"Suit yourself." Toscana opened the box, took out two wedges and made himself a sandwich. "Great stuff! I can almost taste home in every bite. Go on. Give it a shot."
Dutifully, Caroline liberated a piece from the box and set it down on a napkin. She began to pick at the cheese.
"So…" Toscana swallowed and wiped his mouth. "What do you know?"
"If I talk freely, will it come back to haunt me?"
"Maybe. But if you don't talk, your conscience will most definitely haunt you."
Caroline dipped her finger into the melange of sauce, oil, and cheese and licked the tip with her tongue. "Claudia de Vries was arguing with someone the night before she was murdered."
Toscana picked up a pencil. "How do you know?"
"I overheard them fighting in the middle of the night." She perched on the edge of her chair and began the slow recount of what had happened when she had overheard Claudia talking to someone. How she had been hiding in the bushes, crouched like a cornered animal. Maybe she had been the lucky one.
Toscana regarded her with confusion. "Why were you hiding?"
Caroline felt her face go hot. "It's embarrassing."
"A tryst?"
"With a bread stick!" She looked up at him. "I had raided the kitchen for food! I was on my way back to my room when I heard someone behind me. So I hid and…" She let the words die out.
Toscana cocked his head. "You got an eating disorder?"
"No, I just didn't have enough for dinner. The portions here are very skimpy."
"And how much did you pay to stay here?"
"Would you like me to continue?"
"Please." He finished off his pizza and started on another slice.
Caroline picked off a slice of pepperoni and nibbled on it.
"Actually, I don't have much more to say. Claudia was having a vitriolic argument with somebody. It scared me, the anger and nastiness."
"But you don't know who it was?"
"No."
"Did the voice have an accent?"
"Not that I could hear… Oh, you're thinking of Thong Guy, the Adonis who pulled Claudia out of the mud. What's his name?"
"Emilio Constanza. He was there when you and your mother entered the bathhouse. Which means he was possibly the last person around to see Mrs. de Vries alive. He's also being questioned as we speak. You all are going to be grilled. Extensively. So if you have something to tell, it's better for you if you get it out early."
The man was making it difficult. His off-putting manner only strengthened her resolve to do the right thing, whatever that meant. Coolly, she said, "For your information, I also found an empty bottle of Jack Daniel's in the brush. I know that Mr. Fondulac confessed to you that he drank some Jack Daniel's last night."
"Who told you that?"
"Mother."
"Go on."
"I know that drinking is against Claudia's rules. I was under the impression that Mr. Fondulac came here to dry out. Mother told me that Claudia had personally searched Mr. Fondulac's baggage-just to make sure he wasn't sneaking in any contraband. If that were the case, where did he get the bottle?"
"Alcoholics are wonderfully adept at hiding things."
"You've implied that Ms. Talmadge might also imbibe. So I'm suggesting that maybe the bottle was hers." For reasons she didn't understand, she refrained from telling Toscana about Phyllis and Fondulac having been in rehab with King David.
"Jack Daniel's is a popular brand of whiskey."
"A more likely explanation is that they had been drinking together."
Toscana wrote it down in his notes. "What else do you want to tell me?"
Caroline hesitated. "I know that my mother thinks Claudia was skimming off profits through Ondine."
"What do you think?"
"I don't know! I'm just a simple musician, an ex-musician at that."
"It's impossible to be an ex-musician. Just ask an old geezer like King David. Good Lord, his face looks like a truck ran over it. He is way past the prime meat rating. Some people just can't get past high school." Toscana drank his coffee. "What do you think of him?"
Caroline felt heat in her face. Toscana must have picked up on it and that's why he was questioning her about him. "He's a jerk."
"What specifically makes him a jerk in your opinion?"
"For starters, he's been bothering me, scaring me."
"Oh?" Toscana sat up. "Tell me about it."
"He told me he came here to look for something. He was certain that Claudia had it. Now, for some reason, he thinks I have it."
"But you don't know what he's talking about."
"No," Caroline lied.
"Very mysterious, Mrs. Blessing. And vague enough that I can't pin you down on anything. Why should I believe this ambiguous tale?"
"Why shouldn't I be believed?"
"Because, Mrs. Blessing, your mother has more than a little motivation for wanting Claudia de Vries dead, starting with the fact that Mom now owns the majority stake in the spa."
"Then why didn't you arrest her when she wanted to be arrested?"
"Because, silly old me, I still honor a thing called due process." As far as Toscana was concerned, Hilda's little drama was nothing but a ruse. "If there's something you want to tell me, please speak up. You want to help your mom, don't you?"
"Of course," Caroline insisted. "But I've told you everything I know." She hoped her words rang true to his ears.
"Then let me ask you this. Why are you so intent on setting up David King-"
"King David-"
"First, you tell me about a mysterious voice arguing with Ms. de Vries. Then you tell me about David King looking for some unknown thing-"
"King David-"
"Whatever."
There was something about her that reeked of honesty, or more specially, naivete. For one thing, she was a congressional wife, talking without a lawyer. "Maybe King David was making a move on you?"
"Perhaps," Caroline admitted. "But when that didn't work, he became aggressive, insisting that I hand over something that I don't have and don't even know what it is." Again, her eyes watered. "Now I don't know what to think."
Toscana sighed inwardly as he watched her face. This wasn't just a simple "I'm scared" reaction. This was "I'm seeing my life pass before me and I don't like what I see."
No doubt she was weeping for her deceased father, for her overbearing mother. And judging from the way she was playing with her ring, pulling it on and off her finger, she was in the process of making some drastic decisions in the matrimonial department.
Toscana said, "You got a package today, Mrs. Blessing. Mind if I ask you what was in it?"
Caroline dabbed her eyes. "A cello. My own old cello, actually. My mother traced down the person I sold it to and bought it back for me. It's in my room. Go take a look if you don't believe me."
"So you're a classical musician."
"Once upon a life, I was even symphony caliber."
"What happened?"
"I got married."
"And…"
"And it's a boring story." She smiled with wet eyes. "The main thing is that my mother actually did something selfless for me. Hunting down the instrument. That took effort. My mother made an effort to do something lovely for me."
"And that's unusual?"
"Extremely unusual."
"What's her usual style? Hiring a PI to take dirty pictures of your husband with other women?"
The shock registered instantly. Caroline snapped her head upward. "That was totally uncalled for."