Magnolia Fitness Center was the largest gym in St. Long parish, and the only one of any decent quality in Beaulac. I was a member there, though calling my attendance “sporadic” would have been generous. I tended to go through spasms of desire to get fit that usually lasted about two weeks and would then die down for several months. I was quite sure that Magnolia Fitness absolutely loved me, since I was kind enough to allow them to deduct the dues from my checking account every month, and I avoided adding any wear or tear to their equipment by the clever technique of remaining on my couch at home.
The front of the fitness center resembled a plantation, complete with a broad stairway, absurd columns, and rocking chairs on the “porch.” However, the interior was more in line with what one would expect a fitness center to look like: shiny and chromey, with signs indicating directions to the spa, the hair salon, child care, or—amazingly—the weight room.
I’d called Roger and arranged to meet with him during a break in his training schedule. I had to ask for directions to the trainer offices, though, since I’d never had any desire to go there. The thought of paying someone to make me exercise made me whimper, both at the hit it would make on my budget and at the thought of being harassed and goaded to work and push and sweat.
It felt odd for me to walk through the gym in my detective-attire, and I found myself sucking my stomach in as I walked past the banks of mirrors. A couple of months ago I’d been accused of being too skinny—a result of being too stressed to eat properly because of worrying about my aunt. It hadn’t taken long for my usual bad habits to assert themselves and for the “fleshy curves” to return. The running with Jill helped, but my fondness for ice cream before bed did not.
Roger was in the office when I arrived. He stood and shook my hand in a firm grip with no recognition in his eyes, not surprising since I was no longer dressed in go-thy undercover garb. As Lida had said, Roger was definitely a ball of muscle. A damn good-looking one too, with dark blond hair and green eyes and a sharp little cleft in the middle of his chin. I had a feeling those good looks accounted for a fair number of the band’s female fan base.
I debated briefly about not telling him that we’d met before when I’d taken his witness statement after the attack, then decided it would probably be more than a little awkward if he figured it out later.
“Oh, right!” he exclaimed after I mentioned the task force. He grinned, showing perfect teeth. “Man, that was some crazy shit, huh!”
“Yeah, sure was,” I said as I settled myself carefully into one of the plastic chairs. Maybe they made the chairs deliberately uncomfortable so that people wouldn’t want to sit for long and instead would eagerly rush out to exercise? “Seems kinda strange that Lida doesn’t seem to be worried that it could happen again.”
He shrugged. “Lida’s a strange girl. I mean, she’s cool and all, and super tough and driven, but at the same time she kinda does whatever her uncle and Adam say.”
I desperately wanted to pursue that, but Roger didn’t give me a chance. He plopped a chart down in front of me.
“So, I know that I’m not a family member or anything of Vic’s,” he began, expression earnest, “and I know he hasn’t been missing very long, but if there’s one thing he was super committed about it was his workouts. In the past three years he’s only missed three appointments, and each time he made sure to let me know way in advance.”
I obediently perused the chart, more than a little intimidated at the number of training sessions that Vic had scheduled. The man worked out five days a week—and that was just the sessions with Roger. I could also see that he was expected to do a fair amount of cardio on his own. “Wow, he must really be in shape,” I said.
Roger gave a proud smile. “He’s my star client. Three years ago he was close to four hundred pounds. Then he had a scare during a Christmas party—thought he was having a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. Turned out it was only gastritis, but when they ran all the tests they found out that he was inches away from having a real one. He had a couple of stents put in, and as soon as he recovered, he decided he was going to change his life. He came here and signed up, and got serious.” Roger pulled out two pictures and set them side by side for me to see—before and after pictures. I barely recognized that it was the same man in both pictures, and if Roger hadn’t told me so, I might not have at all. The picture on the left showed a man dressed only in gray shorts—balding, morbidly obese, skin pasty and pale, and a deeply fatigued expression on a round and almost babyish face. The picture on the right had him in a white T-shirt and black shorts, and clearly about two hundred pounds lighter, but the differences went beyond the weight loss and the clothing. Vic Kerry was smiling, standing straighter with obvious muscle tone in his arms and legs. He’d gone and shaved his head and even though he still had a faintly cherubic roundness to his face, it was possible to see that he had cheekbones, and he no longer looked as if he never saw the light of day.
