis. “I feel like
I need a shower already.”

He moved across to a bulky
wooden tallboy and began checking the drawers. The sock drawer held
a surprise in the form of a passport and birth certificate in a
dark blue plastic folder from an Italian travel company.

“Well that’s odd. He can’t be
living it up overseas if his passport is still here, can he?”

“Sure he can,” said Cathy
confidently. “He’ll be travelling on a false passport. Bound to be,
so that we can’t track him down. He’ll know the heat will be on
when we discover the missing money, and he’ll have made
arrangements to get false papers ahead of time so he can skip the
country undetected. It’s standard procedure.”

“Of coursh it ish, Moneypenny. I
forgot how exshpert you are at eshpionage.”

“You better believe it, James
baby.” She gave him a sexy wink and flicked her hair seductively.
“But seriously, I don’t suppose there are convenient ticket stubs
or itineraries tucked away in that folder to tell us where he’s
gone, are there?”

Dennis flicked through the
papers. “Afraid not. Looks like we’ve drawn a blank, sorry.”

“Oh well, it was worth a try.
Thanks so much, Dennis. You can’t imagine how much it helps, having
you along for the ride. I suppose we’d better put everything back
how we found it and make our escape.”

She went to give him a grateful
kiss on the cheek just as he turned towards the tallboy and her
lips landed on his mouth instead. Neither of them pulled away. For
a long minute they held each other, lost in the moment. Dennis
allowed his mind to entertain the wild fantasy that they might
actually do more than kiss. He held her face in his hands and
looked into her eyes. To his amazement he saw the same thought
there. They turned towards the large king-size bed with its shiny
black satin sheets and took two steps towards it before both of
them remembered the lube and the hand towels. The moment evaporated
instantly.

“You’re right Cathy, we’d better
get out of here before somebody comes asking awkward questions
about what we’re doing in Vincenzo’s apartment.”

“Of course, it’d be silly to get
caught. Come on, let’s get back to the gym, shall we?”

Back on familiar ground it was
easier to pretend everything was normal. Cathy disappeared into the
yoga room, while Dennis put extra effort into his workout, lifting
heavier weights and taking shorter breaks between sets. In the back
of his mind, he hoped to speed his transformation from flab to fab
just in case another opportunity to be alone with Cathy presented
itself. He might only get the one shot and he wanted to erase her
memory of his pale, soft, shirtless body from when she’d done his
initial measuring session. Thinking of that made him realise he was
almost due for his halfway measurements. He gasped and redoubled
his efforts.

After his workout and her class,
they met up in her office to check on the insurance policy. She
spread the papers on her desk and started to read, frowning more
and more as she went. “God, this stuff is hard to read! Help me out
here. Can you translate it into plain English for me?”

He turned the papers around and
started from the beginning, concentrating so hard his head began to
ache. He looked up as he turned the final page. “OK, here’s the
situation as I see it. You have cover for liability – if somebody
gets hurt as a result of your actions. You have cover for material
damage – if there’s an accident or break-in and you suffer loss or
damage. But I don’t think you have cover for fidelity, covering
loss by the actions of an employee legitimately on the premises.
Vincenzo was committing theft as a servant and you’re not covered
for that. At least, that’s my interpretation. You need to call your
insurance company as soon as possible to let them know what has
happened and get the full story of what they can or can’t do for
you. I’m so sorry.” He braced himself for her tears, wondering if
he had a clean hanky in his pocket, but she surprised him.

“Oh well, at least I know the
worst now. Thanks, I really appreciate your help with deciphering
that jargon. I’ll just have to buckle down and earn back the money
I need and that’s all there is to it. I feel better now I have a
goal.” She took the papers from his hand and put them back in the
filing cabinet. “Come on, let’s go for a drink. There’s no point in
moping, is there?”

They left the office and headed
to the nearest wine bar.

Two days later Cathy called him
into the cubicle and asked him to step on the scales for his
progress report. He looked down at the figure in surprise. He’d
lost another kilo in the last five days. Cathy smiled.

“You’re looking good! You must
have been really disciplined with your eating and your exercise
over the last week or so, well done. Let’s take your measurements…”
she hesitated, “unless that seems a bit awkward?”

“Not at all,” he assured her,
lying valiantly. “Let’s do it.”

She ran the tape measure around
his waist, chest and hips, noting the figures on his chart. “You’ve
done well there too. I’ll just do the pinch test and you’ll be all
finished for now.” It seemed to be more difficult for her to raise
a fold of skin to pinch in the callipers than it had been the first
time, which Dennis took as a good sign. As her fingers touched his
thigh he steeled himself not to react, breathing a quiet sigh of
relief when she’d finished.

“So,” she said, smiling at him
shyly, “do I owe you another dinner for that intrusion?”

“Well yes, I rather think you
do. And we’d better make it soon because from next week there are
rehearsals nearly every night, and somehow I seem to have been
co-opted as stage crew even though I only signed up for
construction.”

“Right then, let’s make it this
Saturday, and it’s your turn to pick the restaurant.” She went to
close his file but stopped. “Do you want to look at your ‘before’
photo now, to see how much you’ve changed?”

He thought for a moment.
“Actually, no, not really. It would gross us both out, and who
needs that? Let’s keep it hidden away for now, shall we?”

“Fair enough. You’ll have even
more to celebrate when you finally see it and compare it with your
new photo. I think you’ll be impressed.”

“I admire your faith.”

“I know my job, sweetie.”

“Of course you do. Hey, how did
you get on with checking around the gym for any clues about
Vincenzo? Did he leave a convenient address book lying around or
anything like that?”

