Naked Came the Phoenix

by Marcia Talley

  Before he could put a casual hand on the pitcher to check, Blessing got control of himself. He breathed like a marathon runner coming down the stretch, and his face went from red back to white, but at least he’d quit shaking.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was so quiet Toscana had to strain to hear it. “I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Toscana assured him, with one eye on the pitcher, just in case. “Police officers hear all sortsa stuff.”

  A ghost of a smile crossed Blessing’s face. “You aren’t going to tell me it goes in one ear and out the other, are you, Detective?”

  Toscana contented himself with a shrug and a noncommittal murmur, but it seemed to help. Blessing sat slumped in his chair, exhausted. Toscana—who really had heard almost everything imaginable in his career—knew when to talk and when to listen. This was a time to keep still and wait. At last, Blessing nodded, like a man making up his mind.

  “I’m being blackmailed,” he said.

  At this point, the news came as no big hairy surprise to Toscana, but he felt his heart jolt in his chest anyway. A break! Goddamn, was he finally going to get a solid break in this case? “Yes, sir?” he said politely. “What about?”

  Blessing’s long, muscular throat moved as he swallowed. “I was adopted as an infant,” he said. “I had no idea who my birth parents were and no reason to think it mattered. But then …” His jaw clenched involuntarily, and he had to force it open to get the words out. “I met Claudia de Vries at a fund-raiser last year. She seemed interested in the issues … .”

  Toscana snorted, by reflex, and Blessing’s head shot up. “Yeah,” the detective said, waving a hand in dismissal. “Issues. Yeah, that too, I’m sure. So?”

  Blessing’s jaw was bulging again. “So,” Blessing got out, “I met with her … now and then. She made contributions to my campaign fund, large contributions.” Toscana made a casual note on his pad: check the congressman’s other contributors, just in case.

  “Illegally large?”

  “Certainly not!” Red, white, red again. The man could get a job as the flashing light on a caboose, Toscana thought. He went back to the noncommittal grunt.

  “I wouldn’t countenance anything of the kind,” Blessing said. “And that’s what … well, eventually, she started conveying … messages. From other contributors. About things they’d like to have happen, votes they’d like to go a certain way.”

  “So Claudia was fronting, huh? Who for?” Toscana was more than interested and didn’t bother trying to hide it. Blessing had made up his mind to talk, and he was going to do it, if he had to fight himself every inch of the way.

  “I don’t know. I have guesses, but I don’t know.” Blessing gave a grimace that might have started life as an ironic smile.”The Mob? Is there still such a thing?”

  “Oh, you better believe it,” Toscana assured him. “Though a few of′ em have gone uptown.” Hoo-boy. Well, that would explain a few things, wouldn’t it? He drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. If you had a lot of dirty money—a chronic problem for anybody connected—a spa had certain advantages as a laundry. A little more class than a garbage company, a great front for funneling funds to political targets, and maybe, just maybe, cover for a few other illegal activities. You could hide a heck of a lot of things under a layer of mud and an herbal wrap.

  Blessing cleared his throat, and Toscana came out of a rosetinted dream of men in tailored suits and wing tips being herded en masse into the paddy wagon.

  “So,” Blessing said, with renewed determination, “when I made it clear that I couldn’t be bought, Claudia smiled and went away—and then she came back, with the record of my birth mother’s name. Hilda Finch.”

  “Hil—” The pitcher clattered to the floor, in a flood of ice cubes and sun tea. So it was plastic, Toscana thought dimly. “But Hilda Finch is …”

  “My wife’s mother. Yes, exactly.” The deep lines still furrowed Blessing’s brow, but he seemed relieved to have got it out.

  “Oh, Jeez.”

  Blessing’s mouth actually twitched slightly at that.

  “Very eloquent, Detective. So you do see, I hope, why I need your help. I have to divorce my wife—or rather, make my wife divorce me.”

  Toscana was recovering from the shock. He flicked an ice cube off the table with one finger, eyeing the congressman. “Yeah? I didn’t hear everything you guys said outside, but I heard enough. Sounded like you were doing everything you could to make sure she stayed married to you.”

