Nevada Barr - Naked Came The Phoenix

Caroline reached across the coffee table and laid her hand on his. "I'm so sorry, Raoul. Sorry about Claudia. About Mother…" She took a deep breath. "About everything." She patted his hand, then settled back into the comfortable recesses of the chair. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Nobody can do anything until the police release Claudia's body, and who knows when that will be." He leaned forward, fingers laced together, his elbows resting on his knees. "They're not even sure how she died. Everyone assumes she was strangled." He shuddered. "But what if she was still alive when whoever shoved her face into the mud?"

"Don't even think about it, Raoul. It'll make you crazy."

"I can't eat. I can't sleep." He fixed his eyes, unseeing, on the wallpaper behind her head.

"Raoul…"

He shivered, seemed to snap out of it, then turned to look at Caroline as if seeing her for the first time. He reached across the table, covered her hand with his, and stood up, pulling her up along with him. "Caroline, Caroline! Please forgive me. I've been babbling like a fool."

Caroline thought the man was hardly a fool. Quietly, she extracted her hand and began to stroke the cat.

Raoul seemed unperturbed. "We're supposed to be talking about you."

That's a subject best avoided, Caroline thought. Aloud she said, "Tell me about that young man you sent to find me. Dante. He's booked me in for a deep-tissue massage after lunch."

Raoul beamed. "Splendid! Should do you a world of good. He's quite the expert, Dante. We hired him away from the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. Claudia considered it quite a coup!"

While Raoul pontificated on the solid-gold credentials of Dante, otherwise known as Daniel Shemanski, and oozed on about macrobiotics, homeopathy, and the miracle of colonic hydrotherapy, Caroline inched her way toward the door, hoping to escape. "Join me at my table for lunch?" Raoul inquired.

Caroline felt her stomach knocking against her ribs. If she didn't get something to eat soon, she'd end up looking like Ondine. "Of course," she replied. "Why not?"

Vince Toscana stared at the plate in front of him and considered where to begin. A scallion, its topknot fringed and curled, sprang like an astonished bird from the top of a pink, spongelike cube. A quartet of tiny shrimp flanked the scallion, each nestled in a rose-cut carrot curl set on a nearly transparent cucumber round, sliced thin as a lab specimen. The whole mess was arranged on a bed of limp yuppie lettuce that reminded him of dandelion greens. Vince nudged his salad with his fork. Whatever happened to iceberg lettuce, he wondered. Saw off a hunk, pour on some Catalina dressing straight from the bottle. Now, that was a salad.

Across the table from him Stick Girl had moved one shrimp to the edge of her plate where she was using a knife to cut it into four pieces. One tiny quarter went into her mouth where she chewed it, he swore to God, one hundred times while gazing at nothing in particular, as if all her energy was going into the chewing of that infinitesimal lump of seafood.

Vince noticed her painfully thin arms and winced. Girls that skinny shouldn't wear sleeveless clothes. But sitting just to her right, Christopher Lund was staring at Ondine with more than the usual agent-to-client interest, so Vince thought, well, what the hell did he know? He was just a happily married old fart who was going to die of starvation himself if he didn't solve this case soon.

At a table for four near the kitchen, Raoul de Vries sat with the congressman's wife and that bitchy mother of hers. Vince would have given a Philly cheese steak with everything on it to overhear their conversation. Hilda was a no-go, but perhaps he'd be able to worm something out of Caroline later. As for Raoul, Vince had been avoiding the spa doctor ever since yesterday when the man had caught him practically red-handed in the file room. With only seconds to spare, Vince had stuffed Ondine's folder back into the proper box and managed to cover his presence in the room by swinging into his rambling, rumpled-raincoat, cigar-chomping TV cop routine.

Chewing thoughtfully on a carrot curl, Vince allowed his eyes to wander. In front of the swinging doors that led from the dining room into the kitchen, he noticed King David deep in conversation with Emilio Constanza. Emilio started to say something, but the rocker raised a hand and cut him short. Emilio shrugged and watched King's back as he approached de Vries's table and rested his paw on the back of the empty chair. Almost without looking up, Raoul waved King David away. But it didn't take the rock star long to find another luncheon companion. Soon His Majesty and that actress were sitting at a table by the window with their heads together, jabbering away like long-lost friends. Their four luncheon companions, with painful self-consciousness, dutifully ate their salads and tried not to gawk at the famous pair. So much for Lauren Sullivan's claim that she didn't know any of the other guests.

Vince dragged the tines of his fork across the pink sponge on his plate and tipped the fork onto his tongue. Salmon mousse. The meal disappeared in three bites-shrimp, carrots, cukes and all. Vince chewed on some corrugated box tops that passed for bread in this godforsaken place, then snagged a bunch of grapes from the tray of a passing waiter.

He popped a grape into his mouth and turned, at last, to the girl. "So, Ondine is it?"

The girl looked up from her plate, a bit of cucumber balanced on the end of her fork. "Yes, sir."

"Got a real name, Ondine?"

"Ondine is my real name."

"What's the rest of it?"

She glanced at Lund as if seeking his approval to answer the detective, then turned her high cheekbones on Vince in a full-frontal assault. Suddenly, even without the makeup, Vince saw what hundreds of photographers and millions of magazine readers must have seen-the gamin beauty, the childlike vulnerability of the woman. Her smile was dazzling. "Just Ondine."

Christopher Lund waved a knife. "Like she said, Ondine. Had it changed legal."

Did these people think he was a complete idiot? Vince polished off the last of the grapes and sighed. He considered starting on the floral centerpiece. "Look, miss," he said. "You went to kindergarten, right?"

She nodded.

"So what name did they put on your report card in kindergarten?"

Ondine laid down her fork, propped the knobs she had for elbows on the white tablecloth, and considered his question with a slight smile. "Mary Louise Thorvald."

"Thorvald." He grunted. Probably had some fancy punctuation marks over the vowels. At least she wasn't another goddamn Italian. "What kind of name's Thorvald?"

"Norwegian."

"So, Ms. Thorvald," he began.

"I haven't been a Thorvald for years, Detective. I was a foster child. Changed my last name as often as my hair style." She dabbed at her lips-the only plump thing about her-with her napkin, then folded it carefully and laid it down next to her fork. "I was a bit of a problem, you see. Nobody wanted me for long."

Vince stared at her in silence. What did it matter what her name was, Vince thought. Ondine didn't have the strength to knock off Claudia de Vries. She could hardly lift a fork, for Christ's sake, let alone strangle a one-hundred-thirty-pound woman and drop her into a tub of mud. Claudia would have broken those fragile arms in twenty-seven places.

A waiter balancing a stack of dirty dishes on his left arm materialized at the model's elbow and, as Vince watched incredulously, Ondine waved away her barely finished meal. Vince gazed hungrily at the lump of salmon mousse remaining on the lapis lazuli plate. "Aren't you gonna finish your salad?"

Ondine shoved the plate in his direction with two well-manicured talons. "Knock yourself out, Detective."