Nevada Barr - Naked Came The Phoenix

Listening with one ear, she heard the phone finally fall silent. What could Douglas have said? She would have to be a moron not to comprehend the tones of the girl's voice, the lazy assurance in it, the estrogen-soaked attraction of that breathless soprano.

Now, trotting behind the tight jeans and wide leather belt that strode ahead, she let the waves of angry realization wash over her one by one. Douglas hadn't been home for dinner more than twice a week for the past three months. He'd been on the road or at meetings or in legislative sessions. Someone important needed his advice, or a crucial campaign donor needed a pep talk.

And she, she had been proud that he was so important. She'd closed her eyes and ears and especially her mouth, because Douglas was everything she wanted, her mother said so, everybody said so. Somehow, she must have felt that way, too.

She bit her lip. She'd left her hard-won position in the symphony, left her home in Tennessee, without a second's regret, gladly even.

"Shit!" she muttered. She had known Douglas since high school, but the gawky kid in the glasses had metamorphosed into a sophisticated, charming man who wore Italian suits and knew how to talk to a woman. He had always said he supported her music, even envied her talent, and he went to her performances, but somehow his work had become the primary work. She had allowed it, had actively collaborated in it. She was a fool!

Caroline and King had reached the lake. Mallards rode the calm water, gossiping in low quacks. Haze veiled the trees in the distance. No one seemed to be around, though the parking lot on the other side of the property was full of cars, including the police cars that had been there since dawn. Detective Toscana must still be hard at work in his conference room.

"You know, now that I don't get loaded anymore I find that running works well to take the edge off the bad stuff," King said. "We could go around the lake."

"No." Actually she was so furious at her stupid naivete right now that she felt like going into the lake, not around it, but she wasn't going to tell that to this complete stranger with his Medusa hair and wicked grin. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

"About Claudia. Sit down." He sat on the grass and indicated the place beside him with a long hand, but she stood in front of him, her hands plunged in her pockets, still locked in anger at Douglas and herself. She felt like somebody else, somebody who didn't care about her manners and who wasn't about to be impressed by this stale old rocker with his muscles and big lips.

"Let's get it over with," she said.

"All right." Sprawled out on the grass he wasn't quite as formidable. "I'm going to tell you something I didn't tell the police. And then I want you to tell me something."

"We'll see."

"Hmm. All right. I told you that I was here for a reason, a reason that had nothing to do with massages and mud baths."

"Yes. You said you were here to get something that belonged to you." Slowly, her mind began pulling away from Douglas as she returned to the indelible, shattering fact of Claudia's death.

"Claudia has it-had it. The thing I was looking for. She died before I could get it. I had been looking for it for a long time, and when she called me I was… I took the first plane."

"You knew her before?"

"Quite well. Pre-Raoul. She knew how to reach me and how to get me here on short notice is what I'm saying. When I arrived, Claudia put me off. I had to stick around, and I started talking to people. Actually, people talked to me. I'm used to it. They do that."

"I'll bet they do." She couldn't keep the scorn out of her voice. "What exactly is this mysterious thing you came here to find?"

"Not important to anyone but me," he said, sitting up and folding his legs. His jaw set and the cheekbones popped into prominence. Under all the hype he was an awfully good-looking man, the sort of man who in the past might have even been said to possess beauty. She now saw a certain purity and cleanness of feature, as though the dissolute lifestyle hadn't even touched him. Sitting like that on the grass, talking calmly, his long hair stirring briefly in the morning breeze, he didn't look dissolute; he looked like a Tibetan lama.

"Women like you always hate me," he said. "I guess I seem unpredictable. The funny thing is, you scare me as bad as I scare you. You seem so sure of yourself. Makes me feel fraudulent somehow."

"Women like me," Caroline repeated. "What is a woman like me?"

He looked surprised. "Well, mainstream women. Who go to good women's colleges like Wellesley. Who marry well and do good works, not for pay of course, and have one point six beautiful-"

"Stop!" she interrupted. "You don't know anything about me!" She felt ashamed to hear her life described like that, ashamed that anyone could reduce her to just that. And yet an hour before she had been proud of her marriage, looking forward to beautiful children. What's wrong with what I am ? she thought. Who have I ever harmed? Did Douglas ever love me at all ?

"Sorry," King said. "Whatever I say seems to make you dislike me more. And from what I heard on the phone, you've just had a hell of a shock."

She breathed out. "It's okay. I suppose I've got you hopelessly stereotyped, too."

"I did do it. Bit the head off a bat. It was performance art. I was young and trying to make it any way I could. I'm forty-four now, and I study classical piano, and I contribute to the Humane Society, and I'm a vegetarian. But people still remember me and the band, the bras flying onto the stage, the screaming, the heroin…" He stopped and folded his arms around his knees.

"I'm a cellist," Caroline said.

"So you said."

"I loved it. Love it."

"Fantastic," King said. "Do you have it with you? Your cello? It'd be a kick to hear you play."

"No."

"Why not?"

She almost didn't answer, but he seemed genuinely interested. He was a musician, too. "I gave it up. When I got married. Isn't that a riot? I sold my cello." Thinking about her cello finally brought out all the emotion that had been roiling inside her. Angry, frustrated tears stung her eyes. She felt King's big hand on her arm, and she shivered.

"You were saying that you knew Claudia," she said, pulling her arm away.

There was a pause, as if they were re-collecting themselves.

Caroline realized that she really wanted to spill her guts about her life, to weep on his shoulder and tell him intimate details about her marriage.

People talk to him, she thought. King was staring down at his shoes, which she was happy to notice were not the lizard-skin pointy-toed boots she might have expected but beat-up Adidas sneakers, size fourteen at least.

"Claudia. Yes. When I first met her, she was a nutritional counselor at a very exclusive facility that catered to a lot of very well-known people," King said. "This was about twelve years ago. She did favors, you know? And then she'd come back to you, sometimes years later, and want a favor in return."

"I see," Caroline said. She was thinking about the word he had used earlier. Heroin . Was that what the "facility" treated? Or was it one of Claudia's "favors"?

"She got me to come here to the spa, and when I arrived yesterday I recognized two of the other guests. They had both been at this other… place. I asked them if Claudia had asked them to come, rather than them just happening to sign up. And they both said Claudia had put the pressure on."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Well, Howie. Howard Fondulac, the producer."

She remembered. The man who seemed to be a drinker.

"And Phyllis Talmadge."

"The writer. The New Age lady."

"Right."

"So what?" Caroline said. "What has that got to do with me? Why tell me this?"