No Place Like Home - A Camilla Randall Mystery (The Camilla Randall Mysteries) (33 page)

She wandered through the children's garden, looking for somebody, anybody to talk to, feeling as if she might jump out of her skin.

There was an area in the back for five recreational vehicles that had special permission to use the parking lot for overnight camping. The people at Lucky and Bucky's camp talked about them as if they were some sort of elite. They did look more prosperous than the creek dwellers.

A man and woman sat at a folding table next to their RV, playing cards. They didn't look particularly friendly.

But they were the only people around. Doria approached them slowly.

"Do you know Lucky and Bucky?" She tried to keep her voice sounding respectful but unafraid.

The man looked Doria up and down. "Who's asking?"

"I, um, was staying at their camp, but I think I missed Bucky. He said he'd pick us up at four. The bus from Morro Bay took forever."

The woman played a queen. "I guess you didn't hear. Bucky didn't come today. He took off. With the van. I heard Lucky's going to kill him if he ever dares to come home."

"Lucky and Bucky had a fight?" Doria felt dizzy. How could they be splitting up? They were her last hope. They'd seemed so stable.

"Have you talked to her—to Lucky? Do you know what happened?"

The man laughed and lay down his cards. "No. We heard it from the kids. But the story's always the same isn't it? Cherchez la femme!"

"Bucky ran off with a girl?"

The woman laughed. "Yup. Somebody named Dorothy."

"Lucky's husband ran off with somebody named Dorothy?"

Now Doria was beginning to question her own sanity. Maybe she was having a bad reaction to Camilla's Vicodin.

"And her little dog, too," said the man. "Seems this Dorothy keeps taking the camp dog, Toto. They've all run off to Oz, I guess. Or maybe Lucky's gone off the deep end."

Whatever end Lucky had gone off, Doria felt as if she was falling off it, too.

The awful men tied our hands with nylon rope—not being very careful of my bandages. Then they forced us to scramble down the rocky path to the cabins, which alone was a terrifying ordeal without being able to use arms for balance. The men—all rather well dressed and well-groomed—spoke to each other in guttural Spanish. I couldn't understand a word. If Silas did, he wasn't letting on. His face had become a stony mask.

The man who seemed to be the leader knocked on the door of one of the more decrepit cabins—a bit uphill from the others. The door opened a crack and he spoke to somebody inside.

The door opened wider, and another man shoved me toward it. I nearly tripped on the threshold as I lurched into the cabin.

"Hello there, Doctor Manners," said a voice.

Ronzo's voice.

We rounded the corner into a little living room where three people sat, their hands bound like ours: Ronzo, Marvin and Plantagenet.

I must have made a noise, because one of our captors said, "silence!"

Nobody said a word.

Ronzo was also tied by his ankles to a tattered leather Morris chair. His face looked puffy and bruised.

But Marvin and Plantagenet looked relatively unharmed and sat next to each other on the little loveseat.

Please," Marvin said, springing to his feet. "Let the Manners Doctor have my seat. I'm perfectly happy on the desk chair." He turned and said something to the leader of our captors in Spanish.

The reply came from one of the others, who pushed him back into his seat with the butt of a rifle. The other shoved Silas onto the little wooden desk chair. It didn't look as if it would bear up under his weight.

They pushed me between Plant and Marvin on the loveseat. A tight squeeze that was uncomfortable on many levels.

The leader of the men grunted something at us and left with two of his henchmen. The fourth man stood at attention at the door, a rifle in his hands.

"I don't suppose anybody speaks Spanish?" I said once they'd gone. "Does anybody know what's going on? I take it these are drug cartel people of some sort?"

"Of some sort," Ronzo said. "Colombians, I'd say, from their accents. They seem to be getting ready to take off somewhere."

"They're certainly not dressed like peasants," I said. "So I take it they're not growing marijuana. What's going on?"

"Harry Sharkov is going on," Marvin said. "There is life after death if you're rich and devious enough. I was right. About everything. Harry's alive. Staying in the nice big cabin by the beach. With Fantasia. The bitch."

Plant gave Silas a dark look. "I don't suppose you or Camilla called the police before making this little excursion, did you?"

"We talked about it…" I started to say. But I could tell that made Plant angrier.

Silas didn't look happy either. "Plant, we needed to see if there was anything shady-looking going on. We couldn't call the Sheriff with nothing to report. Camilla got Ronzo's phone message and I agreed to take a look, but we didn't expect armed gunmen."

"Shady? I guess this might be called shady," Plant said. "A master criminal who's ruined countless lives stages his own death by murdering a homeless man and burning down his own house, then makes a deal with the devil and all his minions to get himself out of the country. Harry Sharkov isn't just shady. He's the Prince of Darkness."

"So Marvin was right?" I said. "Harry killed Tom and planted his body in the fire?"

"Yes," Plant said. "Marvin was right. About everything. As much as it pains me to say it."

"Except how dangerous these dudes are," Ronzo said. "You guys should never have come sneaking around. What were you thinking, Skinner?"

I heard footsteps and murmuring outside. Everybody froze.

"Stay quiet," Plant whispered to me. "They don't like us to talk."

But somebody outside was talking. Quite loudly. A woman. She was screaming at the top of her lungs.

"For God's sake, Harry, it's no big deal! Why are you being like this? Please let me go with you! Stop! Ow!"

The door opened and a pretty dark-haired girl with an extraordinary bust stumbled into our little prison, her face red from crying. Her hands were bound like ours.

"Marvin?" she said "Oh my God! What's happening? Are they going to kill us all?"

