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

by Allen, Anne R.

  Lucky emerged from the back of the van with a battered folding wheelchair while Bucky positioned a piece of thick plywood to work as a ramp.

  Doria looked back at the parking lot, trying to decide if she should make a run for it. The lights were off at the pizzeria and she saw no signs of the sick girl who had been waiting for her mother. The whole place looked deserted.

  She sighed. It looked as if Lucky and Bucky were her best hope for now. She sat in the chair and let them wheel her up into the van. Lucky helped her sit on the potato carton while Bucky lumbered back to the driver's seat.

  He turned and grinned as he got in. "What's the address, Dorothy?"

  "It's…" What was she going to say? She'd have to say something. She also had to hope some place on that property was habitable.

  Lucky climbed into the cab and whispered to Bucky. Doria had a twinge of fear. What were they planning? Had they recognized her?

  Lucky turned and gave her a concerned look. "You do know where you live, don't you, hon? You got maybe an ID in your purse or something?

  She did not want them looking in the purse. They'd probably take her last few dollars. And the rest of the wine. She blurted out the address.

  But that seemed to be a mistake. Bucky and Lucky started whispering furiously. For all Doria knew, they could be planning to mug her—take the purse and throw her out into the street. Why hadn't she escaped from these people when she had a chance? She could have gone into that supermarket. Some markets are open all night. She could have pretended to be conscientiously reading the nutrition information on the cereal boxes until morning. Old people were always standing for hours reading those things.

  Finally Lucky turned back and gave her a strange look.

  "Hon, that's an address where nobody lives no more. It burnt down. It's been all over the newspapers and TV. You don't want to go there."

  Bucky turned around, too. "That place belonged to some Wall Street crook. There's cops everywhere. FBI, too. All that yellow tape saying you can't go in. You must have the number wrong."

  There was more whispering. What would they do if they found out she'd been married to that "Wall Street crook?"

  Doria felt her panic rising. She couldn't even see anything outside the windowless van, except a distant traffic light shining through the windshield. It was green. Maybe it would change and they'd have to stop. Could she jump out?

  Lucky turned to her again.

  "You think maybe you lived in that house when you was a kid, Dorothy? It was a real old house. Maybe that was where you grew up?"

  "When I was a child?" Doria only half-listened as she wondered if she could slide that heavy van door open—and what would happen if she jumped. Would she rip out the stitches?

  "Sounds like the old-timer's disease," Bucky said, in what he might have thought was a whisper. "They remember stuff from a long time ago, but don't have a clue where they live now."

  Alzheimer's. These people thought she had Alzheimer's disease. She must look truly terrible. Did that make her seem like easy prey?

  "Yeah," Lucky said. "That's probably how come she wanted the cigarette and then she couldn't smoke it. They forget they quit the smokes thirty years ago and suddenly they gotta have a cig. I say we drive back to town and leave her at the police station. Somebody's bound to be looking for her."

  Every muscle in Doria's body froze. The police. She couldn't see them now. She needed to go in well-groomed and feeling strong and sober, not all buzzy like this.

  Thankfully, Bucky put the kibosh on that idea. "No way! No effing cops. You know I hate cops. The station is way on the other side of town anyway. Don't have that much gas."

  "Okay, then you're taking Dorothy back with us." Lucky said. "No way we leave that poor old lady here."

  There was a pause, then Bucky looked over his shoulder.

  "Dorothy, we're taking you back to our camp. We got a lot of hungry folks waiting on the food we got back there. Tomorrow we'll help you find your way home, okay?"

  Doria said that sounded okay, although of course nothing was okay. Even if these ragged strangers were as kind as they seemed, she knew she wouldn't find a place to call "home" for quite some time.

  Chapter 40—New Jersey Lawyer

  Ronzo eased open the front door of the cottage, motioning for me to stay back. I slipped off my Manolos—partly because they were hurting like crazy.

  And partly because a steel-tipped stiletto heel makes a pretty effective weapon.

  As soon as the door opened, I could smell something strange. Something chemical and sharp. What could Brianna and that nasty man be up to now?

