C Is for Corpse

  The studio was only half a block away, housed in a former racquetball club that had gone belly-up once the passion for racquetball had passed. With aerobics coming in, it made perfect sense to convert all those plain narrow rooms with hardwood floors into little fat-burning ovens for women who yearned to be lean and fit. I asked if Carrie was teaching and the woman at the desk pointed mutely toward the source of the deafening music that made further conversation unlikely at best. I followed the end of her finger and rounded the corner. On my right, there was a waist-high wall overlooking an aerobics class in full swing one floor below.

  The acoustics were grim. I watched from the observer's gallery while the music blasted. Carrie hollered out encouragement and fifteen of the best-looking female bodies in town exercised with a fanaticism I'd seldom seen. Apparently, I'd caught the class at its apex. They were doing buttocks lifts that looked obscene: women groaning on the floor in frosted, skintight leotards, doing hip thrusts and bun squeezes as if unseen partners were grinding away at them in unison.

  Carrie St. Cloud was a surprise. Her name suggested a second runner-up for a Junior Miss pageant, or maybe a budding actress whose real name is Wanda Maxine Smith. I had pictured run-of-the-mill California good looks, the trim surfers body, blond hair, dazzling white teeth, maybe a little tendency to tap dance. She was none of these things.

  She couldn't have been more than twenty-two with a body builders musculature and dark hair to her waist. Her face was strong, like Greek statuary, with a full mouth, rounded chin. The leotard she wore was a pale yellow Spandex, defining the wide shoulders and lean hips of a gymnast. If she had an ounce of fat on her, I didn't spy it anyplace. She had no breasts to speak of, but the effect was intensely female anyway. This was no beach bunny. She took herself seriously, and she knew what fitness was about, breezing through the exercises without even breathing hard. Every other woman in the place was in pain. It made me grateful that all I have to do is jog three miles a day. I'm never going to look as good as she, but it didn't seem like a bad trade.

  Carrie took the class through cool-down, a slow stretch, and a couple of yoga moves and then let them sprawl on the floor like casualties on a battlefield. She turned the music of£ grabbed a towel, and buried her face in it, moving out of the room through a doorway just below me. I found the stairs and headed down, catching her at the water fountain just outside the locker rooms. Her hair fell across her shoulders like a nun's veil and she had to gather it in a knot and hold it to one side so she could drink without getting it wet.

  "Carrie?"

  She straightened up, blotting a trickle of sweat with the sleeve of her leotard, the towel around her neck now, like a fighter just out of the ring. "That's right."

  I told her who I was and what I was doing and then asked her if we could talk about Bobby Callahan.

  "All right, but we'll have to do it while I clean up. I have to be somewhere at noon."

  I followed her through a door and into the locker room. The floor plan was open, with a counter on the right that circled the perimeter about halfway, banks of metal lockers, a line of hair dryers mounted on the wall. The tile was a pristine white and the place was spotless, with benches anchored to the floor, mirrors everywhere. I could hear showers running somewhere out of sight to my left. Women were beginning to straggle in from the class and the level of laughter, I knew, would rise as the room filled.

  Carrie kicked off her shoes and peeled her leotard down like a banana skin. I busied myself looking for a place to perch. As a rule, I don't interview naked ladies in a roomful of chattering strippers. I noticed that they smelled just like the guys at Santa Teresa Fitness and I thought that was nice.

  I waited while she tucked her hair up under a plastic cap and went into the showers. In the meantime, women paraded back and forth in various stages of undress. It was a comforting sight. So many versions of the female breast, of buttocks and bellies and pubic nests, endless repetitions of the same forms. These women seemed to feel good about themselves and there was a camaraderie among them that I enjoyed.

  Carrie returned from showering, wrapped in a towel. She pulled her shower cap off and gave her dark mane a toss. She began to dry herself off, talking to me over her shoulder.

  "I thought about coming to the funeral, but I just couldn't handle it. Did you go?"

