I
was sprawled out on the pool deck later that afternoon, after a particularly agonizing Tae Bo class. Tae Bo, for those of you not familiar with it, is a kind of cardio-boxing exercise, whose Chinese name, properly translated into English, means, “Holy shi-tzu! What just snapped?”
As I lay there, collapsed on a lounge chair, gasping for breath and begging my muscles to forgive me, I thought back to the verbal slugfest I’d witnessed at lunch.
Quel cat fight. Olga had definitely scored points with her “certified lunatic” zinger, not to mention that shudder-worthy story about Mallory sending out some poor guy to buy mangoes in a hurricane. But Mallory had struck back with a vengeance. That final threat to trash The Haven seemed to have really rattled Olga.
Oh, well. I’d soon be out of this “haven” of bad food and clashing egos.
I was lying there, counting the milliseconds till my massage with Shawna, when Cathy—resuming her ongoing role as a barnacle on my side—plopped down on the chair next to me, weighing in on the brouhaha at lunch. Frankly, she confessed, she was a bit disillusioned. She’d been saving all year for this trip, only to discover that Olga, her diet idol, was a pill-popping binge eater. And Mallory had been right about the place needing a facelift. Why, the towels in her room were so thin, they were practically see-through! On the other hand, she rattled on, she
had
lost two and a half pounds, and that’s all that really mattered, wasn’t it?
This internal debate would have no doubt assumed filibuster proportions, but just then Mallory came sauntering to the pool with her posse. At first I’d been shocked to see her show up for the afternoon activities. I’d thought for sure she’d have checked out after her dramatic exit at lunch. But then, during Tae Bo class, I heard her tell Harvy the only reason she was sticking around was because she was desperate to drop five pounds for her upcoming photo shoot.
She and Harvy and Kendra now took seats a few chairs down from us.
“Hi, gals!” she called out with a cheery wave, eager to disprove Olga’s description of her as a “certified lunatic.”
And it was working. With Cathy, anyway.
“I don’t care what Olga says about her,” Cathy whispered, waving back with gusto. “She seems like a perfectly lovely person to me.”
“A perfectly lovely person?” I blinked in amazement.
“True, she might be a bit demanding.”
A bit demanding??? Try Idi Amin with hair extensions.
“But still, it was very sweet of her to give me that autographed cocktail napkin,” Cathy maintained, ever the starstruck fan.
Mallory untied the sash on her spa robe, revealing her amazing bikini-clad bod. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where she was going to round up those five pounds she wanted to lose.
“Damn,” she said, rummaging in the pocket of her robe. “I forgot my cell phone.
“Kendra,” she snapped at her sister, “let me use yours.”
“I didn’t bring mine either.” Kendra shrugged.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I
thought
I’d be relaxing,” she said, and went back to the
Cosmo
she’d been reading.
“I hope you brought yours, hon.” Mallory turned to Harvy, who was seated on her other side.
“Sure thing, Mall.” He handed her his lime green designer phone.
“Thank God I can count on someone around here,” Mallory said, shooting Kendra a dirty look.
But Kendra just kept her eyes glued to her
Cosmo
.
“Okay,” Mallory announced. “Time to send out a tweet about what a dump this place is.”
It looked like she was going to live up to her threat to badmouth The Haven.
“Let’s see,” she mused. “What should I say? I know!
My dog’s eating better than I am
.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“Oh, wait. How about this?
I’ve had better service at the post office!
”
“Good one!” Harvy gushed, right on cue.
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Mallory giggled, snapping open Harvy’s phone. “Olga’s about to lose the few customers she has left.”
I was sitting there thinking maybe I hadn’t been quite fair to Idi Amin in my earlier comparison, when Mallory let out a bloodcurdling scream.
“Oh, my God!” she gasped, staring down at Harvy’s phone in shock.
“Wish U were here at lunch,” she read aloud from the screen. “Olga told off The Mad Cow!”
She looked up at Harvy, her face flushed with fury. If anything, she was even angrier than she’d been with Olga.
“Is that what you call me?” she sputtered. “The Mad Cow???”
Harvy paled under his spray tan.
