No Place Like Home - A Camilla Randall Mystery (The Camilla Randall Mysteries) (15 page)

"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 with 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.

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.

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.

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.