Pumped for Murder (9 page)

H
elen sat up on the weight bench, gasping for breath. Her midsection felt like it had been gouged out, then wrapped with iron bands. Fantastic Fitness indeed. This place was an air-conditioned torture chamber.

Derek kept smiling. The massive manager was a sadist in spandex.

“Come on, Helen, you can do it,” Derek said. “One more set of crunches. No pain, no gain.”

“What the heck does that mean?” Helen said.

Derek ignored her surly words. “Pain means you’re achieving your goal. You have to work through your pain to get to a better body.” He flashed those blinding white teeth.

“What idiot believes that?” Helen said.

“Jane Fonda,” Derek said. “My mom had her exercise tapes. I grew up listening to Jane say, ‘No pain, no gain’ and ‘Feel the burn.’ ”

“Derek, I’d punch you, except I’d break my hand on your rockhard abs.”

Derek remained relentlessly upbeat. “Come on, Helen. You’re a good-looking woman. You could be hot if you got rid of that flab. You’re a bad example to our members.”

“Flab?” Helen said. “That’s not flab. I have curves.”

“You’ve got Dunlap disease,” Derek said. “Your gut Dunlapped over your jeans.”

“You’re exaggerating. It’s not that bad,” Helen said.

“How old are you?” Derek asked.

“Forty-one,” Helen said.

“You’re too young to think like that. One more set; that’s all I’m asking.”

“I don’t want a better body,” Helen said. “I like this one. So does my husband.”

“But you do want to keep your job, don’t you?” Helen heard the threat. Derek’s smile didn’t look quite so friendly. “You could have finished the next set in the time you’ve been arguing with me.”

“I’m making minimum wage for maximum pain,” Helen said. She could feel the burn, all right. Her abs and biceps felt like they were on fire. She needed this job to watch their client’s husband, the heroically chiseled Bryan. Helen put her aching arms behind her neck and positioned herself on the bench for ten more agonizing crunches.

“One!” Derek said.

Derek had volunteered to train her for free after work. Helen hoped she would discover Bryan Minars’s partner in adultery so she could quit her job at the gym.

“Two!”

She could see Bryan now. Helen had watched Shelby’s husband every time he came to work out, and the man never did anything remotely compromising.

“Three!”

After Bryan had finished his training session this afternoon with Jan, he had stopped briefly to flirt with Carla at the reception desk.

“Four!”

Now Bryan was deep in conversation with “What a Waste” Will, the sweet-natured gay guy who made the men and women gym members sigh. Will disappointed everyone. He was faithful to his partner, despite constant temptation. Helen had seen at least four gym members hit on him, including a smoking-hot firefighter. The man had a will of iron, as well as buns of steel.

“Five!” Derek counted. “Halfway there.”

Bryan isn’t having an affair, Helen decided. He liked hanging out at Fantastic Fitness and he had lots of friends. Too bad Shelby wasn’t one of them. Shelby wouldn’t like hearing that.

“Six!”

If your marriage was over, Helen thought, it was better to know than to delude yourself.

She’d made that mistake herself, and the results were more painful than anything this gym could inflict.

“Seven! Eight! Nine! One more. One more!” Derek called.

Helen finished her ten crunches and collapsed on the bench in a puddle of sweat.

“Good,” Derek said.

“There’s nothing good about this.” Helen dragged her tortured body to the showers. Soaking under the steaming water, her sore muscles slowly unknotted. Helen dried herself with a scratchy gym towel, dressed, then poured herself a glass of ice water in the women’s lounge. She’d earned her rest on the flower-patterned couch and hoped it would give her the strength for the hot walk home.

She watched gray, mouselike Evie scurry toward the lockers. The tiny woman was back for her second workout of the day. Evie was pretty, but her slender white body never developed muscles—or curves. Helen wondered why Evie spent so much time at the gym. She was glad Evie was a member. The quiet creature never caused a moment’s trouble.

Wish we had more people like you, Helen thought, and fewer overdeveloped divas. She swallowed the last of her water.

The walk to the Coronado was a trek through a steam bath. All the way home, Helen cursed their client and this pointless job.

She should have spoken up when Shelby saddled Helen with the receptionist gig. Hell, Phil should have said something. Instead he sat there, transfixed by Shelby’s Red Hots toes, and Helen got stuck with mandatory musclehead workouts.

