Naked Came The Phoenix

Chapter Seven

THE DETECTIVE HAD TURNED THE conference area into a makeshift squad room. Several maps of the spa had been tacked onto the back wall, along with a half dozen postmortem photographs of poor Claudia. Loose scraps of paper had been posted scattershot, certain items underlined in red, but Caroline couldn't read the words from where she was standing. Mounds of what looked to be notes and official documents hid the top of the circular black table he was working on. He smiled at her with watery eyes, pointed to an empty chair. But Caroline elected to stand.

"You actually revived her," Caroline stated. She was in awe. He had shown himself to be a man of action. Passivity, the mainstay of her personality, was probably not in his vocabulary.

Toscana shrugged. Revived her? Not exactly. But he did get the old lady breathing. The psychic was still unconscious.

Caroline said, "Do you think she'll make it?"

Again, Toscana was less than forthcoming. "I'm not a doctor, so I can't answer that. Is something on your mind, Mrs. Blessing?"

Caroline couldn't get the words out. Her eyes were fixed on the grisly photos of Claudia, face caked in mud, a sick parody of a vaudeville minstrel.

Toscana blew out air. "Your mother isn't here, if that's what you wanted to know."

"Did you arrest her?"

The detective tried to keep his face flat, but it didn't work. He must have thrown her a highly nasty look because the young woman recoiled, taking several steps backward and bumping into the wall. He said, "No, I did not arrest her. I detained her. I took her down to the precinct to have her questioned officially. Which is what I should have done with the lot of you when I was originally called down."

"Why didn't you?"

"The spa's a cash cow. Our city's revenue base is limited, if you haven't noticed. But I can't operate like this, tippy-toeing around a bunch of…" He caught himself, bit his lip to hold back venom. Not good to lose it in front of a suspect. "What can I do for you?"

"Does my mother have a lawyer?" Caroline asked.

"Several of them."

"Your lawyers or her lawyers?"

"I think she has both."

Caroline tapped her toe. "Can I talk to you, Detective Toscana?"

Again, he pointed to the empty chair. She sat down on the opposite side of the table, taking him in. No-nonsense eyes peered out of a weathered face. Stubby fingers. She noticed them when he lit a cigarette. He saw her staring at him.

"What?"

"Smoking isn't allowed here," Caroline said weakly.

He took in a deep drag, then blew it out, away from her face. "If it bothers you, I'll put it out. But if you're afraid of my breaking some rule, don't worry about it."

"It doesn't bother me."

Vince was surprised. "No?"

"No." Caroline looked at her lap. "My father… he used to smoke cigars until my mother finally won that battle. Even so, every time she went away, he used to sneak a few. Before she came home, we'd spend hours trying to fan out the smell." She chuckled as her eyes swelled up with water. "It never worked. Mom always knew."

"I can believe that." He raised his brow. "You talk about your dad like he's…"

"He is."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I."

A voice with a drawl interjected. "Where should I put this, sir?"

Caroline looked up. A handsome man in his thirties was carrying a coffee maker, a can of MJB coffee, a jar of coffee whitener, a box of sugar, and some thermal cups. He had dark hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a wedding ring. She twirled her own band around her finger, playing with the mockery.

Toscana said, "Anywhere you can plug it in, Mikey." He looked at Caroline, then at his man. "Officer LeMat, this is Caroline Blessing, wife of Douglas Blessing."

"The congressman?"

"The congressman," Toscana confirmed. "That means we gotta be nice to her."

Caroline said, "You're being condescending."

"Not possible," Toscana replied. "You folks own the monopoly on condescension. If it weren't for that woman over there"-he pointed to the photos of Claudia-"I'd say you all were funnin' with me. You know, let's have some yucks over the Southern crackers out here."

"You're not from the South."

"No, I'm not." He tossed her a bitter smile. "I'm from Philly, Mrs. Blessing. But I can assure you and your gang of high rollers that Virginia takes murder very seriously."

"No one thinks this is funny," Caroline said.

"Coulda fooled me," Vince said. "Mikey, you mind making up a pot of coffee?" He paused. "You want a cup, Mrs. Blessing? Or is caffeine against the rules, too?"

"Probably."

"Would you like a cup? Yes or no?"

"Yes."

"Make the entire pot, Mikey."

LeMat put on the pot and left. The room fell quiet, the only sounds coming from the gurgle of the coffee maker. Caroline licked her lips. "Any idea who pushed poor Ms. Talmadge into the pond?"

"Who said she was pushed?" Toscana answered.

"I just assumed…" Caroline stared at him. "Are you saying she tripped and fell in?"

"It's a possibility."

"But no one heard her scream."

"And if she was pushed in, you don't think she might have screamed?"

