A Body to Die For Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’d first gone looking for my watch. Had it been the sound
     of a struggle, I wondered, of someone holding the dead woman down as he tried to wrap the paper around her? Or was it her
     flopping on the floor, trying to free herself after he’d fled? I felt a wave of guilt roll over me. At the time, I’d told
     myself the thud might be from someone cleaning up—but then I’d discovered that the spa was empty. If only the sound had raised
     more of an alarm in me, if only I’d informed the front desk about it. If I’d
done
something, the woman in the massage room might still be alive.

CHAPTER 3

    D ANNY UNLOCKED THE front door of the inn with a key from the pocket of her jacket. As soon as we stepped inside, Natalie hopped up from the
     desk, sending her chair rolling into the hallway behind her. She’d put through my urgent call to Danny, she’d probably seen
     the police cars and ambulance go by, and now she was wide-eyed with expectancy,.
    “What’s the matter?” she blurted out.
    “Dear, there’s been a death in the spa,” Danny said. “We’re not actually certain who it is. The police are here, and they’re
     taking care of things. Are there any guests who are still out tonight?”
    “Uhh, gosh, I don’t think so. Let me see.” She fumbled nervously around on the desk until she located a sheet of paper that
     appeared to be a guest log. “No, everybody’s in,” she said, sweeping her eyes over it.
    “You’d better give that to me,” the young cop said, holding out his hand for the sheet of paper. “The detectives will want
     to see it.” It was the most I’d heard him say all night.
    Danny suggested that Natalie join us and then led the group of us behind the front desk to a suite of several small offices.
     There was also a sitting room with a love seat and a small round conference table. She told Piper to try to rest on the love
     seat. Natalie volunteered to sit with her and also to listen for any guests who might come downstairs because of the commotion.
    The rest of us traipsed into Danny’s office. As I settled in a small armchair, Danny announced that she was going to make
     tea in the kitchenette across from the office. The young cop parked himself by the door. He’d clearly been instructed to keep
     an eye on us and make certain we didn’t discuss the case or make phone calls.
    Tucking my legs underneath me, I began replaying in my mind everything that had happened from the moment I’d left my room.
     I didn’t want to be fumbling for the info when I finally talked to the police. Two things made me nervous. First, the whole
     deal with my watch. I was sure the police would view it as odd that I’d insisted on retrieving it. Cops take an immediate
     dislike to stuff that sounds illogical or out of the ordinary—and making someone open a spa in the middle of the night fell
     into that category. Second, they were going to be extremely unhappy about how much I had disturbed the evidence. If there’d
     been fingerprints on the Mylar paper or tape, I’d surely smeared them—and by removing and handling the tape, I might have
     mucked up their chances of tracing the roll it came from.
    But I couldn’t fault myself for unwrapping the body. The foil was still warm when I’d touched it, and as far as I knew at
     the time, the person inside might have been alive. I did the math in my head: The spa supposedly had closed around ten. Piper
     and I had discovered the body just before eleven-thirty. I’d heard the thud at around ten-thirty. That meant it easily could
     have been the sound of someone being overpowered or perhaps struggling to free herself.
    The question, of course, was who could have committed such a gruesome crime. There hadn’t been any sign of a break-in; plus,
     why would a burglar go to the trouble of wrapping the body? Most likely someone had gone to the spa intending to kill the
     woman inside the Mylar. It might have been a stranger, some sort of psychopath