Chocolate Heart Killer: A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 14 by Kathleen Suzette (guided reading books .TXT) 📗

broken up recently, she would still be grieving him. Going back and forth breaking up and getting back together was an indication that there was still a lot of love there, regardless of whatever their troubles stemmed from.

Chapter Six

“Where are we going?” Christy asked.

I turned and smiled at her. “The gym.”

One eyebrow shot up. “The gym? I thought you were allergic to exercise?”

I snickered as I pulled out of the parking spot in front of the candy store and headed down the street. “Allergic? Me? What are you talking about?”

She shook her head. “As long as I’ve known you you’ve done everything you can to avoid any kind of physical activity. I’ve come to the conclusion that you must be allergic to exercise.”

I gasped, pretending to be offended. “Avoid physical activity? Me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She chuckled. “You are the least physically active person I’ve ever known. Honestly, with all the candy you eat, I don’t know how you maintain your figure.”

I laughed. She had a point, but it wasn’t one that I was happy about. “I guess I was blessed with great genes. And maybe I will take up some sort of exercise. I am not allergic. At least, I don’t think I am.”

She nodded. “You sure were blessed with great genes. I don’t think I was blessed with the same ones.”

“What are you talking about? You don’t do much to maintain your weight either,” I said. “It’s like magic.”

She chuckled. “I was thinking about joining the gym anyway. I wanted to do it the last time we stopped by to talk to a possible killer. Is that why we’re going? Is there someone there that you want to talk to?”

“There is a very good possibility that that is true,” I said slyly. “Mariah Anderson.”

“Oh,” she said nodding. “Now that makes sense. She’s a trainer there, isn’t she?”

“She is indeed,” I said. “I’ve been thinking, if Logan’s brake line was cut, then somebody had to have crawled beneath that car. A person would have to be nimble and flexible to do that and what better person that could do it than somebody that works out all the time? Plus, she and Logan just happened to have argued a lot. So there’s that.”

She nodded. “It’s that arguing thing that tells me there’s a good possibility she may have had something to do with his death. Being physically agile is secondary.”

“You’re becoming quite the detective these days,” I said sarcastically.

She shrugged. “What can I say? I’ve learned from the best.”

I pulled into the gym parking lot and we got out and headed inside. The same perky blond that had been there the last time we wanted to talk to a suspect was there now. She smiled at us. “Hello ladies, how are you this afternoon?  Is there something I can help you with?”

I nodded. “We’re great. Is Mariah Anderson around?”

She nodded and beamed. “Are you ladies looking for a personal trainer? We have several on staff. Do you have a membership yet?”

“No, we don’t have a membership. We’d really like to speak with Mariah Anderson,” I said, glancing around.

Her brow furrowed. “Well, you’ve got to have a membership in order to work with a personal trainer here. Why don’t we go over the various plans that we offer?”

I shook my head. “No thank you, we just need to speak with Mariah.”

She whipped out a sheet of paper and laid it on the counter in front of us. “Now let’s see, we have a monthly plan, or a six-month plan, or a yearly plan. You get a bit of a price break when you go with the longer plans.” She looked up at me and smiled again.

I glanced at the sheet of paper in front of me. The gym was more expensive than I had imagined. “And does a personal trainer come with this fee?”

She shook her head. “No, you have to buy a basic plan, and then depending on what you’re looking for in a personal trainer, there’s another fee added to that.”

“Are you serious?” Christy asked, glancing at the paper. “That turns into a pretty hefty fee then.”

“Oh no, when you consider how much it costs to eat out several times a week, this is a bargain,” the woman assured her. “Most people eat out far more often than they realize, and if you just cut back a couple of times a week, you’ll have your gym membership paid for.”

“You know, we’d really just like to speak with Mariah.” I was trying to be as smiling and happy as she was, in the hopes she would just let us see Mariah, but I didn’t have any intention of joining the gym. I glanced over at the weight room and saw that most of the machines were occupied. Since it was January, I supposed they had a lot of new sign-ups this month. I wasn’t going to be one of them. Christy might have had a point about me being allergic to exercise.

“I can get the two of you in for a special price. Buy one, get one half off. How does that sound?”

“It sounds like we just want to talk to Mariah,” Christy said evenly. “Can we do that? Honestly, we didn’t come here to join the gym.”

The perky blond frowned. “But, you have to be a member of the gym to see a personal trainer.”

“We’re just going to talk to her, not work out with her,” Christy assured her. “Please, just point us in the right direction and we’ll head over there.”

She shook her head and tried to come up with another reason why we couldn’t do that when I caught sight of Mariah heading to the bank of offices along one wall. “That’s okay, thanks for your help,”