Nevada Barr - Naked Came The Phoenix

Caroline leaned over the marble counter in the plush reception area while Ginger, the receptionist and keeper of the master appointment book, helped her select a body lotion, some moisturizer suitable for extra-dry skin, and an assortment of hair care products. Perhaps twenty bottles of various colors, shapes, and sizes, each bearing the spa's distinctive silver label, were lined up along the counter. "I don't know," Caroline said as she studied the label on a bright lavender bottle of lotion. "This one's got coconut oil in it. I hate the smell of coconut oil."

With a well-trained, plastic smile, Ginger plucked the bottle from Caroline's fingers. "That's about it in the body lotion department, Mrs. Blessing. Unless…" Ginger turned, knelt, pulled open a drawer, and began to search through the neat rows of boxes it contained. While the receptionist's back was turned, Caroline reached over the counter and flipped the pages of the appointment book back a day. Reading upside down, she noticed that the facilities had been busy yesterday afternoon about the time Phyllis Talmadge took her nosedive into the lake. Of the names she recognized, Lauren Sullivan and Ondine had been in at one-thirty and two o'clock, respectively, while Howard Fondulac had managed to drag himself over for a reflexology treatment at three. Her mother, to her surprise, had found time to spend the hour from three to four working out on the StairMaster while Christopher Lund was signed up for something, she couldn't decipher what, in the weight room at five.

"Here we are!" Ginger turned to Caroline in triumph, offering her a slender white bottle with some green leaves looking suspiciously like marijuana embossed on the label. "This stuff is wonderful, and not a speck of coconut oil!"

Caroline took the time to read the list of ingredients as carefully as if it were a logic problem on the SATs. Lanolin. Aloe. Hemp. She unscrewed the cap and sniffed, enjoying the unexpectedly light, clean scent. "Yes, this might do quite well."

A few minutes later as she lay on the massage table of softly padded leather, facedown, naked, a sheet lightly covering her legs and buttocks, she found herself thinking about King David. Maybe it was the hemp that reminded her. Caroline had told Detective Toscana about her conversation with the rock star, of course, but why had she failed to mention the key King suspected Claudia of having? In his gruff, big-city way, Toscana had been as kind to her as he knew how, even letting her tag along like Junior Miss Jessica Fletcher while he interviewed Phyllis Talmadge after her near-fatal plunge. She owed him. She should have told Toscana about the key.

Caroline had been massaged before, so she recognized the effleurage when it began: long, gliding strokes of Dante's hands, open against and never losing contact with her skin. He'd prepared her for the deep massage with warm essential oils-marjoram for grief and sandalwood for depression-and even tucked hot oiled stones between her toes. "I feel like such a hedonist," she drawled.

He bent down until he could look directly into her eyes. "And I forbid you to feel guilty about that. This is all about you, you, you."

Caroline prayed that this focus on me, me, me would make her feel important, worthy, loved.

But right then, all she felt was boneless.

As his hands and fingers, skilled as a surgeon's, worked over her traumatized body, she could feel the muscles loosen, the adhesions breaking and falling away. She moaned. Once, as he loosened the contracted muscles along her spine, she screamed. This was normal, he told her. To be expected. As he worked to release the tension in her thighs, Caroline bit her lower lip and tried not to cry out. Was this what childbirth felt like? she wondered. Exquisite agony?

Childbirth. She had hoped to have children. Douglas 's children. Now that would never be, and her biological clock was ticking, ticking, ticking.

But she had a sister somewhere, or a brother! She counted backward to the year her mother was at Brown, 1962 or 1963. Her half-sibling would be thirty-something today. Had they ever met-on the metro, at the library, at a fund-raiser-without realizing the relationship?

She could be sister to the cashier at Bread and Circus, to the mechanic at VOB Volvo, to her stylist at the Toka Salon. Even to Ondine! No, Ondine was too young. But Lauren? Christopher Lund? And how about Dante? As his hands massaged her feet and ankles, she wondered about Dante. It was hard to tell with him; his amber eyes were wise, but his face was unlined and somehow ageless.

In her mellow state, Caroline wasn't sure whether she felt them first or heard them, but she gradually became aware of helicopters chop-chop-chopping overhead.

"Relax!" Dante warned. "Ignore them. It's nothing to us." His hands moved up to her shoulders.

Helicopters! Silly of Raoul to think he could keep the press out of the grounds of Phoenix Spa forever. It had to be the tabloids, she thought dreamily, training their telephoto lenses on the grounds below, hoping to catch Lauren Sullivan without her makeup or Ondine without her clothes. Vultures! She remembered fuzzy photos of a lover sucking on a topless Fergie's toes and knew that the tabloids would pay big bucks for a photograph of Congressman Blessing's wife with another man's hands grasping her upper thighs. Caroline was thankful that she lay indoors beyond the reach of their prying cameras.

As ordered, she ignored the helicopters, and for the next ten minutes she wallowed in forgetfulness. Cocooned, she felt limp, drained. Maybe she'd died.

"Caroline!" Douglas's voice spiraled down to her, as if from the end of a long tunnel. Dante's hands paused, resting lightly against the small of her back. With great effort, Caroline willed her head to rise and turned it toward the door. She stared at her husband with languid eyes.

He filled the doorway. She wondered, vaguely, why he was wearing jeans and a yellow cable-knit sweater instead of his usual three-piece suit. Brice, his pilot and sometime bodyguard, loomed large behind him, and Douglas must have brought other people along, too, because Caroline could hear the receptionist making fruitless stop-you-can't-go-in-there noises.

"Go away, Douglas." She rested her cheek against the soft, terry cloth covering on the table and waved a sluggish arm.

Douglas indicated to Brice that he should wait outside, then closed the door behind him. Caroline mused that Douglas would have liked to get rid of Dante, too, but the masseur's hands began their final assault on the tendons in her neck, and she once again became one with the table.

Douglas seemed to sense the wisdom of keeping his distance. He stood near the door, slim, tall, elegant as always even in his casual attire. Through half-closed eyes, Caroline was pleased to note that the suave self-assurance he showed in front of the television cameras and before his constituents had evaporated. His arms hung at his sides and he repeatedly opened and closed his hands, as if they were cold. "Caroline," he blurted at last, "I need to explain."

"Don't waste your breath, Douglas."

He took a step toward the table. "Honey, it's not what you think!"

Reluctantly, Caroline pulled herself up into a sitting position. She had never felt uncomfortable being naked in front of Douglas before, but now her nakedness embarrassed her. With elaborate care, she gathered the sheet around her, smoothing the fabric over her bare legs and twisting it into a knot at her breast. She skewered him with her eyes. "Congressman Blessing, you are full of crap!"

"Honey…"

"Don't you honey me!"

"But I can explain."

"Okay. So explain this. Eight-by-ten glossies. Dates, times, and places."

Douglas's jaw dropped. "You hired a private investigator?"

"I didn't, Mommie Dearest did." Dante's strong arm steadied her as she slid off the table and hopped to the floor.