Naked Came The Phoenix (9 page)

"I have things to do." Hilda Finch picked up the pace and her eyes remained straight ahead, confusing her daughter further.

"I've had a telephone installed in our cabin, for one thing. I have a business to run. The transition has to be smooth."

"Mother, for heaven's sake. It's a spa, not a country. And a murder has been committed."

Hilda Finch pivoted on her heel, her face contorted with anger. "Don't you
dare
tell me what to do. Or denigrate my efforts. The spa is my business, just as you have your business. I don't make jokes about your cello playing, do I?"

Caroline was stung. "I wasn't making jokes. I was just trying to understand you. This is a murder we're talking about, the murder of your friend. Don't you feel bad for her? And aren't you concerned for all of us? Why don't we go back and help the detective? What about justice?"

"Justice!" Her mother snorted. "Do you have any idea how much money this spa grosses a year?"

"Well, no."

"Swedish massages at a hundred and fifty dollars a half hour. Victorian manicures at forty-five dollars. All we do is put a foreign name on it and we charge extra."

"We?"

"Yes, we." Her mother's anger seemed to dissipate, and she leaned over confidentially. "The profit margin here is obscene, especially considering what we pay the help. I'm going to run this place even better now. I'll be more hands-on. Downsize, merge, and franchise."

"But you don't know anything about-"

"I don't? Does Mrs. Field know cookies? Does Mary Kay know mascara? Why shouldn't I have my own spa business? Who knows more about beauty than I do?"

Caroline gathered that the question was rhetorical. Her mother was the vainest woman alive, but was that a job qualification? Caroline couldn't shake the sight of poor Claudia, clutching that absurd bikini, even in death.

"With a clever accountant and some elbow grease, I'm planning to make Phoenix Spa into a chain. Breathe new life into the old bird." Her mother's eyes focused for a moment on some faraway bottom line, and Caroline couldn't take it anymore. A woman was dead and her mother was dreaming of franchising facials.

"You know what, Mother?" Caroline snapped. "I don't know you at all. And what I'm coming to know, I don't like very much. I think we should go right back to that detective."

"I will not!"

"Then
I
will."

"You will
not
!" Her mother's eyes flared in renewed anger. "I forbid it! Douglas forbids it!"

"You can't forbid me. I eat solid food now, have you noticed?"

Her mother didn't bat an eye. "I can still forbid you, and I do. Do it and you'll hurt me, destroy your family!"

"But how?"

"I don't want a new business at the center of a murder case, and if you don't care about your own mother, think of Douglas. He loves you. He's a politician. You think he needs his wife being the star witness in an ugly murder case?"

Caroline tried to imagine it. It would be awful for Douglas. But being accused of obstructing justice could be worse. Caroline felt torn, but her mother ranted on.

"Picture this scene. Every press conference dominated by questions about you. Your name in the headlines, linked with a strangulation. And a bikini. God knows how they'll play it up, the possibilities are endless. He'll never get reelected!" Her mother drew a quick breath. "Now stop this foolishness and go to your room!"

The command struck a familiar chord. Without another word, Caroline broke away from her mother and hurried up the staircase to her room in their cottage. She was so angry and confused, she had to be alone. To think. To sort it out. To make a decision.

She threw herself facedown on the puffy duvet like she used to when she was a teenager. When was she going to grow up? Why did she still let her mother control her? She didn't know. But she had to talk to Douglas. Maybe he would tell her. She had to get him up to speed on what had happened, so he could protect himself. And what about this news, about her having a sister or a brother? Was that related to the murder? She had so many questions, so much to think about. It was all too much to process by herself. She needed help.

Caroline padded downstairs, poked around until she found the cordless phone that had been newly installed on her mother's desk, and punched in Douglas's personal number. Only she had the number; it was his wedding gift to her. She hated to disturb him at their country cabin, but she had to. He was working on a speech and always went into isolation at their cabin to write. Surely this was important enough to interrupt his solitude. She knew he would understand.