Caroline was silent.

Toscana said, "Do you know anything about the woman?"

"Not a clue."

"Nothing about her personal habits?"

"Meaning?"

"Did she drink?"

Caroline absorbed his words. "You think she was drunk?"

"Possibly. Wearing heavy shoes and being a bit tipsy, she could have lost her balance. If she was more than a little tipsy, her reaction time might have been off its prime, gone under before she realized she needed to do something. She might have tried to scream, but water's a pretty effective muffler."

"Did you smell alcohol on her breath when you revived her?"

"No."

"Then she couldn't have been that drunk."

Toscana sat back in his seat. "Not necessarily. What I smelled was lots of perfume and lots of mint in her mouth, like she was embalmed in wintergreen. You drink and you don't want anybody to know, what do you do?"

"You suck on a breath mint," Caroline answered.

Toscana nodded. "There you go."

"So her drowning was an accident?"

"I didn't say that. I'll know more once she's conscious-if she regains consciousness." The detective evaluated his subject. "Why are you here, Mrs. Blessing, and without a lawyer? Suddenly stricken with a bad case of conscience?"

"I thought that maybe…" Caroline looked at the ceiling. "You know, if we pull together some stuff… information… maybe we can solve this thing together."

Toscana smiled. "Now that's a great ideal Do you want a thirty-two or a Beretta semiautomatic, Annie Oakley?"

Caroline was silent.

Toscana sighed. "Look, Mrs. Blessing. You seem like a sweet kid. A real thin one, too. Why on earth are you here?"

"For my mother's sake. After Dad died, my husband…" She almost choked on the word. "We thought the trip might help get Mother through a difficult time."

"That's nice." He smiled. "That's really nice."

"The whole thing has been a disaster!" Caroline got up and began to pace. "Since my mother is the majority shareholder in this place, we both have a vested interest in solving this mess."

"Did she send you here?"

"No, she didn't. I actually came here on my own. I am capable of independent thought."

"I don't doubt it."

But he did doubt it. Caroline could see it in his eyes. "I want this to work for her. For her sake as well as my own. When she's happy, she leaves me alone."

"So what are you holding back?"

"If I tell you everything I know, will you tell me what you know?"

"Probably not. But give it your best shot… ah, the pizza." He shoved some papers off the table and onto the floor. "Put it right here, Mikey. Take a piece for yourself."

"Pizza!" Caroline cried out.

Toscana regarded her face. The woman needed a life. He slid the box over to her. "Knock yourself out."

Her eyes traveled to the postmortem snapshots. "I'm too sick to eat it now."

"Suit yourself." Toscana opened the box, took out two wedges and made himself a sandwich. "Great stuff! I can almost taste home in every bite. Go on. Give it a shot."

Dutifully, Caroline liberated a piece from the box and set it down on a napkin. She began to pick at the cheese.

"So…" Toscana swallowed and wiped his mouth. "What do you know?"

"If I talk freely, will it come back to haunt me?"

"Maybe. But if you don't talk, your conscience will most definitely haunt you."

Caroline dipped her finger into the melange of sauce, oil, and cheese and licked the tip with her tongue. "Claudia de Vries was arguing with someone the night before she was murdered."

Toscana picked up a pencil. "How do you know?"

"I overheard them fighting in the middle of the night." She perched on the edge of her chair and began the slow recount of what had happened when she had overheard Claudia talking to someone. How she had been hiding in the bushes, crouched like a cornered animal. Maybe she had been the lucky one.

Toscana regarded her with confusion. "Why were you hiding?"

Caroline felt her face go hot. "It's embarrassing."

"A tryst?"

"With a bread stick!" She looked up at him. "I had raided the kitchen for food! I was on my way back to my room when I heard someone behind me. So I hid and…" She let the words die out.

Toscana cocked his head. "You got an eating disorder?"

"No, I just didn't have enough for dinner. The portions here are very skimpy."

"And how much did you pay to stay here?"

"Would you like me to continue?"

"Please." He finished off his pizza and started on another slice.

Caroline picked off a slice of pepperoni and nibbled on it.

"Actually, I don't have much more to say. Claudia was having a vitriolic argument with somebody. It scared me, the anger and nastiness."

"But you don't know who it was?"

"No."

"Did the voice have an accent?"

"Not that I could hear… Oh, you're thinking of Thong Guy, the Adonis who pulled Claudia out of the mud. What's his name?"

"Emilio Constanza. He was there when you and your mother entered the bathhouse. Which means he was possibly the last person around to see Mrs. de Vries alive. He's also being questioned as we speak. You all are going to be grilled. Extensively. So if you have something to tell, it's better for you if you get it out early."

