Naked Came the Phoenix

by Marcia Talley

  “Ahh!” She jumped back, sending the trolley with the hot-wax burner rocketing across the room, spraying a metallic rain of cuticle nippers, sanding blocks, and callus graters in its wake. The door opened.

  “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.” Karen pressed a hand to her ample bosom, as though to keep her heart from leaping out of her chest and going splat in the aloe-citrus lotion bath. “I thought you were a ghost!”

  “I’m sorry.” Ondine hesitated in the doorway, looking almost as scared as Karen. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you … could you … well, never mind, I mean, it’s not important …”

  “No, no! Come in, come in!” Karen clasped Ondine by the wrist, relieved to find her warm. The poor thing looked just like a living skeleton, but the important word was “living,” after all. “I was just lookin’ for my gargoyle, when I come to catch sight of you through that glass. I just come from the lounge, where they was talkin’ ‘bout that lady what fell in the lake. I was thinkin’ of that, and then I saw you right there, all white-faced and your hair all—” Karen made a vague gesture at her own neat blonde ponytail, indicating Ondine’s floating cloud of hair. “Thought you was drowned, I surely did.”

  Ondine’s look of alarm hadn’t noticeably faded as a result of this explanation. “Gargoyle?” she asked.

  “Yeah, you know, one a them little stone guys? Sits on top of churches?” She waved upward, indicating some imaginary Gothic edifice, ringed with stone guardians. “One of my clients brought him to me from France. He’s from Notre-Dame, like in that hunchback movie,” she said proudly. “I keep him up there”—she waved at the edge of the planter—“cuz he looks so cute, hidin’ in the leaves. He keeps fallin’ in, though. The guy who does the plants don’t see him and knocks him off when he does the watering. But that don’t matter none, I’ll find him later. Can I do somethin′ for you?” She smiled, dying to be helpful.

  Ondine smiled back, charmed, as guests always were, by Karen’s eager kindness and West Virginia drawl. “Well, I don’t want to bother you, it’s just …” She extended one long, pale hand, showing one of the rosy nails snapped off short. “Do you think you could fix that for me?”

  “Bother me? Lawdy, what you think they pay me to do’round here?” Karen laughed heartily and waved Ondine toward the padded cream-leather chair behind her mirror-topped worktable. “Sit down, honey. I’ll take care of that in no time.”

  She set to work at once, removing the rose-colored polish with businesslike dispatch. Besides the broken nail, two more were split; one of those had a chunk taken out of the side. Karen clicked her tongue over the damage as she took out the brushes, powder, and acrylic liquid.

  “Mercy, girl, what you been doing there?”

  A faint pink rose under Ondine’s skin. She wasn’t what you’d call pretty, Karen thought, but she sure Lord did have fine skin. Except for that little bit of discoloration near her eye, not a freckle, not a mole, not a single pore in sight. The blush—if you could call it that—looked just like a white rose blooming, thought Karen, pleased at the poetic thought.

  “I caught my hand on a piece of gym equipment,” Ondine said. “It got away from me and snapped that nail right off.” She waggled the injured finger in illustration.

  “Oh, yeah, I see that kinda thing all the time.” A quick dip into the liquid, a tiny ball of powder, and a beautiful smooth surface spread over the split nail, sealing the tear and hiding it immediately. “‘Specially on the Pilates thing, but … oh! But you wouldn’t have been usin’ that.”

  Karen shook her head, appalled at the memory of what the other staff had told her about that poor, poor man who got strangled in that contraption, the one with the name that reminded her of melted cheese—fondue, that’s what Momma called it, but it was just warm Cheez Whiz to Karen. No big shock there; Karen was only surprised accidents like that didn’t happen more often.

  “Oh, no,” Ondine said. “No, of course not.”

  Eyes focused on her work, Karen couldn’t see Ondine’s face, but she sounded shook up, Karen thought, and no wonder. She frowned slightly, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration as she wrapped and shaped an artificial tip to repair the torn-off nail.

