Naked Came The Phoenix (19 page)

Caroline prayed that this focus on me, me, me would make her feel important, worthy, loved.

But right then, all she felt was boneless.

As his hands and fingers, skilled as a surgeon's, worked over her traumatized body, she could feel the muscles loosen, the adhesions breaking and falling away. She moaned. Once, as he loosened the contracted muscles along her spine, she screamed. This was normal, he told her. To be expected. As he worked to release the tension in her thighs, Caroline bit her lower lip and tried not to cry out. Was this what childbirth felt like? she wondered. Exquisite agony?

Childbirth. She had hoped to have children. Douglas 's children. Now that would never be, and her biological clock was ticking, ticking, ticking.

But she had a sister somewhere, or a brother! She counted backward to the year her mother was at Brown, 1962 or 1963. Her half-sibling would be thirty-something today. Had they ever met-on the metro, at the library, at a fund-raiser-without realizing the relationship?

She could be sister to the cashier at Bread and Circus, to the mechanic at VOB Volvo, to her stylist at the Toka Salon. Even to Ondine! No, Ondine was too young. But Lauren? Christopher Lund? And how about Dante? As his hands massaged her feet and ankles, she wondered about Dante. It was hard to tell with him; his amber eyes were wise, but his face was unlined and somehow ageless.

In her mellow state, Caroline wasn't sure whether she felt them first or heard them, but she gradually became aware of helicopters chop-chop-chopping overhead.

"Relax!" Dante warned. "Ignore them. It's nothing to us." His hands moved up to her shoulders.

Helicopters! Silly of Raoul to think he could keep the press out of the grounds of Phoenix Spa forever. It had to be the tabloids, she thought dreamily, training their telephoto lenses on the grounds below, hoping to catch Lauren Sullivan without her makeup or Ondine without her clothes. Vultures! She remembered fuzzy photos of a lover sucking on a topless Fergie's toes and knew that the tabloids would pay big bucks for a photograph of Congressman Blessing's wife with another man's hands grasping her upper thighs. Caroline was thankful that she lay indoors beyond the reach of their prying cameras.

As ordered, she ignored the helicopters, and for the next ten minutes she wallowed in forgetfulness. Cocooned, she felt limp, drained. Maybe she'd died.

"Caroline!" Douglas's voice spiraled down to her, as if from the end of a long tunnel. Dante's hands paused, resting lightly against the small of her back. With great effort, Caroline willed her head to rise and turned it toward the door. She stared at her husband with languid eyes.

He filled the doorway. She wondered, vaguely, why he was wearing jeans and a yellow cable-knit sweater instead of his usual three-piece suit. Brice, his pilot and sometime bodyguard, loomed large behind him, and Douglas must have brought other people along, too, because Caroline could hear the receptionist making fruitless stop-you-can't-go-in-there noises.

"Go away, Douglas." She rested her cheek against the soft, terry cloth covering on the table and waved a sluggish arm.

Douglas indicated to Brice that he should wait outside, then closed the door behind him. Caroline mused that Douglas would have liked to get rid of Dante, too, but the masseur's hands began their final assault on the tendons in her neck, and she once again became one with the table.

Douglas seemed to sense the wisdom of keeping his distance. He stood near the door, slim, tall, elegant as always even in his casual attire. Through half-closed eyes, Caroline was pleased to note that the suave self-assurance he showed in front of the television cameras and before his constituents had evaporated. His arms hung at his sides and he repeatedly opened and closed his hands, as if they were cold. "Caroline," he blurted at last, "I need to explain."

"Don't waste your breath, Douglas."

He took a step toward the table. "Honey, it's not what you think!"

Reluctantly, Caroline pulled herself up into a sitting position. She had never felt uncomfortable being naked in front of Douglas before, but now her nakedness embarrassed her. With elaborate care, she gathered the sheet around her, smoothing the fabric over her bare legs and twisting it into a knot at her breast. She skewered him with her eyes. "Congressman Blessing, you are full of crap!"

"Honey…"

"Don't you honey me!"

"But I can explain."

"Okay. So explain this. Eight-by-ten glossies. Dates, times, and places."

