Read Elizabeth Zelvin - Bruce Kohler 04 - Death Will Save Your Life for Free Online Page B

later, each of us was wrapped in a skimpy towel bearing the Aquarius rainbow logo.
    “How do I look?” I asked.
    “Everything you don’t want anyone to see is covered just fine,” Barbara said. “You’re lucky. These towels were not designed for a Jewish goddess like me.”
    Clutching her towel with one hand, she pushed open a heavy wooden door, letting out a blast of scorching air.
    “Okay, what do I do?” I asked as I followed her in.
    “It’s not complicated,” she said. “Lie down!” She made it sound like we’d been to obedience school together.
    To my relief, the interior of the sauna was divided into several compartments, each with tiers of what looked more like shelves than benches to me. Barbara marched into the nearest compartment and flung herself down on a bench.
    “Here, next to me,” she said.
    “I’d rather have my own compartment, thanks,” I said.
    “Why can’t you be a free spirit?”
    “I was a free spirit, but then I got sober.” I arrayed myself cautiously on my back in the compartment next to hers.
    “Now what? We just lie here and bake?”
    “Like a piece of matzoh in the desert,” she said. “And matzoh doesn’t talk.”
    It did feel like desert heat, so dry my nostrils felt like paper. My bare skin was toasting to a crisp. Even the towel around my waist grew hot. A faint wood smell, sweet and pungent, came off the benches, floor, walls, and ceiling, as if we were lying inside a giant cedar chest. I might have slept.
    The door opened. I thought I heard two sets of footsteps, but since the feet were bare, I wasn’t sure until someone said, “Shh.”
    “Shit. I hoped we’d have it to ourselves.”
    I felt the faintest breath of a break in the heat in the air around me as someone sidled around the partition to take a peek at me.
    “Are they asleep?”
    I pretended to be asleep like crazy.
    “Looks like it. Just don’t talk too loud. ”
    My bench jounced as someone put weight on a shelf in the compartment on the other side of mine.
    “Here, share the bench with me.”
    My shelf jounced again. I had to strain to hear them, but they had my full attention.
    “Where were you this morning?”
    “Holding my little sister’s hand while she talked to the law. Well, Mel’s sister, but I’ve been looking out for her since she was a kid.”
    “What did she tell them? And even more fascinating, what did you tell them?”
    “Nothing they couldn’t find out on their own. The divorce wasn’t amicable, but whose is? I said it was ancient history.”
    “What about the reality show?”
    “They didn’t want to hear about my career. I said I make a good living and his current will has nothing to do with me.”
    “Oh, bravo, dear, nicely played. Where did you say you were that night?”
    “Why?”
    “Now, now, dear, don’t get your panties in a knot. I thought you might like to have been with me .”
    “What for?”
    “What’s it worth to you?”
    “Fifteen percent, you twisty little devil, and not a penny more. Isn’t that the going rate?”
    “Now, now, dear, let’s not get nasty. You do want that show, don’t you?”
    “It’s too hot to argue. I’m going to take a shower.”
    The bench jiggled. The wooden outer door of the sauna, too heavy to slam, creaked slowly closed.
    Huh. Annabel was right. Jojo was twisty. It sounded like he was trying to get her to give him an alibi for the night of Melvin’s murder. Maybe he had gone out. I couldn’t swear he’d never left the room that night. I’d had a horribly vivid drunk dream and woken up sweating, so scared it was real and then so relieved it wasn’t that I hadn’t so much as looked over at the other bed. I’d said the Serenity Prayer, put the pillow over my head, and gone back to sleep.

    Barbara was enjoying Woo-Woo Farm. Since the couples workshop had disintegrated, she had been able to get into an unhurried rhythm. She had time to smell the flowers, both literally and figuratively.
    The gardens were in