Wishbones

by Carolyn Haines

  I started to pull away, but he held me closer. “I’m your lover who won’t blow your cover, but you have to promise me you won’t get hurt.” His lips moved along my neck. “I might die if something happened to you.”

  “I’ll play it safe. As soon as Chablis can safely travel, I’ll be on my way to Hollywood. Tinkie has to stay, and she doesn’t want to give up yet.” I leaned against him as I spoke, already missing him.

  His answer was another long, searing kiss, and then he got in the car. “I’ll call to check on you as soon as we’re on the ground. If you don’t answer, I’ll have police swarming over this place.”

  I nodded and turned to Federico and Jovan, who were openly examining the bandage that Tinkie had plastered to my forehead. Or maybe it was the makeup job that she’d done to give me a “virusy” look. My skin tone was slightly green and bilious.

  Jovan stepped closer to me. “Come with us, Sarah Booth. You can’t stay in this house. It’s dangerous.”

  I was touched that she cared. “I’m going to the emergency room,” I told her. “I’m too sick to stay here. I think I’m dehydrated, and my fever is high. If they don’t keep me, Tinkie and I will get a hotel room. As soon as I can travel without throwing up, we’re out of here.”

  Relief touched her features. “Thank goodness. Anything can happen in this place. I think the house is damned. You’re already weak, and someone could really hurt you.”

  Tinkie had walked up and overheard her comments. “Once Sarah Booth is feeling better, she’ll be on the next plane home,” Tinkie said. “I’ll stay with her until then. She’ll be fine.”

  “What about the dogs?” Jovan asked. She rumpled Sweetie Pie’s ears. “They could be hurt again.”

  “We’ll take them to the vet clinic.” Tinkie picked up one of Jovan’s suitcases and started toward the waiting car. “Federico can’t miss this flight.”

  “I know.” Jovan hugged me. “It’s so hard to find a real friend in Hollywood, Sarah Booth. I’ll see you soon.”

  When they were gone, I whipped off the bathrobe and revealed my jean shorts and a T-shirt. My running shoes were behind the door. All I had to do was wash the makeup off my face.

  “Where to first?” I asked.

  “I think Senor Lopez hasn’t told us the entire truth.” Tinkie had a look in her eyes that made me shiver. One thing about Tink—she took it personally when someone played her.

  When we were in the car, the dogs riding in the backseat happy as clams, Tinkie glanced at me. “I should handle this alone.”

  “I’m fine. I’m not really sick. It was all an act.”

  Tinkie flipped the passenger visor down so that I was staring at myself. My face was puffy and the bandage made me look like an ax murder victim. Even without the makeup, I looked bad.

  “I can take the bandage off. That’ll help.” I peeled the tape free, looked, and slapped it back into place. “Maybe not.” Tinkie had really clocked me. The lump looked like a misplaced horn.

  “Stay in the car,” she said as she parked. “I’ll be back.”

  “What if he gets aggressive?”

  “He’s, like, sixty-five.”

  “Remember Virgie?” Virgie Carrington was an older woman who ran a finishing school for girls who also happened to be a serial killer. She’d almost snuffed both Tinkie and me, not to mention Sweetie Pie. She’d shot Coleman and drugged Oscar. All in all, she was pretty spry for a senior citizen.

  “Senor Lopez isn’t dangerous, but I am.” She slammed the door. “Stay still. If someone sees you they might think the virus in 28 Days Later has infected Petaluma. Somehow, I get the sense that reanimated dead aren’t part of the Costa Rica tourist scene.”

  Likening me to a slobbering, jittery zombie was a low blow, but I leaned back in the seat and let the cool breeze slip over my face. If Tinkie wasn’t out in twenty minutes, I’d ride to the rescue.

  When the allotted time had come and gone, I ambled into the small office. I could hear Tinkie, her voice raised. The reception desk was empty, so I knocked on the partially open door of Lopez’s private office and stepped inside.

  My appearance obviously hadn’t improved in the half hour Tinkie was gone. Lopez glared at me. “Who are you and what happened to you?”

