Death Comes to a Retreat (Book 4 Molly Masters Mysteries) Read online

  “The door seems to be stuck,” she murmured, and shoved against it with her shoulder.

  She turned back to me, her eyes wide with fright. “Molly, we’re locked in here!”

  Chapter 10

  Is Everything a Joke to You?

  I had to try for myself to open the door, even though there was nothing to operate—the door was supposed to simply push open. What did I expect? That Lauren had pulled instead of pushed? Indeed, the door didn’t budge.

  “It’s locked, all right.” My heart started thumping. Holy shit! We were trapped inside a cedar-paneled oven, set to slow-bake like a rump roast! I smacked my fist on the door.

  Lauren and I pounded and yelled for help. Somebody wanted to kill me. My best friend was going to die, too, just because she was with me.

  My mind raced through the mostly unanswerable hows, whos, and whys, but one name stuck. Katherine. Her parting words about the dangers of heat had all but shouted that this was her doing.

  I had to actively work at blocking out the fear of how excruciating my immediate future might be. I had to keep myself together. If I flipped out, Lauren would too, and we had precious little time and energy as it was. None could be wasted on tears or histrionics.

  My forearms and fists aching from my fruitless blows; I said, more to myself than Lauren, “I knew I shouldn’t have come in here! I’ve always hated saunas. Why on earth do people want to subject themselves to intolerable levels of heat?”

  Lauren continued to pound on the door and yell after I’d stopped. There was nothing but dead silence whenever she paused.

  In the meantime, I studied the heater, hoping to find an emergency shut-off valve or on-off switch. No such luck. The unit was enclosed by a sheet-metal cover. There were probably some controls in there someplace. “Story of my life,” I muttered. “I never have a Phillips-head screwdriver when I need one. I’m really sorry about this, Lauren. This only happened to you because you’re with me.”

  “But how could this happen? I didn’t even see a way to lock this door when I came in.”

  “I did. It’s a deadbolt, operated by a key. Though the key wasn’t in the lock when we came in.”

  Lauren knocked on the door another four or five times, then sighed and turned toward me. Her hair was damp with sweat, and her face was bright red and shiny. “The rental car’s out front. Sooner or later somebody will spot it, figure out that it’s suspicious, and come looking for us. And there’s got to be somebody left in the shower or dressing room. If I keep knocking—”

  “The walls and doors are too well insulated,” I told her. “I can barely even hear you from in here.”

  “We’ve got to do something to get out!” Lauren cried. “Let’s not lose our cool. So to speak.”

  Lauren glared at me.

  I held up a palm in unspoken apology. We’d been friends for so long, she knew that my tendency to crack jokes during bad situations was almost compulsive. I flashed on an idea for a cartoon—more a fleeting hallucination than anything else. A male clown is holding out a bouquet of droopy, wilted flowers to a female clown, who says to him, “Is everything a joke to you?”

  I took a swipe at my wet forehead with an equally damp—and still aching—forearm. How long could we stay conscious under these circumstances? I doubted it would be for much more than thirty minutes. I was already miserable—thirsty, exhausted, feeling as if every breath was an effort. My face was so hot and painful that I half expected to have blood dripping from my pores.

  “Okay, Lauren. Here are our choices. We try to conserve our energy and hope somebody comes and saves us. Or we grab a batch of the rocks out of the sauna. Bundle them into a towel. Make as loud a racket as possible by smashing that against the door. If somebody’s still here, they’ll hear us.”

  “Well… whose towel were you planning on using for Plan B? That’s going to influence my vote.” “Please, Lauren. This is no time for modesty.”

  “Maybe not, but if I’m going to die anyway, I’d much rather have a towel covering my body.”

  Buck naked and dead from heat prostration in a health club sauna was hardly my fantasy of how I wanted to leave this earth, either. But, never being one to go quietly, I dropped my towel. “We have to use both towels.” I spread mine flat on the floor. “I need yours as a potholder to get the rocks.”

