Weapons of Mass Distraction (2 page)

“I like to keep fit?” I replied, phrasing it like a question.

“Okay. How’d this guy die? Are you sure he’s dead?”

“I’ll double check, but I’m pretty sure. He’s not moving and doesn’t have a pulse.”

“Good enough for me. He have a heart attack or something?”

“Maybe. It was a tough class.”

“Remind me to never spin. Besides, overexertion through spinning isn’t really a police thing. We like bullets, knives, heavy mallets. See any of those?”

I looked around, just in case. “Nope.”

“I’ll send a couple uniforms over. Need anything else?”

“A hearse would be nice.”

“Coming up. Stay put.”

“It’s okay,” I told everyone, as I hung up the phone. I jumped over the first human domino, landing neatly a few feet from Anton. I should have been a ballerina. I felt really graceful doing that. “Help is on the way. Everyone needs to just stay calm.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Skinny Headband. “You’re not under this guy and I think he just peed himself.”

“It’s probably just sweat,” said Lily, taking Skinny’s hand. He beamed up at her and I suspected maybe even fell in love a little. People seemed to do that with Lily, although, when I said people, I meant men. Until recently, that was great, but now she was all googly-eyed about my brother, which I found disgusting, but it was fine by me, especially since he finally reciprocated. They were even due to get married very soon after a whirlwind engagement that was a culmination of determination to get the guy on Lily's part, and giving in on Jord's.

Skinny’s lip trembled. “I can feel it all over my legs.”

“The good news is you can feel your legs,” said Lily. She patted his hand reassuringly and wrinkled her nose. I glanced at the other spinners, noticing they too were rallying to help extricate the fallen from their stirrups and saddles.

I left them to their special moment, and crouched down next to Anton. “Hey,” I said. “I think you can let go of his wrist now.”

“Oh, right, yes. I need to call for help.” Anton dropped the man’s wrist and scooted backwards on his butt. “I can’t believe this happened. I killed him. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard. I should’ve…”

“No, you didn’t kill him,” I reassured him. “We all saw. You didn’t lay a finger on him.”

“I pushed you all too hard. I just wanted you all to have great asses. I shouldn’t have gone so hard on everybody,” Anton whispered, his voice thick with shock. He stared at the dead man, seemingly unable to look away.

“Our asses appreciate it,” I told him as I picked up the dead man’s wrist and felt for a pulse. Yeah, definitely dead. I reached for his other wrist. Yep, dead on both sides. Something about his hand caught my eye and I turned his palm over. I noticed a tiny smear of blood on his middle finger. With a shrug, I laid the hand down, and turned back to Anton. He had the walkie-talkie in his hand that all the instructors carried and was speaking into it in a panicked voice. Whatever he said must have been good because a few minutes later, white polo-shirted instructors swarmed the spin studio and started helping the people still lying on the floor and righting bikes.

As I sat with Anton, I watching the chaos, he staring at the body, only one thing occurred to me. I hoped this was the straightforward death he thought it was because otherwise, Maddox would be totally pissed that I allowed a crime scene to get trampled and compromised.

~

“Jeez, Lexi, how many people have been through here?” asked Maddox, surveying the chaos of the spin studio. I didn’t expect him to turn up so I was pretty surprised when he sauntered through the double doors into the gym and purposefully entered the spin studio. Blooms of steam still coated the windows spanning the wall adjacent to the misted mirrors, and the bikes were in chaotic disarray, instead of the neat lines they were in at the start of the class. The floor… the floor was a mess of towels, sweat, shoe prints, and what smelled and looked suspiciously like pee. Poor Skinny did call it.

“What time frame are we talking?” I asked, even though I knew what he meant. Yeah, I should have stopped people trampling all over, but really, what could I have done? People panicked and got stuck under bikes! And there was a corpse only a few yards from them and our instructor went into shock. Then, the gym staff added their footprints and the resulting mess was this. The room was now empty, but for the corpse, Maddox, and me as everyone else cleared out quickly. Lily reported that a few had grazed elbows and other scrapes, which were tended to by the EMTs in another studio.

Maddox raised his eyebrows and waved for a uniform to stand at the door, just to deter the curious from wandering over. “Let’s say, since the class started.”

“Okay, so, there was a full class of twenty, plus Anton, the instructor. That makes twenty-one.”

