CHAPTER TWELVE.

As we raced north up the 101, I stared out my darkened window, watching rows of car dealerships turn into rows of condos turn into rows of outlet stores turn into rows of planted fields.

Everything I looked at was shaded in black as if all of California were in mourning. As if it were all noir. Then the ocean appeared, as bleak as a nightmare. Surfers in wet suits, sleek as seals, waited on their boards for the next murky wave. These two men couldn't be stupid enough to hurt me. After all, my abduction was captured on tape for everyone to see. But why take me in the first place? Did it have something to do with what I knew about Celia? Or was it Jenny Parson? I dug my fingers into the lush leather. I felt like I did when I was in bed at night. Very alone, very scared.

As we reached Santa Barbara, I watched the driver lift his cell phone to his ear, say a few words, then put it down. The limo curved off the freeway onto Cabrillo Boulevard, a street lined with hotels and palm trees on one side, and the ocean, volleyball courts, and palm trees on the other. I watched mothers and fathers pedaling, with Herculean effort, rented surreys filled with their kids along the pristine sidewalks. Though the windows were too dark for me to define colors, I knew the parents' faces would be red from their endeavor. And I envied these tourists their sunburned skin, their tired legs, their cranky children. They might go back home and get divorced and selfishly rip out the hearts of their kids, but right now they were pedaling with all their might for them.

Soon we turned into the Santa Barbara Harbor and Marina. Using a key card to open a barrier gate, the driver guided the car into a private lot. My body grew alert. I knew this was when I had to do something.

The driver opened the door for me. The minute my feet hit the pavement I screamed and tried to run. But Heath was out of the limo, grabbing my arm. With one hand he swung me around to him, then clamped the other hand on the back of my head and shoved my face into his chest, m.u.f.fling my voice. I could smell his freshly ironed white shirt and the soap he'd used. To anyone pa.s.sing I'd look like a woman crying or laughing intimately into her boyfriend's body. Son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h.

I struggled, trying to push myself away.

Lowering his head, lips brushing my ear, he said, "Shut the f.u.c.k up, please."

I raised my right thigh, preparing to kick him in the groin.

"And if you're thinking of kneeing me, I'll knock your standing leg out from under you so fast you won't know how you ended up on your a.s.s."

The driver moved in on me, and I felt a hard jab in my lower back. I'd done enough cop shows to know the feel of a gun muzzle.

Heath removed his hand from my head. "n.o.body is going to hurt you, I promise. So relax." He was so sincere.

I glared up at him. "Relax? With a gun in my back?"

"Jesus Christ, Gerald, put the pistol away," he ordered the driver.

"You don't have to deal with him. I do," the driver growled. "I was told to deliver her, and that's what I'm doing. Walk." He jabbed me harder.

"If you don't put it away I'm taking her back to Malibu, now."

Gerald thought about this, then holstered his gun.

At least I knew they didn't want to kill me. For now. But why should I trust Heath? And who was 'him' Gerald had to deliver me to?

With my purse slung over his shoulder the chauffeur stood on one side of me, Heath on the other. They walked me past the Yacht Club, a gray weathered building that looked like a ship marooned on the sand. The teal-blue ocean shimmered with the noon sun. As we reached the public boardwalk, seagulls dipped and soared under the piercing blue sky. Boats of all shapes and sizes bobbled in their slips. Tourists, children, the homeless, and old salts mixed together. A tan woman, about my age, wearing a T-shirt, long skirt, and flip-flops grinned at me. I saw an opportunity. I flashed her my best eat-the-camera smile.

"Do I know you?" she asked.

"Yes. Would you like my autograph?"

Gerald shuffled his feet like a nervous horse. Heath was amused.

"Oh, I thought I knew you from high school. We're up here for the Camarillo High Reunion." She looked more closely as if inspecting a piece of produce. "Are you somebody?"

"Yes, I'm ..."

