Murder at the Spa Read Free

the rental desk, she checked in and took the glass elevator to her room. Her room was at the rear of the hotel on the sixth floor, which was the top floor (except for the seventh, which was occupied by Paulina’s penthouse). It faced south, overlooking a lovely lake called Geyser Lake, which, the bellman explained, took its name from the geyser that spouted from its island center under the pressure of carbonic acid gas from an expiring underground volcano. Charlotte counted; every three minutes, the geyser magically erupted, shooting a plume of white water ten feet into the air. The bellman proudly informed her that it was one of seven geysers at High Rock Springs—the only spouting springs east of the Mississippi. Her room was luxurious: large and high and filled with the sweet fragrance of fresh lilies. It was decorated in typical Paulina Langenberg style. If one were to give it a name, one might call it riotously eclectic: a chrome-based glass coffee table stood next to a marble-topped Empire dresser; an abstract expressionist reproduction hung above a Greek caryatid lamp. The effect was dramatic, original, sumptuous; it made Charlotte feel spoiled. Which was the whole idea. After settling in, she called Paulina to announce her arrival. Then she took a few minutes to study the program for the Ten-Day Rejuvenating Plan (herbal wraps and mud packs and Swedish massages—it sounded delicious) and to read the literature on the spa. After that, she headed out. Her destination was High Rock Spring, the famous spring from which the spa took its name.
    The spring stood at the center of a long lawn called the esplanade, which was spread out in front of the hotel like a carpet of green baize. The esplanade was crisscrossed by gravel paths, but they were deserted; there were no people to mar the geometry of the neatly spaced rows of pollarded plane trees. It was the time of late afternoon naps or of before-dinner “cocktails” (which here consisted only of fruit punch lightly laced with white wine). In the hazy afternoon sunlight, the atmosphere was one of peaceful tranquillity. The muffled clink of silverware drifted across the esplanade like the sound of wind chimes. Even the grass had taken on a golden glow over which the shadow of the pavilion that housed the spring fell like the reflection on a lake. The only note of color was a bold Chinese red, a color known as Langenberg red for its association with Paulina’s theatrical style in the same way that a delicate shade of floral pink was associated with the more ladylike style of That Woman. The geraniums that hung in baskets from the wrought-iron lampposts were Langenberg red. As were the park benches that lined the walkways and the roses that were planted in beds in the center of the lawn. Both Paulina and That Woman had varieties of hybrid tea roses named after them, but there were no pink roses here. For that matter, there were no pink flowers at all. Paulina would never have stood for it.
    At the pavilion, Charlotte took a seat facing the cone of the spring—the “rock” of High Rock. The cone, which had been built up over the millennia from minerals deposited by the mineral water—stood about six feet high and about twelve feet wide. From a well in its center the water gushed, pulsing with the pressure that would thrust it skyward. Like the spring at the center of the lake, it was a geyser. On its surges, it shot a column of water twelve feet into the air. At its ebb, it bubbled fitfully, occasionally regurgitating a belch of water that would overflow the lip of the well with a gurgle of satisfaction. For eons, it had been thus: the salty, mineral-rich waters of a primeval underground sea had been forced to the surface of the earth by a charge of carbonic acid gas. In the last century, she had read, inquisitive scientists had raised the cone with a giant crane to find out what lay below. They had found only layer upon layer of muck and mineral, and, at the bottom,