Wishbones

by Carolyn Haines

  The film and all of the problems were wearing on Federico. He’d lost energy, and his skin was sallow. He kept glancing toward the house. Jovan hadn’t been out of their rooms, as far as I knew. While the actual movie seemed to be going well, all of us were paying a high personal price.

  Around noon, Federico shut down the cameras and ordered the crews to begin packing to go home. He’d rented a private plane to take the equipment and all of us back to Los Angeles, and he announced that we would leave early the next morning.

  While he smiled and congratulated all of us on fine work, I could see that he was forcing himself to be jolly. Something was eating at him.

  Everyone scattered in different directions, and at last Federico was alone. Tinkie excused herself to drive into town to check on—and hopefully bring home—Chablis. I pulled the director aside.

  “Can I ask you some personal questions?” I dove right in.

  “Is this about the accidents on the set?” He’d stopped pretending to be hale and hearty, and he looked awful.

  “Yes.” I motioned toward the gardens. “Let’s take a walk. The grounds really are so beautiful. It’s going to be hard to say good-bye.”

  “Carlita loved this place,” he said as we stepped into the shade of an arbor. “Me, not so much. I recognize the beauty, but there was always the sense that this wasn’t my home.”

  “Clearly your father-in-law wanted you to feel that way.” I’d told Federico about the passageways. He’d been surprised, but he hadn’t been angry. Now, he seemed more saddened than anything else.

  “Estoban thought that I wasn’t good enough for Carlita. The Gonzalez family came from old money, banana and coffee plantations. My father was a merchant, and I went to film school on scholarships. Estoban had no use for the cinema, especially not since Carlita was so in love with it. He hoped to marry her off to a planter or a banker, someone who could provide for her and give her security. Someone of her class.”

  We passed several beautiful statues, women with flowing hair and gowns, caught in a moment of rapture or action. When we came to a bench in the shade of some lush plants, we took a seat.

  “Surely after your career took off, Estoban got over his initial distrust.”

  Federico’s chuckle was dry. “Hardly. He hated me even more. Carlita was cast in several films, and he felt that was my doing. He had the idea that all actresses were whores, and he made her feel like one. She was exotic and sexy, and he made her dislike those things about herself. Her biggest problem was that the man she most loved refused to recognize her talent.”

  I could draw a lot of parallels, but I wasn’t being paid to do that. In fact, I wasn’t being paid to stir this pot at all. But no one was going to attack my partner and get away with it.

  “I’ve been trying to put together a list of people who might want this film to fail.” I gave him a moment to think it through. “When was the last time you saw Vincent Day?”

  “Vincent,” he said softly. “I haven’t thought of him in a long time now.”

  “Have you seen him lately?”

  “No.” He stood up and started walking. I followed him, giving him a moment to find the memories I needed.

  “I understand the two of you were great friends?”

  “Yes, and we parted bitter enemies.”

  “Because of Carlita?”

  He glanced at me, a sidelong gaze that assessed me in a new light. “I thought the whole business about you being a private investigator was a story Graf made up, some Hollywood hype. But it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Finding out about Vincent Day didn’t require a whole lot of experience, just the right person who’s interested in movie stars and has a good memory.” Millie was invaluable.

  “Hardly anyone working in Hollywood remembers Vincent. And he was brilliant. That was twenty-five years ago or better.”

  “Is he Estelle’s father?” I thought the question would shock him, but it didn’t.

  “I never asked Carlita. I didn’t care. Estelle never belonged to me or Vincent, she was her mother’s daughter. She was born with an attachment to Carlita that no one could sever, not even for her own mental health.”

  We’d passed through the main part of the gardens and were almost at the cliff that gave onto the beach. It was still early afternoon, and the sun cast stark shadows. The wind was warm, a caress, and tropical blossoms grew in abundance all around me, creating a scent of such poignancy that I wondered if Carlita had been happy in this house.

