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The door to the house was still standing open, so Ian knocked on the dark panels and stepped into the cool interior with its white plaster walls, dark overhead beams, and a series of arches leading from one room to the other.
Sharp footsteps echoed on the dark tile floor, and a petite woman wearing a gray tunic and open-toed boots, her hair pulled back in a tight bun hurried into the foyer. “How did you—oh, you’re the ex-son-in-law,” she guessed. “I’ve seen pictures. We talked on the phone earlier.” She extended her hand. “I assume Clark let you in. Angie Morales, Ms. Champagne’s assistant. She’s expecting you. She’s out back.” She led the way through a living room with a tiled fireplace and a baby grand piano and through French doors to the pool area.
Tina Champagne was waiting.
Lounging by her pool, wrapped in blankets, sunglasses covering part of her face, a big, floppy hat shading her forehead against Southern California’s weak winter sun, she lifted a hand in greeting. She was still beautiful, he thought, though much of her retained youth was due to the skill of some of the best plastic surgeons the Golden State had to offer.
Sandal-clad feet stretched in front of her, a cup of coffee sat next to an ignored paperback on a small table.
“Ian,” she greeted, her voice raspy, forever altered by the attack. She tossed off the blankets to stand and give him a hug complete with air-kisses. She was wearing a frothy sundress and shivered, rubbing her suddenly bare arms. “Sit, sit.” She motioned to the matching chaise on the other side of the table. “Angie can get you coffee or something stronger.”
“I’m fine.” He sat on the end of the lounge as she settled back into her blankets, then stared across the water to the pool house, a casita replicating the main house, including its arched porch and tile roof. A groundskeeper was sweeping dried leaves off the decking surrounding a raised hot tub and a waterfall.
“I expect you’re here about Lucy,” Tina said.
“You know she’s missing.”
“I know she said she needed some time away. Didn’t she say the same to you?”
“Quick text. No answer when I called.”
“She left me a message, too.”
“But didn’t say where she was going?”
“No. Our relationship wasn’t exactly close.”
Not exactly a news flash. Now his flight to LA seemed like a frivolous wild-goose chase. He’d been grasping at straws, but he was running out of options.
Tina said, “The truth is, I haven’t seen her for months. I’ve barely met my only granddaughter. I think, though she’s never admitted it, that Lucy never forgave me for sending her to Austria, though, why in God’s name I can’t imagine. As if I could have taken care of her in my state.” She pursed her lips, still full and glossy, any fine lines carefully Botoxed away. “Her father and I agreed that boarding school would be best.”
Her father. The long-absent Hamilton McKenna. He’d never been a part of Lucy’s life, not as far as Ian knew. And was now dead. Heart attack after overdoing it in the gym.
“And you’re not afraid of Ray Watkins?” he asked.
“God, no.” She lifted her shades to stare directly at him with eyes as aqua as the water in her pool. “That’s over. Ancient history. I haven’t heard from him in twenty-five years and I don’t see that it’s going to change.”
“He attacked you.”
Shrugging, she settled the glasses back on the bridge of her nose. “So I’m told. I mean, yes, of course, but Ray insisted it was Lucy, though that seems unlikely. She did have the scissors, but the gun—?” Absently, she touched her neck where the tiniest of scars was still visible. “She knew where it was, of course, all the kids did, and Ray, too. Unfortunately, I don’t remember. The whole night is a blur. A horrible, ghastly blur.” The same words she’d told the police when she’d woken up in the hospital room. Maybe she’d been nearly passed out drunk, or perhaps the trauma of it all had placed a mental block on those memories, but Tina Champagne had always insisted that she didn’t remember anything of that night. It had been Lucy’s testimony that had sent Ray Watkins to prison for half of his life, Lucy whom he blamed.
“You were fighting that night. You and Ray.”
She let out a little laugh. “We always fought.” With a smile, she added, “I fought with all of my husbands.”
“Ray wasn’t your husband.”
“No, after Hamilton, I learned my lesson. Husbands are fine for the most part, they can be fun and attentive and . . . well, you know . . . the in-the-bed part, but ex-husbands, which they invariably become? They’re angry and petulant, and expensive.” She sighed. “Such greed.” She smiled again. “But still good in bed. In fact, if anything, a divorce tends to make them a little more thrilling. Edgy, you know?”
He did. Hadn’t his own ex-wife become even more attractive now that she was no longer married to him? He’d never thought he’d taken Lucy for granted, but now he wondered about that as he stared at this woman he hardly knew. His ex-mother-in-law, who had lit out from Missouri at the age of eighteen to find fame and fortune in Hollywood. And she had. Working her way up from waitress to acting as a real-life Disney film character at Disneyland to eventually a TV ad, then a soap opera part, and finally a big, breakout movie. Along the way she’d picked up husbands and had children she named after the Hollywood legends she adored as a child: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, and, finally, her third after Lucille Ball.
Lucy had hated that bit of information when the press got wind of it.
“What was the fight with Ray about?” he asked.
“I wanted him to leave,” Tina said. “And he didn’t want to go. I remember that much. Ray wasn’t very good at taking ‘no’ for an answer. Couldn’t believe it was over.”
“But it was.”