  Lauren obliged and I scooped handfuls of the rocks out and piled them into my towel. Every time I bent over the heating unit, I got a blast in the face of even more intense heat. I worked fast, spurred by the knowledge that each passing second brought us closer to heat prostration and further from the likelihood that anyone still remained in the building. The resulting bundle of stones was roughly the size of a large melon. Lauren’s towel was frayed enough that she managed to tear off an inch-wide strip, which we tied tourniquet-style just below the rocks.

  I took a couple of turns with our contraption, gripping the bottom of the towel and swinging it with an overhead tennis serve motion. Despite our dire circumstances, Lauren, prone to nervous giggles, started to laugh.

  When I glanced back at her, she said, “You look really silly.”

  “Lauren, if we get out of here, don’t you ever, ever describe this to my kids.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, laughing all the harder. “We’re never going to get out of here.”

  She held out her hand, and I surrendered my place to her. Using both hands, she twirled it lasso-style, stepping into the door with each revolution. This made so much noise that if anybody were actually in the building, they would have heard.

  Nobody came. Either we were alone, or whoever remained was the same person who had locked us in here in the first place.

  Already horribly light-headed, I had to lie on the floor. My words coming out in breathy pants and semi-slurred, I muttered, “The original Olympics were performed in the nude. In fact, this was one of the events—the Rocks-in-a Towel-Door-Banging competition. Michael Phelps holds the current record.”

  Lauren’s cackle was halfway between tears and laughter. “That’s not really funny. My mind’s just mostly gone.” She took another swing at the door, then had to put her hand on the wall to steady herself. “Oh, shit. This really sucks.” Now she was on the verge of full tears.

  With effort, I dragged myself to my feet again and took the towel, and we traded places. I knew I could only manage a few more hurls against the door. My vision started to go gray and I almost passed out. Death by sauna had never occurred to me as a possible fate—not even during my teen years when I’d spent a shameful portion of my daydreams imagining how devastated my parents and friends would feel over my death.

  “Moll? You’ve always been the greatest friend I could ever imagine.”

  “No, you are.” My head and especially my face were pounding so hard that the pain was excruciating. My tongue felt swollen and it hurt to swallow. About to keel over, the thought of Karen and Nathan came to me, their image so strong I could almost feel their arms around me, hugging me. I couldn’t die. My children needed me.

  At the very least, I was going to collapse against the door, making some noise as I died. I lashed the rocks against the door repeatedly, pausing for a few seconds each time.

  In my current state, I couldn’t tell if this was a hallucination, but I thought I heard something on the other side of the door. “Lauren? I think someone’s coming,” I muttered.

  She raised her head a little. “Are you sure?”

  I sank to my knees and shook my head, too exhausted to speak. There was a click that sounded as if the heater had been shut off. Shortly afterward, there was a distinct rattling at the lock. An instant later, Julie threw open the door.

  “Oh my gosh!” she cried. “The door was locked! What happened?”

  I felt even worse than I had immediately after childbirth and couldn’t answer. She grabbed me and all but dragged me into the shower, then turned cold water on full force. The sudden blast of freezing water was so painful and shocki
ng, it felt as though the force of a lightning bolt had thrown me through a plate-glass window. I was too busy trying to survive the experience to do anything but stumble back against the wall.

  Julie returned moments later with Lauren, whom she forced into the large shower beside me. I had recuperated enough to be able to stand upright and step away from the stream of freezing water. Cupping my hands, I drank as greedily as if I’d crossed the Sahara. Lauren, too, was gulping down water.

  From a short distance away, Julie chewed on a fingernail and watched our every move. She seemed terribly flustered. “Maybe I should call nine-one-one. They could give you an IV.”

  “I think I’m all right. Lauren?”

  She nodded, still in the direct stream of the shower. After a moment, she said, “I’m okay.”

