“Perhaps the door of the sauna just got stuck.”
“No way. It was locked. And then unlocked. I heard the sound when it happened.”
The tingle becomes a full-blown chill. Car door open, I study her face in the dim light: the wide eyes, the straightforward manner that has already gotten her in enough trouble to ruin a good chunk of her life.
“Somebody locked you in the sauna?”
“And then turned off the lights.”
I think back. The lights in the place had been blazing when I arrived with the other reporters. The door to the club had been open.
“Then somebody unlocked the sauna?”
“And I stumbled out, got my towel and found you people waiting for me. I tell you, somebody locked me in there, then let me out just in time.”
“Who would want to do something like that to you?”
“I don’t know,” she sobs. “If they tried it once, what are they going to do next?”
I try to follow up on Tania Marie’s story back at the health club when I pick up Tania Marie’s phone and clothes. The woman with the gym-teacher voice informs me that she’s the night manager. She doesn’t like my questions and especially doesn’t like my invading the privacy of her members. When I ask if I can speak to the employees who were responsible for locking up that night, she says certainly not. She mentions attorneys. I tell her I’ll be checking with her. With her still berating me, I walk away.
Tania Marie refuses to see me, so I leave her phone, jeans and T-shirt outside her apartment as she has requested.
I know what I have to do next, but I don’t want to. I try to invent excuses, reasons why I must remain here in Santa Barbara, living out of a motel, talking to the other Killer Body candidates. It doesn’t work. The knowledge of what must happen next keeps me thrashing most of the night. I leave a little after six the next morning.
It’s close to eleven by the time I reach Pleasant View. Pete Lewis’s office is located in the rapidly developing northeast part of town, on the twelfth floor of a bank building. I asked if we could meet here because I didn’t think I could bear being in the home where he and Lisa were going to live. Now I’m not so sure I shouldn’t have opted for something impersonal, like a coffee shop.
We sit in his conference room, with its view of the hazy day. Pete doesn’t look as if he’s slept, either. His jeans and fisherman’s knit sweater look brand new, as does everything I’ve ever seen him wear. I remember that I told Lisa he was too perfect, asked her if she didn’t ever want to just reach over and muss up his hair. But then, she was that way, too. Perfection personified.
Although his hug is warm, I know he’d rather do just about anything than meet with me today. After he asks about my trip, which was uneventful, and lunch, which is impossible, he sits on the edge of the conference table, his eyes so intense I have to turn away.
“I went to the cemetery this morning,” he says.
“I’m stopping on my way back.”
“After the funeral, I spent that first night out there, all night, in my car.”
“Oh, Pete.”
“I couldn’t stand for her to be alone.”
The ragged pain in his voice mirrors what I feel, what I try to hide from others. There is no reason to hide it from him. I let the tears fall. He leans down, puts his arms around me, and I know that he is crying, too, into my hair. Turning abruptly, he walks to the window, his back to me.
“What are we going to do, Rikki?”
“I don’t know. Work, I guess. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“On that Julie Larimore story?”
“Yes,” I say to his back.
“You get anything?”
“Not much, so far. That’s why I’m here. I need your help.”
He turns. “I don’t know anything that can help you with that story.”
“You might.” I sit straight in my chair, trying to pretend he is a source and not the man who loved my cousin, not the man who spent last Saturday night at the cemetery because he didn’t want her to be alone. “I need to talk to you about Lisa.”
