Murder Has a Sweet Tooth - By Miranda Bliss Page 0,60
hadn’t learned much that was going to help me find Vickie’s killer, had I?
Maybe that was why I didn’t want to think about it. Maybe it was just too depressing to realize that I was no closer to clearing Alex’s name than I had been before we walked inside the sauna.
Or maybe I was just too preoccupied with everything Celia, Glynis, and Beth had revealed. And everything they didn’t need to say: all that stuff about marriage and how maybe reality could never live up to my fantasies. Maybe my pie-in-the-sky version of how things were going to be for Jim and me would never actually mesh, not in real life.
Maybe I should have learned that from my marriage to Peter.
I sat there for a few minutes, deep in thought, before I shook myself back to reality.
“Snap out of it, Annie,” I reminded myself and headed for the door. “You’re not Celia, Glynis, Beth, or Vickie. And Jim isn’t a thing like any of their husbands. He’s certainly nothing like Peter. Jim and I will always be honest with each other. We’ll always be open—”
As fate would have it, that was the exact moment I pushed on the door. Only the door never moved.
“Open,” I said again, and gave it another push.
But the door didn’t budge.
To say I was surprised was an understatement, and, thinking about it, I stepped back and considered my options. That was just about the same time I heard the heat in the sauna click on.
Eleven
SO WHO CAN BLAME ME? I STOOD THERE FOR A FEW dumbstruck moments, the panic closing in while the heat rose, not little by little, the way I imagine it’s supposed to in a sauna, but by leaps and bounds. What had Celia said? The sauna was acting up? Oh, yeah. Big time. Even little ol’ unmechanical me knew that. Even before I shook off the surprise and fear that kept me rooted to the spot, there was a thin stream of perspiration on my forehead and another one on my upper lip.
I flicked it aside and shook myself out of my daze. “It’s a machine, Annie,” I reminded myself. “And machines can be controlled. You’re not stuck in some suburban house of horrors.”
Keeping the thought in mind, I tamped back my fear and did my best to approach this problem like I did everything else: logically, reasonably, carefully.
There were control buttons on the side of the sauna heater unit, and I fiddled with them, stepped back, and waited for the promise of cooler air.
No dice.
In fact, I swear the temperature climbed another few degrees.
“Logically, reasonably, carefully,” I told myself. “Logically, reasonably, carefully.” The mantra might actually have helped if I didn’t suddenly feel like a Thanksgiving turkey that had been shoved in the oven and left to baste in its own juices. I lifted the hem of my top and flapped it to cool myself off, and the strategy worked, at least for a few seconds. Before I could heat up again, I went back to the door. When it didn’t open, I pounded on it with my fists, and when no one answered, I cursed myself for keeping my cell phone in my purse and my purse in Celia’s kitchen. I looked around, considering my options.
They were limited, but not nonexistent.
“Logically, reasonably, carefully,” I told myself, climbing up on one of the cedar benches against the wall. If I could reach the skylight on the ceiling . . .
Yeah, I don’t know what I intended to accomplish, either, but I thought maybe the skylight up there might open. Seeing that I was a couple feet too short to get anywhere near finding out, it didn’t really matter. I hopped back to the floor and sat down, hauling in breath after stifling breath. How long I sat there, I don’t know. I may have drifted off for a few minutes. I do know that by the time I snapped myself out of the daze, I was drained and weak, and my head was swimming. One glance at my clothes and I realized I looked like I’d been swimming, too. My shirt stuck to my body and a stream of perspiration trickled between my breasts. My pants were soaked and clung to my legs like wet rags. My hair was too curly even on the best days and with the added oomph of the heat, I could practically hear it springing into wild curlicues all over my head.