  “If it sounded like that,” Blessing said shortly, “then I did a good job.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The congressman exhaled, shoulders slumping a little. “Claudia may be dead, but whoever she was fronting for isn’t.” He straightened up, with a sharp glance at Toscana. “Bear that in mind, Detective. I knew there was someone behind her, and that someone certainly knew the secret of my birth—and my marriage. Killing her wouldn’t have helped me. It’s put me in a much more difficult position,” he added, with a nod toward the door.

  The position was simple. When he had discovered the truth about his marriage, he had been overcome with horror. Unwilling to believe it at first, he had finally accepted Claudia’s claim. Records could be forged, but there was something else.

  “Look.” He stretched his hands out on the desk. They were neatly manicured, the nails buffed and glossy, long-fingered and graceful. “When you get a chance, look at Caroline’s hands. They aren’t identical, but the shape of the fingers is damn close. And then there’s this.” He held up his hands, palms toward the detective. The fingers of the right hand lay together; on the left hand, the little finger stuck out at an angle, with a space between it and the ring finger. “Caroline has it, too. It isn’t obvious enough that anyone would notice unless he or she was looking.” He folded his hands abruptly. “There are half a dozen other tiny things; that’s just the most obvious.”

  All doubt erased, he had been confronted with a wracking dilemma. “I love her,” he said softly, looking down into his lap, where his fists lay on his thighs. “I couldn’t bear to tell her, to have her look at me with disgust, to recoil from me. But likewise, I couldn’t …” He shrugged, helpless. “I couldn’t …”

  “Well, I can kinda see how that would be,” Toscana said slowly. “But what you said? About being a good actor?”

  Blessing nodded and took a deep breath. “Whoever was behind Claudia, he—they—wants me to stay married. It helps the image”—he made a slight, instinctive grimace—“and more important, it keeps me under control. So I couldn′t divorce her, they wouldn’t have it. The only thing I could do was to try my best to make Caroline divorce me.” He swallowed. “She might hate me, but at least she could remember having loved me. If I … if she knew the truth, she couldn’t ever think of me without wanting to throw up.”

  He sighed. “So I did my best. I went off to the cabin with Miranda to make it look like we were having an affair”—he nodded toward the door, where his aide presumably still buzzed—“and gave that masterful performance outside.” He looked up with a faint smile.”It might have sounded to you—and to Miranda—like I wouldn’t let her divorce me. But Caroline’s a proud woman. Being told, and told in brutal, shaming terms like that, nothing would drive her away faster.”

  Toscana pursed his lips, nodding. “What about those photos? Method acting, huh?” He quirked a brow at Blessing.

  “Faked,” the congressman said shortly. “You know there’s nothing easier than to doctor photos.”

  “Yeah,” Toscana agreed amiably. “Look at the National Enquirer. Elvis don’t even look dead half the time. So, Ms. Mosquito—I mean, your aide, there—you think she’s in with the people who were controlling Claudia?”

  Blessing grimaced. “I don’t know for sure. It might be just devotion to duty, but I think she’s spying on me for them. She never leaves my side. It was a heaven-sent chance when you called me in
and wouldn’t let her come with me.”

  He leaned forward, dark eyes intense. “So now you know. And now you see, Detective? I have to have your help, to make my wife, to make my sister”—he paled slightly at the word—“divorce me.”

  12

  VINCE TOSCANA HAD NEVER HAD any reason to give nail polish a second thought. But after today, he’d never again be able to watch his wife paint her nails without a shudder. No amount of life on a Philly corner could have prepared him for the scene that met his gaze in the manicure studio.

  He stared speechless as the carved mahogany shelf unit that had contained the dozens of nail preparations was gently raised by his crime scene technicians, leaving behind it an incarnadine sea. Just as the ocean contained myriad shades of blue and green, there was now a glutinous pool of multitudinous tones of scarlet spreading across the floor. Carmine bled into ruby, magenta swirled through vermilion, cherry melted into plum. And through it all, glass shards stuck up at random angles, polish sliding viscously down them to join the rest of the drying mess that Vince feared would soon be rigid as vinyl siding.

