because of all forms of exercise this was the least distasteful, but mostly because she didn’t have to carve a couple of hours out of her working day, an impossible task. This flock of early birds met at 6:30 A.M. for an hour. Betsy would be back in her apartment by 8:30, showered, dressed, and on time for her pre-exercise routine: her and Sophie’s breakfast, e-mail, a bit of bookkeeping or bill paying, and down in the shop by 10:00.
But first she had to get there. Oddly enough, at 5:45 in the morning, the rush hour into the Cities was swift enough to deserve the name. Betsy drove toward Minneapolis, but only as far as Golden Valley. She exited onto Highway 100, then took Golden Valley Drive to The Courage Center, a brick building in its own small valley, parked in the nearly empty lot, and went in. All three women behind the big reception counter were in wheelchairs. The Courage Center’s primary aim was to restore injured bodies to health and bring handicapped bodies to their full potential-hence its name, and the status of its employees-but it also offered pool exercise to all comers.
In the women’s locker room four other women greeted Betsy with that muted cheer found before 6:30 A.M. All were at least middle-aged. More women came in until they were eight and they all, after perfunctory showers, trailed down a short hallway to a large room nearly full of an enormous swimming pool. Between pillars on the far wall large panes of glass were hung, with stained glass sections making a thinly traced and almost abstract map showing a confluence of rivers.
The water was warm. The pool, instead of sloping from shallow to deep, had four large flat areas, each a foot or so deeper than the one before. The shallowest area was three and a half feet deep, and Betsy went there with three of the other women to start walking back and forth. Two men joined them. Disco music began to play. A cheerful and energetic young woman in a professional swimsuit came to stand in the water and direct the movements.
“Good morning, Jodie,” said several of the more-awake women. This did not include Betsy, who could not even remember Jodie’s name, though it had been Jodie who had interviewed Betsy just last week while signing up for this program.
“Let’s keep walking, knees high,” called Jodie, standing waist deep in the pool. She was taller than Betsy, on whom the water came nearly to her armpits.
After a few minutes of this, Betsy’s brain sputtered to life. “Hi, Florence, hi, Ruth, hi, Barbara,” she said, pushing her way through the water past them, knees high and glutes tight. She had a lot of catching up to do.
A few minutes later, they were sidestepping, bending sideways, and reaching with the lead arm, when Florence, at eighty the most senior person present, said as Betsy flowed past her, “Look, Betsy, we have a new person here today.” Florence nodded toward one of the deeper areas, and Betsy looked over. And stopped dead in the water.
“Why, I know her, that’s Charlotte Birmingham!”
“No, not Charlotte,” said Florence impatiently. “She’s been coming for a long time. I mean the man.”
“But I don’t remember seeing Charlotte here before,” said Betsy.
“She sometimes stops coming for a week or so. She travels, I think.”
“Oh.” Of course. Charlotte had been getting ready for last week’s run. Betsy thought about going deeper to say hello, then decided against it. She was getting into this sidestepping business, feeling the push of water against her legs and
“Jumping jacks with elbow kisses, side to side!” called Jodie, and everyone continued moving sideways but now in jumping jack motions, bringing elbows together in front and out again. There was no way Betsy could have done this for this long on dry land, but with the lift and support of the water, it was fun and not too difficult.
She looked again at the man, who was out beyond Charlotte, in the second-deepest area. He was taller than Charlotte, but not by a lot. He was trim and muscular, though he wasn’t young. His hair, a light brown, showed no trace of gray-Grecian Formula, concluded Betsy. He had a pleasant face, presently lit with laughter as he struggled with the unfamiliar movement. Charlotte, facing him and moving well, said something to him and his head went back as his laughter intensified.
“Find a place to cross-country ski!” called Jodie, and the swimmers settled into stationary places where they could swing their arms and move their legs without bumping or splashing one another. The man looked around to see how it was done, and set a rapid pace, churning the water with arm movements, grinning. Charlotte turned to face him, her expression a mirror of his.
Betsy was surprised, then surprised at her surprise. The man was enjoying himself, why shouldn’t Charlotte? Then she realized Charlotte’s face held the same warm, open look of amused affection she’d had last Saturday. Only then it had been directed at her husband.
“So she was having a good time,” said Godwin when Betsy told him about it. “I’ve heard it’s possible for people to enjoy doing more than one thing. Who is he, anyone we know?”
Betsy was going through her half-price-floss basket, pulling out items that were starting to look shopworn. She’d use them to make up more kits. “I don’t think so. I wonder if he’s another antique car buff. I talked to Charlotte in the locker room, but only briefly because we both had to get going. She said the man’s name is Marvin Pierce, a business associate of Bill’s who became friends with both of them, and now he’s rallied round the whole family, running errands and being a general help.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I’m probably making something out of nothing, but she seemed so… cheerful with him. She wasn’t acting like a new widow and he wasn’t acting like a comfort to the bereaved. It was startling to see her laughing and having a good time.”
“Well, you can’t cry twenty-four hours a day, can you? And she told you this guy’s been really helping out. So she laughed for an hour because he made her forget.” A thought struck. “You say she didn’t introduce you in the pool. You think that was on purpose?”
“No. I went over to Charlotte and we exchanged hellos, and she said I was going to love this program, she’s been doing it for years. Then Barbara noodled over to ask me where my shop was, and when I finished telling her and looked around, Charlotte was over talking with Ruth and Leah.” Betsy frowned, trying to be sure there’d been nothing suspicious about her not getting introduced to Marvin. She would have introduced herself, but Marvin had gone to share a joke with Joe and she hadn’t wanted to intrude.
“You can’t be thinking she did it,” said Godwin.
“No, of course not, I know that’s impossible. But I’m thinking how she told me that she’d been going to a counselor and things had been improving between her and her husband. But she said he wouldn’t go with her, and I’ve heard that both have to go before you can turn a marriage around. So suppose things weren’t actually improving? And suppose she turned to an old friend for advice and comfort?”
“You mean this Marvin fellow.”
“Yes. And suppose that old friend and she decided the best form of help involved killing Bill? Maybe it was a plot the two of them cooked up, because then, you see, she would have a very good reason to get close to someone on that Saturday, and stick with that someone, who could give her an unbreakable alibi.”
“Does this Marvin fellow drive an antique car?”
“I don’t know. But he didn’t need to, really. All he had to do was sabotage the Maxwell’s engine and watch for Bill to pull over.”
Godwin said admiringly, “How your mind works! That’s a wickedly clever plot-too bad for whoever did it that you’re even cleverer! But how can you prove it? I mean you can’t find out if the Maxwell was sabotaged, because it’s all burned up. And who did it?”
“I don’t know, but he took an awful chance, burning the Maxwell. The police are very clever nowadays proving arson. Or is it the fire department that investigates suspicious fires? Whichever, they thought the fire was suspicious from the start.”
“Not so clever, then.”
“And you know, I may be wrong about all this. It’s just one of several possibilities.” Betsy remembered again that look of affection Charlotte had given her husband, the gentle caress she gave as she left him to his frantic car repairing on Saturday. It had seemed spontaneous, authentic. She said, “I haven’t had a chance to look into Adam Smith’s drive from Excelsior to St. Paul, for example.” She checked her watch. “Time to open up,” she said.
Godwin went to turn the needlepoint sign so OPEN faced outward, and realized someone was waiting for the door to be unlocked.
