Approaching the guard, I caught a glimpse of my stunned hollow-eyed reflection in a floor-to-ceiling wrought-iron framed mirror. I looked like a blond ghost holding an urn.

"Diana Pole, I'm expected," I told him.

He repeated my name into his Bluetooth, nodded, then opened the door.

Shrill laughter and the loud voices of people trying to be heard over the relentless music hit me like a blow to the head.

The partygoers filled the enormous room, which was decorated with antique area rugs, seductive sofas obese with down, and a walk-in fireplace. Gilt-framed French paintings depicting turn-of-the-century women leisurely reading, pouring tea, taking baths, or strolling with their parasols glinted from the walls. More or less famous guests spilled out open French doors onto a veranda that led down to the gardens and a rented pavilion from which the music blared. Young attractive waiters, hope still in their eyes, circled with trays of martinis, mojitos, and expensive red and white wines. Others displayed small filet mignons on bite-size hamburger buns, caviar, iced crab, and Dodger Dogs. Everyone here was the chosen, the connected, the sought-after.

Grabbing a martini, I downed it and placed it back on the tray. The alcohol streamed through me, burning the edge off what now seemed to be a permanent chill.

"Diana, so good to see you," Barbara Quinn, a producer who had never hired me, grabbed my shoulders and looked intently into my face. This was a new thing in Hollywood-looking intently into people's faces, creating a false intimacy. I liked the old way better-staring at the forehead.

"Last year Colin, and this year your mother," she continued. "You look devastated. A great writer. A great actress. Both gone. Is there going to be a memorial service for her?"

Memorial service? "I ... haven't had a ..."

"Hold that thought. I'll be right back." She swooped away to chase after an up-and-coming actor whose name I couldn't remember.

Ryan Johns loped toward me. He had on a fresh pair of Bermuda shorts and another loud Hawaiian shirt topped off with an expensive cashmere blazer, and his Uggs. His crimson legs and face clashed with his orange-red hair.

"Look what you did to me," he said. "You left me out on my deck until I burned to a crisp. Where have you been? I was hoping you could drive me here. I had to take a cab. Too many DUIs. Do you know what it's like to take a cab in Los Angeles? We got lost in Mar Vista. Where the h.e.l.l is Mar Vista? Can you drive me home?"

"I'm leaving right away."

"Great, it's a dull party."

"Have you seen Zaitlin?"

"No ..." His eyes came to rest on the urn. "That's not ..."

I nodded.

"Nora!" His blue eyes shined with glee. "You brought your mother to the party?" He was as delighted as if I were a school chum who'd brought a live frog to cla.s.s.

A sliver of a blonde sidled up to him. "Remember me?"

"I ..." He was trying to think fast.

"Hot pink leather coat? Back bedroom of your agent's house?"

"I had trouble with the b.u.t.tons."

"You pa.s.sed out. We have unfinished business." She ran a fingernail along his bottom lip, then turned and slipped away. He winced at his burnt skin being touched.

"What do women see in me?" he asked, honestly amazed.

"I have no idea."

Ryan grabbed a drink from a pa.s.sing waiter and stalked after the Blond Sliver.

"I don't know how a man can drink as much as Ryan does and be such a successful writer. But he'll never be in Colin's league." Zaitlin's wife kissed me on the cheek.

"He has high-concept ideas," I said.

Tall and thin, Gwyn Zaitlin had a sad elegance about her. She wore her mink-brown hair pulled severely back from her tired face. It was as if she wanted to show us every deep line and erosion that burying her soul had cost her. Some women don't have a soul to lose but she did. Of the three of us, Celia, Gwyn, and myself, she was the one who had my mother's kind of talent. But she had suffered a breakdown and began hearing voices and cowering in bushes. During that period she got pregnant; to this day she says she doesn't know who fathered her son. Her parents put her in a sanitarium in Switzerland where she was to have an abortion and get her sanity back. In that order. But even in her deepest despair it never occurred to her not to keep the baby.

