Aurora 03 - Three Bedrooms, One Corpse (17 page)

I looked at my watch. It was almost time to meet Martin. I looked dreadful. Standing still in the cold had drained all color from my face, and my hair had been whipped around until it looked like a long dust mop. In the rearview mirror, I looked at least five years over my age. I pulled some lipstick out of my purse and put it on. I did have a brush, so I tried to tame my hair.

I was marginally more presentable when I got through.

The Athletic Club was a fairly new enterprise in Lawrenceton. Built only a couple of years before, it offered memberships to businesses and individuals. It featured weight rooms, exercise classes, and racquetball courts, plus a sauna and whirlpool. My mother took aerobics classes there. I explained to the dismayingly fit woman at the front desk—she was wearing orange-and-pink-striped spandex and had her hair in a ponytail—that I was meeting Martin Bartell, and she told me he was still playing racquetball on the second court. “You can watch if you climb those stairs,” she said helpfully, pointing to the easily visible stairs five feet to her left.

Sure enough, one side of the second-floor hall was faced with Plexiglas that overlooked the racquetball courts. The other side had ordinary doors in an ordinary wall, and from behind one of them I could hear shouted instructions (“Okay! Now BEND!”) to an exercise class, backed by the deep-bass beat of rock music. The first racquetball court was empty, but in the second court the only sounds were the rebound of bodies and the ball from the walls, and the grunts of impact.

Martin was playing killer racquetball with a man about ten years younger than he, and Martin was playing with a single-minded will and determination that gave me pause. In the five or six minutes they played, I learned a lot about Martin. He was ruthless, as I’d sensed. He was a man who could push the edge of fair play, staying just on the good side. He was a little frightening.

Was it possible this man, this pirate, was content to be an executive of an agricultural company? There was a barely contained ferocity about Martin that was exciting and disturbing.

I’d already known he was a competent, forceful, and decisive man, a man who made his mind up quickly and kept it made. Now he seemed more complicated.

The game was over at last, and Martin had apparently defeated the younger man, who was shaking his head ruefully.

They were both pouring with sweat. I heard someone mounting the stairs heavily, then sensed a presence to my left. Someone else was standing there looking down at the racquetball court.

When I glanced sideways, I saw a blond man in his forties, burly and dressed in a suit that was rather too tight. He was staring at Martin with a look that alarmed me.

When I looked back down, Martin had spotted me and was signaling that he’d be with me in ten minutes. I nodded and tried to smile. He looked puzzled, and then his eyes moved to the man next to me. Martin’s grimace of recognition was irritated, no more. He gave the man a curt nod.

But then his face became angry, and when I looked back at the blond man, I found out why. The man, now only three feet away, was looking at me—and not with the hate-filled glare he’d aimed at Martin but with a spiteful speculation.

I was all too aware that the hall was empty. I’d never had anyone look at me like this, and it was horrible. I was considering if the situation warranted screaming—surely the only way the exercise class would ever hear me—when I heard more footsteps thudding up the stairs. Martin, covered with sweat, said easily, “Sam, did you want to talk to me?” He had his racket in his hand, and though his voice was relaxed, he wasn’t.

“This your little squeeze, Bartell?” asked the blond man in the sort of voice you use to say insulting things.

Little squeeze?

The man hadn’t decided what to do yet; I could tell by the set of his shoulders. If only I could step past him to Martin, we could simply leave. I hoped. But the burly man, who carried maybe twenty extra pounds around the middle, blocked my way. Deliberately. Now Martin’s racquetball partner appeared behind Martin, and I vaguely recognized him as one of the Pan-Am Agra executives who’d been with Martin at the steak house Monday. He looked excited and interested; this was like the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

We were all frozen for a minute.

This was absurd.

“Excuse me,” I said suddenly, clearly, and very loudly. They all jumped. The blond man halfway turned to look at me, and I just stepped right on by him, close enough to tell he’d been drinking—in the middle of the day, too! noted my puritan streak.

