well. She’d lived a life where fairy tales did come true. That hadn’t necessarily been my experience, but I let it go.
“We’ll find out who’s responsible for this when Estelle regains consciousness.” I spoke with more authority than I felt. Looking at the unconscious young woman, skin taut from dehydration, her face pale but hot with fever, and her hands and legs still an unnatural gray color from the lack of circulation, I wondered if she would ever wake up. We had found her, but maybe too late.
Footsteps pounded toward us, and Daniel Martinez came up the stairs. If his expression could be taken at face value, he was shocked and horrified at what he saw.
“Estelle.” He slid across the polished floor on his knees. He picked up her hand and held it to his chest. “Holy
Tinkie gave him a rundown on how we’d found Estelle, and how we didn’t know who might have hurt her.
I could see the anger building behind his eyes, and when he spoke, the flash of fury was in his speech. “I’ll find the person who did this, and he will pay.”
“Any ideas who it might be?” I asked.
He considered. “Estelle sometimes behaved like a spoiled child. She made enemies, but not the kind that would do this.” He waved a hand over her unconscious body. “Will she live?”
I didn’t have an answer to that, but I heard the sirens of the paramedics. At least the presence of the movie crew and my friends had helped the local economy by keeping the hospital and vet clinic busy.
“Estelle.” He rubbed her hand frantically, as if he could erase the gray tone and bring it back to the full flush of life. “Wake up,” he begged.
I eased her head into his lap and stood. There were things to be done. At a signal from me, Tinkie backed away so we could talk privately.
“So it couldn’t have been Estelle who was haunting the house. She’s been in the closet awhile.” Tinkie was watching as Daniel stroked her hair from her face. If he wasn’t acting, he was truly grief-stricken.
“The timeline is everything. Was Estelle in the closet when I was lured onto the beach?” I’d always assumed it was Estelle playing the role of her dead mother for dramatic effect. Now my theories were blown to hell and I needed to rethink the sequence of events. “Estelle could have pushed Jovan.”
“Or the ghost could have.” Tinkie met my gaze. She was choosing to believe me and what I’d said I had witnessed.
“I saw Carlita up close. She didn’t have enough meat on her bones to push a pea across the table. She looked awful.” I shook my head. “I had this crazy idea that ghosts got to choose their bodies and how they looked at any time in their life. Poor Carlita. She died a terrible death, and she’s stuck in the phase just before she passed on.”
“Carlita didn’t do this to Estelle,” Tinkie said, “and we have to find out who did.”
“I’m afraid that answer is going to be in Hollywood, not Petaluma.” It had to be someone on the cast and crew. If it wasn’t Daniel, and I believed Tinkie was correct in her assessment, then it had to be a member of her father’s movie ensemble-or someone who’d passed himself off as part of the crew. Each day there were dozens of hangers-on-people who catered or drove cars or cleaned clothes and brought them back or provided some special service like a massage or bottled water of a certain brand. While the core group of the movie was fairly well known to me, there were people coming and going all the time.
“What about the grandfather?” Tinkie asked.
He was an evil and unhappy man, but why would he punish Estelle in this manner? Yet he’d refused to divulge the floor plans of the house even when he knew Estelle was missing. “He’s a possibility.”
We heard the ambulance pull up in the yard and right behind it was a squad car with two police detectives. I ran down to let them in and direct them to Estelle. The paramedics wasted no time putting her on a gurney and moving her into the ambulance. The medical experts gave me and Tinkie the strangest looks, but they said nothing and focused their skills on Estelle.
“I’ll ride with her,” Tinkie said. “Sarah Booth, you can give a statement to the detectives.”
“Please, let me go with Estelle.” Daniel was distraught. “I should never have left. She was obsessed with her father. I knew she was doing things she shouldn’t, but I never dreamed she was lying in that hole, hurt.”
“Go with her,” Tinkie told him. “We’ll be there soon.”
After the ambulance was gone, we told the police officers the sequence of events, showed them the secret passage, and then answered their questions. Before they began the forensics work, they told us we could go.
I turned to Tinkie. She had a huge lump on her forehead. I touched my own head, where the heel of her stiletto had done its work. We looked at each other.
“Frik and Frak.” She shook her head. “Jesus, Sarah Booth, we look like members of some religious cult that batters their foreheads. No wonder the paramedics were giving us the evil eye.”
“The good news is, I can’t work looking like this so I might as well solve this case.”
“Oscar is going to throw a hissy, but that’s too bad.”
“Let’s ride,” I said, though I wasn’t certain which direction we needed to take.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
With Sweetie and Chablis riding shotgun, we drove into Petaluma. I’d left word for Federico to call me, but I felt we needed to tell Estelle’s roommate.
When we got to the cabana-style apartments, we ran into Regena in the courtyard. She took one look at us and winced. “Who whacked you two?” she asked.
“We’re fine,” Tinkie told her. “It’s Estelle you should be worried about. She’s at the hospital.”
We filled her in on what had happened; I watched closely for some sign that she knew more than she was letting on, but she was floored.
“Is she going to be okay?”
“We don’t know.” I glanced at my watch. Time was slipping away from us too fast. “If there’s anything you can tell us about Estelle and who she’s been talking to or seeing, it might help.”
Although Regena was anxious to get to the hospital, she motioned us to a seat in the shade of a big tree.
“When Estelle first heard the movie was going to be filmed in her mother’s house, she was upset. I know she got some calls from someone in the States, and there was one time when I overheard part of her conversation. It was pretty extreme.”
If only Regena had come forward with this information sooner, I thought, but I refrained from saying so.
“What did you hear?” Tinkie prompted.
“She said something like she’d never forgive her father for what he’d done, and that Carlita would not go unavenged.”
This was old hat. “Who was she talking to?”
“It was a woman. That’s all I know. I tried to question her, but she said it would be best if I didn’t know anything about her plans.”
“She was right about that,” Tinkie said, “but it doesn’t much help us figure out who hurt her. Or who was hurting us.”
Regena frowned. “She was so bitter toward her dad. I tried to talk to her about it a couple of times. I mean, what’s the point? Her mom is dead. Her father is all she has. It just seemed senseless to hate him for something from so long ago.”
She was preaching to the choir-unless Estelle knew something we didn’t. Federico had always been a weak suspect, and I couldn’t believe he’d hurt his own daughter in such a way, but it was a lead and I had to follow it.
“Did she say why she hated Federico?”
“She never said specifically.” Her eyes widened. “Except for one comment. She said her dad and his friends used women as brood mares and dropped their sperm and then forgot about them.”
Tinkie and I looked at each other. “Thanks, Regena.”
“I have a dance lesson scheduled, but I’m canceling and going to the hospital.”
