Gossip Can Be Murder (12 page)

Light never glanced my way as he walked toward a corner table. I decided on a quick change of plans and chose a table where I could observe him. I casually picked up a newspaper and sat with my shoulder toward his side of the room. He went on to a corner table where he joined another man, also dressed in suit and tie. I sneaked occasional glances over the top of my paper.

It was clearly a business meeting, with folders of legal-sized documents changing hands and signatures being applied. Curious. The man whose sole driving force in life seemed to be spiritual and above earthly concerns was certainly in full swing now on the other side of the worldly spectrum. Once it appeared that all the papers had been signed the two of them turned to their hamburgers. I finally got a clear look at the other man and was surprised to see that it was the dark-haired man I’d seen peeping into Trudie’s window on Tuesday. This was truly becoming confusing. If he knew Dr. Light, why hadn’t he gone directly to Light’s office, rather than peeking into guestrooms?  Why hadn’t they met at the resort instead of here?

I folded my newspaper, capped my Coke, and walked out to my car. Keeping the restaurant’s door in my rearview, I waited fifteen minutes for the two men to come out. Light walked over to a white Lexus, which I remembered seeing in the parking lot at Casa de Tranquilidad. My attention shifted to the other man, who had already climbed into a tan Suburban and was backing out of his parking slot. I quickly cranked my ignition and followed suit.

The Suburban pulled around to the back of the McDonald’s building and signaled a right turn onto a side road leading away from the main drag. I noticed that Dr. Light had already gone out the main exit and joined the traffic on bustling Cerrillos Road. Staying behind the big SUV didn’t prove difficult. He made a couple of turns, then pulled into the parking lot of a small office building. I drove past it in time to see the dark-haired man open his door and kick a foot out as he turned to gather items from the passenger seat of the vehicle. I pulled into the parking lot of the next building and watched.

He didn’t notice me. With briefcase in hand and a newspaper tucked under his left arm, he clicked the remote switch on his keyring to lock his car before heading toward the front door of the one-story adobe. In keeping with Santa Fe’s laws on signage, the office building had only one discreet, carved-wood sign on the front. Once the guy had entered, I pulled out and cruised slowly past. LAW OFFICES read the top line. In smaller lettering, turquoise against white, his name stood out among the three listed. David Ratwill.

Confusion reigned for a full ten seconds. David Ratwill. Rita’s husband. What was his connection with Celeus Light? Why the business meeting away from either of their offices? Had the Ratwills known Light socially? Maybe Rita had gotten her job with the Lightness conference through that connection?

An impatient horn jolted me back to the present. I’d nearly come to a stop in the street. Now I’d managed to call attention to myself. I hit the accelerator.  By the time I’d negotiated the traffic through Santa Fe and up the winding mountain road to Casa de Tranquilidad I still didn’t have any real answers.

Meditation session was just letting out and people were milling in the lobby as I entered. I caught Linda’s eye.

“Hey, how’s Drake?” she asked.

“Fine. No problems.”

She gave me a quizzical look.

“No, really. I just saw something really puzzling, though.” I glanced at my watch. “Look, I have a massage in a couple minutes. Meet you later?”

“I’ll be in the dining room at seven.” I felt her eyes on my back as I walked through the lobby to the spa building.

By the time I’d shed my clothes in the locker room, donned my robe and showed up in the treatment room, Joanne was waiting for me.

“Boy, everyone’s got tense muscles today,” she said as she began rubbing my shoulders.

“That obvious, huh?”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re getting the energy enlivening massage today. First, we’re going to relax you to the state of a puddle of mush then we’ll rejuvenate you so you can face life with the energy of a tiger.”

I visualized a bunch of tigers lying around and yawning those huge lazy yawns with lots of pointed teeth showing. It probably wasn’t exactly the comparison she intended but maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. I settled into the soft surface of the massage table and let my body meld with it. After thirty minutes or so of Joanne’s gentle touch with some heavenly scented oil, I’d completely put aside the events of the morning and the strange encounter at McDonald’s.