‘Couldn’t find anything helpful
at all. He’d left a bit of gear here in his locker, but that could
have been to make us assume he was coming back so we wouldn’t raise
the alarm.” She wrinkled her nose. “I had to throw the clothes in
the washing machine or they would have grown legs and walked out of
here.”

“And did you search right
through the place?”

“Well, a quick look round, yes.
I didn’t deflate all the exercise balls and look inside them, if
you want to be pedantic about it. I’ve been a bit busy here what
with being shorthanded, remember?” Her blue eyes flashed and he
could see the red hair was living up to its reputation.

“Sorry, I wasn’t meaning to
imply you hadn’t done a good job. I’m sure you did everything you
could,” he soothed her. “I’ll go and do my workout now and leave
you in peace. See you later.”

To his relief she smiled back
and waved him on his way.

Dennis walked thoughtfully into
the main exercise room. If Cathy hadn’t had a chance to do a proper
search, perhaps he could help out by doing it now. Nobody would pay
any attention to a guy in exercise gear walking around a gym, as
long as he looked purposeful. He headed for the furthest part of
the room and began to walk along the back wall, looking carefully
at the carpet, fixtures and moveable equipment as he passed by.

He shook his head as he saw two
dumbbells missing from the rack. People were hopeless about putting
them back in the right place after using them. He’d pick them up
when he found them and tidy them away.

He came to the storeroom door
and pushed it open. The room seemed clean and tidy, but as he
looked around he saw some indentations in the carpet at the end of
a long wooden storage box. The box was nearly the width of the room
and easily big enough for a person to fit into. He walked slowly
towards the box and raised the lid, his heart suddenly pounding.
Inside were two large sports bags, bigger than any he’d seen
before. Cautiously, he reached down and pulled on the zip of the
top one, revealing, to his great relief, nothing more sinister than
a set of hockey sticks and body padding. He pulled it out of the
way, sniffing the air but detecting only stale sweat and dusty
plastic. The second bag was larger and quite lumpy. He leaned right
over the box and pulled the zipper open slowly. The bag contained
several sets of inline skates and some goal nets. Dennis blew out a
gusty sigh and closed the box, wiping his sweaty hands on his
T-shirt. Then he took a closer look at the indentations in the
carpet. It looked as if the box had been moved from its original
position, one it had plainly occupied for quite some time. This was
an anomaly that required further investigation. Feeling like a
genuine CSI, he knelt down at the far end of the box and pushed it
back towards the marks so it stood where it used to. He bent
forward to get his face close to the floor. A faint reddish-brown
mark stained the grey carpeting. Dennis reared back with a stifled
exclamation.

A dozen thoughts ran through his
mind. Rust. It was probably rust. If only he had a proper CSI test
kit and could check whether it was blood or not. He could use a
damp corner of his handkerchief and rub the stain gently – no! If
this was really a crime scene he shouldn’t be touching it at all!
No convenient little pink-tinted cotton buds for him, no Luminol
and UV light to show up the blood spatter. It was probably rust.
After all, there were lots of iron bits and pieces around a gym.
Weight bars, springs, that sort of thing. Even if it was blood, it
might just be from somebody who’d cut their finger or something.
There didn’t have to be a sinister reason for it.

He stood up. If he told Cathy
about this, she’d probably feel obliged to tell the police so they
could check it out. If it did turn out to be blood, they might seal
off the room and close the gym until their investigations were
completed. That would be a disaster for Cathy in her precarious
financial position. She could only cover her tax bill if she kept
trading, even assuming the tax department gave her some leeway to
make up the lost money. But if he didn’t tell her, it might mean a
vital piece of evidence went undiscovered.

He weighed up the facts and his
conscience. He pushed the box back across to where he’d found it
and firmly closed the door.

At the next construction session
Denis was surprised to find the crew in the foyer when he came into
the theatre. Tony and Gazza were wandering round with tape measures
while Nick and Fenton wrote down figures and made sketches.

“What’s going on out here?”
asked Dennis.

“Aw, gidday Doc,” said Gazza.
“We’ve got the happy task of constructing a bar for our lucky
patrons to purchase items of an alcoholic nature.”

“I can’t imagine why we didn’t
think of this before,” said Tony. “The sweet shop always does well.
In fact they usually make more profit than the shows, so why
haven’t we had a proper bar before now? I’d have thought Howard
would have suggested it. No doubt he’s making good use of the bar
right now on that bloody cruise he’s on.”

“It was probably the last
committee,” said Nick. “They were a bit conservative. And over the
last few years they got so tired of running the place that new
ideas were just too hard to put into practice. You can’t blame
them, really. But now we’ve got fresh young blood on board, the
sky’s the limit!” He adopted a manly stance as one destined to
achieve greatness.

“There’s a limit to our
patience,” muttered Gazza. “Get out of the way, will you?” He ran a
tape from one wooden pillar to the next. “Twelve point one, Fenton.
Got that?”

With the sketches all annotated
with measurements, the guys headed off to the timber bay in the
workshop to select their materials. Dennis tagged along behind,
pausing for a moment to watch what was happening on stage.

Cathy had the five actors who’d
be learning the strip routines lined up facing her.

“Now then, you know the scene in
the play where Glenda tells the boys to sort out their grooming?
The ‘bum fluff – get rid of it!’ line?” They grinned and nodded.
“Well it’s all true. You guys are going to be more man-scaped than
you’ve ever been in your lives. It’s your choice whether you shave
or wax or use a cream, but all that body hair has to disappear for
the length of the season.”