“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
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