  I pointed at Tinkie. “She nearly killed me with her stiletto heel.” I mimed the action. “She’s small, but she’s deadly.”

  Lopez dismissed me with a glance. “If you want to know more about the Marquez house, you’d better get a court order.” His smile was foxy. “Or perhaps you should talk to Senor Estoban Gonzalez.”

  Tinkie’s mouth dropped, and so did mine. And Tinkie thought zombies weren’t part of the Petaluma scene. “He’s dead,” I pointed out.

  “No, senorita, he’s very much alive.”

  “And no one bothered to tell us this, why?” Tinkie asked, her voice tight with fury.

  “You never asked.” Senor Lopez rendered a perfect Latin shrug. “You asked for blueprints of the house. I gave them to you without a fuss.”

  “Not the complete blueprints,” Tinkie pointed out. “There are other secrets in that house.”

  “Why didn’t Federico tell us that his father-in-law was alive?” I asked, thinking aloud.

  Lopez glared at me. “Perhaps because he carries the burden of his wife’s death on his head.” He sat back in his desk chair as if he’d resolved everything. “If you want more information, you’ll have to speak with Senor Gonzalez. I’ve told you all that I’m authorized to tell.”

  “Where is Senor Estoban Gonzalez?” I asked.

  “He lives mostly out of the country now. In Venezuela. But he maintains a home here.” Lopez scribbled an address on a slip of paper and handed it to Tinkie.

  “Call him and tell him we’re on the way,” I said.

  “I’m not going to disturb Senor Gonzalez. I’m going to call the police,” Lopez threatened.

  “Call them,” I said. “Do it fast, because I think you’re involved as an accessory in a series of serious assaults.”

  My words were as effective as a lip zipper.

  “Let’s go,” Tinkie said. “Before the stink in this office rubs off on us.”

  As we were leaving, I heard him scrabbling for the phone and dialing. Senor Gonzalez would be waiting for us.

  The day was warm and pleasant, and we left Sweetie and Chablis in the car once we found the Gonzalez address in the heart of Petaluma. We rolled the windows down and parked in the shade of a lush tree. The pups would be fine for half an hour.

  The house, which occupied almost a city block, was surrounded by a high, stucco wall painted a lovely pale cardamom. Tropical vines climbed the exterior and vibrant blossoms gathered in clusters. I knocked at a solid wooden gate.

  “Sarah Booth, you look awful. You really should stay with the dogs,” Tinkie said.

  “Not on your life.” I wasn’t at my best, but I had no idea what Tinkie would confront with Estoban Gonzalez. I wanted to be backup in case he was as nutty as the rest of his family.

  The gate was opened by a middle-aged woman in a maid’s uniform. She ushered us into a shaded patio and through the front door of a lovely Spanish-style home.

  The house, filled with a beautiful golden light, was completely silent. Our footsteps echoed on the tiles, as if we’d stepped into a place where time and sound were self-contained.

  The maid never said a word. She opened a door, indicated with a nod that we were to enter, and then closed the door behind us. Lopez had let his master know we were paying a call.

  Tiger-oak wainscoting was offset by a pale plaster wall. It was a spacious room, the north end in dark shadows.

  “I get the sense we’re meeting the Godfather,” I said.

  “Shush!” Tinkie warned, but she was too late.

  “I can see your mind has been rotted by the film industry. I expect nothing less from an actress.”

  The voice that came from the deep shadows was old and dry, like the touch of
a frail decaying leaf.

  “Mr. Gonzalez,” Tinkie said, unfazed, “we’re here to talk about Carlita and the house you built for her.”

  “I wanted to know what you looked like,” he said. “Now I do. Get out.”

  “Your granddaughter is missing.” Tinkie stepped forward. “Don’t you care about her?”

  “Estelle was lost to me years ago. Her father saw to that.” The filtered light in the room touched his forehead, nose, and chin. The rest of his features were hidden.

  “Mr. Gonzalez, Estelle left for the States a couple of days ago. No one has seen or talked to her since. Do you know where she is?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you care?” Tinkie’s voice rose.

