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in smaller plants, and maybe some trellises, it could be very pretty.”

“Sheila, I didn’t ask Alex to cut down those vines. Are you sure it was him?”

Sheila stared at her for a moment, then nodded her head firmly. “Absolutely. Do you think I would have let a stranger do it? I saw him a couple of hours ago, and then I got busy with something else. The next time I looked, the vines were all down, and Alex was gone. I thought he must be having lunch or something.”

Ellen’s gaze shifted to the house. “Maybe that’s what he’s doing,” she said, though she didn’t believe it. For some reason, she was sure that Alex was not in the house. “Thanks, Sheila,” she said abstractedly. “I … well, I guess I’d better find out what’s going on.” Leaving Sheila Rosenberg standing on the sidewalk, she went through the patio into the house. “Alex? Alex, are you here?”

She was still listening to the silence of the house when the phone began ringing, and she snatched the receiver off the hook and spoke without thinking. “Alex? Alex, is that you?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Marsh’s voice came over the line. “Ellen, has something else happened?”

Something else? Ellen thought. My best friends are being murdered, and I don’t know what’s happening to my son, and you want to know if something else is wrong? At that particular moment, she decided, she hated her husband. When she spoke, though, her voice was eerily calm. “Not really,” she said. “It’s just that for some reason Alex cut all the vines off the patio wall.”

Again there was a silence; then: “Alex is supposed to be at school.”

“I know that,” Ellen replied. “But apparently he isn’t. Apparently he left school—if he even went—and came home and cut down the vines. And now he’s gone. Don’t ask me where, because I don’t know.”

In his office, Marsh listened more to the tone of his wife’s voice than to her words, and knew that she was on the edge of coming apart.

“Take it easy,” he said. “Just sit down and take it easy. I’m on my way home to get you, and then we’re going down to Palo Alto.”

“Palo Alto?” Ellen asked vacantly. “Why?”

“Torres has agreed to talk to us,” Marsh replied. “He’ll tell us what’s happening to Alex.”

Ellen nodded to herself. “But what about Alex?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we try to find him?”

“We will,” Marsh assured her. “By the time we get back from Palo Alto, he’ll probably be home.”

“What … what if he’s not?”

“Then we’ll find him.”

Now, Ellen thought. We should find him now. But the words wouldn’t come. Too much was happening, and too much was closing in on her.

And maybe, she thought, as she sat waiting for Marsh to come for her, maybe finally Raymond would be able to convince Marsh to let him help Alex.

Half a mile away, on the hill above the hacienda, Alex, too, was waiting.

He wasn’t yet sure what he was waiting for, but he knew that whatever it was, he was prepared for it.

In his arms, cradled carefully against his chest, was the now loaded shotgun.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Cynthia Evans glanced nervously at her watch. She was running late, and she hated to run late. But if she hurried, she could get the shopping done, swing by the school and pick up Carolyn, and still be home in time for her three-thirty appointment with the gardener. She pulled the front door closed behind her, and moved quickly toward the BMW that stood just inside the gates to the courtyard. As she was about to get into the car, a flash of reflected sunlight caught her eyes, and she looked up onto the hillside that rose beyond the hacienda walls.

He was still sitting there, as he had been since a little past noon.

She knew who it was—it was Alex Lonsdale. She’d determined that much when she’d first seen him, then gotten her husband’s binoculars to take a better look. If it had been a stranger, she would have called the police immediately, especially after what had happened to Valerie Benson last night. But to call the police on Alex was another matter. Alex—and Ellen as well—had had enough troubles lately, without her adding to them. If he wanted to sit in the hills, he probably had his reasons.

Even so, she was starting to get annoyed. When they bought the hacienda, why had they not bought the surrounding acreage as well? It was