Girl Undercover 4 & 5: Ariel & Financial Devil Page 4

  She quickly caught on and leaned closer to me, mimicking my voice. “What did you want to know?”

  I threw a couple of quick glances around me to be sure no one was looking like they were eavesdropping on us. The other patrons all appeared either deep in conversation or sat too far away to be able to hear anything. “A girlfriend of mine was here having dinner with a date last Thursday night. Did you work that night?”

  The girl looked pensive for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I did.”

  “I assume you’re aware that a woman who dined here that night was found strangled a few blocks away from this restaurant.”

  The cooperative expression on the waitress’s face morphed into one of horror and her hands flew up to cover her mouth. “I am aware of that. Cops were here a couple of hours ago to ask about who she was having dinner with that night. That was your friend? My God, that’s so sad!”

  I made myself look miserable. “Yes, it is very, very sad.” Blinking a couple of times, I reached for a paper napkin and dabbed at my eyes. “She was such a nice girl... Did the cops ask you about her?”

  “Yes, but there wasn’t much I could say since I didn’t serve her. I just remembered seeing her and her date that night.”

  “What did the cops want to know if you don’t mind me asking? Do they think her date might be the killer?”

  The waitress shrugged her skinny shoulders. “I’m not sure, but they did ask us a lot of questions about him. I couldn’t really answer any since I never spoke to the couple, just saw them. My manager gave them the number to the waiter who attended to them. He’s not here today.”

  “Oh. Do you remember if they looked like they were having a good time?”

  The waitress inhaled deeply and looked like she thought hard. She sighed. “The cops asked me that too and I told them that I couldn’t really tell. They were talking a lot and leaning closely together. You know the way people do when they’re discussing something really serious? Do you know the guy she was with?”

  “Yeah, he’s a friend of mine too. Not as close as Ariel though. That’s her name. But, yes, I do know him…” I blinked again to force a couple of tears to my eyes and then dabbed at them with the napkin. This clearly provoked the wrong idea because the waitress suddenly leaned closer, eyes round with dismay. “Oh, no… You think he might have killed her?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “No, definitely not. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. So the cops only wanted to know about her date then? Nothing besides him?”

  “Well, they did ask me and the other staff if we remembered anything else strange happening that night. If she had some kind of altercation with someone. None of us saw anything like that.”

  I nodded. “Do you know if she forgot something here? Did she come back to pick something up after she and her date had left?” I hoped the detectives assigned to this case hadn’t asked these questions. I couldn’t see why they would since they didn’t know that Ariel had ostensibly taken a cab up to her neighborhood with Ian right after the date was over. Well, except for the fact that the murder took place about forty-five minutes after Ian said they left the restaurant. Maybe they had wondered why it took the killer so long to attack when the body was found only blocks from La Bonne Soupe.

  The waitress screwed up her features and gazed beyond me, looking deep in thought once more. I exhaled quietly with relief; they probably hadn’t asked then. Her eyes found me. “I honestly can’t remember. I was so busy that night. We were all very busy.” She brightened. “But our hostess might remember. She would be the person your friend spoke to if she forgot something. She hasn’t been in since Thursday, so the cops never spoke to her. She’s coming in for the night shift. I can call her and ask if you want.”

  I smiled wide. “That would be so great. I think I’ll have a cappuccino actually.” I handed her a twenty-dollar bill. “You can keep the change.”

  She took it from me. “Thanks! Okay, I’ll call her while the barista makes your drink. I’ll be right back.”

  The girl hurried through a swing door that I assumed led into the restaurant’s kitchen. I was keeping my fingers crossed that the waitress would not only call the hostess, but that the hostess would pick up the phone.

  By the time the waitress returned with my cappuccino, I had begun biting my nails, something I never did, I was so desperate to find out if Ariel had come back to the restaurant.

  A little flushed, the waitress placed the steaming drink before me.

  “I spoke to her,” she said.

  “Oh, great! What did she say?”

