Wishbones (14 page)

"She said she was going, and yesterday morning she was gone."

"Did she take her things?"

Regena shrugged. "Estelle has things here, in Malibu, and in Europe. She doesn't have to carry things. They're there waiting for her when she arrives." There was no bitterness in Regena's tone.

"What kind of person is Estelle?"

She sank into a beanbag chair--an artifact from the seventies,
I suspected. "She's very kind. She helps people when she can."

"And she hates her father."

She looked away, a telling gesture. "Federico was never there for her. After she turned ten, she was shipped off to boarding schools. Whenever she wanted to come home, he told her no. She wasn't even allowed to visit her mother when she was dying. How would that make you feel?"

"Pretty shitty, I'm sure."

"Her dad doesn't care about anything but himself and his movies. He even had Estelle thrown out of her house."

I thought of Federico's face as he tried to assure me Estelle couldn't be involved in the attack on me. "That isn't true, Regena. He's devoted to his work, but he cares about Estelle. He's worried about her right now."

"She doesn't think so."

And therein lay the rub. Perception was everything.

"Has Estelle been in Petaluma long?" I was curious to discover if she was in Malibu when Suzy was killed.

"She's been gone for a couple of weeks, and she came in the night before you guys arrived. She travels a lot." She went to the kitchen and returned with two bottles of water and handed me one. "She was in a state. She talked about booby-trapping the house. She said she asked her father not to film there, out of respect for Carlita. He just ignored her. The film was everything. Estelle's feelings didn't matter at all."

I sipped the water. "Has Estelle ever mentioned that her mother's ghost is in the house?"

Regena gave me a look that left no doubt she thought I was nuts. "Look, Estelle is angry, not insane."

"She's never spoken of a ghost or spirit in the house?"

She laughed. "Not to me. But it sounds like a good way to run off a bunch of unwanted company."

"You've never heard ghost stories about the house?" That
was peculiar. Daniel Martinez, the security guy, had mentioned the ghost stories as if everyone in town knew them.

She shrugged. "Any old house that sits empty is going to get a reputation in a small town. Petaluma isn't a big city. Kids used to go out there to park, until a couple of them got spooked away."

This was interesting, but impossible to track down. "Do you remember any of the stories?"

The blush that touched her cheeks was unexpected. "I was there one summer evening with a guy I used to date, swimming in the cove. I thought I saw a woman in a red dress on the balcony."

My gut tightened and my skin began to crawl. "Who was it?"

"I don't know."

"Did your date see her?"

She bit her bottom lip. "No. He thought I was making it up to avoid, you know. He got mad because I insisted that we leave. Anyway, there were a couple of people who saw something like that."

"No one ever investigated?"

"Nope." She walked to the door. "Now I have to go. I can't be late or they'll cut me from the rehearsals."

I followed her out the door. "Thank you, Regena."

"When you finally track Estelle down, ask her to call me, please. I've left twenty messages and she hasn't returned my calls. Sometimes she gets depressed and just sort of fades. That worries me and I have some things we need to talk about."

"Will do." I kept it perky and upbeat, but the talk about depression concerned me, too.

Another day in paradise was concluding, and I returned to the mansion with a mental list of people to talk to. Ricardo was right at the top, but I wanted to catch him away from his dad.

Tinkie, Chablis, and Sweetie were at the beach. I walked to the edge of the gardens and looked down to see her and the dogs scurrying around castle rock. It took me a moment to realize that the slick body in the surf wasn't a dolphin--Graf was in scuba gear examining the portions of the rock that were underwater.

They were looking for clues. My heart surged with warmth. Graf really seemed to care about me. And Tinkie, well, she was the best friend ever.

We were an odd couple for a business team. When I'd first come home, licking my wounds and in dire financial circumstances, I'd failed to see past the Daddy's Girl exterior that Tinkie projected.

I'd sold her short.

But she was far more than her five-carat engagement ring, her banker husband, and her Dun & Bradstreet report. Tinkie, for all of her slavish devotion to glamour and fashion, was smart. And loyal. And caring.

Watching her and Graf and the dogs, I again thanked whatever lucky stars had brought her into my life. I'd lost a lot, but I'd also gained.

Tinkie and Graf went into a huddle, and then they packed it in and started back toward the mansion. I changed into some cool shorts, sandals, and a sleeveless T-shirt and went down to greet them.

Graf swung me into his arms, making me giddy with laughter, as Tinkie looked on with approval. "It's good to see you happy, Sarah Booth." She punched Graf's arm lightly. "I never thought this celluloid playboy could do it, but I was wrong. I think he's good for you."

"And she's good for me," Graf said.

"And we all have to be good detectives to get this whole mess resolved." I put my arms around their waists as we walked to the front door. When I told them my plan, they readily agreed.

Tinkie distracted Federico, while I talked to Ricardo. Graf was going to the third floor to see if Sally and Dallas had heard or seen anything unusual.

Ricardo had a room on the second floor in another wing from my room. I knocked on his door, half expecting that he wouldn't be in.

The door swung open and he stood there, shirtless, in a pair of shorts. Like his father, he was handsome, and he knew it. While his conduct on the set was impeccable, I'd heard he was something of a rake and a scoundrel with the young women who were part of the crew.

"Dad send you to talk to me?" he asked, leaving the door open so I could enter or not.

"No. Why would he?"

He flashed his perfect white teeth. "Because Dad doesn't like confrontation of any kind."

"And what have you been doing that would lead to a confrontation?"

"Sleeping with Dallas. Dad is afraid if I dump her she'll quit in the middle of the film." His grin was just a hair too smug.