Still Caroline couldn't keep her thoughts from racing ahead. She had overheard Claudia's conversation last night. Did her knowledge put her in jeopardy? As the phone started ringing on the other end of the line, she eyed the glass sliders to the patio with new concern. The room was open to the lake. Anybody could break in. She tucked the cordless under her ear and hurried over to double-check the lock.

Good. The lock was in place. The phone was ringing. Douglas would know what to do. She loved him like crazy, and he was wonderful to her. He always seemed to have all the answers, and being married to him for the past eleven months was the best time of her life. Soon it would be their first anniversary. How would they celebrate? She would have to think of something. The phone was finally picked up. "Douglas!" Caroline said, almost breathless.

But the voice on the other end of the line was equally breathless. And it wasn't Douglas's voice. It was a woman's. "Hello?" the woman said, in almost a whisper.

"Douglas?" Caroline asked, taken aback. It couldn't be Douglas's phone. He was alone at the cabin, and nobody else had this number. "I'm sorry, I must have a wrong number."

"No, you wanted Doug? This is his phone."

Caroline's mouth went dry. Her face felt suddenly aflame. She didn't understand.
Doug
?

"He's sleeping, right here, but I'll wake him if it's important. Is this his office?"

Caroline couldn't answer or speak. She didn't get it. Was Douglas at the cabin with another woman? It couldn't be. He was going up alone, he'd said. He always did. Their marriage was sound, wasn't it?

"Hello? Anybody home?" breathed the woman's voice, then laughed lightly. She sounded young. Fresh.
Thin
.

Caroline's fingers tightened around the cordless. So Douglas hadn't sent her here for her benefit, or for her mother's. He had done it so he could be alone with this woman. It had all been planned. Premeditated. And was it the first time? Douglas always went to the cabin to work. Was this woman with him all this time? Caroline felt her heart wrench within her chest, but it wasn't pain, it was anger. Rage.
Fury
. She felt like exploding. For the first time in her life, Caroline felt like an adult. Like a
woman
.

"Would you give Doug a message for me?" Caroline asked, her voice surprisingly strong.

"Fer sure. I'll get a pencil."

"You won't need one. Just listen."

"Okay. Whatever."

"Tell that jerk I want a divorce for my anniversary," Caroline said abruptly, then pressed the button for End.

"BRAVO!" THE PHONE CLATTERED to the floor. Caroline whirled around and saw King David in the doorway clapping, his head seeming to scrape the top of the door frame. "Couldn't have said it better myself," he added and came toward her.

She took a step backward toward the bathroom.

He stopped and held his hands up as if she had a gun on him. But he was smiling. "Did I scare you?" he said. "I just wanted to have a minute to talk to you. It's not easy, with your mother… anyway, can I sit down?"

Caroline shook her head. He was too big for the room. It wasn't just his extraordinary height, the long ropy arms, the snakelike hair coiling around his shoulders. Power bristled around him like microwaves. It came from decades of people pouring love into him in huge stadiums, writing him letters, waiting for him outside stage doors; from the critics arguing about him in
Rolling Stone
and
Spin;
from the judges letting him off one more time; and from the gossip columnists and girlfriends and agents.

He put his hands in his pockets and sighed, lounging comfortably in place.

"For all I know, you killed Claudia," Caroline said.

"Maybe I did," he said and laughed. "In one of my famous drug-induced frenzies. Don't think I was having one last night, but then, the frenzied one is always the last to know. Look, let's go outside. We can stay in full view of the police the whole time, if you're really worried about me. I really have to talk to you."

She hesitated, searching herself internally for the flood of emotion that ought to be paralyzing her. Shouldn't she be wailing and weeping and taking to her bed about now?

Why did she feel so… so liberated instead, as if she'd been living in a cage, well fed, well housed, for the past year? Her mouth opened a little and she looked down at herself. Her hands were on her hips, her chest sticking out so the top button of her shirt had unceremoniously popped out of the buttonhole, her bare feet standing apart on the rug. She felt galvanized, not stricken. The giant only a few feet away raised his eyebrows and she saw the tattoos in the corners.

"That must have hurt quite a bit," she said, tapping her temples with her fingers.