  Momma had been on the phone every half hour since the news of Mrs. de Vries’s death came out, wanting Karen to quit and come home. When Mr. Cheez Whiz got choked, Granny McElroy started in to calling, too. She’d finally unplugged the phone, so as she could get a little work done, but Karen would admit that she’d had her doubts about staying. She jumped whenever she heard a sound behind her, and she had a feeling all the time like mice were crawlin’ up her spine.

  But whatever in heck was going on at the spa, Karen couldn’t see how it might have anything to do with her. And this was the best job she’d ever had; it paid like three times as much as doing nail-tech work in the city, and it wasn’t but half the work, either. And besides, she’d told Momma and Granny both, the police were right there. That nice detective walked through her building now and then, and waved and smiled. He wouldn’t be letting any killers bother her, she was sure.

  “There.” She admired her repair work; all the nails were once more long, smooth ovals, gently shaped and glossy. “You got such nice hands, honey. Those long fingers, and nice long nail beds, too—see, that’s the part of the nail’s attached to your hand, that’s what you gotta have for elegant nails. Mine are so short.” She waggled her free hand briefly in illustration. “Even if I put long tips on, they’re never gonna look great, but yours … you know, I could swear I seen hands just like yours someplace lately. Not quite the same, but real close. Now, you want to pick you out a nice color? How’bout I do you a pedicure, and we can put it on your toes, too?”

  Leaving Ondine mesmerized in front of a wall rack filled with dozens of bottles of custom-blended Phoenix nail polish, Karen went into the small alcove where the thronelike pedi-spa, her pride and joy, sat in splendor under a cool blue light, designed to make the client feel as though she were a mermaid sitting at the bottom of the sea, with reef fish nibbling at her toes and the soothing scents of kelp and sea salt all around.

  Caroline’s long, thin, neatly manicured fingers twitched unconsciously against the leg of her jeans, her left hand fingering the reaches as she played the allegretto of Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre in her mind. She was some way beyond the spa buildings now; the sea of leafy green had closed over the slate-tiled roofs like a cleansing flood, as though the place had sunk like Atlantis. Good riddance.

  Her pace slowed, and she wandered aimlessly, summoning up bits of her long-neglected repertoire, pleased to find that the music came back effortlessly. She knew it wouldn’t be that easy to reach performance level with the actual instrument, but it was both a thrill and a relief to find how much she remembered, how instinctively her fingers flexed and reached for the notes that thrummed in her inner ear.

  She left the path, and her feet shuffled through layers of crumbling dead leaves, damp with the residue of summer rain. The light filtering through spruce and beech wood was a soft blue-green, and the susurrus of branches in the wind could have been the sound of distant surf. But these were quiet woods sounds and made no interference with the music in her head.

  Dum, da-da-da-da dum, da-da-da-da dum, dum, dum, dum … The music conjured images, as it always did: imps, dancing with unholy glee, tossing things into a magic cauldron, leaping back as the contents erupted in a shower of firework sparks.

  Dee, deedle-deedle dee-dee-dee, dee, deedle-deedle dee-deedee—She stopped abruptly, as she realized that the high-pitched violin part was not coming from her inner ear but from someone singing it, near at hand.

  She swung around, hands half raised in instinctive defense.

  “Deedle-deedle, dee-dee-dum!” Phyllis Talmadge finished and bowed, with a smile of fulfilled performance. “I knew you wouldn’t forget,” she said, straightening up. She was still smiling, though with a look of remoteness in the back of her eyes, as though she
was looking at something beyond Caroline.

  Caroline was at once startled and flustered by the intrusion. Finding no words to protest, she said rather weakly, “Forget what?”

  “What?” Phyllis’s wispy gray brow lifted. “Your music, of course. I used to watch you, you know, when you played with the symphony. Even as part of the orchestra, you played with such … such life! And in the solos, you were simply magnificent, my dear.” She shook her head, sighing.

  “You heard—oh.” Caroline was still flustered but undeniably pleased at this echo from her past. “I didn’t know you were a music aficionado. Do you play, yourself, or did you just know the violin part from performances?”

  The older woman had started to walk, and Caroline fell into step naturally beside her.