“Martin, we have to go to lunch, I’m starving,” I told him, and held his elbow firmly. Because I continued walking, he had to turn and the younger man had to go down the stairs ahead of me. I didn’t look at Martin, and I didn’t look back over my shoulder.

“I’ll wait out here for you to shower,” I said at the bottom of the stairs. The blond man had not followed. I waited for Martin and his racquetball opponent to go through the doors marked men’s LOCKERS AND showers before I seated myself in the safe proximity of the incredible spandex girl at the reception desk.

After a moment the blond man stomped down the stairs and, giving me another long look, left.

“Do you know who that was?” I asked the receptionist. She looked up from her book—

Danielle Steel, I noted—to say, “He’s not an individual member, but he used to come here on the Pan-Am Agra membership. I think his name is Sam Ulrich. They took him off the list last week, though.”

“So why didn’t you tell him he couldn’t come in?”

“He went too fast.” She shrugged. “Besides, one of the guys in the men’s locker room would see he wasn’t on the list and tell him to leave if he went in to change.”

Security was really tight at the Athletic Club.

I stared blankly at an out-of-date magazine until Martin emerged, dressed for once in casual clothes.

When he held out his hand, I took it and rose, conscious of the receptionist’s gaze. She was really making those orange-and-pink stripes ripple for Martin’s benefit. But he was not in the mood.

Martin said over his shoulder to her as we left, “I’m going to have to call the manager today.

You should have informed me Sam Ulrich was in the club, and I would have escorted him out.” I caught one glimpse of her dismayed and beginning-to-be-angry face as the door swung shut.

“Are you all right?” he asked. He put his arms around me. I was kind of glad to lean against him for a moment.

“Yes. It shook me up, though,” I admitted. “Who was that man?”

“A very recent ex-employee. Part of the deadwood I was hired to cut out of the company. He took it pretty bad.”

“Yes, I could tell,” I said dryly.

“I’m sorry you had to be there. If you see him again, call me instantly, okay?”

“Do you think he’d hurt me to get at you?” I asked Martin.

“Only if he’s a more complete idiot than I think he is.”

Not too good an answer, really. But how could Martin tell what the man would do?

“Are you really worried about Sam?” he asked. “Because, if so, I can cancel my trip and stay here.”

I thought for a minute. “No, not so much worried about him, though that did shake me up. It’s just been a down morning, Martin. I went to see Susu Hunter, and that was depressing. Then I went to Tonia Lee’s funeral.”

“You told me when it was and I forgot. I was so involved in getting everything assembled for my trip.”

“I didn’t expect you to come. It was pretty bleak, and very cold.”

“Where are we going to lunch?” he asked. “You need something to warm you up.”

I was recalled to my hostess duties. “Michelle’s, have you been there? They have a buffet lunch with lots of vegetables.”

“In my three months here living in the motel, I think I’ve visited every restaurant in Lawrenceton at least ten times.”

“I didn’t think about that, Martin. I’ll have to cook for you soon.”

“Can you cook?”

“I have a limited repertoire,” I admitted, “but the food is edible.”

“I like to cook once in a while,” he said.

We talked about cooking until we got to Michelle’s, where we collected our plates and went through the line. I saw Martin was careful in his selections and realized he was weight-and health-conscious as well as an exercise enthusiast. We sat on the same side of the booth, and even in that prosaic setting, his nearness was disturbing.

It had been a harrowing morning, and now Martin was leaving town. Ridiculously, I felt like bursting into tears. I had to get over this. This intensity was terrifying me. I sat with my fork poised in my hand, staring straight ahead, willing myself not to cry.

“Do you want me to ignore this?” Martin murmured.

I nodded vehemently.

So he kept on quietly eating.

At last, I gathered myself together and put some cauliflower in my mouth, making myself chew and swallow.

I was going to have to keep busy while Martin was gone.

After a while I said conversationally, “So you’re leaving this afternoon?”

“About five o’clock. I’ll have a meeting first thing tomorrow morning, and it may go on all day. Then I meet with another group Thursday. So I’ll stay over that night and catch the first flight out Friday morning. Will you cook for me Friday night?”