By the time she dragged herself upstairs to Coronado Investigations, she’d worked up a full-blown case against her husband and declared him guilty. It didn’t help when he greeted her with a big smile.

“Helen!” Phil wrapped his arms around her.

“Ouch! Don’t touch me,” she said. “I’m sore.”

“How about a massage?” he asked.

“How about hands off?” she said.

He kissed her lightly on the cheek and started to unbutton her blouse. “We could do it on the desk,” he whispered in her ear. “We haven’t christened our office yet. I’ve been thinking all afternoon about that.”

“I’ve been thinking all afternoon about how I got stuck with this lousy job at the gym,” Helen said. “You don’t have to exercise to keep it—I do.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I feel your pain.”

“You couldn’t begin to,” Helen said.

Phil wisely changed the subject from sex to work. “Any progress on the case of the wandering husband?”

“None. A lot of women look at Bryan, but I’ve never seen him step out of line.”

“Cheaters can be accomplished sneaks,” Phil said. “His wife goes to that gym. She called me and asked if she should continue working out there. I advised her to quit going there. It may take him a while to drop his guard. Just watch him a little longer.”

Helen didn’t want to hear that. “I’m working
two
cases. You’re working one.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil said.

Was he trying to look sincere? Or was a smirk hovering around his lips?

“How can I make it up to you? Helen, I haven’t been sitting on my hands. I’ve been working on Gus’s investigation. I drove up to Boca this afternoon and talked with Joel, Mark’s friend from the old days. Have I got news.”

She sat down gingerly in her office chair, careful of her sore glutes and thighs. “Spill,” she said.

“Joel says Mark and Bernie were running with a party crowd—and he was one of the hell-raisers. He bragged about his wild past. Gus didn’t hang around with them. Joel liked Gus well enough—they all did—but Gus only cared about cars and Jeannie. He’d just met her and he knew she was the one. Jeannie didn’t do drugs and didn’t like wild parties.

“Bernie was living with the drug dealer, and Joel thought she had her nose in the snow. Joel says Gus didn’t see much of his brother or his sister, except at Mark’s thirtieth birthday. Right after that party, Joel says Bernie called her brother.”

“Which one?” Helen asked.

“Mark,” Phil said. “She couldn’t go to Gus with this problem. Bernie was in a panic. She told Mark that Ahmet wouldn’t let her leave his house. The drug dealer hid her clothes and locked her in his house.”

“That’s kidnapping,” Helen said.

“Taking a woman’s clothes is a common trick to keep her in her place.”

“She could have run out the door,” Helen said.

“Naked? With no money?” Phil said. “Not the way she looked then. If Bernie attracted the attention of the law, she’d have to listen to an ‘I told you so’ lecture from her mother and the cops might get interested in her party crowd. Instead, Bernie searched Ahmet’s house when the dealer was out and found where he hid the phone. Then she called Mark and begged him to get her before the dealer got home.

“Joel says Mark drove to Ahmet’s house, broke down the side door, wrapped Bernie in a bedspread and carried her to his car.”

“Dramatic,” Helen said.

“It was,” Phil said. “And everyone in their crowd knew the story. Joel says Bernie couldn’t go home to her mom. She told Gus she’d broken up with Ahmet and stayed in her brothers’ apartment.”

“With no clothes?” Helen said.

“She put on Mark’s old T-shirt and jeans, and he took her shopping for clothes. Joel said she hid out there at her brothers’ place, too afraid of Ahmet to leave. About a week later, Mark was shot.

“Joel has no doubt that Mark committed suicide. He described Mark as ‘messed up’ and said he ‘wanted to die’ and talked about killing himself.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?” Helen asked.

“No,” Phil said. “We’ve found too many red flags. This gave Ahmet a good motive to kill Mark. You don’t diss a drug dealer the way Mark did and live long. But there’s an even stronger reason why Mark had to die: He owed Bernie’s boyfriend three thousand dollars. He was running up a coke bill and couldn’t pay it.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep Mark alive and get the money from him?” Helen said.

“Not according to Joel. He said Mark was growing unstable, between the coke and his bipolar disorder. Joel wasn’t sure Mark could concentrate enough to work anymore. Joel said with Mark’s death, the permanent party was over. His friends sobered up and settled down.”

