San Diego. She envisioned the comfort of her little apartment and quiet evenings sipping sherry with Violet. Violet’s pointless chatter would seem pleasant now. Her shabby Golden Hill studio would seem luxurious after jail and Franny’s tiny, over-decorated cottage.
Home. She was free now to go home. And home was in San Diego.
~
The old building looked the same, and as she walked down the dingy hallway, Camilla could almost imagine the last few months had been some awful dream. But when she put her key in the lock of the familiar door of apartment ten, it wouldn’t turn. Then she noticed the lock looked shiny and new. With rising panic, she realized she hadn’t even thought about paying rent for the last two months. Of course Mrs. Rodriguez would have rented the place to a new tenant. This was someone else’s home. Not hers.
She knocked on the door of Violet’s apartment. When there was no answer, she knocked again, as loudly as she could. Violet was a little deaf, and wouldn’t be expecting a visitor at this hour.
“Violet! It’s me—Camilla!” She knocked harder, banging against the old wooden door. As she came out of her freeway-driving trance, she thought about the fact that the pearl beaded bag she carried contained nothing but makeup and a driver’s license. It hadn’t occurred to her to bring money when she left Franny’s house this morning. She had no money for gas to get back to L.A.
She banged again. Nothing.
But a sudden stream of curses broke the silence. She turned to see a gray-haired man emerge from her old apartment. He wore red plaid pajamas and no teeth.
“Go home where you belong, Missy,” he growled. “She ain’t here.”
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“Nope. She’s been gone for weeks. Can’t say I’ve missed her. Been nice and quiet around here without her yakkity-yak. Now you go on home. Young girls shouldn’t be running around here dressed like that.”
“This is an emergency,” Camilla said. She started down the hall toward Mrs. Rodriguez’s door.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going to ask Mrs. Rodriguez where Violet is.”
“Mrs. R. ain’t here neither. Gone to her nephew’s wedding.”
“Do you know anybody who might know where Violet’s gone?”
“Nope. Just the crippled guy. And he don’t live here.”
“Crippled guy?” Camilla realized how little she knew about Violet.
“Yeah. Younger guy. Tall. Walked with a cane. She called him Attila the Hun or something. Old lady don’t have all her marbles. Could be anywhere. You go on home now.”
The door closed in her face.
Attila the Hun. Walked with a cane. Could he have meant “Genghis Kahn?” As Camilla ran to her car through the rain—which had graduated from drizzle to downpour—her thoughts raced. Jonathan. Again.
Back in her car, she drove through falling sheets of rain, thinking of Jonathan on that other rainy night when she helped him get away from the muggers. He had been so sweet and normal then. Was it possible that he cared about her after all?
Taking a deep breath for courage, she turned the key in the ignition and started for Jonathan’s apartment.
~
It wasn’t until she was at the foot of the redwood stairs looking up at Jonathan’s lighted window that she remembered Plantagenet’s earlier remark about “a tough-bitch reporter” that Jonathan left Angela for. What if Jonathan had company?
But as the rain poured down, she decided to take the chance and climbed the stairs. When she reached the door, she listened for voices, but could hear nothing but the sound of the rain. Finally she knocked—louder than she meant to.
“Come on in. It’s not locked.”
She had to stifle a gasp as she opened the door. Her first thought was that she had blundered into the wrong apartment: instead of Jonathan’s monastic quarters, she had entered some nightmarish junk shop.
On a turquoise Naugahyde couch, which bisected the room, a man sat with his back to the door, watching an old TV set—painted fluorescent orange. His feet were propped on a low table made from a wooden industrial spool.
“Just leave it on the orange crate by the door, Jose,” he said without turning around. “There’s a fiver on the Melmac plate. Keep the change. I hope Juana gave me lean pastrami this time. Last night it was all fat.”