  I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around me, and slumped onto the nearest bench. After a few seconds of breathing heavenly cool air, I had the energy to speak. “How could someone get the key to the sauna?” I asked. “It wasn’t in the lock when we all went in there.”

  Julie paced in front of me, as anxious as a caged tiger. She still wore the simple pullover and sandals she’d put on after class. She shook her head, her eyes so wide they were almost googly. Her hands trembled as she fidgeted with her bangs. “I have a key on my chain, which I keep with me. There’s another one under the tray in the cash register, but we never use it. Only our employees even know it’s there. As far as I know, those are the only keys. The lock was empty when I found you.” She said the last sentence over her shoulder as she sprinted toward the door. As it swung shut behind her she called, “I’m checking to see if the key’s still in the register.”

  “You okay?” I asked Lauren gently as she turned off the water. Still so red that she looked sunburned, Lauren wrapped herself in a towel and lowered herself stiffly onto the bench next to me.

  She nodded but sat slumped over, elbows on knees, with her eyes closed. “Remind me to get on a scale before we leave,” she murmured. “If I lost a couple pounds, at least some good’s come from this.”

  Julie dashed back into the room and announced breathlessly, “It’s gone. The key’s gone.”

  “Do you lock the sauna every night?” I asked.

  Arms tightly crossed, she resumed her pacing. “We never lock it Except when it’s under maintenance, something like that. That key could have been gone for weeks with nobody noticing.”

  “We have to call the police,” I said.

  Julie stopped in front of me, clutched her hands, and pleaded. “Do we have to report it?” Her eyes started to fill with tears. “I’m going to get fired over this. Once we report it to the police, our insurance rates will quadruple. The owners will turn around and sue us.”

  With a look of anguish, she paused and took a seat between Lauren and me, then covered her face and shook her head. “Oh, listen to me. I’m so ashamed. You poor people were nearly killed.”

  “Right,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just say, ‘Oh, well. We lived through it, so let’s not make trouble for you with your boss.’ The police might be able to catch the person who did this.”

  Julie sagged a little, but nodded. “I never should have taken chances like I have been, letting my friends stay here after me. I always figured, as I long as I take one last swing through the place and make sure everything’s okay, what could happen? And now you… What have I done?”

  “It’s a good thing you came when you did,” Lauren said.

  “Yes, you saved our lives. Thank you.” Though I truly did feel immensely grateful, my gratitude was tempered with suspicion. Julie might well have locked us in there in the first place and either changed her mind about killing us or merely intended to scare us.

  “I can’t believe this!” Julie said, rising. “Who would do such a thing? It had to be one of the women in the class. But none of them would have done it. I mean, yes, we all have our little eccentricities. But to…to lock two people you barely know in a sauna That’s so cruel!”

  I said nothing, simply stared at her. One of those women’s “eccentricities” already included killing Allison.

  She said, “I’ll go call the police.” Julie left the room, heading toward the front lobby. “I’ll also go open up the juice bar and get you some drinks.”

  As soon as Julie was gone, Lauren said quietly, “The last person to leave had to have done this.”

  “Yeah, but whoever it was would also have made it look as though she wasn’t the last one.” I stared at the door. “Anybody with a contraband set of keys could have done it. Including Celia, or Julie herself.”

  Julie brought us the phone and bottles of some lemon-lime concoction. I gulped my drink, then called the Boulder police and explained what had happened. The dispatcher said she’d send someone out right away. Julie seemed reluctant to leave us alone even momentarily and watched us while we pulled on our T-shirts and shorts. I was too fatigued to care about modesty.

  Glad to be fully dressed before the police could arrive, we took Julie up on her suggestion to join her at the juice bar and have a second bottle “on the house.” This, apparently, was the upside of being slow-roasted in a health club—free beverages afterward.

  With Julie playing bartender from behind the counter, Lauren and I sat on the tall wooden stools and accepted our Gatorades. The counter was in an elongated C-shape on one side of the front lobby. From where we were seated, I could see out over the lot to where our little white rental car was parked.

