No Place Like Home - A Camilla Randall Mystery (The Camilla Randall Mysteries) (20 page)

I had a feeling Jason had a lot of those.

"No! He said he never wanted to see me again because I can't hold my liquor. He wouldn't even let me get in the Mercedes because I was throwing up and he said I'd mess up the leather upholstery. I had to call my mom." Tears glinted in Brianna's eyes. "And now she says I have to live with her until I graduate."

"Jason bought a Mercedes?" This was a new and improbable shift for a man who had nothing but a broken-down truck yesterday.

"He didn't buy it. Exactly." Brianna sniffled. "But it was sitting there with the key in the ignition so he said it was fate. He said it meant he didn't have to hang out with skanks like me. He called me all these mean names. I lost my boyfriend and my home. Because you wouldn't give me my money. You rich people don't give a damn about whose life you're ruining."

I had to catch my breath as she waved the bottle around my eyes. Did she intend to blind me? This was getting seriously scary.

"So you're going to give me my money now." Brianna's voice had gone hard.

I glanced in the direction of the cottage, hoping the man with the overalls might be eavesdropping. No such luck. The dumpsters kept us out of sight of the workmen.

"Oh, no," Brianna said. "You're not going in the house. You've probably got your gangster boyfriend hiding in there." Brianna's eyes had that dead look I'd seen in Jason's right before he hit me.

Time to make serious noise. I called to the workmen for help. Loudly. Some of them would have to hear.

"Oh, no you don't!" Brianna screamed. "You damned rich bitch!"

She came at me with the bottle.

I grabbed her arm and pushed as hard as I could with one hand as I tried to protect my face with the other.

"Oh, my God," Brianna shouted. "You're getting blood all over."

There did seem to be blood. Lots of blood. It came before I felt the pain. But the pain did arrive. Then the blackness.

Marvin pulled onto a dirt road that led to a modest mid-century ranch house—probably no more than three or four bedrooms. Not exactly Home magazine material. But at the moment it looked like heaven to Doria. All she wanted at the moment was a clean bathroom.

The place was decorated beautifully, just as Marvin said. It looked as if Doria Windsor had done it herself.

"Bathroom?" she said.

He pointed down the hall.

The pre-op instructions said she was to take no showers until the stitches came out, so Doria hoped to make do with a sponge bath. But her filthy clothes stuck to skin with the dried blood. And the elastic girdle-thing was saturated. The sight of it made her feel faint.

She was going to have to get under the shower head, clothes and all, in order to melt the blood and peel the clothes off. Which was going to make a hideous mess all over Marvin's bathroom—so elegantly decorated with pale green wallpaper and deep lavender towels and curtains. There was even a matching lavender robe hanging on the back of the door.

Good. She'd have something to put on after the shower. Her Dress for Less suit was probably headed for the trash bin. And she'd left Betsy's jogging suit in the car. It would be soaking in the Pacific now.

Sad about that car. Betsy would be so annoyed.

Doria got the shower water running nice and hot and stepped into the tub. That was something of a hassle, trying to climb over the edge, but when she stepped under the warm, RainFall showerhead, it felt like heaven.

She got her blouse off fairly easily, but the pants were a pain. She got them over the drains, but as she pulled them down, blood started flowing out. She must have disturbed something.

That's when she fell. She stepped onto a slick patch in the tub and lost her balance. She reached out for the wall, but there was nothing to hang onto. She could feel her head thunk against something as she fell.

Next thing she knew, she was lying in the tub, which was overflowing with what appeared to be blood.

Toto jumped up and down, barking like a demented thing.

Marvin stood over her. He must have turned off the shower.

"Thank goodness that little dog has such a loud bark. Oh, my God, Doria. You look like Jean-Claude Marat expiring in his bath."

When I came to consciousness, my arm was heavy with bandages and dull pain. I lay in a bed with a crowd around me. But my body didn't quite feel like mine.

I felt as if I might be watching the whole scene from far away, or maybe seeing a movie.

A dream. It was probably a dream.

Plant, Silas, George and Enrique were all in it. And a strange person who might have been the flooring man in coveralls.

"You lost a lot of blood," Plant said. "Luckily she missed any major arteries. You're going to be okay. Brianna is in custody. You're safe now."

He put a gentle hand my good arm. His touch brought tears. This was real. And it was horrible. My hands instinctively went to my face.

"She didn't get your face. You're fine. Only your forearm was slashed. You'll have a scar, but you won't need plastic surgery," Silas said.

"You're safe now," Plant repeated.

I didn't feel safe. I felt furious.

"No. I'm not safe. I have no home. They took my home. They painted it mauve. And I can't find my check." My words came out thick and slow.

I looked at the man in coveralls.

"What are you doing here? I can't believe you're in such a hurry to take my house that you'd come to the hospital..." I looked around. "I am in a hospital, right? What day is it?"

"It's still Monday," Plant said. "And yes, you're in the hospital. They're going to keep you overnight for observation. You lost a lot of blood."

Silas harrumphed. "Steve here saved your life. He pulled that lunatic girl off you. He got cut up himself."

Coverall Steve raised a bandaged hand. "The guys chipped in for some flowers." He waved in the direction of at some roses on the nightstand.

I knew I should be grateful, but I wasn't going to let him—or Silas—think that made anything okay.

"You threw everything out. You took all my things. Even my mail."