  And at the heart of the horror, curved like a gathering wave, lay the crushed heap of bones and skin that had once been Ondine. Only her toes were untouched, sticking out from the red sea and looking incongruously pale. “Jesus,” Vince sighed. “The only way we’re going to be able to tell blood from nail polish is when it sets.”

  As he waited for the technicians to complete their work on the crime scene, he walked through to the consulting room where Karen McElroy’s hair still swirled gently in the foot spa, the coppery smell of blood mixing with kelp and mineral salts hitting his nostrils as he bent over her, careful not to disturb anything. The trouble with working for a small department where there wasn’t a lot of serious crime was that there was only one team of technicians. Just like always, Vince thought. The poor folk have to wait in line for the rich folk to get seen to first. He wished he could at least restore some small grace to Karen by draining the pink-tinged water, but he knew better than to touch anything before it had been processed by the experts. There was nothing dignified about these deaths, he thought bitterly. Anger began to burn like indigestion in his stomach. Somebody in this place didn’t give a damn about human life. And even though he considered most of the people he’d encountered at Phoenix to be pretty damn worthless, they still had a right to their selfish little lives. It was his job to protect them, and so far he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

  Fresh determination burned inside Vince as he gazed down at the murdered beautician. He was going to put a stop to this killing spree. And if that meant slamming every last one of these spoiled people in the county jail, then he’d damn well do it. Vince turned on his heel and marched through to the nail studio with a new sense of purpose.

  Hilda yanked open another drawer. She didn’t think Claudia had ever thrown anything away in her life. The banks of filing cabinets filled the entire walk-in storeroom that opened off the spa director’s luxurious personal office. It was like an archaeological dig, ploughing through it. But although she’d found business correspondence dating back more than twenty years, brochures from every establishment Claudia had ever worked in, and folders stuffed with letters from grateful clients, Hilda still hadn’t found what she was looking for. Somewhere, she knew, there must be Claudia’s secret stash. She’d made it her lifetime’s work to get something on everyone she thought she might possibly make use of, and Hilda knew her well enough to realize it would be somewhere accessible. No bank vaults for Claudia; she’d have wanted her leverage where she could gloat over it at her leisure.

  Hilda sighed. Another file of correspondence. She probed farther back in the drawer and came across a thick manila folder marked “College.” Curious, she pulled it free and opened it. To her amazement, it was stuffed with mementos of Claudia’s years at Brown. There were handbills for plays and concerts, notes from fellow students, ticket stubs for movies and football games, even a faded corsage, pressed and preserved to recall some distant evening. Hilda was amazed. She’d never have credited Claudia with so sentimental an attachment to the past.

  Fascinated, she flicked through the folder’s contents, mistyeyed at the memories it evoked. She was sure they’d been to that performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost together. Yes, she remembered now. They’d gone on a double date with those two seniors that they’d met at the Harvard—Yale football game. Claudia had spent the whole evening sulking because the more handsome of the two boys had clearly preferred Hilda. Hilda’s present smile was pure malice at the recollection.

  Right at the back of the folder was a thick wallet of photosgraphs. Suddenly, Hilda’s memory provided its own snapshot. Claudia, filled with delight over her parents’ Christmas gift, one of the new Kodak Instamatic cameras, gathering her friends into groups and making them pose for pictures. “Smile, everybody!” had become the words most often on Claudia’s lips that semester.

  Intrigued to see what had survived of her own past, Hilda opened the flap and pulled out the faded color photos. The first half dozen were an assortment of girls from the dorm. Hilda herself appeared in three of them, her hair perfectly lacquered in a beehive, showing off her small, neat features to their maximum advantage. Her face relaxed as she drifted back in her mind to those cozy dorm chats, drinking hot chocolate and eating cookies late at night, girls perched on narrow beds and pillows on the floor, gossiping about their lives and loves. They’d still believed the world was theirs for the taking, convinced the golden days would run forever. God, she wished she’d known then what she knew now.

