“He is her father.”
As a practicing Daddy’s Girl, Tinkie had rigid criteria for the father/daughter relationship. Putting a movie, no matter how great, ahead of a daughter was totally unacceptable.
“I’ll call Graf.” I’d held off telling him about Estelle, but someone needed to let Federico know. Graf could relay the message and perhaps that would inspire the director to call back.
“I’ll call the hospital and check on Estelle,” Tinkie said.
We whipped out our cell phones and had a moment of dueling digits as we tapped in numbers.
“Hello, darling.” Graf had the leading man vocal timbre down pat. He melted me with two words.
“Graf, we’ve found Estelle. She was beaten and tied up and hidden in another secret passage.” The words spilled out.
“Sarah Booth, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. So is Tinkie. And both dogs.”
“Thank God. Who would do such a thing to Estelle?”
“We don’t know.” I told him about our visit to Estoban Gonzalez and how Estelle would have died if we hadn’t found her.
“Can she remember anything about who attacked her?”
“She’s delirious. In fact, Tinkie is checking on her condition right now.” My partner gave me a thumbs-up, but also a shake of her head. “I think she’s holding her own. Critical but stable. We don’t have a lot of information right now.” Tinkie nodded that I’d interpreted her signals correctly.
“Can you bring her to the States?”
“I’ll ask the doctor later today, but I’m waiting for Federico to call. Have you seen him?”
“Actually, no. He left the airport and went straight to editing.”
“I’ve left several messages. Would you see that he knows about Estelle? He might want to be here.”
“I’ll go back to the set and look for him.”
“Graf, be careful. The person who did this to Estelle could be in the crew.”
There was a pause. “What are you saying?”
“Only that Estelle was tied and locked in a closet a while before y’all left. So it could easily be someone in the cast and crew. I think this has to be an inside job. I’m just saying be careful.”
“Now you’ve creeped me out.” He tried to make light of it, but he was disturbed.
“And I saw the ghost again.” I had to tell him.
“Where?” he asked.
“In the secret passage. She sort of led us to Estelle.”
“Did Tinkie see her?”
Now why was that relevant? I’d seen her. That should be enough. “No, Tinkie hit her head and knocked herself out.”
“At least she did it to herself this time.”
“You aren’t even going to ask me about the ghost?” I was disappointed. I wanted Graf to believe me.
“All of this talk makes me want to hop a plane and get down there to load you up and bring you home. Ghost or not, someone is dangerous and determined to harm members of this production.”
“Tinkie and I are heading out in the morning. You don’t need to come and fetch us.” The idea of seeing him again made my stomach knot with anticipation.
“I’m worried for you and for Tinkie.” Graf spoke with passion. “It wasn’t the ghost of Carlita who pushed Suzy Dutton off a cliff, Sarah Booth. It was a real-life, flesh-and-blood murderer. And if that person is still in Petaluma, I want you out of there.”
“And if that person is in Los Angeles, intending to sabotage the film further?”
“I’ll talk to Federico. It might be good to get some security around the set. To protect the cameras and all.”
“Call Sheriff King.” Although the California sheriff was difficult, he also had the ability to protect Graf and the rest of the crew.
“Not a bad idea,” he agreed. “I’ll do those things if you promise to hop the first flight out of there tomorrow.”
“Wild horses couldn’t stop me,” I assured him.
“I love you,” he said before he hung up.
Tinkie closed her telephone about the same time. “Estelle has stabilized, but they’re not sure they can save her hands and feet.” She shuddered as she spoke. “She hasn’t regained consciousness.”
“And Daniel?”
“He’s with her.”
“Let’s stop by there on the way back to the mansion.”
Estelle lay in the hospital bed, dark hair spread on the pillow. Someone had done his or her best to wash her hair and remove some of the blood, but nothing could be done to hide the wide gash that ran from her temple across the top of her head. The doctors had shaved it and done what they could to close the wound.
Daniel sat beside the bed, rubbing her hand and then her foot. He was trying to bring the circulation back to her limbs by sheer force of his will.
