Part 20 (1/2)

”He was right. I would have.” Tears rolled down my cheeks.

”Don't do that, only drunks cry in Kiki's.” He handed me a c.o.c.ktail napkin.

”The blackmail, not being able to pay, not being able to tell me, maybe that caused his heart attack.”

”You don't know that.” He held his empty gla.s.s up toward the bar.

I watched Kiki give another okay and wondered what his cut-off number was for Ryan. Or did it just make Kiki feel important. ”You can stop paying Parson,” I said.

”He'll find a way to use the pictures.”

”What can he do to me now? Take Colin away from me? Ruin my career? Make me hate my mother? The most horrible possibility has been accomplished. Colin's dead. And she won.”

”Diana, when are you going to let her go?”

”Colin wasn't true to himself. And he wasn't true to me. But you were.”

”I did it for both of you.”

”I'm going home. Do you want a ride?”

”No, I'll walk.”

”Don't drink too much.” I leaned over, put arms around his shoulders, and kissed his cheek. ”Thank you, Ryan.”

He shrugged in my embrace. The martinis had dimmed his intelligent eyes.

Gathering my purse and phone, I slid out of the booth and stood looking down at him. ”Tell Parson to call me when he wants his next payment. That is if he, or his lackey, don't kill us first.”

It's always depressing to leave a bar and walk out into the daylight, but this time it fit my emotional state perfectly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

The tether that held me to Colin had snapped completely and I sat in my car not knowing what to do with myself. I couldn't go home. What would I do? Stare at Colin's Oscars and my mother's urn? Christ. How could she? And I'd been trying to find a way to love her. I decided to go grocery shopping. I drove further up the coast to Ralph's Market in the Malibu Colony Plaza.

Filling my cart with Lean Cuisine, a lot of wine, and the antidote coffee, I thought of Beth Woods telling me that lonely women don't have alibis for the early morning hours. And Celia realizing her life, which she had so carefully structured, gave her no support. And I'd been clinging to eight years of my past for support.

A blond actress I knew from various readings where we'd been up for the same roles pushed her cart toward me. I stood riveted by the freezer cases. Seeing me, she immediately ducked down another aisle. Had she seen me with the urn on TV? Or didn't she want me to see her doing something as humdrum as shopping for dish soap? I caught my reflection in the gla.s.s of the freezer door. An un-tethered, abandoned, frightened, forty-year-old child in the clothing of a confident actress. Okay, so it wasn't the urn or her own concerns that made her turn away. It was the expression on my face.

On the way to the cas.h.i.+er I tossed a California Wrap, a kind of healthful gourmet burrito, into my cart.

Now with a bag of frozen swill wedged onto the pa.s.senger seat of my car, I was forced to go home or it would defrost.

In the kitchen, I put the food away and poured myself a very large gla.s.s of white wine. Taking a few gulps, I opened Colin's office door. I gazed at the computer, the mementoes, the books, and the empty chair that was turned toward me, always waiting for me.

”You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!” I threw the wine at the chair and watched the chardonnay run in rivulets down its tufted-leather back and eventually drip off the edges of the seat. ”Why her? Why?”

I slammed the door.

Standing on my deck watching the sun make a fiery red dramatic exit, I ate the California wrap. Swallowing it back with my tears, I thought of my mother, Colin, and me sitting out here one summer afternoon drinking Margaritas and chatting about which famous star was better at shooting a gun. Colin had said it was James Cagney. I went for Clint Eastwood. My mother had chosen Bette Davis.

”She killed men while wearing a mink coat and holding a handbag,” she said. ”And Davis was always walking downstairs toward her male victim, arm straight out, gun unwavering.” She'd extended her arm, her hand, imitating a gun, and said in a deadly voice, ”Bang. Bang. Bang.”

Colin laughed. ”No, it's got to be Cagney. When he shot a gun, it was as if he were dancing.”

Then I said, ”Bette Davis's mother wanted everything her daughter earned. If Bette got a new mink, her mother had to have one too.” I looked off across the ocean. ”I wonder if that also included her daughter's husbands and lovers.”

Turning somber, Nora stared down at her gold-sandaled feet, her blond hair falling across her face. ”I need another drink.” And even though her gla.s.s was full, she went into the kitchen.

I'd closed my eyes against the sun, a.s.suming she'd interpreted my comment about Davis and her mother as Diana not wasting any chance to attack her. So sure of the one person I loved, it had never occurred to me that I'd spoken a truth. Or had I intuited in some deep primal place the truth all along: that my own mother had known what Colin's naked body had smelled and tasted like.

”Diana?” The sound of my name jolted me back to the present. I recoiled back into the shadows of my house.

”It's Heath!” The voice called out louder.

One of the last men I wanted to see. Wiping my tears away, I stepped forward and peered down. Looking up at me, Heath stood on the beach, the wind blowing his dark brown hair, and his graying temples almost silver in the dimming light. ”I rang your doorbell. You didn't answer.” He wore an expensive suit jacket, jeans, a white s.h.i.+rt open at the neck, and lug-sole shoes too heavy for the sand. He was a man who belonged on cement.

”I can't hear it when I'm out here on the deck,” I shouted back.

”We need to talk.”

”I'm busy.”

”The pool man at the Bel Air house got shot.”

My muscles tightened. ”What does that have to do with me?”

”I know you were there.”

”I'll give you ten minutes.”

Inside the house, I sat down on the sofa. Legs apart, Heath stood in front of the fireplace, my ghosts on the mantel lined up behind him. He moved toward me, placing a wrapped piece of candy on the table.

”What's this?”

”Your mint from the Red Pepper Restaurant in Camarillo. Two of them came with the check. I ate mine. That's yours. It reminds me that you and I should be more truthful with each other.”

”Really? You go first.” I leaned back and crossed my arms.

He returned to his spot before the fireplace. ”In Santa Barbara I held on to your cell phone because I knew if you had it you'd do just what you did ... call a cab so you wouldn't have to drive back with me.”

”Why was it so important I drive back with you?”