No Place Like Home - A Camilla Randall Mystery (The Camilla Randall Mysteries)

by Allen, Anne R.

  "Ronzo," said Ronzo. He gave them all a big grin. An adorable grin.

  But I was not going to be taken in by adorable. I'd seen been there before. More than once.

  Plant tried to introduce George and Enrique, but they scurried off, still looking like naughty children with something to hide.

  Ronzo gave Silas's hand a warm shake before turning back to Plant.

  "Are you Plantagenet Smith, the playwright? Camilla didn't tell me your name. Awesome. I saw a revival of two of your one-acts at the Laura Pels Theatre last winter. Loved the twist endings. And Wilde in the West is one of my favorite films of the last decade. I cheered when you got that Oscar."

  Oh great. He was charming Plant. Now it was going to be even more difficult to tell him to get lost. And how did a policeman know that much about Off Broadway theater?

  "You guys want to go for a drink?" Ronzo beamed another affable smile. "It's only nine o'clock. The night is young." Clever move. He was going to include third parties. That meant I couldn't yell at him for abandoning me. Not that I would. I never yelled. I detached. And I was about to detach now.

  "Sorry. We've got to run," Silas said. "We've got a crazy day tomorrow. A Monday from hell."

  He avoided my eyes. His hell was my hell and we both knew it.

  He whisked Plant into the milling crowd—leaving me with Ronzo.

  And without a car.

  As I realized what was happening, I pushed through the crowd, calling to Plant and Silas. They had to give me a ride. Yes, it was out of their way, but Silas owed me. It would cost a fortune for me to get a taxi to go out to Morro Bay at this hour. If I could even find one.

  I called again. But Plant only turned to give me a raised thumb and a hand sign for "call me." He obviously thought Ronzo was hot and wanted all the details.

  I hoped Ronzo hadn't seen the thumb. Yes, he was hot. He was also rude. And way, way too sure of himself. This was getting more humiliating by the minute.

  "You didn't tell me Mr. Roses was Plantagenet Smith." Ronzo pushed through right behind me, dogging my steps. "I think he's one of the geniuses of contemporary American theater. He never should have gone to Hollywood. They don't get him out here."

  I watched Plant and Silas cross the street at the light. Okay, I was stuck with dealing with rude, dishy Ronzo one more time. I would treat him politely until he got me safely home, then I'd give him a quick dismissal.

  My life was precarious enough without another untrustworthy man to deal with.

  I turned to Ronzo with a half-smile. "Hollywood hasn't been good to Plantagenet. His current screenplay has been in development hell for over two years and he's dead broke. So is Silas. But you probably figured that out from the little drama in the bookstore this morning. Brianna's paycheck isn't the only one that bounced."

  Ronzo put an arm around me.

  I pulled away.

  "I hope you'll be able to drive me home, Mr. Ronzoni," I said in my coolest Manners Doctor tone. "As you know, I left my car at home this afternoon. I need to get back right away. I shouldn't have taken the time off. There's so much to do. And I have to open the store tomorrow morning."

  "I'm really, really sorry about abandoning you." Ronzo stopped under a street light and looked into my eyes. "Oh, Jeez. You've got some shiner there. I didn't realize that Bozo hit you that hard. Are you okay?"

  I'd forgotten. It didn't hurt so much now. But I didn't care how concerned he acted. Or what his excuse was. My ex used to look me in the eye like that when he was about to tell his most outrageous lies.

  "As you said back at the store, I'll live."

  "I was an idiot not to get your phone number." Ronzo didn't touch me again, but he walked close, in step with my quick pace. "Skinner had something to show me a few blocks away, and I thought it would take five minutes, but it turned out to be a much bigger deal."

  Oops. I'd never given him my phone number. Not that he'd asked, but it explained why he hadn't called. I gave him a small smile.

  He kept going, talking a little too fast.

  "When I got back to the winery, you were gone. And I don't blame you. I would have left too. And I knew you had this concert tonight. I saw the note on your fridge."

  That's how he had tracked me here. The note on the fridge. If he was a policeman, he'd probably been trained to notice details like that. But still, it felt a little stalkerish.