  "Yeah, I went. I hadn't known Bobby long, but it was tough. You were dating him when he had the accident, weren't you?"

  "Actually, we'd just broken up. We dated two years and then things went sour. I got pregnant, among other things, and that was the end of it. He paid for the abortion, but we weren't seeing much of each other by then. I did feel terrible when he got hurt, but I stayed away. I know people thought I was a real cold fish, but what could I do? It was over. I couldn't see hovering around him loyally just so I'd look good."

  "Did you hear any talk about the accident?"

  "Just that someone ran him off the road."

  "You have any idea who it might have been or why?" She sat down on a bench and hauled a foot up, drying carefully between her toes. "Well, yes and no. Not who really, but I know something was going on with him. He didn't confide much by then, but he did go with me when I had the abortion and he stayed real close for a couple of days." She switched feet, bending to inspect her toes. "I worry about athletes foot," she murmured. "Sorry."

  She tossed the towel aside and got up, crossing to a locker, taking out clothes. She glanced at me. "I'm just trying to say this right because I don't really have any facts. Just an impression. I remember him saying some friend of his was in trouble and I had the feeling it was blackmail."

  "Blackmail?"

  "Well, yes, but not in any ordinary sense. I mean, I don't think there was money changing hands or anything like that. It wasn't sinister cloak-and-dagger stuff. Somebody had something on somebody else and it was pretty serious. I gathered he'd been trying to help and he'd just figured out how to do it... ." She pulled on her underpants and then an undershirt. I guess she figured her breasts weren't big enough to worry with a bra.

  "When was this?" I asked. "Do you remember the date?"

  "Well, I know I had the abortion on November sixteenth and he stayed with me that night. The accident was the day after that, I think, the night of the seventeenth, so it was all in that same week."

  "I've been going through the newspaper starting in September, thinking maybe he was caught up in something public. Did you get any impression of the arena where all this was taking place? I mean, I don't even know what to look for."

  She shook her head. "I have no idea. Really. I'm sorry, but I couldn't even make a guess."

  "You think Rick Bergen was the friend in trouble?"

  "I doubt it. I knew Rick. I think Bobby would have told me if it had been Rick."

  "Somebody at work?"

  "Look, I just can't help you with that," she said impatiently. "He was being very tight-lipped and I wasn't in a mood to pry. I was just glad the abortion was over with. I was taking pain-killers anyway so I slept a lot and the rest was a blur. He was just talking for the sake of it, to take my mind off things and maybe a little bit from nerves."

  "Does the name Blackman mean anything to you?"

  "I don't think so."

  She pulled on a pair of sweatpants and slipped her feet into some thongs. She bent at the waist, flipped her hair across one shoulder, and gave it a couple of whacks with a hairbrush, then grabbed up her shoulder bag, moving toward the door. I had to do a quick two-step to catch up with her. I didn't think she'd finished dressing but I could see now that this was all she intended to wear. Sweatpants and an undershirt? She was going to freeze once she got outside. I scurried after her, catching the door as she passed into the corridor.

  "Who else was he hanging out with back then?" I asked, trotting up the stairs to the main entrance with her. "Just give me a couple of names. I gotta have something to go on."

  She paused, glancing back at me. "Try a kid named Gus. I d
on't know his last name, but he works at that skate-rental place down at the beach. He's an old high-school buddy and I think Bobby trusted him. Maybe he'll know what its about."

  "What were the other things? You said you got pregnant 'among other things.'"

  Her smile was tense. "God, you are so persistent. He was in love with someone else. I have no idea who, so don't bother to ask. If I'd known about the other woman I'd have broken off our relationship long before. As it was, I didn't hear about her until I told him I was pregnant. I thought at first he might marry me, but when he told me he was seriously involved with someone else, I knew what I had to do. To his credit, he did feel terrible about the bind I was in and he did as much as he could. There was nothing cheap about Bobby and he really was a sweet guy at heart."