“This can’t be happening,” he said.
“I’m so sorry.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “Has she said anything at all?”
“She’s mumbled some. It’s incoherent. Sounds like a nightmare.”
“We need for her to wake up and talk,” I told him.
“Ms. Delaney, if she loses her hands and feet, I hope she never wakes up.” He looked as if he’d been stabbed in the heart. “She won’t be able to handle this. It’ll drive her mad, and then . . .” His voice broke and he turned away.
“Whoever tied her and left her meant for her to die, Daniel. That person could still be out there.” I wasn’t trying to come down hard on him, but he had to realize the danger. Just because Estelle was in the hospital didn’t necessarily mean she was safe.
“If she wakes up, I’ll do my best,” he said.
“Call us. We’re trying to help her.”
He nodded as he shifted to the other side of the bed and began rubbing her left hand briskly between his own. “I know.” He kissed her hand. “I knew something was wrong. Estelle would never have disappeared like that. But I didn’t listen to my heart. I believed she’d grown tired of me and simply left to avoid the confrontation.”
“Daniel, we all act from weakness sometimes,” Tinkie said. “You heard what you dreaded most to hear.”
“And I failed to search for her.”
“But we were looking, and we didn’t find her either,” Tinkie said. She put a hand on Estelle’s arm. “We did the best we could do with the information we had. She’s a young woman who had disappeared before, moving from one place to another at the drop of a hat. Her disappearance was normal behavior. This isn’t your fault.” She gave Daniel a hug and followed me out into the hall.
“If the person who murdered Suzy Dutton is the same person who tried to kill Estelle and that’s the same person who’s been in the house, hurting you and me and Jovan, then it all goes back to the movie.”
“But why and who?”
That was the weak spot in my theory. “I don’t know. But whoever it is knew Suzy was going out to the Malibu house Graf and I leased. They also knew that Estelle was prone to disappearing acts—that no one would take it seriously until it was too late.”
Tinkie’s blue eyes widened and she did that little thing with her lip popping out of her mouth that drove men wild. “It’s someone on the inside.”
“Without a doubt. As much as I’d like to hang this on Estoban, I don’t think he’s guilty of it.”
“So now we begin to narrow our suspects. We need a cast and crew list.”
“Exactly.”
“Where do we begin?” she asked.
“In the stacks of the national gossip sheets. Let’s find a library.” It would be easier to call Millie, but we didn’t have time to wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
To our utter delight, the research librarian at Petaluma was a misplaced South Dakotan named Patsy Kringel. She was a demon of research and bilingual. By the time we’d warmed our chairs, she had us on the Web and surfing the thousands of sites and archives dealing with the movie cast and crew. The only stars we left out were me and Graf. Everyone
else, we did at least rudimentary checks on, narrowing our focus mostly to Federico, Estelle, and Ricardo.
Our searches came up with little that Millie hadn’t already told us. The Marquez family had seen its share of sorrow and success. The story of Carlita’s “devastating illness and death” was reported almost everywhere, but not a single newspaper or tabloid had unearthed her anorexia. It was a kinder and gentler media back when she’d died.
“Look at this,” Tinkie said. She’d taken Jovan as her next prospect. Since she was living in the house when many of the incidents took place, Jovan was a logical suspect even though she’d been the victim of an attack.
I rolled my chair over beside Tinkie’s computer to read the Web site. She pointed to the visitor counter at the bottom of the front page.
“Holy cow,” I said. “This says one million eight hundred and eighty-nine thousand visitors to this Web site since January.” I couldn’t believe it. Jovan had more Web site hits than Tom Cruise.
Tinkie was unimpressed. “She’s part of the fashion world as well as movies, and she has devoted fans that follow her every move. These great pictures don’t hurt, either. She photographs even better than she looks in person, which pretty much makes her a goddess.” Tinkie moved around the Web site. “Says she was born in Stockholm to working-class parents, went to high school, was seen by a talent scout while playing sports, and the rest is history.”