  "It's fine," I said, keeping with my non-committal tone. "Just take me home, please. Where's your car?"

  He pointed toward the nearby parking garage.

  "Listen, you have every reason to be pissed off. I shouldn't have left you alone, but it was important."

  "I'm sure it was." I quickened my step, keeping my eyes on the sidewalk ahead.

  "It's Tom. The homeless guy. He's a vet, and Skinner is in touch with veteran's organizations around here, so I thought he could help me find him."

  The homeless guy. Ronzo had left me to go help homeless people. As far as excuses went this was turning out to be better than average.

  I kept looking ahead, but I slowed my pace a bit.

  "And did he find Tom?"

  "No. But we found his campsite. He's missing. Skinner's pretty sure somebody killed him."

  Chapter 37—Menthol Magic

  When Doria saw Betsy's car had disappeared, the first thing she wanted was a cigarette.

  She had no idea why. Maybe the catastrophe took her mind back to her feast-or-famine modeling days when a cigarette could make the most ghastly situation bearable—at least for a few minutes.

  Or maybe it was the way smoking used to make a moment seem more real by slowing her body down so she could pay attention. She wanted things to slow down and get real right now—and put Betsy's car back where it should be next to that old rattletrap truck. A Mercedes did not disappear into thin air like that.

  Of course she could simply be reacting to the considerable buzz she had going from the wine and the Oxycontin.

  She'd always craved nicotine most when she was high, in the old days.

  She made her slow way to the parking place where the Mercedes had been—feeling as if she were wading through Jell-O. The yellow parking lot lights made everything seem oily and surreal.

  Had she left the keys in the car? She might have. She'd been kind of buzzed when she left, and she'd been listening to the CD player, so she'd had the keys in…

  Once she got to the empty space, she no idea what to do.

  She stared at the asphalt a while—then at the stupid truck—then back.

  Betsy's car did not reappear.

  The truck did not morph into a Mercedes.

  Two urgent desires took over: the need to sit down and the need for that cigarette.

  She could smell it—wafting toward her from somewhere—that sharp, somehow alluring stink of burning tobacco.

  Out on the street, an old woman sat on a bus stop bench under a streetlight, a cigarette dangling from her lips.

  Somehow it seemed the most natural thing in the world to wade over, join the woman on the bench, and ask to bum a cig.

  Doria realized this wasn't entirely wise when the woman responded by scooting down to the far end of the bench. Her face was in shadow, but Doria could tell from the woman's body language that the intrusion wasn't welcome.

  The woman's gray hair stuck out like straw thatch from under a knit cap. Doria wasn't entirely unhappy that she'd moved down a few feet. The woman smelled as if she hadn't bathed in weeks.

  After another whiff, Doria realized she'd tried to get a free cigarette from a homeless person.

  Right after losing her best friend's car.

  Things could have been going better.

  But her brain didn't seem to be working well enough to turn them around.

  She would have moved on, except she had no idea where she would move to. Maybe a bus would come. She could take it out to the house—or what was left of it—and maybe find a place to sleep amidst the rubble. From what she'd seen in
that newspaper photo, it looked as if the old detached garage had mostly survived the fire. There had been a bunch of bedding stored out there, as she remembered.

  The scarecrow woman startled her with a shoulder tap. She held out a crumpled pack of Salems.

  "I'll sell you one for fifty cents. How about that?"

  Menthol. Doria's mother had smoked menthol cigarettes. Kools. She remembered the idyllic TV commercials from when she was a kid: beautiful people on a mountaintop, urging viewers to "come up to the menthol magic of Kool." The first cigarette Doria ever smoked had been a Kool—pilfered from her mother's purse, of course.

  She reached in Betsy's purse and fished in the bottom for the cash she'd taken from Betsy's wallet and pulled out a dollar.

  "Do keep the change. You're being very kind."

  The woman grabbed the bill, gave Doria a broad, semi-toothless smile and tapped out a cigarette to draw from the pack. It was an archaic, but polite gesture that made Doria smile.

