Read Murder at the Spa for Free Online

shook.
    “You’re in C-group.” She nodded at Charlotte’s sweat suit. “We’re color-coded—dark gray, light gray, and white. White is for the backward group, those of us whose biological age is forty-five and over.” She gestured at the booklet in Charlotte’s hand. “Do you have Swing and Sway now?”
    Charlotte checked her booklet. “Yes.”
    “Good. So do I. There are only four from the backward group in that class and two are men. It’ll be nice to have some more female company.”
    “How is it?” asked Charlotte.
    “Swing and Sway isn’t bad. It’s Backs and Bellies and Absolutely Abdominals that are the killers. In case you haven’t noticed, they’re big on alliteration here,” she added with a little smile. “The real killer is Awake and Aware—that’s the one at seven.”
    “At that hour, I’m more like semiconscious and stupefied.”
    The woman laughed. “I know what you mean. What age did you clock in at?”
    “Forty-nine.”
    “Hey!” Drawing away, the woman gazed at Charlotte in wide-eyed admiration.
    It was true that Charlotte didn’t look her age. Outside of her hair style and a few crow’s-feet, she still looked much as she had in her twenties. The years had dealt lightly with the fine structure of her face. As for her body, she had gained a few pounds, but she still had a good figure and she carried herself with the lightness and grace of a woman half her age.
    “Congratulations. I clocked in at forty-eight, but that’s not much of an achievement. I’m really only thirty-eight. My name’s Adele Singer, by the way,” she added, extending her hand.
    “Charlotte Graham.”
    “I know. I recognized you right away. I always imagined you would be tall. But so often movie stars turn out to be a lot shorter than you think—you know what I mean?” She continued: “I’m a fan. But don’t worry. I’m not going to hound you for an autograph.”
    “Thanks,” replied Charlotte. She hoped the same would be true of the other guests. She was counting on the guests at a posh spa like this one to be considerate enough not to harass their celebrity fellows.
    As Charlotte changed, Adele filled her in on the other C’s. The two men were Art, a middle-aged chemist who had been ordered to the spa by his cardiologist, and Nicky, an obese young man who worked as a counter boy at his father’s Greek deli in Astoria, and who had been eating more than he sold. He had sold the Buick he’d saved three years to buy to pay for his stay. The third C was Corinne, a model who’d come to the spa to promote a new line of Langenberg products, the chief ingredient of which was mineral water. Corinne had technically been assigned to A-group—she’d clocked in with a biological age in the teens—but she’d voluntarily relegated herself to the ignominy of C-dom. Her attitude was that she’d come to the spa to do a promotion, not to torture herself, which Adele thought a sensible attitude indeed.
    As she entered the exercise room a few minutes later in her white sweat suit, Charlotte felt like a spa virgin about to be sacrificed on the altar of physical fitness. Her usual idea of athletic wear was a sturdy pair of walking shoes and her usual idea of exercise a brisk walk up the sunny side of Fifth Avenue. The front of the room had been claimed by the dark gray sweat-suited A’s, who awaited the commencement of class with grim seriousness of purpose. Adele wisely staked out their turf at the back next to Art and Corinne, whose face Charlotte recognized from magazine ads. She was a vague-but-wholesome-looking beauty who wore sweatbands around her forehead and wrists to match her low-cut plum leotard, which was definitely not spa-issue.
    While they waited, Charlotte chatted with Art, the chemist. By now, she had recognized “What’s your biological age?” to be the conversational equivalent of “How do you like the weather?”—the icebreaker that established a bond of shared experience. For