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  She turned the screen to face me. I saw three absolutely gorgeous shots of Celeste in various outfits and poses. They could have been fashion magazine covers.

  “Those are very good,” I said, unable to figure out what was upsetting her.

  She looked at the screen and scowled. “Wrong pictures.” She angrily punched another key. “Look,” she commanded.

  I looked. And felt my mouth drop open in shock.

  On the screen was a different kind of photo of Celeste. She was holding in one hand what was unmistakably a chef’s apron. It was placed against her torso strategically, but she was positioned at such an angle that the side of one hip was visible, making it obvious that she wasn’t wearing anything below the waist, either. Somehow her holding that apron against her front made for a more salacious picture than if she’d been standing there completely naked.

  It wasn’t only her posing with nothing to cover her except the chef’s apron that made the picture such a shocker to me. Her left hand was raised shoulder high, palm pointed backward, like a waiter carrying a tray. Celeste was smiling at the camera—a sly smile, as though she was enjoying some private joke.

  I got the joke because I was sure it was aimed at me.

  Balanced on her palm was a pie.

  9

  I closed my mouth and looked away from the screen—to find Tanis whatever-her-name-was staring at me with venom in her eyes.

  She said, “Do you expect me to believe that this surprises you?”

  “Of course it does.”

  “You introduced Celeste to that man, Redding. Surely you must have known what kind of pictures he took.”

  I wasn’t going to betray Liddy by correcting her, so I said, “All I know is that Alec Redding is reputed to be one of Hollywood’s top photographers. His wife works with him—she does his lighting—so it didn’t seem as though Celeste would be asked to do anything . . . inappropriate.”

  “Inappropriate!” Tanis snapped the laptop’s lid closed. “This is a catastrophe!”

  I reminded myself that this was the anger of a mother being protective of her child, so I spoke gently. “It’s a shock, I understand that, and if she were my daughter I would be as upset as you are, but nowadays many young actresses pose nude. Several even have had sex tapes pop up on the Internet. This photo isn’t going to ruin Celeste’s chances for a movie career.”

  “Celeste?” Her eyes widened, then narrowed again into a white-hot glare. “I’m not worried about Celeste’s fantasy of becoming an actress. And there won’t be any sex tape because I’ve kept her a virgin.”

  I wondered, silently, how many other mothers had thought that about their teenage daughters, and been wrong.

  Tanis shook the pink laptop as though that would remove the offending photo.

  “This is a disaster for me,” she said. “I’m planning to marry a member of royalty. He’s very conservative. His family is very conservative. If this picture gets into the press or on the Internet it will ruin everything. Not only for myself, but for the future I have planned for Celeste, once she gets this acting nonsense out of her head.”

  Does she intend to foist Celeste off on some “royal”? That pretty virgin Lady Diana Spencer who married Prince Charles had an unhappy life and a tragic early death.

  But I didn’t say that. Instead, “Of course you’re upset. Why don’t you come inside and have a cup of coffee. Or tea. No bags—I brew it with leaves.”

  “Tea?” she said with loathing. “I drink coffee. With a sweetener. No sugar.”

  “Then may I offer you”—I paused, then added—“black. With a sweetener. No sugar.”

  Oblivious to my gentle mockery, she signed heavily, glanced at the laptop, sent a quick sideways look toward the limousine. After weighing her options, finally she said, “Yes. Coffee.”

  When I opened the door, Tuffy gave us his whole-body wag.

  My unexpected guest looked at him in a way that suggested she regarded Tuffy as worthy of her attention. “A standard poodle,” she observed. “They’re actually German dogs, not French as everyone thinks.”

  “Not everyone,” I said briskly. “Please come this way.”

  Tuffy preceded us down the hall. Despite my best efforts to have her go next, she gestured impatiently for me to lead off. I don’t consider my back view to be my best feature. All the way to the kitchen I was very conscious that Tanis was assessing me critically.

