Rage Factor (18 page)

“As I said, it’s my job to be suspicious.”

“Is that why you’re spying on your boyfriend instead of walking right up and telling that blonde to get lost?”

“I’m not spying.” Dixie felt her face flush. “Not exactly. I mean, they’re only talking. Parker’s a salesman, he talks to people. It’s business.”

“Dixie, maybe
he
thinks it’s business, but
she
is Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction!”

The woman did look awfully intense as she leaned toward Parker in a dress much too revealing for the weather.

“Dixie, go get your man!” Sarina swiveled her gaze toward the loading ramp and smiled wickedly. “And I’m going to get mine.”

Her mother and Alan Kemp had arrived, and the young man from the shuttle had boarded with them. Dixie watched Sarina-the-sophisticate slink in their direction. When Dixie looked back, Parker spotted her. He waved. The blonde glanced at Dixie, but suddenly seemed to have other interests. As Parker strolled across the deck, he looked so good, Dixie couldn’t blame the woman for wanting to scoop him up.

Sauntering up beside her, he leaned close and whispered, “You look nice. Really nice. Thanks for coming.”

Nice?
That was a long way from smashing.

“Thanks for inviting me.” She wished they were at home, curled up with Mud and Jay Leno.

“Did you meet our hosts?” Parker gently plucked a piece of lint off her new jacket.

“Yes. I’m glad you sold them this boat. They seem to be enjoying it. They seem to enjoy each other.”

He nodded. “Like high school sweethearts. Hard to believe they’ve been married over forty years.”

Dixie watched the couple conversing with their celebrity guest. Other guests crowded round. Sarina and the young shuttle driver stood together at the rail, well away from the others, and close enough to be in Dixie’s protective reach in a few strides. Couples, couples, couples, everywhere she looked.

“I expected everyone here to be elderly,” Dixie told Parker. “But most seem to be … our age … or even younger.”

“The Berinsons’ children, their friends. Come on. We should mingle.”

Mingling was exactly what Dixie loathed about parties. Mingling meant making intelligent conversation with people she didn’t know and had nothing in common with. What
should she say, “Did you notice those thugs on TV last night? I caught up with those old boys down in Monterey, after they skipped bail. And how was your week?”

But Parker was a consummate “mingler,” and in minutes they were talking to a man who raised emus. Dixie kept an eye on Sarina. At the same time, she tried to keep track of Alan Kemp, another good mingler. Wherever he was, whoever he talked to, his eyes never seemed to leave Joanna. Exactly what business had brought him to Houston? Dixie wondered.

The emu man was funny. As he told a long, convoluted tale about his emu farm, Dixie found herself relaxing. After the story reached its punch line, Parker looked at their empty glasses.

“What are you drinking?”

The man said Scotch, Dixie said soda, unable to remember the name of the sparkling water, and Parker wandered off for refills. Shortly, a waiter appeared with their drinks.

Surprised, Dixie looked around for Parker. She spotted him at the bar, talking to the blonde.

Following a taxi with Joanna and Alan Kemp back to the Four Seasons Hotel, Dixie decided this was one day she was glad to see end. She couldn’t recall one thing that had gone right. To top off the uncomfortable evening, a black spot had appeared out of nowhere and landed on the crotch of her new white pants. The club soda-removal trick someone suggested only made it worse. Everybody she talked to the rest of the night seemed to adopt a frozen-faced stare to avoid looking at the stain. And Parker spent most of the evening talking with his blond “client.”

To be fair, Dixie hadn’t been the ideal date, unable to dance, unwilling to be far from Sarina. How could she blame Parker for being less than attentive? But dammit, he’d wanted her there, hadn’t he? The strain between them had not lessened. Would he be at home when she got there? Maybe by the time she saw Sarina safely into the hotel suite, and investigated something that had been nagging her since
seeing that latest valentine, she’d have figured out what to say when she finally faced him.

Sarina hopped out of the Porsche. “See you tomorrow.”

“Wait! I’m going up with you.”

“It’s okay. I’ll ride up with Mother and Alan.”

“I need to check out the suite.”

“Okay. We won’t go inside until you get there.”

“Sarina, I’ll only be a minute here. Wait up.”

“C’mon, what can happen between here and the hotel room? Are you planning to hold my hand in the shower, too?”