  "Bless your heart, honey," the woman said. "You trying to quit?"

  Doria nodded and accepted a book of matches. No point in telling the woman she'd quit over twenty-five years ago. It was amazing how the first drag took her back there. Back to when she was married to Frank, the real estate developer—a sociopath who made Donald Trump look humble—but he did pay for Doria to go to through a smoking cessation program at a very nice spa in the Poconos.

  The sharp bite of the smoke made her cough.

  Which hurt her stitches like crazy.

  "You waiting on a bus hon?" said the woman after politely waiting for the coughing to abate. "Where you headed?"

  Since Doria was sitting at a bus stop, she realized she probably needed to say she was going somewhere.

  "Out on Edna Valley Road," she said, giving the vague location of her burned-down house. "Past the airport."

  The woman shook her head. "Hate to tell you this, hon, but there's no bus out there at this time of night. There used to be, but you know, this economy…"

  Doria inhaled another drag, loving and hating the biting smoke that soothed and made her want to cough at the same time. No bus. So what was she going to do? Sit on this bench all night? And then what?

  The future had become a black hole.

  Chapter 38—Not Exactly "Cheers"

  Ronzo found a place to park his rented Ford about a block down the street from my cottage. Patrons of nearby restaurants had filled up most of the parking places in front of the store.

  Even though good manners prescribed that Ronzo should walk me home, I hoped he'd stay in the car. I wanted to avoid any attempt he might make to rekindle last night's romance.

  I found him way too attractive to let him get too close. Even if he turned out not to be as selfish and rude as he'd seemed this afternoon, I knew it would be best to cool things off.

  How stupid would I be to get myself into a relationship with a guy who lived on the other side of the continent? Especially a policeman.

  I'd been there, done that. I was still smarting from being dumped by Capt. Maverick J. Zukowski of the L.A.P.D. two years ago. Three months into our long-distance romance he got himself engaged to a fellow cop named Lourdes-Maria Kaminski. He hadn't even bothered to tell me for weeks.

  "Thank you Mr. Ronzoni." I opened the car door to make a quick escape. "I appreciate the ride. I hope you'll find your friend Tom is alive and well after all."

  Ronzo scrambled out of the car and rushed around to open my door.

  "No way am I letting you walk home by yourself. You might get mugged wearing a dress that expensive. It's Chanel isn't it? Besides, I want to make sure those thieving friends of yours aren't waiting to ambush you. I don't want you to get another black eye."

  How did he know I was wearing Chanel? Couture didn't seem a likely interest for a policeman from New Jersey. But he was right. If there was a chance Jason and Brianna were still hanging around, I'd be awfully happy to have Ronzo there.

  He helped me out of the car with a courtly little bow, then offered his arm. He was so cute about his good manners. He really had been very nice on the way home. His concern for homeless veterans was appealing. As well as the fact he'd served his country. He said he'd joined up after 9/11, leaving a promising career as a musician that never rekindled after his tour was up.

  He seemed genuinely concerned for Tom, which was sweet, especially since Tom had not been an endearing sort.

  "I hope you find him," I said. "It's such a shame that people fall through the cracks like that. Are you sure Tom hasn't simply moved on—maybe to a bigger city?"

  "He has ties to this area, according to Skinner. And he's got a kind of seniority. Which lets him choose his favorite spots. Like in front of your store. I guess he'd been staying at a sober living facility until the county shut it down for code violations, and everybody around here knows him. That's hard to give up. A place where everybody knows your name."

  Tom's favorite bench was right ahead. Empty now.

  "Not exactly Cheers," I said. "But I'm afraid he did do some drinking there."

  I couldn't help remembering the old man's often alcohol-infused stink, which normally would have started to waft into my nostrils from this distance.

  Ronzo gave a half-smile. "I don't think he'd been doing much sober living recently." Ronzo steered me down the dark pathway that led to my little cottage. "Skinner says Tom crawled back into the bottle after he got kicked out of the facility. And that's the problem. Most of the official shelters require sobriety."

  As we approached the little courtyard between the store and the cottage, I was surprised to see light glowing from the windows. I'm usually pretty obsessive about turning lights off.

