Fountain of Death(7)

“None of the Golden Circle members came in that night?”

Traci shook her head. “The only person who came to that door was Dessa Carter. I think she got confused about where she was supposed to go. We had advertisements on the radio and directions in these brochures we were giving out, but I don’t think the directions were too clear. Dessa wasn’t the only one who came to the wrong door or called the wrong phone number or got the dates mixed up.”

“But she was the only one who came that night,” Gregor said.

“The only one,” Traci agreed.

“And you didn’t see anything? Or hear anything? You didn’t hear the strange sounds the other young woman reported?”

“Not a thing.” Traci Cardinale sighed. “We all thought it was a mugging, you know, after it happened. With him lying out there in the bushes and all. And then there was all that stuff about him being naked and poisoned and all that, and we didn’t know what was going on. We were all very upset—the staff here, I mean, all of us. And Tim was from around here, too, and that made it worse.”

“Bramford,” Tony Bandero said helpfully. “About twenty minutes away.”

“We didn’t any of us know him before he started working here,” Traci said, “but I don’t see that that should matter much. It wasn’t like he was some stranger from Vermont. And nobody knows why it happened even now, so we’re all walking around thinking it could have been anybody, it could have been us. If you see what I mean.”

“Yes,” Gregor said, because he did see what she meant. It was the most common reaction people had when they found out that someone they knew had been killed. What he didn’t see was what good wandering around this foyer was going to do him. There were two tall, thin windows with plain glass in them on either side of the front door, but they looked out only on the front walk and on Prospect Street. There was that stained-glass window to Traci’s right, but the limitations to looking through that had already been determined. Traci Cardinale could not have seen the Royal Welsh Fusiliers doing marching practice on the back lawn—and she might not have been able to hear them, either.

Gregor went back to Traci’s desk. He seemed to be walking in circles. To Traci Cardinale’s left, a curving staircase with a fluted rail swept to the balcony on the second floor. Three stories above his head, the stairwell ceiling was covered with those plaster fruits.

“What do we do next?” he asked Tony Bandero.

It was Traci Cardinale who answered. “You have an appointment with Simon Roveter,” she said, picking up the receiver on her house phone and beginning to punch buttons. “Simon’s the head of everything here. Magda’s husband. You’re supposed to see Magda one of these days, too, but not now because she’s leading aerobic dance. Just a minute.”





2


GREGOR HADN’T GIVEN MUCH thought to what someone who did what Simon Roveter did would look like. He knew what Magda Hale looked like, because along with the cursory police report Tony Bandero had sent him after Gregor agreed to at least consider the possibility of looking into the death of Tim Bradbury, Tony had sent some Fountain of Youth brochures. Gregor remembered these now as Traci Cardinale led both him and Tony up the curving staircase to the second floor. On the balcony there, placed just far enough back so that it couldn’t be seen from the foyer, was a life-size stand-up cardboard poster of Magda Hale holding a sign that said, “COME TO THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH, BE A NEW YOU FOR THE NEW YEAR.” This was the same picture that appeared on one of the brochures. Magda Hale looked twenty-six and full of infinite energy. Traci Cardinale went past the stand-up poster and opened a set of double doors. The balcony was suddenly full of noise. There was fast, driving music with a heavy bass backbeat. There was the sound of something heavy being smashed against wood. Gregor was now sure that Traci Cardinale could not have heard anything that might have been going on in the backyard on the night Tim Bradbury died. Either the foyer was soundproof, or it was terminally well built.

“That’s the beginner’s class,” Traci said, moving them along a hall carpeted in pearl gray pile. She stopped at the first door on the left and opened it up. The noise got louder. Added to the sounds Gregor had heard from the balcony was a woman’s high, insistent voice commanding: “Leg up leg up leg up. Switch right.”

“Come look,” Traci Cardinale said.

Gregor expected to walk through the door and find himself in the middle of a lot of jumping women. Instead, he found himself in a little viewing area, installed several feet above the floor of the work-out studio itself, outfitted with half a dozen fixed plush chairs like a very tiny movie theater. In the studio, a dozen women stood in rows and moved in unison, following the lead of a woman standing alone at the front. The woman had her back to the class and was facing a long wall of mirrors. Gregor thought he had seen walls of mirrors like that in pictures of ballet practice studios. But there was nothing ballet-like about what these women were doing. They jumped. They turned. They marched. They loped from side to side. Most of them were heavyset and most of them were not graceful.