No Place Like Home - A Camilla Randall Mystery (The Camilla Randall Mysteries) (8 page)

Then sit back and read whatever book was in Betsy's bag. A mystery, it looked like. Perfect.

The third key on Betsy's key ring opened the door.

After sliding into the driver's seat, Doria reached into the bottom of the bag and felt something wrapped in foil—the right shape. Yes! A Lindt chocolate bar. The kind with raspberry filling. Even a serving of fruit. She ate two squares.

Betsy and Cesar were now arguing loudly out by the pool. Better to lie low. Doria read a while—a fun mystery set in 1930s Hollywood—and ate two more chocolate squares washed down with the contents of Betsy's water bottle.

But once she had a little sugar in her blood, Doria realized staying in the car was a bad idea. When Cesar took off, he'd drive right by the Mercedes. She'd have to scootch down on the floor to keep him from seeing her, and her bandages made scootching problematic. Thank goodness she'd taken the Vicodin. It was kicking in. It made her brain a little floaty, but the pain was subsiding.

Finally the voices died down.

Good. They must be back in the main house by now. Time to sneak back to the pool house.

Tiptoeing along the side pathway, Doria was careful to step on the flagstones and not the noisy surrounding gravel. Now that she had food of sorts, it would be easy to hide out until Cesar left.

Thank goodness. The place had a lovely bathroom. A necessity at the moment.

Oh no. Betsy and Cesar were still out there. Not arguing. And not words, exactly, but…grunts and moans.

Damn. They were having make-up sex in Doria's bed.

Unfortunately, the bathroom problem was urgent. Maybe worth tiptoeing back to the big house.

But no. The door had shut behind her. The lock had clicked on automatically, the way the front gate was supposed to.

That front gate—it was still standing wide open at the end of the driveway.

Maybe she should simply take off—start up the Mercedes, drive out onto the street and find a bathroom. She wasn't dressed for an outing, but that did seem the wisest move. Betsy would understand.

Back in the Mercedes, Doria turned the key in the ignition. The engine purred quietly as she backed it out onto the street.

Now to find an anonymous coffee shop and have some real food, coffee and a bathroom break.

After a couple of hours, everything would blow over. Betsy and Cesar would have another fight and Cesar would macho off in his Ferrari.

Then Betsy would crawl into another tequila bottle, eager for a drinking buddy.

Doria simply had to borrow the Mercedes for a few hours until then. Betsy probably wouldn't even notice it was gone.

As Plant scrambled to pick up the roses from the floor, I clutched the blankets around me.

At least Plant looked suitably sheepish.

"I came to apologize, but I seem to have made things considerably worse. I am so sorry, darling. You didn't tell me you had a new boyfriend. I've been so caught up in financial dramas and all our ridiculous wedding plans…"

I felt my face burn—partly with embarrassment at being caught naked with a strange man in my bedroom, and partly with sheer fury at Plantagenet.

The fury won.

"Plant, those buyers of yours are going to take my house. My store. They even want my chairs. The last of my mother's Chippendale dining set. She had such a battle with Brooke Astor's people over that set at Sotheby's."

The thought of my dead mother brought me close to tears. Even though Mother had never been the warm and comforting type—and she'd let her sixth husband burn through the family fortune—I still missed her.

I was an orphan now, with no living relatives. Plant was the closest thing I had to family. Sometimes I couldn't bear the loneliness of it.

"The buyers cannot have the chairs. Silas already told them that." Plant's voice trailed off as he walked toward the kitchen. Probably to find a vase for the roses. He was always worried about things like that. Useless things.

Why did I always surround myself with useless men?

Ronzo didn't seem useless. But then he hadn't told me what he actually did for a living. I'd asked him several times, but somehow he avoided answering. He had an air of blue-collar authority that made me think he might be in law enforcement. But it probably didn't make sense for a Newark policeman to be here in Morro Bay. Not wearing a suit.

Besides, it didn't matter. He was gone now. And he was unlikely to come back.

Plant called to me over the sound of water running in the kitchen sink.

"I can't believe those L.A. people wanted us to throw in furnishings—when they don't even want the books or the business. They want to turn the shop into a jewelry store. They say a bookstore isn't worth a thing in the era of e-books. They're really low-balling us. Silas and I have been fighting about it all morning. The buildings may be decrepit, but the land alone is worth more than they're offering."

"My cottage is not decrepit!" I shouted toward the kitchen as I launched myself out of bed and ran to the bathroom, shutting the door with a slam. Which was less dramatic than I would have liked because the door was too warped to close tightly.

Okay, the place was pretty tired. The store and my cottage were all that was left of a motel owned by Silas's great-grandfather, who had constructed a string of them on the coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 1930s and '40s. But with some fixing up, this place could last a long time. It had been built solidly and had loads of cute built-in cupboards and cabinets and a lovely fold-down ironing board.

Those people from L.A. hadn't even looked at the built-in ironing board.

And they weren't going to buy the book inventory? Morro Bay did not need yet another jewelry store. But they were probably right about book stores. E-books were killing them. I refused to buy one of those Kindle things, but everybody else seemed to have them.

I had let my publishers put my backlist of manners guidebooks into e-books for the international market, but I cringed every time they tried to tell me about the wonderful opportunities e-books gave me

Nothing that caused the death of bookstores could be wonderful.

My anger slowly dissolved as I stood soaking in the shower.

Poor Plant—caught in the middle. It wasn't his fault Silas had lost all his money. A few weeks ago, Plant had been about to marry the multi-millionaire of his dreams and finally be rid of the money problems that had plagued his whole life.