  “I still can’t imagine any of my friends doing something like this,” Julie said wistfully.

  “You must have a different perspective than I do. One of them killed Allison. And I can see anyone of them trying to kill me. With the exception of you and, I guess, Nancy, they’ve all been openly hostile toward me.”

  “You don’t include Katherine in that, do you?”

  I nodded, though, until tonight, Professor Katherine had really been more of an intellectual snob toward me than anything else.

  “Katherine is just insecure. She’s a good person underneath it all. She used to be my sister-in-law.”

  “She did?” I asked.

  Julie nodded. “She used to be married to my brother. They got divorced almost five years ago now.”

  A black-and-white police car drove up. I was disappointed that a solitary officer emerged. It wasn’t that I expected the cavalry to come—the danger was past, after all but surely a brush with death rated at least one officer per victim.

  Julie followed our gazes. “Oh, dear,” she said as she hurried over to unlock the door. “Here we go again.”

  The handsome, thirtyish man in full blue uniform entered, identified himself as Officer Montoya, and asked simply if one of us had “called in a report.”

  Julie said, “Yes, I’m the manager here, and these two poor folks were locked in our sauna for probably something like twenty minutes or so while I was out on an errand.”

  “Is the only lock on the outside of the sauna?” he asked.

  Still seated at the counter, Lauren and I said, “Yes,” but Julie, who was right beside the officer, nodded and immediately began, “I’d left to run to the store. I have a lot of dogs and was low on food. I had to get there before PetsMart closed, but I was too late. It closes at ten. So I went next door to Albertson’s.” Julie spoke rapidly, gesturing with her characteristic energy. “The only people here, other than these two, were my three good friends. I…trusted them to let themselves out. I’ve done that a couple of times in the past, but I always take a last swing through the place to make sure everything’s safe and snug for the night. I really, truly had no way to know anything like this could happen.”

  The officer waited patiently for her to take a breath, then said, “It’d help me if I could see the layout of the building first, then I’ll need to get everyone’s statements.”

  We all escorted him through the exercise room, sauna, and women’s locker room. The locker room had two exits: one into the
front lobby and one near the sauna and the exercise room where class had been held.

  Officer Montoya asked Julie if she was certain that no one else had been present. She explained that the health club had been closed, as usual, at nine p.m. but that she’d reopened after hours for our special class. Then she gave the participants’ names and addresses.

  The officer, who had been taking notes as we went, raised an eyebrow when she mentioned it was “a memorial class in honor of Allison Kenyon,” but made no comment. Then he pressed a button on his radio, which carried voices that had been sporadically rattling along throughout our conversation and building tour—an annoying buzz that he didn’t seem to mind. He spoke quietly into the radio, using some code numbers that clearly added up to a request for additional officers.

  He sat Julie and Lauren down at the juice bar and took me to the opposite end of the lobby. I told him what had happened and added Celia Wentworth’s name to Julie’s list of suspects, with the explanation that she knew about this class and was angry with me. Though I felt a little silly, I explained that Celia could have been keeping an eye on the health club, watching to see whose car remained in the parking lot.

  I expected his first question to be: Why would one of these people want to kill you? But instead he asked, “What made you decide to bang the bundled rocks against the door?”

  Caught off guard, I hesitated, then answered, “I don’t know why I decide to do half of the things I wind up doing. It just struck me as the best way to make noise. I was hoping to rouse the attention of somebody still in the shower.”

  He nodded. “So the exercise class ended around ten-thirty p.m. How long would you say it was between the time the last person left the sauna and you noticed it was locked?”

  “Just a few minutes. No more than ten or fifteen.”

  “And how long would you say you were locked in there?”

  I glanced at my watch, which I’d retrieved from my locker along with my clothes. It was now eleven-fifty. Doing mental arithmetic, I said, “I guess it could only have been fifteen or twenty minutes. It seemed like an eternity in hell, though.”