Camilla stood in the doorway, unable to speak. The man was definitely Jonathan. His cane rested on the arm of the couch and a bottle of Jack Daniels sat next to his foot on the spool table. What he was watching with such attention was a television newscast of her press conference. The television Camilla was all pink ruffles and curls and murmured inanities about “innocence”. Tossing her curls, the TV Camilla turned to kiss a beaming, tuxedoed Plantagenet. The kiss lasted a long time.
“Do you believe this is the biggest news story of the week?” Jonathan said, picking up the whiskey bottle. “You’d think that brat had just been elected president.”
His bitter tone made her draw a quick breath.
Jonathan turned at the sound.
“Good God!” he said. The bottle of Jack Daniels dropped to the floor.
She froze, feeling rainwater drip from the hem of her dress down her legs and into the painful pink pumps.
“Am I completely zonkered or is Camilla Randall standing in my living room in a transparent dress?” Jonathan said, apparently to the whiskey bottle, which he rescued from the floor.
“Yes. It’s me.” She was now terribly aware of how the soaked dress was clinging to her un-underclothed body.
Jonathan walked slowly toward her, wobbling on his cane.
“Amazing,” he said, after scrutinizing her for a moment. “On the tube that dress makes you look like you’re about to break into a chorus of ‘The Good Ship Lollipop’.”
“I’ve come to see if you know where I can find Violet Rushforth.” She tried to make her voice sound precise and calm. “A man at my old building said she hasn’t been at her apartment for weeks. Do you know where she is?”
“Violet Rushforth?” Jonathan said in a quiet voice. “Let me get this straight: every journalist in North America thinks you’re a combination of Joan of Arc, Princess Di, and Cinderella; there’s a star-studded bash in your honor going on in Beverly Hills; and you’re here looking for a crazy old lady?” He made a growling sound that might have been a chuckle. “Maybe you’re not the spoiled brat I thought you were.”
“Do you know where Violet is?” She tried to control her anger.
“New York,” he said. “That’s all she’d tell me when I took her to the airport. Probably looking for her mythical grandson. I assume she’ll call me when she gets home. I’ve got her car and the key to her apartment.”
“May I have it please?”
“What do you want the Edsel for? Didn’t Jimmy deliver your DeLorean?”
“I don’t want the key to Violet’s car. I need the key to Violet’s apartment, Mr. Kahn. Would you give it to me, please?” The word ‘please’ came out as a kind of squeak as emotion began to crack through her controlled facade.
“Sure.” He pulled a ring of keys from his jeans pocket. “Here. Take the keys to the Edsel, too. Damned antique is nothing but trouble. If it hadn’t broken down in the middle of nowhere last month, this ankle would be healed by now.” He tossed her the keys. “Hey, take your furniture, too. I can’t tell you how glad I’ll be to have this crap out of here. She insisted I take it when the landlady found a new tenant for your apartment. The woman can’t hear the word, ‘no’.”
Camilla took the apartment key and handed the others back.
“Thank you.” She turned to open the door.
“No way.” He leaned over her to push the door shut again. “You’re not going until you tell me the reason you’re here. I don’t buy the story about the old lady. Sorry.”
She gave him her stoniest look and tried not to react to the closeness of his body.
“I came her
e looking for a friend. Obviously I don’t have one here.”
“OK. OK,” he said. “I know I’m a little drunk. Let me make some coffee and sober up. Can I get you something? Coffee?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it to your party,” he said. “I was planning to go. Got my tux cleaned and everything.” He pointed to the dry cleaner’s bag draped over the back of the eagle-printed chair. “But then I wasn’t sure that old Lila would make it. Transmission is going, as well as just about everything else. It’s never been restored, you know. Everything’s original on that thing.”
“What happened to your Toyota?”
“Needs major brake work—which I can’t afford for a while.” He disappeared into the kitchen. “I hope you don’t take milk in your coffee. I used all the milk today making chocolate pudding.”
“Chocolate pudding? You like chocolate pudding, too?”
“Yeah. The cooked kind—that gets the chocolaty skin on top. When I was a kid, my Aunt Esther used to make it for me when I was down in the dumps. You want some?”
