Wishbones

“Could we just take a look through the east wing?” Tinkie asked. “We didn’t really search there.”

I checked my watch. “We’ll try for two hours. Then we’re leaving. I don’t want to be here after dark. Why risk getting hurt?”

“It’s a deal.”

I gathered the high-powered flashlights Graf had bought and we took off down the second-floor hallway. Tinkie had purchased a stethoscope from a drugstore so we could listen to the walls. My plan was to find any additional secret passageways, check them and leave. Estelle was too clever for us. We’d never catch her. But if we did manage to hem her up, we were going to drag her out and turn her over to the authorities-either legal or mental health. She was going to pay for kicking Chablis.

The house was L-shaped, with the main wing extending north to south and the east wing jutting off. And then there were the stables and other outbuildings. I’d begun to wonder if there might not be tunnels that linked the buildings together underground. Hell, anything was possible where Estoban Gonzalez was concerned.

Because we hadn’t spent any time to speak of in the east wing, it was creepy and unfamiliar, even in broad daylight. I kept having images of Jitty as Mrs. Danvers standing at a window saying, “It’s a lovely view. Why don’t you jump, Sarah Booth? Just jump and put an end to all of it.”

“Sarah Booth, is something wrong?” Tinkie asked.

I shook my head. “Just thinking of an old movie, Rebecca.”

“I’ve thought of that film more than once,” she said as we moved down the hallway, tapping the plaster, moving portraits and tables, as we tried to find some place that sounded hollow. “The parallels are a bit uncomfortable.”

We searched several bedrooms and finally ended up at the small study. The painting I’d admired was there, and Tinkie knew the artist. While she talked about the composition and use of color, I remembered something else.

“Tinkie, I was thinking about being tied to that rock in the ocean.”

“Not a good thing to think about.” She removed a shelf of books and began pressing on the built-in mahogany bookcase.

“When I was tied to the rock, Cece told me Sweetie and Chablis had been locked up in a third-floor bedroom.”

Tinkie turned slowly and looked at me. “So someone in the house knew you were going to see that ghost and chase it. And that someone didn’t want the dogs to mess things up, so they confined them.”

I nodded. “Because the dogs can run so much faster than I can. The dogs might have caught the person I was chasing.”

She nodded. “So there have to be at least two of them. Our ghost has an accomplice.”

“So it would seem.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she asked.

“I thought you were going home. I didn’t want to worry you. Then so many other things happened, it slipped my mind. If Estelle was the person I was chasing, who was the person who locked up the dogs? Even if Estelle is a sprinter, she couldn’t be in two places at once.”

“Who else was here? Never mind, because if someone was hiding in the house, in the passageways, we’d never know.” She turned back to her shelf. I moved to help her, and we worked our way toward a lovely fireplace that held Indian pottery.

I moved the pottery. “This is the whole problem. With these hidey-holes all over the house, a battalion of miscreants could be involved.”

“Press the stones around the edge of the fireplace. There has to be a trigger.” Tinkie was taking books from another shelf. She had one wall denuded.

“Why the fireplace?”

“It’s always the fireplace,” she said. “Don’t you watch any detective shows?”

The soft sound of thumping froze me on the spot. It was the same sound I’d heard for the past few days, but fainter, maybe weaker.

“Doesn’t that sound like someone kicking the floor or a wall?” Tinkie asked. She rubbed at the chill bumps that had sprung to her arms.

“It does. Or a head rolling down stairs, a la Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte.”

Tinkie got out her stethoscope and put it against the wall behind the empty shelf. Her face told me everything. She handed the listening device to me.

Someone, or something, was definitely thumping in another part of the house. The sound was traveling through the walls. I swallowed and strained to hear.

A heartrending sob trembled down the dead space of the wall and straight into my heart. In the past, I’d felt the strange noises were designed to frighten me. This was different. “Someone’s in trouble,” I said.

Tinkie touched my shoulder. “Or else it’s a trap.”

My chest constricted painfully. “Or it could be the ghost.”

Tinkie’s eyes widened. “Or it could be both-the ghost and a trap.” She picked up a heavy candlestick. “What should we do?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

We had three choices. We could continue on the search, or we could get Daniel to help us, or we could run like hell. Tinkie was moving from skeptic to believer in wraiths of the supernatural realm, but I was way ahead of her there. I had the sense that the ghost who haunted the Marquez mansion was bitter and angry and filled with enough negative energy to truly harm us. But I wasn’t certain what we were hearing was made by a noncorporeal being. This sounded like someone in distress.

But someone in distress wouldn’t likely be shutting the power on and off and breaking things. Were both partners in this deadly game of destruction in the house?

“It sounds like it’s coming from inside the wall.” She held the candlestick in one hand and her flashlight in the other.

“I-” Before I could finish, both of our cell phones began to ring.

We answered simultaneously, looking each other in the eye.

“It’s Daniel Martinez,” Tinkie mouthed before she turned away so she could hear him.

“Hey, Millie,” I said, delighted to hear her voice. “What’s going on?” Now wasn’t the optimum time for a call, but Millie wasn’t someone who chatted. If she was calling, she had something to tell.

“I’ve been doing some research,” she said, “and I thought you should know that Vincent Day has a criminal record. An old one and a recent one.”

I could hear Tinkie making soothing noises, and I wondered what in the hell Daniel was telling her. Millie was my priority now, though.

“How recent?”

“As in less than a year ago.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“The reason the media didn’t pick it up was because it happened on location in Canada. Both Federico and Vincent were directing films in the same province. You know, the production costs are cheaper in Canada, and it’s so beautiful there.”

Millie could work for the Canadian government as a PR person. “Okay, so they were working on different films on the same continent. And?”

She ignored my sarcasm and continued. “They both ended up in this trendy restaurant. From the account in the Canadian newspaper I found, Vincent walked over to Federico’s table and said something. Federico stood up and responded. Then Vincent said, ‘You righteous bastard, you ruined my life.’ That was a direct quote, and then Federico said, ‘Everything you lost, you lost by your own hand.’ And he sat down. Vincent then attacked him, turning him over in the chair and trying to stomp him.”

The scene Millie was describing sounded like utter chaos, and also the behavior of teenagers rather than grown