Randall #02 - Ghost Writers in the Sky (30 page)

Now the fight was resuming outside.

The earring woman yelled at the smoking cowboys.

Ted Nugent punched Tie Dye in the mouth.

I grabbed the phone.

“
Jonathan, this is Camilla. Please come get us right now. Donna has taken the car keys and gone off with Walker Montgomery. I think she’s in danger. There’s a huge brawl at the Maverick Saloon, and the Rancho seems to have been taken over by gangsters, and Luci’s disappeared and…Jonathan, can you hear me?”

The phone was dead.

 “
I think that was the wrong number,” Mrs. Boggs Bailey said. “That didn’t sound like Jonathan Kahn. I don’t always remember which button to push.”

More fight spilled out into the parking lot.

Giddy with desperation, I again tried each of the locked handles of the Saturn. One of the windows was cracked open. If I could find a coat hanger, maybe I could break in. But I couldn’t start it.

“
Mrs. Boggs Bailey, I don’t suppose you can hotwire a car?”

“
Nope, but I sure can ride a horse.” The old woman pointed at the pair of Arabians tied up at the sidewalk railing.

I fought panic as a van painted with rain forest scenes and smiling whales pulled into the parking lot. It was followed by two wine-tour limousines.

Reinforcements. This could be nasty.

“
Come on, slowpoke!” Mrs. Boggs Bailey called from the wooden railing where the horses were tied. With sudden, surprising energy, she raised the toe of her boot and stuck it in the stirrup of the saddle of a bay gelding. “Ride ’em cowgirl!” She vaulted herself up on the animal with creaky, but practiced flair.

“
You can’t take somebody’s horse!” I ran toward her.

But Mrs. Boggs Bailey was off down the road at a healthy trot. I stood by the remaining horse, a sorrel mare, who looked away from me as if even she could tell I was a loser.

“
Hey, yuppie scum. You stay away from those horses!” yelled one of the cowboys.

I looked at the mare. I’d never ridden western, but it was supposed to be an easier seat than English. The fight was getting noisier. And bloodier.

Mrs. Boggs Bailey was halfway down the street.

As I attempted to mount, someone grabbed me from behind.

“
You stay away from that animal, Miss Wine Snot,” said a boozy voice. It was Ted Nugent. “Or should I say Mister? I heard you’re some kind of a tranny pervert.”

I aimed an elbow at his gut.

“
You leave her alone,” said another voice. “She’s a published author!”

Something made an awful thud.

I turned to see Ted Nugent on the ground, with Herb Frye the Sci-Fi guy standing over him, brandishing a tire iron. “Come on Dr. Manners,” said Herb. “Over there. Get in the car!”

He pointed at a PT cruiser—a bright custom pink, idling in the middle of the road. At the wheel, Vondra DeHaviland called to me.

“
Jump in, Dr. Manners!”

I ran and opened the door to the back seat. But it wasn’t there. The whole car, except for the front seat, was stacked with books.

“
No room back there,” said Vondra, who was wearing a silvery pink cowboy hat. “It’s my new book,
Love on the Range
. I’ve been hitting the malls.”

Ted Nugent, still lying on the ground, gave a roar and grabbed Herb’s trouser leg.

Herb kicked him away.

“
Come on!” he said, as he ran to the car and jumped in the front seat. “Come on, Dr. Manners, there’s room for all of us.”

There wasn’t.

But Ted Nugent was getting to his feet now. I perched myself on Herb’s lap and pulled the door shut just as Nugent, followed by three cowboys and a tourist started moving toward the PT Cruiser. Vondra took off with a squeal.

“
Where are we going?” she said.

I pointed at Mrs. Boggs Bailey, now several blocks ahead.

“
Follow that horse!” I said.

Vondra assured me the casino was only a few streets over from the Saloon, and we should have no trouble finding Mitzi once we got there. I was grateful for the rescue, but would have been happier if Herb Frye hadn’t put his hands in such awkward places as I balanced on his lap—and if Vondra had paid more attention to the road and less to Herb’s shirt collar, which had been torn in the fight.

