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Characters...
Aggie
Mundeen,
single, past thirty, and unexpectedly financially secure, moves to Texas to start over. Appalled at the prospect of middle age, she enrolls in graduate school to take “Aspects of Aging.” She doesn’t admit to herself that she chooses San Antonio because Detective Sam Vanderhoven (her secret love) fled there six months earlier after losing his family in an accident.
Eager but klutzy, she joins Forever Fit Health Club to meet other men, but stumbles into murder. She discovers she shares a secret with the murder victim, a secret that Sam must never know. She must keep him away from the health club and solve the murder herself.
Detective
Sam Vanderhoven, San Antonio Police Department, helps people he cares about,
even when it causes him pain.
Still grieving over the tragic loss of his wife and daughter, he’s glad to see Aggie, his old friend from Chicago. But when a girl is murdered at Aggie’s health club, he becomes irritable when Aggie is determined to play amateur sleuth.
Meredith
Laughlin
Aggie's
young friend from graduate school was married to Dr. Conrad Laughlin,
but now she must learn to exist alone. When Aggie decides to expose
the killer, Meredith becomes her unwitting participant.
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FOREVER
FATAL
By Nancy
Glass West
Chapter
One
The thing that terrifies me is middle age. Even before I left Chicago to start over in San Antonio, I, Aggie Mundeen, had decided that thirty-something was old enough. So I concocted a strategy to stay young: take courses to spark brain cells, devour wholesome food—including peanut butter—and consider exercise. It was time to gear up for a new life.
I’ve never considered myself shy: I clambered up a steep ladder to reach executive status at Chicago’s Consolidated Bank and earned a BBA after hours. The minute I settled in river city, I enrolled in graduate school. I figured maturity enhances learning.
Now I was investigating physical improvement. As I chugged toward Forever Fit Health Club in the Wagonneer station wagon I named Albatross, I deliberated about how to evaluate the facility without physically participating. I’m mechanically inept. I shudder just thinking about trying to operate the machines packed in fitness clubs. At my age, shaping up could be murder.
When I called Meredith Laughlin, my graduate school friend, to discuss my fitness plan, I heard a pause on the other end of the line. She’s twenty-four.
“That’s great, Aggie. I don’t have much time left between studying and clearing out Conrad’s office, but I really should exercise.” Conrad is her ex-husband. Her practical nature may result from being spawned by a successful Southern couple. Having virtually raised myself in Chicago, I plunge into situations headlong.
I needed to jumpstart my social life: break out; encounter people. Not people. Men. I’d been confined at that bank, like a squirrel counting nuts, for too long. There had to be a good man around somewhere, somebody trustworthy like Detective Sam Vanderhoven, my friend who previously left Chicago. By pure coincidence, we both ended up in San Antonio.
“Who knows? I might meet somebody,” I told Meredith. My class this semester was Aspects of Aging. I was finally getting to study liberal arts, but chances were slim I’d find the right man at graduate school. “Grad students are fledglings,” I said, “and professors stagnate. Do you realize that getting tenured petrifies a teacher’s brain?”
She chuckled. “Have fun at the health cub. I think sitting and studying expands our sitters faster than our minds.”
That remark spurred me into action. When I stopped at North New Braunfels Avenue, waiting for the light to change, I fixated on my nails: tomato red did not match the wine trim on my warm up.
Okay, I was stalling. I veered right on to the Austin Highway and saw the club: a four-story armory with convex windows that bulged out over a grassy knoll. What kind of crazy people paid money to go there and exercise? The parking garage for inmates was on the other side of the building. I rolled by the asylum, contemplating alternatives.
With people living past one hundred, middle age hits around fifty. Laboratories should genetically test every person who reached ninety-nine, drug companies should synthesize their genes into a pill, and pharmacists should distribute them like vitamins. Until those people get busy, I guess everybody over thirty has to rely on maintenance.
With my heart dancing a tango, I settled Albatross in Forever Fit’s garage. If I was too klutzy to master the machines, I would need an alternative. Personal ads. I snatched my yellow Big Chief tablet off the seat. “Single white female,” I scribbled. “Intelligent. Interested in everything. Desires to meet intriguing man.” I ripped off the sheet with the ad—I’d work on it later—and tossed my tablet on the seat.
Inhaling a liter of air, I pried myself from the car and pointed my body toward the club, hoping I wasn’t about to kill myself on some peculiar apparatus. I crossed the garage exit and was approaching the entrance when a shaggy arm flew up in front of me and blocked the door. Hairy fingers gripped the sheet I had torn from the tablet. He grinned down through hair flopping on massive shoulders.