  “Where is Vincent Day?” I asked.

  Federico shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s been years since we spoke.”

  “Do you think he might be behind this scheme to ruin your film?”

  Federico slowed and then stopped. He put his hand up to shade the sun from his eyes as he glanced out at the surf pounding below us on the beach. “Why would he do this now? So much time has passed. We’ve both accepted Carlita’s death.”

  “Did he know she was starving herself to death?”

  He looked to the left and I couldn’t see his expression. “I never told him. Even as Carlita was dying, I wanted her to be mine.” He made a sound of disgust. “That sounds so pathetic, but you had to know her. She was fire and ice. She was so magnificent—”

  “That you had to sleep around on her.” I said it quietly, and that only heightened the impact of my words. Federico looked as if I’d slapped him.

  “It doesn’t make sense, I know.”

  Even though I waited, he didn’t attempt to explain it further. So I pressed. “If you were so in love with your wife, why did you sleep around on her?”

  He sighed and reached out to pick a perfect rose from a vine growing along the fence at the back of the garden. He held the blossom, turning it slowly in his fingers. “Can you begin to imagine what it was like for me when I finally realized that Carlita would never be mine? Not truly mine.”

  “She loved Vincent Day that much?” Somehow, I’d gotten the impression that Vincent was someone Carlita used.

  “Not Vincent.” He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “If it had been Vincent, perhaps I could have understood.”

  “Then who?”

  “Carlita loved her father. He was the only man that mattered to her.”

  “Are you saying—”

  He looked appalled. “No. Not that. Certainly not. There was no sexual bond between them.” A flush stained his cheeks. “Or perhaps there was, and I was too blind to see it.”

  “What do you mean?” Federico’s emotions were like an angry abscess, and I was the one jabbing around with a needle. It wasn’t going to be pretty if he ever really let go.

  “Carlita was a virgin when I married her. In fact, she was unbelievably innocent. I knew she was pure, but I found myself in the position of teaching her everything. How to kiss, how to accept a touch of affection. It was as if she’d been . . . walled away from most human emotion that had even a hint of sexuality in it.”

  “This was the eighties, Federico. Sex was all over television and the movies and—”

  “You’ve just made my point,” he interrupted me. He sniffed the rose and then held it out to me. I took it, careful of the thorns. “Carlita’s innocence was unnatural. I believe Estoban honestly felt that all sexual feelings were dirty, so he raised Carlita to deny all such urges.”

  “Holy cow. That’s a sick and twisted thing to do to a young woman.”

  “Indeed.” He waved a hand around him. “He built her this temple to virginity, and then he had to spy on us so that he could manipulate her. I didn’t know about the secret passageways, the listening spaces, the panels where he could watch a peep show.” Anger crept into his voice and I saw his features harden. Here was the hatred I’d expected.

  “I was gentle with Carlita. And patient.” His dry and hollow laugh came again. “Imagine such a fool. I was proud that I was the only man my wife had ever known. That I was the one to teach her to please me. And that bastard Estoban watched, so tha
t he could punish her for each thing she did that gave her pleasure.”

  I leaned against the fence, slightly queasy. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I was a coward,” he said. “Instead of confronting Estoban about the way Carlita took such pleasure in some intimacy and then later lashed out at me for teaching it to her, I buried myself in work.”

  “Federico, you didn’t know. How could you know what Estoban was doing?”

  He moved so quickly that I almost yelped when he lashed at the roses with his hands. He swung at the beautiful blooms, sending a shower of petals on the winds that blew them out toward the ocean and the beach. The sweet scent, old-fashioned and heartbreaking, filled the area where we stood.

  He didn’t stop until the last rose was demolished and he was panting from exertion. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and gripped the railing of the fence. “She hurt my ego. She said things that—that I was a bad lover, that I would never satisfy her, that I was dirty. She drove me insane, Sarah Booth. And I paid her back by sleeping with the woman I knew would hurt her the most, a tall blonde.”

