Randall #01 - The Best Revenge (10 page)

“Camilla, come back! How do I find you? Where are you living? What’s your number?”

She couldn’t bring herself to turn around.

Chapter 10—Mr. DeMille’s Bad Dream

On Saturday—the real Saturday, Camilla woke up to a quiet house again. She wandered aimlessly from room to room, feeling a little sick from eating three packages of chocolate pudding the night before.

And trying not to think about Plantagenet and Angela.

Or Jon-Don Parker.

Or her lost job.

Or her mother’s upcoming wedding to the evil Lester Stokes.

Or much of anything at all.

As she wandered, she looked for evidence that either Wave or Jennifer had returned, but everything was just the way she left it. Neither of her roommates had been home since the party. She was trying to decide whether to be worried or envious. If nothing terrible had happened, they must have been having a pretty wonderful time.

As she sipped coffee and surfed TV channels, vainly looking for a program that did not involve one animated character hitting another with a blunt instrument, she wanted to cry again, but tears wouldn’t come. She wondered if she’d used them up.

The phone rang. She rushed to answer it, almost hoping to hear her mother’s voice. Even marriage to Lester Stokes seemed more forgivable right now than Plantagenet’s terrible betrayal.

“Camel?” said a small female voice. Definitely not her mother. “This is Waverly.” The voice was so soft she wanted to disbelieve it.

“Wave? Where are you? Are you OK?”

“I’m at my parents’ house. 210 Starlight Drive. You have to come right away.” Wave’s voice sounded mechanical and distant.

“Are you hurt? What’s happened?”

“I’m OK. You have to come. Right now. I can’t talk any more.”

~

The house on Starlight Drive looked like a bad dream by Cecil B. DeMille. Camilla half expected a servant in a toga to emerge from the door in the pillared façade. As she rang the bell, she was glad she’d taken the time to press the white linen suit she’d dug out of her jumbled closet.

The man who opened the door wasn’t wearing a toga. He was garbed in yellow polyester pants and a shirt with very red palm trees on it. Mother would have had a fit if any of their staff dressed so badly. Camilla relaxed a bit. She couldn’t be intimidated by a man in such silly clothes, even such a large person.

She handed him one of the calling cards she still kept in a monogrammed case in her purse.

“I’m Camilla Randall,” she said. “Miss Nelson is expecting me.”

The man crumpled the card in his gigantic fist.

“No. Miss Nelson is not expecting you. Miss Nelson is in her room, which is where she is going to stay until you are out of this house.” His face turned as red as his shirt. “I am Waverley’s father. Come this way.”

Mr. Nelson’s rage seemed a bit excessive for the simple gaffe of mistaking him for a servant, but Camilla did as she was ordered. She was led to a mahogany paneled room dimly lit by one small, round window, rimmed in brass to look like a porthole. Wave’s father sat in a leather chair behind a huge desk. She looked around for a place to sit, but there was no other chair.

“I’m so sorry Mr. Nelson—” she started to say.

“Captain Nelson!” His voice was something between a bark and a growl.

“Captain Nelson,” she said, wondering if she was expected to salute. “I’m terribly sorry if I’ve come at a bad time. Wave telephoned me—”

“Of course she telephoned you. I told her to telephone you.”

“I see,” Camilla said, but she didn’t. Her stomach was still feeling the effects of pudding abuse and her head hurt.

“Have you seen today’s paper?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t.”

“Read it.” He tossed a copy of the
L. A. Times
onto the polished wood of his desk. She could see a picture of Jon-Don Parker smiling seductively at the camera. A headline read: JON-DON’S DRUG ODYSSEY TRACED BY POLICE IN THREE COUNTIES

Camilla tried to focus on the tiny print of the article, but it only made her dizzy.

“Very sad,” she murmured. “I read about it yesterday. A drug overdose, apparently. A terrible tragedy.”

“Tragedy!” The Captain’s face went from red to purple. “I’ll tell you about tragedy! A tragedy is what would happen if they printed the truth in that goddam paper!”

“They lied?” Her stomach was not feeling at all well.

“It’s not exactly the whole truth, is it, Camilla?” His face lunged across the desk as his voice went quiet and menacing. “Did you happen to notice anything missing from that article, little Miss Debutramp? Any names or addresses that the press seems to have overlooked?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, sir.” If the man didn’t like debutantes, he shouldn’t have sent his daughter to Rosewood, for goodness’ sake.

“Cut the crap, lady,” the Captain said. “You and I both know that a couple of hours before this Parker character bought the farm, he was at a party at the house that you were sharing with my daughter.”

“Yes. But nothing happened at our house that the
Times
would be interested in…”

“Right.” His voice was thick with sarcasm. “I’m sure nobody is interested in the story of how a drug-crazed TV star spent the night before he died at a drunken orgy given by the nineteen-year-old daughter of a prominent local businessman. And I’m sure they have no interest…”

The Captain swiveled back and forth in his desk chair as he spoke.

 “…no interest at all in hearing that the dead TV star spent nearly an hour of that time in the bedroom of a famous New York debutante. You know they wouldn’t be interested in that stuff, huh?”

What Camilla knew was that if Captain Nelson didn’t stop twisting in his chair, she was going to be sick. She leaned on the edge of the desk to steady her dizziness. A sharp stomach pain made her eyes water.

