Daddy’s Girl, I was smart to have partnered up with her.
Graf had also been pulled into her plans. “I told Tinkie I’d man the grill. Maybe some shrimp and steaks. This place is paradise, and we need to bid it farewell in style.” Graf was so handsome, it hurt to look at him. He’d become the man I needed him to be.
“That sounds like fun.” I was still trying to accept that we would leave this house without resolving the mystery of the ghostly presence and who’d been hurting my friends and the crew.
“And the best news is that Chablis may be able to be here with us,” Tinkie added. “The doctor said if she continues to heal at this pace, she’ll be released tomorrow afternoon.”
“That’s wonderful!” I grabbed my friend and almost picked her up in a hug. Now that was something to celebrate.
“Did you discover anything from Ricardo?” Tinkie asked as she began to help tidy up the kitchen.
I told them about his journal and the marijuana. “No serious drugs. No amphetamines or things like that.”
“No prescriptions?” Graf asked.
I shook my head. “I think his mood swings are emotional. He’s worried about Estelle.”
“While we were in town, I stopped by Estelle’s apartment. Regena still hasn’t heard from her, and now she’s getting worried,” Graf said.
“She was very willing to talk to Graf,” Tinkie said, a teasing note in her voice. “She would have told him anything he asked, I think.”
“I have a very effective interrogation technique,” Graf said.
“You have a handsome face, a beautiful body, and a way with the women,” Tinkie responded. “We could use that at Delaney Detective Agency.”
Tinkie looked as if she wanted to take the words back, but she couldn’t. There it was, the question that we each knew had to be faced eventually. Was I an actress or a private investigator?
“Almost all of the television PIs are handsome.” Graf was doing his best to patch the silence. “Magnum, Rockford. A man can have good DNA
“Both of those stars are delicious,” Tinkie agreed, “but are they really intelligent? I mean, can a man be both things at once?” She hid her smile as she began pouring liquor in a blender. “This isn’t the time to worry about tomorrow. Where are we going for dinner?”
I hadn’t told them about the woman in red at the staircase, or what she’d said to me, and as I took the margarita that Tinkie offered me, I debated whether I should. The problem was, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. She’d been a terrifying presence.
“Are you okay, Sarah Booth?” Graf asked.
“I need to speak to Daniel Martinez. He was mentioned in Ricardo’s journal. While you two get ready for dinner, I’m going to find him. It won’t take ten minutes.”
Graf and Tinkie exchanged a glance I couldn’t read. “He was at the gate when we came in,” Graf offered.
“I’ll wait for you there. And I’m starving.” Still clutching my drink, I headed out the front door and down the drive to the gates.
I saw Daniel’s silhouette standing in the doorway of the small office where a security guard checked vehicles in and out. Since the last days of filming had gone without incident, most of the paparazzi had moved on to fresher meat. Without the scent of tragedy or scandal, they had nothing to follow, so they’d left.
I recognized Daniel from a good distance away, and I slowed my pace as I realized he was talking to someone on a cell phone.
When I got close enough to hear what he was saying, he saw me and snapped shut the phone.
“Ms. Delaney, what can I do for you?” he asked.
“Tell me about Estelle.”
“I believe she’s returned to California,” he said. The man was smooth, I had to give him that.
“Really,” I said with a hint of sarcasm. “Do you know that for a fact?”
Concern slipped into the furrow between his eyebrows. He cleared his expression with an effort. “Her father told me she’d returned to Malibu. I haven’t seen her hanging around the house.”
“And would you report it if you had?” I asked.
He knew I was on to him, and in the light from the guard booth, I watched him decide how to play his hand. “So you know Estelle and I are… friends.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Don’t you think that was something you should have told your employer?”
He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Perhaps. But maybe not. I’ve done the job he paid me to do.”
“Let me count the ways I disagree with you. I was nearly drowned, Jovan has been pushed down stairs, my friend Tinkie was attacked in the house-”
“Attacked! No, that’s not possible. And anyway, Estelle is gone.”
“So you admit you knew she was responsible for what happened to me and Jovan.”
He sighed and waved me into the guard shack where two stools were almost knee to knee. “I’ll tell you what I know,” he said. “The truth is, I’m worried about Estelle. I’ve called her house in Malibu repeatedly. She doesn’t answer. Her roommate in town hasn’t seen or heard from her. Estelle is like the wind-she blows from place to place. But she always calls and checks in. Always.”
Not everyone on the set could be an actor, so I believed the worry in Daniel’s face. He cared about Estelle, and he was concerned for her. “When was the last time you saw her?” I asked.
“Her father made me escort her out of the house. You were there. You saw it.”
I nodded.
“I took her back to her apartment. Regena was there and we both talked to her. We told her she was going to end up in jail. Federico is Petaluma’s star. He’s like a national hero, and if he snapped his fingers, the local authorities would lock Estelle up, at least until Federico finished filming.”
I hadn’t realized that the director carried such weight in Petaluma, which begged the question of why he didn’t want some officers to check out the mansion once Joey had fallen and nearly been killed. That was when action should have been taken. He could have stopped this before it got started.
“What did Estelle say? What were her plans?”
“She promised me that she’d stop bothering the film crew. She’d meant to frighten you with the ghost stories. That’s all. She never meant for anyone to be hurt. She was going to Malibu. She’d given up, she said.”
“Did she admit to any of the incidents that happened at the mansion?”
He shook his head, and the furrow deepened. “Only the cameras and the balustrade. But she never meant for anyone to fall. She thought the railing would give only enough to halt filming. She insisted that her mother was unhappy with the film crew in the house.” His gaze dropped, but he continued talking. “She truly believes her mother’s ghost is there, angry at the people in her home.”
I cleared my throat softly. “And what do you believe, Daniel?”
When he looked at me, I was unprepared for the directness of his gaze. “I love her, Ms. Delaney. She’s troubled. I know that. She was hurt so deeply in her past that she can’t overcome it without help, but I’m willing to see that she gets that help.”
I put a hand on his knee. “Does Federico know how you feel about his daughter?”
He shook his head. “Ricardo knows. I told him when he offered me the job. I think that’s one reason he made sure my security firm was hired. He loves his sister, even if he thinks she’s insane.”
“And what do you believe about the ghost of Carlita?” I was cheating, trying to get a consensus of opinions before I made up my mind.
“I’ve never seen the ghost. Other people claim that they have. And Estelle certainly believes it. But she’s still that little girl desperate for her mother’s love and attention. She wants it to be true, because that’s the only chance she’ll ever have to know Carlita.”
Daniel was not only a security guard, he was also familiar with human behavior. “What’s your story, Daniel?”
He looked surprised, then sheepish. “I’m working toward a degree in psychology. I want my own practice. I met Estelle in class at the local university.” He rubbed his chin again. “Estelle is messed up in some ways, but she isn’t dangerous. She wouldn’t push Jovan down the stairs. And she wouldn’t have tied you up to drown or attacked Mrs. Richmond.”
When I looked at him, hard, he held his ground. “She wouldn’t do that,” he said. “She might try to scare you out
