No Place Like Home - A Camilla Randall Mystery (The Camilla Randall Mysteries) (23 page)

But it was time. She couldn't trust him. Even if he wasn't Mistress Nightshade, he knew her/him. And he knew what happened in that fire. And he wasn't telling her. Plus she knew he didn't like Harry much.

What if he was keeping her here to wreak some terrible revenge? No one would know.

Being officially deceased, she was entirely in his power.

It was too ghastly to think about. She had to go. Now.

That twenty dollar bill in the faux Birkin bag—it should cover the cab fare.

She tiptoed into Marvin's room, terrified he'd reappear the way he did last time. Amazing how quiet he was on those big feet. He didn't galumph around like most men.

But her body still felt shaky and weak, so she had to take her time.

Excruciatingly slow time.

But when she got to his room, the bag still hung from the closet hook and yes!—there was the neatly folded twenty dollar bill inside.

Back in her room, Doria put the money in the Manners Doctor costume's Chanel bag—along with the rest of the Oxy and the vial of antibiotics Marvin had been giving her.

Waiting for the cab might have been the longest twenty minutes of her life. The dispatcher said the cab had to drop somebody at the airport first. She fussed with the wig and the make-up and worried like mad about the Dress For Less shoes—of course the faux Manolos had been too big. But the cheap pumps were a winter navy—totally wrong with the pale green linen—but they were going to have to do.

The cabby seemed to accept her in the Manners Doctor outfit. He hardly looked at her face, but he was not happy about Toto, who of course had scampered out of the house with her.

"Pets gotta be in a carrier, ma'am. I can't have a dog running lose in my cab. I don't need any dog poop on the upholstery. Or fleas."

She gave the dog a pat. She'd miss the little guy. But it seemed best to leave him here. Marvin would probably continue to care for him.

"Go home, Toto," she said. "Go home now." She pointed at the house.

The little dog took off running. Not back to the house, but down the street toward a wooded area. She felt herself tearing up and hoped he'd be okay.

Sniffing back the silly tears, she got in the cab and gave the name of George and Enrique's store. She had a half-million dollar diamond waiting for her there. Once she got her money, she wouldn't have to be dependent on Marvin—or anybody.

She pushed away her feelings of sadness and panic and reminded herself this could be the beginning of a wonderful new life.

I'd never seen so many customers in my store—not even at Christmas. And here it was, an ordinary mid-week summer day. Totally crazy. Without Brianna's help or the use of my left arm, I was painfully slow at the register, especially since the ancient machine didn't print receipts, so I had to write them with a pen. Thank goodness I'm right-handed.

I figured the crowd must have had something to do with my fifteen minutes of fame as "Bookstore Manager Attacked by a Disgruntled Employee."

It made me a bit nervous that people kept calling me "the Manners Doctor." Silas's attempts to keep my name out of the press seemed to have failed. But at this point I couldn't complain. Several customers actually bought my manners book and asked me to autograph it.

I had no time to try to make sense of it all. The line to get in the store had snaked out into the street, and people could hardly move around inside.

Luckily the customers were remarkably patient.

When one of the schoolteachers from Sunday's wine tasting came to the register with a stack of classic mysteries, I was careful not to make any remarks about how she was being disloyal to her e-reader. But I did ask if she had any idea why so many people had come in to buy books today.

"Do you suppose it's because everybody heard about my little, um, accident on the news?" I asked her.

"Oh, yes—you got attacked by some crazy employee didn't you? That too. It was so awful, that girl going crazy like that."

Now I was even more confused. "What do you mean, 'that too?' Is there another reason why I have more customers on a Thursday afternoon in June than I had on Christmas Eve?"

"The cash mob, of course," said a man behind the teacher in line. "I saw it on Facebook. That blogger said you needed our help."

"A blogger? What's a cash mob?" I felt a little as if I'd been in some kind of Rip Van Winkle coma, or wandered through a portal into another dimension.

As I rang up books as fast as I could, people in the crowd around the register explained in bursts of semi-comprehensible words that a cash mob was like a flash mob, only it involved shopping. Somebody on the Internet would spread the word that people were to support a particular merchant on a certain day and everybody would show up, cash in hand.

"It's about supporting small local businesses. You know, fighting the corporate takeover of our lives," said a scruffy man who clutched the store's only two copies of On the Road.

"A local blogger—wanted to support me? That's awfully nice."

It was wonderful. But I really could have used a heads-up so Silas could have enlisted the help of some clerks from his other stores.

"He's not local," somebody else said. "This guy blogs for Rolling Stone. He said this store was run by the Manners Doctor—you know—who used to be in all the newspapers? He said she lost all her money and the store was about to be bought out by some idiots from L.A. so it was up to us to save it."

"We drove up from Santa Barbara," said a perfectly-coiffed woman in Ralph Lauren. "We wanted to support the Manners Doctor. I have her wedding guide book. I'd never have got through my daughter's wedding without it."

"The Manners Doctor?" the schoolteacher said. "That part of the story is silly. This is the owner of the store right here. She's just Camilla."

"Just Camilla" kept ringing up books, still not quite sure I wasn't in the midst of a bizarre hallucination.

Doria was surprised at how short a trip it was into town. She gave the cabby the twenty and told him to keep the change. She'd have plenty of cash very soon.

The posh little jewelry store was a bit crowded when she walked in. George was helping a couple pick out an engagement ring and Enrique was talking to an elderly rancher buying diamond earrings for a relative. About five other customers waited to be served.

"Hi Camilla," Enrique said after a quick glance. "We'll be with you in a moment."