The man was making it difficult. His off-putting manner only strengthened her resolve to do the right thing, whatever that meant. Coolly, she said, "For your information, I also found an empty bottle of Jack Daniel's in the brush. I know that Mr. Fondulac confessed to you that he drank some Jack Daniel's last night."

"Who told you that?"

"Mother."

"Go on."

"I know that drinking is against Claudia's rules. I was under the impression that Mr. Fondulac came here to dry out. Mother told me that Claudia had personally searched Mr. Fondulac's baggage-just to make sure he wasn't sneaking in any contraband. If that were the case, where did he get the bottle?"

"Alcoholics are wonderfully adept at hiding things."

"You've implied that Ms. Talmadge might also imbibe. So I'm suggesting that maybe the bottle was hers." For reasons she didn't understand, she refrained from telling Toscana about Phyllis and Fondulac having been in rehab with King David.

"Jack Daniel's is a popular brand of whiskey."

"A more likely explanation is that they had been drinking together."

Toscana wrote it down in his notes. "What else do you want to tell me?"

Caroline hesitated. "I know that my mother thinks Claudia was skimming off profits through Ondine."

"What do you think?"

"I don't know! I'm just a simple musician, an ex-musician at that."

"It's impossible to be an ex-musician. Just ask an old geezer like King David. Good Lord, his face looks like a truck ran over it. He is way past the prime meat rating. Some people just can't get past high school." Toscana drank his coffee. "What do you think of him?"

Caroline felt heat in her face. Toscana must have picked up on it and that's why he was questioning her about him. "He's a jerk."

"What specifically makes him a jerk in your opinion?"

"For starters, he's been bothering me, scaring me."

"Oh?" Toscana sat up. "Tell me about it."

"He told me he came here to look for something. He was certain that Claudia had it. Now, for some reason, he thinks I have it."

"But you don't know what he's talking about."

"No," Caroline lied.

"Very mysterious, Mrs. Blessing. And vague enough that I can't pin you down on anything. Why should I believe this ambiguous tale?"

"Why shouldn't I be believed?"

"Because, Mrs. Blessing, your mother has more than a little motivation for wanting Claudia de Vries dead, starting with the fact that Mom now owns the majority stake in the spa."

"Then why didn't you arrest her when she wanted to be arrested?"

"Because, silly old me, I still honor a thing called due process." As far as Toscana was concerned, Hilda's little drama was nothing but a ruse. "If there's something you want to tell me, please speak up. You want to help your mom, don't you?"

"Of course," Caroline insisted. "But I've told you everything I know." She hoped her words rang true to his ears.

"Then let me ask you this. Why are you so intent on setting up David King-"

"King David-"

"First, you tell me about a mysterious voice arguing with Ms. de Vries. Then you tell me about David King looking for some unknown thing-"

"King David-"

"Whatever."

There was something about her that reeked of honesty, or more specially, naivete. For one thing, she was a congressional wife, talking without a lawyer. "Maybe King David was making a move on you?"

"Perhaps," Caroline admitted. "But when that didn't work, he became aggressive, insisting that I hand over something that I don't have and don't even know what it is." Again, her eyes watered. "Now I don't know what to think."

Toscana sighed inwardly as he watched her face. This wasn't just a simple "I'm scared" reaction. This was "I'm seeing my life pass before me and I don't like what I see."

No doubt she was weeping for her deceased father, for her overbearing mother. And judging from the way she was playing with her ring, pulling it on and off her finger, she was in the process of making some drastic decisions in the matrimonial department.

Toscana said, "You got a package today, Mrs. Blessing. Mind if I ask you what was in it?"

Caroline dabbed her eyes. "A cello. My own old cello, actually. My mother traced down the person I sold it to and bought it back for me. It's in my room. Go take a look if you don't believe me."

"So you're a classical musician."

"Once upon a life, I was even symphony caliber."

"What happened?"

"I got married."

"And…"

"And it's a boring story." She smiled with wet eyes. "The main thing is that my mother actually did something selfless for me. Hunting down the instrument. That took effort. My mother made an effort to do something lovely for me."

"And that's unusual?"

"Extremely unusual."

"What's her usual style? Hiring a PI to take dirty pictures of your husband with other women?"

The shock registered instantly. Caroline snapped her head upward. "That was totally uncalled for."

Toscana regarded the look on the young woman's face. It made him shrink. It was one thing to be tough, another thing to be cruel. "That was terrible. I'm sorry."

She stood up. "I think we're done."

Toscana said, "If that's what you want. Again, I'm sorry."

"No, you're not. I'm sure this fits nicely into your stereotype of me-a stupid, innocent girl getting shafted by her husband."