  She started to move away and I caught her by the arm, thinking rapidly. "Carrie, is there a chance that the friend in trouble and the woman he was involved with were one and the same person?"

  "How do I know?"

  "I don't suppose he gave you a little red address book, did he?"

  "All he gave me was heartache," she said and walked off without looking back.

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  The skate-rental shack is a dark green box just off a parking lot near the wharf. For three bucks, you can rent roller skates for an hour, with kneepads, elbow pads, and wrist braces thrown in without charge so you won't sue them later for the harm you might do yourself.

  Bobby's taste in friends was hard to predict. Gus looked like the sort of fellow if you saw on a street corner, you'd reach over casually and make sure your car doors were locked. He must have been Bobby's age, but he was sunken-chested and frail, and his color was bad. His hair was dark brown and he was struggling to grow a mustache that only made him look like a fugitive. I'd seen mug shots of felons I'd trust before him.

  I had introduced myself and ascertained that this was indeed Bobby's friend, when a blonde with flyaway hair and long tanned legs came up to turn in a pair of skates. I watched their interchange. Despite my first impression, Gus had a nice way about him. His manner was mildly flirtatious and he had a tendency to glance in my direction, showing off, I suspect. I waited, looking on while he calculated how much she owed him. He returned her street shoes and I.D. and she hopped over to a bench to put on her tennies. Gus waited until she was gone before he spoke.

  "I saw you at the funeral," he said shyly when he turned back to me. "You were sitting near Mrs. Callahan."

  "I don't remember seeing you," I said. "Did you come to the house afterwards?"

  He shook his head, coloring. "I wasn't feeling too good."

  "I don't think there's any way to feel good about that."

  "Not when your buddy dies," he said. His voice carried a barely perceptible quaver. He turned away, making a big display of shoving the shoe skates back into the proper slot on the shelf.

  "Have you been sick?" I asked.

  He seemed to debate for just an instant and then said, "I got Crohn's disease. You know what that is?"

  "No."

  "Inflammatory bowel disease. Everything goes right through me. I can't keep weight on. Run a fever half the time. Stomach hurts. 'Etiology unknown,' which means they don't know what causes it or where it comes from. I've had it almost two years and it's got me down. I can't keep a real job, so I do this."

  "Is that something you recover from?"

  "I guess so. In time. That's what they say, at any rate."

  "Well, I'm sorry you're suffering. It sounds grim."

  "You don't know the half of it. Anyway, Bobby cheered me up. He was in such bad shape himself, we'd get laughin' sometimes. I miss him. When I heard he died, I almost gave up, but then this little voice said, 'Aw Gus, get up off your dead ass and get on with it... this isn't the end of the world, so don't be a jerk.'" He shook his head. "It was Bobby, I swear. Sounded just like him. So I got up off my dead ass. Are you looking into his death?"

  I nodded, glancing over as a couple of kids approached to rent skates.

  Gus conducted some business and came back to me, apologizing for the interruption. It was summer and despite the uncharacteristic chill in the air, the tourists were swarming the beaches. I asked him if he had any idea what Bobby was involved in. He moved uneasily, glancing off across the street.

  "I got an idea, but I don't know what to say. I mean, if Bobby didn't tell you, why should I?"

  "He couldn't remember. That's what he hired me for. He thought he was in danger and he wanted me to find out what was going on."

  "So maybe it's best to just leave it be."

  "Leave what be?"

  "Look, I don't know anything for sure. Just what Bobby said."

  "What are you worried about?"

  He shifted his gaze. "I don't know. Let me think about it some. Honest, I don't know much, but I don't want to talk about it unless it feels right. You know what I mean?"

  I conceded the point. You can always push people around, but it's not a good idea. Better to let them volunteer information for reasons of their own. You get more that way.

