"He should be. Will you please let go of me!"

Helmut's voice became soothing, pleading. " Elizabeth, next week is Labor Day. The Peninsula is alive with tourists. There are hundreds of college kids having one last fling before school opens. You could drive around half the night and not find a room. Stay here. Be comfortable. See Sammy tomorrow night, then go if you must."

It was true, Elizabeth thought. Carmel and Monterey were meccas for tourists in late August.

" Elizabeth, please." Min was weeping. "I was so foolish. I thought, I believed that if you just saw Ted… not in court, but here… I'm sorry."

Elizabeth felt her anger drain away, to be replaced by bone-weary emptiness. Min was Min. Incongruously, she remembered the time Min had sent a reluctant Leila to a casting for a cosmetics commercial. Min had stormed, "Listen, Leila, I don't need you to tell me they didn't ask to see you. Get over there. Force your way in. You're just what they're looking for. You make your breaks in this world."

Leila got the job and became the model the cosmetic company used in all its commercials for the next three years.

Elizabeth shrugged. "Which dining room will Ted be in?"

"The Cypress Room," Helmut answered hopefully.

"Syd? Cheryl?"

"The same."

"Where did you plan to put me?"

With us as well. But the Countess sends her love and asks you to join her table in the Ocean Room."

"All right. I'll stay over till I see Sammy." Elizabeth looked sternly at Min, who seemed almost to cringe. "Min, I'm the one who's warning you now," she said. "Ted is the man who killed my sister. Don't dare try to arrange any more 'accidental' meetings between him and me."

Five years before, in an attempt to resolve the vociferous differences between smokers and non-smokers, Min had divided the spacious dining room into two areas, separating them by a glass wall. The Cypress Room was for nonsmokers only; the Ocean Room accommodated both. The seating was open, except for the guests who were invited to share Min and Helmut's table. When Elizabeth stood at the door of the Ocean Room, she was waved to a table by Countess d'Aronne. The problem, she soon realized, was that from her seat she had an unbroken view of Min's table in the other room. It was with a sense of deja vu that she saw them all sitting together: Min, Helmut, Syd, Cheryl, Ted, Craig.

The two other people at Min's table were Mrs. Meehan, the lottery winner, and a distinguished-looking older man. Several times she caught him glancing over at her.

Somehow she got through the dinner, managing to nibble at the chop and salad, to make some attempts at conversation with the Countess and her friends. But as though drawn to a magnet, she found herself again and again watching Ted.

The Countess noticed it, naturally. "Despite everything he looks quite wonderful, doesn't he? Oh, I'm sorry, my dear. I made a pact with myself not to mention him at all. It's just that you do realize I've known Ted since he was a little boy. His grandparents used to bring him here, when this place was a hotel."

As always, even among celebrities, Ted was the center of attention. Everything he did was effortless, Elizabeth thought-the attentive bend of his head toward Mrs. Meehan, the easy smile for the people who came to his table to greet him, the way he allowed Cheryl to slip her hand into his, then managed to disengage it casually. It was a relief to see him and Craig and the older man leave the table early.

She did not linger for the coffee that was served in the music room. Instead, she slipped out onto the veranda and down the path to her bungalow. The mist had blown off, and stars were brilliant in the dark night sky. The crashing and pounding of the surf blended with the faint sounds of the cello. There was always a musical program after dinner.

An intense sense of isolation came over Elizabeth, an indefinable sadness that was beyond Leila's death, beyond the incongruity of the company of these people who had been so much a part of her life. Syd, Cheryl, Min. She'd known them since she was the eight-year-old Miss Tag Along. The Baron. Craig. Ted.

They went back a long way, these people whom she had considered close friends and who had now closed ranks on her, who sympathized with Leila's murderer, who would come to New York to testify for him…

When she reached her bungalow, Elizabeth hesitated and then decided to sit outside for a while. The veranda furniture was comfortable-a padded sofa swing and matching deck chairs. She settled on a corner of the sofa and, with one foot against the floor, set it moving. Here in the almost-dark, she could see the lights of the big house and quietly think about the people who had incongruously been gathered here tonight.

Gathered at whose request?

And why?

"For a nine-hundred-calorie dinner, it wasn't bad." Henry Bartlett came from his bungalow carrying a handsome leather case. He placed it on the table in Ted's sitting room and opened it, revealing a portable mini-bar. He reached for the Courvoisier and brandy snifters. "Gentlemen?"

Craig nodded assent. Ted shook his head. "I think you should know that one of the firm rules at this spa is no liquor."

"When I-or should I say you?-pay over seven hundred dollars a day for me to be at this place, I decide what I drink."

He poured a generous amount into the two glasses, handed one to Craig and walked over to the sliding glass doors. A full, creamy moon and a galaxy of brilliant silver stars lighted the inky darkness of the ocean; the crescendo of the waves attested to the awesome power of the surf. "I'll never know why Balboa called this the Pacific Ocean," Bartlett commented. "Not when you hear that sound coming from it." He turned to Ted. "Having Elizabeth Lange here could be the break of the century for you. She's an interesting girl."

Ted waited. Craig turned the stem of the glass in his hand. Bartlett looked reflective. "Interesting in a lot of ways, and most particularly for something neither one of you could have seen. Every expression in the gamut marched across her face when she saw you, Teddy. Sadness. Uncertainty. Hatred. She's been doing a lot of thinking, and my guess is that something in her is saying two plus two doesn't equal five."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Craig said flatly.

Henry pushed open the sliding glass door. Now the crescendo of the ocean became a roar. "Hear that?" he asked. "Makes it kind of hard to concentrate, doesn't it? You're paying me a lot of money to get Ted out of this mess. One of the best ways to do it is to know what I'm up against and what I have going for me."

A sharply cool gust of air interrupted him. Quickly he pulled the door shut and walked back to the table. "We were very fortunate the way the seating worked out. I spent a good part of the dinner studying Elizabeth Lange. Facial expressions and body language tell a lot. She never took her eyes off you, Teddy. If ever a woman was caught in a love-hate situation, she's it. Now my job is to figure out how we can make it work for you."