everyone was calling the church, wanting to know about arrangements for Jack. I’ve already had a heart attack myself, you know. So this is all just as depressing as hell.”
“Tell me about it.”
Soon I was outside our house, and I speedily let Marla in. I asked her if she wanted a sherry. She glanced at our kitchen clock—I was thankful we actually had one—and said to make it scotch with a splash of soda.
“I don’t care that it’s not technically cocktail time,” Marla said. “I need the good stuff, calories be damned. Speaking of which, do you have any food left over from the wedding? I know we had eggs this morning, but I’m hungry again. And I didn’t get very much of that fabulous-looking food during the reception, I’m sorry to say.” She grinned widely. “But I’m hungry for it now.”
“Julian packed up, sorry. I have some Brie and crackers. Will that do?”
Marla lifted an eyebrow. “Works for me. God, that spa was awful, with Victor hovering around, as if he was spying on you, on the wedding, on something. Victor gives me the creeps. He employs Lucas Carmichael there, did you know? The vaunted PA does intake evaluations.”
“Lucas?” My mind immediately leaped to the possibility that Lucas and Victor, neither of whom was on my Favorite Persons list, were in cahoots. But in cahoots about what, exactly?
Marla was squinting at me. “Goldy, what in the world are you thinking? You look awful. Look, I know I said I’m sorry about Jack, but maybe I shouldn’t—” Marla paused, then reached over and squeezed my hand. “Maybe I should go home. I’m sorry I brought up all this stuff.”
“It’s okay, you can talk about the spa or Victor.” My throat closed momentarily. “You can talk about Jack.” I felt Marla’s friendship embrace me. Oddly, this meant that tears were able to run freely down my face.
Marla disappeared, then reappeared with a box of tissues. “C’mon, let it out.”
So I did. But something Marla had said stuck in my head, and when I stopped crying I stared at her steadily.
“Dammit, what’s wrong now?” She sipped her drink, set the glass on the table, and glared back at me. “You want some other brand of tissues?”
“No, I want you to go out to Gold Gulch Spa.”
“Why?” She waited for me to say something, but my throat had closed again. “You want me to help you get Jack’s car? I mean, it’s still out there, isn’t it?”
“No. I want you to go out there as a client. For a week.”
She stuck a piece of Brie in her mouth. “Forget it,” she mumbled around the cheese.
“It’s not for me. It’s for Jack.”
Marla closed her mouth and chewed. Then she shut her eyes and rubbed them, as if she were trying to think of just the right words. Finally, she said, “Jack passed away last night, Goldy. He doesn’t care whether I lose weight or not.”
“Don’t joke, okay? Just listen.” I explained to her how Jack had written “Gold” on a piece of paper, and how Lucas had misunderstood Jack as wanting to summon me to his bedside. But, I said, it was my opinion that Jack had been referring to Gold Gulch Spa. I’d even seen him rummaging around in the Smoothie Cabin when I’d been out there. And, I added, I thought Victor Lane was having money problems. He’d asked Charlotte Attenborough to invest in Gold Gulch. So maybe Jack was looking for evidence of money problems, and Victor caught him…and attacked him.
“Goldy,” Marla said after a few more minutes’ thought, “I think you need a drink, too.” When I sighed, she insisted, “Who knows what Jack meant? He’d just been attacked, he was probably on some megadose of painkiller, he could have meant anything. And anyway, Victor’s been looking for a financial angel to help with that spa since he first took it over. He even asked me to invest in the place. I went out there once, as a day client? I told him he needed to serve better food if he wanted any of my bucks. Nothing against Yolanda, I think she’s a great cook. But when I complained to her, she said Victor keeps a stranglehold on the regimen out there.” Marla took a long pull on her drink. “Really, I think you should just—” She paused again. “Just—”
“Grieve?” I supplied. “I already tried that. I want to know what was going on with Jack, and why Doc Finn, his best friend, was killed.” I reminded myself not to give away anything Tom had told me about Finn’s peculiar murder. “Something is going on out at that spa,” I insisted to Marla, “and I think Jack wanted me to find out what it was.”
“But he didn’t say anything to you about it, did he? He didn’t leave you a note telling you something untoward was happening at Gold Gulch, did he? And he certainly didn’t indicate what he wanted you, or better yet, Tom, to do about it. Did he?”
“No. Not really. But there’s more.” I told her about the crowd in the hospital: Lucas, Billie, Charlotte, and Craig. I told her about Jack’s impatience to have them all gone, and how he’d written “Keys,” and “Fin” on the paper, too. As if in proof, I drew the crumpled paper from my sweatpants pocket and laid it on the kitchen table.
Marla peered down at it. I suddenly saw Jack’s shaky lettering through somebody else’s eyes, and an arrow of doubt found its way to my heart.
“Goldy,” said Marla, “he didn’t even spell Finn’s name right. And you think this word ‘Gold’ stands for Gold Gulch Spa?”
“I do,” I said with more firmness than I felt. “I’m, uh, going to see if I can go out there and cook. Maybe help Yolanda in the kitchen or something. But I need you to be poking around, too. Like, for example, talk to the other, long time guests about the Smoothie Cabin, about whether Victor is selling them something other than fruit drinks. Or try to find out more about what ever financial problems Victor might have.”
“Why? Because Jack was scrounging around in the Smoothie Cabin? I’m sure that has all kinds of interesting things to do with Doc Finn’s death.”
“Something’s going on out there in that Smoothie Cabin,” I said stubbornly. “Victor Lane has cameras focused on the inside and the outside of a one-way mirror that looks into the space, and he keeps that cabin locked up tight—”
“Maybe he’s worried the clients, desperate for extra food, will get in there and trash the place.”
I sighed in exasperation. “Why won’t you take me seriously?”
“But listen to yourself. You want
“Or high-protein meals,” I corrected. “I don’t know what kind of diet Victor has people on.”
“Okay, so I go out there and eat and exercise for a week, and you’ll be working in the kitchen, and in the meantime, I’m supposed to chat up the other guests and see if Victor Lane is a drug dealer. And that will help you find out why Doc Finn was killed?”
Okay, it sounded a teensy bit illogical. But I said, “Yes. Please.”
Marla collapsed her head onto the table and banged it several times, for effect. She said, “You’d better fix me another drink.”
MARLA LEFT SOON after, to sleep, she said. “You know, Casanova’s aunts used to have to nap for months before he showed up.”
“Casanova?” I said. “What are you talking about? Are you planning on a tryst out at the spa?”
“I wish. No, I’m planning on withdrawing from booze and chocolate. Oh, and did I add the part about being exhausted from exercising?”
“Look at all the good being out there did for Billie.”
“All the good that spa did for Billie was negligible,” Marla immediately retorted. “Charlotte had to pay her dressmaker to let out that expensive wedding dress ad nauseam, well, maybe not ad nauseam, because that would have made Billie thinner. Billie lost a total of two pounds, and she still ended up postponing the wedding all those times.”
“Who told you all this?” I asked absentmindedly as I walked Marla to her car. I’d thought getting outside would do me good, but when I saw Jack’s empty house looming across the street, my stomach clenched.
Marla turned to me. “Goldy, are you listening?
Hmm, I thought, and why would that be? But I said nothing because, to me, Billie always seemed to be a
