Voices in the Wardrobe (21 page)

She was still repeating this mantra, inside her head at least, when she pulled into Les Artistes. It was right off the highway at the southern edge of Del Mar. It sat down from the highway and was easy to miss, which was curious, because it exuded color, perhaps because the color was real and not neon. Charlie had noted it in passing before because it was a favored spot of her prize screenwriter. She had to turn down the side street next to it and off that into a small setback parking lot in front of it.

It was a small motel, two-story with a balcony, maybe eight or nine rooms with an office down and nine rooms up, hard to tell because every last square inch was decorated with color swatches or cut-out lattice work, painted fish or butterflies or birds. Flowers hung in pots and rioted from earthenware and little patch gardens below. Wind chimes whispered, tinged, clanked, and clattered from every hook not dangling a bird feeder, from covered walkways below and above.

Charlie's first thought was disbelief that she'd made it this far without being stopped. The second was disappointment that Libby's Wrangler wasn't parked there. It was still early. The Amtrak or Coaster roared by down on the tracks near the sea, its horn bleating warning.

Worried, tired, hungry, thirsty, sore, and stiff, Charlie was still momentarily free to do what she wished. She couldn't face the thought that Libby Abigail Greene, Maggie Stutzman, and Luella Ridgeway might not be so privileged. Somebody else could easily have stolen the Wrangler and taken off with it, headed south where Charlie headed north on the Pacific Highway. But of all the cars in the lot at the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol why would anyone choose the beat-up Wrangler?

On that more hopeful thought, Charlie slid out of the Ram to the cracked concrete. She could at least find Keegan Monroe. She needed a hug. She did not expect what she found inside.

Twenty-Seven

Charlie sidestepped a big man with a big smile, and an armload of used bedding on its way to the laundry room, and a couple bumping luggage on wheels across a mixture of decorated ceramic tiles and blocks of natural rock out to their car. In the process she ran into the carved figure of an Indian chief with a cigar and a low-hanging wind chime of colored-glass dolphins, and she'd thought the Sea Spa had a busy decor. If she hadn't been wearing sunglasses she'd have poked her eye out on that cigar.

The double doors to the office stood open and no one sat in the chair behind the desk but voices came over an open-topped partition and so did the odor of cooking. She walked around it instead of ringing the bell, as a sign requested, to see Libby Abigail Greene sitting at an ancient round pedestal table with Keegan Monroe and Brodie Caulfield.

“This is a motel, not a bed and breakfast you understand,” said the man at an antique gas stove, “but any friend of Keegan Monroe is a—”

“She's my agent,” Keegan said.

“Well in that case, she gets two eggs. Sit yourself in my chair, Charlie. I'll take the stool here at the bar.” The man at the stove was bald with a fuzzy muzzle, plump rather than fat, and tall. A faint twinkle in his eyes softened an otherwise somber expression.

Brodie pulled out a chair for her, poured her some orange juice from a pitcher and said, “You look frazzled, lady. Did you park your metallic blue bomb out front?” When she nodded, drinking in the sight of her daughter whole, alive, healthy, and eating with gusto, he said, “Give me your keys, I'll move it around to the side so it won't be visible from the road.”

Charlie handed him the keys, took a sip of the orange juice, touched Libby's cheek with the back of her fingers, and broke into sobs.

“Mom, it's okay,” the kid said softly and stroked the hair on top of Charlie's head like she did Tuxedo's. “What about Maggie and Luella?”

“You don't know?”

“No, you must have got my message. You're here.”

“There, there … you'll be all right now. You're safe with us.” Their bald host placed huge strong hands on Charlie's shoulders, digging into her lower neck with his thumbs and pulling back her shoulder bones with his hands. It hurt and felt good at the same time. “And so is your sprout. How about we feed you and then ask questions?”

Numbed by relief and exhaustion, Charlie ate the eggs benedict he'd just poached for himself. They sat on a bed of al dente asparagus spears instead of a muffin and with sliced fruit and banana bread. When she'd finished and sat back with coffee and the hiccups, Charlie decided she might live after all. “That's the best bearnaise I ever met.”

Her host sat in Brodie's chair next to her with his freshly poached benedict and nodded his condescension. Brodie perched on the stool with coffee freshened.