"Your father has legitimate concerns, Ricardo. No one likes to be used like garbage." Dallas was a beautiful young woman. She could have her pick of any number of men, but Ricardo could make her feel like trash in a ditch.

He shrugged, picked an apple from a table, and bit into it with a loud crack. "I'm giving her what she wants."

"Somehow, I doubt that."

"Come on, you older people don't get it. We hooked up. She knows that. When we get back to Los Angeles, she'll go her way and I'll go mine. That's how it is." He took another huge bite of apple.

"As long as she knows that upfront. We 'older people' and most younger ones, too, like to know the rules before we begin the game." I wasn't insulted by his rudeness. In terms of maturity, the fourteen years between us was a huge distance. He was handsome, privileged, and felt entitled. "I didn't come to talk about Dallas. I want to ask you some questions about your sister."

"Estelle, the psycho queen?" He took the last large bite of the fruit and tossed the core into a garbage can. "What's she done now?"

"Do you know where she is?"

"Ah, hiding in the attic?" He grinned big, proud of what he viewed as his cleverness.

It was peculiar, but I'd talked to Ricardo before, and he hadn't been such a jackass. "Do you know where Estelle is?" I asked patiently. "Federico is worried about her and so am I."

The mask of superiority dropped for a moment. "Why? What's she done now?"

"Nothing, for sure. She's not answering her cell phone." I wasn't certain how to proceed. I'd expected Ricardo to be more cooperative. Our prior conversations had been pleasant; now there was antagonism.

"Sometimes she gets down and doesn't want to talk to people," he said. "Maybe she wants to be left alone."

"That's a reason for concern. This anger she carries toward your father could be . . ." I let the sentence fade. He'd supply his own ending.

"She'll be fine. She's just pissed about the house. He could have asked her, you know."

"I don't know. I don't know any of the details. What I'd like to know is how stable is your sister?"

He dropped all pretense of being the smartass he'd been earlier. Motioning to a comfortable chair for me, he sat down on the floor. "Look, Estelle has her ups and downs, but she's not going to harm herself."

"Could she harm someone else?"

That really got his attention. "She likes to pretend to be crazier than she is."

"Someone tried to drown me last night. It wasn't kidding around. Joey was seriously hurt in that fall. Another woman associated with your father in Los Angeles is dead."

"And you think Estelle is doing all of that?" The idea shocked him.

"I didn't come to tell you what I thought. I want to know what you think."

"What does Dad say?"

"What do you think, Ricardo? Tell me that and then we'll talk about Federico."

He considered for a long moment, one hand aimlessly brushing up and down his shin. "She hated Suzy Dutton. She thought . . ." He looked at me, suddenly much younger than his twenty years. "Estelle wasn't rational about sex. She has it in her head that Mom died because of Dad and his liaisons with other women."

"And why did your mother die?"

"She hated herself."

It was a pretty succinct summation of the terrible disease that had killed Carlita. "Does Estelle know this?"

"In her heart she does, but she won't admit it. If she accepted that Mom was mentally ill, that Mom starved herself to death, then she'd have to forgive Dad." He sighed, suddenly tired. "This is all so boring."

"If Estelle is trying to sabotage Federico's film, we're going to have to stop her before she really hurts someone."

"Good luck. She knows this house inside and out. Grandfather showed her all of the secret passages, the places he had built into it just for her."

I'd been curious about this. "Why would he construct a house like that?"

"He liked puzzles. He liked playing games with us when we were children. He could hide and we would never find him. He enjoyed that." He was smiling as he talked. "Estelle adored him. He gave her his undivided attention and I think the only time she really felt loved was when she was with him."

"I've never heard Federico talk of him."

"For good reason. Dad and Granddad hated each other. Pappy Estoban didn't believe Dad was good enough for his daughter. He did everything he could to break them up before they married. He told me once that if Mom hadn't married Dad, she would be alive and happily married."

"And I suppose he told Estelle the same thing?"

Federico lifted a shoulder and let it drop. "When Dad moved us to California, Pappy was furious. He tried to get the police to stop Dad from taking Mom and us. He had Dad arrested. It was awful."

I could only imagine the horror of that scene to a child--caught between the grandfather she loved and the family she felt didn't love her.

As sorry as I felt for Estelle, I still had to know if she
was capable of harming another person. "Estelle went to a private boarding school, as you did. Was she ever in trouble?"

His gaze dropped and I knew he was thinking about lying. For all of his sexual suavity, he wasn't as sophisticated as he thought.

"Tell me the truth, Ricardo. I'm not out to harm Estelle, but if she is behind some of these things, she has to be stopped."

"Why don't you ask Dad about this?"

I considered my answer, but I told him the truth. "Whatever Estelle thinks of her father, he's doing everything he can to divert suspicion from her. I'm afraid he'd color the truth to protect her."

"And you figured I'd be a stool pigeon?" He was quick to insult.

"No, I figured you'd want to help your sister and could see that the truth was the best way to get there."

He rose to his feet in one fluid movement. "How about a banana? They're fresh from a plantation not far from here."

"Sure." The bananas available in Petaluma were totally different creatures from the ones in supermarkets.

He brought back two and began to peel his. I thought perhaps he was going to ignore my request, but he began talking. "Estelle was expelled from one school for a stunt she pulled that resulted in injury to another girl. It was harmless, but it looked bad then and it could also look bad now."

"What happened?"

"No one knows the exact details, because Estelle would never talk about it. Not even to defend herself. But Lisa, a girl in her dormitory, fell from a second-floor window. The headmaster said Estelle put Lisa up to edging out on the brickwork and pretending that she was going to jump. This was a diversion so Estelle could sneak out of the dormitory."