“I’d love it.” She sat down on her old couch, hoping she had sufficiently dripped dry. “So Angela invited you to the party tonight?” she said.
“No, not Angela.” Jonathan set two steaming mugs on the spool table. “Your friend Smith did. Angela’s not talking to me. I refused to give that elitist Juan Carlos an endorsement in the Sentinel. Sometimes she forgets the paper’s not hers anymore.”
“Plantagenet called you?” This was more than odd.
“Yeah. Surprised the hell out of me. I thought the guy hated my guts.” Jonathan sat next to her on the couch and handed her a bowl of pudding with Cool Whip on top.
“Maybe Plant knew how much I owe you. But I didn’t know—not until today.” She dug into the pudding wondering if Plant sensed these feelings she had whenever she was with Jonathan—the feelings that right now were making her tingle all over.
“You didn’t know—what? That I knew the FBI had been obstructing the investigation? Yeah. I knew that a whole month before your goddam lawyer would talk to me. He kept hanging up on me—thought I was some tabloid sleaze.”
“Of course, yes. I so grateful for that. And for my car. And especially—the rest. I thought you believed I was guilty, like everybody else. Even Plantagenet believed it for a while. But there you were, behind me the whole time, and I didn’t even know. I do owe you my thanks. Is that what you meant about why I’m here?”
Jonathan gave her a half-smile. “I wish I deserved that much credit, but I wasn’t exactly convinced of your innocence. In fact, I was pretty sure you helped Jon-Don O.D.”
A spoonful of pudding stuck in Camilla’s throat.
But Jonathan continued to smile. “What pissed me off was the way the FBI was covering up the facts to keep Teeter’s investigation going. But it never occurred to me that Parker had been fooling around with two blondes.”
“You really thought I killed Jon-Don?” She tried to swallow as her anger rose.
“Hey, the evidence was there.”
“You thought… I was a murderer?” She could hardly speak. “You thought I was a drug dealer? Then why did you put up my bail?”
He laughed as if she’d said something ridiculous.
“Bail? Hell, that wasn’t me. Remember, I’m the guy who can’t afford to get his beat-up old car fixed.”
“Then who did? Why won’t anybody tell me?”
“Because she swore us all to secrecy.”
“She? You mean Angela?”
“I mean Violet. I guess that old lady is better off than she seems.”
“Violet Rushforth put up my bail?”
Jonathan nodded as he set down his pudding.
“You had nothing to do with it?”
“No more than I could help. I thought she was nuts.”
“Because you thought I was guilty?”
“Because she’s a poor, lonely old woman, and you’re an over-privileged child of the elite. And yes, I thought you killed Jon-Don Parker.”
“How could you? How could you believe that?”
She jumped up. She couldn’t bear to sit near him now.
“You may have convinced the world tonight that you’re some sort of squeaky-clean fairy-tale princess, but you did give one hell of a wild party, and you did spend most of it entertaining that pretty-boy drug addict in your bed.”
“You think I had sex with Jon-Don Parker?” She went to the kitchen and started refilling her pudding bowl.
“Why not?” He followed, wobbling on his cane. “I know first-hand that you don’t limit your sexual activities to your fiancé. Where is he, by the way—your fiancé? I’d think an engaged couple would want to be together on such a happy occasion.”
“You don’t know anything! He’s not a fiancé! Not mine.”
“Oh? You two looked pretty lovey-dovey on the tube a few minutes ago.”
She wanted to throw something at him.
“That was before I saw him—in the stupid gazebo. If that’s what he wants, he isn’t engaged to me!”
“You broke off your engagement because of a gazebo?”
She bit her lip. No way was she going to cry. “The engagement broke because he’s in love with somebody else, and he thinks I am, too, but he’s wrong!”
The rage inside her erupted as the bowl of pudding seemed to leap from her hands. She ran for the door, tears blurring the vision of Jonathan’s startled face, covered with brown, sticky goo.
“Camilla!”
“He is so wrong!” she called out into the night.
