Chris Grabenstein - Rolling Thunder

They hold hands and head for the door.

“Maybe we could kiss in front of her coffin,” says Peter, “give mommy dearest another heart attack!”

The glass doors whoosh shut behind them.

“Interesting,” says Ceepak.

“Yeah,” I say, as I watch Peter and his leathery friend through the plate glass windows. “So far, we’re two for two.”

“Indeed. The two O’Malley children we have spoken to both seem happy that their mother is dead.”

“You sure about the M.E.’s report? Maybe Peter or Sean poisoned Mrs. O’Malley, gave her a drug that just made it look like she had a heart attack.”

“Doubtful,” says Ceepak. “And, as you recall, Peter was nowhere near the roller coaster yesterday morning.”

“True. But maybe he used some kind of slow-acting poison that mimics a heart attack.”

Ceepak gives me his double-eyebrows-up, extremely skeptical look. “Are you suggesting that, some time prior to ten A.M., Peter O’Malley administered a lethal dose of a drug perfectly timed to kill his mother during the inaugural run of the Rolling Thunder roller coaster?”

“Well, what if it was time-release, slow-acting, heart-attack-mimicking poison?”

Hey, if I’m going to stretch logic, I might as well stretch it till it snaps.

“Then, Danny, we should’ve asked the M.E. to do a tox screen for such a poison. As you know, tests for specific toxins must be requested or they won’t be done. As a sidebar-I know of no known poison with all the properties you suggest it might possess.”

“I guess I just don’t like all these O’Malley’s saying bad things about their dead mother.”

“Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“I suspect they were saying these things long before she died.”

Ceepak straps on his helmet, hops on his eighteen-speed bike, and heads for home.

I’m supposed to meet him and Rita at King Putt at three P.M.

Figures Ceepak would schedule an outdoor activity involving physical exertion for the hottest part of the day.

I decide to head into the gym. Hey, I paid my monthly membership fee so I figure I should step inside Beach Bods at least once during the month of May, which is almost over.

I show the girl behind the front desk my I.D. card.

“Are you interested in Chi Gung Yoga or the Total Body Sculpt class that just started?”

“Nah,” I say. “I just thought I’d lift a few weights. Grunt a little.”

She hands me a towel. “Enjoy your workout.”

Yeah. Right. Like that’s going to happen. I enjoy a cold beer. A hot slice of pizza. I do not enjoy voluntary artificial exertion.

I head over to the dumbbells and grab a pair of ten-pound weights to do a few bicep curls in front of the mirrored wall. I figure I could save my gym fees by going back to the Acme and lifting a few ten-pound sacks of sugar. Work my way up to the pet food aisle and those fifty-pound bags of kibble.

Behind me, in the mirror, I see Gail Baker over on a blue rubber mat where some people do stretches and stuff. She’s wearing what looks like black Spandex underwear: a sports bra and sporty short shorts.

One of the Beach Bods trainers, a guy with a chin dimple goatee and Tibetan tattoo sleeves on both arms, has one hand on the small of Gail’s back, the other on her extremely taut stomach, to coach her through a series of deep knee bends.

I stroll across the gym floor and pretend like I’m interested in the Smith machine, this piece of equipment that has a barbell fixed inside steel rails so you can slide the weights up and down to do your squats or bench presses without dropping everything on your head. I load it up with two twenty-pound disks so I can be closer to Gail.

You gaze at her incredible body, you want to look better naked.

While I’m slipping the weights onto the bar, I hear Gail tell her trainer, “Anyway, I can’t slack off. Need to keep looking good.”

“Then we’ll work extra hard today.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

She does a few forward lunges.

Mike steps back, admires her form.

“Hey,” he says, as Gail switches lunge legs, “if you’re free this week, we should hang out.”

“Maybe,” says Gail. “Sounds like fun.”

She stands up. Mike moves in and massages the top of her shoulders.

“I’d stretch you out afterwards. Give you a deep-tissue massage.”

Gail laughs.

“So, when can we, you know, hook up?”

Gail does a flirty sideways twist so her breasts brush against muscle man’s biceps.

“Like I said, I’m free any night or day this week. After that, I’m fully committed till July.”

“Let me check my book. See if I can fit you in. Okay, on your back. Time for crunches.”

I can just imagine these two having sex. Probably do three sets of ten reps. Probably have mirrors on the ceiling and all the walls. Probably wouldn’t sell me a video of it.

I put in a good half hour. Okay, twenty minutes.

I do some lat pull-downs, seated rows, hamstring curls, and assisted chin-ups on this machine where you can set a counterweight so you’re only pulling up about twenty pounds of body weight but it looks like you’re doing a manly-man chin-up, something I could never do in P.E. class, something Ceepak does whenever he has some spare time and sees a convenient horizontal bar.

Then, to work on my abs, I sit on one of those Swedish balls and try not to roll off it.

I’m toweling off some sweat when I see the dentist from the bar at Big Kahuna’s swing open the front doors. He marches to the desk. Flashes the check-in girl his card.

She scans it. Scans it again.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s being rejected.”

“What?” The dentist strains to look over the desk and see what bad things the computer monitor is saying about him. “Look up Hausler. Dr. Marvin Hausler.”

Computer keys clack.

“You haven’t paid your dues in two months.”

“What?” Now he reaches over, grabs the monitor and tries to swivel it around, only it’s not on a lazy Susan type deal so it only budges an inch or two. “Let me see that.”

I toss my towel in the wicker laundry basket and amble toward the counter.

My cop sense tells me we’re about to have an incident.

“I really can’t let you see the computer screen-”

“This is fucking unbelievable,” fumes Hausler. “I come here every weekend.”

“They updated the membership rolls late last night, told us to double-check everybody’s cards today-”

“This is total fucking bullshit. I paid my fucking dues.”

“If you’d like to put the charge on a credit card-”

“What? So you can double-bill me? Fucking forget it!”

I’m about to butt in when Gail comes out of the women’s locker room in her street clothes, which, by the way, are just about as skimpy as her gym clothes. Up top she has on this tight little yellow-and-red Sugar Babies tee-looks like the vintage logo from a bag of Sugar Babies. I swear she bought it at a store for newborns, it’s that small.

“Hey, Marvin,” she says.

The dentist backs away from the counter. Stops acting like a spoiled brat.

“Hey,” he says, his voice all silky and deep. Maybe he studies Luther Vandross CDs. “How’s it going?”

“Great.”

“Missed you last night.”

“What?”

“The date we didn’t have. How’s your grandmother?”

“Huh? Oh-better. Thanks!”

“Good. Glad to hear it. Hey, I got Leno tickets for down in AC. Interested?” Dr. Marv is leaning one cocked arm against the counter now, putting on his suave ‘n smooth moves.

“I don’t know.”

“We could take your grandmother with us. If she gets sick again, I could write her a prescription.”

“That’s sweet.”