Wrong, she told herself grimly. Absolutely wrong.
And then, keeping her mind firmly turned away from Nero and his fiddle and the fire consuming Rome, she sat there and played her heart out, waiting for someone to come and tell her that her mother was under arrest.
Even without the benefit of practice and despite having been away from her music for months, Caroline Blessing played better than she ever had before. She played flawlessly because she meant to and because she was playing for her mother. Because somehow, Hilda Finch had known that her daughter would need that cello again. In spite of whatever difficulties had presented themselves, she had gone out and found it.
"Thanks, Mom," Caroline murmured as the last strains of the concerto died away. And then the tears came again.
Phyllis Talmadge entered the interview room, followed closely by her lawyer, Marsha Rollins. Wearing spike heels that clicked ominously on the marble floor, Rollins marched into the room with her laptop in hand and with a three-inch-deep chip on her shoulder.
"I want to object to the fact that you interviewed my client earlier under entirely false pretenses," Marsha Rollins announced. "I'm serving notice right now that anything my client said in the course of that interview will be considered inadmissible."
"Wait a minute, Ms. Rollins," Vince said calmly. "To begin with, your client came to me. I didn't send for her. She came in and spoke to me entirely of her own accord."
"She thought you were a producer," Rollins objected while Phyllis Talmadge nodded furiously. "She thought you were there to interview her…"
Vince smiled. "I was interviewing her," he said.
"… for an appearance on The Today Show," Rollins finished. "She thought this was something that had been set up by her publicist."
Vince looked past the attorney. "Why are you here, Ms. Talmadge?"
She blinked. "Because you said I had to be. Like everybody else."
"No, I don't mean why are you here in this room. Why are you at Phoenix Spa?"
Phyllis shrugged. "For the same reason everybody else is, I suppose. I have a cover shoot in a few weeks, and I want to look my best. So I thought I'd come here and shed a few pounds. Get in touch with my core being, you know. That kind of thing. In my line of work, centering is very important. Otherwise I can't tune in to the universe and learn what I need to know."
"What is the universe telling you about Claudia de Vries?"
"Really, Detective Toscana, you can't expect my client to answer…"
But Vince had hit Phyllis Talmadge where she lived, in her ability to see deep into other people's hidden lives. "Shut up, Marsha," Phyllis told her attorney. "I want to answer this question. It's important. Claudia de Vries was an evil woman. She preyed on other people her whole life. It's hardly surprising that she finally got what she deserved. In fact, what I can't figure out is why it took someone so long to come after her."
"Did she ever prey on you?" Vince asked.
"Phyllis, please," the attorney objected. "You don't have to say anything."
"She tried to," Phyllis Talmadge said, as her eyes narrowed dangerously. "But I didn't let her get away with it. I told her to back off, and she did."
"When you say prey, what do you mean?"
"Blackmail," Phyllis said simply.
"She was blackmailing you? How and why?"
Phyllis shrugged. "She knew I had had a bit of a drinking problem, years ago. Then my first book came out and she went to my publisher and tried to convince them that I was a fraud, that I had become a psychic by taking a correspondence course when I was locked up at home with three little kids. That was a lie, of course. I only had two."
"And it worked?" Vince asked. "The correspondence course, I mean."
"Sure it worked," Phyllis Talmadge replied. "It turned out I already knew how to do it, it's just that I didn't know I knew. It's like radio waves, you see. As long as the station is on the air, the waves are there. The only reason you don't hear them is you haven't turned on your receiver."
"I see," Vince said. "So do you ever help with criminal cases?"
"Detective Toscana, this is utterly uncalled for…" Marsha Rollins began.
"Do you?" Vince asked.
"Sometimes," Phyllis Talmadge said. "Not very often, mind you. But sometimes."
"Would you be willing to help us on this case?"
"You mean professionally? Not as a suspect?"
"Absolutely," Vince said. "As one professional to another."
"I'd have to think about that for a little while," Phyllis Talmadge said. "I'd have to go outside by myself. Maybe down by the lake and think about it."
"Why don't you do that," Vince said, nodding sagely. "You go think about this case. Tune in to whatever radio waves you need to in order to be able to tell me what's going on here, then you come back and tell me what you learned."
"You mean in less than eight weeks," Phyllis said. "Eight weeks is usually my limit. Any longer than that, and the results may not be reliable."
"You take as long as you need, but I'd appreciate something sooner than eight weeks. That's a little longer than I had in mind." Phyllis was nodding, and Vince knew he had her. He had appealed to her professional ego. If she knew something-incriminating or not-the woman would be stumbling all over herself and her bullheaded attorney to spill the beans.
Then, just when he should have been asking Phyllis for her verbal agreement to go along with his plan, there was a knock on the door. Damn.
"What is it, Mikey?" Vince demanded as the door opened a crack. "Don't you know I'm busy in here? I thought I told you I wasn't to be interrupted."
"Yes, sir. I know, sir, but I thought this was important."
Vince sighed. "All right. What is it?"
"There's someone out here demanding to see you."
"That's a switch," Vince Toscana said. "Somebody actually wants to see me for a change? Sure it isn't another one of them damn lawyers?"
"It's that Finch woman. She says she's come to turn herself in."
Vince turned back to Phyllis Talmadge. "I'm sorry about the interruption," he said. "There's another door over here. If you wouldn't mind, you can go out the back way. And then, after you've spent some time down by the lake, you can come back and tell me what you've learned."
She shook her head. "No, that won't be necessary."
"What won't be necessary?"
"My going to the lake. I've already tuned in. Your assistant here is absolutely right. The Finch woman-I believe her name is Hilda-is the one you want."
"You're saying she killed Claudia de Vries?" Vince asked.
Phyllis frowned. "That's still a little fuzzy. The message isn't quite coming through, but the person you're looking for is Hilda Finch. I'm quite sure."
Mike was standing in the doorway with the door half open behind him. Now someone knocked on it hard enough that it bounced off his back and the doorknob whacked him in the hip.
"Well," Hilda Finch demanded loudly, "is he going to see me or not? If he can't be bothered, I suppose I could always go outside the gate to where all those television cameras are stationed and tell the reporters there that I tried to turn myself in but Detective Toscana was too busy doing other things to be bothered with arresting me."