  The next picture hit Hilda’s nostalgic mood like a cold pool after a sauna. Claudia had framed her subjects perfectly. They were leaning against a car. Hilda was in profile, head thrown back, mouth open in laughter, her arms thrown around the slim hips of the boy who was pulling her close to him, his own narrow, triangular face grinning sheepishly at the camera. “Tad Blake,” Hilda hissed, her lips pulled back tightly over her teeth.

  She had forced Tad Blake from her memory with the systematic efficiency she’d brought to every area of her adult life. The foolish conviction that she’d been in love, the fumbling passion that had left her life in ruins, Tad’s refusal to accept that her nightmare was anything to do with him, his protestations that she couldn’t expect him to believe he was the only one she’d given herself to—it had all been consigned to a section of her memory marked “Do Not Enter.” The temptation to rip the photograph to shreds was almost overwhelming. But she controlled herself. She didn’t want torn photographs in the office trash to tell their tale to any passing police officer. She grabbed the photograph and stuffed it in her pocket. She’d dispose of it later, somewhere its remains wouldn’t be found.

  Her action revealed the next photograph in the bundle. It was Tad again, but this time he was the one seen from the side. An involuntary gasp escaped Hilda’s mouth. Her mind rebelled. It couldn’t be. Could it?

  Intently, she studied the picture. Tad’s flaming red hair had faded to a dull auburn as the film chemicals had degraded, but her memory supplied the missing tones. Okay, the hair was the same. But that was no proof of anything, not in these days of flawless hair tinting. But that profile was undeniable. The pointed chin, the high forehead. They were identical. Hilda pulled the other picture from her pocket. Substitute her neat little nose for Tad’s, and you’d be looking at the unmistakable profile of Lauren Sullivan.

  Hilda stared at the photograph, a confusion of thoughts and images tumbling through her head. It looked as if Claudia had left her a legacy that could yet prove even more advantageous than the spa. Lauren Sullivan. What a coup.

  The encounter with the psychic had unsettled Caroline. Phyllis Talmadge was right. Playing air cello in the woods was no substitute for the real thing. She decided to head back to the cottage. She was going to have to face Hilda sometime; if her mother was there, at least she’d get it over and done with. Then she could open the windows and sit look
ing out over the lake playing one of the Bach cello suites. Number three, she thought. That would lift her out of this despair and rage and remind her that there was a place inside her where beauty could still live.

  Caroline hurried through the woods, paying scant attention to her surroundings, already hearing those first haunting notes in her mind’s ear. By the time she emerged on the path, she was almost trotting. She pushed open the door of the cottage, humming the theme of the first movement under her breath, and stopped short. To her astonishment, she found Raoul, not Hilda, sitting in the morris chair, looking as relaxed as if he were in his own sitting room.

  “What are you doing here?” Caroline demanded.

  He raised his perfectly shaped eyebrows. “Hoping for a word with you, my dear Caroline.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand to silence her. “I wanted to discuss the return of something that belongs to you.”

  She glared at him, suddenly putting two and two together. “It was you who left those photographs lying on the table for Detective Toscana to find, wasn’t it? And then you came back for them later, didn’t you?”

  Raoul smiled. “Clever Caroline.”

  “But why?”

  “I thought it might muddy the waters with the cops. You see, Claudia had a very profitable little sideline going. Some friends of hers needed a little political clout on their side, and your charming husband was in a position to meet their needs. Of course, he took a little persuading.”

  “Claudia was blackmailing Doug?” Caroline crossed to the sofa and sank into it. She knew her husband was a double-dealing, two-timing bastard when it came to love, but she didn’t think his politics were as corrupt as his sex drive.

  “Such a coarse word, blackmail. I prefer to think of it as oiling the wheels of commerce. And with your mother taking over my living, I figure I’m going to need all the commercial support I can find. I didn’t want the cops stumbling over the real dirt that Claudia had on Doug, so I decided to serve them up a delicious little red herring.”