I always thought the sanitarium was where her soul and talent got buried, not because of Ben, her son, but because she had returned so utterly unwaveringly normal. Hollywood normal, that is. It was as if she had been given a script and she was playing the same role over and over. Three years later she met Zaitlin, and they married. Many people thought he married her for her family's money. But as Gwyn reminded me, "Someone was going to marry me for my money, so why not the man I wanted?"

And now she was one of the town's major hostesses and a force for charities, especially rape victims. But in the land of plastic surgery, she moved through Hollywood with a raw aging face, a warning symbol that no one heeded.

"Robert's waiting for you." She took my arm and guided me back through the party. "It's terrible about Jenny Parson. You haven't told anybody have you, Diana? I don't want my Ben's birthday ruined."

As I shook my head, we returned to the quiet of the foyer.

Her hazel-colored eyes, like a chameleon's eerily changing their shade to fit her surroundings, fell on the urn. "What's that?"

"My mother."

"Nora? Give it to me. I'll put it in the guest closet."

"No." I said too loudly, causing the security guard to glance toward us. My own vehemence surprised me. Then I realized Mother's ashes had become my mooring, something safe to hold onto in an otherwise horrific day.

She touched my cheek. "Are you all right, Diana?

"I'm really not losing it, Gwyn."

"You mean as I did?" Her hand dropped away.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean that at all." I squeezed her hand.

"I know you didn't. I don't know why I said it. I guess the death of that young actress has made me anxious. Was she any good?"

"She could've been if she'd wanted it."

"Like you. I know you always thought I was the one with the talent. But it wasn't true. I'm glad you've gone back to acting. And I'm glad Robert is here to help you." We paused by his closed office door. "How is Celia these days?"

Gwyn was the sort of wife who could live knowing that her husband had a mistress. The problem was that Celia had once been a dear friend to her in the pre-Zaitlin days. She had even gone to Switzerland to visit her. But now they saw each other only by chance. Since I was still Celia's friend, I never knew when Gwyn wanted to talk to me about her as Robert's mistress or as my friend. Conversing with her could be a minefield.

"She's fine," I said simply.

"Really? I heard Robert on the phone telling her how to take care of a swollen eye."

"She took a spill, fell off her five-inch heels, and got a little bruised. That's all." I regretted telling the lie, feeling I was betraying Gwyn while protecting Celia.

"She never liked being shorter than us." She smiled, opening the door to Zaitlin's overly decorated office.

Robert was wearing an expensive silk jacket, jeans, a striped shirt, and no tie. Looking exhausted, he sat behind his desk, talking on the phone. He waved us in. Beth Woods, the director, still wearing her leather Mossad jacket and cargo pants, slumped on a dark green velvet fringed sofa, her elbows resting on her knees and her head hanging down. She looked as if she'd just vomited. On the wall behind her hung a Chagall painting of a voluptuous woman floating through the sky with a horse.

"Diana." Beth glanced up, acknowledging me. "This is awful."

As I nodded, Zaitlin snapped into the phone, "How the h.e.l.l do I know what we have to be careful of? I want to be ready in case we do have to be careful. Try to get this through your head-an actress in my movie is found dead by another of my actresses whose very famous mother has just died. This will be all over the media." He slammed down the phone. n.o.body says good-bye anymore in Hollywood. Jenny certainly wasn't given the chance to, I thought.

"The cake is going to be served soon," Gwyn announced.

Zaitlin stared at her. We all did. "You're worried about the G.o.dd.a.m.n birthday cake being served while I'm trying to save a sixty-million-dollar film?"

"No, I'm worried about our son."

There was always the tension of Ben between them. Ben who carried a total stranger's DNA.

Zaitlin let out a long sigh. "I'm sorry, Gwyn. This won't take long. I'll be there for the presentation of the cake." The only times I ever heard Robert apologize for anything was when speaking to his wife.

