Naked Came The Phoenix (21 page)

He blushed dark red, but she wondered if it was shame for having done such things, or embarrassment at his own stupidity in having been caught and recorded for posterity, in particular for the newspapers and the divorce court. She was afraid it was the latter. She might have forgiven him had it been the first.

His eyes were hard and bright, far colder than the sun glittering off the blue lake. "I intend to deal with that," he said between his teeth.

"Oh yes? How?" she jeered. Anger was easier than tears. Self-pity would destroy her. It opened up like a great hungry pit in front of her, filled with the death of her dreams, the most tender and vulnerable and precious dreams she had ever known. That was a kind of murder as well. She would have to learn to hate him for that! The deceit of it, the deliberate cruelty.

He was impatient. "Well, for a start, you are going to forget about the whole incident and behave like the loving, loyal, and admiring wife you were last week. You are going to-"

"I am not! I am going to divorce you," she shouted. "And if you think for half a second that you are ever going to touch me again, you're out of your mind!"

His eyes widened. "My dear girl, I don't give a damn whether I touch you again or not! As no doubt you are now aware, I can take my pick of any number of very beautiful and willing women."

"Don't be so squeamish, Douglas. There are names for women who are willing to be so obliging. And usually you have to pay them for it!"

He gave an abrupt little laugh. "I've got dozens of friends who'd understand me very well; they can't afford not to!" He shook his head, and his voice was brittle. "No, Caroline, you'll play the loyal and trusting wife in public, whatever we do in private, because I intend to get into the Senate one day, possibly even the White House. I have no intention whatever of allowing you to parade your small-town outraged virtue to stop me."

She was aware of a sense of danger, and yet she couldn't help herself from going on. "Small-town virtue, as you put it, has stopped more powerful men than you, men who were better at not getting caught!" she said witheringly. "Good heavens, Douglas, even if your 'friends' in power don't care about your appetites, surely they have enough sense to care about your crass clumsiness at getting caught! A villain is one thing, a fool is quite another!"

She felt the satisfaction run warm all through her at the fury in his face and the knowledge that out here where anyone might see them, including any wandering reporters, he dared not even let the rage show in his body language, much less actually hit her. She very nearly smiled.

"Talking about getting caught," he said deliberately, his lips thin. "A bit careless of your mother getting 'caught' when she was at college, wasn't it? Not like the Hilda Finch I know. But of course she wasn't Finch then, was she!"

Caroline felt the blood drain from her face. How could he know that? For a moment she was dizzy, the sunlight was glaring, blinding her.

"Don't tell me you didn't know?" Douglas's voice came from far away. "But of course you know, or what I'm saying wouldn't mean anything to you, would it? And you wouldn't look like you'd just seen ghosts walking."

"How could you?" she demanded. "She would never have told you! She doesn't trust you and never did!" She was challenging him as if the fact that he shouldn't know meant that he didn't.

What did it matter how he knew? He did, that was the only ugly, horrible reality that counted.

"Claudia de Vries, darling! Who else?" Now he was mocking her. "Really, I'd have thought you could have worked that out for yourself. You're a disappointment, Caroline. Not only are you a prude and childishly unrealistic, but you're slow-witted as well. Don't make me spell all this out for you. Just acknowledge the facts and behave like a well-bred congressional wife."

"Or what?" She wanted to sound defiant, brave, and above all confident. She only sounded panicky and defensive.

"Oh, please!" he said wearily. "Do we have to play this all out to the bitter end?"

Caroline's mind raced, horrible possibilities crowding one after another. Would Douglas try to blackmail her mother as Claudia de Vries had? What would he do now? Did he merely know about the child because Claudia had told him, or could he prove it?

Anyway, these days who cared? Quite possibly it would simply add a little mystery and glamour to what had previously seemed a very staid and shallow, boring life. Her father was not around anymore to be hurt or embarrassed about it. Who was socially ruined because of a youthful tragedy these days?

And there was the other question she would like to have avoided ever asking. How much did she care, anyway? She and her mother had never been close, and the few rare confidences over the last two days did nothing to undo a lifetime's pattern. Would she live the rest of her own life tied to Douglas, living out a hideous charade of a marriage, to save her mother from possible embarrassment?

No, definitely not. Hilda could clean up her own mess.

She put her hands on her hips. "I suppose you also took Claudia's proof of this event?" she said with raised eyebrows.

"What do you think I'm going to do, blackmail your mother?" he said in surprise.

"Aren't you?" she countered. "Or, more exactly, blackmail me?"

"Hardly over that!" He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "At least, not exactly," he amended. "Who cares if Hilda Finch had an illegitimate child thirty-something years ago? It would hardly be headline news."

Caroline was startled how deeply she resented his casual dismissal of her mother. It stung her pride, and she found herself instantly defensive, which was very odd. If ever there was anyone completely capable of looking after herself, it was her mother. But still she retaliated. "Not like a congressman caught on camera in what I imagine were some
fascinating
poses!" she said. "That would be news, illustrated news at that. A little difficult to deny… darling!"

His face was white, his eyes glittering. "I think there's really only one person interested in your mother's indiscretion, but he would be very interested indeed, especially when he knows that it was Claudia de Vries who told me."

"My… my half brother? I gather it is a brother, because you said 'he'?" she asked, finding herself breathless, her heart pounding.

"No, fool!" he said tartly. "Detective Toscana!"