Chapter 34—Making Whoopee
Loud knocking woke Camilla. She lay in the dark, terrified—unable to remember where she was. She lifted a heavy hand and managed to switch on a lamp over the nightstand. As its lavender-shaded glow illuminated Violet’s crowded apartment, she searched for the source of the noise.
“Hey, I’m freezing my butt off out here,” said a voice. Frantic knocking followed. Did the old man next door know she was here?
She sat on the edge of the bed and checked the time. Five-thirty. She shivered in the worn flannel nightgown she’d found Violet’s closet.
More knocking.
“It’s me. Jonathan. For God’s sake, let me in.”
He was wet. Very wet. Water ran from the dark curls plastered to his forehead into rivers that ran down his cheeks. His corduroy jacket and jeans looked as if he’d been swimming in them. His teeth chattered as he stumbled into the room.
“Damned Edsel died.” He set down his cane and removed his dripping jacket. “Down at the bottom of the last hill. The mechanic told me it was just a matter of time. Everything was going at once.” His words came in breathless spurts. Damned ankle. Hey, could you get me a towel or something?”
She dashed to the bathroom for one of Violet’s large purple bath towels. Jonathan dried his hair and face and peeled off his shirt, which was soaked through as well. She noted it was not the ragged T-shirt that he had been wearing earlier.
“At least the rain rinsed the chocolate out of my hair,” he said. “That’s never happened to me before.”
“I thought you said the Edsel broke down last month.”
His chest was glistening. Perfectly muscled. Magnificent.
“Not the car—the chocolate. Nobody’s ever thrown a bowl of chocolate pudding at me before.” He wrapped the purple towel around his shoulders.
She waited for him to smile, but he didn’t.
“You’re angry.” She was suddenly afraid. His powerful body would be dangerous if he chose to be violent.
“Angry? Of course I was angry. I was furious. So furious I couldn’t sleep. I kept hoping you weren’t sleeping, either.” He stopped toweling his hair and studied her face. “But you were? Sleeping?” He took a step closer. She could see him wince with pain as he put weight on his injured ankle.
“Please sit down. I’m sure you should get off that ankle. Does it hurt?”
&n
bsp; “It hurts like hell.” He didn’t sit down.
“But why? Why did you come here in the middle of the night?”
“There are some things you just can’t say on the phone.” He gave her an odd look. “Do you know you look about twelve years old in that thing?”
She looked down at the peter-pan-collared granny-gown that barely covered her knees. “Violet’s. I don’t think she’s got anything that will fit you. I’ll hang your wet stuff in the bathroom. You’d better give me your jeans, too. Maybe you can use that quilt on the bed for a robe.”
Jonathan’s face broke into a grin.
“Two minutes I’m here, and you ask me to take off my pants? You’ve always been a woman who comes to the point.”
“That is not the point. At all. And if that’s what you came here for, Mr. Kahn—just to be rude and insult me—you can go right back outside again. I didn’t ask you to walk here in the rain in the middle of the night.”
“No.” He looked vulnerable in nothing but the purple towel. “No, you didn’t. And I didn’t come here to insult you.”
“Why did you come?” She added his jeans to the damp bundle.
“Because of something you said—just before you attacked me with the pudding. Something about thinking you were in love with somebody. I need to know if that had anything to do with me?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Of course it did.”
His gaze was so intense she could hardly stand to look at him, and his body was so near—so naked. She turned away, trying to get her breath.
She dashed to the bathroom and tossed his wet things over the shower rod. When she returned, he hadn’t moved. He stood watching her, an unreadable smile on his face.
She picked up the quilt. “Here. Don’t freeze to death.”
He draped the quilt around his shoulders and gave her a warm, sweet smile.
“I don’t intend to.” He folded her into the quilt, putting his arms around her until she felt his damp body pressing against hers, as his lips touched her hair, her cheek, her mouth. As she nestled her cheek in the hollow of his shoulder, she could feel the weight of his body leaning, pressing against her…
Randall #01 - The Best Revenge Page 24