Vondra seemed to have trouble comprehending what I was trying to tell them about the recent events at the Rancho Grande.

 “
Luci Silverberg was killed by ghosts?” Vondra said.

“
No. Weren’t you listening?” said Herb. “It was a gang. She heard them over the phone. Gangbangers right there in the Hacienda.” He grabbed me tighter. “Do you think Luci Silverberg was murdered?”

I shifted my weight on his bony knees.

“
Nobody knows,” I said. “We don’t even know if she’s actually missing. She could have gone for a walk. All I know for sure is that Alberto sounded terrified on the phone. It’s lucky most of the guests have left. He’s the only sane person in the place.”

“
The guests have—left?” Herb stopped, mid-grope. “The conference isn’t supposed to end until tomorrow. Is this going to be on the news?”

Vondra’s voice went shrill. “These gangsters—are they looting the place? Where’s the sheriff? What about that policeman friend of yours? Isn’t he doing something? Oh, my lord, I hope they’re not burglarizing our rooms. I have some very nice matching luggage.”

I tried to sound calm. “All I know is that it didn’t sound safe—and Alberto said the sheriff’s people are busy at the vineyard protest. I’m sure they’ll get up there soon, but this probably isn’t the best moment to go back up to the ranch.”

I didn’t want to alarm them with my worries about stomped phone stories, or Rick’s murky gang connections, or suicidal dishwashers, but I had to warn them not to walk into the middle of something nasty.

Herb seemed obsessed with the possibility of media coverage.

“
If the conference is over early, people will know! I’ll be expected home tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.”

“
Expected home?” Vondra said. She slowed the car to glacial speed. “By whom?”

“
My wife!” Herb said in a panicked voice. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“
You have a wife?” Vondra’s voice was pure ice.

A car behind us honked.

“
I never said I didn’t,” said Herb.

“
You said you loved me!” said Vondra, a sob escaping from her hot pink lips. “You sleaze!” She pulled the car over on the shoulder. “You lying, low-life sleaze!”

“
I did not lie!”

I could see the entrance to the parking lot of the Chumash Casino ahead. When the car came to a full stop, I opened the door and escaped. I could still hear Herb and Vondra shouting when I was well down the drive.

When I reached the main casino building, I saw no sign of Mrs. Boggs Bailey or the horse. In fact, I found it hard to believe I was only a few blocks from the Maverick Saloon. I felt as if I’d been transported to an elegant urban club. The entrance was graced with gorgeous fountains and crowds of people dressed in evening wear.

As I glided up the waterfall-flanked escalator to the main casino, a hand on my back startled me.

“
Now you mind your P’s and Q’s, Dr. Manners.”

I turned to see Mrs. Boggs Bailey—looking a bit the worse for wear, but as determined as ever. “These Indian fellas have their own police. They don’t allow any hanky panky. And no drinking except at the Willows Fine Dining Restaurant. Come on Dr. Manners. Don’t be such a slowpoke.”

She sprinted up the last few steps of the escalator like someone a third her age.

I was afraid to ask what had happened to the horse.

The huge, multi-storied room was packed with flashing, beeping gambling machines—and people smoking. I coughed as the acrid air hit my lungs.

“
You can smoke here, but you can’t drink,” said Mrs. Boggs Bailey. “Jonathan Kahn said that was a crazy-ass rule.”

“
Do you see Jonathan?” I wondered if I’d been naive to pin my hopes on him. There was a very good chance he might not believe me about Walker Montgomery. In recent years, he seemed to have had a compulsion to tell me I was wrong about pretty much everything.

“
Gaby calls this room the morgue,” Mrs. Boggs Bailey said with a chuckle. “Full of dead people.”

Some of the gamblers did look dead. Others seemed to be hooked up to the gambling machines as if they were life-support systems, with thick coiled wires hooking credit card-like things from chest pockets to the gambling machines. Only the ubiquitous Indian security guards showed signs of life, smiling and talking together as they eyed the gamers, like cowboys keeping an eye on a restless herd.