“Now just lie still for a few minutes while this herbal oil does its magic,” Joanne said in her most relaxing voice. “I’ll be back in about ten minutes to start the enlivening part of the treatment.” She pulled a light blanket over me.

“Okay,” I mumbled. With my face buried in the table’s oval slot, the word came out more like “umphm.” I never heard the door close behind her.

I dozed lightly, only vaguely aware that the door had opened again. Quick ten minutes, I thought. A second later a hand clamped down on the back of my neck.

Chapter 15

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll quit snooping around here.” The voice sounded raspy, light, neither male nor female.

I struggled to get a glimpse of my attacker, but the hand held me firmly and the padded edges of the table blocked my vision on all sides.

“No one asked you to butt in here. Rita ended up as she deserved.”

My voice struggled to scream but only muffled squeaks came out. I swung out with a fist, but contacted nothing. The attacker must be standing near my head.

“I mean it!” came the nasty whisper again. “Leave this alone or you die!”

The clawlike hand jammed my neck downward with enough force to make sparks jump in front of my eyes, then it released me as suddenly as it had appeared. I fought against the sparks and raised my head until I could stretch the crackly feeling out of my neck. I whipped my attention to the door, but it was designed to open away from the treatment table and I couldn’t see the person as the door softly swung shut. I clutched the light blanket in front of me and hit the floor on rubbery legs, nearly blacking out from the sharp stab in my neck. I staggered to the door and pulled it back.

“Help!” My voice croaked pitifully in the silent hallway. “Joanne!”

“Charlie? What is it?” she said, emerging from the reception area. “What’s happened?”

“Did you see anyone come through here just now?”

“Several,” she said, guiding me back into the massage room. “A lot of people are milling around.”

I allowed her to steer me back to the table. I sat weakly on its edge.

“What’s wrong with your neck?” she asked, standing in front of me and giving me the critical eye. “You’re holding it crooked.”

I gave her a quick recap. “I think that final shove did it,” I said. “I saw sparkles.”

She made me sit up straight and place my hands in my lap. “Hold still.” With gentle hands on both sides of my head she straightened it, staring at me critically. “Does that hurt?”

“No, not really.”

She walked around behind me and touched the sides of my neck and head, guiding, making minute adjustments to my position, touching the vertebrae carefully. “Nothing seems out of place, but you should probably have an X-ray.”

I wanted to get off this table and start searching the building, not waste away the evening in some hospital ER. However, common sense told me that the person was long gone.

“I’ve got to find out who threatened me,” I insisted.

“Well, I can see that you aren’t going to lie quietly and let me finish the enlivening part of this treatment. You’re about as enlivened right now as anyone I’ve seen.” She moved around to face me again. “At least let me work those shoulder muscles for a minute. Bolting from the table like that wasn’t good for you.”

No kidding. Going from melted-butter relaxation to scared-to-death probably hadn’t done my heart any good either. I allowed her to recline me once more and knead some of the tension from my shoulders and neck. After insisting once more that I didn’t want to be taken to the hospital (I promised to drive myself there later), she gave me a hand in sitting up slowly.

“Now go take a hot shower and try to keep those muscles as relaxed as possible,” she advised. “And get that neck X-rayed.”

I made obedient noises as I slipped into my robe and headed for the locker room. After the prescribed hot shower I stopped at the spa reception desk. During my shower I’d mulled over the possibilities of my attacker’s identity. While it
could
be anyone, guests were usually attended in the building and someone would surely know who had been in here at the time. We were given our white robes when we checked in for our appointments, we wore them from the locker room to the reception area, then we were escorted to a treatment room. Afterward, as I’d just done, we left the robes hanging in dressing rooms, where an attendant promptly tidied up after each guest. Anyone who came in could grab a robe and blend in perfectly.

“Can you tell me who had spa appointments this afternoon?” I asked the guy at the desk. He must have caught a hint of the trouble because he didn’t question me. He ran a hand through his dark, spiked hair and consulted a sheet of paper on the lower desk, hidden from my view by the counter top.

“Mr. and Mrs. Mayhew, Ms. Carlotti, and Dr. Gaston are here now,” he said.