"Anything for art," he said. "So?"

"So let's go outside."

As she passed through the doorway after him, the phone began to ring. She closed the door on the ringing, no slam, no acknowledgment of it at all. King did the eyebrow thing again, then turned and walked over to the path by the lake. Following him down the path toward the water, she felt grateful for his ironic smile and cheerful cynicism, because she had responded to it with some unknown part of herself that was saving her now. That conventional part of herself hadn't taken over, the part that would have been hoping she was wrong. If King hadn't come along she would have answered that phone and listened to whatever story Douglas told her.

Listening with one ear, she heard the phone finally fall silent. What could Douglas have said? She would have to be a moron not to comprehend the tones of the girl's voice, the lazy assurance in it, the estrogen-soaked attraction of that breathless soprano.

Now, trotting behind the tight jeans and wide leather belt that strode ahead, she let the waves of angry realization wash over her one by one. Douglas hadn't been home for dinner more than twice a week for the past three months. He'd been on the road or at meetings or in legislative sessions. Someone important needed his advice, or a crucial campaign donor needed a pep talk.

And she, she had been proud that he was so important. She'd closed her eyes and ears and especially her mouth, because Douglas was everything she wanted, her mother said so, everybody said so. Somehow, she must have felt that way, too.

She bit her lip. She'd left her hard-won position in the symphony, left her home in Tennessee, without a second's regret, gladly even.

"Shit!" she muttered. She had known Douglas since high school, but the gawky kid in the glasses had metamorphosed into a sophisticated, charming man who wore Italian suits and knew how to talk to a woman. He had always said he supported her music, even envied her talent, and he went to her performances, but somehow his work had become the primary work. She had allowed it, had actively collaborated in it. She was a fool!

Caroline and King had reached the lake. Mallards rode the calm water, gossiping in low quacks. Haze veiled the trees in the distance. No one seemed to be around, though the parking lot on the other side of the property was full of cars, including the police cars that had been there since dawn. Detective Toscana must still be hard at work in his conference room.

"You know, now that I don't get loaded anymore I find that running works well to take the edge off the bad stuff," King said. "We could go around the lake."

"No." Actually she was so furious at her stupid naivete right now that she felt like going into the lake, not around it, but she wasn't going to tell that to this complete stranger with his Medusa hair and wicked grin. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

"About Claudia. Sit down." He sat on the grass and indicated the place beside him with a long hand, but she stood in front of him, her hands plunged in her pockets, still locked in anger at Douglas and herself. She felt like somebody else, somebody who didn't care about her manners and who wasn't about to be impressed by this stale old rocker with his muscles and big lips.

"Let's get it over with," she said.

"All right." Sprawled out on the grass he wasn't quite as formidable. "I'm going to tell you something I didn't tell the police. And then I want you to tell me something."

"We'll see."

"Hmm. All right. I told you that I was here for a reason, a reason that had nothing to do with massages and mud baths."

"Yes. You said you were here to get something that belonged to you." Slowly, her mind began pulling away from Douglas as she returned to the indelible, shattering fact of Claudia's death.

"Claudia has it-had it. The thing I was looking for. She died before I could get it. I had been looking for it for a long time, and when she called me I was… I took the first plane."

"You knew her before?"

"Quite well. Pre-Raoul. She knew how to reach me and how to get me here on short notice is what I'm saying. When I arrived, Claudia put me off. I had to stick around, and I started talking to people. Actually, people talked to me. I'm used to it. They do that."

"I'll bet they do." She couldn't keep the scorn out of her voice. "What exactly is this mysterious thing you came here to find?"

"Not important to anyone but me," he said, sitting up and folding his legs. His jaw set and the cheekbones popped into prominence. Under all the hype he was an awfully good-looking man, the sort of man who in the past might have even been said to possess beauty. She now saw a certain purity and cleanness of feature, as though the dissolute lifestyle hadn't even touched him. Sitting like that on the grass, talking calmly, his long hair stirring briefly in the morning breeze, he didn't look dissolute; he looked like a Tibetan lama.