“
There he is!” said Mrs. Boggs Bailey.

Jonathan was plugged into a machine like the rest of them, his eyes reflecting an unearthly glow from the machine’s lights. And beside him was Marva.

What a party.

Marva waved happily at me, balancing precariously on her stiletto heels. I had to fight my sense of revulsion at the sight of her. She did look a little like me—if I’d been a little meaner, tartier, and a lot drunker. It was like looking at my own dark side.

I hoped she didn’t have anything to do with the murders or Luci’s disappearance—or Walker Montgomery. If she got into the media, it would pretty much end what was left of my career.

 
What was she doing with Jonathan? A little blackmail of her own?

 
Mrs. Boggs Bailey walked up to Jonathan and tapped him on the shoulder.

“
I had to come to the Casino. Those fellas at the Saloon weren’t all right.”

Jonathan merely grunted. His crew people said nothing, and neither did Marva—all playing their own solitary games—their gazes never wavering from the blinking lights.

“
Did you hear me, Mr. Kahn?” said Mrs. Boggs Bailey. “I couldn’t get you on the phone, so I had to borrow a horse. I told them in the parking lot that I was with you.”

“
I warned you, didn’t I, Mitzi?” Jonathan said with a fixed, impatient grin. “You should have come with us in the first place.”

He shifted focus from his video poker as the machine blinked “Game Over” and finally saw me.

“
Well, well. The former Mrs. Kahn. What are you doing here? So far from your police protection! Poor bastard.” Jonathan’s glazed eyes and clumsy movements suggested he was seriously inebriated.

His machine beeped and boinked. He swore at it.

“
Rick isn’t protecting anybody right now, except maybe some gang. Awful things have been going on at the Rancho Grande, and what’s worse, Donna has gone…”

Jonathan swore at his machine again.

“
Jonathan, Luci is…”

“
Yeah, yeah. Marva told me all about Luci.” He dismissed the subject with a wave, never looking up from his machine.

“
I know Luci showed you that damned photo. The whole thing’s a scam. You’ll never see more than a fraction of that money she’s promising. She just wants to get you under contract to write a memoir, and then she plans to blackmail me into paying to keep it from being published. She’s not a literary agent at all. Hasn’t been for years. Nobody in the business will have anything to do with her.”

“
I know that. But you need to listen…”

“
No, Camilla.” As Jonathan’s machine boinked again, he turned to me for a moment. “You listen to me. Listen very carefully.” He spoke slowly, as if I were a learning-disabled child. “Luci had a scam going with Toby Roarke. It went like this: he posed as a ghostwriter for a celebrity memoir, got a bunch of dirt on the celebrity’s friends, and then the friends got a visit from Luci, offering to keep the book off the shelves—for a fee. Sweet, huh?” He clicked a button on his beeping machine. “Damn!” he said, clicking again.

“
Jonathan, I kind of figured that out. But Luci…”

“
But Luci’s greedy,” Jonathan said, his focus all on the machine now. “She and Toby were getting low on actual dirt, so they started to manufacture it. That’s when they contacted Marva’s employer. A photo with a hooker is ho-hum these days, but a photo of some poor jerk getting spanked by the Manners Doctor: that’s page one stuff. Nobody cares if it’s faked. They retract it a month later on page thirteen. So they were getting big bucks from poor shmucks like me. Marva calls it ‘gerbilling’.”

He finally looked up at me and his glazed eyes came to life for a moment.

“
It’s like my stupid joke about how being married to you was so kinky—S/M, bestiality, necrophilia and all that. Of course they didn’t print the damned punchline—when I said how my wife would torture me by cuddling with the dog when I wanted sex, and when I did finally get her alone, it was like doing a dead person. Okay, the joke sucked, but that reporter bitch was trying to get me to admit to all kinds of crazy stuff—maybe she’d heard I’d been visiting Marva’s club—so I said it to shut her up. I didn’t think she’d take a few words out of context and print them.”