No Place Like Home - A Camilla Randall Mystery (The Camilla Randall Mysteries) (5 page)

Both Plant and Silas's cars were gone when I walked back to my cottage, and the place was blissfully empty. They'd even done a bit of tidying up. I hoped this meant things were okay with them now.

Well, as okay as they could be in the middle of a financial catastrophe.

I was not looking forward to telling Silas about Brianna's bounced paycheck.

Or my own, which had probably bounced as well. I'd brought the rest of the mail back to deal with after dinner.

There was something from my bank. I didn't expect it to be good news.

But I wasn't going to think about it right now. I wanted to relax in the solitude. I pulled off my aging Marc Jacobs blouse and my bra and scrambled into my oldest, grungiest sweatshirt.

My new definition of luxury.

I wondered how I'd managed to stay married for fifteen years. Trying to look nice for other people was such hard work.

I kept thinking about Mr. X in his uncomfortable-looking suit. It was flattering that he knew who I was, since my fifteen Warhol minutes of fame were pretty much over. He sure was curious about local wine country. I was pretty sure he'd been leading up to asking me to that wine event in Edna Valley tomorrow.

If only his phone hadn't rung just then.

When I was writing my Manners Doctor column, I'd been very vocal on the subject of cell phones and how they were destroying civility in our culture.

Now I had one more reason to hate them.

An afternoon of wine tasting and music with someone that cute would have been such a welcome distraction. I hoped the fire hadn't affected the wineries in the neighborhood. I should check out the local news to find out what had happened.

I couldn't afford TV these days, but I booted up my laptop and brought up the local TV station. The lead story showed a huge two-story house engulfed in flames. Underneath was a photo of the ageless Doria Windsor in her dark, precision-cut bob, standing next to her grizzled financier husband, Harry Sharkov—known in some circles as Harry the Shark.

Plant had seemed to dislike Harry from the beginning, but Silas called him a financial wizard. I always tried not to listen when they fought, but the Harry Sharkov battle had been going on for months so I'd been forced to hear a few tiffs. At least that was over now.

I clicked on the photo of the burning house and brought up the full screen video. It had been a gorgeous place—a restored Victorian with a scattering of well-kept out-buildings. Seeing it destroyed like that brought me pain. The reporter was interviewing neighbors. I recognized a woman who lived on the other side of Silas and Plant's property—an older woman with an elaborate white coif that looked like swirls of merengue.

"It's those homeless people," the woman said, diamond earrings flashing. "They start fires down by the creek. Those camps are disasters waiting to happen, with all that dry brush down there. Somebody has to clean that place up. It's a menace. We'll all end up like Mr. Sharkov. And I don't care what they say. He was a good neighbor. A nice man. Always cheerful."

Was. They were talking about the cheerful Harry Sharkov in the past tense. He must have died in the fire. I shuddered. How awful to be burned in your own home. The one place you ought to be able to feel safe.

I'd felt so safe in this little cottage. Where was I going to find a home if Silas sold this property? Rents on the California coast were almost as high as New York, and wages were much lower. What would I do? Bookstores were closing everywhere. I had no family—only an alcoholic ex-husband, last seen in one of the seedier watering holes of Southeast Asia.

Plant and Silas were my family now. And they were about to go through hell.

I wished I could do something, instead of being one more burden for them to worry about.

I turned off my laptop without bothering to check my email—I hardly ever got anything more than spam these days. But I did have to deal with the snail mail—at least the bills and stuff for the store. I poured myself a glass of chardonnay from the bottle Plant and Silas had left in the fridge, and attacked the stack of envelopes while my Lean Cuisine heated in the microwave.

And there it was—the notice of insufficient funds from my bank. Even though I'd sort of expected it after Brianna's note, my stomach gave a thunk. I'd only just paid off the debts I'd incurred with my mother's medical bills and funeral expenses, and here I was flung into financial Hades again.

I checked the Lean Cuisine and went back to the fridge for the wine bottle.

Stuck to the fridge, I saw a note from Plant I'd missed before.

"Reminder: Chanticleer at the Mission tomorrow night. We meet George and Enrique at Novo for early dinner. 5:30."

The concert. We'd been looking forward to it for months—San Francisco's glorious a cappella men's choir singing in SLO's eighteenth-century mission. And a nice dinner first with Silas's friends George and Enrique, the couple who had talked Silas and Plant into finally tying the knot.

But now the thought of spending tomorrow evening with Silas and Plant and their happily married friends filled me with nothing but dread.

Doria sat in silence as Mr. Sanchez wove expertly through the traffic and zoomed onto the freeway. The sight of a Silverstone Ferrari Spyder like Harry's brought her another wave of grief.

Harry. Dead.

It didn't make sense.

Neither did that phone call from Mistress Nightshade. Even if it hadn't been a hallucination, it defied logic. For one thing, he/she said Harry thought the Jacuzzi would be a good place to wait out the fire.

But Harry would never do that.

He'd lost his friend Spuds Ryan in a wildfire that swept through the Santa Barbara hills a couple of years before. Spuds had tried to take refuge in his Jacuzzi. The water boiled away and his remains were charred beyond recognition. The funeral had been gruesome.

Doria could believe there was something funny going on with Harry's money. His complicated tax sheltering had always made her nervous, and she knew he'd been getting insider tips that might annoy the SEC. And he'd said something last week about how his new boat company had triggered an investigation by some federal bureau or other.

She'd been terrified he'd end up in jail like poor Martha Stewart.

But dead? Burned up in a Jacuzzi like Spuds? Nothing about the story felt true.

