Page 38 of Passions in Death
She didn’t have to keep an eye out for street thieves—she had cop’s eyes, so they stayed trained. But none crossed her path as she walked to Mind, Body, Spirit.
She went inside, where it felt like a brisk March wind had blown in. Fast, pulsing music blew in with it.
Lots of mirrors, she noted, and lots of shiny machines with people sweating and puffing on them. A good free-weight area with a couple of people pumping while admiring themselves in a mirrored wall.
Lunch-hour warriors maybe, she thought, and walked to the check-in desk.
The woman behind it had the proverbial brick shithouse build, and showed it off in skin shorts and a very inadequate sports bra. She had her hair done in many braids pulled up like a crown on the top of her head.
A pirate ship rippled across the rock-hard sea of her abs.
She folded small white towels and spoke on a headset.
“Hold on,” she said, then glanced at Eve. “Just swipe your card, take any available locker.”
“Not a member.”
“Okay.” She tapped the headset. “Get back to you.” Then stepped over. “Help ya? A tour of the facilities, a day pass? Summer special on memberships through Labor Day.”
Eve held up her badge. “Wade Rajinski?”
“Ha. Figured he’d run into cops one day. Second level. He should be finishing up his yoga class.”
“Thanks.” Then she leaned on the counter in a friendly way. “Why did you figure he’d run into the cops?”
The woman shrugged rock-hard shoulders, like boulders over the rock-hard ab sea.
“Too smooth, too shiny. Gotta be something under the smooth and shine, right? Total player with the ladies. Got dinged there a time or three.”
“Dinged?”
“This one time, this woman came barreling in here. Wade, he’s working with a client on the bench press and she flies right over. Me, I’m surprised we got any glass left in here the way she was shrieking about how he bounced off her and bounced right onto her sister.”
“How’d he handle that?”
“Smooth.” She glided a hand through the air. “Like butter. Gets somebody to spot his client, then takes her into the consult room. About ten minutes later, she comes out, all flushed up and starry-eyed. Walked out with a smile on her face, and Wade, he comes out and finishes up the training session like nothing ever happened.
“Smooth.” She shrugged again. “We lose a client now and then because of it, but management likes him because for every one we lose, he pulls in three more. Guy’s got a magic cock.”
At Eve’s lifted brows, the woman shrugged a third time. “Sure. I mean it’s right there, just looking to oblige. I figure why not go ahead and use it if the mood strikes, before some woman gets pissed enough to whack it off. But me, I don’t get emotional over a cock, right? Magic or not.”
“Good policy.”
With that insight, Eve wove through the machines and took a set of curved stairs to the second floor.
Through one set of glass doors, she saw about a dozen people wiggling hips more or less in unison, quick stepping to the right, then the left while an instructor faced them. One of those dance-the-pudge-away deals, she assumed. Since the instructor appeared to shout, and she imagined the music blasted, she gave the place credit for excellent soundproofing.
Inside the next room a woman in a white gi led another dozen or so—older, at or around the century mark to her eye—through some tai chi.
Rajinski held the third classroom. He wore black skin shorts and a black tank that showed off his attributes. It came as no surprise to her that twenty of the twenty-two students were female.
While she watched, he bent fluidly into a split-legged, seated forward fold, golden muscles damp and rippling, golden hair shining. Shifted fluidly into cobbler, and a flow into boat pose.
She couldn’t fault his form as he finished up the floor poses and slid into savasana.
Keeping an eye, Eve pulled out her ’link and contacted Angie Decker.
On-screen, Angie’s eyes welled with grief. “Lieutenant Dallas. Is there anything…”
