No Place Like Home - A Camilla Randall Mystery (The Camilla Randall Mysteries) (22 page)

When I went to get my car, I peered into the courtyard, which had been cleared of the old carpeting as well as my furniture. My curtains had been taken down inside the cottage, so I could see the mauve glow of the walls.

We'd remedy that as soon as the police allowed us in.

Steve the coverall man had offered to install new carpeting gratis. He said the free advertising he got from the incident was worth every penny. He and Silas seemed to agree the house should be ready for me to move back into in a week or so.

Everything was going to be okay.

Except that Ronzo was still missing. Which was more bothersome to me than anybody else. I could tell Plant and Silas thought I'd been dumped and should get over it.

But my stuff was still at the motel, as far as I knew. I had a right to get it back even if Ronzo was rude enough to dump me and not return my things. My laptop was there. And a Vuitton suitcase.

I decided to go. I'd promised Plant I wouldn't work, but I didn't say anything about going to the Thrifty Motel.

The tired-looking woman at the reception desk greeted me with a surprisingly warm smile.

"You're Mr. Zolek's girlfriend? He said you'd be by. We've got your stuff right here."

I hesitated a moment. Claiming to be Ronzo's girlfriend was a bit of stretch. But I couldn't very well say "No. I'm his two-night stand." So I nodded yes.

The tired woman's grin stretched wider. "Boy am I glad to see you! Listen, you're going to have to clear his stuff out of there. He only reserved through today, and we told him he had to check out by ten A.M. We've got reservations up the wazoo."

Odd that Ronzo would have left his things if he didn't intend to come back.

"When did you see him last?"

"Tuesday. Early. He said he was going fishing. But I he never came back."

He'd been gone for two days.

Of course I was happy to be reunited with my suitcase and laptop. But I wasn't quite sure what to do with Ronzo's things.

A maid hovered. She obviously wanted to clean the room for new arrivals.

Tossing Ronzo's clothes into his canvas case, I was madder at him than ever. He'd left my luggage with the motel manager, and hadn't even bothered to phone me. What a jerk.

His things didn't hold much of a clue to his whereabouts. Aside from the suit—much in need of a cleaning—and a couple of shirts, his clothing was not businesslike at all. Mostly Levis and vintage tees from rock concerts. Plus the cheap black shoes he'd been wearing. Maybe he'd figured they were expendable and he'd left them so he could have a lighter load on the way home. He could be back in New Jersey already.

Maybe that was for the best.

I scanned the room for anything I might have missed and noticed the nightstand drawer partly open with something inside colored a vivid blue.

I pulled out the drawer.

Ronzo's precious blue notebook lay inside, next to the Gideon Bible.

The day after Doria found Mistress Nightshade's business cards, Marvin took off early. He said he had to do a favor for an old army buddy and he'd be gone all day. Since Doria was able to walk around now, he said she should be okay on her own. He even showed her where to find the Jell-O in the fridge.

Very sweet. Maybe he didn't know she was onto him and his kinky friend.

In any case, she was ecstatic to see him go. The first thing she did once his car was out of the driveway was take out Mistress Nightshade's card and call the phone number. It looked like a local one.

She used Marvin's landline in the kitchen and dialed.

Immediately a phone rang somewhere inside the house. Marvin's study, it sounded like. It kept ringing as she made her slow way down the hall. She found a phone attached to an answering machine on the desk. When she picked it up, the ringing stopped.

Okay, Mistress Nightshade used a separate landline in Marvin's office.

A landline suggested a need for privacy. Harry had been partial to landlines because the calls were much more secure, he said.

It made sense for a dominatrix to use a landline.

But not in somebody else's house.

Which meant Mistress Nightshade worked or even lived here.

And might show up at any time.

Doria figured she'd better get her snooping done fast.

Fast being a relative term when you're doped up and recovering from a tummy tuck gone bad, and you have a little dog following your every step.

The first thing she needed to find out was what kind of business Marvin did in that garage. She went out and tried to peek in the windows, but they were all masked by black curtains of some kind. Suspicious.

The side door was locked and the overhead door wouldn't budge.

Okay, she needed a key. She went on a hunt, but found nothing under the mat. And no flowerpots to hide things in. If Marvin had a spare key, it must be inside.

The study would be the best place to look. There was an Ikea desk very like the one they'd featured in the December issue of Home. She'd recommended it because of the stack of small drawers on the right side, ideal for paperclips, stamps and—yes!

Keys. A whole ring of them.

Triumphant, Doria went back to the garage. On the side door she saw a sign she'd missed before. "Massage Therapy" it said, in discreet pale green lettering. So that was it. Marvin was a massage therapist. That made sense, for a former medic with knowledge of anatomy. Maybe he simply helped Mistress Nightshade with a bad back or an arthritic knee. Nothing sinister in that.

But the hairs on the back of her neck begged to differ.

Toto didn't look eager to enter the garage either.

The third key she tried opened the lock. Inside was black-dark. Those must be blackout curtains on the windows. Doria tiptoed in, feeling around for a light switch.

Toto hovered by the door.

Doria found a round dimmer switch and dialed it all the way up, flooding the place with light.

And what a place.

Doria had to remind herself to breathe.

It was a dungeon—totally faux Medieval. Complete with wall manacles and a cage. Ghastly looking instruments hung from nasty wrought iron hooks. Yuck. Mistress Nightshade obviously plied her trade inside these fake-rock walls.

A couple of gothic-arched doors—not badly done—led to what must be dressing or store rooms. Doria couldn't help taking a peek.