  “That someone called the restaurant to find out if they had misplaced a purple scarf. One of the busboys found a scarf like that and gave it to her.”

  “To the hostess?”

  “Uh-huh. And Gina—that’s the hostess—told the woman on the phone that we had it, but she never showed up to get it.”

  I nodded slowly. I could see Ariel wearing some kind of purple scarf; she loved bright, bold colors. “Can I see the scarf?”

  “Sure. It’s in the hostess stand.” The waitress turned to leave, but I grabbed her by the arm. She looked at me.

  “Did you ask Gina what time the woman called to ask for the scarf?”

  “No,” the waitress replied, “but I told her you were a friend of the woman who was found strangled and that you wondered if she might have forgotten something at the restaurant. So I think she got that it was later in the evening. But I can text her to double-check. Do you want me to?”

  “Yes, please do.”

  “Okay,” she said and I let go of her.

  She was soon back with a purple silk scarf in her hands that she extended me. “This is it. Does it look familiar?”

  I made myself brighten with delight. “Yes! That looks just like one of Ariel’s scarves. She’s a total scarf person.” Bringing the scarf to my cheek, I looked up at the waitress. “Can I keep it? It would mean a lot to me.” I blinked and wiped at my eyes again.

  She shrugged in that non-committal way of hers. “I can’t see why not.” She glanced down at the white apron tied around her hips. “I think someone just texted me. Hold on.” Her hand disappeared into the apron’s big pocket and she fished up a cellphone that she looked at. She raised her gaze back to mine. “She thinks the call was sometime around eleven, maybe a little later.”

  “Thank you. That must have been Ariel then.” I had a few big sips of my cappuccino, then got to my feet. “I really appreciate you telling me all this and giving me this scarf.”

  “No problem. Are you gonna tell the police about her wanting to pick up the scarf? That might be important information.”

  I nodded gravely. “Oh, definitely. They need to know every detail of what Ariel did right before her”—I made myself as teary-eyed as I could muster—“her death. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have to leave now. I just wanted to see for myself what it was like at the place where my dear friend had her last meal. And now I know and I got this scarf. Thanks so much again.” I wiped at my eyes with my fingertips. “Have a great day.”

  I swiveled around and strode out of the little restaurant before the waitress could have second thoughts about all my questions.

  Ian is probably telling the truth then , I thought as I walked along the busy street outside the French eatery. Ariel must have realized she forgot the scarf almost as soon as she stepped out of the cab and then took another back to midtown. But she obviously never got inside the restaurant after leaving the second cab. Did someone assault her right outside the restaurant? Considering how crowded the area was where the restaurant was located, it seemed unlikely—chances were someone would have seen it happen. With all the streetlamps and lit signs, it wasn’t exactly dark on the sidewalk and Thursday was a popular night in this part of town.

  Maybe she left the cab a few blocks away because she wanted to walk over? She could have been low on cash, only able to afford the fare up to a certain point. Perhaps the cab driver assaulte
d her. Did someone on the street lure her away before she could enter the restaurant? Janine Eastwood? But how would Janine know that Ariel would come back to La Bonne Soupe?

  I shook my head. So many possibilities, so many questions… Just to be sure the scarf was in fact Ariel’s, I’d ask Ian when I saw him again if she had worn one at some point during their date.

  ***

  I had just finished training Ian and he had confirmed for me that the purple scarf looked exactly like the scarf Ariel had worn that fatal night; it had to be hers. Now that he was fully recovered from his food poisoning, he had kept ranting about the conspiracy throughout the entire session and how we needed to figure out who else might be spying on us. There had to be several amongst all the employees at the club; Adler and their cohorts ran too big an operation to use only one spy. Plus, he’d claimed, Ariel herself had said she thought there were more, but she wasn’t aware of who they could be. She suspected that Rolf, the fitness manager, was in on it, but that was it. The one person who’d surely know was Janine Eastwood, Ian had said.