After Gwyn left, Zaitlin's eyes narrowed in on the urn. "What's that?"

"My mother." I sat down, facing his desk and resting the urn on my lap.

He placed his hand over his shaved head as if to keep the top of it from exploding. "You weren't carrying that around when you discovered Jenny, were you?"

"Actually, I was."

"Oh, s.h.i.t," Beth moaned, running her hands through her already disheveled spiked hair.

"It's bad enough you found Jenny. But to find her while carrying around Nora Poole, for G.o.d's sake? This is a media wet dream." Zaitlin's face grew red, and a vein protruded on his forehead. Struggling to regain his composure, he asked, "What did you tell the police?"

"Just what I knew. Not much." Then I explained what had happened, including how I got into Jenny's condo by using the urn as a ruse.

Despite herself, Beth laughed. "You are a natural actress, Diana."

"Why didn't you just leave when she didn't answer the door?" Zaitlin demanded.

"You asked me to go there and help her with her lines. But then I became worried about her."

"She wasn't your problem!" he snapped.

"You made her my problem!" I snapped back.

"Could she have committed suicide?" Beth asked, trying to break the tension.

"Not unless she jumped out of a window from the third floor then put herself in a garbage bag and threw herself into a dumpster," I told her.

Blanching, she collapsed back into the depths of the sofa.

"Murder could mean a long investigation. You never know what the cops will dig up." Zaitlin's fingers tapped his desk nervously.

"What could they dig up?" I asked.

"What do you usually dig up in a horror movie? The unexpected. Like learning you used Nora's ashes as a ploy. How do we get in front of that?"

"I wasn't thinking about the media at the time. Is there something I don't know? Or should know?"

"We're just trying to preserve what's left of our film, Diana," Beth spoke softly, as if giving me an acting direction. "You know how the media distorts everything. And there's Jake Jackson to consider. If he feels his star image is going to be harmed by being a.s.sociated with this project now, he may pull out. It'll all collapse around us."

I realized that Beth needed this movie as much as I did. It's not easy for women directors.

"She's right." Zaitlin let out a long sigh, then said "Sorry if I sounded unfeeling." He was now in fatherly mode.

But he hadn't sounded unfeeling. He'd sounded panicked. And I wondered if it was only the movie he was worried about.

"Are you all right?" he asked me.

"No. I had to pick Mother up at the Bel Air Hotel, and then I found a young woman's murdered body. No, I'm not all right."

He stood and came around to me. "Let's get you something to eat." He helped me to my feet. "You can wish Ben a happy birthday, go home, and get some sleep. I just want you to know that I'll do everything not to shut down the film."

"Why did you put up with so much from Jenny?" I asked him.

"I told you, we were in too deep to fire her."

"Why did you hire her?"

"Because she was good. I thought she had it. Star quality."

My eyes met Beth's, and she quickly stared down at her motorcycle boots.

"What's with all the questions?" Zaitlin said. "You're lucky to have gotten this part, Diana. That reminds me-Pedro Romero, the director, is here. I want you to meet him. He has a new script."

"I'm not up to meeting anyone."

"This is an opportunity. Take it. Nora would. She had a wonderful brutal strength." There was longing in his voice, and I wondered if Zaitlin had gone to bed with my mother. "But I think you should leave her here with me," he added gently.

"I can't."

The office door opened, and a man in jeans, black T-shirt, and an army-green windbreaker stepped into the room. I froze, recognizing the dark hair graying at the temples and the tough crooked nose. It was the man who had been looking at Bella Casa yesterday. The man who saw me in the pool. The man who Celia told me had beaten her up. His dark eyes looked straight through me as if I didn't exist.

CHAPTER NINE.

"Sorry, I didn't realize you had company. I'll wait outside," the man said to Zaitlin.

"No, no. We have a problem on our hands. We need to talk." Zaitlin gestured in my direction. "Leo Heath, this is Diana Poole."