“You did get my message, right?” Libby sat back in her chair so that a cat with a squashed-up nose and the size of a dog with big hair could jump on her lap.

“Oh Libby, you're so beautiful. I thought you were dead.” The cat was suddenly on her lap now.

“No, Fluffy, she hates cats.”

“Hates cats?” their host said, offended. “Well, I take back my welcome, agent or no.”

Fluffy's cold nose moved from Charlie's neck under and behind her ear so her embarrassed sobbing was muffled in its fur. You went a long way into that fur before you came to cat.

“I've never known a kitty to offer sympathy before—disdain, condescension, demands, but look at that. Fluffy, what's that Jezebel done to you?”

“It's because she doesn't like cats,” Brodie said. “They have a diabolical need to snuggle up to those who can't stand them. Won't let me near her and I love cats. Watch. Come here, kitty, let me give you a snuggle.”

Kitty moaned warning, hissed, spat, and jumped to the floor leaving Charlie with a face full of fur.

“Mom, about Maggie and Luella?” Libby said with a great show of patience Charlie figured would last about two more seconds.

“They weren't in Luella's car that went off the cliff—somebody else's body was—the son of one of the owners of the Spa. I don't know where they are. I thought you might have been with them and could tell me they're at least alive too. What were you doing up there?”

“Looking for you. I told you I was coming. You'd said I should come here instead and I did after those freaks started chasing me all over the place. I lost my cell and car keys—but I had an extra key hidden under the hood on that magnet thingy you gave me for Christmas. And I left you a message on your cell.”

Libby had been snooping among the cottages and gardens behind the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol, wondering where everyone was, when she heard the sound of women's voices somewhere and was trying to trace them when “this creepo came barging down a path at me with his arms full of file folders and I think floppy disks and maybe CDs and when he saw me he dropped everything and came after me, swearing and calling me a bitch and wanting to know who I was and he tripped and went down grabbing my wallet purse and I went down too.”

“Were you hurt?”

“I'm fine, can't say the same for him—”

“You didn't—”

“Oh Mom, I got him so good—he wasn't expecting anything. He's gonna have bruised nuts for life.”

The three guys stared at the willowy blonde in silence and Charlie couldn't blame them. That euphoria and triumph on the classic features—totally free of zits this week—the long fingers rearranging the platinum hair which fell back into place to cup her face when she let go of it. The combination of how she looked and what she said scared Charlie too.

“You enjoy hurting people?” their host asked.

“Just creepos. If I had my way they'd fall over dead at once, everyone of them and all over the world, just walking down the street or something.”

“Do you think the voices you heard could have been Maggie and Luella?” Charlie asked, daring to hope again, and not as bothered by Libby's daydream of destroying “creepos” as the men at the table seemed to be. Maybe it was a female fantasy thing, but Charlie still dared to dream it sometimes. She didn't imagine herself “taking” them down like Libby did though.

“Why don't you try their cell phones?” Libby asked.

Charlie tried instead to explain the concept of satellites tracking cellulars. And how Kenny calling Libby's number made it ring in the earthquake crevice and all of a sudden the Feds showed up. She took it out of her purse. “But Mitch and I found it first and I got out of there with it. I'm afraid they could track Libby here if she uses it.”

“I don't think that's possible.” Brodie swooped in on the snub-nosed feline who'd leapt onto a cupboard shelf and held it upside down in one arm while reaching for the cell on his belt with the other. “Especially if your answering service got a message and then you accessed it later.”

“So if I listened to my messages now, nobody could trace me here, right?”

Charlie asked and held out an empty coffee cup.

“You were both up all night. Eddie and Sang Waa have about got a room ready for you,” their host, Wallie, warned but poured a refill anyway.

Obviously no one in the room understood the cell technology that well, although everyone of them had one and the very thought of the severance of this umbilical cord to life and the world as they knew it caused all but Fluffy to go silently inward and contemplative. This was an isolating and personal terrorist threat of silent but unimaginable proportions.

“What do we do if it rings, Mom?” Libby asked later when they stood in the newly vacated and now restored Georgia O'Keeffe room. “Couldn't we at least listen to our messages?”

