Wishbones

by Carolyn Haines

  As we rode to the studio, dawn brightened the sky. Funny, but the weather in California was seasonless—paradise by anyone’s measure—but I found it annoying. The last winter at Dahlia House had been lonely and on some mornings bitterly cold. The summers were often unbearable. But weather marked the passage of time in a rhythm that was familiar.

  We were almost to the studio when King began to talk. “I have some information on the situation,” he said. “I’ve got men at the studio, and I just talked with one of my captains. We believe Jovan is holed up on a sound stage with hostages.”

  “Hostages? Plural?” My voice broke.

  He cast me a quick glance. “Two or more. We can’t be sure. We’ve got surveillance equipment trained on the building, but the visibility isn’t great.”

  “Are the hostages alive?”

  He rubbed his chin. “As far as we can tell. But I’m not going to kid you, this is a bad situation.”

  “Has anyone tried to talk to her?” Tinkie asked.

  “A hostage negotiator called and she said if we called again, she’d kill the people she’s holding. And I believe she will. She’s coming unraveled fast.”

  As I watched the sun come up on one of the most beautiful places I’d ever been, I was paralyzed by dread. The car seemed to crawl forward, and while Tinkie asked questions, I couldn’t make out any of the words.

  I felt her hand on my shoulder, and I squeezed her fingers to let her know I appreciated all she was doing. Graf was okay. I had to believe that. Somehow he’d gotten caught up in this mess, but there was no reason for Jovan to kill him.

  Except that she’d killed Suzy Dutton and almost killed Estelle, not to mention taking a swipe at me and Tinkie. Homicidal maniacs didn’t need a reason.

  As we turned into the studio lot, I saw the patrol cars, a line of eight, waiting for the sheriff. Snipers with high-powered rifles stood talking beside the cars. This was serious business, and while Grady King was calm, he was prepared for anything.

  “Graf is okay, Sarah Booth.” Tinkie spoke with the confidence of a friend. “Feel it? He’s fine. Don’t worry.”

  “Sure,” I said, though I felt only the sensation of dropping into a void.

  King stopped and we got out. He talked with several of the SWAT team members, then came back to us.

  “It’s like this. We can see one man we believe to be Marquez tied in a chair. There’s no sign of the second man. We can see Jovan pacing back and forth, talking to the man in the chair. We’ve used the bullhorn to alert her that we’re law enforcement and that she should surrender. She’s not inclined to listen.”

  “What’s your plan?” I asked.

  “We can’t get a clear shot on her. We need someone to try to talk to her. She won’t answer her cell phone.”

  “I’ll go talk to her,” I said. I had to get to Graf and make sure he was alive.

  King assessed me. “You’d risk your life?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t want to. I had a pretty good life. If something happened to me without producing the Delaney heir that Jitty kept hounding me about, I’d never hear the end of it. Jitty would haunt me in the afterlife just as she did now.

  “No!” Tinkie stepped forward. “Let me do it. She has reason to hate Sarah Booth because of the movie. I’m not involved with any of it. She may listen to me.”

  “She whacked you on the head and kicked Chablis,” I reminded her. “You’re as vulnerable as I am. And you look like a raccoon. She won’t talk to you.”

  The bruises from the wreck had already begun to settle around Tinkie’s eyes. She did look remarkably like the masked bandit of the animal world.

  “She’ll be a lot more receptive to me,” Tinkie insisted.

  “Ladies.” King held up a hand. “I’ve never seen two civilians argue for the chance to get shot.”

  “You’ve never met a true Mississippi gal,” Tinkie said.

  “And hope never to again,” King said under his breath. He looked at me and then Tinkie. “She’s going in.” He pointed at Tinkie. “Get her a vest and as much protection as we can,” he said to one of the men, who led Tinkie away to make a Kevlar selection.

  “You can’t let her risk herself,” I told him. “She has a husband and friends who love her.”

  He only arched an eyebrow. “All we need is for her to get the door open. She’s short and if we have to, we can take the shot right over her head.”