  I understood, and the truth of it was unbearably sad. “It was Carlita’s father who made her self-conscious about her looks, because she was so sexually charged. She was the Latin Marilyn Monroe.” I repeated what Millie had told me.

  “When the film world saw her, she got offers from every director working. She was so exotic, so sensual, and she could act. She could also sing and dance, but that wasn’t important in that first rush of offers. I told Carlita that her true talent would be acknowledged, but that her feminine power was what everyone saw first.”

  “So the roles she was offered fed into the misgivings her father had set up in her. She was typecast as the seductress, the role her father had taught her would send her straight to Hell.”

  He nodded once and then turned away. His hand went to his face and I wondered if he was wiping away a tear. “I utterly failed her, you know. Instead of helping her, I cut her to the bone.”

  “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, Federico. Neither of us can say whether you could have changed anything had you behaved differently. Estoban set those behaviors and beliefs from infancy.”

  “And that’s why I sent the children away from her. Not to be mean, not to punish her, but to protect them. I thought if I could keep them from seeing the way she behaved, the things she did to herself, they wouldn’t learn them.” His tone had turned bitter. “Estelle certainly proved me wrong. It’s genetic. It comes in the blood.”

  I put a hand on his arm and felt the tension in his muscles. “Estelle can choose to change.”

  “You say that as if it were so simple.” The anger was gone and he was left with sadness again.

  “Change is the hardest thing, for human or animals. Even plants have difficulty, and many can’t survive it.” I felt the corners of my mouth tug upward, but it was merely the ghost of a smile. “But the most amazing thing is that we keep trying. As long as we’re alive, we continue to try. So we have to find Estelle and make sure she has all the help we can give her, if she chooses to try.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders and moved back the way we’d come. “You’re a wise woman, Sarah Booth.”

  I laughed, and this time it was full and real. “Not me. I happen to have some very smart friends.”

  He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “But you listen to them, and that’s what makes you wise. Now let’s head back to the house and find Jovan. I’m sure she’s wondering where I am. I can’t leave all the packing to her.”

  But as we rounded the hedge in the garden, I realized Jovan wasn’t worried about packing. She stood on the balcony of my room and stared down at us. Her expression was blank, but when she noticed my gaze on her, she turned and went inside. She’d witnessed Federico putting his arm around me and whispering in my ear. She couldn’t know that he was talking about something innocent. From her vantage point, I doubted that the gesture looked anything except guilty as sin.

  I started to tell Federico, then stopped. He had so much on his mind. And besides, I couldn’t be certain Jovan was the jealous type. After all, she’d been spending mornings, evenings, and nights acting opposite Graf in scenes from which I was excluded.

  That didn’t exactly equate to a private walk in the gardens, but it was Federico’s call. If he wanted to tell her, he could. I was going inside to pack. If Tinkie got the nod for Chablis to head home, Tinkie would fly back to Zinnia with the dustmop in the morning, and Graf and Sweetie and I would hop the private jet to L.A.

  As soon as this film was wrapped, I was heading back to the Delta for a dose of down-home common sense and some of Millie’s cooking. I was fairly certain the problems in the Marquez mansion stemmed from Estelle. She was somewhere on the premises, pulling pranks and still trying to sabotage her father’s film. Like Carlita, she wasn’t ready to change the patterns of her behavior, and I wasn’t willing to spend my time trying to solve a mystery that would have no real resolution. Estelle was the only person who could stop her personal crash and burn.

  “Chablis!” I hailed the returning heroine. Tinkie parked in front of the mansion and carried the little moppet, all done up in fashionable hospital white, into the foyer where Graf, Sweetie Pie, Federico, and I waited.

  “When Sarah Booth does her next film, you must bring Chablis to Hollywood,” Federico said, stroking the pup’s silky ears. “Now that Sweetie Pie has a role in a film, we must cast this darling creature.”