“That must be a typo, hon. You know I’m crazy about you.”
He reached over to get his phone back, but she slapped his hand away and began scrolling down his recent texts.
“The Mad Cow is driving me nuts.” “If I have to eat one more mango, I swear I’ll strangle her.” “Can’t wait to kiss the bitch good-bye.”
Mallory rose from her chaise and glared down at Harvy, who by now was a quivering puddle of fear.
“If you think I’m financing your salon,” she hissed, “think again, mister. Time to find yourself another cow to milk.”
Then she turned to Kendra.
“Call the bank, and stop payment on his check.”
And for the second time that day, she stalked off in a huff.
But not before hurling Harvy’s phone into the pool.
Harvy was in an advanced state of panic.
“Kendra, sweetheart,” he pleaded, kneeling beside her lounge chair, “please don’t call the bank. Give me a chance to make things up with Mallory.”
“That should take a minor miracle,” Kendra replied, rolling her eyes.
“I know!” Harvy’s face lit up with hope. “I’ll tell her the messages weren’t mine. That someone was using my phone without my knowledge. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to take the fall and say you did it? She already knows you hate her.”
“Forget it, Harvy. I’m not about to be written out of her will.”
“Just give me some time,” Harvy begged. “I’ll think of something.”
“Okay, but only until tomorrow. I can’t put it off any longer than that.”
Harvy was sitting on his haunches, cursing the “idiot” who first invented the cell phone, when Shawna came hurrying out to the pool.
“Okay, people,” she said, clapping her hands. “It’s time for your seaweed wraps!”
“Seaweed wraps?” I frowned. “What about our massages?”
“No massages today,” Shawna smiled brightly. “It’s Seaweed Wrap Day.”
Oh, foo. I’d suffered through another round in exercise hell just to be wrapped in kelp?
“You’re going to love it,” Shawna assured me, seeing the look of disappointment on my face.
“Better than the massage?”
“Much better than the massage. It’s what everybody comes here for.”
Oh, what the heck. I’d give it a shot.
(A mistake of monumental proportions. But of course, I didn’t know that then.)
Shawna explained that in the interests of efficiency she’d be giving all of us our wraps at the same time.
A half hour later, she’d set us up assembly-line style in adjacent cubicles in the Spa Therapy Center.
I was assigned to the first room at the front of the hall. Mallory, still fuming from the L’Affaire Cell Phone, stormed in to the cubicle next to mine, ignoring Harvy’s pleas to grant him just a few minutes to worm his way back into her good graces.
On other side of Mallory was Kendra, and down at the end of our row was Cathy.
Harvy was ushered into a cubicle across the hall. And Clint Masters was nowhere to be seen, having opted to stay in his room and take a nap instead.
(In a silk teddy, no doubt.)
Shawna settled us each in our cubicles with a cup of The Haven’s special muscle-relaxing tea, imported all the way from either Tibet or Costco and steeped a full twenty minutes in the urn in the hallway.
I sipped my tea, wearing nothing under my spa robe except a pair of The Haven’s disposable paper panties, and immediately felt the tension begin to drain from my body. Who cared if Mallory was right and Olga bought the tea at Costco? The stuff really worked.
When it was my turn to be wrapped, I took off my robe, grateful the lights were dim and there were no security cameras around to record my hips for posterity. I hopped up on the massage table, which had been covered with an electric blanket and topped off with a sheet of plastic. Draping a decorous towel over my erogenous zones, Shawna began exfoliating my skin with a pair of special exfoliating gloves. (On sale in The Haven’s gift shop for an outrageous twenty dollars a pair.)
Once I was smooth as a freshly sanded two-by-four, she went over to her supply table and brought back a bowl of appalling green guacamole-like goo. Which, Shawna explained, was pureed seaweed. Soon she was slathering the stuff all over my body.
Much to my surprise, I found the whole process marvelously soothing. The green goo had been heated so it slid into my freshly-exfoliated pores like Velveeta melting on an English muffin.
So mellow was I that I didn’t even mind when Shawna took two slimey strands of bull kelp from the vat in the corner and crossed them over my body. And when she wrapped me in plastic and cocooned me in the warm electric blanket, I practically swooned in ecstasy.