  “Oh, I play a bit, but I’m not up to your level, by any means.” She flipped a dismissive hand.

  “Neither am I, anymore,” Caroline said, a little wistfully. “Maybe again, but not yet. Not until all this”—she waved a hand in the direction of the spa buildings—“is settled.” She cleared her throat, suddenly aware that Phyllis had herself been attacked, or evidently attacked.

  It occurred to her that they were quite alone here. Caroline brushed a hand casually across her thigh, reassured by the weight of her cottage key with its heavy ornamental fob. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but she was younger, taller, and stronger than the elderly psychic.

  “Uh, are you sure you’re feeling all right, Ms. Talmadge? Should you be out walking?”

  Now that Caroline took time to notice, she saw that the older lady was in fact looking very pale and insubstantial, her skin nearly the same gray as her hair. Phyllis paid no attention to the question, though, instead focusing her eyes intently on Caroline. “It’s very important that you play,” she said. “That’s what I came to tell you. Don’t let anything that happens here stop you.”

  “What do you mean?” Caroline’s initial startlement at the psychic’s sudden appearance was rapidly giving way to distinct uneasiness. “What’s going to happen?”

  The psychic tilted her head to one side, almost as though she were listening to someone—or something.

  “You don’t need to know that,” she said.

  “What? What do you mean, I don’t need to know that?”

  “Things will happen,” Phyllis said mysteriously, “but you’ll be all right. Some people close to you”—she turned her head, wearing the listening expression again—“people very close to you,” she amended, “may suffer harm. But you’ll be all right.”

  “Who? Who do you mean? My mother? Is something going to happen to my mother?”

  This is ridiculous! Caroline thought. Absurd! If asked half an hour previously, Caroline would have expressed complete skepticism of the concept of psychic ability and profound disinterest in anything said by anyone professing to have any. Now, the first inkling of some personal relevance, and she was agog as any caller to the Psychic Hot Line.

  On the other hand—a ripple of unease snaked down her spine—she knew she hadn’t been humming aloud, and yet Phyllis Talmadge had come in with the violin part, precisely in the right spot. Danse Macabre, indeed!

  “That,” said Phyllis enigmatically, “is up to you. But you must play your cello. It’s very important.”

  Caroline closed her eyes in momentary frustration and drew in a deep breath through her nose. “Now, look,” she began, in a determined tone of voice, opening her eyes, “you can′t—″

  But she stood alone in the middle of a small grove of oaks. The glossy leaves rattled faintly in the breeze, and an acorn tumbled down through the branches, rolling to a stop at her feet. Nothing else stirred.

  “Ms. Talmadge?” she said, and her voice sounded weak to her ears. She cleared her throat and called again, louder. “Ms. Talmadge!″

  No one answered. The wood stirred gently around her, but the solitude was no longer soothing. It was only as she turned to make her way back toward the spa that she recalled. Hadn’t they said that Phyllis Talmadge had been taken to the hospital following her attack? Had she been released, or had Caroline just met a …

  “Nonsense!” she said aloud and, turning on her heel, strode determinedly back toward the spa.

  Karen turned on the taps of the pedi-spa and dumped a handful of sea lavender—scented bath salts into the swirling water. Leaving the basin of the footbath to fill, she went back toward the door to the studio, pausing on her way to pick up a cuticle nipper that had fallen to the floor when she’d been startled earlier.

  “Forget it!”

  She was startled again, this time by Ondine’s voice, pitched low but furious. A male voice answered, also low, and grimly commanding.

  “Oh, no, baby. I’m not about to forget it. And neither are you. Where is it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” There was a scuffling sound, then a sharp intake of breath from the girl. “Let go! Howard had it. Now he’s dead, and it’s gone. Somebody took it.”

  “Yeah? Well, if ‘it’ is what I think you mean, then you’re the most likely person to have taken it! Ow!”

  Holy shit, Karen mouthed silently to herself. What was “it”? Drugs, maybe. Mr. Cheez Whiz sure looked like he was taking something. And if he had enough for somebody to kill him for, he was maybe a pusher, not just a user. If it was Ondine, a coke habit would sure explain how she kept so skinny!