  Tinkie beamed, though I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever risk Chablis on another trip again. The dustmop was healing, but it was a close call.

  “I made her some chicken and rice,” Graf said.

  He’d disappeared into the kitchen and threatened me if I tried to enter. But Graf, cooking comfort food for a dog?

  “I’m skeptical,” Tinkie said, voicing my exact thoughts. “You’re a good man, Graf, but I don’t buy this at all.” She bustled past him, Chablis in her arms.

  We weren’t far behind, but when I heard her exclamation, I had to give Graf a kiss. He was a man of his word. Two doggie bowls of chicken and rice were on the counter, warm to the touch. He’d even washed up the mess he’d made cooking.

  “If Sarah Booth lets you get away,” Tinkie whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, “I will have her put in the mental institution we’ve been threatening her with.”

  “She can’t shake me this time,” Graf assured her. “We’re a team. Better together than either is solo.”

  How is it possible that words that can bring so much pleasure can also bring pain? I’d thought the same could be said of Coleman, but it hadn’t panned out. And each time I found myself drifting to the past and my feelings for Coleman, I was cheating Graf.

  “Is something wrong?” Federico came up beside me and spoke so softly that neither Graf nor Tinkie heard him. They were busy hand-feeding Chablis. Sweetie Pie was scarfing her food down in fine Delaney tradition.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s hard to leave here.”

  “Once you’re back in L.A., the work pace will keep you so busy, you won’t have time to miss Petaluma.”

  He was right, of course. “I think I’m going up to my room for a quick shower,” I told the gang. “Graf, since you’re playing chef tonight, rustle up some vittles so we can all eat on the patio and enjoy the last evening here.”

  “Your wish is my command.” He nodded his head like a certain television genie and I ducked out of the room and hurried upstairs. I wanted the water pounding down on me to wash away my self-destructive tendencies. I cheated my own happiness by clinging to the losses of the past. If I had to have a lobotomy or an exorcism, that was one pattern of behavior I intended to break.

  I’d gathered fresh clothes and turned to go into the bathroom when I caught a glimpse of a figure standing on my balcony. My heart hammered against my chest, and my fresh clothes slipped to the floor. I almost ran back to the kitchen, but I didn’t. It was Estelle, an
d she wasn’t going to get my goat this time. She couldn’t get past me; the door—or jumping twenty feet to the ground—were the only ways out of my room.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I said. I walked toward the balcony. So my knees were a little weak; my voice was strong and steady. “If you’ve got something to say to me, you’d better come on in and say it.”

  The figure didn’t move, and it took me a few seconds to realize it was dressed in a floor-length gown of fine gray silk, with a high-necked, fitted bodice and flaring full skirt. The dress rustled in the breeze that was coming off the ocean.

  The figure turned toward me and I saw pale skin, hair in a chignon. My mouth was suddenly dry. This wasn’t the woman in red. This was another figure entirely, and one that seemed to fade and shimmer in the dying light of day.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Quinton. I want Quinton. He loves me, you know. The children see him in the stables. He’s waiting for me.”

  Try as she might to imitate a Victorian governess from one of the scariest movies I’d ever seen, The Innocents, Jitty couldn’t completely lose her Southern accent. A desire to wring her neck came hand in glove with the knowledge of what she was up to.

  “Damn it, Jitty, you scared me.”

  “I’m a ghost, Sarah Booth. It’s in the job description.”

  I picked up my clothes and turned back to the bathroom. I didn’t have time for her antics. “I’m heading home tomorrow.”

  “To Zinnia?”

  There was such hope in her voice that I stopped and turned back to face her. “To Los Angeles. But once I’m done with this film, I’m going to Dahlia House. I need a break from all of this movie hustle and bustle.”

  I could see that my explanation did nothing to soothe the wound I’d so innocently inflicted. She’d really thought I would give up this movie in midstride and head home. “Why are you on my balcony?” I asked.