The city was zooming by. Because Doria had spent her childhood in a gritty New England mill town, Los Angeles had never seemed quite real to her—all those lollypop palm trees looking so stark against an impossibly blue sky.

Part of her wanted to believe none of it was real.

She tried to tell herself maybe it wasn't. Maybe she was still in the hospital—and her subconscious was inventing this because she'd been dreading the trip up to the Central Coast.

She'd been apprehensive about being alone with Harry. He'd been having such crazy mood swings and strange silences. Their relationship had been strained ever since she moved back to New York and he stayed on the West Coast. Plus he'd flown down to Colombia twice—without warning—and refused to tell her what it was about.

She did hope he hadn't taken up drugs at his time of life. His heart couldn't take it.

Btu he was definitely keeping things from her. Sometimes he'd avoid her calls and emails for weeks. Then he'd pretend nothing was wrong and do something strangely sweet—like upgrading her engagement diamond and offering the tummy tuck with Dr. Singh, surgeon to the stars. Initially she'd been afraid the gifts meant he wanted something.

Like maybe a divorce.

His bimboing had become epic in recent months, according to her friends who followed the tabloids. She'd been trying to avoid the gossip papers and TV shows, but people seemed to feel compelled to tell her things.

When Mr. Sanchez pulled up to Betsy's house, everything looked unfortunately un-dreamlike: there was the cold, spiky iron gate built to keep out the riff-raff.

Doria announced herself through the speaker, feeling a little panicky. What if Betsy wouldn't let her in? What if the face lift hadn't kept her at home after all? She might have decided to recuperate at some spa.

She fought for breath, like a drowning person, clinging to the gate for stability.

How could she have mismanaged her life so badly that her welfare depended on somebody as flaky as Betsy Baylor?

Without Betsy, she was alone in the world with nowhere to go.

I was about to dig into my five-fat-gram, broccoli-chicken fettuccine when a knock on the door to my cottage made me jump. I so hoped it wasn't Plant and Silas, needing to spend the night again.

But it wasn't.

It was Mr.
X
.

With that sparkly look in his eye.

And here I was: bra-less, in my oldest, grungiest sweats.

"Hey! You do live back here. I took a chance. I hope you don't mind."

Of course I didn't. But for some reason, I couldn't make those particular words come out of my mouth. I stood still, with an idiotic grin on my face, the steaming box of fettuccine in one hand and my wine glass in the other.

"Yes. I live here," I said finally. "Twenty feet from work. The commute is great."

"I've interrupted your dinner."

"No. It's, you know…plastic food. I didn't feel like cooking…um, would you like some of this wine? It's an Edna Valley chardonnay…since you're interested in the area, you might like to try it…you were asking about the wine tasting event there tomorrow… um, weren't you? I mean, the other day… Remember, I told you about that great band that's playing? Classic rock."

If he was here to ask me to go. I wished he'd come out and say it.

"A glass of wine sounds great."

Okay. Wine. I needed to pour him some wine.

I went to the kitchen, put down the box of fettuccine and emptied the rest of the wine bottle into one of my Lalique glasses Plant had politely left—neatly washed—by the sink.

Mr. X. followed and gave me another of his smiles.

"I've taken the last of your wine."

"Not mine. My friends left it. They were staying here overnight because of the fire… I mean, because they got evacuated. I have some more wine in the cupboard. Not as elegant as this…they always buy the best…at least they did…although they seem to have lost all their money…which is going to be hell for Silas…he's always been wealthy…I used to be, too, but now I'm…"

Babbling. I was babbling again. I handed Mr. X a glass and shut myself up with a sip from my own.

I hadn't had a straight male visitor in the tiny cottage before. Somehow the little former motel cabin seemed even smaller with his wide-shouldered, muscular body in it.

I'd been here almost eight months, but I hadn't met anybody I felt comfortable enough with to invite over.

Actually I didn't feel that comfortable with Mr.
X
.

Why had I invited him in? I didn't even know his name.

"Ronzo." He held out his hand, apparently mind-reading. "They call me Ronzo."

I took the hand, wondering if that was a first or last name. But somehow I couldn't figure out how to ask. I hoped he couldn't really read minds. It could lead to serious embarrassment if I didn't stop thinking about what his body might look like under the stupid suit.

"Do people still call you Dr. Manners?" He spoke with perfect politeness, but his eyes were flirty. That didn't help me access my speaking faculties.

I shook my head. My days as an etiquette columnist seemed so long ago.

"But you are the author of the Manners Doctor books, aren't you?"

"You know about my books? They're out of print, unfortunately. All except one that came out in England last year. It's not exactly tearing up the bestseller lists."

Uh-oh. Was he trying to remind me of my own manners? What was I thinking? I'd been standing there like a complete lout.

"Um, please. Have a seat." I gestured at the tiny living room.

Instead of choosing the easy chair or the couch, he pulled out one of the two Chippendale chairs by the small table overlooking the bay. Actual Chippendale chairs. Originals from Blair Castle in Perthshire. The last of my mother's dining set. I'd probably have to sell them now, too. As well as the Lalique glasses and the last of the Limoges china.

I didn't really need them, of course, not with the way I lived now.

I'd need them even less if I was to going to be homeless.

I sat in the chair as he held it for me—so oddly formal. He'd been the same in the store—opening doors and offering to help old ladies reach books on high shelves. Very courtly and old-fashioned.

He perched on the opposite chair as if he were afraid it would break, looking almost as nervous as I felt.

"Was there something you wanted to ask me?" I gave him my warmest smile.