Shawna had not led me astray.
This was
much
better than the massage.
Dimming the lights, she left me to marinate while she worked her magic on my fellow inmates. With seaweed goo melting in my pores and soft music tinkling in the background, I felt my eyelids grow heavy, and within minutes I’d drifted off into a deep sleep.
Before long I was in the middle of a heavenly dream starring me, George Clooney, and a vat of guacamole. But then, just as George was whispering sweet nothings in my ear, he started screaming at the top of his lungs.
Oh, crud. He must’ve gotten a good look at my thighs.
His screams grew louder and louder, and frankly I was beginning to get a bit ticked off. Okay, so he was a major motion picture star. And I was just a Weight Watchers dropout. But a girl’s got feelings, you know.
Then suddenly I realized it wasn’t George screaming, but a woman.
And Holy Moses. It wasn’t a dream.
Those screams were real!
I sat up with a jolt, and indeed the voice I heard was Shawna’s, wailing from Mallory’s cubicle next door.
Unwrapping myself from my kelp cocoon, I jumped down off the massage table, my legs wobbly from my nap. Draped in a towel, I hurried out to the corridor, leaving a trail of green goo behind me.
Shawna was standing in the doorway of Mallory’s cubicle, still screaming at full throttle.
And with good reason.
As I peered over Shawna’s shoulder, I saw Mallory lying naked on her massage table, eyes bulging, mouth gaping, strangled with a hunk of bull kelp.
I
was grief-stricken. Desolate.
Not over Mallory’s death. Which was sad, of course. She was, after all, a human being. Almost.
What had me in a dither was what the sheriffs said when they showed up after the murder. After gathering all the inmates into the lounge, they told us no one was to leave town for the next few days.
Oh, crud. Just when I’d been on the brink of freedom. Why hadn’t I made my escape when I had the chance?
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d fallen asleep during the seaweed wrap. Everyone else had conked out, too. The cops suspected that our special muscle-relaxing tea had been tampered with, so there’d be no witnesses to the murder. No wonder I’d felt so mellow the minute I started drinking it. The stuff had been laced with sedatives.
And right away I flashed on the jumbo bottle of Valium sitting on Olga’s kitchen table. Thanks to Mallory’s rant at lunch, everyone knew it was there. Anybody could have grabbed a fistful of pills and slipped them into the tea while it was steeping in the corridor.
Soon the cops had set up headquarters in the dining room, and started calling us in for questioning.
Olga was up first. And as the Diet Nazi marched off to her interrogation, I couldn’t help but think of that ugly scene at lunch and Mallory’s threat to ruin The Haven. Had Olga strangled the demanding diva to keep her business afloat? She sure had the biceps for it.
Then, as I looked around at the others, I realized they all had motives to kill Mallory. Harvy, sitting on a settee with Kendra, was trying his best to look grief stricken, but the minute the cops were gone, his first words of mourning to Kendra were, “You’re not going to stop payment on my check, are you?”
“No, of course not,” she said, shooting him a funny look. I wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking: That maybe Harvy had bumped off The Mad Cow to save his salon.
Then again, Kendra might very well be the killer herself. Just that afternoon she’d said she was in Mallory’s will. Maybe she got tired of being her sister’s lapdog, and decided to cash in on her inheritance.
Clint Masters had joined us, looking quite refreshed from his “nap.” Like Harvy, he’d given a halfhearted performance of a grieving friend for the cops. But now that they’d left, he was on the phone with his agent, yakking excitedly about an upcoming movie deal.
Gone was the haunted look I’d seen in his eyes. With Mallory dead, no one (except maybe the friendly folks at Frederick’s of Hollywood) need ever know about his penchant for ladies’ underlovelies.
Rounding out our crew of suspects was Cathy, who was parked at my side as usual. But for once, she wasn’t bubbling with happy chat. Mallory’s murder seemed to have put the fear of God in her.
“Omigosh,” she moaned, eyes darting around the lounge. “One of you is a killer!”
“Oh, please,” Kendra said. “Mallory had an enemies list as long as her hair extensions. Maybe the cook killed her. Or the maid. Or the masseuse. Especially the masseuse. Everyone could see Mallory was making time with her husband.”
