Naked Came The Phoenix (11 page)

"Do that often, do you, Howard?"

"More than I should. I know I wasn't supposed to bring liquor in at all. I admit it, I've got a problem. I've been admitting it and surrendering and making amends and relying on my higher power for twenty-five years now, and I've still got a problem."

"What's your poison? Let me guess, Chivas?"

"Jack Daniel's."

"Good sippin' bourbon, if I do say so. So where's the bottle from last night? And by the way, how big a bottle are we talkin' about?"

"A pint? I think a pint."

"That's interesting, because we just picked up this pint bottle on the path by the bathhouse where the lady was strangled." Vince held it up in its wrapping. "The security man says he made a round at midnight and there was no bottle. He saw it runnin' in to see the commotion when the body was discovered. So it got laid down last night."

"Now wait just a minute," Eric Derrick said.

"That couldn't be my bottle," his client said in a choked-up voice.

"Great," Vince said. "Then you won't mind us taking your fingerprints just so my superiors don't yell at me. Mike outside has the kit."

"I don't think that would be appropriate at this time," the lawyer drawled.

"Oh, yeah? I'll decide that," Vince said and gave him the patented Toscana glare. "You know, if we get involved in a lot of formalities, legalisms, that sort of thing, Mr. Fondulac could be here for a long, long time."

Fondulac and Derrick hastily convened on the far side of the office. Whispers flew. Vince looked out the window again. Strong sun now, not a soul out there enjoying the path by the lake. Eventually, the lawyer allowed as how Mr. Fondulac would give fingerprints, seeing as how he wanted to cooperate and get home.

And they all knew he didn't have a choice. Vince put on a cheerful look and said, "That's great. So let's get back to the location of that bottle."

"I certainly didn't leave it there. But if my fingerprints are on it, maybe someone took it out of my trash."

"Ah." They figured his prints would be on it and so the next line of obstruction had come up. They were making progress. "So you put it in the trash?"

"Yes."

"And where is the trash located?"

"In my room, of course. The plastic can in the bathroom, actually. It had a swinging lid."

"You specifically remember putting it in the can?"

"Yes."

Vince showed his teeth. "Then we're all set. All we have to do is confirm that. Dust the lid for prints."

"Maybe it didn't get into the trash can. I might have left it on the floor. I was drunk!"

"So you're saying somebody came in your door late at night while you were crashed and took your empty bottle and left it on the path by the bathhouse?"

"My God," old Howard said in a surprised voice, turning to his lawyer. "Someone's trying to frame me! That's just what must have happened!"

"Now who would do a thing like that?" Vince went on, not missing a beat.

"I-I can't imagine!"

"You had an enemy here, Howard. That must be how it went down."

"Yes! Yes! Raoul! That sneaky bastard. I'll fix him. He hates me. Because I-because of a money thing. Years ago. We had a dispute. He said I owed him two hundred thousand dollars. We lost that money fair and square. It was a joint venture, a tax thing, and Claudia told me Raoul had forgotten all about it. But now I see he's just been biding his time. Eric, you have to do something!"

"How long ago was this? The money thing?" Vince asked.

"Ten, twelve years ago."

"You and Claudia and Raoul were tight, huh?"

And out it came. "Tight? We were business partners, that's all. Claudia worked at this health place I went to and we got to talking, and she told Raoul about this film I was producing. I had Kevin Costner practically attached, this was before the water flick and the futuristic Pony Express one. Raoul and Claudia had some money from somewhere and they were looking for an investment."

Vince nodded sagely. "Hollywood," he said.

"The project tanked, they tank sometimes, but they took it personally. And about the same time the deal soured, Raoul got this idea that Claudia was sleeping with me. He was madly in love with her. He was insecure and jealous. So anyway I was damn surprised when she called and invited me to come, but I really needed to get away, and when she told me Lauren Sullivan was here and looking for a project, it was perfect, and Claudia said-God, she said-" He stopped and a horrified expression came over his face.