  "What's the Bozo called?" Ronzo whispered.

  I mouthed Jason's name.

  Ronzo shouted to him.

  "Nobody named that here," a voice called back.

  A man stepped out of the bedroom. He wore painter's overalls and carried a paint roller coated in an intense shade of mauve.

  "You the owners? Sorry. I can't paint any faster. I'm doing my best here. I only found one guy who's willing to work all night, even for triple the regular hourly."

  Painters. The awful L.A. people were already painting my house. Mauve. I made a sound that came out as a cross between a growl and a squeal as I ran to my bedroom.

  The place was barely recognizable. Everything had been piled in the middle of the floor and covered with drop cloths. Blotchy, filthy drop cloths. Probably dripping paint on all my irreplaceable antiques and beautiful clothes.

  All I had left in the world.

  A second man was busy painting the trim around the windows.

  "These guys aren't working for you?"

  Ronzo looked more like a baffled child than the fierce "Bozo"-fighter he'd been a second ago.

  I shook my head, hard.

  "Get out!" I shouted at the men. "Get out. I pay the rent here. It's my home."

  Pink?" Ronzo said, surveying the walls. "You had to paint the place pink?"

  "It's mauve," I said, furious with him now, too. "Worse than pink. It clashes with everything."

  I turned back to the painters. "My rent is paid until the end of the month. Those horrible people can't have my house until then. Get out of here!" I shook my shoe at him. My words dissolved in a stifled scream.

  "Which month, lady?" said the first painter. "Tomorrow's the first of July."

  I lowered the shoe. Could he be right? Why hadn't I noticed the date?

  Ronzo looked at his watch. "It's not July first yet. It's two hours till midnight."

  I walked up to the head painter. "You have to leave. Now."

  "Look, lady, we've been paid good money to have this place ready for the flooring guys tomorrow morning."

  I took my phone out of my purse.

  "Please leave. I'm calling my landlord now," I said as the phone rang. "You're trespassing. If you don't understand what that is, I'm sure my landlord's lawyer can explain…after I get you arrested."

  "Good luck getting hold of a lawyer at this hour." The man turned back to his paint tray. "I'm getting paid triple time and I'm not going to throw away money in this economy."

  The phone kept ringing. It went to voice mail. I wanted to dump the paint on the painter's smug head. I looked over at Ronzo, who was back in fighter mode, wearing his Mafioso face.

  "How about a policeman? Mr. Ronzoni, why don't you show these gentlemen your badge?"

  Ronzo winced. "Did I tell you I was a policeman? I don't think I said I was a policeman."

  Now he was the one I wanted to dump paint on. He wouldn't let on who he was even to save my home?

  He pulled something from his wallet. But it didn't look like a badge.

  "I do represent a law firm." Ronzo handed a business card to the head painter. "You guys can't work here legally until July. It's not July yet. You've got two hours. What do you say you go home now and let the lady pack up her things?"

  "What do you say you get the hell out of my face," said the painter. "This card is from New
Jersey."

  He tossed the card to the drop-clothed floor. Ronzo reached for it, but I grabbed first. The ivory card showed the embossed name of a law firm and a Newark address. In the bottom left corner it said, "Ronson V. Zolek"

  Ron-son Zo-lek. Not a cop. Not even Italian.

  And I was now officially homeless.

  Chapter 41—Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

  As Bucky and Lucky's van bumped painfully down a dirt road, Doria realized she could very well be traveling on the private drive to her own property. She'd caught sight of a few familiar landmarks before they'd turned off the main road.

  She remembered a stand of tangled willows at the bottom of their lot, down along the creek past the vineyards. She'd hoped to have them removed so she could have a view of the creek, but apparently there was some ordinance against it—which had made Harry furious.

  She had a half-recollection of one of their last phone conversations. Harry had been thundering on about the willows and how a "bunch of bums" were camping out near their property.

  She had a feeling she might be heading to that camp.

  And she was about to become one of those bums.