"Hello Fantasia, dear. Yes, I think they are planning to kill us. Plantagenet and I paddled up here to rescue you. But we don't seem to be doing a very good job, do we?"

"Hello Marvin!" said a voice that boomed like cannon fire.

Into the room walked a large, balding old man in wrinkled Ralph Lauren. He looked like his pictures. Harry Sharkov. Alive and well. All I could think was—poor Doria. How miserable to be married to this awful man.

He surveyed us all, then pushed Fantasia into a sitting position on the coffee table.

"Change of plans. You can have her back, you old pervert," he said to Marvin.

"Hello Harry," Marvin said. "Did you get tired of her?"

"Got tired of keeping her away from my Colombian guests," Harry said. "And my submarine is here. Time to go. It's been swell meeting you all."

He motioned for his guards to come in. They had more rope. They started to tie Fantasia to the coffee table. Then another one grabbed Plant and tied his legs to the the loveseat.

Then he came to me. He pulled the rope so tight it hurt. I wanted to kick him in the face. But that obviously would have got me shot by the guard with the rifle.

"What's going on now, Harry? Why are you doing this?" Fantasia's voice squeaked. "I was only flirting with Mr. Reyes because he scared me. Look, I'm not with them. I never even slept with Marvin. I swear. Just the lesbian stuff when he was Marva—for the show."

"Fantasia, dear, I don't think he ever intended to take you with him. Those narco-subs are a very tight fit. And what's all that jewelry you're wearing?" Marvin spoke with a bravado none of the rest of us could muster.

Fantasia ignored him as her voice rose to a shriek. "I promise I won't try to stow away on your stupid boat. Why would I? You're a jerkwad. All I want is to go home. Give me back my dad's dingy and take the damned jewelry. I don't know why you suddenly gave me all this stuff."

She tried to pulling off a diamond bracelet, but of course it wouldn't come off over the ropes. Then she reached for the earrings and started fiddling with them.

"Take them! Take them. I don't want any of it. I want to go home!" She dropped the earring on the floor.

I recognized the jewelry—very like the diamonds I'd seen on Doria Windsor on the cover of Home magazine last December.

Harry strode over and clapped a hand over Fantasia's mouth.

"My lovely wife seems to have been resurrected from her watery grave, according to the local radio, so we need a better corpse for her this time. Yours will do fine." He put the earring back in her ear. "These were always her favorite. Somebody will be able to identify them. By the time forensics finds out it's not Doria, I'll be long gone. Nobody will suspect anybody was here but Doria and her gang of prostitutes and perverts. Case closed."

He gave us all a horrible grin. "Thanks for providing me with a nice little red herring for the local cops."

Nobody else spoke as the men tied us to the furniture in silence.

I fought panic and wondered if the rest of them could smell what I smelled.

Kerosene.

One of the men standing in the little hallway carried a big can of it.

"You know, I have the worst luck with fire," Harry said. "Too bad it takes at least forty minutes for the nearest fire department to get here."

Doria stood under a pine tree on the side of the parking lot, with absolutely no idea what to do next. The people in the RVs said she wasn't allowed to stay there after the 4:30 closing time unless she was one of their elite members.

They wouldn't even let her sit on the grass nearby.

Her limbs didn't seem to belong to her, the way they sometimes behaved in dreams. She had that walking through Jell-O feeling she'd had right after she heard about the fire.

Maybe she'd been dreaming this whole time. None of it had happened. She was still lying in the L.A. hospital, waiting for Dr. Singh.

She clutched her guardian angel pendant and prayed. If that angel was up there, this would be the time to kick in with a nice little miracle.

The one place she knew she couldn't go was back to the camp. Lucky was fierce. If she thought "Dorothy" had stolen her husband, her life would be worth nothing.

Finally Doria walked out to the street and back to the bus stop. She felt in her pocket, as if a magic bus token might have materialized.

Nope. No miracle-activity there.

So should she sit at the bus stop? What would she do if a bus came and she tried to get on without the fare? They'd probably report her to the cops. She'd be better off walking. She saw some campers illegally parked across the street, but the legal RV-ers in the parking lot had warned her about huge fines for being caught there. Better to stay away.

So she Jell-O walked down Prado Road. She had no idea how much time had elapsed. Thoughts mushed around in her head with visions of Harry, dead.

Then Harry, alive.

And Joey, looking at her with all that hurt in his face.

She needed to go somewhere. Anywhere. Maybe she could pretend she had amnesia. Get a job as a cook. Or a housekeeper. She was the world's premier expert on homemaking. Not useless. She simply needed to get a ride. She stuck out her thumb a few times, but nobody seemed to notice her.

Walking was slow, but exhausting. She was out of shape after her week in bed at Marvin's. When she got to a sturdy looking fence, she leaned against it to catch her breath.

She prayed again. Please. Send someone to help.

Okay, she needed to be more forceful with the hitch-hiking. She stuck out an assertive thumb at an approaching car.

But it whizzed by.

Then she heard sirens. And saw flashing lights.

The police. They'd come for her.

Fantasia screamed as the smell of kerosene wafted through the little cabin.

"Fire! They're going to burn us all to death!"

Actually, there wasn't any fire yet, although we all knew what was going to happen. The silent henchperson still stood guard over us, his rifle at the ready, half-in and half-out of the open cabin door. Maybe Harry had left orders to wait to light the fire until his submarine was ready for launching. I had no idea what that might entail.

Personal submarines. I had no idea they existed. But apparently Harry had been working with South American narco-sub makers to build an upscale version for wealthy businesspeople and celebrities who wanted to travel in complete privacy.