  In the kitchen, I said, “Sit down while I make the coffee. It won’t take long. I have some sour cream pecan coffee cake. Would you like a piece?”

  “No, thank you. I don’t eat sweets.”

  She sat, and placed the laptop on the chair beside her. I didn’t know whether she was afraid I was going to snatch it from her if she put it on the table, or if she didn’t want to look at the thing. Probably some of both.

  I took two china cups and saucers from the cupboard, cloth napkins from a drawer, and spoons from the chest that held the sterling silver place settings that had been a wedding gift from my parents, and put everything on a tray.

  “Do you live here alone?” she asked.

  “No.” I spooned ground coffe into the machine. “A young woman friend lives here, too. Eileen O’Hara.”

  “Ah.” Her tone was ambiguous. I couldn’t decipher its meaning.

  “Eileen is only four years older than Celeste. We’re partners in a small business that she runs. Eileen and Celeste might like each other.”

  She ignored that and said, “I gather that you’re seeing Nico.”

  Nico?

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He looks wonderful. But then he always did. He’s a few pounds heavier than when we were together, but Celeste tells me you cook. I didn’t leave Nico because he wasn’t terribly attractive and superb in bed.”

  Ouch. She opened that door, so I kept my voice level and asked, “Why did you leave him?”

  “I wanted a different kind of life.”

  “But why in the world did you keep him away from his daughter all those years?”

  “Frankly, I didn’t want to see Nico and be tempted to fall into bed and return to a dull life I didn’t enjoy.” A brief smile curved her lips. “At least I didn’t enjoy life with him when I was standing up and fully dressed.” Then the smile was gone. “Looking back, I suppose that was selfish of me.”

  “You suppose? Not being able to see his daughter broke his heart,” I said.

  That didn’t seem to faze her. She went on as though I hadn’t spoken.

  “I was young and I wanted excitement. Naïvely, I thought a reporter’s job was glamorous, that we’d be traveling all over the world having adventures. But it wasn’t like that. He wrote articles, and didn’t get to go any farther away than San Francisco. I was so disillusioned that I had intended to leave him sooner, but then I found out I was pregnant. I thought perhaps motherhood would make me feel differently, but it didn’t.”

  The coffee was ready. I brought the tray with the cups, coffee, and a little crystal bowl of artificial sweeteners to the table and sat down opposite her.

  She put one packet of sweetener into her coffee. After taking a sip, she said, “I was planning to go back to Vienna tomorrow, but then I saw”—she nodded toward the pink laptop on the chair beside her—“that.”

  “Did Celeste show it to you?”

  “No. She was out driving her new car. She’d left the computer in my suite so I could use it to send an e-mail to my houseman. Just as I was about to, I saw a message come in with the subject line ‘photo proofs,’ so I opened it. I was horrified. Even worse, I was afraid my fiancé, who was standing there with me, was going to have a heart attack.”

  Tanis put down her coffee cup. “What influence do you have with this man Redding?”

  “None.”

  “This is really Nico’s fault.”

  I didn’t try to hide my anger. “How do you figure that?”

  “He allowed her to keep her appointment with that Redding cre
ature. Now he’ll just have to get us out of this mess.” She huffed in frustration. “I’m desperate for a cigarette, but my handbag’s out in the car. Do you have one? I’ll take any brand.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “But don’t you keep some to offer guests?”

  “None of my friends smoke.”

  She swore softly in German.

  I don’t speak German, but it wasn’t hard to guess the essence of what she was saying.

  Tanis picked up Celeste’s laptop and stood. “Thank you for the coffee. I should get back to the hotel. Freddie is terribly upset, and he’s not in the best of health—he’s a hemophiliac.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Oh, he’s fine unless he accidentally cuts himself,” she said in an offhand manner, “but sometimes stress makes him careless.”

  I saw her to the door and we exchanged polite good-byes.

  Barely had the door closed behind her when my telephone rang.

