Джанет Иванович - Twisted Twenty-Six

“A tour would be great,” I said, taking a glossy pink folder from her.

Four minutes later we were following a guy named Thor.

“This is the Pilates room,” he said. “We have two of them. As you can see there’s a class going on. The second one is almost always free for unsupervised use. Any questions?”

“I got one,” Lula said. “Is Thor your real name?”

“No,” he said. “My real name is Bruce. They make you take a godlike name when you come to work here.”

“I got another question,” Lula said. “Are there any more naked statues besides the ones out front?”

“Nope. That’s it.”

We looked in on a Zumba class and a spinning class.

“I couldn’t do that spinning class,” Lula said. “My cooter falls asleep when I ride a bike.”

I have the same problem, but I wasn’t comfortable discussing my cooter with Thor.

“I have a friend who took some classes with one of the trainers here and really liked him,” I said. “I don’t know his name, but he wore red Air Jordans.”

“That would be Zeus,” Thor said. “He’s dead.” Thor moved to the next door. “We also have a room with a heavy bag and a couple speed bags if you’re into that.”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” I said. “Zeus is dead? What happened?”

“Don’t know. They found him behind a dumpster.”

“Who would want to kill Zeus?”

“Probably lots of people,” Thor said. “He was an okay guy, but he messed around. And I think he owed a bunch of people money.”

“Miracle Fitness won’t be the same without a Zeus,” Lula said.

“It’s only temporary,” Thor said. “The new Zeus starts tomorrow.”

“The new Zeus,” Lula said. “That’s like the old Stephanie and the new Stephanie, only instead of changing himself, the old Zeus got dead and replaced. Gives you something to think about when you see how that’s another route to take.”

If Thor was confused, he didn’t show it. He just stood there and calmly waited to continue his tour. Probably he smoked a lot of pot.

“I guess that’s the cycle of life,” Lula said. “Still, seems like it was awful easy to replace Zeus.”

“They keep a file of applicants in the office,” Thor said.

Lula and I peeked into the ladies’ locker room and followed Thor back to the lobby.

“This has been helpful,” I said. “I’ll go home and look through the packet of information.”

We returned to the SUV and buckled ourselves in.

“It’s wrong that someone could kill Zeus,” Lula said.

“He wasn’t really Zeus,” I said. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, but he was sort of Zeus. It just seems wrong.”

For sure.

—

I dropped Lula off at the office and continued on to my parents’ house. I wanted to make sure everything was okay, and I wanted to mooch lunch and read through the information I got from Connie and Miracle Fitness. If one of the La-Z-Boys snatched Grandma, it would be worrisome, but at least we would have a place to start looking. This other player was much more frightening.

My father was watching television and eating an egg salad sandwich off a tray table. My mom and my grandmother were at the kitchen table. They each had an egg salad sandwich. The first thing I noticed was that Grandma wasn’t wearing her necklace.

“Where’s your necklace?” I asked, hanging my messenger bag on the back of a kitchen chair. “You’re supposed to never take it off.”

“It got wet in the shower, so I set it on the counter to dry, and then I forgot about it,” Grandma said. “There’s more egg salad in the fridge.”

I made myself a sandwich and brought it to the table. “You can’t forget about the necklace. You need to always wear it.”

“I’ll put it on when I go upstairs, but I don’t see the need for it,” Grandma said. “This seems like a lot of to-do about nothing.”

“The man who tried to kidnap you is dead,” I said. “I’m sure he was killed so he couldn’t divulge the name of whoever hired him.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Grandma said. “People get killed in Trenton all the time.”

“Humor me and wear the necklace,” I said. “Besides, it’s pretty and it’s a gift from Ranger.”

“I understand the man who was murdered worked at Miracle Fitness,” my mother said. “That place has a real reputation. It’s practically a swingers’ club.”

Grandma leaned forward over the table and lowered her voice. “Marg Bowman said the ladies diddle themselves in the sauna. She said they wear nothing but a towel and they diddle.”

I felt my face scrunch up. “Eeuuww!”

“I’d like to know how that goes,” Grandma said. “Do they all sit down and one of them asks, ‘Should we diddle today?’ Seems like it would be rude if one of them just started diddling without asking.”

“I’m eating egg salad,” I said. “Could we talk about something besides . . . you know? Like, is there anything new going on?”

“I got a letter from the lawyer setting the estate meeting for Monday,” Grandma said. “I’m thinking about giving some of my money to the animal shelter.”

“Good idea,” I said.

“I’m going to get more money than I need, so you all can have what you want and then I’ll give the rest away to the homeless dogs and cats.”

“That’s nice of you,” my mother said, “but I don’t need anything. The house is paid off and my car is only two years old.”

“Yeah, but you’re gonna need a new liver one of these days, and that costs money,” Grandma said.

I pulled Connie’s folder plus the pink folder out of my bag. First up was the list of trainers. This wasn’t worth anything because they all had phony names. Poseidon, Hermes, Apollo, Atlas. I went to the membership list next. Eight pages of small print. Mental groan.

“Something wrong?” Grandma asked. “Your eyes just rolled so far back in your head I was afraid you’d fall out of your chair.”

“It’s this list. Connie got me the names of everyone who has a Miracle Fitness membership. I thought I might find someone who was connected to Jimmy in some way and would want the keys. Someone who would hire Red Air Jordans and then kill him to shut him up.”

“That’s easy,” Grandma said. “Jimmy’s first wife, Barbara. She’s always talking about the hot trainers at Miracle. She’s in her late seventies, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s one of the diddlers. She’s on hormone replacement, and Rogaine. I think she gets Botox, too. Did you see her at the viewing? Her face doesn’t move. She’s all frozen up. She belongs on that show . . . Housewives of Hell. ” Grandma reached for a cookie from the white bakery box on the table. “Barbara never married again, after the divorce. She tells everybody she has PTSD from being with Jimmy. She’d take out a hit on me in a heartbeat. His daughter, Jeanine, goes to Miracle Fitness too. She’s married to Bernard Stupe.”

“I went to school with one of their kids,” I said. “Don. He was a year ahead of me.”

“He’s in Seattle now,” Grandma said. “And the other one is in the military. I’m sure Jeanine would know about the keys, but I can’t see her killing over them. She’s always been a nice person. Quiet. Not like her mother. Bernard’s quiet too. Polite.”

“What about the second wife?” I asked.

“Bunny,” Grandma said. “They were married for less than a year. Rumor has it that she got a bucketload of money from the divorce. She’s living in Arizona now. She was at the viewing and then she flew back to Phoenix. I think she just wanted to make sure Jimmy was dead.”

I looked at my mother. “Can you think of anyone?”

“Sidney DeSalle owns Miracle Fitness,” she said. “There are a lot of rumors about him and his business practices. He’s known for being a pretty rough guy. I don’t know if he would be interested in the keys, but I imagine he’d know about them.”