  The idea was awful. But I could see from King’s and Tinkie’s faces that they were going full ahead. “I’ve got to find a toilet,” I said. “I’m going to be sick.”

  “That way,” a young deputy pointed.

  Vomit was such an effective threat. They were only too glad that I was ambulatory and could clean myself up. I slipped away without anyone giving me a second thought.

  The sound stage looked to me like a huge warehouse with metal doors that slid on runners. Inside, there were different sets and climate-controlled conditions. I had no idea which set Jovan might be occupying with her prisoners, but I would find out.

  As I passed a patrol car, I saw a canister of pepper spray on the seat. I reached in and took it. Then I was running, heading behind the building, hoping that there might be a way for me to slip inside before Tinkie could risk her life.

  I heard Sheriff King cursing a blue streak, but I was too far away for him to stop me, unless he shot me, and I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t do that. Not yet.

  When I made it to a corner of the building, I pressed myself against it and took some deep breaths. To my horror, I saw that Tinkie was proceeding toward the building, too. She was going straight to the doors.

  I pushed off the wall and began circling behind. Although I couldn’t see them, I knew snipers surrounded the building. Moving quickly, I ran along the back looking for a window or door or some opening where I could push myself inside. I had to hurry. Tinkie and Graf both were in danger.

  I was on the north side when I found a window with a cracked pane. If I did this wrong, tragedy could result. Using my elbow, I cracked the glass more and began to pull it out piece by piece. When I could get my hand and arm inside, I unlocked the window and gently raised it.

  In another three minutes, I was inside, completely disoriented but able to hear the sound of someone knocking.

  “Go away or I’ll kill Milieu,” Jovan yelled.

  I followed her voice, tracking silently through the huge building.

  “It’s Tinkie Richmond,” I heard my partner say. “Will you please talk to me? Jovan, your mother is worried sick about you.”

  “Yeah, right. She was so worried she gave me away at birth.”

  The last and final piece clicked. Tinkie had been right. The parents on Jovan’s Web site had adopted her. Her mother, the lovely Ivana, had not wanted to raise the daughter that was a product of . . . her marriage or an affair? Was Federico Marquez her father?

  I moved steadily closer to the sound of Tinkie pounding on the door. “I can help you, Jovan. You have a career and fans and Federico cares for you. You don’t want to hurt him.”

  Don’t go there, Tinkie, I wanted to shout at her. Federico might be her father. And her lover. Shades of Chinatown. Don’t go there. But it was too late.

  I saw a flood of daylight as the door opened and Jovan reached out and snatched Tinkie inside just as several slugs whammed into the side of the building.

  “You were trying to set me up to be shot.”

  I crept forward. Jovan gripped Tinkie’s shirt.

  “It’s not too late for you to give up,” Tinkie said. “I’ll try to help you.”

  Jovan pushed her back so hard that Tinkie fell. She stayed on the floor.

  “You can help me,” Jovan said. “You can watch as I gut the man who destroyed my family and my life.” She stepped around Tinkie and went to a set designed as a bedroom. Federico was sitting in a chair, tied so tightly that he couldn’t move.

  Jovan stepped behind him and picked up a knife on a small tabl
e. Quick as a flash, she grabbed Federico’s hair and pulled his head back, revealing his throat. She passed the blade in front of him, and for a moment I thought she’d slit his jugular.

  “Federico Marquez slept with my mother to get even with my father.” Jovan kept repositioning the knife. At any moment she could easily kill him.

  “So Vincent Day is your father,” Tinkie said. She walked closer. She was calm and poised. Tinkie had courage.

  “That bitch Carlita seduced my father. She used him to try to manipulate Federico. And then Federico turned on his best friend and tried to ruin him. My father’s last two films ended in bankruptcy because Federico convinced the backers to pull out.”

  The man tied in the chair began to struggle and fight against his bonds and the gag.

  “Why don’t you let Federico speak?” Tinkie asked. “Have you given him a chance to tell you his side?”

  “I don’t need his side. His pathetic daughter told me how he’d killed Carlita and wouldn’t allow the children to see her. He’s a vile man and he deserves to die. I’m going to make sure it happens.”