  When Bucky finally brought the rattletrap van to a stop and Lucky opened the door, Doria could see willows out there. She couldn't be sure they were her willows, but she couldn't be sure of anything, in that darkness, especially after Bucky killed the headlights.

  Doria smelled smoke from a wood fire and heard people shouting—and music. Somebody was playing guitar and singing. Some old Woody Guthrie song.

  Lucky came around and asked if Doria needed the ramp to get out. After all that Alzheimer's talk, Doria was eager to show she wasn't over the hill, so she jumped out on her own. A mistake. She felt a pull at her abdomen.

  She turned away from the van and saw something that choked her throat with tears. At the top of the hill beyond the willows was a stone fireplace, silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Her stone fireplace. The original—from the 1889 farmhouse that had been the foundation for more than a century of additions and "improvements." She'd so much wanted to get rid of the mid-twentieth century modifications and take it back to its Victorian splendor. But all of it was gone now. The fireplace stood naked and alone in the moonlight. The full force of her loss hit.

  Her dream retirement home—gone.

  Harry—gone.

  Everything she'd worked for in her life—a pile of ash.

  She was saved from complete despair when she realized most of the out-buildings were indeed still standing. The modern garage was gone, just as Mistress Nightshade had predicted. But the old model-T-sized detached garage, the pool house, and a couple of sheds still seemed intact. In that dim light, she couldn't tell what state the interior might be in, but she could hope. Most of her personal things were stored in those out-buildings. She might have something left.

  Bucky saw her staring as he opened the back of the van.

  "Ain't that a pretty sight? No more Wall Street scum. Looks like the police are gone, too. I didn't see any cop cars when we drove by."

  Wall Street scum. Doria had to remember that's who she and Harry were to these people. She couldn't let them find out who she really was, even if they hated the police enough to resist turning her in on those ridiculous charges George and Enrique talked about.

  She was startled by shouts as people sprang from the darkness and swarmed around the van. A small boy pulled on her sleeve and asked if she had any candy.

  "Or a dog treat for Toto?" He bent down to pet a tiny black dog that looked like the result of a moment of passion between a Scottish terrier and a fruit bat.

  "Sorry," she said. "I'm not a dog person."

  "Tyler, don't bother Dorothy," Lucky said. "Why don't you find her a nice place to sit while we unload the van? We've got chili. You like chili, right?"

  "I like candy better," Tyler said. "And Toto won't eat chili if it's spicy."

  Tyler and the odd little dog led Doria toward the willows. She could see the glow of a fire ahead.

  "Come on," Tyler said. "Be careful those bushes don't stick you in the eye."

  The boy seemed to be used to taking charge of slightly dim adults. They had to push through the tangled brush on a narrow path. She could hear the singing louder now. And people shouting. She could see the glow of fire. They walked along a path that might have been a dry stream bed.

  As they rounded a bend, she could see them, silhouetted against a small campfire. It was a group of ten or twelve, some of them small children. A grey-bearded man with wild hair strummed a beat-up guitar.

  A woman sitting next to him had a bottle of whiskey. She held it high and said, "To old Tommy, may he rest in peace."

  The man with the guitar stopped playing and took a swig from the bottle. "To Tommy the Tooth. Let's hope he's not dead. Probably sleeping it off in the drunk tank."

  "Well, I hope he is dead," Tyler said. "He was mean." He went to join the other children who were playing with a plastic truck in the sand by the creek.

  "He's dead all right," said somebody else. "Go look at his tent. Nobody could have survived that fire."

  "I'm not gonna believe he's dead until I see his body. The firemen didn't find no body," said a woman with a shrill voice. "Gimme some of that hooch, Joe."

  Lucky and Bucky burst out from the bushes, followed by four or five men carrying the food bags.

  "Booze, Joe? Really?" Lucky shouted at the guitar man. "Who brought the damn booze? You know this place is clean and sober. We got kids here."

  "It belongs to the Tooth" the shrill woman said. "We found out where he'd been camping since you kicked him out. About a half mile up the creek. The place was burned—the whole camp. Nothin' left but this bottle of Old Crow he had stuck in the creek. The label was ashes, but the whiskey inside is just fine."

