No Place Like Home - A Camilla Randall Mystery (The Camilla Randall Mysteries) (16 page)

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.

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.

"Shoes!" I said. "I need comfortable shoes! I can't be homeless in a pair of Manolo Blahniks." I felt close to tears now, as the awful painters kept slapping away and the paint roller hissed along the plaster walls.

Ronzo somehow found my Nikes—and even unearthed a pair of socks.

"Just grab what you need for tonight," he said. "We'll come back tomorrow with a U-Haul and get the rest of your stuff."

"Tonight? How do I know what I'm going to need for tonight? I'm homeless! I have no place to go!"

I threw in some toiletries I gathered from the bathroom and pulled an ancient parka from the closet. I'd spent every bit of cash I had on dinner. My bank account was overdrawn because of the bounced check, so my debit card would be refused. I had no credit cards because of last year's bankruptcy. What do you wear to sleep on a park bench? Maybe I'd end up sleeping on old Tom's bench.

The horror of it was too much. I fought back the tears. I didn't want to completely lose it in front of Ronzo.

But he just gave me a smile and clicked the suitcase shut.

"Come on. The Thrifty Motel isn't exactly five-star, but my room has two beds. You can bunk with me."

Sleeping with Ronzo. Exactly what I'd wanted to avoid.

But I had no choice. I followed him back to his car and tried to gather my thoughts as he put my suitcase in the trunk of his rental car.

I kept my body language stiff as we drove the few blocks to his motel, hoping to make it very clear I didn't want a repeat of last night.

The motel itself looked respectable enough, in spite of the name, and the parking lot was full of late-model cars.

But when he unlocked the door and ushered me in, I had second thoughts. The room was tiny. It had two beds, but they were only about a foot apart—and the bedspreads seemed to have been inspired by a bad dream by Jackson Pollack.

"Not exactly the Hilton." Ronzo seemed nervous as he put my suitcase on the rack at the end of one of the beds. "But at least the walls aren't pink—I mean mauve."

I wanted to laugh, but I was still too upset. Plus I was trying to figure out why a lawyer was staying in such down-market digs. It sort of went with his down-market suit. But was he really a lawyer at all? Nothing else about him had turned out to be true.

He seemed to take my silence as disapproval.

"It's a little cramped isn't it? Let me see if they've got another room for you." He scurried off like some intruder.

Okay, he'd picked up on my "no romance" signals, but I kind of missed his presence. Enigmatic as the man was, he seemed to have a calming effect on me.

I sat on the bed and stared at the awful bedspread as random thoughts zoomed around my head. How could my life have come to this? I'd grown up in a Connecticut mansion with forty-two rooms plus stables and guest cottages. With a brownstone in Manhattan and a vacation house in Barbados. Now it felt as if that life had happened to somebody else. Somebody I read about, or maybe saw in a movie.

When Ronzo came back in, he looked even more uncomfortable.

"Sorry. They don't have another vacancy. We're going to have to share the room."

I gave him a polite smile and set about unpacking my suitcase. But I couldn't deal with the half-truths any longer.

"How come you have to stay in a Thrifty Motel? Don't they pay lawyers in New Jersey?"

Ronzo's smile went goofy. "I'm, um, not a lawyer."

Oh, great. Maybe he was a Mafia thug after all.

"Then what was that card about? I suppose you're not named Ronson V. Zolek either?"

"I am indeed Ronson Zolek. And I work for those guys sometimes, but not as a lawyer. I do investigating for them. They pay for some of my expenses, but not all."

"And that's what you're doing out here? Investigating? That's why you wanted to find Tom? Like his family is looking for him or something?"

"Yeah. Something like that." He sat heavily on the second bed. "Hey, I know you don't want a repeat of last night. I'm disappointed, but I get it. It's my fault for being an idiot earlier with Mr. Smith and then leaving you at the winery. But don't worry. I promise to be a gentleman." He gave an odd laugh. "If you want, we can put up a clothesline between the two beds and hang a bedspread on it. You know like in that old 'thirties flick, It Happened One Night? Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert?

"The walls of Jericho?" I laughed in spite of myself. It was one of my favorite classic movies. "No need. I'll change in the bathroom. I need a shower."

As I stepped into the shower and let the water soothe me, I realized Ronzo had once again managed to change the subject from his own identity.

I still didn't know who on earth the man was.

Doria felt something wet on her face and opened her eyes to see a black imp from Hell staring at her with a fiery gaze. Her head buzzed. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard Joey Torres's voice calling to her. Poor, dead Joey.

Was she dead too?

The voices around her started to form into words.

"Toto, get away from the lady," said a boy's voice. Tyler. He was only a shadowy form in the darkness. The adults were huddled behind him, staring down at her.