She scrolled down to a photograph of Jovan with a pretty middle-aged woman and a middle-aged man.
“So what did you want to show me?” Jovan was interesting, but I didn’t have time for fashion gossip or celebrity schmoozing.
“Do you think she looks anything like those people?” Tinkie asked.
“Her parents?” I wondered what tangent Tinkie was off on now. “Not really, but so what. Genetics are strange things.”
“Could she be adopted?”
I shrugged. “Possibly.” Tinkie and Oscar were thinking of adoption, and Jovan might prove to be the poster child to help her bring Oscar around. I studied the picture closer. “That might explain her attempts to control Federico when he wants to rescue Estelle from her own bad conduct. Jovan may feel a little threatened when he shows unlimited love to his daughter—especially a daughter who’s done everything to defy and ruin him. I mean, if she feels her father didn’t want her.”
“Aren’t you little Miss Freud.”
“If you’re going to call me psychiatric names, I’d prefer to be Little Miss Jung. Freud and all the emphasis on penis envy sort of leaves me cold.”
Tinkie laughed, and several patrons glanced at us—right, the rude Americans were in the library. I mimed an apology and went back to my computer. “Take a look at this on Ricardo,” I whispered.
She rolled over and we examined the Web site for the younger Marquez, which included photos of him with his heavy metal band in Venice, California, and several black-and-white photographs he’d taken, which were beautiful.
“He has a feel for light,” I whispered. “He’ll be a great cinematographer.”
“And not a single word about Federico on the Web site,” Tinkie pointed out. “You’d think he might mention his dad is one of the premier Hollywood directors.”
“Which could mean he doesn’t want to trade on the old man’s name.”
“Or it could mean he hates his father and wants to sabotage his film.” Tinkie rubbed the lump on her forehead and I knew she was tired and getting cranky. Our time to solve this case was running out. We’d dropped the dogs off at the vet clinic. Chablis was due for a checkup and Sweetie was hanging with her.
“We’re getting a lot of background on people, but nothing really useful,” I told her. “I wonder why Federico hasn’t called yet?” I’d turned my cell phone to vibrate, so I knew he hadn’t. “And neither has Millie.”
“It’s like we’ve dropped into the black hole of Calcutta. No one is returning our calls.” Tinkie’s tone was huffy. In Zinnia, Tinkie’s calls were never ignored. As the premier Daddy’s Girl, by virtue of the fact that her father owned the bank and her husband was president of it, Tinkie was used to people sitting up and taking notice of her. It was a fact that had worked to the Delaney Detective Agency’s advantage many times before.
We thanked the librarian for her help and made our way into the afternoon breeze. For all of the problems we’d had here, Petaluma was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever been. The town was clean, filled with bright colors and hand-painted tiles decorating the walls of buildings and gardens. It had some feel of old New Orleans, but with a definite Latin twist. The cobbled streets were baked in the sun, old and worn and authentic. Looking at the vista of the town sloping down a gentle incline, I wondered if I’d ever come back. Maybe Graf and I would honeymoon here.
“You look pensive,” Tinkie said.
“I was considering Petaluma for honeymoon potential.”
She started toward the car. “That would be lovely,” she said, and I could hear how she forced the happiness into the words.
“It was just a thought.”
“Whatever makes you happy, Sarah Booth. That’s what I want for you.”
And she meant it. If she had her wish, I would go home to Zinnia. As much as she’d once deviled me about Coleman’s lack of commitment, now she wanted to return to that time when I was at Dahlia House, Coleman was on the horizon, and our partnership was not impeded by the distance of a continent.
“Where to now?” I asked. We’d done pretty much all we could using the Web for a research tool. If Federico didn’t call back soon, we’d be winging our way home to the States. Tinkie had booked a flight to New Orleans for 6:00 A.M. the next morning. My flight to LAX left at 7:10 A.M. We had early calls to meet the guidelines of the international flights.
“I don’t want to go back to the mansion,” Tinkie said.