“And after the guy died?”

“Six instructors and gym staff, their manager, four paramedics, and a whole bunch of nosy people. That makes…”

I started to count on my fingers, but Maddox was already there first with, “Thirty-two, plus.”

“Thirty-one,” I corrected. “One guy was dead, remember? I don’t think he counts after his demise. Who was he anyway? I’ve seen him at the gym a few times.”

Maddox checked his notepad. “Jim Schwarz, thirty-seven. Unmarried, no kids. Lives in Harbridge. Works as a lab tech.” He looked up. “You’ve never spoken to him?”

“No.” I tried to remember him. “I’ve seen him here with a woman a few times. She’s a member too.”

“You know her name?”

“No, but she was on the bike to the right of Jim. I saw them having a conversation before class started and she didn’t look too happy. Anton might know who she is.”

“I have their names. What does she look like?” Maddox asked.

“Around the same age as Jim, or a little younger. As tall as him too. Light brown hair. Oh, she was wearing a really cute, pink top. If you speak to her, can you ask where she got it?”

Maddox just shook his head as he snapped the notebook shut. “I’m just going to ask a couple questions for now, then I’m out of here.”

“What? You’re not going to interrogate anyone?”

“No reason too. From what I’ve heard, it looks like Jim just had a heart attack, but the ME will confirm. This isn’t a murder, Lexi. Sorry. Don’t look so disappointed. You did the right thing though in calling me.”

That was disappointing, although in a way… not so much. I really didn’t want to solve a murder at my own gym and since witnessing Jim Schwarz’s death, I knew I would feel compelled to. This was where I sweated, relaxed, and checked myself out in the full-length mirrors. And not where I wanted to be on high alert for possible murderers. But on the other hand… “So what happens now?” I asked, seeking to learn how this would get wrapped up. The dead people I usually came across were murdered, so a natural death was new to me. I sincerely hoped, however, to encounter neither kind of death again.

“Jim’s body will go to the ME and they’ll want to do an autopsy since it is an unexplained death.” I perked up. Unexplained! Called it! Maddox smiled, continuing, “Don’t get your hopes up. He could have had a weak heart, or an aneurysm. These things happen, Lexi.” He patted me on the shoulder in a friendly way, repeated the motion to the young uni posted on the door, and made for the exit. I followed him out, glad to escape the studio. I wondered if I would ever go in there again, and if this were a good excuse to make Lily choose some other kind of group exercise, something gentle, something non-life threatening like… yoga.

“I think I’m going to take up yoga.”

Maddox paused and looked up from his notes. “Good to know. It’s good for stress.”

“How do you know?”

“Yoga club down at the station on Tuesday nights.”

My mouth dropped open. “You guys do the downward dog en masse at the station?”

Maddox smirked and snapped the notepad shut. His blue eyes sparkled as he appraised me, eyebrows raised. “I’m imagining you doing the downward dog right now.”

“Oh, please.”

“Play hard to get, Lexi, don’t plead,” Maddox teased, laughing and I had to admit he looked as handsome as ever. It almost felt like old times, back when I first had a huge crush on him at my temp job, and way before I found out he was an undercover officer on the trail of missing millions. We closed the case together and I got the guy. Sometime later, when we worked separate cases, I lost him. It was sad, but it was life. “Hey, smile. It could be worse though I really don’t know how. Now, can you point me towards the studio where the EMTs set up? I want to talk to this friend of Jim Schwarz’s before I head back to the station. Figures she’ll be in there, if anywhere.”

While Maddox looked for the dead man’s friend, I went in search of the manager, Michael Rivers. I found him by the coroner’s van. It was parked in front of the gym, right where everyone could see it; and Michael looked like he was about to burst into tears. He was a bodybuilder, and around a foot wider than most normal folk. His dark skin looked like he buffed it, and his biceps appeared to have a bigger girth than my thighs. He was damned nice guy too with a sweet temperament and a sensitive disposition, that didn’t sit quite right with his physique. He always took the time to say hi when I saw him. I suspected he once had a huge crush on Lily.

“You okay, Michael?” I asked, coming to a stop at his side. Behind me there was the sound of rattling castors and we turned to watch two attendants wheeling out a gurney, with a full body bag strapped on top.

