Nevada Barr - Naked Came The Phoenix

Caroline stepped closer to Raoul, wanting to speak only to him. " I think you need to call the police," she suggested quietly.

His response was anything but quiet in return. "The police? Absolutely not. Why would I do that? Claudia would kill me. The publicity …" He turned slightly and clapped his hands once . "I want everyone to leave now. This is a private affair. I appreciate your concern, but this is a family matter. If you will all please step outside the room, I'll handle this…"

At that moment, Hilda finally did step forward to speak. "No, Raoul," she said. "I'll handle this."

He turned his handsome, aristocratic face toward her, looking surprised, condescending, even slightly amused. His distress seemed to have given way to brisk management, Caroline observed.

"You'll handle it?" he asked Hilda with insulting politeness. "Is that what you said? Well, thank you, Hilda, I'm sure that's very kind of you, but there's really no need for your assistance. I may be distraught"-he didn't look it, Caroline thought-"but Claudia was my wife, and I am now the owner of this spa, and-"

"No, Raoul, you're not," Hilda announced in the same strong, bossy tone. Behind him, his famous guests gaped at the little scene that was unfolding. Hilda cast a quick glance at her astonished daughter before saying, "You are not the owner of this spa, or at least you are not the majority owner. I am. I am sorry for your loss, Raoul, because I know what it's like to lose a spouse, but I must tell you that you have lost more than you realize. I am the new owner of this business, and I will take charge of everything from this moment on."

"Mother!" Caroline urgently pulled Hilda aside after a furious Raoul de Vries had been ushered out by the Adonis in the swim-suit who now, it appeared, worked for her very own mother. "Is this true, Mom?"

"No, I made it all up," was her mother's sarcastic reply.

"You've got to tell me more than you told them!"

"All right, come over here where he can't hear us." Hilda cast a queenly look at her employee and called out to him, "What is your name, anyway?"

"Emilio."

"Emilio what?"

"Emilio Constanza, madam."

With that accent, Caroline thought, she wouldn't have been surprised to hear him say his name was Winston or Basil or Frederick, something as British as double-decker buses.

Her mother, who had honed her giving-orders skills on Caroline and her father for years, was already proving adept at taking charge and issuing edicts. That was the one part of this incredible turn of events that didn't surprise her daughter in the least. She'd always suspected that her mother must have been Napoleon in a former life.

Hilda ordered King David to call the police immediately, an assignment that he appeared to accept with relish and sardonic amusement. "Great publicity," he murmured, as he sauntered off to accomplish the job.

"Black forces still threaten us all," declared Phyllis V. Talmadge.

"Oh, mind your own business," Hilda snapped.

The psychic departed in a huff of outrage.

Hilda then shooed Christopher Lund and Ondine out of the building as well.

The only guest who hadn't appeared on the scene at all was Howard Fondulac, the producer Caroline suspected of being an alcoholic. So at least there was one guest whom her mother hadn't yet managed to order around or offend.

Now only Emilio remained with them. He stood with his back against the door, instructed by Hilda to keep out everyone except the police.

Caroline was determined to demand answers from this astonishing woman who was her mother. She had already heard Hilda tell Raoul that she herself was the majority stockholder in this privately owned company that was the spa. But what Hilda hadn't answered yet to anybody's satisfaction was, "How? Why? Mother!"

Hilda smiled in a satisfied, superior way. "Claudia and Raoul always thought their benefactor-their majority owner-was a wealthy attorney in Atlanta."

By the door, Emilio looked openly interested in this.

"But it wasn't? Was it you and Dad?"

"Not your father, dear, just me. It was my secret little investment that I made long ago with money your father gave me when I asked him for it."

Of course, Caroline thought, Hamlin Finch gave his wife anything she wanted to try to keep her happy, to try to keep the peace.

"But why did you keep it a secret, Mother? Why didn't anybody know? Claudia was your old roommate, for heaven's sake. Why didn't you tell her?"

"She was my roommate but not my friend."

Hilda glanced at their "guard" and pulled Caroline deeper into the room, away from his listening ears. And then in a few terse sentences, Hilda delivered to Caroline the biggest shock of her life. "Didn't you ever wonder why I stayed at Brown for only one year?"

"Well, no, I-"

"You thought I left to marry your father, didn't you? That was true, as far as it went, but that came later. The real reason I left was to have a baby."

Her daughter gasped, and the man at the door looked at them curiously, though she thought he was surely unable to overhear their conversation.

"My parents knew, and my roommate knew, but nobody else-not even the father-knew about it. I had the baby, and I put it up for adoption-"

"Oh, Mom," Caroline murmured, sympathy overcoming shock. But then she blurted in amazement, "I have a sister? A brother?"

"One of the above," her mother said, with a hard, brittle humor that Caroline suspected hid her real feelings. At least, Caroline hoped it did; she would have hated to think her mother could really be that cold and unloving. "I didn't want to know if it was a girl or a boy. I made them take the baby away without telling me. And then I let your father court and marry me, because I was afraid to go back to college."

"But why?"

Hilda cast a lingering glance at the woman whose mud-covered body still lay on the tile floor. "Because she said she would tell everyone what I had done. She hated me, she was jealous of me, and she didn't want me ever to return to school. I was afraid of her after that, always expecting her to divulge my secret someday. And then one day years later she called me and said she would tell your father about the baby if I didn't give her enough money to start this spa."

"Oh, Mom!" Caroline tried to clasp her mother in a comforting embrace, but Hilda didn't want it and pushed her away. Still, Caroline whispered, "I'm so sorry."

"Never mind that. The important thing is that I vowed my own revenge on that terrible woman. I began to buy her out, using an attorney, and she never knew it. It took me twenty years, but this year I finally did it. I finally became the majority owner of this place. And now I intend to run it my way." Her mother's smile was cold. "It's the best revenge, Caroline."

The owner of Phoenix Spa was dead.

The new owner was her very own mother.

But her mother was wrong, Caroline thought, even in the shock of the moment. That wasn't the most important thing. Not at all. And it never would be. The most important thing was that all those years ago another baby had been born and then disappeared, perhaps into another family. She has another child! And I have a sister or a brother .

Caroline's heart felt suffused with a warmth that nearly brought her to tears. But she saw at once that her mother wouldn't appreciate any show of emotion or, worse, sentimentality. And then a very unsentimental thought occurred to her like a cold wind that froze the warmth in her heart.

If the police were looking for a good motive for murder, her own mother certainly had one.

DETECTIVE VINCE TOSCANA SURVEYED the scene. A bunch of people who were already too beautiful, standing around a beauty spa that had more marble than the Vatican, and all the people were covered with mud. In fact, they had paid good money to be covered with mud. Vince didn't get it. Back home in Philly, if some knucklehead threw mud on you, you wouldn't pay him for it, you would break his face, no. question. You would have to break his face just to save yours, and you both would be better for it. Vince had learned that lesson from the boys on the corner, which is where he learned every lesson that mattered in life.