Douglas's jaw dropped. "You hired a private investigator?"

"I didn't, Mommie Dearest did." Dante's strong arm steadied her as she slid off the table and hopped to the floor.

"Where are the photos now?" Douglas asked.

"They were in my room…"

"Thank goodness! Then no one…"

"Depends on what you mean by no one." She gave him a tight-lipped smile. "I had them hidden, but somebody searched my room yesterday.
Somebody
found them." She watched her husband's face as the news sunk in. "Detective Toscana saw them when he searched our cabin, but when I got back to my room later, they were gone."

For an instant, Douglas wore that little-boy-lost look and Caroline felt her heart soften. But just as instantly, the look was gone, masked by what she had come to recognize as his press conference face.

"That's right. You'd better get on the phone to the damage control team.?" With one arm, she shoved her husband aside and disappeared through the door that led into the sanctuary of the women's sauna. "But tell those spin doctors not to waste any time working on me!"

From her post at reception, Ginger Finnegan was accustomed to hearing the occasional scream coming from behind the massage room doors. As she noted Mrs. Blessing's departure time in the proper column of the appointment book, she wondered, not for the first time, why anybody'd want to put herself through all that poking, prodding, and manipulating. With that new guy, Dante, there seemed to be more screaming than usual, but when the clients emerged, they seemed to be all smiles, so go figure. You know what they say. No pain, no gain.

With a few clicks of a mouse, she transferred information on the late afternoon schedule from the appointment book into the computer, thinking she had the most boring job in the world. Dr. de Vries had promised to give her a raise, but that had been before yesterday, before that wife of his had died and that other woman put herself in charge. Now all bets were off. Raoul had always been the voice of reason around the place. Didn't he put a stop to that foolishness when Claudia had wanted to call the spa attendants "guides" and the treatments they provided "journeys"?

Ginger nibbled at her thumbnail, scraping off the violet polish with her lower front teeth. She made up her mind to talk to de Vries about her future when he came through on his rounds at four-thirty. She looked around and, feeling guilty and a bit reckless, crossed to a console on the wall and turned a dial that silenced the singing whales. Enya, rain forests, and all that inner child crap. She just didn't get it.

She thought about the issue of
People
magazine that waited for her in the top drawer of her desk. Mel Gibson, now that was a subject she understood. But reading magazines on the job was a big no-no. Nevertheless, she had already slid the drawer half open when Howard Fondulac breezed into the room, a cell phone clamped to his ear.

"Can I…?" she began, but he held up an index finger to silence her.

"We have a
deal
, buster, and don't you forget it!" His head bobbed vigorously. "Yeah, sure, sure. You do that." Fondulac punched the End button, then tucked the cell phone into the pocket of his exercise pants.

With a casualness born of long practice, Ginger slid the drawer shut over her
People
magazine. Honestly! First that congressman bursting in with his thugs, and now this jerk. "Cell phones aren't in the spirit of the spa," she reminded him sweetly.

Fondulac leaned over the counter and grinned at her. "I know that, sweetheart. But now that the old witch has cashed in her chips, who's gonna stop me?" He reached out and tapped the name tag pinned to the breast pocket of her uniform. "You?"

Ginger slapped his hand away and scowled. Fondulac was definitely not her type. "Don't mind me," she said. "I just work here." She stood, making herself as tall as possible in her sensible flat shoes, until her eyes were level with his. "How can I help you,
sir
?"

He pointed to his name in the appointment book. "It's Fondulac. I'm supposed to meet Gustav in the weight room."

With a slight nod, Ginger indicated the door on her right. "This is the bathhouse, sir. The exercise center is just through there, down the path a little ways and to the left. If you get to the lake, you've gone too far." Suddenly remembering that Fondulac had once worked with Mel-her Mel-she aimed a thousand-watt smile in his direction. "Gustav will be waiting for you."

Ginger watched thoughtfully until the swinging door had closed over Fondulac's narrow backside, hoping that Gustav would teach that arrogant SOB a thing or two. Gustav had come to Phoenix Spa after a twelve-year gig with the Russian weight-lifting team. She smiled. Gustav, now he was someone she could get cozy with. Or that hunky Detective Toscana who was out on the meadow just then dealing with that delicious congressman's helicopter. She liked her men older. Road tested.

