No Place Like Home - A Camilla Randall Mystery (The Camilla Randall Mysteries) (6 page)

He had remarkably good bone structure—a perfect aquiline nose and a square jaw with just a hint of a cleft.

He relaxed a bit and sipped his wine. "You sure you don't mind?"

I wagged my head no as I smiled at him over my wine glass. Could he tell I wasn't wearing a bra?

"Good. Actually, there are a couple of things..."

I leaned in. "Sure. Ask me anything."

"It's about Tom."

The name hit me like a bucket of cold water. Tom. He wasn't asking me to a wine tasting. He was asking about the homeless guy. I felt my face heat up.

"I don't know him, really." I sat up very straight. "I sometimes give him a yogurt or stuff from my lunch. He likes to come into the store for the free entertainment newspapers. He's sometimes a little disruptive. He can get pushy asking the tourists for money. But he obviously really needs to buy dentures. He always asks for money for new teeth."

"When did you last see him?"

I tried to think. It was hard, with the embarrassment roaring in my head.

"Thursday? Maybe not…maybe Wednesday. I'm pretty sure he wasn't there on Friday. We were super-busy, though, so he could have been there for a little while and I might not have noticed."

Why did he want to know? This was all so bizarre.

"Try to think. It's important."

I tried to picture the store on Thursday. Mostly what I'd noticed that day was that Ronzo himself hadn't been in, even though I'd been kind of hoping, since he'd been so friendly on Tuesday and Wednesday.

But I didn't remember seeing Tom that day.

"Maybe not Thursday. The last time I remember seeing him, he was talking to, um, I think it was you, actually. I saw you give him some tooth money. That's what he called it when he begged: 'tooth money.' It was very kind of you to donate."

"So Wednesday around four P.M.?"

I nodded and took a sip of wine.

"And what about Joe? Do you know of a homeless guy they call Hobo Joe? Old dude? Lots of gray hair?"

That described half of the homeless people in town. I was embarrassed that I didn't know any of their names. I sort of shrugged.

Ronzo stood abruptly. "Thanks for your time, Camilla. I appreciate the glass of wine." He offered his hand.

I shook it and saw him to the door. When he was gone, I went back to pick up his glass. He'd hardly touched it. Whatever sparked his interest in Edna Valley, it probably wasn't the wine.

Or me. Definitely he wasn't interested in taking me to a wine tasting…or anywhere else. I hadn't felt so embarrassed since sixth grade dancing school, when I asked Wentworth Farley to dance because he kept smiling at me, but it turned out he was laughing at me because my bra strap was showing.

I heard Ronzo's feet crunch the gravel outside as he walked toward the street.

Maybe just as well. I didn't need a man to further complicate my life right now.

Doria stood frozen in Betsy's driveway. Both of Betsy's cars were there: the sturdy old Mercedes and the new electric blue Porsche Betsy had bought for herself when the boyfriend bolted.

That meant Betsy had to be there, didn't it? Why wouldn't she buzz open the gate?

Mr. Sanchez held Doria's luggage, shifting from one foot to the other.

"Maybe it's not locked," he said after a moment. "It wasn't closed right." He gave the gate a yank. Sure enough, it pulled right open.

Doria sighed. That was so like Betsy. She was spectacularly un-mechanical. She used to leave the tops off all her pill bottles because she couldn't work those child-proof caps.

Mr. Sanchez carried Doria's suitcase to the front door.

"My wife is waiting," he said, pointing to his watch.

Doria felt a moment of despair as he walked away, leaving her and her luggage alone in the middle of this nightmare…or whatever it was.

She rang the bell and a maid answered—a new one Doria didn't recognize. With a stony look, the woman said Betsy wasn't at home.

But Doria knew where Betsy had to be. She brushed past the maid and headed for the elevator. Betsy was sure to be ensconced in her inner sanctum on the third floor, watching DVDs of her 1980s sitcom, Heavens to Betsy.

It's what she always did when one of her lovers dumped her.

Doria could hear the TV as soon as the elevator door opened. It was the episode where the Martians invaded, disguised as nuns, and joined the convent choir in a rousing chorus of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." That show had jumped the shark after the third episode.

Betsy was waving a tequila bottle at the screen and singing through her bandages in an ear-splitting soprano—

"Girls just wanna have fu-un."

"Got another glass?" Doria said.

Betsy turned and dropped the bottle on the floor.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph."

As far as Doria knew, Betsy hadn't invoked that particular Catholic trinity since they were teenagers back in Pawtucket.

Betsy stared at Doria as if she'd just risen from the grave.

I had been looking forward to my quiet evening alone, but Ronzo's rejection made my aloneness feel thrust upon me instead of chosen. It felt like being punished. I wasn't sure for what.

I dialed Plant. It was good to hear his voice. I needed to know things were all right with him and Silas.

"The county fire people let you back into the house? Are things okay there?"

"Kind of." His voice sounded weary. "It stinks of smoke, so Lureen wants to put off showing it. In fact, I was about to call you. She's on her way over there."

"Lureen? Is that your realtor? What does she want to do here?"

"She might have a buyer. Very motivated. These people are in the market for a Morro Bay business/residence combo for their daughter who was about to graduate from USC. They won't find a deal like this one anywhere on the coast. If Silas can get twenty-five thousand down, we might not have to sell our house right away and…"

My mouth went dry. "Silas really is going to sell my, um, his store? The cottage? My home?"

It was his store. His cottage. But my voice broke, like some little kid about to collapse in a puddle of tears.