It was all hideously clear now. She saw it in the triumph in his face, the leering knowledge that he had terrified her, and she could not conceal it.

"Rather a good motive for murder, don't you think?" he went on calmly. "All the years of hate, blackmail, power. Not to mention the little matter of inheriting all this rather lucrative little business?" He gestured widely around him at the buildings, the lake, the trees and flowers, the cottages in the distance. "A lot of people have killed for a great deal less, never mind greedy women like your mother, who have endured years of humiliation and fear of exposure."

Caroline's mouth was dry, her heart pounding so violently she was sure she must be shaking with it.

"You… wouldn't…"

"No, of course not," he agreed, leaning a little toward her. "I'll help you conceal your mother's crime,
darling
." He emphasized the last word sarcastically. "Just as you'll help me conceal my little affairs… won't you!"

She stared at him. "I… I can't! I told you before, I haven't got the pictures anymore. Someone took them!"

"Oh, please! Can't you do better than that?" His tone was one of exquisite derision.

"It's the truth!" she said desperately. "I haven't got them! Douglas, I swear it!"

He looked as if she had hit him. He stood motionless for several seconds, fear and rage equal in his face. Then he mastered himself again and stared at her venomously. "Then you'd better find them, hadn't you? Or your mother is going to be arrested for murder, and this time it'll stick!"

"I… but…" she started.

"Find them!" He turned on his heel and marched away, his back stiff, his shoulders rigid, feet almost silent on the grass.

She was amazed how intensely it mattered to her. She never even considered not trying to save her mother. The pain that had existed between them was irrelevant. All she could think of was the cello, as if that one act of kindness had obliterated all the quarrels, the criticisms, and the loneliness. She must find the photographs and give them to Douglas-whatever it cost. She'd deal with leaving him afterward, after Detective Toscana had found out who had killed Claudia and Howard Fondulac. Or if Toscana didn't, then she would find out herself… and prove it. Damn Douglas. Damn him, damn him, damn him!

CAROLINE'S EARS WERE RED WITH anger, and the blood pulsed through her temples with such force that she thought her brain might explode, shooting shrapnel out through her eyes. As long as some of it went through Douglas's heart, she didn't much care.

Detective Toscana was standing on the patio by the swimming pool, a glass of something brown in his hand. He waved through the pool fence at her, but she ignored him, stalking past with her head down, eyes firmly on the ground. The image of him, peering through the bars of the fence like a big brown bear in the zoo, stuck in her mind. That's how he'd like to see her mother, no doubt-behind bars, waiting for her daily mammal biscuit!

Out of sight of the detective, she hesitated. Her mother would be in their cabin, and she wasn't in any mood for company, no matter how sympathetic. She didn't think she could stand even the soothingly professional attentions of the spa staff.

What she did want was her cello-a stormy workout with Zeller to exorcise the worst of her fury, then half an hour of Bach. JSB could calm the most aggravated spirit with the beauty of his singing logic.

The fingers of her left hand twitched, aching for the throb of the metal strings, the solid mellow wood of the cello's neck. But the cello was in the cabin with her mother, and she wasn't fit to be near another human being right now. She glanced around, desperate for a refuge, someplace out of sight of everyone.

Wind stirred in the branches of the trees behind the main building, bringing her the sharp, clean scent of pine resin, a faint olfactory echo of her cello. Mind made up, she turned toward one of the paths that led beyond the compound and marched off, into the beckoning green depths of the wood.

"I'd say that lady isn't very happy with her husband, eh, Detective?" Emilio Constanza rocked back and forth
on
the soles of his spotless white sneakers, tray balanced negligently on one hand. "What do you figure all that was about?" He nodded toward the scene of the recent argument, to which he and the detective-to say nothing of the maintenance man cleaning the pool filter-had been unwitting-but certainly not uninterested-observers.

"You got me." The sun was hot, and the metal bars of the pool fence were warm on Toscana's face; he pulled back and took a deep, meditative sip of the iced tea Emilio had brought him. "Ooh, that's good."

The waiter smiled. "Special recipe. Phoenix sun tea, brewed with orange pekoe, green tea, ginseng, and ginkgo. A dash of papaya enzyme, a drop of kiwi nectar, and Bob's your uncle!"

"You don't say?" Toscana squinted into the depths of his glass, sniffed suspiciously, then shook his head. He nodded toward the lawn where Douglas Blessing still stood, spine stiff with anger. His aide had popped up out of nowhere-that lady reminded him of some kind of mosquito, the way she was always appearing out of nowhere, whining in somebody's ear-but Blessing was ignoring her, fists clenched by his sides as she murmured urgently to him, one hand on his rigid arm. Toscana drained his glass and set it back on Emilio's tray.

"Tell you what, pal. Why don't you go tell the congressman I'd like to see him for a minute? Bring some more a that up to the office, huh, maybe bring the pitcher and two clean glasses?"

"
Clean
glasses," Constanza said gravely, inclining his dark shock of hair. "I'll make a special note of that, sir."

Karen McElroy was searching through the leaves of the planter full of English ivy that lined the wall of her tiny manicurist's studio, when she saw a pale face rise up behind the glass-brick wall above the ivy. Big eyes bulged in a ghostly face surrounded by something that looked like water weed, and the mouth opened in a soundless fishy gape.

"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 pony-tail, 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.