Before I could finish, Heath said in an easy seductive voice, "Excuse us. She's had a little too much to drink." Draping his arm over my shoulder, he winked at the woman, who actually winked back at him.

His fingers slid down and dug into my elbow. I gasped as pain shot through my arm and the two men forced me farther down the boardwalk.

"What were you going to do, write 'help me'?" A sardonic smile played on his lips.

"Something like that." I tried to pull away, but his fingers pressed deeper into my skin and bone, and I stopped trying.

"You don't give up, do you?"

"Maybe you're just not used to women who fight back."

"You don't have to fight me."

We paused at another gate that led inside the marina. The driver unlocked it, and we started down the long dock. The water smelled of salt and gasoline. I peered around to see if there was anyone relaxing on their boats. But there were only pelicans ogling me from the tops of pylons, looking like old drunks, and sunburned FOR SALE signs tucked into portholes.

We came to a yacht, a little smaller than a Princess cruise ship, docked in a slip far from the other boats. At the top of the deck-stairs stood a man wearing a baby blue windbreaker with the sleeves rolled up, showing off his biceps and a tattoo running down his right arm. I kept telling myself that no harm could come to me in the Santa Barbara Marina-unless my captors decided to sail out of the marina.

The man reached down to take my hand, and now I could read his tattoo. It said: One Night With You. His jacket fell open revealing a gun tucked into his waistband. I whirled around. Heath pressed in on me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

The gunman helped me up onto the yacht. Heath followed. The driver, my purse still slung over his shoulder, remained on the dock.

A bar with stools, lounge chairs, and built-in banquets filled the s.p.a.cious deck.

"She goes in alone." The man blocked Heath's way.

"No, I go in with her." Heath glanced down at the One Night With You tattoo on the guard's muscular arm. "Finally got lucky, uh?"

The guard's neck stiffened, and his biceps flexed as if he had no control over them.

"He's waiting," Heath reminded him.

Fierce resentment oozed from the man as he ushered us into a mahogany-paneled salon about the size of my house. The floors were dark wood, and rich Burgundy-colored drapes were pulled over large rectangular windows blocking the sun and the water from view. A crystal chandelier glowed from the beamed ceiling. Old oil paintings of someone's royal ancestors and their dogs hung on the walls. A dining room table surrounded by twenty matching Chippendale chairs took up the end of the room. I felt as if I had walked not onto a yacht but onto the set of an old Merchant Ivory film about the English upper cla.s.s.

A man in his sixties sat on a paisley velvet sofa. Tall and thin, ash-gray hair swept back from a face as bony and grim as a skeleton's. His long narrow chin ended in a goatee. Staring with red-rimmed, stone-colored eyes at a heavily draped porthole, the man seemed to not to know we were there. Heath leaned against the wall near the salon door. I remained standing, trying to control my fear, which was fighting for dominance with my anger. The tantrum-squawking of the seagulls outside punctuated the tense silence. The thug waited, his thick arms hanging down, fingers twitching.

Finally the man said to him, "Leave."

As he did he b.u.mped Heath's shoulder. Heath pretended not to notice.

The man continued, "You found my daughter's body."

"You're Mr. Parson?"

"Sit down, please." He gestured to a burgundy leather club chair opposite the coffee table.

My anger beat out my fear. "Look, I'm very sorry for your loss, but you had no right to have me abducted, to scare the h.e.l.l out of me, to drag me up here ..."

He raised a hand up, stopping me.

"I'm meeting two detectives at my house in Montecito in about an hour. They're going to explain what happened to Jenny. I know how the police operate, Ms. Poole. They won't give me the complete picture even if they knew it, which I doubt they do. So I brought you up here to tell me exactly what you saw before I talk with them."

"There is such a thing as a telephone. You could have called me. Or at least your driver or Heath could've told me where they were taking me."

"If they told you that it was I you were to meet you'd naturally begin to plan what you were going to say. I've found over the years I gain more information from spontaneous discussions. I haven't slept much, so let's get this over with." He rubbed his long fingers against his thigh as if trying to ma.s.sage life into it. His navy blue slacks matched his polo shirt. Black velvet slippers with gold embroidered crests added a hint of Old World decadence to his outfit.