“Me either.” The memory of Estelle was too fresh. And there was the sense that Carlita was still there, waiting for another chance to talk to me.
“Maybe we can catch a flight out tonight.”
Tinkie was ready to go, and I didn’t blame her. “If you can get out, I’ll stay and make sure Estelle is stable and improving before I go.” I touched my forehead. The swelling had gone down, but I still wasn’t ready for the camera.
Tinkie longed to leave, but she shook her head. “I’m here until you go.”
“We both believe the person behind the attacks is in Los Angeles. It’s okay for you to go, Tinkie. Take Chablis and go home to Oscar. Talk to him about adopting. There are a lot of children who would love to have you for a mom.”
She nodded her agreement. “I’ll deal with my family issues when I get home. Right now, we need to think about a possible killer. It’s true, we believe the attacker is in California. But until we have proof, I’m not willing to leave you here alone.”
My cell phone rang and I snapped it open. Millie’s voice came through loud and clear.
“I’ll give you Tor’s private number,” she said when I told her what I needed. “Since you’re a friend of mine, he’ll tell you what he knows.”
“Thanks, Millie.”
“Sarah Booth, you should see the spread Cece did on you in the newspaper. She got some photographs from the filming. You’re magnificent. Everyone in town is raving about it. Several men are desperate for you to come home.”
“Several?”
“Harold Erkwell had the newspaper matted, framed, and hung in the café. He’s so pleased for you. I had no idea he harbored such deep affection for you.”
“Give Harold a kiss for me,” I instructed her. “He’s been a good friend.”
“And what shall I give Coleman?” she asked.
I closed my eyes. Why was it that I had to keep making this break over and over again? “Give him my regards and tell him I’m happy and fine.”
There was a pause. “I will.”
“Thanks for Tor’s number, and tell Cece I’m going to get even with her when I get . .
. home.” No matter what, Zinnia would always be home.
I hung up and Tinkie suggested that we get the dogs and go back to the mansion to make the call to Tor. We still hadn’t retrieved our things, but we weren’t going to stay there overnight.
On the way to the vet’s clinic, we stopped by the Petaluma police. One of the officers who’d come to the house, Sergeant Calla, told us they’d gathered a number of prints, but they were waiting for Estelle to regain consciousness. If she could identify her attacker, they would be all over it.
Sergeant Calla did have one interesting thing to report—aside from the prints Tinkie and I had made, there were two other sets. Estelle’s and a stranger’s. While the forensics team had collected a pretty good impression of a size nine and a half athletic shoe, they hadn’t matched it with anything in their system. They were working with Sheriff King for some help in the States.
“We’re more hopeful on the fingerprints recovered from the dust in the passage and closet,” he said. “We take it seriously that Ms. Marquez was nearly killed. We’ll find the perpetrator and he or she will be punished. Estelle’s father is an important man.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Tinkie said, batting her eyelashes in a way that looked helpless and sexy. “We’ll be in touch.”
We picked up the dogs—Chablis’s glowing recovery report going a long way to making Tinkie ecstatic—and headed for the Marquez place.
Night was falling. Another day had come to a close, and we both knew we had to leave Costa Rica. Despite Tinkie’s generosity with her time, she had her own life to manage. So far, the filming of the movie had proceeded without me, but my scenes were coming up and quickly.
Which made me wonder again why Federico hadn’t called me back.
I put in another call to Graf, who was delighted to hear from me but could shed no light on what was happening with the director.
“He’s disappeared, Sarah Booth,” he said. “Ricardo is trying to track him down. Jovan is frantic. I did call Sheriff King. He told me if this was a publicity stunt he’d put all of us in jail, but he is checking into it.”
“Is there a chance this is a publicity stunt?” I had a terrible feeling. What if everything that had happened in Petaluma—the falls, the attacks, everything—was a way of getting buzz going for the movie? Maybe someone had seen Suzy Dutton’s death and the resulting publicity as an opportunity to promote this film.
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