Free A Body to Die For by Kate White Page B

of the Paradise Spa, and it was glowing, praising
     Anna’s skills and professionalism. Knowing that the police might confiscate these files at some point, I jotted down Nina
     Lyle’s phone number, which had been scribbled at the bottom of the letter. I glanced then at the application form. Filled
     out just over a year ago. My eyes ran down the page, past the section on allergies (none) and health ailments (none). On the
     line that inquired whom the applicant had been referred by, a small surprise awaited me. It said Piper Allyson. Piper, who
     had told me, quote, she barely knew Anna.

CHAPTER 7

    I PICKED UP the phone and called Danny in her office. I mentioned what I’d discovered on Anna’s application and asked if Piper had played
     a role in securing Anna the job.
    “She might have,” she said. “I just don’t know—Josh does all the hiring for the spa.
Why?
”
    “Piper told me earlier today that she barely knew Anna. And then lo and behold, I see her name on Anna’s application.”
    “Perhaps the two of them worked together once but weren’t necessarily friends,” Danny suggested. “You don’t have to like a
     person or think of them as a friend to consider them a good therapist. Why would it matter, anyway?”
    “I’m just following up on what seems like an odd discrepancy,” I said. “If Anna and Piper were in cahoots with Josh on some
     bad business in the spa, they might have chosen to play down how well they knew each other.”
    After I signed off, I pulled down Piper’s folder from the pile again and slid out the résumé, laying it next to Anna’s. I
     couldn’t see where the two of them could have met. At no point, at least according to their résumés, had they ever worked
     together, nor had they even lived in the same city. Piper’s massage experience, all seven years of it, was concentrated mostly
     in hotels in Los Angeles and Lake Tahoe and at a spa in New Jersey, whereas Anna’s only experience had been in New York City.
     The only thing worth noting was that part of the year Anna had been in New York, Piper had been working in New Jersey.
    I jumped from the bed and pulled a black-and-white composition book out of my tote bag. Whenever I take on an article assignment,
     I use a composition book to scribble notes and questions to myself. Though I always write the actual article on my computer,
     there’s something about putting down my initial impressions in a composition book with a number two pencil that jump-starts
     my thinking and helps me develop an angle. I intended to use the same approach with the case. I cracked the spine and jotted
     down notes about the murder, Bud’s insights, my brief conversation on the path with Piper, the small discovery I’d made about
     Anna and Piper’s connection, plus various questions that had formed in my mind about the murder. I didn’t end up with any
     brilliant insights, but at least felt I was doing
something.
    It wasn’t quite time yet to meet with Josh, but I wanted to try room 17 again. I strode down the hall and rapped on the door.
    This time a woman called out, “Who is it?” in a voice that suggested a trace of anxiety.
    “It’s Bailey Weggins,” I said as the door opened a crack, the chain still on. “I work with Danielle Hubner, the owner of the
     inn, and I was anxious to see how you were doing.”
    She swung the door open, and with the kind of haughty smile she might offer a salesgirl at Louis Vuitton, she motioned for
     me to enter the living area of the suite.
    It was the woman I’d seen earlier with Beck. She was about sixty, handsome looking, with hair the same shade as one of those
     blond ranch minks women wore in fifties’ movies. Her skin was beautiful, almost porcelain-like, but she’d already had a face-lift
     or two, and her eyes were slanted upward slightly and pulled back too far. If she kept going under the knife, she’d end up
     looking just
like
a mink, with an eye on each side of her