Using her new cane for support, Dixie eased out of the Targa. Her foot ached from standing on it all evening. She accepted a valet ticket and steered the teenager toward the entrance.

“Sarina, you can do this my way or you can break in a new bodyguard.”

“Unbelievable! You’re making a big deal over a two-minute elevator ride. What about Mother? If Alan’s the stalker, isn’t she in danger, too?”

Joanna and Alan Kemp were disappearing behind the elevator’s gold-tone doors.

“I wasn’t hired to protect your mother.”

The girl blinked at Dixie, then her eyes narrowed with understanding.

Dixie glanced at her watch. Parker should be home by now, settled down with Mud in front of the fireplace.

“You’re saying you’d let my mother walk into danger, while you’re protecting
me?”

“The only way this kind of job can be done is to set priorities. Your safety is my priority. You’re the one the stalker threatens.” Dixie chose her next words carefully. “If you and Joanna were both in a killer’s gun sight, I would save you. Then I’d help Joanna if I could.”

Sarina scuffed her shoe over a matted spot on the carpet, mouth thinned into a stubborn line. Then she crossed her
arms and stared at the elevator doors until they opened. The day hadn’t been bad enough, new Dixie had the kid mad at her, which meant tomorrow would begin on a sour note.

Upstairs, Joanna had kicked off her shoes and was on the phone ordering room service, while Alan sat on the sofa, reading aloud from the menu. The scent of too many flowers thickened the air. Dixie spotted a fresh arrangement on the bar separating the sunken sitting room from a tiny dining area beyond it. She sauntered over and angled a glance at the attached card.
Knock ’em dead, Joanna.
No signature. Another bouquet from her agent?

Snatching up the television remote, Sarina perched on a sofa arm and punched the
POWER
button, then looked over Alan’s shoulder.

“Pizza,” she said. “Huge, with everything except anchovies. How about you, Dixie?”

No
sulk in her voice. Had she already decided not to be mad?

“Nothing for me, thanks.” Dixie felt a peculiar relief. She had enough to deal with tonight. “I just came up to use your telephone—when your mother’s finished.” She’d purposely left her cell phone in the Porsche’s trunk. “Meanwhile, I guess the bathroom is through there?”

She strolled offhandedly toward the bedrooms.

“Yeah.” Sarina rolled her eyes behind Kemp’s back. “There’s another phone, too, if you want privacy.”

“Thanks.” Dixie shut the bedroom door behind her and quickly searched the closets and under beds. In different circumstances, she would’ve swept the entire suite before Sarina and her mother set foot in it. But Belle had warned that the film star was as stubborn as a fed mule about maintaining a low profile, and Joanna had indicated as much when she introduced Dixie to her cousin Kemp. Searching the hotel suite had to be totally, as Sarina would say, unobvious.

Dixie also wanted to satisfy a hunch. A hunch she hoped wouldn’t pan out.

The enormous bathroom had twin sinks, a shower, a
whirlpool bathtub, a separate area for the toilet and bidet, and locking doors that opened into the bedrooms. It didn’t take long to see that everything was fine. Fine, that is, unless they’d brought the stalker home with them.

The door popped open just as Dixie rose from looking under the bed. Sarina poked her head in.

“Mother’s off the phone.”

“Okay. I won’t be long.”

Lifting the extension, Dixie dialed Belle’s unlisted number. She loved interrupting the lawyer’s evenings. When Belle answered, Dixie quietly filled her in on Kemp’s opportune visit, suggested a background search, then rattled off the other questions on her list.

“I don’t feel good about your leaving them alone while Kemp’s in the hotel suite,” Belle said when she’d finished. “Maybe you should spend the night.”

“That wasn’t part of our deal.” Besides, even though she was suspicious of Kemp’s motives, Dixie’s hunch might eliminate him as the stalker. “You said Joanna wanted me to disappear when Sarina was with her.”

“I didn’t know she might invite the viper back to her own nest.”

“Kemp’s probably exactly what he claims to be—a reporter who happened into town, saw his cousin was filming here, and dropped by to say howdy. Doesn’t make sense that he’d stalk Joanna after not seeing her for ten years. Checking him out is just part of doing the job right.”

A resigned sigh issued from the phone. “I alerted hotel security. I suppose that’s the best we can do.”