  "I hope you'll give me a call," I said. "If I don't hear from you, I might have to come back and make a pest of myself." I took a card out and laid it on the counter.

  He smiled, apparently feeling guilty for holding out. "You can skate for nothing if you want. It's good exercise."

  "Some other time," I said. "Thanks."

  He watched me until I pulled out of the parking lot, turning left. In the rearview mirror, I could see him scratching at his mustache with the corner of my business card. I hoped I'd hear from him.

  In the meantime, I decided to see if I could lay my hands on the cardboard box the lab had packed up after Bobby's accident. I drove over to the house. Glen had apparently flown up to San Francisco for the day, but Derek was home and I told him what I needed.

  His look was skeptical. "I remember the box, but I'm not sure where it went. Probably out in the garage, if you want to have a look."

  He closed the front door behind him and the two of us crossed the courtyard to the three-car garage that stretched out at one end of the house. There were storage bins built into the back wall. None of them was locked, but most were stacked top to bottom with boxes that looked as if they'd been on the premises since the year oughty-ought.

  I spotted a carton that seemed to be a good bet. It was shoved against the back wall under a workbench, marked "disposable syringes" with the name of the medical supplier and a torn shipping label addressed to Santa Teresa Hospital Pathology Department. We hauled it out and opened it. The contents looked like Bobbys, but were disappointing nevertheless. No little red book, no reference to anybody named Blackman, no clippings, no cryptic notes, no personal correspondence. There were some medical books, two technical manuals for radiology equipment, and office supplies of the most benign sort. What was I going to do with a box of paper clips and two ballpoint pens?

  "It doesn't look like much," Derek remarked.

  "It doesn't look like anything," I replied. "You mind if I take it with me anyway? I may want to check through it again."

  "No, go right ahead. Here let me get that." I stepped back obligingly and let him heft the box up off the floor and carry it to my car. I could have done it, but it seemed important to him, so why hassle? He shoved some stuff aside and we wrestled the box into the backseat. I told him I'd be in touch and then I took off.

  I went back to my place and changed into my running clothes. I was just locking up when Henry came around the corner with Lila Sams. They were walking hip to hip, arms entwined. He was a good foot taller than she and lean in all the places she was plump. He looked flushed with happiness, that special aura people take on when they've just fallen in love. He was wearing pale blue brushed denim pants and a pale blue shirt that made his blue eyes look nearly luminous, His hair looked freshly cut and my guess was he'd actually had someone "style" it this time. Lila's smile tensed somewhat when she caught sight of me, bu
t she recovered her composure, laughing girlishly.

  "Oh Kinsey, now look what he's gone and done," she said and held her hand out. She was sporting a big square-cut diamond that I hoped was some gaudy fake.

  "God, its gorgeous. What's the occasion?" I asked, heart sinking. Surely, they weren't engaged. She was so wrong for him, so giddy and false, while he was genuine.

  "Just celebrating the fact that we met," Henry said with a glance at her. "What was it, a month ago? Six weeks?"

  "Well, naughty you," she said with a playful stamp of her little foot. "I have half a mind to make you take this right back. We met June twelfth. It was Moza's birthday and I'd just moved in. You catered that tea she gave and you've spoiled me rotten ever since." She lowered her voice then to its most confidential pitch. "Isn't he awful?"

  I don't know how to talk to people this way, exchanging pointless banter. I could feel my smile becoming self-conscious but I couldn't make it go away. "I think he's great," I said, sounding somehow lame and inept.

  "Well, of course he's great," she said in a flash. "Why wouldn't he be? He's such an innocent, anyone can take advantage of him."

  Her tone was suddenly quarrelsome, as though I'd insulted him. I could feel the warning signals clanging away like crazy, but I still couldn't guess what was coming. She was wagging a finger at me, red painted nails piercing the air near my face. "You, for one, you bad girl. I told Henry and I'll say it right to your face, the rent you pay is a scandal and you know perfectly well you've been robbing him blind."