  “Carlita died of anorexia,” Tinkie said. “No one killed her. She killed herself.”

  Tinkie was getting to Jovan. I inched around to the flank position. If Tinkie could just distract her, I could knock her down and douse her with pepper spray.

  “Federico loved his children and his wife. Carlita was ill. She needed validation of her beauty, and she did some bad things to people, especially to Federico and his children. And to you and your parents. Federico is as much a victim as you are.”

  “That’s not true!” Her rage was instantaneous. “How dare you!” She started to lunge at Tinkie and I hurled myself out of the shadows and at her legs. I took her down at the knees like an Ole Miss tackle. She hit hard and before she could recover, I pressed the button on the pepper spray and sent a thin jet of it directly into her eyes.

  “I’ll kill you,” she raged, thrashing and choking. “I’ll kill all of you.”

  Tinkie found an extension cord and together we bound the model’s hands behind her back. “I think you’re killing days are over, Jovan. And just so you know, Estelle is going to be fine.”

  We left Jovan on the floor and untied Federico. He looked like he might keel over, but he assured us he hadn’t been harmed. While Tinkie went to signal the deputies inside, I knelt beside Jovan.

  “Where’s Graf?” I demanded.

  “Screw you,” she said. “He’s as good as dead.”

  I grasped a fistful of hair. “I swear to you, if you don’t tell me where Graf is, I will snatch you bald-headed.”

  Something in my tone must have convinced her. “In the trunk on set eight.”

  As King and the deputies entered the building, I was rushing to set eight. It was built to be an attic, and I saw the trunk instantly. It opened with a creak, and I found Graf bound and gagged.

  For a moment I thought he was dead, but he opened his eyes when I removed the bandanna she’d wadded into his mouth.

  “Sarah Booth,” he said. “I knew you’d come.”

  Tinkie had walked up behind me. In the background, Sheriff King was reading Jovan her rights. Tinkie helped me loosen the bonds that held Graf, and he climbed out of the trunk bruised, but none the worse for wear.

  I can’t say for sure who embraced whom, but we were holding each other like we intended to graft.

  “Oh, no.” Tinkie spoke so softly that I thought something had happened to her. But when we followed the finger she was pointing, we saw it.

  What looked like miles and miles of film had been pulled from canisters and burned. Cameras were bashed and destroyed.

  We ran toward the devastation, but I knew what it was. Jovan had achieved her goal of destroying the movie. Every scene Federico had shot was ruined. In one vengeful, insane act, she’d changed all of our lives.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Graf, Sweetie Pie, and I stood on the tarmac of the private airport and waved good-bye to Tinkie and Chablis. On the flight to Los Angeles from Costa Rica, Tinkie had formed a strong friendship; Charlize was loaning Tinkie her private jet for a quick trip home.

  My heart ached as she waved out the door and then disappeared into the plane. She reappeared at a window, waving Chablis’s little paw.

  “What’s Federico going to do?” I asked Graf.

  He’d spent the morning with the director. Not a single frame of the movie was salvageable.

  Jovan was in jail, charged with Suzy Dutton’s murder, kidnapping, and a dozen other offenses. Estelle was recuperating in Petaluma. She was scheduled to fly to L.A. to stay with her father.

  “Federico doesn’t know. He can’t afford to reshoot the film. His backers have abandoned him. They don’t care that none of this was his fault.”

  “I’m not so certain I want to do it again.” I couldn’t believe I was speaking those words. “I mean, it’s fun and all, but I—”

  “You were far more involved in solving the case than you were in acting.”

  Graf said it so well.

  “I don’t know. Can’t I do both?”

  He smiled. “I don’t see why not. You can be biprofessional.”

  My cell phone rang and I saw with surprise the number from the Sunflower County Sheriff’s Office. I answered cautiously.

  “Sarah Booth, I’m trying to find Tinkie. It’s important.” Coleman’s voice was strained.