A door opened near the dining room table and a young man with teak-colored skin and glistening black hair entered. He wore a white polo shirt and khakis.

"What would you like to drink after your journey?" Parson asked me.

"Nothing."

"Same here," Parson said to the young man, then turned to Heath. "You?"

"No."

"Please, sir, eat something."

"I can't, Luis. Leave us."

Frowning with concern, Luis drifted out, closing the door.

"Do you still wish to stand, Ms. Poole?"

"I wish to be taken back to my house."

"Not until we talk."

"He just wants to know what happened to his daughter," Heath said. "Make it easy on yourself."

I relented and sat down, crossing my legs. Parson stroked his goatee, a ghost of a connoisseur's leer playing on his dry lips as he took in my body. Heath shifted his weight.

I focused on the red garden roses exploding from a vase on the coffee table and wondered what kind of power this man had that he was able to force Zaitlin to cancel our meeting, if there really had been one. There was no doubt Parson was a grieving father. But he was also surrounded by armed thugs, and that made him a very dangerous grieving father. I decided to ask a few questions myself.

"How were you able to get Zaitlin to cancel my meeting? Do you control him in some way?"

"I like an intelligent woman. Don't you, Heath?"

"Not always."

I ignored Heath as Parson leaned forward. "You might say Jenny was murdered on Zaitlin's watch. He's only trying to accommodate me. And your meeting has been postponed, not canceled."

"Yet he felt the need to send Heath with me. Why?"

"Heath owns one of Los Angeles' best investigative security firms. He is looking into Jenny's death for Zaitlin. Zaitlin will share any information he learns with me."

Seemingly unaware he was being talked about, Heath pulled a strand of blond hair from his lapel and flicked it onto the floor. It was mine.

"I thought it might be because of all the heavily armed men you have surrounding you." Not waiting for an answer, I continued. "Where is Jenny's mother? Doesn't she want to know what happened to her daughter?"

The deep lines around Parson's mouth twitched. "You really want to make this difficult, Ms. Poole?"

"After what you've put me through, it's only fair you should answer some of my questions first."

He let out a heavy sigh. "My wife, her mother, is at our Montecito home. She's devastated and under sedation. When I married her she was just twenty and I was forty-five. Now she's forty-five. Jenny was our only child. My wife blames me for her death because I let her move to Los Angeles to work." He paused, considering. "Are you worried about your friend Ryan Johns?"

I tensed. "How did you know we were friends?"

"It's what I do. Knowledge of people is important in my business. But I never harm people who owe me money. What's the point? Unless, of course, he's involved in my daughter's death."

"What is your business?"

"I'm an investor."

He tapped the crown of his diamond-encrusted Rolex. Even Parson with his self-created, Old World, upper-cla.s.s trappings couldn't resist some major bling. "It's getting late. There won't be any more questions unless I ask them." Like a bony pasha, he settled back into the abundant pillows and stretched his long thin arms across the back of the sofa as if to receive grapes or s.e.x or both. "I'm waiting for my information, Ms. Poole."

If he had been another kind of father I would have been kinder in my a.s.sessment of Jenny. But I decided for him I would be brutally honest. "Jenny couldn't remember her lines, so Zaitlin asked me to go over them with her."

"Are you saying my daughter came to the set unprepared?"

"Yes."

"That doesn't sound like Jenny."

"Maybe you don't know much about her. The night before she was murdered ..."

"That would be last Monday?" Heath asked.

"Yes. The day I met you," I said pointedly, then I turned back to Parson. "I talked with Jenny in her trailer. She couldn't make it through her scenes without forgetting her lines. She ran off the set. Zaitlin had to call a wrap. Jenny was costing the production time and money."

He shook his head. "Jenny would never behave that way."

"But she did."

Parson paused. "What did you two talk about in her trailer?"