Naked Came The Phoenix by Marcia Talley Read Free Book Online

she was terrified that she was going to tumble facefirst into the "grave."
    "Got 'em?" her mother crowed, as Caroline saved the shoes.
    She peered over at Hilda, marveling at her mother's ability to wrest the trivial from the profound in virtually any circumstance. Where was the hint of new sensitivity she thought she had detected in her mother this morning? She should have known better than to get her hopes up. One good cry did not a better woman make. It was said that a person's true character emerged in crises, and this was a crisis if ever there was one. And here was the old familiar Hilda, bobbing to the surface like a rotten egg in a pan of boiling water.
    I knew it was too good to last
, Caroline thought.
    She put the shoes down by the edge of the bath.
    "Those could be saved," her mother said, with a fastidious frown. "Although they might have to be re-covered in a new fabric."
    When Caroline turned and looked up, she saw that the young man was still clasping the body to his chest, and looking as if he didn't quite know what to do with it. He and Claudia were locked in a stiff embrace that looked to Caroline as if they were caught in a moment of dancing a macabre tango. For one wild moment, she thought he might whirl the body in his arms, press his tanned cheek to its muddy one, and step smartly out into a Latin rhythm.
    "Put her down on the floor," Hilda commanded him.
    Gently, he followed her directions.
    "Caroline, turn up the lights in here," her mother ordered, and when the dimmed lights came up to their full brilliance, painfully illuminating the scene as if it were an operating room or a morgue, she exclaimed, "Good grief, she's still in that same dress."
    Caroline heard an acidic note to her mother's comment, as if this were a judgment on Claudia's fashion sense instead of on the timing of her demise. For surely this meant the spa owner had never gone to bed last night. With a shiver, Caroline remembered the voices she had overheard on her own adventure-the raised voices-and wished she knew who had been taunted by Claudia only a few hours ago on the moonlit path among the trees.
    "Why would she take a mud bath in her dress?" Hilda asked in the peevish, superior tone of someone who might have said, "Why would she wear a cocktail dress to a morning wedding?"
    Caroline stared at her mother and then looked up at the Adonis. He was shaking mud off his arms, flinging it off onto the tile floor. A glob of it landed on Claudia's still breast. Another bit struck Caroline's own cheek, just missing her eye, and she flinched when it stung her skin.
    Didn't they see what she saw?
    Couldn't they see the obvious, terrible truth?
    With a chill that increased her shivers, Caroline realized she might have overheard the final argument between Claudia de Vries and the one who killed her. For there was no doubt in Caroline's mind that this was no "natural" death. Claudia's peach chiffon dress was plastered to her body. But it was her lovely shawl of a thousand scraps of fabric that told the murderous tale: It was wound around and around her neck, pulled tight as a cello string tuned almost to breaking, and tied with a strangling knot.
    "Go get Raoul," Hilda imperiously told the muddy Adonis.
    He cast her an unreadable look but then turned to do as he was bid. As he brushed past Caroline, he muttered, "Your mother acts as if she owns the place." She cast him an apologetic glance that her mother couldn't see. Caroline had to agree that even for Hilda, her mother was being uncommonly bossy. His accent, she was startled to hear, was English, and not just any old Cockney, either, but decidedly upper-class. What in the world was that accent doing with those black eyes, that wild hair, and that swimsuit?
    "What was that?" Hilda demanded when they both jumped at the shock of a loud splash in the adjoining room. "What's he doing?"
    Caroline walked on shaky legs to the connecting door and opened it.
    Adonis had plunged into the swimming pool