“Don’t you pull any of that crying crap on me, lady. If anybody should be crying, it’s me. She tried to raise her daughter right. I sent her back East to the best schools. And who did she meet there? Little sluts like you!”

On the Captain’s desk was a brass paperweight in the shape of an octopus. Its shiny head became the hub of a giant wheel as the room started to spin. She felt the Captain’s hands grab her shoulders as she started to fall.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he said, shaking her. He propelled her around the desk and sat her in his chair. “You stoop to every trick in the book, don’t you?” He sat on the edge of his desk, looming over her. “Your step-dad warned me about that.”

“Step-dad?” Camilla was shocked back into consciousness. “I don’t have a stepfather. If you’re talking about Lester Stokes, he is no relation of mine.”

“So he told me,” the Captain said. “In words I haven’t heard since I retired from the Navy.”

“I don’t understand why you talked to him.”

“Don’t you? Do you think I intend to pay for this all by myself?”

“Pay for what?”

“Buying off the papers. And the TV. And the radio, for God’s sake. Do you have any idea how much that cost me? How many favors I had to call in?”

At each phrase, he swiveled the chair one way and then the other, standing over her as he held the arms of the chair.

“If it’s more than twenty-four dollars and eighty-five cents, I’m afraid I can’t help you.” She fought the returning nausea. “That’s all I have left in the bank. Plus a few dollars in my purse. And my mother’s broke.”

“No. You have nine dollars and eighty-five cents in the bank,” he said. “I’ve already checked. But you do have a car. And you’re going to give me the keys. Right now. Where are the papers?”

“Papers?” She clutched her Chanel bag close, as if she could protect the keys inside. She honestly didn’t know about any papers.

“The title and registration. To the damned DeLorean. Where are they? I assume the keys are in here?” He yanked away her purse and opened it.

“I don’t know,” she said, feeling violated. “Maybe the glove compartment?” She reached to take her purse back.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re probably dumb enough to keep them there.” Clutching the keys in his fist, he stomped from the room.

As soon as he was gone, Camilla was sick in a large metal wastebasket with the emblem of the U.S. Navy on the side.

~

She was driven out of La Jolla in an elderly Ford pick-up truck by a silent old man who appeared to work for Captain Nelson. The man had a face like a dried walnut and seemed to understand no English, nor did he respond to any of the Italian or French that she could remember. From time to time, she glanced at his grim face, which seemed to grow grimmer as they progressed along the winding road, high on the cliffs overlooking the crashing waves of the Pacific.

Slowly, Camilla realized that absolutely no one knew where she was, or would even miss her if something happened. She looked down at the menacing waters and back at the strange old man, who broke the silence only to let out a rasping cough. Just as she was contemplating pushing open the door to make a run for it, he turned the truck onto a familiar-looking road, and in a few minutes, stopped in front of her house.

“Gracias,” she said, hopping from the truck as soon as it pulled up to the curb.  

Making a hasty dash down the driveway, she headed for the front door, passing an unfamiliar yellow van parked by the walkway. The old man got down from the truck and followed her, but she tried to ignore him. She hated to be rude, but she couldn’t give him a tip. She had to hang on to what might be her last few dollars in the world.

As she opened her front door, she was almost relieved to see two muscular blond men in cut-off jeans. Jennifer must be home.

“Hold the door, will ya?” one of them said. They were carrying a TV set. The house TV set.

Camilla could do nothing but let them pass. The old man slid past her into the house, heading directly for Wave’s room.

The living room was almost empty. All that remained were two wicker chairs, some empty beer cans and a crate of LPs.

With a thump, the door to Jennifer’s room flew open.

“Shit!” Jennifer said. She dropped two pink plastic suitcases on the floor and readjusted a matching tote bag on her shoulder. “What time is it, Camel?”

“Two-fifteen.” Was it still that early?

“I’ve got to be at the airport in fifteen minutes.” Jennifer picked up the suitcases.

“Where are you going?”

“Like I’m really going to tell you, amoeba-brain.” Jennifer made her way to the door. “You’d be the first one to tell the cops.”

The two blond men reappeared. Each took one of Jennifer’s suitcases and disappeared again.

“Damn!” Jennifer rummaged in her tote bag. “I can’t find my suitcase keys.”

“The cops?” Camilla said, still confused. “You mean because of Wave’s father? Does he want money from you, too?”

Jennifer stared at her for a moment. “Well, yeah, that, too,” she said. “The asshole wanted a thousand bucks.”

“Only a thousand?”

“Only? Shit, Camel, how much did he take you for?”

“He took my car.”

“You gave him your DeLorean?” Jennifer’s hand emerged from her tote bag holding two small silver keys. She jingled them triumphantly. “Poor Camel,” she said as she opened the front door. “You really do have Wonderbread for brains.” She went out and climbed into the yellow van, which took off with a squeal of rubber.

Camilla could do nothing but stare at the empty driveway. Nothing made sense.

She was startled by a voice grunting behind her. It was the old man, carrying Wave’s dresser. In a few minutes, he had Wave’s bedroom as empty as Jennifer’s and the truck rattled off.

Camilla was alone in the silent, empty house.