  When we reached the door, I knew something was wrong. The door stood slightly ajar. Unlocked. I'd been very careful to lock it after Ronzo announced he'd let himself in earlier this morning.

  Ronzo put out a protective arm, motioning me to stay back.

  "Somebody's in there. Sounds like Bozo and his girlfriend might be back."

  Now I was glad to have a policeman by my side. I hoped he had a real gun somewhere on his person, and not just a ballpoint pen.

  I could hear a voice. A male voice. Voices.

  They were coming from my bedroom.

  Chapter 39—Lucky and Bucky

  The homeless woman gave Doria a concerned smile.

  "You got anybody who can come get you? I got a friend who's gonna pick me up in a few minutes. We can drop you someplace."

  She was being remarkably kind. Doria gave her a smile, but couldn't think what to say.

  "I'm Lucky," the woman said. "Lucy's the name I was born with, but everybody calls me Lucky. My old man's name is Bucky, so we're just Lucky and Bucky to everybody. What do they call you?"

  Lucky was so genuinely friendly that Doria started to say her own name, then stopped in the middle. It would probably be mistake to reveal her identity until she got the law enforcement people straightened out.

  "Door? Your name is Door?" The woman nodded encouragement like somebody trying to teach a baby to talk. "Like a Jim Morrison Door? Or short for Dorothy?"

  "Dorothy," Doria said quickly. This was perfectly true. She'd been born Dorothy Castelo. She'd legally changed her name when she started modeling, but right now plain old Dorothy was as good a name as any.

  "And what's your address, Dorothy? Is it right there on Edna Valley Road?"

  Doria figured she'd better say yes, although the property was actually on a small private road that ran off Edna Valley. She didn't want to give anything away.

  "We're goin' that way, so why don't you come with us?"

  "You have a friend with a car?" This was handy. Doria hoped she'd heard right. The smoke was adding dizziness to her Oxy/wine buzz.

  "Better than that. We got a…Here's my old man."

  Lucky waved at a battered van that looked as if it might have been used to deliver flowers sometime in the last century and had since been attacked by madmen wi
th random cans of Rust-Oleum spray paint.

  It pulled to the curb and the driver rolled down the window. He had the same leathery skin as Lucky, but a lot less hair.

  "We scored Lucky, baby!" he said. "We scored big. Best dumpster dive this month! Found us some big bags of oranges—only a few got mold on them. And three boxes of potatoes. Got us some chips, stew, and chili. We're gonna have a feast tonight!"

  Lucky went over to the window and whispered something to the man.

  He waved. "Hop in, Dorothy. We're happy to give you a lift! There's no seats back there, but you can sit on an orange crate."

  Lucky opened the door and climbed into the back of the van, making a sort of seat for Doria by putting a filthy old quilt on top of some boxes of sprouting potatoes. The vehicle stank so badly of old cigarette smoke and rotting food that Doria thought she might be sick. She turned away, trying to figure out how to make a polite escape.

  Or any kind of escape. What had she been thinking? These people were homeless. Probably alcoholic, drug-addicted, demented, or all of the above.

  She turned back toward the bus stop, hoping to catch sight of anybody who might rescue her. But all she could see was the sick girl from the restaurant climbing into somebody's car.

  But Bucky misinterpreted Doria's reluctance. He opened the cab door and stepped down slowly to approach her.

  "Getting up into a van isn't so easy now that we're older, is it? I got a ramp back there. I need it when I'm using my chair. Sometimes my prosthetic drives me crazy, so I don't wear it for a few days." He lifted up his pant leg to reveal an artificial leg made of metal and plastic. "Lucky, you want to get the ramp?"

  "Good idea," Lucky said. "How about the wheelchair? Let me bring that down too."

  A wheelchair. Doria sighed. These people thought she was so old and decrepit she needed a wheelchair. She probably had been moving pretty slowly. And the pain of the incision made her stoop over like an old person. In the half-light from the distant parking lot, they probably couldn't tell her face had been lifted three times by the very best surgeons.