I stepped into the hall to answer my phone. Tor still retained a soft Southern drawl beneath his California accent. “Millie said I should help you,” he said.
“Where is Vincent Day?” I asked.
“Millie also said that you could be rude. She was right.”
“Sorry, but it’s a time thing. I do apologize but we have only a few hours. If Vincent Day is in this area, I have to find him before my flight leaves.” It was logical to me, and I hoped Tor understood.
“I haven’t seen Vincent since he came back from Canada. I’d heard he stopped over in Sweden to look up his ex.”
“Ivana?” I struggled to remember. The cast of characters in the infidelity quadrangles of the Marquezes and Days was a bit confusing.
“Yes, she lives in Stockholm. I think Vincent was trying to make atonement.”
“What makes you think that?”
“He said something about how he’d walked away from the one person who gave him real joy.”
“Ivana?” The story I’d gotten from Millie was that Ivana had left him and returned to her native country because of the romantic intrigues and domestic violence.
“I got the sense it wasn’t Ivana. Hey, I knew her and she was a bitch extraordinaire. She left no stone uncast when she got riled up, which was about every twenty minutes. I think she hated Vincent.”
“So why would he go and see her?”
There was a pause. “Technically, he didn’t say he was going to see Ivana.”
“Then who else could it be?” He didn’t even have to answer. A dozen little balls tumbled into place in my brain. “Did he have a child?”
“Not a word was ever spoken about a child.”
But I could hear it in Tor’s voice. He was making the same connections. “What happened to Ivana after she left Day and went home?”
“She was a beautiful woman, but she wasn’t part of the Hollywood royalty.”
“She dropped out of sight.”
“Exactly.”
“So she could have had a child?”
“Possibly.” There was another pause. “Damn. Day could have a son or daughter.”
“Thanks, Tor.” I had to get off the phone and fast. There were calls to be made. Calls of life and death. “I’ll give Millie your regards.” I’d already proven I was rude so I hung up.
As I pushed against the hospital door, it opened. Estelle was weeping silently in the bed. She looked at me. “I only meant to mess up the movie. I never meant for anyone to be hurt.”
“Who hit you and put you in that closet to die?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. Jovan.
Her response was an echo of the name in my own brain. I looked at Tinkie. “We’ve got to get to Hollywood. Federico is missing.”
Estelle was crying in earnest now. There were only a few other questions that needed an answer in Petaluma. “What role does your grandfather play in all of this?”
“He paid off Daniel’s security men to allow me to slip around the premises. Daniel didn’t know. He wouldn’t have helped me.”
“You could have died, Estelle. Had Sarah Booth and Tinkie not searched the house, you’d be dead now.” Daniel was hurt and angry, and I didn’t blame him.
“Grandfather didn’t know I was injured and in the house. Like everyone else, he thought I’d gone back to the States. He truly didn’t know.” She reached for Daniel’s hand, and I could see that her dexterity was clumsy. The price she might pay for this would be far higher than any a judge could mete out to her.
“And Suzy Dutton?” I asked.
“I had nothing to do with that. Nothing.”
“We have to call Sheriff King,” Tinkie said.
I handed her my cell phone. I had another question for Estelle. “Why did Jovan turn on you?”
“I realized she meant to kill someone if she had to. We argued. I told her it had gone far enough. That I’d come to realize that my mother loved my father, and that it was her own illness that killed her, not his infidelity.”
Tinkie was waiting for the secretary to find King and ring her through.
“How did you discover that?” I asked.
Estelle never faltered. She never even blinked. “Mama told me. When I was in the house one night and everyone else was gone, I saw her. She told me to stop, that Father wasn’t to blame. She said she’d never rest in peace until I knew the truth.”
Chill bumps danced along my arms.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she asked. “I’m headed to a mental institution anyway.”
“The problem, Estelle, is that I do believe you,” I said. It was cold comfort, but it was all I had to give.
With the cell phone still pressed to Tinkie’s ear, we hurried out of the hospital and into the night. If there was a flight to LAX tonight, we were going to be on it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
When Sheriff King answered, he was brusque but courteous. Tinkie gave him the information and then rang off. I called Graf. My heart began to thud when there was no answer. Graf always kept his cell phone with him.
“It’s okay, Sarah Booth. I’m sure Graf is fine.” Tinkie spoke the words with a valiant heart, but she couldn’t hide the tremor in her voice. She was worried, too. A psychopathic killer was on the loose in Los Angeles, and she’d targeted Federico and the cast and crew of his film. Graf was one of the key players in the movie.
“We should have figured this out quicker,” Tinkie said.
“The running shoes that Valdez found. Jovan had access to them. She planted them.” As crazy as it was, it gave me hope. “Maybe she intended to frame Federico for murder rather than kill him. Maybe he’s still alive.”
“Maybe.” Tinkie drove like a bat out of hell. She normally drove that way, but she upped it a notch on the narrow Petaluma road. We had our luggage and the dogs, and we were only minutes from the airport. A plane had to be there. It had to. We couldn’t wait to get home.
I dialed Graf again. I had this horrible image of him, broken and dead, at the bottom of a cliff. As hard as I tried to shake it, I couldn’t.
We tried Federico again, no answer. Ricardo, no answer. Was it possible that Jovan had pulled a Jim Jones and given them all a lethal dose of poison-laced Kool-Aid?
When we pulled into the airport, I knew we were in trouble. The place had that desolate look of an empty train station. No one waited on a flight because there weren’t any planes going out.
Since I was almost in tears, Tinkie negotiated with one of the sleepy airline employees. For the wad of cash Tinkie produced, the man would have built a plane for us if he’d had the ability. “Sorry, senoritas. There are no planes on the ground here. None will come in until tomorrow.” He eyed the money reluctantly.
Tinkie walked to the window that gave a view of the airfield and pointed. “Then what is that?”
He followed her finger to the beautiful jet that seemed to perch, briefly, on the ground.
“That is a private jet, senoritas. We have no public transportation available.”
“Who owns the jet?” I asked.
“It is an actress. Charlize Theron. She was here to do a benefit and she is leaving very soon.”
I looked at Tinkie and she looked at me. We handed the dogs’ leashes to the attendant and ran out the door and across the tarmac. Tinkie and I were getting into good physical shape despite ourselves with all this running to and fro.
We got to the gangplank just as they were about to push it away. “Wait!” I screamed, mounting the stairs even as they began to move.
The ground crew scrambled to stop it before I was injured, but they gave me a murderous look. I beat frantically on the door of the plane. “Please, open up,” I said. “Please.”
An incredibly beautiful woman peeped through the small window. She assessed me and finally opened the door.
“We need a ride to Los Angeles,” I explained. “It’s a matter of life and death.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I realized what a cliché they were.