“I don't know, honey. I'm afraid to and afraid not to. I see they didn't confiscate your backpack. There were all these clothes stuffed into the crevasse with papers and pill bottles and your cell. I thought some of them might have been yours.”

“I don't think so. It was in the Wrangler when I took off out of there.” But she unzipped what she considered luggage. It was a large backpack with a pull-out handle and wheels to be towed as well as shoulder straps so it could be carried on the back. It actually held an amazing amount of stuff. “This is a weird place, huh?”

“It's certainly artistic.” How could they let Libby dash off in her car that way, and Charlie too? Something funny about this whole business.

Copies of colorful paintings and smaller practice drawings of the artist, a lone voluptuous flower blossom with curved petals in bright colors standing out on a dark background on a large canvas where a lesser artist would have painted a whole tree.

“A rustic southwestern mission look to the decor,” Libby said when Charlie stepped out of the shower. It actually had a curtain.

“How do you know that? Are you into interior design now?” Anything would be better than the model, movie star, hopeful, waitress, retail clerk reality pit.

“There're little signs everywhere explaining this room and the ‘artiste' who designed it. Let's take a nap and then decide whether to check our voice mail. I'm taking the couch. You can have the bed.”

“I'll set the alarm for two hours.”

The room was divided into sitting room and bedroom by a shoulder-high partition that had art nooks and shelves. Charlie opened the front door and locked the screen, drew the curtains over the front window. Outside, across the narrow cobbled general walkway to the lower floor rooms was their own little outdoor breakfast arbor with a small yellow and blue inlaid tabletop on an iron pedestal, chairs, and a tiny splashing fountain in the wall, sheltered from the parking lot and highway above with bougainvillaea, potted plants and vines, hummingbird feeders, and latticework.

Inside, on the wall opposite the queen-size stood an armoire in brushed mingled tones of faded turquoise and blue, a large mirror over a sink, small fridge, and corner cupboard with a TV on top. She opened the backdoor for ventilation too. Here, a tiny rock patio looked out on a narrow garden running the length of the motel like an alley, but filled with potted plants and small trees as well as planted ones with an occasional flowered bush. Two wooden chairs nestled in among the vegetation. Someday when she wanted a getaway—this might be fun. But they hadn't even bothered to unpack. Their world permitted little peace or leisure now.

She was reminded of that thought when they awoke suddenly to the shrill pandemonium of sirens, an indecipherable message on a bullhorn, thundering engine noise on the street outside, and a helicopter flying low overhead.

Charlie's grownup, independent, tough, testicle-mashing daughter flew out of nowhere to land on the bed.

Twenty-Eight

“We better get on the floor in case they start shooting in here, Mom.”

Charlie's heart was still in shock when she hit the bristly rug with Libby on top of her. Just when it seemed the noise began to let up it got worse instead, shaking the funky little chandelier and tilting a Spanish cross on the wall.

“Those guys are really mad at us, huh? What do we do, wave a white flag or what? We didn't even use our cells.”

Frenzied shouting in the parking lot, moaning and groaning and screaming—

“Is it an earthquake?” Charlie ventured. “Maybe they're not after us, maybe—”

“I gotta pee!”

“Well don't do it here.” Her slender daughter was taller and chestier than Charlie, surprisingly heavy. Charlie tried to squirm out from under but Libby slid off and slithered on her stomach toward the bathroom. Charlie started after on hands and knees.

“Mah-om.”

Charlie locked the door behind them and pulled herself up to peer out the small window. All she could see was the back of a man's neck but she recognized it. She widened the crack and whispered, “Keegan? Is it the Feds? Have they found us?”

“You guys up? Come on out and watch the show.”

“What do you mean show? All the sirens and shouting and traffic and helicopters?” But Keegan's grin got her out there, where Wallie, Brodie, and Eddie stood out in the open entry-way in front of the office, two of them with cameras and Wallie trying to keep a terrified Fluffy from climbing his face. Triage people strove to diagnose possible survivors in the parking lot, one dead man giving them the finger when their backs were turned. The hovering, sinister helicopter was clearly marked as at work for a television news station instead of the black, low-flying types Charlie once encountered near Groom Lake in Nevada. It was a scheduled, federally mandated, emergency response drill, that local officials and emergency and medical types must participate in today. Charlie vaguely remembered reading or hearing something about it.