“And thirty minutes ago?”

“The same. The late afternoon appointments have all finished and most left before you got here, Ms. Parker.” Anticipating my next question, he added, “We don’t book appointments during the dinner hour, and we have no evening appointments today.”

I thanked him and wandered out. Neither of the Mayhews nor Dina seemed like likely candidates, and I didn’t even know a Dr. Gaston. Presumably, he or she was one of the medical doctors here for the professional portion of the seminar. I could catch up with

 Linda in the dining room and ask her while she ate dinner.

Chapter 16

In the restaurant Linda had already gotten a table and our little glasses of digestive elixir waited at each of our place settings. Linda’s concerned frown dissolved as I approached.

“Well, you
look
okay,” she said. “Feel all right?”

“I guess you heard. How far has the gossip mill spread it so far?”

“Pretty much through the whole conference,” she said.

“Oh, great.” I’d been hoping to find out who’d threatened me without their necessarily knowing I was after them. Obviously a dumb thought.

“I want to examine your shoulder right after dinner,” Linda said.

“It was my neck. That’s the problem with gossip as a source of information.”

She looked slightly chagrined. “You’re right. So I’ll want to look at your neck.”

“Lucky me, being right in the midst of all these doctors.” I told her what I’d learned, or rather not learned, in the spa. “I have a hard time believing either of the Mayhews or Dina was involved in this. And I don’t even know Gaston.”

“I do,” she said. “Soft-spoken woman, about my age. I can’t figure how she’d be involved in something like this, although she is a chiropractor. She’d know how to snap your neck without doing any visible damage.”

Bright thought, that.

Our waiter came just then with salads, and I declined, not mentioning that I’d just filled myself with fat, sugar and caffeine.

“I think I’ll go to the room,” I told Linda. “I should check in with Drake and be sure he got home okay.”

“Lie down and relax your neck.”

Before I got out of the dining room I was interrupted four times by people wanting to know if I felt all right. Some were attendees I didn’t even know, and one was Dr. Light himself. He seemed to study my face an extra few seconds, but didn’t indicate that he remembered me.  He was back in form now in his loose cottons. The earlier business suit image was completely gone. I felt myself itching with curiosity about his dealings with David Ratwill. But that was information best saved for later.

I went to the room and called Drake. He said he was eyeball-deep in the accident file and he sounded so preoccupied that he probably didn’t hear a thing I said anyway. I purposely didn’t mention the attack in the massage room. He would worry needlessly. We kept the call short and wished each other a good night’s sleep.

I reached for the phone directory in the nightstand, a twinge grabbing my neck as I did so, and Linda chose that moment to walk into the room.

“Hey, what’s this—there’s no lifting heavy objects when you have a neck injury,” she said.

“It’s hardly a ‘heavy object’.” I held up the book, which was barely over an inch thick. “And I’m not really injured.”

“That’s for me, your doctor, to say.” She snatched the book out of my hand and set it aside, making me sit straight and stare into her eyes while she did some mumbo jumbo, moving her finger back and forth in front of my face and making sure my eyes weren’t tracking off in wacky directions or something. She ran her hands gently down the sides of my neck, and I have to admit that I flinched at one point when she pressed on a muscle.

“See, there’s some tenderness here,” she said.

“Well, yeah. When you jab me ruthlessly.”

By this time her fingertips were doing a little dance up and down my vertebrae and I guess she didn’t find any of them missing. “Looks like you’ll live. I’ll give you a mild muscle relaxant for tonight, and that spot should feel a whole lot better by morning.”

“Thanks, doc.” I gave a little eye-roll and she snicked my shoulder with her nail. “Just shut up and take your pills.”

I did both, and within fifteen minutes I’d drifted into a happy slumber.

When Linda suggested that I skip yoga the next morning, just to give my neck an extra day to recover, I was secretly not unhappy. The classes were okay, especially now that Dina had taken over, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to really concentrate on the postures.

The minute my roomie left, I pulled the business card from my bag and made a call to Detective Gallegos at the Santa Fe PD. The short answer to my question was that they’d ruled Rita’s death an accident.