  I agreed the North Carolina senator was a shady character, though not in the same way as Ian did. I was convinced she had something to do with Ariel’s murder, but that was it.

  Which was why I was now going to see if I could turn her into my client using a similar method to the one I’d used to turn Felipe Cardoza into my client a few years ago. It had worked brilliantly. For it to succeed, I needed to act quickly.

  I walked over to the employee computers behind the fitness desk and pulled up the database with all the members. Very soon I had the senator’s contact info in my phone. Taking a quick look into the adjacent basketball court, I moved over there to make my illicit phone call. I needed to be in an area where I could be sure no one would suddenly interrupt me and the basketball court was perfect for that purpose. Using a code to block my number from showing up, I called the senator. As I listened to the rings going through, I prayed the senator would pick up. I wasn’t about to leave a voicemail.

  She finally did.

  “May I speak to Miss Janine Eastwood?” I asked in my most pleasant voice to which I had also added a deep Southern twang. It was crucial that she didn't recognize my voice when we spoke in person.

  “This is she,” the senator replied.

  “Hello, my name is Linda and I’m an administrative assistant at Nikkei Sports Club, how are you today?”

  “I’m good, thank you. What’s this regarding? I’m in a bit of a time crunch.”

  “Okay, I understand. I’m calling to inform you that unfortunately your trainer, Ariel Rafaeli, is no longer with us. She was assaulted and passed last week.” I paused and pricked my ears up.

  “Oh, no! She’s dead? That’s terrible. Oh, my God, so terrible!”

  As I had expected, her outburst sounded completely phony, so phony I would have picked up on it even if I had been half asleep and drunk. This woman just had to be involved in Ariel’s passing somehow.

  “I know,” I said, “we are all so upset here at the club. It’s so, so sad. She was a very valued employee.”

  “When is her funeral? I would like to go there to honor her memory. She was a wonderful trainer and person.”

  That’s a lot of emotion to express for someone you had known only a few weeks and whose arm you grabbed and shook hard, I couldn’t help but note. This woman was so full of it.

  “Of course,” I said calmly. “We’ll send you an email with all the information. Does the club have your email?”

  She gave me her email and I verified in my phone that it was the same one we had. Not that she’d ever receive any funeral information, but I doubted she actually cared.

  “Are you looking to continue your training?” I asked when we had finished going over her email. “I see here in the system that you have nine sessions remaining. May I book you with one of our excellent trainers for a time this week? I see your next appointment with Ariel is scheduled for tomorrow at three p.m. Would you like to keep that appointment but with another trainer?”

  I held my breath as I waited for her to give me her answer.

  “Yes, sure.”

  I exhaled, relaxing a little. Halfway there. “Okay, great. I have an amazing trainer named Jamie Richards who is very similar in style. She could train you. Would that work?”

  “Yes, fine.”

  “That sounds good. I’m revising your appointment in the system right now. You’ll get an email with all the information, including Jamie’s contact information so you can communicate with her directly from now on. Do you know where to meet your new trainer?”

  “I assume by the fitness desk?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right. Well, you have a great day now, Miss Eastwood.”

  “Likewise. Goodbye.”

  I closed my eyes and pressed the smartphone to my chest. Thank God. That went almost too easily. It would be just my luck that the senator contacted me to cancel the session now that I was about to get to talk to her and get a feeling for what kind of a person she was.

  I opened my eyes and smiled. No point in thinking negatively. If the senator happened to cancel her session, we could always reschedule. I’d get to speak to her one way or another. And if Rolf wondered how come I was suddenly training Janine Eastwood, I’d just claim the senator had approached me on the floor and asked me to train her. It was a common enough occurrence at the club.