  “It wouldn’t matter if I did. Federico took my grandchildren away from me. They never visit. I don’t know who they are.”

  While another person might have felt pity for an old man mourning the loss of family, I didn’t. Estoban Gonzalez had done everything in his power to sabotage his daughter’s marriage and her self-confidence. From what Federico said, Estoban had browbeaten an already fragile young woman. No wonder Federico kept Estelle and Ricardo far away from their grandfather.

  “You loved Carlita a lot, didn’t you?” I asked. My voice was deceptively smooth. Tinkie cut a glance at me.

  “She was my light, the most perfect thing in my life.”

  “And Federico took her?”

  “Yes. He stole the thing I loved most. He took her and didn’t appreciate her.”

  I didn’t know how deep his self-centeredness went, but I took a wild stab at it. “Carlita would have been happy here in Petaluma had she never met Federico. If Federico had never shown her the world of movie stars, she would still be alive.”

  He leaned forward into a shaft of light that illuminated his face. He was old. His features had begun to fall in on themselves. “Federico tempted her with being a film star. He turned her into a whore and a fool. Men could pay five dollars and watch her strut across the screen in her underwear, showing off her body like a strumpet.”

  “I see your point,” Tinkie said, catching on to what I was doing. “It must have been difficult for you, knowing that men everywhere watched her. And wanted her.”

  “They never knew her, the sweetness and innocence. They saw only her flesh. It was obscene.” Estoban was deep in his memories of a young daughter who was his alone.

  “When you built the house for Carlita, why did you put in the hidden passageways?” I asked. “You did it for her, but why?”

  He gave a soft chuckle. “When she was a child, she loved for me to read stories. Her favorite was about a house with secret passageways and rooms. We must have read that book a thousand times, and she would always say she wanted such a house.”

  “And you gave it to her because you loved her, even though you didn’t approve of her marriage.” Tinkie was leading him exactly where we needed to go.

  “I took that storybook to Senor Lopez. He created the house exactly as the one in the story, or as exact as an architect could.”

  “Ricardo told me there were games of hide-and-seek. Exciting times,” I said. “He spoke of it with fondness.”

  He shook his head. “Ricardo was a dullard. He was never part of the secret. He never knew about the passageways and secret places. When I looked at him, I saw his father, and I told Carlita that she could never show him.”

  “The house was only for Carlita and Estelle,” I said.

  He nodded. “Those were the best times. Estelle was very clever. She was even better than Carlita at hiding. She could move around the passageways, slipping from one floor to another, hiding in the smallest corner. She was a beautiful child with such intelligence. The games we played.”

  Tinkie and I exchanged a look.

  “Sometimes,” he continued, “when there was a big dinner party, Carlita and I would move through the passages, listening to the gossip in different rooms.”

  I kept my features blank. “You must have heard some interesting things.”

  “People are not discreet when they think they’re alone. Especially not men who have power. There were women desperate to flaunt themselves in a movie and men who willingly took advantage of it.”

  It appeared that Estoban Gonzalez may have set his own daughter up to witness her husband’s flirtations or even adultery. He had stopped at nothing to undermine the marriage he found unacceptable.

  “Federico never knew about the passageways, did he?” Tinkie asked. “Carlita loved her husband, yet she never told him.”

  “He wasn’t part of the family. He was an outsider. I told Carlita he would never be allowed to know.”

  Poor Carlita. The man she loved wasn’t accepted, and so she was torn between her own feelings and her father’s harsh demands.

  Tinkie was tired of his cancerous narcissism. “We got the architect’s drawings of the house, but there are other secret passages, aren’t there? That’s your specialty. Secrets among secrets. Layers revealed slowly, like peeling an onion.”

  “Complexity makes life interesting.”

  Tinkie walked to within a few feet of him. “Someone is hiding in that house. Someone dangerous. I was injured. Another woman was pushed down stairs. And your granddaughter is missing. If she’s in that house, she may need help. Can you step outside yourself long enough to realize that Estelle may be in danger?”