"You're not stupid, Mrs. Blessing. Furthermore, you don't have to be stupid to be shafted. I nearly lost my entire IRA on a stock tip. It almost cost me my wife as well. That's why I'm here, to placate my spouse. Up to me, I would have never left Philadelphia. But you do things to keep the marriage going. You compromise."

"Up to a point!" Caroline said.

"Up to a point," Toscana repeated. "May I ask how long you have known about your husband's indiscretions?"

Tears pressed onto her cheeks. "Since this morning. When my mother gave me the envelope."

Toscana shook his head. "Why would she do that? Shove those pictures in your face. It seems to me that she wants you as miserable as she is-"

"Oh please! Haven't you said enough things for one day?"

"Probably."

Caroline glared at him. "How'd you find out about them?"

"I saw them when I visited your cabin."

Once again, Caroline was outraged. "You must have been snooping, then. I hid the packet quite well."

"Hid it?" Toscana was confused. "You left the pictures out in the open-"

"I did not! I should report you."

He offered her his cell phone. "You want the number of my superior?"

She pushed the phone away. "If you even think of using those pictures in your investigation-"

"Mrs. Blessing, even if I had found a smoking gun, I couldn't admit it into evidence. You've gotta know that I broke the law by entering your room without permission. I know it's not nice, but it's not murder."

"You don't seem bothered by prying into my personal effects!"

"The pictures were left in plain view, Mrs. Blessing."

"I didn't even open the envelope." She threw daggers at him with her eyes. "You opened the envelope, didn't you? You found the envelope, opened it, and left the pictures out for all to see!"

Toscana said, "Mrs. Blessing, I would never open sealed mail. That's a felony. You can sit here and protest your little heart out, but I didn't find your hiding place. Which means that someone else busted into your room. So why don't we cool down and try to figure out who would go through your things. Please. Let's start over. When did you hide the envelope?"

She thought about it. "I'd say about three hours ago."

"Okay. I went into your cabin right after I revived Ms. Talmadge. Since everyone was at the pond-out in the open-I took the opportunity to poke around. That was around two hours ago. So someone else was in your room between two and three hours ago. First person who comes to my mind is your mom. She certainly has easy access to your room."

"Except that she was the one who gave me the envelope and told me to hide it," Caroline said.

Toscana flipped a page on his notepad. "Maybe that's what she told you. But maybe she wanted to make it public so there would be no turning back."

"No, you have it wrong. She told me not to expose the bastard!"

"And if she had asked you to expose the bastard, would you have done it?"

Caroline was silent.

"So maybe she thought she was helping you."

"It wasn't Mother. She'd be mortified if Douglas's infidelities came out. It would sully her reputation."

"Why would it hurt her? Gossip would be great for the spa's business."

"It wasn't Mom!" Caroline insisted. "It had to have been King David. He did this to warn me that I should give him what he wants or else he'll have the photos published."

"If he was going to use the photos for nefarious purposes, I'd think he'd steal them, then go to your husband for blackmail."

"Well, someone opened my mail! Someone invaded my private life… such as it is." She looked at the remnants of the pizza. The cheese had leaked enough axle grease to oil down an auto lot. Just looking at it made her sick. She wanted to go home. Except where was home now? Certainly not with Douglas. And she wouldn't go back with Mother. "When can we leave this godawful place?"

"I'm taking you all down to the station, one by one."

"How long will it take?"

"Not too long," Toscana lied. "Why don't you… I don't know. Take a nice long walk. But be careful, and don't go too far."

She glared at him.

"Okay," Toscana admitted. "A walk is a poor idea. Your mom went to all this trouble to get your cello back. Why don't you, you know, noodle around with the thing until it's your turn to be officially questioned?"

Toscana's cellular chimed. He opened the latch. "Detective Toscana."

Caroline saw his eyes grow wide.

"Okay, I'll be right down!" Toscana pressed the end button. "Psychic Beauty has awoken, thank God."

"I want to come, too!"

"This is official business, Mrs. Blessing."

"And I'm married to an official of the state of Tennessee… for the time being." Caroline stood up tall. "Don't make me pull rank!" But a moment later, she crumpled and pleaded to him with baleful eyes. "Please get me out of here, Detective!"

What could it hurt? Having a congressman's wife with you was good for the brass. He shrugged. "The only reason I'm agreeing to this is I don't want problems with the politicians."

"Fine. Neither do I!"

"Don't get in my way. Don't say anything, especially about what we were discussing!"

"I understand." Caroline let go with a genuine smile. "You actually trust me, don't you?"

"Yeah," Toscana sneered. "I trust you. I also trusted my brother when he gave me that stock tip-"

"Your brother almost lost you your entire IRA?"

"Ain't that always the case?" Toscana said, putting on his coat. "Family. You can't live without 'em, but you sure can dream."