  With those reassuring thoughts in mind, I walked out of the basketball court and over to the women’s restroom at the other end of the fitness desk. One of the maintenance guys was standing outside with a cart full of cleaning supplies. His name was Paco, a six foot tall man from Nicaragua somewhere in his forties with a V-shaped unibrow that made him appear eternally angry. But he wasn’t; instead, he was one of the happiest, friendliest people I had ever met. Too bad his English was no way near as good as his Spanish. I was dying to speak to him in Spanish, ask him how life was in Nicaragua, a country that had always fascinated me. Unfortunately, Jamie Richards wasn’t from Colombia but from the Midwest, so that could never happen.

  “Hey, Paco,” I said and smiled. “You waiting for people to exit the bathroom?”

  “Yes. Many ladee inside.” He grinned at me, displaying crooked, yellow teeth. The maintenance staff weren’t allowed to enter while members were using the restrooms to restock and clean. Some of the members could be quite militant about this rule, making me feel bad for the hard-working, underpaid cleaners.

  Out of solidarity, I decided to wait with Paco until whoever was inside the small restroom had left. I didn’t mind if he was there while I did my business.

  “How’s life treating you?” I asked him. “Good?”

  He looked at me with uncomprehending eyes, that benevolent grin still on his face. I patted him on the shoulder. “Como te trata la vida?” I repeated the question in Spanish, unable to help myself. Besides, a girl from the Midwest could have picked up a few words of Spanish while on spring break in Mexico, right?

  “Oh, estoy bien, bien, gracias ,” he replied. “Y como esta usted? Habla espanol entonces?”

  He wanted to know how I was doing and was now fairly sure I spoke Spanish. As much as I wanted to keep the conversation going, connect a little with this nice man, I knew that I couldn’t take the risk. So I smiled and just said, “Que?”

  Chapter 5

  The stately, dark-haired woman was standing by the fitness desk when I arrived, reading something on what had to be an iPad. I walked up to her.

  “Excuse me,” I began. “Are you Janine Eastwood?”

  She glanced up from the iPad. “Yes, I am.”

  I extended my hand and smiled. “I’m Jamie Richards. Nice to meet you.”

  She shook it and returned my smile, telling me it was so nice to meet me too. If she knew who I was already, she did a great job of covering it up. The way her demeanor had changed as she’d detected me in the cafeteria suggested that she did. I realized it was the first time I’d seen he
r smile in person, and it was even more pleasant than the couple of times I’d seen her talking on TV where she smiled a lot. She had tied back her thick, shoulder-length hair in a low ponytail and her olive skin was smooth like a young woman's. The brown eyes were set wide apart, her lips on the thin side and the narrow nose elegant. Overall, she had an appealing face and aura about her.

  Since Ariel had already done a fitness evaluation on Janine and taken good notes, I didn’t need to do one of my own but could refer to hers. Janine and I walked down to the third floor where we would work out, doing small talk about how horrible it was that Ariel had been strangled. The senator seemed a lot more genuinely upset about the incident in person than she had over the phone, making it hard to believe that she had shaken Ariel like a ragdoll, not to mention potentially murdered her.

  I stole a glance of the woman’s hands and noted that, while nicely manicured with red-painted nails, they were strong, almost manly. I could easily see them strangle Ariel with the cord the medical examiner had stated had been used in the police report. When I trained her, I would give her hands a closer examination, look for chafing and marks that might have resulted from a fight. As far as I could tell, there were no bruises or marks on her wrists and lower arms suggesting that Ariel had tried to defend herself, scratched and grabbed at the hands and arms of the person assaulting her. According to forensics in the police report, the person had attacked from behind. So far, the only suspect the police had was Ian, whom they had taken in for questioning a couple of days ago. Except for the fact that he was the last person who’d been with her, there had been nothing to tie him to the murder, so they had to let him go.

  We reached the third floor. “How about we do a light jog out on the track to warm up?” I suggested and indicated the track that was visible through the big windows. “It’s so nice out.”

  “Sounds like a great idea,” she replied, so we went out there.

  Other trainers were out there, working out with clients. I spotted Jonah and gave him a brief nod. I had to be careful not to be too friendly with him as he kept coming on to me, apparently determined for me to go out with him if he only tried hard enough.