Camilla. He'd called her Camilla. The costume worked.

But the customers presented a problem. Obviously Doria would have to reveal her not-deadness to George and Enrique in order to sell them the ring. But she couldn't do it in front of the customers. It would cause a media storm within minutes. She needed to have her legal strategy in place before she came back to life, and that would require money.

"Um, could I wait in the back room?" she said in a soft whisper.

Luckily Enrique simply smiled and waved her toward the door.

Everything would have been fine if George hadn't looked up at that moment.

"Camilla, is your arm all healed? You're carrying that bag as if…"

His face went white.

Now Doria knew what people meant when they said somebody looked "as if they'd seen a ghost."

He stopped his sales pitch in mid-sentence, stared for a moment, then pulled Doria into the back room. He sat her down in a chair by the jeweler's bench as if he were talking to a naughty child.

"Doria," he said. "You can't be here. You're dead."

He obviously heard the absurdity of his own words, but all he seemed to be able to do was stare and sputter, his face turning from white to an angry pink.

"I know," she said, patting his hand to soothe him. "Everybody seems to think I'm deceased. Some drunken boy stole my car and apparently thought it would be fun to drive it off a cliff. It's sad, but they do say that karma comes back."

George continued to sputter. "The FBI. Everybody. You're wanted…at least you were."

"Yes. I need a lawyer. But they cost money. So I thought if you could give me a down payment on my diamond, I could set things in motion for my, um, resurrection. Do you happen to know a good criminal attorney?"

George shook his head no. He bit his lip and sputtered some more before he got the words out.

"Doria—the stone in your ring. It's not a diamond. The original stone has been replaced by a CZ. Manmade cubic zirconia. It's worth about ten dollars, tops."

Doria stopped breathing. The room started to spin.

"A zircon? Harry gave me a damned zircon?"

So that's why he had her ring "upgraded" to a bigger stone. He'd stolen her engagement diamond. How could she not have suspected anything?

"Oh, my God…It didn't sparkle. I told him it didn't sparkle. The rat. No. The Shark. That's what they all called him behind his back. Harry the Shark. He thought it was funny. Funny! The goddam…" Her words petered out in a stifled scream.

For the first time she felt one hundred percent glad that Harry Sharkov was dead.

Fat, wet tears started to slither down her face. She'd never felt so helpless. Not even when Joey Torres took his stupid cousin Bernice to the prom instead of her because Doria turned down his ridiculous marriage proposal. Her mind flashed back, and there she was: sitting in the living room of that dark little Pawtucket duplex, corseted into her prom dress, waiting for the date who never came—rivers of tears running down her face, wreaking havoc with her make-up.

Which they must be doing now. She asked George for a tissue.

George handed her one, but his eyes wouldn't meet hers.

"Doria, I'm so, so sorry. This whole thing is so…surreal. I can tell you it's not that uncommon." He fussed with things on the workbench. "We've even had some husbands ask us to 'repair' their wives rings with fake stones when they're strapped for cash. We'd never do such a thing, of course. Your replacement wasn't done by a very good jeweler, as I remember. We were going to take it to the FBI people, but after you, um, died, we figured it wasn't necessary…."

He drifted off and started searching through drawers in the workbench again.

"Men!" Doria couldn't come up with another word to express her frustration and rage.

The door swung open and Enrique poked his head in, his face flushed with anger.

"George, your customers are waiting…oh, my God."

It was Enrique's turn to do the saw-a-ghost thing. His lips seemed to disappear.

"You're dead," he said after a moment.

"So everybody tells me." Doria sniffed back her tears. "But I haven't felt like it until now."

"You told her about the CZ?" Enrique looked scared as much as anything.

"Yes. But…" George opened a small white envelope and slid something into his hand. Her ring. "The setting is 18 Karat. It's worth several hundred dollars. I can't tell you exactly, but if you'll allow us to remove the stone, we can weigh it for you."

"We don't have time, George," Enrique said. "We're going to lose at least two sales if we don't get out there."

"She has nothing, Enrique. We could at least give her…"

Enrique sputtered. "Not now, for God's sake!"

"Why?" George gave Enrique a sharp look. "The FBI aren't looking for her. Everybody thinks she's at the bottom of the ocean."

"The two cops who just walked in the store might notice a walking corpse."

George peered out the small window in the door that led back to the store. "Good Lord. Those guys are cops all right. And they don't look as if they're shopping for a wedding set."

Enrique opened the back door. "Doria, go." He gave her shoulder a squeeze as she scurried out. "Good luck."

She went—stepping out into the bright sunlight of the parking lot.

Dazed, she walked around the lot, where the jacaranda tree still scattered its purple bounty on the asphalt. The last time she'd been here—what was it, five days ago?—she thought she knew despair. But then she had a car. And the hope of a nest egg. Now she had nothing at all. Except maybe two cops tailing her. She didn't even know what direction to run.

She fought the damned tears, but they were winning.

"Oh, my God, you're beautiful," said a girlish voice. "That outfit is perfect. You totally put us to shame—you really do. That wig is genius."

Doria turned and saw two other fake Manners Doctors. That is, two women dressed very like her—in a more improvised fashion. Their wigs were made of glitter—obviously left over from Mardi Gras or Halloween—and several of the pieces still had Dress for Less tags.

They looked young. College girls, maybe.

"Do you want to ride with us? We'll make such a great entrance with three of us. We might even get on the blog with the real Manners Doctor!"

The girl made absolutely no sense, but she had such a nice smile, Doria couldn't see the harm in humoring her.