Now Plant and I were just two broke friends.

Orphans in the storm.

I needed to channel my anger elsewhere.

Doria zoomed north on the 405, looking for somewhere she could pop into wearing granny-sweats, no make-up, and flip flops.

Obviously not in posh Bel Air.

And not the Getty or the Mountain Gate Country Club.

Whatever was going to happen to Home magazine in the wake of all this mess, it wouldn't be helped by a paparazzo shot of her looking like somebody's grandmother on her way to Wal-Mart. Even though she'd retired as editor, she was still the face of the magazine.

As she conducted a stern conversation with her bladder, she realized it would have been wiser to turn south, not north.

She was headed for the Van Nuys airport.

On second thought, an airport might be good. Lots of bathrooms. And nobody dressed to travel these days. She wouldn't be noticed.

But no. Harry had a movie producer friend who kept his Cessna there. It would be awful to be recognized looking like this.

She saw the exit for the 101 and headed toward Tarzana. That sounded like the sort of place a middle-aged woman in a jogging suit might escape notice.

The sight of the golden arches ahead filled her with relief. Amazing to be so happy to see a McDonalds.

She made a bee-line for the ladies'.

In the privacy of her stall, she delved into Betsy's bag and found some treasures—a wallet with over a hundred dollars in cash, several credit cards, plus make-up.

The make-up was too pasty for Doria's dark complexion, but even the wrong lipstick and eye shadow could make her look less like a re-animated corpse.

She felt almost human by the time she went to order coffee and a McMuffin.

The place was crowded, but she found an unbussed table away from the windows. There was even a crumpled copy of USA Today to hide behind. After a sip of coffee, she willed herself to relax.

This would all be fine. No need for panic. The magazine had lawyers. And separate financial accounts. It wasn't terribly flush, but there ought to be a way to get hold of that money and start a real investigation into what caused Harry's death. Find out about his mysterious trips to Colombia. That boat-building company he was obsessed with. All sorts of shady people could have wanted to harm him. She could probably fix things with a few phone calls. If only the hospital nincompoops hadn't lost her phone.

Once things calmed down back at Betsy's, she'd call the office. And her realtor. Who knows, maybe the sale of her apartment hadn't gone through. And even if it had, there were others.

Doria still had her own life, separate from Harry. She'd miss the bastard, but it wasn't the end of the world.

Back home in New York, she could start over. She didn't believe much of the stuff the nuns taught her at St. Rita's parish school as a kid, but she still believed in guardian angels. She touched her necklace, glad she'd kept it on last night. Somehow, her angel would help her get things back on track, no matter how dire they looked.

Doria picked up her Egg McMuffin and smoothed the newspaper open to the front page. "SHARKOV-WINDSOR CRIMINAL GANG BILKED CHARITIES" the headline said.

Sharkov-Windsor? The ridiculous article made the two of them sound like Bonnie and Clyde. And it got worse. The reporter suggested Doria had been a partner in Harry's business—maybe even the mastermind. Somebody was quoted as saying Home magazine was probably a tax dodge and money laundering scam.

Well, there went the last of her advertisers.

And any thoughts of getting that money. Apparently it had been frozen, too.

Flipping through the pages, she saw the worst headline of all.

"HOLLYWOOD CELEBS BILKED BY PONZI SCHEME."

Celebrities. Most of whom she knew. The list was long. And there at the top was telenovella star "Cesar Alonso." Harry had buttonholed Cesar at one of Betsy's parties last winter. Doria thought Harry was being extra-nice to the dreadful Cesar just to annoy her.

But no. Harry had been robbing him. Robbing them all—all her friends in the film industry, even—oh, please, no…

Yup. There was her name, under the "B's": Betsy Baylor.

If Doria had a guardian angel, he seemed to be sleeping on the job.

Harry had ripped off her best friend. Betsy was probably in denial about it. That must have been what Cesar was talking about at breakfast.

Maybe it didn't matter if anybody had murdered Harry. Doria was saved from having to do it herself.

She tried to swallow, but the bite of McMuffin sat in her gullet, halfway between mouth and stomach, not moving.

Exactly like her, sitting in this place between Beverly Hills—a place where she was not going to be welcome for some time—and…where? Certainly not New York. Not without money.

She did not have a clue where to go.

As I dressed, I smelled the heavenly scent of French Roast wafting from my kitchen.

Plant had not only made coffee, but was arranging bagels and lox on two of my Limoges plates. I saw the bag came from my favorite deli in San Luis. Several miles out of his way. He was really trying.

I gave him a hug.

"I know it's not your fault, Plant. Silas is in a financial bind. He has to do something."

Plant shook his head. "But not this. I had no idea Lureen was going to offer this property for under two hundred thousand. Or that the buyers would want to move so fast. We don't need cash for the whole amount anyway. Just a down payment. All we really need is enough to keep the house and get the bookstore business back on its feet again. We've cancelled the wedding and were able to get our deposits back on some things…"

"You've cancelled your wedding?"

This was not going to be good. If the two of them split up on top of everything else, it would be a catastrophe. Plant didn't have a penny of his own.

He poured me a cup of coffee. "Of course. Under the circumstances it would be absurd."

"Because you're fighting over my house?"

"Of course not, darling. Silas and I will always be fighting over something until death do us part. But weddings cost money. And we don't have any. The accounts are empty and the cards are maxed. That's the cold truth." He took a sip of his coffee. "Don't try to cash your last paycheck, by the way."