She was right, of course. Who’s to say Shawna hadn’t strangled Mallory herself and then pretended to discover the body?
“It might even be one of the townies,” Kendra suggested. “Over the years, Mallory’s alienated just about every shopkeeper on Main Street. Or maybe someone from Hollywood drove up and bumped her off.
“For all we know,” she added, pointing at Cathy, “it was you!”
“Me!” Cathy blinked, stunned. “You’re crazy!”
It did seem like a zany idea. Cathy was the one person in this joint who actually seemed to like Mallory. But maybe she figured Mallory’s autographed cocktail napkin would be worth more money on eBay if Mallory was dead. A pretty flimsy motive for murder, but it was the best I could come up with.
After Cathy’s outburst, we all just sat there in an uneasy silence, waiting to be questioned.
One by one, the others were called in.
Finally it was my turn.
The cop who ushered me into the dining room was a tall good looking dame with pouty lips and a body that wouldn’t quit. And her partner was no slouch in the looks department, either. Craggy and tan, he looked like he’d just come from a GQ photo shoot.
For the purposes of this narrative, I’ll call them Brad and Angelina.
But their looks were the last thing on my mind when I stepped into the dining room. For the first time since I’d shown up at diet hell, I actually smelled something delicious!
I looked over at the table Brangelina had commandeered for their investigation and saw two humungous, half-eaten deli sandwiches. Hers looked like roast turkey and ham. His, roast beef and swiss. Both had bags of chips and pickles.
“Hope you don’t mind if we eat while we do this,” Brad said. “We didn’t get a chance to have lunch.”
Was he kidding? It was all I could do not to hurl myself at their chow and make a run for it.
But somehow I managed to contain myself.
They started with some routine questions about my name, age and occupation, all of which I answered staring fixedly at their sandies, praying one of them would offer me a bite.
“So did you?” Brad was asking me.
Oh, dear. I’d been so intent on a piece of swiss cheese dangling from his Kaiser roll, I hadn’t heard his question.
“Did I what?”
“Hear anything at all during your massage that might give us a clue to the killer’s identity?”
“Afraid not.”
Unless George Clooney was the killer, I hadn’t heard a peep.
“Do you have any idea,” Angelina asked between bites of her ham and turkey, “who might have wanted to kill Mallory?”
I hesitated to rat on my fellow guests, but there was a murderer among us. I couldn’t just sit by and pretend that Mallory was adored by one and all.
I ran down my list of suspects—just about everyone—and was about to offer them my services as a part-time semi-professional P.I. (You’d never know it to look at me, but I have solved a few murders in my day, which you can read all about in the titles listed at the front of this book.)
But just then they threw me a most unwelcome curve ball.
“What was
your
relationship with the deceased like?” Angelina asked.
“What relationship?? I barely knew the woman.”
“That’s not what we heard.”
“Huh?”
“According to our notes,” Brad said, taking time out from his sandwich to flip through a small pad, “the other night at dinner, you offered Mallory your services as a writer.”
I thought back to that first dinner when blabbermouth Cathy, upon hearing that Mallory needed a writer, piped up and suggested
moi
.
“I didn’t offer my services. Cathy did.”
“Whatever. We have an eyewitness who confirmed that Mallory Francis was quite insulting in her reply to you. Suggesting you weren’t a real writer.”
Oh, for crying out loud. Who the heck felt the need to share
that
little anecdote?
“So?” I shrugged. “Mallory dissed me. She dissed everybody.”
“Writers can be very sensitive,” Brad said.
“High strung,” Angelina chimed in.
“You think I’d strangle Mallory with a piece of kelp because she said I wasn’t a real writer?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Well, I can assure you, I didn’t do it.”
“Nevertheless, we’d like you to stick around for a few days. Understood?”
“Understood,” I nodded, steamed to the max. The nerve of these people, practically accusing me of murder!
“Any questions?” Brad asked, licking some mustard from his finger.
“Just one,” I said.
Brangelina looked up at me inquiringly.
“You guys gonna eat your pickles?”