  It was Nicholas. “Della.” His voice vibrated with anger. “Do you know what Tanis has done?”

  “What?”

  “She turned the perfectly good, safe Honda I bought Celeste back to the dealer and leased her a BMW instead. She said a BMW presented a better image!”

  “Nicholas, Tanis was just here.”

  “Where? At your house? Why?”

  “She’s upset about something. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think you should be prepared.”

  When I told him about the photo of Celeste, he exploded. In Italian. But in school I’d made “A’s” in Latin so I understood almost every word.

  “No, Nicholas—don’t do anything foolish!”

  He hung up.

  I ran to the kitchen to the computer to look up Alec Redding’s address. It was on his Web site. I prayed I could get there before Nicholas did.

  The address of Alec Redding’s photo studio was the same as his home address in Brentwood. If Nicholas had phoned me from his place in Larchmont, then being here in Santa Monica I was closer to Redding. I’d have even more time to get there if he’d called me from the Chronicle office in downtown Los Angeles.

  Even though I’d scribbled down his phone number along with his address, I couldn’t call Redding to warn him that an outraged father was on his way. Suppose he had a gun? He might think he needed to defend himself. I imagined them struggling for the weapon and Nicholas being shot.

  That image was so horrible I snatched up the phone and dialed Redding’s number.

  The call went right to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message.

  Because Nicholas drove like a NASCAR champion, it would be a race to Redding’s no matter where he started from. I grabbed my wallet with my driver’s license and rushed out of the house without giving Tuffy a good-bye pet.

  10

  One-ninety Bella Vista Drive was a block and a half north of Sunset Boulevard, near the border—visible only to real estate agents and tax assessors—where upper-income Brentwood melts into upper-upper-income Bel Air.

  Redding’s house was a tall, two-story red brick, trimmed in white, with smooth white columns on either side of the front door and a satellite dish on the roof. The numerals “190,” in black iron, were affixed to the top of the carport. One car was there: a tan Lexus. The other half of the carport was empty, but parked behind the Lexus was an older model green Buick. I heaved a huge sigh of relief that Nicholas hadn’t arrived.

  I parked on the street in front of the house, hurried up the walk, and pressed the little mother-of-pearl bell button. A few seconds passed, during which I anxiously scanned Bella Vista Drive while listening hard for the familiar roar of the Maserati’s motor. Simultaneously with my pushing the bell again, the door was opened by a woman of sixty or so with silver hair in a braid coiled on top of her head and a light pink complexion. From her pale gray domestic’s uniform I guessed this was the Reddings’ housekeeper.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’d like to see either Mister or Missus Redding.”

  “They are no’ at home.” Her voice had the slightest trace of an Irish brogue.

  “What time will they be back?”

  She shook her head. “They be gone until Friday. Would ye like to leave a message?”

  “No, that’s all right, I’ll—”

  At that moment, I heard the Maserati’s engine and turned to see Nicholas’s car zoom up the street. It came to a screeching stop so tight behind my Jeep that if his brakes hadn’t been in perfect condition he would have plowed into it.

  I said a hasty “Thank you” to the woman at the door and started down the front walk. Nicholas confronted me halfway up.

  “He’s away until Friday,” I said.

  Nicholas’s eyes blazed. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him. “Where did that miserable bastard go?”

  “Out of town. I don’t know where, but the mood you’re in I wouldn’t tell you even if I did know.”

  His fury dropped from a boil to a simmer. “What are you doing here?”

  “Don’t use that tone with me. I came to stop you from doing something you’d regret.”

  Glancing back toward the Reddings’ front door, I saw that the housekeeper was watching us curiously. As soon as she saw me looking at her, she retreated inside and closed the door.

  I took Nicholas’s hand. “Come on,” I said. “He’s not here. Do you want something to eat? Or coffee? How about a glass or two of your favorite Sicilian red wine? I still have an unopened bottle.”

