Nevada Barr: Naked Came The Phoenix

"Ondine's were just the same," Lauren said sadly.

"Would you look at that." It was Douglas, speaking Caroline's wonder.

Now Emilio spoke up, for the first time. "When Hilda got to her thirtieth birthday and had never been pregnant again, she decided she needed a child. I gather by the notes in Claudia's safe that your father was tested and judged not to be the problem. Eventually it was determined to be the result of some long-ago infection, perhaps just after Lauren was born, blocking her tubes. Surgery might have helped, but instead she went looking for Claudia de Vries, thinking that if her old college roommate had been able to get rid of one child, surely she could lay hands on another."

"As it turned out, she was right. Claudia never forgot an old friend, never lost track of someone she'd once used. She was one of the few who knew what had become of Tad Blake. By this time she had a whole staff of snoopers, one of whom found out that King David, in those good old pre-AIDS days of drugs, sex, and rock and roll, wasn't always punctilious in his use of birth control. Your mother was a sound technician on his road gang. You were three months old when she agreed to give you up, and Claudia handed you over to Hilda. Who, so far as I have been able to determine, had no idea where you came from. Claudia may have been saving that bit of information for the future."

King David now reached across Lauren to claim Caroline's hand and to take possession of her attention with that magnetic gaze that she had mistaken for a man's desire, when all along it had been a father's yearning that gazed out at her, just as the mesmerizing touch of his hand had been blood calling to blood. The key that he told her he was searching for, she suddenly knew, was not just a slip of metal, but something more. The beloved lost possession that Claudia had dangled in front of his nose to get him to come here was in fact herself, Caroline. His daughter. "I knew as soon as I laid eyes on you," he was saying. "That's why I couldn't take my eyes off you, couldn't help touching you. You look just like your mother. She was a beautiful, talented, big-hearted woman. Catherine was her name, although she called herself Cat. She died nine years ago, I'm sorry to say, but I have pictures of her for you. She didn't want to give you up, but it would have meant losing what she had worked long and hard for-a rock band on the road isn't exactly the place for a baby. She made the decision that it would be best for you to go to a loving, two-parent, relatively wealthy, and stable home. She couldn't have known… And I should have taken responsibility, but it was the seventies, and we were touring nearly three hundred days a year, and frankly in those days I was just a hyped-up bastard. I'm sorry, I was barely aware of you. I have to admit, you and Lauren aren't the only ones."

Of course, he would say that Caroline's mother had been a paragon, even if he scarcely remembered her. But it was his last statement that snagged her attention: more siblings? A father- this father? And maybe, once she'd gotten used to the idea, a member of the band's road gang wouldn't be such a terrible mother figure. Lord, even an irresponsible, drugged-out groupie of a mother would be better than…

With that thought Caroline shook off her father's grip and turned to lay a tentative finger on the slim wrist of the woman between them. "Lauren? I am so sorry about Ondine."

Emilio answered. "Giving those people in the library the fact that Ondine was the daughter of Lauren Sullivan was Lauren's own idea. Obviously, someone in the group will sell the story to the papers before the ashes in that fireplace are cold. We'd thought of it before, but after Ondine died, we wanted Lauren to keep it quiet. She said no, and she's right. Doing it this way will distract the media, giving them a bone to chew so they don't keep digging and get the rest of the story. If they found out that the four of you are tied together, by blood and marriage, the feeding frenzy would never let up."

Douglas looked ill.

"At least Ondine's death was quick," the actress said, although none of them believed she found much consolation in the fact.

"That manager of hers would have killed her before much longer."

"Chris Lund?" Caroline was startled. "They seemed to get along so well."

Again Emilio's English tones gave the explanation. "Ondine had a huge life insurance policy, with Lund the benefactor. She was starving herself to death. Lund pretended he was against her dieting, pretended that he was on the brink of force-feeding her, but at the same time he was the one who had told her she needed to lose weight, and that was what she believed. Just before she died, they'd had word of a major contract cancellation, the second this year lost to younger models; they could both see the writing on the wall. He decided to, as they say, cash in his chips."

"But I thought you said that Mother-that…" If Hilda wasn't Mother, what was she?

Lauren answered her protest, in a bitter voice. "Hilda pushed over the shelf unit, but Chris Lund put my daughter there, vulnerable."

Emilio clarified. "We think Lund killed Karen McElroy either because she'd noticed the similarity between Ondine's hands and Lauren's when she did their manicures, or because she'd overheard him and Ondine arguing and was calling the police. We found a blood spatter on one of his shoes that I'm pretty sure will turn out to be Karen's. Ondine either saw him, or found the girl shortly afterward. And as I said earlier, fainted."

Again, Douglas said what was foremost on Caroline's mind. "And you don't think Lund's death was a little… convenient?"

"An accident," Emilio said blandly, although a bit too quickly.

Caroline glanced at King David-at her father!-and saw him studying his hands, those oddly elegant, larger versions of her own, as if reading their history in the skin and bone. Then Lauren reached her right hand over and wrapped her fingers through his, before doing the same with her left hand and Caroline's.

A family, joined together, with one daughter's husband and the father's lover looking on. A family, rising phoenixlike from the ashes.

Yes, thought Caroline. Lund's death was an accident.

Much better that way.

But-"Wait a minute," she objected. Everyone tensed, willing her not to say aloud that it could not have been, but Caroline had something else in mind. "There was a polka-dot bikini in Claudia's hand when we dragged her out of the mud bath. If… Hilda… killed Claudia, where did that come from? And you can't tell me that my mother was wearing that thing." She fixed the agent of law and order with a look of accusation and was astonished to see those finely chiseled features turn a furious shade of red, flushing down to the neck of his expensive wool suit, and beyond (just how far beyond was a speculation that crossed the minds of all four witnesses).

Emilio gave a short bark of uncomfortable laughter and with great dignity told them, "It was mine. I'm afraid that, among Claudia de Vries's other sins and wickednesses, she was also guilty of the most blatant form of what I would have to call, er, sexual harassment."

He looked up at their snorts of laughter, none of them stifled with much success, and protested. "Honestly, she wasn't a very nice woman!"