"Well, what'd she say?"

"She said I deserved the full treatment."

"And had she started giving it to you by last night?" Vince asked.

"He thinks I'm lying," Howard said to his lawyer. "You check it out, Detective. It was her husband. He killed her. I don't know why he killed her, but he got me here to frame me."

"But she was the one who said you deserved the full treatment," Vince said.

"He got her to invite me," Howard said, less assurance in his voice. "He's a subtle one, he is."

Vince said, nodding again, "I hate subtle people. All those hidden agendas."

"So are you going to do something about him? Arrest him?"

"We'll check for his prints on the bottle."

"He'll have wiped them off," Eric Derrick said.

"You sure you didn't take a midnight stroll last night?" Vince asked. "I get lit, I do funny things sometimes. Decide I need some air."

"I'm quite sure I never left my room," Howard said.

"Is there anything else?" said the lawyer, leaning forward.

"Well, I have to ask, you understand. Whether you did sleep with her way back when in the Kevin Costner days. Since it might have inflamed the husband."

"I never laid a hand on her."

"Oh, come on, how could you resist? You were all going to get rich together, you were at this relaxing place together, hot tubbing and all that, she was a fine-lookin' lady. And it would explain a lot better why the husband would go after you."

Howard said, "Well just the one time."

"One time only. Sure."

"Once or twice. She really wanted me. I was damn attractive in those days." He smoothed back his neat, thinning hair, as if remembering thicker, more unruly days.

"I bet."

"Come on, Howard," Eric Derrick said. "Are we finished?"

"For now," Vince said.

"Who's next?" Mike said, sticking his head in. Behind him was a talking head, irate.

"The husband."

Raoul de Vries came bounding in like he was aching to beat some butt on the tennis court. His tan and good health made Vince feel vaguely pissed off. He must be the stiff-upper-lip type, or else he didn't give a flyin' fart that his wife was dead, whatever he might have felt about her before, because there was no sign of red eyes or sadness. The second lawyer was just like the first: tall, balding, portly, and young. Vince waved them to seats and took the card. "H. David Derrick," it read.

"Your brother out there, H.?" Vince asked the lawyer.

"Yes. It's a small town. We aren't in the same firm."

"You guys could be twins."

"We are."

"What's the
H
stand for?"

"Herrick. Can we move on?" He was even more humorless than his brother.

"I bet you're the older one. By ten, fifteen minutes," Vince said. The devil made him do it.

"I am the younger. Is this relevant?"

"I guess not," Vince said. "But I don't know what else we're gonna talk about. Because your client told me this morning that he wouldn't talk to me on advice of counsel."

"I said without advice of counsel," de Vries interposed. "Let me explain. A long time ago a lawyer told me to say that if I ever found myself in a police situation. It's not that I don't want to cooperate. My wife is dead. My heart is broken. I'm at your service."

"I'm happy to hear that. Really. Because it looked bad," Vince said. "So what was this police situation you were in?"

"I didn't say I was in a police situation. I said
if
I was in a police situation."

"You ever done time, Mr. de Vries?"

De Vries gave him an incredulous look and turned to Derrick Herrick or whatever the Mother Goose hell his name was.

"I fail to see the relevance," the lawyer said.

This parrot talk didn't go over very well with Vince. He ignored the lawyer and picked up the rap sheet in front of him and said, "You went to Soledad Prison fourteen years ago. For attempted murder. You tried to kill your then-girlfriend. Not Claudia." He turned to Derrick. "Relevant enough for you?"

"Go ahead."

He was ordering Vince around, the twerp, but Vince did want to go ahead, so he contented himself with a scowl and went on. "You served only two years, what with good behavior, good lawyering, and good connections. It's cryin' out for reform, our penal system."

"Is there a question pending?" asked Derrick.

"I didn't do it," de Vries said flatly.