“Yes,” I said, and smiled.

“And Saturday night is the realtors’ thing?”

“Yes, the annual banquet. We’ve booked the Carriage House, so at least the food will be good. There’ll be a speaker, and cocktails. Usual stuff.”

“You handled that situation at the Athletic Club with great ... aplomb,” he said suddenly. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that word out loud. But it’s the only one that fits.”

“Um. I figured I could rescue myself this time.”

“Let me do it next time. My turn, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and laughed.

He took me back to the Athletic Club to pick up my car, and we parted there in the parking lot. He gave me the phone number of his hotel and made me promise to call if I saw Sam Ulrich again. Then we kissed, and he was gone.

Madeleine had a checkup at the vet’s office scheduled the next morning. I got out the stout metal cage Jane had bequeathed me and opened the little door. I put one of Madeleine’s toys inside. I set the cage, door open, on the kitchen table. I put on gardening gloves.

I had profited by experience.

Madeleine knew the instant the cage came out. She could find places to hide you’d swear a fat old cat could never squeeze into. I’d quietly gone upstairs first and closed all the doors while Madeleine was in plain view on the couch, and even closed off the front downstairs living room and the downstairs bathroom. But still, Madeleine had disappeared.

I groaned and started searching.

This time she’d wedged herself under the television stand.

“Come on, old girl,” I coaxed, knowing I was wasting my breath.

The battle raged for nearly twenty minutes. Madeleine and I cursed at each other, and very nearly spat at each other. But after that twenty minutes, Madeleine was in the cage, staring out with the haunted expression of a political prisoner being filmed by Amnesty International.

I dabbed some antibiotic ointment on the worst scratches and pulled on my coat. I was bracing myself for the ordeal to come.

Madeleine wailed all the way to Dr. Jamerson’s office. Nonstop.

Sometimes I loathed that cat.

“Oh, good, Madeleine’s right on time,” said Dr. Jamerson’s nice receptionist with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. I returned a grim nod.

“Let’s see. What does Madeleine need today?”

She knew damn good and well.

“All her shots.”

“Charlie’ll get his gloves,” she said, heaving a resigned sigh. “He’ll be with you in just a minute.”

Charlie helped Dr. Jamerson with the really difficult animals. He was a huge cheerful young man, working at the vet’s office until he had enough saved to go to college full-time instead of part-time.

“Is she here yet?” I heard Charlie asked the receptionist apprehensively. A moment later Charlie stuck his head out into the waiting room.

“Right on time, as always, Miss Teagarden! And how is your kitty today?”

Madeleine yowled. The Labrador on the other side of the room began to whine and pressed his nose against his owner’s leg. Charlie winced.

“Better bring her back,” he said with false assurance. “Doctor’s waiting.”

I struggled with the heavy carrier, knowing I’d have to heft it myself, since Madeleine had found out last time that her paw could fit through the mesh door nicely, even with her claws fully extended. Dr. Jamerson had all Madeleine’s shots laid out ready, plus a generous supply of cotton balls and antiseptic. His jaw was set, and he gave me a grim smile.

“Bring her on, Miss Teagarden. We got through her neutering before, we’ll get through her shots now. Thank God she’s a healthy cat.”

That thought certainly gave me pause. If Madeleine was like this when she felt
good
— “Oh, dear,” I said.

I pulled my gloves back on. “Are you ready?”

“Let’s do it,” Dr. Jamerson said to Charlie and me, and we all nodded simultaneously. I unlatched the cage door and pulled it open.

Fifteen minutes later I emerged from the vet’s office, lugging the cage with the cat screaming triumphantly inside. She’d had her shots. And we’d pretty much had ours, too.

“He didn’t bleed very much, Mother,” I said reassuringly when she called to see how Dr.

Jamerson was doing.

“I sold him a house. He’s such a nice man,” she sighed. “I wish you’d take that cat to Dr.

Caitlin. He went through Today’s Homes.”