Plant sighed. "I know it's miserable, but we won't put you out in the cold. You know that. You'll always have a place to live as long as I do. And Silas will still have the store in San Luis. I'm sure he'll find you a job there."

Perching in somebody else's house and working as a minimum wage clerk. Not exactly the same as running my own store and living in a cozy cottage by the sea.

Besides, if two paychecks from Silas had bounced, the rest probably had too. There would probably be no bookstore jobs in San Luis Obispo or anywhere else. The paper book business was dying. That's what everybody said.

I heard rapping on the front door.

My inner teenager immediately thought: Ronzo! Maybe he changed his mind!

What an idiot. Time to let go of that fantasy. I'd simply read his signals wrong.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I was nearly forty and dressed like a homeless person. What was I thinking?

"Yoo-hoo!" called out a chirpy voice.

I pulled the door open. There was a bottle-blonde woman in a polyester suit with an overdressed fiftiesh couple in tow. They reeked of pricey perfume and big money. The older woman wore Christian Louboutin sandals—this year's version of a pair I'd owned just three years ago. Another lifetime ago.

"Lureen. Mr. Ryder's realtor." The blonde spoke in a clipped, businesslike voice. She hardly glanced at me as she charged into the cottage.

"Look how cozy!" she said to the Louboutin woman. "Isn't it perfect for your daughter? She's got a business in the front and this cozy little treasure to live in. Think of the money she'll save on commuting."

The woman looked out the window at the glorious sunset over the water.

"You said ocean view. Isn't that the bay, not the ocean?" She sniffed. "But I like the Chippendale chairs. We'll need you to throw in the chairs. And take the price down twenty thousand. We want a very quick escrow. Get the tenant out by the end of the month. We'll need to redecorate, and my daughter graduates next week. This is her graduation present."

Lureen avoided my eyes and sputtered. "I'll take the offer to Mr. Ryder, but we have no control over how long it will take to get the loan…"

The woman shut her up with an ocular dagger I recognized from my mother's arsenal.

"Mr. Ryder will take the offer," she said. "We're paying cash."

Doria rescued the tequila bottle from the floor, turned off the DVD player and plunked herself down in the chair opposite Betsy.

"I need you to tell me the truth, Bets. What really happened to Harry?"

Betsy stared at Doria for a few more beats, with what looked like of horror and disbelief, then leaned down to pick up the copy of the L.A. Times that lay scattered on the floor. She found the front page and handed it to Doria.

The headline read:

FINANCIER SHARKOV FOUND DEAD IN FIRE.

While Doria reached into her bag for her reading glasses, Betsy got a shot glass from the sideboard and filled it from her bottle of Patron.

"Drink," she said. "The whole thing."

Doria drank. Then she read.

According to the L.A. Times, it was all true. Every damned word the Wicked Witch said. And what nice Mr. Sanchez had been trying to tell her.

Her Central Coast wine country home had burned to the ground—arson suspected.

Harry Sharkov, the financial wizard, was dead.

The cause was under investigation.

His assets had been frozen. Frozen by the FBI. His wife, "home decorating maven Doria Windsor", was "unavailable for comment."

Thank goodness they didn't know where she was. There would be a media feeding frenzy when they found her.

It was more ghastly than she could have imagined. Not only was Harry dead, he was a crook. At least the FBI thought so. The Times said they suspected some sort of Ponzi scheme.

The FBI. Somehow having them investigate seemed even more sordid than the Securities Exchange people or the IRS.

"My God," she said. "A Ponzi scheme? They think Harry was pulling a Bernie Madoff?"

Betsy refilled the shot glass. "It's so terrible, honey. Suicide is so selfish. My first husband killed himself, you know. I pretended it was an accidental O.D., but I know…"

"Suicide? There's nothing in there about suicide…."

Betsy's face said otherwise.

Doria bent over painfully, gathering the rest of the sections of the paper from the floor. This was making less and less sense by the minute.

There were two articles on suicide in the lifestyle section, both mentioning Harry's name. Everybody seemed to have decided that's what it was.

"His cause of death is under investigation" seemed to mean "we know he killed himself" to the press. Bastards. Did they really have to make stuff up when the story was so ghastly already?

"Suicide? Why are they saying that? No way did Harry commit suicide!"

Betsy gave her a pitying look.

Doria wasn't buying it. "Harry might have got burned up in a Jacuzzi, although I find that hard to believe, but never in a million years would that man harm himself. He was his own biggest fan."

Betsy reached out and squeezed Doria's hand.

"He'd lost everything." Betsy spoke in the voice Doria's mother would use when she tried to explain why little orphaned Joey Torres liked to splash mud on her new Easter Mary Janes.

"They said on the evening news he hadn't made a payment on that house for months." Betsy said. "I'm sure that's why he burned it down. He didn't want the bank to get it. Suicides are very angry people."

All Doria could do was shake her head as she flipped through the paper, looking at the grim photographs of the ruins of her home, surrounded by garlands of yellow police tape.

The blackened fireplace/chimney seemed to be all that was left of the great room.

Two twisted wrecks nearby might have once been their cars.

Only the barn and the ancient garage that had been turned into a tool shed seemed to be standing.

But probably nothing inside would be salvageable.

The word "suicide" still rattled around her head.

"Not suicide. Not Harry."

She gulped tequila. Never her favorite drink.

Betsy refilled her own glass, draining the bottle. "Sweetie, at least he didn't leave you for a bimbo half your age and make vicious remarks about your wrinkles on Telemundo."