“What’s Joel do these days?” Helen asked.

“Not sure,” Phil said. “He’s definitely lost the mullet and Members Only shirt. Joel has a big office with a corner window and enough plants to stock a rain forest. His card says he’s a ‘financial consultant,’ but he’s not affiliated with a bank or a brokerage firm.”

“Sounds vague,” Helen said.

“It is,” Phil said. “Maybe deliberately. Joel’s schedule was wide open when I stopped by. He was friendly, took the time to talk to me, had his secretary bring in coffee. Joel remembers Mark as ‘a party animal.’ Called him a ‘good-looking dude.’ ”

“That’s an understatement,” Helen said.

“Joel said he lost touch with the Behrs after Mark’s funeral. He asked after Gus and Bernie. He wanted to know if Gus was still crazy about cars. Joel said Mark’s sister is the most beautiful woman in South Florida.”

“Do you believe him?” Helen asked.

“From the way he described Bernie, I’d say yes,” Phil said. “In his mind, she’s still a knockout.”

“Any way we can verify this story?” Helen asked.

“There’s no police report. It’s all hearsay, gossip. But after the way Bernie overacted when you talked to her, I’m sure there’s something there.”

“Gus isn’t going to like hearing this,” Helen said.

“I know,” Phil said. “I won’t enjoy telling him, either. I warned him what happens when you dig around in your family’s past.”

K
risti looked like she’d escaped from Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico. The bodybuilder had huge round eyes, a wrinkled face and a furtive manner. With her misshapen muscles, Helen thought Debbi’s mentor could pass as an extraterrestrial.

Tansi, the other mentor, looked like a creature from this planet—a reptile with yellow eyes and smooth scales for skin. The Lizard and Space Alien, Helen thought. What a pair.

“You look perfect, Debbi,” Kristi said. There was a cosmic emptiness in her smile.

Debbi preened, if a strip of leather could preen. She stood before the mirror in the middle of Fantastic Fitness. Helen and Carla were at the reception desk some thirty feet away. Debbi was obviously proud of her stringy body in her posing suit, a black bikini with yellow sparkles.

“I can see you on stage, picking up that trophy,” said Tansi.

“Nice suit,” the Space Alien said. “Looks expensive.”

“Four hundred bucks,” Debbi said. She couldn’t hide her pride—or her need for their praise. She craved it like an addict needed heroin.

Helen gasped. “Did I hear right?” she asked Carla. “There’s barely room for a dozen gold sparkles on that teeny bikini.”

“Four hundred dollars is what a good competition suit costs,” Carla whispered. “I know competition bodybuilders who spend a thousand bucks or more on their posing suits. They cover them in emeralds, Swarovski crystals, or real gems. One competition builder couldn’t pay her rent. All her money went into—or rather on—her suit.”

“You’ve done a good job maintaining your base tan,” the Lizard told her protégé.

“The day before the competition, I’ll go in for a spray tan,” Debbi said. “Then I’ll get another coat before the prejudging and another coat before the evening show.”

“Make sure you get a dark tan,” the Lizard said. “East Coast Physique judges like a natural bronze—nothing sparkly.You’re using the competition spray tanner I gave you?”

“
We
gave you,” said Kristi, Debbi’s other mentor. The Space Alien smiled and distant suns darkened.

“Tanning is too important to get wrong,” their protégé said, as if the universe would implode should she miscalculate the color.

“We’ve done good,” the Alien said. “If the competition was today, you’d have the Novice Women’s Muscle title.”

“I hope that ‘we’ includes me,” the reptilian Tansi said. “I’ve been working with her, too.” She smiled, and Helen thought of dinosaurs and extinct volcanoes.

“Debbi reminds me of myself when I started bodybuilding,” Tansi said.

“That’s been a while,” Kristi said.

The Lizard frowned. Planes of muscle shifted in her forehead like tectonic plates. No wonder Tansi looked unhappy. Racing Father Time was one competition that bodybuilders couldn’t win. They could only stave off the effects.

“Another year and Debbi will be serious competition for both of us,” the Alien said.

Debbi’s jaundiced eyes glowed yellow with pleasure. In her black posing suit with the amber beads, she looked like a feral cat. A starving cat, lapping up that praise.