Nevada Barr - Naked Came The Phoenix

DETECTIVE TOSCANA FELT AS IF HE were in a nightmare. Here he was staring down at another corpse, and he had not the faintest idea who had killed him or why. Howard Fondulac was as dead as Claudia de Vries had been, if not quite as spectacularly, and it was unfortunately just as obviously murder.

How he wished it could have been suicide! That would have tied it all up nice and neat and he could have left this artificial place and these artificial people, and especially their itsy-bitsy food, and gone home to a sane woman who knew how to cook and was handsome and fun and wasn't obsessive about her appearance.

But before he could go anywhere, or have a square meal rather than a flat one, he had to find out who killed Claudia de Vries and Howard Fondulac, and please heaven before anyone else turned up strangled, drowned, or otherwise terminated with extreme prejudice.

The wraithlike Ondine had been shepherded away by Christopher Lund, an irritating cross between a nursemaid and a guard. His relationship with the girl was an interesting example of codependency. Toscana wondered just how much they needed each other as opposed to how much they thought they did. Ondine was unique, at least until someone else became the model du jour. But Lund could be replaced by any other ambitious young man with an eye for a golden chance when he saw it.

Who made the money, both of them, or only she?

And what was Ondine really doing at Phoenix Spa? Trying to put a few curves onto her bones, so she looked a bit more like a woman? Not on the scraps of rabbit food they fed people here! He didn't know how anyone kept body and soul together. If it had been starvation that killed the two victims, he would not have been surprised, but Howard Fondulac had most definitely had his throat crushed by the leather straps of this infernal machine. It even looked like a contraption designed to torture or kill, invented by the Spanish Inquisition. It was a pity he couldn't use it to get the truth out of someone.

The medical examiner and the crime scene technicians were on their way, but unless there were fingerprints, there was nothing they could tell him that he couldn't see for himself. Since the machine was part of the spa equipment, all the guests could reasonably say they had used it and justify their prints being found on the handles and adjustable parts, so that avenue of evidence seemed closed.

Detective Toscana turned away with a sigh. It was back to interviewing everyone and asking all the same old questions, of comparing the answers to try and spot a lie or, better still, a meaning! A meaning would be good! Lies were a dime a dozen with this bunch.

Caroline Blessing was about the only one who seemed like a real person. She was quite decent, and she looked so wounded. Hardly surprising, considering the death of Claudia de Vries and the discovery of her body, not to mention the shock of learning the truth about her husband. She was a nice little thing who could use a bit of comfort about now. But he would wager a meatball and pepperoni pizza she'd get damn little warmth from her mother!

Ondine stared at Toscana with watery eyes. The poor girl looked like something you put on charity posters to make people give donations. "This could happen to you, too!" sort of thing.

"Why did you go into the gym?" he asked her again. Her frailty made it highly unlikely that she meant to use one of the machines herself. "I'm waiting, Miss, uh, Ondine!"

She lowered her gaze, staring down at her hands on her lap, like a sulky child. "I was looking for Emilio Constanza," she replied.

"What made you think he'd be in the gym?"

"Nothing! It just seemed a good place to look."

"When did you see him last? Had you agreed to meet him someplace?"

"I can't remember when I saw him," she said crossly. "Yesterday or the day before. And no, I hadn't agreed to meet him anywhere."

"Why were you looking for him then?"

She looked up at him with disgust. "Do you really need me to spell it out for you, Detective?" She was waiting, one perfect eyebrow arched enquiringly.

"Humor me," he said. "I've forgotten what it's like to be twenty, and I never knew what it was to be a world-famous model."

She stared at him and gulped air.

He waited.

The expressions crossed her face one after the other: anger, humiliation, fear, confusion, anger again. She settled for self-pity. "No," she agreed soulfully, "and you probably don't have any idea what it's like to be lonely! People want you only because it boosts their egos to be seen with you, or because you can make even the most shapeless clothes look good, or because you can bust your butt selling their lousy rags that people wouldn't touch otherwise! I needed to speak to someone who wasn't looking for what he could get out of me!" She leaned toward him. "I knew Emilio. Well, let's just say he wouldn't want to date me-or any woman."

Toscana thought her words had a ring of truth. "Do you do that often, Miss Ondine, confide your loneliness to the hired help?"

She blushed scarlet, the color rising in a deep wave up her pallid face. She stood up sharply, tipping her chair and almost sending it over.

"Sit down!" he ordered.

She remained standing, but she did not leave.

"All right, suit yourself," he said, sliding back in his own seat. "When did you last see Mr. Fondulac alive?"

She thought about it for so long he was almost certain she was concocting a lie, judging what she could get away with.

"I can't remember," she said at last, looking him straight in the eye. "Maybe breakfast, or I might be confusing it with another day."

He leaned forward suddenly. "Tell me exactly what you saw as you went to the gym. Start from when you left your room. Who did you see, where, and when? Who were they with and what were they doing?"

She started slowly, obediently, like a child reciting a lesson. "Christopher and I had been talking… actually he had been talking, I just listened, or pretended to. He doesn't know the difference. I left him in my cottage and walked down to the edge of the lake. Then I saw that psychic, and I thought I'd quite like to talk to her." She shrugged. "You never know, she might be for real. But actually she was a terrible bore. All she talked about was herself, although how she could do that for fifteen minutes without actually saying a thing, I'll never know."

"You were with her for fifteen minutes?"

"About that. It seemed like longer." She pulled an expression of disgust. "I saw King David going up toward the gym." She was watching his face quite carefully. "Then he came out again within a minute or two…"

"Be more exact! How many minutes?" he demanded. "Two-five-ten?"

She smiled, that slow, dreamy smile with wide eyes that she used for the cameras when she was advertising an exorbitantly expensive perfume that was supposed to have men hurling themselves at your feet. "I'm not any good at time," she said sweetly.

"Try!" He meant to keep his voice level, and failed.

"I can't. It matters too much," she protested. "You're asking me to say something that might cost a man his liberty, even his life!"

An idea flashed across his mind with sudden illumination. "You went to see Howard Fondulac because you're fed up with being a clotheshorse, and you want to be an actress! Howard Fondulac's comeback, and Ondine's first movie!" He grunted. "You'd be good at it."

"Do you think so?" she was very obviously pleased.

"Sure!" he said. "You know how to play all the tunes, and you wouldn't know truth from fantasy if it rose up and bit you!"

She drew in her breath slowly, then let it out again without speaking.

Toscana did not speak either. Did he really think Ondine might have killed Fondulac? Why should she? He needed her far more than she needed him. Unless, of course… Another idea struck him. What if Fondulac had managed to persuade Lauren Sullivan to commit herself to working with him? Then he might have rebuffed Ondine.