  “If Estelle is in her house, she’s safe.” The hint of a smile touched his features. “In the last years, I’ve often had the sense that someone was watching me in that house. I walk down the halls and feel a gaze on my back. Sometimes I catch the tail of a red dressing gown going around a corner, but when I get there, nothing.”

  His statement was like a shower of ice water. “When was the last time you were there?” I asked.

  “Officially? That would be when Carlita died. There was a family service there, a wake.”

  “And unofficially?”

  “The house is empty. Sometimes I go there to look at the portrait of my daughter. I miss her.”

  I knew exactly which portrait. The day was pleasant and warm, but my body had grown cold.

  “I gather Federico doesn’t know you visit there?” Tinkie was having a hard time keeping her tone neutral.

  “He doesn’t know I come back to Costa Rica at all. He said that to him, I am dead. He won’t speak my name.” He laughed. “Why should he care if I go there? I built the house for Carlita. It will pass to Estelle in a few years. If I go there, it’s none of his business. He drags filthy movie people there. He takes his whores there. No one in the movie business has morals.”

  “That’s a blanket condemnation of a business you don’t know about.” I’d had enough. “A lot of people in film have ethics and—”

  “And you’re sleeping with Graf Milieu.”

  I didn’t deny it, and I had the most awful thought that perhaps he’d watched us from the peephole behind the portrait. It was a Norman Bates concept.

  He laughed. “I haven’t been watching you, Ms. Delaney. But film crews talk in town, and eventually everything of interest filters back to me. My network of sources is impeccable.”

  “I’m flattered that I’m of interest,” I said. “But does your network of impeccable sources tell you where your granddaughter is, or who’s in the house attacking people?”

  “Some say it’s the ghost of my daughter.”

  “And what do you say? Are you responsible for the attacks on Tinkie, Jovan, Joey, and me?” I walked up to him, and it took me a moment to realize he was in a wheelchair.

  “And your question has been answered,” he said with only a hint of bitterness. “I’ve been in this chair for the past eight months. I’m not capable of frolicking through the secret passages for mischief or spying.”

  If he hadn’t been such an old roach, I might have felt sorry for him. “But you are capable of hiring someone to do so.”

  He nodded. “A smart man would pay someone to d
o his dirty deeds.” He paused a beat. “Though I’m innocent, of course.”

  “Where is Estelle?” I pressed.

  “She refuses to see me because I told her the truth. That her father wanted her mother gone so he could live his profligate life. I told her about the affairs and the way Carlita came home from Los Angeles to cry and berate herself that she wasn’t beautiful enough to keep her husband.” His forearms rested on the wheelchair, but he couldn’t keep his fingers from dancing in the air.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked. “Why would you hurt your own granddaughter like that? Federico is her father.”

  “The Gonzalez family always faces the facts, Ms. Delaney. We look life in the eye and spit.”

  “And you may have cost your granddaughter her happiness.” Tinkie leaned forward into his face. “You are a vile, unhappy old man and you want everyone around you to be the same. You stole Estelle’s chance at a relationship with her father and filled her head full of anger and suspicion.”

  “I tried to protect her.”

  There was a terrible second when I thought Tinkie was going to punch him. She controlled herself and stepped back. “Your soul is rotted. You’ll die alone and that’s what you deserve. Let’s go, Sarah Booth.”

  I was almost out the door when he called out to me.

  “Ms. Delaney, you won’t last a year in Hollywood. The cannibals will eat you alive. They’re already nibbling.”

  I didn’t bother to respond. He was still hurling bile when we walked out the front door and into the sun.

  “We didn’t learn anything new,” I pointed out. My head had begun to throb.

  “Not true. We learned a lot about the family dysfunction, and that the old bastard has access to the Marquez house and money to hire someone to do dirty deeds. He’s capable of anything.”

  I sighed. “Poor Carlita and Estelle.”

  “Do you think he was trying to set us up when he mentioned seeing someone in a red gown? That sounds like your ghost.”