“No, I can’t believe this. No one ever died in my gym before,” Michael said, reaching one meaty hand up to scratch his head.

“Bright side, you know how to deal with it now,” I replied, trying to find a positive.

“I hope to never deal with it again. Detective Maddox said you called him?” Michael dragged his eyes away from the body bag to look down at me.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said, feeling stupid now that Maddox emphasized just how natural this death looked, even if it was unexplained. We stopped talking for a moment and watched the morgue workers heft the gurney into the back of the van before banging the doors shut. It seemed a very final say on Jim Schwarz’s life, and, I had to assume, not the way he planned on leaving the gym today. Or ever. “Did you know him?” I asked, nodding toward the van.

Michael shook his head. “Not really. Seen him around a few times. He came here a lot when he left his job, but he hasn’t been here so much recently, so I assumed he was working again. Seemed pleasant. Always polite to my staff. Where’s your friend, Lily? She back at the gym now?”

“Yeah. Making me suffer, too.”

“Well, whatever she’s making you do, it’s working.” Michael looked down and smiled. “You ever think about taking up weights?”

“Do bottles of wine count?”

“Sure, just don’t drop ‘em.”

I feigned horror. “Never!”

“You could do some bikini athlete modeling; Lily, too, if you both worked at it, ate clean, lifted hard.”

“Sounds awesome, but I’m all out of bikinis,” I replied, wondering what the hell a bikini athlete was.

The morgue van guy came over with a piece of paper for Michael to sign and I took the opportunity to snoop. It would have been ruder not to. “What happened?” I asked the attendant, hoping the all-encompassing question could glean some good answers. “Was it a natural death?”

“Maybe a heart attack,” said the guy, squinting at me. “We won’t know until we get to the morgue. Do I know you?”

“Nope,” I said quickly, just in case he recognized me from any of my cases. I preferred to go incognito, which was tough, since at any given moment, someone could figure out I was a PI. It happened before and didn’t always work in my favor. “What brought it on?”

“Couldn’t tell you, sorry. Do you know the guy?”

“No, only in passing. Um, not that kind of passing. I didn’t mean to pun,” I added. “Just seen him around.”

“Was he doing strenuous exercise when he collapsed?”

“Spinning. I told Detective Maddox already. He took statements.”

“Thanks. I’ll get in touch with him. Have a good day now.”

“I’ll try,” I said as Michael harrumphed, clearly not having a good one.

We watched the van leave and Michael looked down at me as I looked up. “Another bright side, no more corpses at the gym,” I said as we turned away from the van to head inside.

“I wish I could laugh. I gotta spin studio to clean, and serious PR to do. Don’t want any members leaving. Also, Anton is a wreck. I’m gonna drive him home before he confesses to killing that poor guy and ends up with an angry family’s law suit. He didn’t kill him, by the way, and Jim Schwarz was a fit guy. Anton’s just upset.”

“I know that. I was there.”

“If anyone asks, will you make sure to say the guy just keeled over and collapsed off his bike and was dead. Nothing to do with us. I hope the guy’s family doesn’t sue.”

“Since that is exactly what happened, I will say just that.”

“You’re a good woman, Lexi Graves.”

I bumped him with my shoulder. It was like bumping a wall. “Don’t tell anyone.”

Finally, a smile appeared on Michael’s lips, but vanished just as fast. I patted his arm and resisted the urge to stroke the muscles that roped it. “Don’t worry, okay? People die all the time. It’s just unfortunate he died here. Everything will be back to normal tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“Hah. Um, no. Since I don’t work here and am really just throwing out platitudes,” I explained so another crappy day wouldn’t fall back on me.

“At least, you’re honest.”

“If you keep saying nice things about me, I might start to think you like me.”

“Nah. Now your friend, Lily…”

“I’ll pretend not to be offended and Lily is engaged to my brother. But like I said, everything will be A-okay tomorrow.” I gave him my brightest smile, and left to find Lily so we could spend the rest of our day somewhere with less corpses hanging about.

Chapter Two

Everything was so not okay at the gym the following day.

After filing my report to Solomon on a simple surveillance job — successfully reuniting an old lady with her miniature Poodle after it was “appropriated” by a well meaning family on her street, which I completed a few days before — I hopped into my VW and drove to the gym. I parked within yards of where the morgue van was parked the day before.