At the door she turned back and looked over her shoulder. "Oh, by the way, Min, dear, I left my bill on Dora's desk. I'm sure it was just an oversight that one was left in my bungalow. I know you planned to have me as your guest, dear."

Cheryl had left the bill on her desk. Dora knew that meant she had gone through the mail. Cheryl was what she was. She had probably seen the letter to Leila.

Min looked at Helmut. Frustrated tears welled in her eyes. "She knows we're in a bad financial bind, and it would be just like her to tip the columnists off! Now we have another freebie-and don't think she won't use this place as a second home!" Despairingly, Min jammed the scattered bills and sketches back into the file.

Dora took it from her and replaced it in the file room. Her heart fluttering rapidly, she went back to the reception room. The letters to Leila were scattered on her desk; the poison-pen one was missing.

Dismayed, Dora tried to assess what harm that letter might do. Could it be used to blackmail Ted? Or was whoever sent it anxious to have it back, just in case someone tried to trace it?

If only she hadn't been reading it when Min and Helmut came in! Dora sat down at her desk; only then did she notice that propped against her calendar was Cheryl's bill for her week at the Spa.

Scrawled across it Cheryl had written Paid in full.

At six thirty the phone in Elizabeth 's bungalow rang. It was Min. " Elizabeth, I want you to have dinner with Helmut and me tonight. Ted, his lawyer, Craig, Cheryl, Syd-they're all going out." For a moment she sounded like the familiar Min, imperious, brooking no refusal. Then, before Elizabeth could answer, her tone softened. "Please, Elizabeth. You're going home in the morning. We have missed you."

"Is this another one of your games, Min?"

"I was absolutely wrong to have forced that meeting last night. I can only ask you to forgive me."

Min sounded weary, and Elizabeth felt reluctant sympathy. If Min chose to believe in Ted's innocence, so be it. Her scheme to throw them together had been outrageous, but that was Min's way.

"You're certain none of them will be in the dining room…?"

"I am certain. Do join us, Elizabeth. You're leaving tomorrow. I've hardly seen you."

It was totally out of character for Min to plead. This would be her only chance to visit with Min, and besides, Elizabeth was not sure she welcomed the prospect of a solitary dinner.

She had had a full afternoon at the Spa, including a loofah treatment, two stretch-exercise classes, a pedicure and manicure, and finally a yoga class. In the yoga class, she'd tried to free her mind, but no matter how much she concentrated, she could not obey the soothing suggestions of the instructor. Over and over, against her will, she kept hearing Ted's question: If I did go back upstairs… Was I trying to save her?

" Elizabeth…?"

Elizabeth gripped the phone and glanced around, drinking in the restful monochromatic color scheme of this expensive bungalow. "Leila green," Min called it. Min had been sickeningly high-handed last night, but she had certainly loved Leila. Elizabeth heard herself accepting the invitation.

The large bathroom included a step-in tub, whirlpool, stall shower and personal steam-room facility. She chose Leila's favorite way to wind down. Lying in the tub, she took advantage of both steam and whirlpool. Eyes closed, her head cushioned by a terry-cloth neck rest, she felt tension slip away under the soothing mist and churning water.

Again she marveled at the cost of this place. Min must be racing through the millions she'd inherited.

She had noticed that that worry was shared by all the old-timers on the staff. Rita, the manicurist, had told her virtually the same story that she'd heard from the masseuse. "I tell you, Elizabeth," she had complained, "Cypress Point just doesn't have the same excitement since Leila died. The celebrity followers are going to La Costa now. Sure you see some pretty big names, but the word is half of them aren't paying."

After twenty minutes the steam automatically turned off. Reluctantly Elizabeth stood under a cold shower, then draped herself in a thick terry robe and twisted a towel around her hair. There was something else she had overlooked in her anger at finding Ted here. Min had genuinely loved Leila. Her anguish after Leila's death had not been faked. But Helmut? The hostile way he had looked at Leila's picture, his sly suggestion that Leila was losing her looks… What had provoked that venom? Surely not just the cracks about his being a "toy soldier" that Leila made at his expense? When he overheard them, he was always amused. She remembered the time he'd arrived for dinner at Leila's apartment wearing the tall, old-fashioned cap of a toy soldier.

"I was passing a costume shop, saw it in the window and couldn't resist," he explained as they all applauded. Leila had laughed uproariously and kissed him. "You're a good sport, Your Lordship," she said…

Then what had triggered his anger? Elizabeth toweled her hair dry, brushed it back and caught it in a Psyche knot. As she applied makeup and touched her lips and cheeks with gloss, she could hear Leila's voice: "My God, Sparrow, you get better-looking all the time. I swear you were lucky Mama was having an affair with Senator Lange when you were conceived. You remember some of her other men. How would you like to have been Mart's kid?"

Last year she'd been in summer stock. When the show got to Kentucky, she'd gone to the leading newspaper in Louisville and searched for references to Everett Lange. His obituary notice was four years old at that time. It gave details of his family background, his education, his marriage to a socialite, his achievements in Congress. In his photograph, she had seen a masculine version of her own features… Would her life have been different if she had known her father? She suppressed the thought.

It was a fact of life that everyone at Cypress Point Spa dressed for dinner. She decided to wear a white silk jersey tunic with a knotted cord belt and silver sandals. She wondered if Ted and the others had gone to the Cannery in Monterey. That used to be his favorite spot.

One night, three years ago, when Leila had to leave unexpectedly to shoot extra scenes, Ted had taken her to the Cannery. They had sat for hours talking, and he had told her about spending summers with his grandparents in Monterey, about his mother's suicide when he was twelve, about how much he had despised his father. And he told her about the automobile accident that took the lives of his wife and child. "I couldn't function," he said. "For nearly two years I was a zombie. If it hadn't been for Craig, I'd have had to turn over executive control of my business to someone else. He functioned for me. He became my voice. He practically was me."

The next day he told her, "You're too good a listener."

She had known that he was uncomfortable about having revealed so much of himself to her.

She deliberately waited until the "cocktail" hour was nearly over before she left her bungalow. As she followed the path that led to the main house, she stopped to observe the scene on the veranda. The lighted main house, the well-dressed people standing in twos and threes, sipping their make-believe cocktails, talking, laughing, separating, forming into new social units.

She was acutely aware of the breathtaking clarity of the stars against the backdrop of the sky, the artfully placed lanterns that illuminated the path and accentuated the blossoms on the hedges, the placid slap of the Pacific as it washed against the shoreline; and behind the main house, the looming shadow of the bathhouse, its black marble exterior glistening in the reflected light.