  "Tom passed out with a candle in the tent again?" Bucky put down his bags and limped toward the guitar man. "Didn't that teach you something? Booze will kill you, Joe, one way or another." He took the bottle and looked at it with disgust.

  "Poor old Tommy." Joe strummed the guitar again, playing a familiar tune Doria couldn't quite name. "I guess that explains why the dude hasn't been mooching around here lately. He always used to get into my granola stash. Maybe he got burned to death and some animal dragged the body away."

  He gave Doria a strange smile, as if they were in on a private joke.

  She didn't feel like joking.

  "Some animal?" she said. "Are there animals around here big enough to do that?" Her voice went shrill as she spoke out. Everybody turned to stare. Stupid. She knew she shouldn't let these people know she was scared. Especially that man Joe. His smile was cocky and challenging. Almost as if he knew who she was.

  "A pack of coyotes can drag a body away," Joe said. "But it was more likely a bear or a lion." He played a tune she could swear came from Peter and the Wolf. Was he frightening her on purpose?

  He looked familiar. He might have been the man she gave the five dollars to this morning. She wondered if he recognized her. Or if regular people were as faceless to the homeless as the homeless were to the rest of the world.

  She tried to maintain her composure.

  "'Lions and tigers and bears—oh my'? I hope you're joking?"

  Joe gave a throaty laugh. "No tigers. But we got bears and lions all over the damn place. Couple years ago, friend of mine had a court hearing and they had to cancel, because a mountain lion was sitting on the steps of the courthouse, cool as you please. Wouldn't let anybody in all day long."

  "That's bullshit," somebody said. "They killed that cougar before the building opened at seven A.M. Brought in sharpshooters and shot that kitty dead."

  Doria leaned against a tree trunk and tried to figure out how much of this might be true. They were only a few miles from town. Harry's realtor hadn't said a word about dangerous animals in the vicinity.

  "You're all full of shit," said one of the women. "My money says old Tom is fine. Probably
doing a little jail time or squatting somewheres. Some people are too mean to die."

  "Your money can't say nothin'.'Cause you got no money, Marlene." Bucky gave a loud laugh. "What about his teeth? Anybody find those dentures?"

  Bucky walked back to the willows and opened the half-full bottle of bourbon and started pouring it slowly into the dirt.

  "No teeth. Nothing. Everything burned to a crisp." The woman called Marlene watched Bucky with an expression of resentment. "Like Mr. Wall Street up at the big house. I guess some people's karma really does come back."

  "Not only Mr. Wall Street." A little bald man said. "I hear Mrs. Wall Street kicked the bucket, too. In a car crash. I just heard it on the radio."

  Doria had to hang onto the tree to stay upright. Her whole body went cold.

  "What? Doria Windsor is dead?" somebody said.

  "No. She ain't," said Joe. He gave Doria that private-joke look again.

  "She sure as hell is," said Marlene. "It's all over the news. She stole some TV star's Mercedes and the CHP tried to pull her over on the 101, but she floored it. They say she must have been driving over a hundred miles an hour when she hit that curve right before Pismo—went right over the cliff. Into the drink. They're fishing for the body now, but they say there's no way she survived. No more Doria. Good riddance."

  Joe changed his key and started to sing, "Ding Dong, the witch is dead. The wicked witch is dead…"

  That's when Doria passed out.

  Chapter 42—The Walls of Jericho

  In a panic, I grabbed as many of my things as I could from the bedroom closet and started piling them on the couch. Luckily the living room hadn't been sullied by the mauve monsters yet.

  Ronzo stood by looking confused again. And utterly useless.

  I dashed back into the bedroom and rummaged for things in the furniture under the tarp. A change of underwear. Something to sleep in. My laptop.

  The painters kept painting. One of them whistled. I wanted to hit him.

  Ronzo finally caught on and retrieved one of my battered Vuitton suitcases from the closet shelf.