“Holy crap,” I said, sincerely impressed.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Roger said, nearly beaming. “Now he weighs one-ninety and his doctors say he’ll probably outlive all of us.” Then his smile slipped. “I went by his house and his office and he wasn’t at either place. I have keys,” he explained. “If Vic was busy he’d have me come to him so that he could still get a workout in.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Vic’s not just a training client. I mean, he’s a friend as well. He’s helped me out of some tough spots and given me some great financial advice, and ... well, I’m really worried about him.”
“I understand,” I said in a reassuring tone. I asked a few questions about Vic and his family—of which there was practically none. Parents deceased, no spouse, no kids. A brother who lived in Seattle who Vic almost never spoke to—not out of any sort of antipathy, but more because they’d gone different directions with their lives, and their contact was now down to obligatory phone calls on birthdays and Christmas.
“Let me make some calls,” I said. “I want to rule out the possibility that he had an accident and hasn’t been able to get in touch with you.”
He gave me a relieved smile. “I tried calling hospitals but they said that they weren’t allowed to give patient information because of privacy rules.”
“Right. I should be able to get more info.” I’d also call the coroner’s office to see if Mr. Kerry was in the morgue, but I wasn’t going to tell Roger that. I was sure he knew that would be one of my calls, but that didn’t mean I had to say it outright.
Roger excused himself to go tend to a client, and I used the opportunity to make the calls.
“Well, no one with his name or fitting his description is in any of the local hospitals. Or the morgue,” I told him when he returned about ten minutes later.
He gave me an uneasy smile. “I don’t know whether to be relieved or more worried.”
“Sorry,” I said. “But that’s only the first step. Do you have time to take me by his office and house?” Since he had keys and—I assumed—permission to enter, that made my life a bit easier.
“Yeah, I just had my last client. I start at five A.M.” He grinned at my involuntary shudder. “I’m free until about four-thirty this afternoon. Band rehearsal every night this week,” he explained.
“Oh? Where do you rehearse?”
“Adam owns a studio in town—Sound Systems. It’s convenient and free,” he said, “which is nice since we’re spending so much time practicing right now.” A faint grimace flashed across his face. “Lida’s putting together some new songs and it usually takes us some time to get all the instrumentation right.”
I thought I could sense a touch of resentment about the amount of time the band demanded. “Lida writes all of the songs?”
“Most of them,” he said, “though Trey’s put together a few as well.”
“What about Michael?”
Roger gave a small laugh. “Um, no. I mean, Michael’s brilliant at playing existing stuff, but he doesn’t do the creative stuff. At all.”
“Does he read sheet music?”
He shook his head firmly. “No. Plays strictly by ear. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s absolutely amazing at it. He can hear something once and then play it damn near perfectly, but someone always has to play it for him first. Usually Lida does that.” Then he smiled. “But she’s incredibly patient with him. It’s really cool.”
“Sounds like it,” I said, suddenly wishing I knew more about music and performance. I also wished I had more time to grill Roger about Lida and the other band members, but that would have to wait for another time. “Well, we’re burning daylight. Let’s go look for your client.”
Taking separate cars, I followed Roger over to the City Towers, where Vic had his office. The City Towers building was a landmark in town, not only because it used to house the city offices, but it was also the skyscraper in Beaulac. If a seven story building could be called a skyscraper. But it was the tallest structure in town other than the water tower.
