Her fear might be groundless, but it didn't feel that way.
Abby passed an hour watching the bungalow in silence.
After six o'clock the sky began to darken.
By six-thirty a sunset flamed over the rooftops. She thought about leaving. She should get back to Hollywood and see if Hickle was home, but as long as Kris was at KPTI, there was no immediate danger. She decided to wait a little longer.
To use her time more productively she fished her micro recorder out of her purse and dictated notes. She reported her visit to Travis's house, tactfully leaving out the steamy stuff but including everything else, then her unlawful entry to the bungalow and what she'd learned.
If she died, she would at least leave an up-to-date record of her activities.
In the hot tub she'd come close to cashing it in, and if things had gone a little differently when she was escaping from Hickle's apartment last night, he might have unloaded his shotgun on her at pointblank range.
She had cheated her own mortality twice already.
Third time's the charm? she wondered ruefully, and then headlights flared in her rearview mirror.
She sank lower in her seat and watched a black Lexus roll by. As it eased past her car, she glimpsed the driver's profile, lit by the glow of the dashboard. It was Howard. No surprise.
The Lexus pulled into the bungalow's driveway, and Howard got out to lift the garage door, then parked in the garage. He entered the house via the front door. Lights came on a moment later, but the curtains remained shut.
Abby had seen all she needed to see, but she lingered, curious about Amanda Gilbert, who was sure to show up before long.
At seven-fifteen a white BMW parked at the curb a few doors down. The woman who hurried to the house was slim, almost bony, and quite young.
She started to unlock the bungalow's front door with her own key, and then the door opened from inside and Howard ushered her in.
Abby got out of her car and took a stroll, partly to stretch her legs and restore the circulation to her tush, but mainly to check out the BMW. She noted the license plate number and, resting on the dashboard, a parking permit for KPTI stamped with the words March and Employee.
Amanda Gilbert worked at Channel Eight. She was one of Kris's colleagues, and if her car was any indication, she didn't occupy an entrylevel position.
Driving out of the neighborhood, heading toward Hollywood, Abby activated her cell phone. She obtained the number of KPTI's switchboard from Information, then called the station.
"I have some correspondence for Amanda Gilbert," she said when the receptionist answered.
"May I have her exact title, please?"
"Executive Producer," she was told.
"News Division?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Thanks very much." Abby ended the call.
So Amanda was Kris's executive producer. All of a sudden Abby found her dislike of Howard Barwood rising to uncomfortably high levels. She supposed the identity of his illicit paramour shouldn't have made any difference to her assessment of him. Yet it did, because intuitively she knew that it turned him on to be balling Kris's boss, that in doing so he obtained a sense of power and control over his wife that no call girl or receptionist could have provided.
She pulled into a mini-mall and found a pay phone.
Her next call was too sensitive to entrust to a cellular transmission.
She dialed Travis's office, expecting him to be working late. He answered the phone personally; his assistant had gone home.
"The bungalow is Howard's love nest," she reported, keeping her voice low to be sure she wasn't overheard.
"He meets his girlfriend there."
"Who is she?"
"Does it matter? If not, let's leave her name out of it.
What's important is that Howard owns the bungalow, which means he owns Trendline, which almost certainly means he's tunneling assets overseas without Kris's knowledge."
"Which means he has a motive for getting Kris out of the way."
"True. Marriage has become inconvenient for him.
He seems ready for a fresh start. I doubt he's capable of arranging Kris's murder on his own, but when Hickle came along, he may have seen an opportunity."
Abby blew out a tired breath.
"You remember how concerned he was about my safety, asking if I had backup or if I was on my own? I thought he was being chivalrous or sexist, depending on how you look at it.
But maybe not. Maybe he wanted to assess my vulnerability so he could attack me."
"He may have had the opportunity. The guest cottage logs show that he left Malibu at six o'clock on Wednesday evening and didn't return until shortly after midnight-later than usual."
"I was in the hot tub around ten o'clock, ten-thirty."
"It fits. When he failed to finish you off personally, he may have decided to rat you out to Hickle and have him handle it."
"Was he out last night? The phone call reached Hickle around eight-thirty."
"Howard was out from six-thirty to eleven."
"Okay, then he might have spent the first part of the evening at the bungalow. After that, he called Hickle, using his Western Regional phone because he didn't know if Hickle's phone was tapped, and he figured it would be harder to link the cell phone to him. Speaking of which-" Travis cut in.
"We're still trying to nail down a connection between Western Regional and Trendline.
Nothing so far, but I've got two of my computer jocks burning up their high-speed modems. They're pros.
They can nose out anybody's secrets." Even mine? Abby wondered, but what she said was "How about Hickle? Any escalation in his attempts to contact Kris?"
"Just the opposite. A total shutdown. No phone calls to her home or office all day. Kris is worried."
"She should be. You'd better tighten her security."
"I will. Where are you now?"
"Heading back to Hollywood. Don't try to stop me."
"I wouldn't dare." She heard him sigh.
"Good luck, Abby. And watch yourself, all right?" "Always do," she said.
The lights in Hickle's apartment were on when she reached the Gainford Arms, and his Volkswagen was in its assigned space, at the opposite end of the parking lot from her own. She was glad he was home. At least he wasn't in Malibu, lying in ambush outside the Barwoods' house.
She rode the elevator to the fourth floor. As she was fumbling with the key to her door, Hickle emerged from his apartment next door.
"There you are," he said.
The first thing she noticed was that his right hand was positioned awkwardly behind his back, concealing something. Her mind inventoried the possibilities: shotgun, handgun, jar of battery acid.
She still hadn't unlocked her door-she was trapped in the hall, Hickle two feet away-and the.38 Smith in her purse was not instantly accessible.
Hickle was smiling, but it was a tight, false smile.
"I've been waiting for you," he said.
"Really?" She shifted her purse, placing two fingers on the clasp.
"Yeah. I've got sort of a surprise." He stepped forward, his right hand swinging into view.
She saw "what he'd been concealing, and it wasn't acid or a gun or a weapon of any kind. It was a bulky paper sack emblazoned with "Shanghai Palace." "Hope you haven't eaten yet," Hickle said.
"I ordered Chinese."
Abby kept smiling as she admitted Hickle to her apartment, and she emitted the appropriate exclamations of delight when he removed the food from the bag and filled the kitchen with its medley of aromas.
"Sweet and sour pork," he announced, "almond chicken, and-because I know you like veggie meals-broccoli with black mushrooms."
"Sounds great," she said, still smiling, smiling. But she didn't like this situation, didn't like it at all. Hickle was a profoundly antisocial man, not the type to press for close friendship with anyone.