Nevada Barr - Naked Came The Phoenix

He looked up, startled by the sudden materialization of a great deal of smooth, exquisitely tanned male skin in front of his face. Vince had seen this particular epidermis a number of times now, but he found it no less disconcerting than the first time. The man was just too beautiful to be real.

"Detective, we need to talk," the bodybuilder in the tiny shorts began, but Vince was already looking past him at the two backs he didn't want to disappear on him.

"It'll have to be a little later, Mr. Constanza. I'm kinda busy just now." Vince glanced back to be sure that his uniformed officers were ready, then raised his voice to call, "Er, Mrs. Finch, Dr. de Vries? Could you two come with me for a minute?"

Caroline was just thinking that the bench, though scenic, was hardly the ideal place for a lengthy session of revelations and self-recriminations when she happened to glance over her husband's shoulder at a scene straight out of the evening news. In fact, seeing it enacted on the stage of Phoenix's bucolic landscape made it seem even less real than the televised version: the stereotyped shot of the handcuffed suspect, shoulders hunched against distant camera lenses, a cop's hand steering him by the elbow toward a police cruiser. The bizarre unreality of the scene only grew as she recognized the suspect as Raoul de Vries. And then she saw his companion, also handcuffed, also bent over, also urged forward by uniformed figures. Caroline shot to her feet, cutting dead the abject apologies of the man at her side. Her mother was being arrested.

The minutes that followed later became somewhat confused in Caroline's mind. Douglas had held her back, and Caroline had raged at him, but even as she struggled against his arms and pounded ineffectually at his chest, a part of her had been quite aware that if she truly wanted to go to her mother's rescue, she had only to knee her husband hard and she would be free.

That she had not done so, Caroline reflected later that evening as she pushed around the remaining cake crumbs on her lapis-and-gold dessert plate, indicated both that she had not actually wanted to go to Hilda, and that some part of her had begun to anticipate a future need for Doug's more delicate plumbing. Torn between her mother's version of the truth and her husband's, Caroline's body had known which way her mind, and her heart, had chosen. She had not forced her way to freedom.

Still, there was a heavy load of apprehension and guilt and fury and despair packed into those confusing minutes on the lakeside. Which made it all the odder that, looking back, Caroline's most vivid memory of the entire afternoon was not of the shiny handcuffs riding above her mother's expensively manicured hands; nor of the prisoner's defiant protest at the door to the police car, Hilda irritably shaking off the protective constabulary hand that threatened to mess her coiffure; it was not even the memory of Douglas's strong, satisfying, and-yes-dependable arms encircling her, keeping her from harm.

The image that had stayed with her the rest of the day and through the substantial Italian dinner that followed, an image as crisp and clear as the late afternoon sunlight, was the brief communion of the two people left behind when the arresting officers moved away. The two most unmistakable figures in the whole gathering of strong personalities had stood shoulder to shoulder, waiting until the cars holding Hilda Finch and Raoul de Vries left the compound. And then Caroline, with a blink of astonishment, had watched King David turn and seen Emilio Constanza's arms go around the green-haired rock star, comforting him just as Douglas had been comforting her.

However, not even astonishment could last long, not in the wake of the past few days. Caroline had nestled the side of her face into her husband's shoulder, gazing across the corner of lake at the other pair, feeling nothing but a kind of mindless pleasure at the simple sanity of two humans holding one another.

With that, a third figure had come out of one of the cottages, moving with a quiet, self-controlled dignity that seemed to radiate pain. Lauren Sullivan, her coppery hair blazing as if to deny the soul's aches, had approached the two men. Their arms parted as they gathered her in, and the three of them had stood locked together, oblivious to the world.

Caroline had not seen what broke up the circle, because Douglas had decided the time had come to move on, and when she'd glanced across the water, King David and Lauren had been going slowly toward the cabins, his big hand resting across the nape of the actress's neck. Emilio had remained behind, deep in conversation with Vince Toscana, who had suddenly reared back, seized by some strong emotion resembling outrage. The detective had snatched something that resembled a small book out of Emilio's hand, thrown it to the ground, and stalked away. Constanza had picked the object up, pushed it into a pocket, then followed on Toscana's heels.

"I hate to be prosaic, sweetheart," Douglas had said at that point, "and I know we have to find out what's going on with your mother, but if I don't get something to eat pretty soon I'll starve to-I mean, I'm really hungry."

Pushing away the spotless dessert plate, Caroline now found that she was smiling at the memory: by all means, let us avoid using the word "death" with its air of dark reality. Douglas was a born politician.

"We may have to send your aide to town for a McDonald's," she had told him lightly, adding in saccharine tones, "right before you fire her."

"It's never a good idea to fire somebody who knows too much, darling," Douglas had protested. "Wouldn't it be better if I just found her a job somewhere else?"

"At a higher salary," the politician's wife had suggested.

And in amity at last, looking the very picture of the successful political couple, the Blessings had gone in search of food and information. Food they had found, and information they were about to receive, both of those commodities in greater abundance than they had dared imagine.

The dinner that Mike LeMat's various family members had provided was a smashing hit, a meal that went far to counteract the depredations of the last days-both on the waistlines and in the minds. After Mike's restaurateur cousin, grocer brother, and baker mother had done their parts (the spa's chef having taken to his bed in horror), everyone in the dining room was replete, stunned with the unaccustomed bounty, drunk on carbohydrates and fats (both saturated and un-), tipsy with refined sugars and the first caffeine most of them had had since setting foot on the premises.

And Vince Toscana saw that it was good.

However, Vince reminded himself sourly, Detective Vince Toscana was no longer the chief investigator here. He couldn't think about it without a jolt, the sight of that authoritative ID wallet in the hands of the near-naked man. If he hadn't made the calls to Washington and confirmed it, he'd have slapped the guy in cuffs, too, for impersonating an officer.

Well, he'd have tried to.

Vince had to hand it to the state of Virginia: Even Philly'd never thrown anything like this at him.

Okay, he decided, these jokers had stuffed in about as much food as any Italian mother could hope for. If he waited any longer, they'd fall asleep into their tiramisu. He caught Mike's eye, and they began to encourage the players to move next door. Into the library.

Caroline wondered for an instant who the gorgeous guy in the pricey suit was and then blushed furiously when she realized that the first time she'd come in-no, not in contact exactly, the first time they'd had relations-no! The first time she'd seen the guy, he'd been wearing rather less fabric than the scrap of paisley silk that was currently sticking out of his breast pocket. Adonis, Thong Man, the hunk-of-all-trades with the Italian name and the Oxbridge accent who'd hauled Claudia out of the mud bath, a man (a whole lot of man) she'd never seen wearing more than brief shorts and a briefer tank top, was dressed in a suit that made the custom three-piece that Douglas had changed into look like it came from Penney's. Constanza straightened from applying a match to the kindling in the stone fireplace, and the room could see that, along with several yards of wool and linen, he had donned an unmistakable air of authority. They all forgot instantly that Detective Toscana was there.