One room held more instruments of torture. Double yuck. But the other was a walk-in closet. A very nice one, with rather yummy plush carpeting in deep crimson, and a full length mirror with a pewter-finished medieval-looking frame right out of Count Dracula's castle.

Toto made himself a little nest in the plush and lay down.

The clothes looked like the usual fetish outfits. They featured lots of leather and grommets. But Mistress Nightshade had been truthful about one thing on the phone: the outfits felt like real leather, not the fake plastic kind. There was also a pair of real sheepskin chaps and a nicely cut black suede bustier. But the surprise was all the other costumes, hung in zippered plastic bags, each labeled with the name of a celebrity or a character from a film.

Every bag contained a dress or suit, a wig, bag and matching shoes. She saw bags labeled "Martha Stewart", "Sarah Palin", "Hillary Clinton", "Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil", "Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction", "The Manners Doctor", "Charlize Theron's Evil Queen", "Julia Roberts' Evil Queen"… and yes, she'd made the list: "Doria Windsor."

She unzipped the bag with her name and found a dark, bobbed wig that mimicked her signature 'do. Along with it was a little black dress by Michael Kors like the one she wore for one of her most popular magazine covers and a pair of alligator Prada pumps she used to adore. But they were obvious knock-offs—like that faux Birkin bag. And the shoes were huge. Seriously huge. Maybe a size 13 wide.

Doria checked the "Manners Doctor" garment bag and found a Chanel jacket dress that looked like something she'd seen a few seasons back, plus a faux Chanel bag and a pair of strappy Manolo Blahnik knockoffs—huge, like the others.

Okay, things were pointing more and more to Marvin himself being Mistress Nightshade. That phone voice Doria heard in the hospital had sounded non-gender-specific.

Whoever he/she was, Mistress N. seemed to entertain clients by dressing up as famous powerful women.

Interesting: most of the other costumes seemed to be equipped with handbags. All except "Doria Windsor's."

That faux Birkin—maybe it was part of the Doria Windsor costume?

That would suggest that somebody—probably Marvin—dressed in a Doria Windsor costume had been at Harry's house the day of the fire. Perhaps supervising an orgy.

Doria didn't have time to contemplate the implications of her husband hiring a dominatrix to dress up as her and "discipline" him.

What loomed largest in her mind was the realization that Marvin made that phone call to her in the hospital.

And he wasn't owning up to it.

He knew a whole lot he wasn't telling her. And he was toying with her.

Which meant…it was time to get out of his house. Lickity split.

After the motel manager and I got the stuff loaded into my car, I took Ronzo's notebook from my pocket and flipped through it, hoping to find a clue about his disappearance.

I knew he used it for things like addresses and appointments, so it might hold a clue to where he'd gone. But since it had seemed so precious to him, I couldn't figure out why he would have left it.

I was pretty sure I had an unsold copy of the Merriam Webster Secretarial Handbook back at the store. I wondered if it had a chapter on Gregg shorthand.

If I went back to the store, I'd sort of be breaking my promise to Plant, but I knew I couldn't rest until I had some idea of what had happened to Ronzo.

So instead of getting on the freeway to go to Silas and Plant's house, I turned around and drove back to the bookstore. I figured I'd only stay a minute or two—just to get the Secretarial Handbook.

But I figured wrong.

A small crowd had gathered outside the store.

"Why won't the police let you open?" a well-dressed woman said. "There's the government again—taking money away from small businesses."

"We want to support you because of what you've been going through," said a scruffy young man.

It looked as if I'd have to wait a few more hours until I got to decipher Ronzo's notebook. And I'd have to forget those doctor's orders. And my promise to Plant. This was my first day as the owner of my own business, and these people wanted to spend money in my store.

I unlocked the door, removed the "Closed for Police Investigation" sign, and let my customers in.

Doria tried to form a plan for her escape. First she had to deal with a little matter of clothing. At the moment, she was wearing Marvin's old pajamas and his lavender bathrobe. Not suitable for a trip into town.

She'd have plenty of money for clothes if she could get the money for her diamond ring.

So she had to get to George and Enrique's store immediately.

Even if they only gave her a little down payment, she could buy some decent clothes, get a room and prepare to deal with the law enforcement people.

She looked through the clothes in Marvin's dungeon closet. The Michael Kors knock-off in the Doria Windsor garment bag might be suitable. But no—of course she didn't want to look like Doria Windsor until she was ready to present her resurrected self to the world.

She flipped through the garment bags. Most of the clothes were huge—size 14 or larger. But the Chanel suit for the Manners Doctor was boxy, so it might work with some safety pins. And there was a nice wig. Doria had often been tempted to go blonde. This would be fun.

She took the bag back to her room.

The outfit wasn't half bad. With the wig and some make-up, she could be mistaken for the Manners Doctor at fifty paces.

The Manners Doctor. That's who she saw through the window of George and Enrique's jewelry store that night. Camilla Something. Old money. Her family owned a pseudo-Gothic pile out in Connecticut somewhere. She must have a vacation home around here. She'd been married to that dreadful TV muckraker on Fox News. Probably got a pretty penny in the divorce. This would be the perfect place to hide away until the public forgot about her connection to the TV newsman.

Doria admired herself in the mirror as she formulated her plan. Looking like a local celebrity might be handy right now. A good way to keep herself "dead" until she found a good lawyer.

A little panic set in when she realized what she was giving up—this nice bed, Marvin's medical help, and three meals a day.