"Yeah? You told the California parole board you did it. You gave plenty of details and said you were sorry. You said you were, let's see, in a rage due to her infidelities and didn't know what you were doing. You beat her up pretty bad."

"If I hadn't told them I did it, I'd still be rotting in jail," de Vries said. He had crossed his leg and was bouncing his foot up and down. He was counting the seconds until he could get out of there.

"Did you already know Claudia by then?"

"Yes. We were married two months after my parole. Which has expired, by the way."

"Where's she now? The girlfriend, I mean."

De Vries jumped up. "Why are we crashing around in this ancient history? My wife is dead! You should be finding her killer, finding out how Hilda Finch ends up getting everything we worked for, everything we own. You should ask me where I was last night, when I went to bed, how we got along! Yes, I went to bed with her! No, we had no quarrel at all! Yes, she must have got up in the middle of the night and gone to check something or maybe meet someone, I don't know!" He covered his face with his hands and started to sob.

Bored, Vince sat back and waited for the curtain to fall. He didn't believe de Vries's performance. Vince was getting the idea that de Vries was a jealous, weak man with a definite place in his scheme of things for women as objects of desire and sources of financial security, who had learned a few things in prison.

Derrick put his arm around his client's shoulder and offered him the paisley handkerchief out of the chest pocket of his jacket. Next he'd be saying de Vries was too distraught to continue.

Time for a little consult with Laidlaw, Vince decided. Laidlaw was the accounting expert the department used in white-collar-crime investigations. Raoul and Claudia had a nice business here. He wondered where the money to start it had come from. Were they pulling down a profit? So much money they could lay almost a million bucks on that stick of a girl out there?

And Fondulac's story, was there anything to it? De Vries was all bent over now, bawling like a baby, getting his back patted. It was a good act, but nothing Vince hadn't pulled himself when his ma caught him stealing papers off the stoops in Philly and reselling them on the corner.

And he thought about ancient history. It had a way of rearing up and biting you on the ass. The whole case had a smell of ancient history.

OUT OF BREATH, CAROLINE SLAMMED the cabin door behind her and then stood leaning against it, gasping.

"You never did learn to enter a room like a lady," Hilda said. "You came racing through the door like the devil himself was after you." Hilda was once more seated in the morris chair. Quickly she removed the pair of red-framed reading glasses that had been perched on her nose. She stowed them in one pocket of her pink sweats and then gathered up the sheaf of papers and photographs that had been spread in her lap. Those she shuffled back into a manila envelope. Once the envelope was closed, she used the metal fastener to hold it tight.

"Douglas called," she said.

Caroline barely trusted herself to speak. "And?" she said finally.

"He wants you to call him back. At the cabin."

"What did he want?" she asked. Even as she asked the question, it puzzled her why she was carrying on this charade and acting as though everything were normal when she should have thrown herself into her mother's arms and confided in her, telling her the awful truth-that she had already called Douglas that morning only to find another woman at the cabin. But the years of acrimony between Caroline and her mother had left too much of a void between them, too much distance to be crossed all at once.

Not trusting her knees to hold her upright, Caroline sank down into the desk chair and stared at the phone as though it were her mortal enemy.

"Well?" Hilda urged impatiently. "Are you going to call him, or are you just going to sit there all day looking at the phone?"

"I'm not going to call him," Caroline said.

"Why?"

"Because I don't feel like it." Even in her present mood, it sounded to her own ears like a childish, stupid thing to say.

"Caroline," Hilda said firmly. "You have to understand. Your husband's a politician. You need to talk to him so he can give you whatever directions you need for handling yourself in this kind of situation."

"You mean like send one of his staffers out to bird-dog me and make sure I don't say or do something that could make matters worse?"

"Yes. Of course," Hilda returned mildly. There was another unspoken part to her mother's answer, the part about now that Caroline had made her bed, she would have to lie in it. And, of course, there was no need for Hilda to say it then because Hilda had said it so often, Caroline knew it by heart.