“You must have dropped this,” he smirked, devouring me with close-set eyes. “‘You’re interested in everything, huh? Me, too. Maybe we should get together."
Chills tumbled from my neck down my spine, into my socks. My feet froze.
“I’m not interested in everything,” I stammered. “Actually, I’m not interested in anything right now (cough) because I’m about to throw up.”
He dropped his wooly arm, and I lunged through the door. He didn’t follow me inside.
Head down, I crossed the stuffy foyer and approached the girl at the desk. I glanced outside and didn’t see the primitive, but I was sweating from a case of nerves. The health club was stifling. Heat rising from sweaty bodies on the upper floors must have sunk to ground level. “Is it all right if I look around?”
“Sure.” She smacked her gum. “Sign this form and I’ll issue you a guest pass. Good for today only.”
As I unzipped my jacket, exposing my T-shirt with Garfield the Cat hoisting his barbell, a magnificent blond creature with Caribbean eyes swaggered up from nowhere and smiled at me as if I were Sandra Bullock. He blinked at Garfield, but I’d never felt so gorgeous in a jogging suit.
"Hey. I'm Pete Reeves." He extended a bronzed
hand.
"Aggie Mundeen." He beat everything I'd seen at a
financial institution or graduate school. He was over six-feet tall, the blond lifeguard type. After toiling days at the bank and
attending college at night, I was skittish about meeting hunks.
But eager to catch up.
"Would
you like me to take you on a tour of our fabulous club?"
Only a corpse wouldn’t tour with him. “Okay,” I relented, preparing myself to view a universe of flawless specimens.
With his hand on my shoulder, Pete squeezed me around the entrance desk and pointed to the establishment on the left. “There’s Tofu Temptations Grill. Men and women’s locker rooms are beyond the grill. Our swimming pool is behind them.” He irradiated me with a smile. “Olympic-sized, indoor pool. Heated to a satisfying temperature.”
I
cleared my throat, suddenly eager to use the bathroom.
"Would
you like to see the pool?”"
“No, thanks.” I had remembered to stuff a swimsuit in my purse, but I didn’t need any extra steam. I was suffocating. “I’ll catch you later, after I check out the ladies’ room.” His smile vanished.
Before he could speak, I crabbed backward into the women’s locker room and crashed into the towel depository inside the door. The din of high-pitched voices ceased. I righted the metal container, smiled agreeably, and plunged through fragrances toward the farthest lockers. Chatter resumed above the racket of showers and hairdryers. Assorted women in various stages of undress robed and disrobed. I had discovered a nudist colony of magpies.
I grabbed a towel and found an empty locker.
Two women flanked my space. Monica, a naked, pencil-thin woman with doorknob breasts, introduced herself. Her friend Mindy, a heaving Mason-jar woman, toweled her substantial body on my other side, her curly red hair flapping around her jowls. Smiling, I peeled off my warm-up, T-shirt, and tights and wrenched my cheap turquoise swimsuit on over sticky skin.
I envisioned the hunky-but-dependable man I’d find in the pool. He and I would glide like arrows through rippling water. I was not seeking thrills or emotional involvement, just safe companionship.
I knew how to swim, which seemed like the safest way to exercise. I could access the pool from the back of the locker room without having to traverse the lobby, so I flip-flopped Kmart rubber slides to the entrance and gaped at the Olympic-sized pool. A rectangular jewel set in an oblong room, it would nestle perfectly into a Greek hillside overlooking the Aegean Sea. Eight lanes, painted with black stripes, ribboned the bottom.
Inhaling the purifying odor of chlorine, I scanned the pool for swimmers and spotted a woman at the far end. Backing down the nearest steps, I luxuriated in water lapping my body and bounced toward her to begin my workout with a chat.
Despite my splashing, she ignored me. She floated face down, didn’t have snorkel gear, and wasn’t coming up for air. My heart pumped faster. I started running, water dragging against me. The pool seemed twice as big as before. It didn’t matter that I was out of shape; I had to reach her fast. I ignored the fleeting memory of my leaping into situations that proved disastrous. Gulping a breath, I plunged in, ripping water with my arms and kicking hard. Years had passed since I’d expended such energy. When I reached her, I grasped her shoulders and flipped her face up. Panting from exertion, I leaned over her. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?” She was little more than a girl. Unconscious. With blue lips.
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