“No. If you’re really worried, you can hire round-the-clock surveillance, not only for Sarina but for Joanna.”

Belle’s silence stretched until Dixie wondered if she’d disconnected. “Trust me, Flannigan, Joanna won’t budge on this subject.”

As Dixie cradled the phone, she scanned the bedroom. Judging by the bug-faced space monster residing on the dresser, this was Sarina’s room.

Beyond the door, a Lexus commercial changed abruptly to a sitcom. The kid would be busy for a while, manipulating the TV control. Dixie slid open dresser drawers and riffled stacks of cotton underwear, black and gray T-shirts, and jeans. Then she opened the closet to search through jackets and shoes. Inside the pocket of a black designer bathrobe with “SP” embroidered in gold, she found what she’d prayed wouldn’t be there: a white paper sack with a brand-new valentine inside, along with a cash register receipt and a red felt-tip pen—as red as the spot on Sarina’s thumb that morning.

According to the receipt, the pen and three cards had been purchased at a gift shop in the Los Angeles airport. A tan smear on the side of the bag caught Dixie’s eye. She sniffed it. Peanut butter, the same odor that had puffed out of the Ziploc bag that held the second valentine at Belle’s office.

Sarina was Joanna’s stalker.

Arriving home to see the familiar wisp of chimney smoke in the night sky. Dixie’d felt a rush of relief that quickened her spirits like sunshine after a long rainstorm. She found Parker stoking a blaze of pecan shells in the fireplace. And now she was curled in her favorite club chair in the living room, a woolly afghan over her lap, her hands wrapped around a warm mug. Parker had made hot buttered rum.

Mud, having lapped up his own small measure of the savory drink, lay with his muzzle across Dixie’s good foot. He snapped to attention when Parker tossed him a homemade cookie.

“I don’t understand why the kid would want to terrorize her own mother,” Parker said.

Dixie had related what she’d found in Sarina’s bathrobe pocket.

“I stood in that closet doorway at least two minutes, staring at the valentine and the red pen and the peanut
butter smear, and asking myself that exact question. Sarina obviously sent the cards. But why?”

Dixie didn’t want to talk about the blonde at the party, or the fact that Parker had barely said a dozen words to Dixie the entire two hours she was on the boat. But she
did
want to talk. She wanted them to get past the disagreement about her job. Maybe keeping him involved, letting him know what she was doing, would dispel some of his anxiety.

“The thing is,” Dixie explained, “if Sarina sent the cards, then she was never in danger. Joanna had no reason to hire a bodyguard, no reason to worry about her daughter—except whether the kid’s psychotic. But why would Sarina play such a mean prank on her mother?”

“To get attention?” Parker stood by the fireplace, one foot on the raised hearth, firelight flickering across his handsome features, turning his naturally tanned skin to burnished gold.

They were being unusually formal with each other, Dixie realized, as if a third person were in the room, a stranger. She wanted to break the tension, make Parker laugh—or even yell at her—but she continued talking, talking, talking, about everything except what needed to be discussed. Relationships were such a damned struggle.

“Joanna does seem wrapped up in her own world. Everything she says to Sarina is some sort of complaint or criticism.” She remembered how upset Sarina had been when Dixie asked about the divorce. “Maybe Sarina thinks her bizarre prank might bring her parents back together. She wouldn’t be the first kid with such hopes.”

“Inventing a stalker is no typical adolescent prank.”

“Sarina’s not a typical adolescent.”

“You’re making excuses for the girl, Dixie.”

Yes, she was.
Picturing Sarina calmly composing the stalker’s threatening messages, disguising her handwriting with the blocky red letters, and placing the cards where her mother would find them, Dixie wanted to jerk the girl up by
her ears and shake till her brains rattled. But she could also picture the kid growing up with Joanna’s Hollywood craziness and self-involvement. By contrast, Sarina seemed practical, highly intelligent—a kid any mother should be thrilled to have around, to enjoy being with and getting to know. Sarina—she realized—was a kick.

“She pulled a stupid stunt,” Dixie said. “Naturally, I’m surprised, and yeah, I was pissed when I found that card in her robe. But I’m also relieved.” The most frightening aspect of a bodyguard job was knowing you might not be adequate to the task, knowing that one slipup could give a killer an opening. “At least I don’t have to worry about her ending up on a mortician’s slab.”