  He removed his hand from mine. “Not now,” he said, but at least he sounded calmer. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Where?”

  “To talk to Tanis.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I only had one good idea, but Redding’s not here.”

  He took my arm, walked with me to my Jeep, and opened the door for me. “Go home,” he said. “I’ll call you later.”

  “All right. But take a dozen deep breaths before you talk to either Tanis or Celeste. Acting like a maddened bull isn’t going to solve anything.”

  His response was a grunt.

  I climbed into the Jeep and watched Nicholas get behind the wheel of his car. We turned our respective vehicles around and headed south to Sunset Boulevard.

  At the corner, I turned west toward Santa Monica.

  Nicholas turned east, toward the Olympia Grand Hotel. And Tanis.

  Nicholas didn’t call me later.

  He didn’t call me all day Thursday, either. I had gone from being worried about him to becoming angry at being shut out. If our relationship was as serious as I had thought it was—as he had declared it was—then I deserved at least a one-minute phone call from him.

  But anger wasn’t a useful emotion in this situation, so I decided to concentrate on my responsibilities.

  This night’s show was called “Microwave Meals from Scratch,” so I didn’t need to prepare the finished products here at home. The three dishes I’d planned to demonstrate—Stuffed Acorn Squash, Zucchini Canoes, and Brown Rice with Raw Vegetables—could be made within the show’s live hour. I didn’t even need to buy the ingredients, because for the past several months a production assistant had been assigned to do that. The items would be waiting for me at the studio.

  To keep from listening for the phone to ring, I busied myself baking seventy-two muffins from a homemade batter that was almost as easy to whip up as it would be to open a box mix, and it tasted a lot better. The chocolate, vanilla, and coconut muffins would be passed out to the audience tonight, with plenty left over for the Better Living Channel’s staff.

  It was time to drive to the studio.

  No longer able to stand the suspense, I dialed Nicholas’s cell phone, but after four rings, my call went to his voice mail.

  “Hi. It’s me,” I said. “What’s going on? I’m worried about you. Call me. I’ll keep my cell on until the show and turn it back on again as soon as we go off the air at eight.”

 
; Disconnecting, I wished I could talk to Liddy about the trouble the racy photo Alec Redding took of Celeste had caused, my visit from Tanis, my concern about Nicholas. But I knew I shouldn’t tell anyone else—even a friend as close as Liddy was—about something that was the private business of Celeste and her parents. To take my mind off worrying about Nicholas, I wanted to talk to Liddy about silly things. She’d tell me the latest Hollywood gossip, and I’d tell her about the new supplier at Della’s Sweet Dreams who misread our address and mistakenly delivered our order of superfine sugar to the muffler repair shop down the street. But Liddy was working on a movie set all this week, playing a bank robber’s hostage tied up next to Bruce Willis in Die Hard 9: Overdrawn.

  Six fifty-five PM. Five minutes to air. Still no call from Nicholas. My emotions had gone from worry to anger, but now that so many hours had passed with no word from him, my anger had been replaced by a concern so deep the feeling was almost ominous.

  Instead of turning the phone off entirely, as I was supposed to while in front of the cameras, I compromised by shutting off the ringer and slipped it into the pocket of my slacks. I adjusted the earpiece concealed under my hair to make it more comfortable, and prepared to teach the studio audience and the viewers at home how to prepare delicious meals with fresh, healthy ingredients, and do it quickly by using a microwave.

  I was in the middle of the broadcast’s second segment, slicing zucchinis lengthwise to show the audience how to make what I called “Zucchini Canoes,” when I felt my cell phone vibrate. It was frustrating, but I had to continue talking to the camera and to the studio audience while I chopped the veggie mixture that would fill the canoes.

  As soon as the red light over the camera lens went off and we were into another commercial break, I hurried behind the set to pull the phone of my pocket.

  I was sure it had been Nicholas who tried to reach me, and the number on the incoming call record confirmed that. But he hadn’t left a message.