When Ginger first came to Phoenix Spa, all the girls had been goo-goo-gah-gah over Emilio Constanza, but what a waste of time that had turned out to be. She'd actually engineered a date with Emilio, until Jean-Claude, the dietitian, had taken her aside, raised one artfully plucked, bleached-blond eyebrow, and drawled, "Honey, you may be standing on the platform, but that train is not coming in for
you
." Back then her competition had been Steve, the pool man, but lately Emilio had been hanging out with the assistant pastry chef, a short, hairy-chested creep named Geoff. Ginger pulled her magazine out of the drawer and balanced it carefully on her knees where it would be hidden by the desk. Mel, she read, had a wife and seven children. Tried-and-true. She rested her case.

It could have been minutes or hours later when somebody screamed. Ginger dismissed it, assuming that Dante must really be giving his four o'clock client the business. But then the screams came again and again, long and shrill, like somebody twisting a cat's tail, and Ginger realized they were emanating from the exercise center, not from Dante's cubicle.

She deserted her post-another no-no-and followed the sound, flying out the door and down the path, straight-arming her way through a set of swinging double doors and bursting into the weight room. It was that skinny model, Ondine, who was screaming, tugging with scrawny arms on the long, leather straps of the Pilates machine, her narrow face flushed and tearstained. "Oh, help! Help!"

Ginger puffed air out through her lips. Jeez! What with all that screeching you'd think she'd caught a boob in the contraption or something. Except the poor girl didn't have any boobs. Maybe she'd mashed a finger. Wondering where Gustav had gotten to, Ginger rushed forward to assist the model.

Ginger knew all about the Pilates machine. Claudia de Vries had demonstrated it to her when she first came to work at Phoenix Spa. Mrs. de Vries had read about Pilates-pronounced puh-LAH-tease, if you please-in the
Washington Post
and had decided, right away, that her spa should have one. This model was called "The Reformer," which Ginger thought perfectly appropriate for an exercise device that looked like a cross between a hospital cot and an autoerotic rowing machine. It came equipped with straps, stirrups, springs and bars, a brace for the neck and shoulders, and a sliding pad to support the torso.

Howard Fondulac's torso was being supported just fine and so was his head, but someone had fully extended the leather straps, wrapped them around the producer's neck like dog leashes, and tied them off in a macabre bow. When Ginger got close enough to see Fondulac's face, she took hold of Ondine's shoulders and pulled her gently away. "I think we need to call Detective Toscana," Ginger soothed. She folded the sobbing woman into her arms and began rubbing her back vigorously, right where Ondine's shoulder blades stuck out like marble wings.

But Ginger knew by the way the straps bit tightly into Fondulac's neck, by his contorted face, and by his eyes, wide and bulging as if astonished by something written on the ceiling, that there was not much Detective Toscana or anybody else could do. They might have been able to revive that psychic lady yesterday, Ginger thought, but Howard Fondulac, Hollywood producer, was tee-totally dead.

DETECTIVE TOSCANA FELT AS IF HE were in a nightmare. Here he was staring down at another corpse, and he had not the faintest idea who had killed him or why. Howard Fondulac was as dead as Claudia de Vries had been, if not quite as spectacularly, and it was unfortunately just as obviously murder.

How he wished it could have been suicide! That would have tied it all up nice and neat and he could have left this artificial place and these artificial people, and especially their itsy-bitsy food, and gone home to a sane woman who knew how to cook and was handsome and fun and wasn't obsessive about her appearance.

But before he could go anywhere, or have a square meal rather than a flat one, he had to find out who killed Claudia de Vries and Howard Fondulac, and please heaven before anyone else turned up strangled, drowned, or otherwise terminated with extreme prejudice.

The wraithlike Ondine had been shepherded away by Christopher Lund, an irritating cross between a nursemaid and a guard. His relationship with the girl was an interesting example of codependency. Toscana wondered just how much they needed each other as opposed to how much they thought they did. Ondine was unique, at least until someone else became the model du jour. But Lund could be replaced by any other ambitious young man with an eye for a golden chance when he saw it.