"That's why I'm here," Steve said. "My guys found your mail in a kitchen cupboard. Here." He picked up a pile of envelopes from the nightstand and handed them to me. "We're real sorry. We didn't have a clue escrow hadn't closed on the property…"

I grabbed the pile with my good hand. There it was, with the familiar blue and white Par Avion sticker and the British postmark. I couldn't get it open one handed. But I suppose it didn't matter now. The spoiled daughter of those L.A. people was probably already moving into my house.

I turned to Silas. "Those mauve people. Have they moved in?"

"No." Silas gave me an odd grin. "And they won't. The sale didn't go through. They can barely afford to pay the painters and Steve's people. It seems they've been pretty much wiped out by Harry Sharkov and Doria Windsor. Just like us."

"Let's not get into this now, Silas," Plant said. "Camilla doesn't need to know…"

"No. I do." I fought my druggy brain-haze as I tried to open the envelope. "The L.A. buyers? They lost their money? To Harry Sharkov?"

"It seems they hadn't been paying attention to the news," Silas said. "They'd put all their millions with him because he offered such a high rate of return. They were idiots. Like me."

"I'm so glad!" I would have jumped for joy if I could have moved any jumping muscles. Instead I tore at the envelope with my thumb. It wouldn’t open. One stupid envelope was standing between me and my future. "I need a letter opener! It's going to solve everything!"

George and Enrique exchanged horrified looks.

Plant shook his head. "Camilla, this isn't exactly good news. We're wiped out."

I wanted them all to stop the doom and gloom and be happy.

Silas opened the envelope and handed it back to me.

I pulled out the check. It was real. Twenty-five thousand, four hundred dollars and thirty-five cents.

I waved it at them. "Don't be sad. This is good. Really good."

Everybody stood staring at me with their stupid long faces.

"No. Plant has been right all along," Silas said. His voice cracked like a teenager's. He looked weepy, too. The result of no sleep, probably. "I got taken in by those crooks and Plant and I are about to be homeless."

"No," said Plant. "We aren't homeless. We can always move into your old motel up by Ragged Point."

"Yeah, after we evict the raccoons." Silas gave a sad laugh. "Harry actually wanted to buy the old Raggedy Inn—I have no idea why. Kept pressuring me about it. I guess I'm lucky I'm such a sentimental fool about that place, or he'd have conned me out of that too."

"No." My words weren't coming fast enough. "You don't have to be homeless. And maybe I don't have to be either." I handed him the check. "Go save your house. Then maybe we can save mine."

"What's this?" Silas said.

"A down payment on the store and the cottage. Those L.A. people can't buy it, but I can."

Plant took the check and examined it.

"Where did you get this?"

"My publisher," I said. "The Manners Doctor is very big in India."

"Do you really want to buy the property?" Silas asked. "With this?"

"Let me endorse it," I said. "And as soon as it clears, buy me some paint!"

Doria had been tucked into her cozy bed at Marvin's house for what seemed like days. Could have been weeks. She had no idea.

She had no idea of anything.

Except that Marvin was her new best friend. She'd been ridiculous to doubt him. It seemed he'd been a medic in the army. He knew all sorts of things about healing people who had been wounded. He'd cleaned her up, given her antibiotics, removed the drains and probably saved her life.

He even bought her Jell-O.

His nicely-decorated house was a pleasant place to stay, and he was kind and sympathetic, if not very forthcoming about his own activities. He understood she was as much a victim of Harry's crimes as his investors.

Marvin was even nice to the ugly little dog, Toto, and seemed to have had the creature bathed and combed. It had been sleeping happily at the foot of her bed most of the time she was here and she was getting rather fond of the little mutt.

Best of all, Marvin didn't try to talk her into going to the police. He seemed as interested in avoiding law enforcement as she was. He was willing to let her stay dead for the time being, which was fine with her.

It had been rather fun to watch all the nonsense on the news about how she'd driven Betsy's Mercedes off a cliff. Sad of course, but the fact the car thief had met his death seemed kind of karmic.

And for Doria, dead was a fine thing to be.

She would have to resurrect herself at some point. But resurrection was something she was putting on hold for now. She hadn't decided how or when to announce the fact she hadn't been in that car.

But she'd wait until she was fully recovered and then discuss it with Marvin. He might be helpful in finding a local lawyer. He seemed to have a good head on his shoulders in spite of being such an odd duck.

She hadn't figured out what Marvin did for a living. He seemed to have some kind of business in the large two-car garage connected to the main house by a breezeway. People came and went, but she never heard much of anything. Maybe he was an accountant with a home office. Or a computer repair-person.

He wasn't much of a cook, but he fed her adequate meals. He'd heat up soup or microwave something and had obviously bought a bunch of pre-made Jell-O cups just for her. Very kind, especially since she couldn't pay him a thing yet.

She hadn't told him about the ring she'd left with George and Enrique, but she let him know he'd be compensated for his trouble. With the money from the ring, she could hire an attorney, rent her own digs and start to get her life back on track.

On what might have been the third day of her recovery, she realized it was time to be up and about in spite of Marvin's insistence she keep getting "bed rest."

He'd provided her with a nice little television for her room, but since so much of the news was ridiculous lies about herself, she didn't find it all that soothing. She avoided news shows and found even the daytime talk ladies were full of nasty cracks. Everybody seemed to have decided she was in on Harry's schemes.

So she immersed herself in her Hollywood mystery novel, but when she finished it, she felt at loose ends. She needed a new book. She wished she had her lovely iPad she'd left at Betsy's.

When the bathroom she was using ran out of toilet paper, she decided to be brave and start walking around. She went on a quest for toilet paper, reading material and a little confidence. She also wanted to see if the house revealed any more about Marvin's personality than his fondness for using her own decorating tricks.