  “She just boarded a plane to head home,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  He hesitated, and I felt a sharp blade to the gut. Whatever had transpired between us, I’d never given him reason to doubt me.

  “It’s Oscar,” he said. “He’s deathly ill.”

  He could have slugged me and I wouldn’t have been more shocked. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Coleman took a breath. “We’re not certain, but it’s bad. Remember the old Graystone Estate? The bank has held the mortgage on it for years, and Oscar had a buyer, so he went out to check the property. When he got back, he wasn’t feeling well. Two hours later, his secretary found him in his office, unconscious.”

  Before I could even think, I was signaling frantically at Tinkie to stop the plane. She quit waving Chablis’s paw and made a face at me.

  “Stop the plane,” I told Graf. “You have to stop it. I’ve got to get on.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Just stop that plane.”

  While Graf went to find someone in authority, I ran to the plane with Sweetie right at my heels. Tinkie’s face reflected horror, but in a moment the door of the plane reopened. She came out.

  “What?” she yelled above the roar of the airport.

  Before I told her, I had to know the extent of it. I spoke into the telephone. “Coleman, how bad is Oscar?”

  “Sarah Booth, it could be fatal.”

  I made my decision. “We’re both headed home.” I couldn’t abandon Tinkie with Oscar so sick. What I was really worried about was telling Tinkie about Oscar.

  “I’ll call you when I land,” I said to Coleman before I hung up.

  As I stood on the steps of the plane, I saw Graf. I ran toward him and explained briefly, that Tinkie’s husband was seriously ill.

  “You’re a good friend, Sarah Booth. Do you want me to come?”

  I shook my head. Tinkie was going to require my undivided attention. And Graf’s career was hanging in tatters. He needed to be where he could address a million issues.

  “Stay here. As soon as Oscar stabilizes, I’ll be back.”

  He kissed me. “Go. Call me when you get there. And be careful.”

  I kissed him with my heart tearing in two. But then Sweetie and I were on the plane, and in less than fifteen minutes, I’d ripped my friend’s world apart and sat holding her as she cried.

  We were headed back to Zinnia, but not as victors. Oscar’s sudden illness could change our worlds forever. He was a fit and strong man, and it would take a serious illness to bring him do
wn. But Coleman’s tone of voice had frightened me. This wasn’t just a case of the flu.

  The truth was, I didn’t know what we might find in Sunflower County. But one thing was for sure, I wasn’t about to let Tinkie face it alone.

  I sat on the steps of Dahlia House in the warm spring sun, my cell phone at my side, waiting for word. Tinkie was at the hospital. She wasn’t allowed to see Oscar, except through a glass window, but she refused to leave her spot in the hall.

  I’d spent most of the night beside my friend, but I’d come home to check on Sweetie Pie. She was fine, and the cotton planted around Dahlia House was a tender green, extending to the horizon in long rows.

  I heard the squeak of rubber wheels, and I looked up to see who had a baby stroller at Dahlia House. But it wasn’t a stroller. It was a wheelchair, and in it sat a chocolate rendition of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Jitty pushed up the small glasses that perched on her nose.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Look, you can play Marilyn or Lana or Halle or just about anyone. But I don’t think you can pull off FDR.”

  “I’m only going for the HBO movie, not a major feature release. Kenneth Branagh is hard to imitate. That man’s got some moves.”

  I put my head in my hands. As glad as I was to see Jitty right back here on the front porch of Dahlia House, I was too worried about Tinkie and Oscar to enjoy her games.

  The wheelchair creaked up to my side. “Did you know that polio victims were treated as if they had the plague? People were terrified of them. Sometimes no one would help them at all, and the high fevers killed them. Strange that it was a virus that could be controlled by a simple vaccine.”

  She was spoon-feeding me hope, and I mustered a smile for her. “Welcome home,” I said.

  “Right back at you.” She pushed up the glasses that weren’t meant for her smooth nose.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  “Same as always, Sarah Booth. Fight. It’s in your blood and in your bones. You fight for what you love and hold dear.”

  “Tinkie will die if Oscar doesn’t make it.”