Maddie Cochere - Two Sisters and a Journalist 01 - Murder Under Construction by Maddie Cochere Page A

road and the site. There was nothing of interest. That left the temporary dirt road made by the construction company along the eastern edge. It made more sense that someone might have parked there to remove a body unseen. I started my walk up the road and looked carefully along both sides.
    I was nearly to the end when I spotted a crumpled fast food bag lodged in a tuft of weeds. It was the first large piece of trash I had come across. A worker had likely tossed it there, but it was still something to inspect. I picked up the bag and tore it open to dump the contents on the ground.
    There was a wrapper from a sandwich and a container from French fries. Everything else appeared to be trash from the owner’s vehicle. I had used the technique many times myself and was familiar with quick car cleaning via fast food bags. I bypassed the candy bar wrappers, generic gas receipts, and the broken pen and went right to a piece of torn paper.
    The paper was a diagonal section of the bottom half of a business card. The printing remaining on the card didn’t offer any immediate clues. The only two letters that were from the business or the person’s name were TS. The numbers 893 were likely from a telephone number, and the only part of the web address remaining was LS.COM.
    It was improbable that any of this trash had come from the killer’s vehicle, but what if the bag had fallen out when Ruby was moved?  I didn’t want to assume anything. I needed to keep an open mind and look at everything until I was sure it was nothing. I slipped the business card into my pocket and headed for home.
     
     
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    Pepper was excited to try out the machines at Figure Perfect, but I was less enthusiastic. I hated being overweight, but I hated the idea of working out more. I simply didn’t enjoy exercising like I did when I was in shape.
    We were on the north side of town in a small, unattractive building behind the city hospital. Brown kraft paper covered the windows to keep passersby from peeking in at clientele. The inside wasn’t wholly unpleasant. Fluorescent lighting illuminated every corner of the room. The smell of new carpet and fresh paint lingered in the air. A local country radio station was semi-blaring from a boom box.
    Three large women were on machines that had been positioned along the back wall. I couldn’t tell what the machines were doing, but the women were doing squats as they held onto small rails. I didn’t want to do squats. Neither did my knees.
    There was only one trainer on the floor. She was assisting a woman who was lying prone with her face through an opening in a table. The table was shaking the woman from head to foot.
    Pepper and I checked in with a girl seated behind a small desk. We each paid an introductory price of nine dollars and ninety-nine cents for a month of unlimited visits. The girl then showed us small lockers for stowing our purses. We were smart to have come already dressed for the workout, as there were no locker rooms.
    “What now?” I asked.
    Pepper scanned the room. “I don’t know. I suppose we wait for the trainer.”
    The girl at the desk looked up from her magazine and said, “The machines are self-explanatory. You can try any of them until Suzy has time for you.”
    The three women moved from the squat machines to walk on treadmills. Pepper and I stood next to the machines closest to us - a treadmill and an old-fashioned vibrating machine with a belt. Pepper pushed me to use the vibrating belt machine.
    “Just do it, Jo. It’ll feel good, and it’s supposed to work.”
    She couldn’t be serious that this vibrating belt was going to shake my fat off. If the machines didn’t work fifty years ago, why would they work now?
    She laughed. “I’m not kidding. These machines are all the rage. Shaking really does take off weight. I’ll start on the treadmill, and you start with this. You’ll have your flab all jiggled and loose and ready for melting when you start