Unfortunately, the building had lost a number of its tenants in the last year due to newly constructed office complexes that were willing to price their rent competitively in order to fill their spaces. Judging by the almost empty parking lot, I didn’t think there were more than a dozen occupied offices in all of City Towers. It looked as if any attempts at landscaping that were more complicated than cutting the grass had been abandoned. Bushes ringed the building, but they’d been allowed to grow so high and thick that the first-story windows were almost completely obscured. Walking into the building, I could see more reasons business owners would have left. The linoleum in the lobby was stained and cracked, and the walls probably hadn’t seen a new coat of paint since the seventies. In fact it didn’t look as if anything had been updated or maintained for a few decades.
Roger took me up to the sixth floor and unlocked the door to a very ordinary office. Utilitarian and boring were the words that first leaped to my mind. Black and white tile floor, metal desk, a row of metal filing cabinets, and a couple of slightly battered chairs. I had to wonder how successful an accountant and financial advisor he was if this was the best office he could afford. It certainly wasn’t the sort of place I’d want to meet clients. As far as I could tell, Vic Kerry had the only occupied office on this floor. And, I didn’t think the other floors were too much better.
Maybe he’s simply frugal, I thought charitably. On the other hand, the view from his window was nothing short of spectacular. I could see down the entire length of Lake Pearl from here, and with binoculars I thought I’d probably be able to pick out my aunt’s house on the lakefront.
“He has a little home gym set up through there,” Roger said, gesturing to the another door. “Once he started to lose the weight he shelled out some serious bucks for really nice equipment.” He opened the door and flipped on the lights. Still the same ugly tile floor, but this room was packed with weight benches and machines, and the far wall was taken up with a small kitchenette area with refrigerator. I didn’t know a whole lot about exercise equipment, but even I could tell that this was gym-quality stuff—not the kind sold at Walmart. Okay, so maybe he preferred to spend his money on stuff that actually mattered to him.
“Actually, I work out here pretty often,” Roger told me. “I gave Vic a discount on my training fee in exchange for being able to use the equipment here.” He glanced at me with a wry smile. “Sometimes it’s nice to get a totally uninterrupted workout. If I’m at Magnolia I’m kinda always on duty, and I get interrupted all the time by people wanting help or a spot or whatever.”
“Trust me,” I replied, “I totally sympathize with the ‘always on duty’ thing getting old.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I guess cops get it all the time.”
“You know it. So, was Vic dating anyone?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Roger said. “I’m pretty sure he would have mentioned it if he was.”
“What about business dealings? Did he ever talk about that?”
“Um, sure, Vic mentioned some stuff sometimes,” he said. “But he never gave details about the accounts he worked on. He knew his shit, though. He gave me some great advice.”
“What sort of advice?” I asked.
“Investments. That sort of thing.” He gave me a casual shrug that struck me as being a bit too casual. Maybe some of Vic’s advice had been off the mark and Roger had retaliated? Just because Roger was reporting Vic missing didn’t mean that he wasn’t the cause.
I turned back to the front office and went to the desk. Neat and tidy, obsessively so. I riffled through a stack of papers on the desk, but didn’t see anything that leaped out at me as a reason to go missing. No threatening letters from an ex-girlfriend. No blackmail notes.
I sighed and looked out at the view. A few sailboats were making their way across the lake in meandering patterns. I stepped closer to the window then stopped, frowning as a strange sensation rippled over me.
What the hell? I shifted into othersight, shocked as a familiar resonance washed over me. Like the creature that grabbed Lida.
Pulse quickening, I switched back to normal sight, then crouched and peered at the tiled floor. There was dirt there. Not much, but on the pristine floor it was noticeable. I straightened and looked at the window itself.
“Did you find something?” Roger asked.
I glanced back at him. “Do these windows open?”
“Yeah, they prop out,” he said, stepping up to point to the latch mechanism at the bottom.
“This one isn’t latched,” I murmured. Shit. I knew I needed to look, but I didn’t want to. I had a sick and certain feeling that I knew where Vic was.
“Oh, god. Do you think ...” He trailed off.
I took a piece of blank paper from the printer and put it against the window so that I could push it open without marring any possible prints too badly. I peered down, then looked at Roger.
“I think we found your client.”