  She craned her neck to one side, trying to see the man who was talking to Ondine, but couldn’t see anything save a few wisps of the model’s hair against the curtain of ivy, as she tossed her head, hissing at her companion.

  “Let go! I’ll call for help!”

  “No, I don’t think so. You can’t afford to do that.” The man’s voice was low and self-assured but not loud enough for Karen to say for sure who it was.

  Call for help. Karen licked her lips and glanced into the shadowy blue alcove. There was a phone there, back around the corner where she kept the canisters of sea salt scrub and peppermint lotion. Wiping her sweaty hands on her pale-blue uniform, she took one stealthy step toward the phone. One more, careful not to let her gum-soled shoes squeak on the white marble floor.

  She could call the main office. If the man heard her talking, he’d be scared off, but that was okay. Ondine could tell the detective who he was, and then …

  Her hand closed over the receiver. She held it to her ear for a long, heart-stopping moment of silence before she remembered that she’d unplugged the phone earlier. Fingers trembling, she fumbled for the phone jack, her hands sweaty with fear. The voices had gone silent for a moment. Was the man gone?

  Someone else spoke, a different voice, one she knew, but—The dial tone sounded loud in her ear. It was a cordless phone; she huddled as far as she could get into the cupboard alcove, close to the wall, back turned to the studio. She punched the three-digit number for the office and pressed the receiver tightly against her head to muffle the sound of ringing. Ring … Ring … Ri—

  A white light bloomed inside her eyes, and the receiver fell from her hand, bouncing and clattering off the slick white marble. There was a sound of dragging, a splash, and Karen McElroy’s blonde ponytail fanned out, waving gently in the blue-green water of the footbath like some exotic seaweed.

  “Hello?” said a tinny voice from the fallen receiver. “Phoenix Spa. Hello?”

  A finger poked the Off button on the phone, and it fell silent. Then the switch for the pedi-spa. The whirling water spun slowly to a stop, a few final bubbles of lavender scent bursting to the surface. Tiny tendrils of crimson unfurled in the silent water, but the surface lay still and blue over the manicurist’s submerged face.

  On the white tile by her hand, a small gray stone gargoyle grinned through jagged teeth.

  The congressman’s aide was a mosquito, Toscana decided, and just as hard to swat. She kept insisting that she had to be with the congressman, she must sit in on the interview, after all, this wasn’t really official, was it? And the co
ngressman would need advice, she’d call his attorney …

  Toscana thought he maybe should have asked Constanza to bring a can of Raid, instead of the pitcher of Phoenix sun tea, but he succeeded at last in keeping the pesky aide out and the congressman in.

  “Sit, sit,” he said, waving Blessing to a seat. He picked up his glass and gestured invitingly at the sweating pitcher. “A little tea?”

  Blessing waved away the tea impatiently. From his earlier behavior, Toscana expected him to start cutting up rough again, but no, not a bit of it. To his surprise, the congressman sat down, leaned across the table, and said, “Detective, you have to help me! Please!”

  Sheer astonishment prevented Toscana from saying that no, the congressman hadn’t quite grasped the situation here—he was the one supposed to be helping. Instead, he set down his glass of tea, carefully, to avoid splashing any on the polished granite, and sat down at the table across from Blessing.

  “Help you, huh? What with?”

  “With my … with my wife.” Blessing was looking pretty strange. Red one minute, white the next. His hands were clenched into fists on the desk, and the knuckles stood out like the joint on a drumstick.

  “Your wife,” Toscana repeated carefully. “Well, see, Congressman, it’s like I told you. Nobody can leave here until—″

  “That’s not what I mean!” Blessing’s features contorted, his teeth gritted, his eyes squeezed into slits. He looked like a politician who’d taken the lid off his garbage can and found a National Enquirer reporter nestling inside.

  Toscana stole a look at the pitcher; it looked like a big chunk of glass, heavy enough to conk somebody. Was it, though, or was it some of that plastic stuff that just looked like glass?