the party Saturday, plus trying to follow up with Schulz on the scalpel and Arch and his eccentricities. If that was all they were.
The key to the athletic club beckoned. Work. That was the ticket. It had helped when I was preparing for Laura’s wake. With decorating supplies and heavy-duty cleaners I could do something useful and work off industrial-strength stress at the same time. Friday night, I could make a recheck for a spot cleaning before the party. Even athletes couldn’t completely mess up a place in a couple of days, could they?
My key turned in the latch and echoed loudly in the darkness. I flipped on the lights. The empty Nautilus machines sprang into view like a chamber of horrors. They flashed silver in the minors. Without jocks pumping iron and exercycling and running in place, the air between the club’s cream-colored walls and gray and burgundy carpet expanded, thinned out.
I shook myself. The place had a new life when one was in it alone. The walls, shelves, machines seemed to undergo a metamorphosis at night, like toys in nursery stories. I gritted my teeth to haul the vacuum and bags of supplies across to the front desk.
Standing in the middle of the open area, I puzzled over where to put the table with pumpkins, punch bowl, and party munchies for Halloween. I could put the long tables by the walls overlooking the racquetball courts, then cover them and the columns in the dance area with orange and black crepe paper.
The closet next to the bank of mirrors flanking the Nautilus equipment, when I had found its one light, yielded four long tables that would work for the snacks. I placed all the chemicals on the closet floor and started setting up.
During a break I peered down the stairs and saw that all traces of the exercise-room mirror, the one Trixie had shattered, were gone. Oh, how replacing the old mirror with fun house-style trick ones to make all the skinny people look fat would have been hilarious. But I was not in the practical joke business.
I dusted, vacuumed, decorated. It was after midnight when I mixed the solutions for disinfectant and tub- and-tile cleaner and trotted downstairs to start on the locker rooms.
There were some jogging suits and open lockers on the men’s side, and despite the staff’s once-over on the sinks and showers, the vague odor of sweat still hung in the air. I sprayed the diluted disinfectant into one sink and heard music go on in the aerobics room.
“Just give me money …”
It was a jazzed-up version of a Beatles hit. I knew I was the only one who was supposed to be here. Was this a burglar with a sense of humor? One who needed rock and roll to steal hand weights and towels?
I pushed back fear by reasoning that the music camouflaged any noise I could make. I crept out of the locker room. Looking around the corner I could just see the movement of someone … exercising?
It was Trixie. She was kicking her legs out and shrieking along with the singers.
“Muh-huh-honey … that’s what I want!”
I waved my spray bottle to indicate my presence.
“Hey, Trix!”
She gave the startled cry of a person discovered naked. Which, of course, she was not.
“Goldy! I thought you were coming tomorrow.”
“What are you doing?”
She began to cry and crumpled onto the rug. I hurried over.
“I just wanted to be alone,” she said finally. “I just wanted everybody to quit bugging me. You … don’t understand.”
“Try me.”
She took deep breaths to try to calm herself, then hiccuped. “You can’t, because you have a child.”
“I am sorry about your loss. You know that.”
Her voice was bitter. “That man took mine away from me.”
“Fritz?”
“He knew I had high blood pressure. That the placenta could break down. It did. I lost the baby while I waited for him. What was he doing? Why didn’t he hurry? Now everybody just feels sorry for me. And he goes on with his practice.”
She began to cry again. I hugged her and eventually her sobs subsided. The tape ended; we were enveloped in quiet.
“Are you still coming to our group the day after—or I guess”—I took a look at my watch—“it’s technically tomorrow?”
She gave that harsh laugh. “You really think that’ll help?”
“What would help?”
Trixie gulped and said, “If Laura were still alive. She had some information on Korman she was going to show me. I told her my whole story one day after class. She said it wasn’t the first time he had messed up. She was planning on doing something—”
We were interrupted by a noise upstairs, someone walking across the open room I had just cleaned and decorated. I put my finger to my lips.
I whispered to her, “Are there any weights down here?”
She nodded.
“Could you throw one at a burglar, if that’s—?”
She nodded again. “I have a very strong arm.”
“Let’s go.”
We crept upstairs. Trixie had picked up some weights and was warming up her triceps with two-pounders in each hand. To my chagrin the intruder had turned the lights off. Only the outdoor parking lot lights cast a pale neon glow on the room.
“Where is—” Trixie began.
“The closet,” I whispered back.
The closet door was partly open. A wedge of light shone out its door, casting a huge triangle of gold-gray on the carpet. The wrapped pillars looked ghastly.
“Can you hit the closet door?”
“I think so,” she hissed. “Hold this one.” She let go of one of the weights and damned if I didn’t drop it.
“Eeyah!” I shrieked when it hit my toe.
The closet light went out.
“
CRASH! went the Nautilus room mirror.
“Oh no!” screamed Trixie.
Someone rushed past us in the blackness.
I tried to run but fell over on my pain-wrenched toe.
“Turn the lights on!” I commanded Trixie. “Hurry! Run outside! See if you can tell who it is, or see their car!”
Trixie cursed and careened through the dimness. She hit the light switch and then stumbled out the front door.
Across the way the Nautilus room mirror looked like an avant-garde glass sculpture. I would have to remind Hal of this when he sued me. What the hell. He hadn’t exactly provided a high-security place to work in, had he?
“I saw the car,” Trixie gasped when she came trotting back.
“And?”
“Kinda weird,” she said. “It looked just like Laura’s old blue Volvo.”
CHAPTER 24
Hopping down my well of sleep came frog-faced doctors holding scalpel blades. Hot on their trail were gargoyle-faced liches in unhemmed robes, and behind them roared a phalanx of honking blue Volvos. The Volvos crashed against the well walls; the liches and frogs in robes scampered down toward me to escape the wailing horns. I had the frantic thought: Have I disinfected those walls yet?
