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

by Allen, Anne R.

  I pulled out the drawer.

  Ronzo's precious blue notebook lay inside, next to the Gideon Bible.

  Chapter 57—Size Thirteen Wide

  The day after Doria found Mistress Nightshade's business cards, Marvin took off early. He said he had to do a favor for an old army buddy and he'd be gone all day. Since Doria was able to walk around now, he said she should be okay on her own. He even showed her where to find the Jell-O in the fridge.

  Very sweet. Maybe he didn't know she was onto him and his kinky friend.

  In any case, she was ecstatic to see him go. The first thing she did once his car was out of the driveway was take out Mistress Nightshade's card and call the phone number. It looked like a local one.

  She used Marvin's landline in the kitchen and dialed.

  Immediately a phone rang somewhere inside the house. Marvin's study, it sounded like. It kept ringing as she made her slow way down the hall. She found a phone attached to an answering machine on the desk. When she picked it up, the ringing stopped.

  Okay, Mistress Nightshade used a separate landline in Marvin's office.

  A landline suggested a need for privacy. Harry had been partial to landlines because the calls were much more secure, he said.

  It made sense for a dominatrix to use a landline.

  But not in somebody else's house.

  Which meant Mistress Nightshade worked or even lived here.

  And might show up at any time.

  Doria figured she'd better get her snooping done fast.

  Fast being a relative term when you're doped up and recovering from a tummy tuck gone bad, and you have a little dog following your every step.

  The first thing she needed to find out was what kind of business Marvin did in that garage. She went out and tried to peek in the windows, but they were all masked by black curtains of some kind. Suspicious.

  The side door was locked and the overhead door wouldn't budge.

  Okay, she needed a key. She went on a hunt, but found nothing under the mat. And no flowerpots to hide things in. If Marvin had a spare key, it must be inside.

  The study would be the best place to look. There was an Ikea desk very like the one they'd featured in the December issue of Home. She'd recommended it because of the stack of small drawers on the right side, ideal for paperclips, stamps and—yes!

  Keys. A whole ring of them.

  Triumphant, Doria went back to the garage. On the side door she saw a sign she'd missed before. "Massage Therapy" it said, in discreet pale green lettering. So that was it. Marvin was a massage therapist. That made sense, for a former medic with knowledge of anatomy. Maybe he simply helped Mistress Nightshade with a bad back or an arthritic knee. Nothing sinister in that.

  But the hairs on the back of her neck begged to differ.

  Toto didn't look eager to enter the garage either.

  The third key she tried opened the lock. Inside was black-dark. Those must be blackout curtains on the windows. Doria tiptoed in, feeling around for a light switch.

  Toto hovered by the door.

  Doria found a round dimmer switch and dialed it all the way up, flooding the place with light.

  And what a place.

  Doria had to remind herself to breathe.

  It was a dungeon—totally faux Medieval. Complete with wall manacles and a cage. Ghastly looking instruments hung from nasty wrought iron hooks. Yuck. Mistress Nightshade obviously plied her trade inside these fake-rock walls.

  A couple of gothic-arched doors—not badly done—led to what must be dressing or store rooms. Doria couldn't help taking a peek.

  One room held more instruments of torture. Double yuck. But the other was a walk-in closet. A very nice one, with rather yummy plush carpeting in deep crimson, and a full length mirror with a pewter-finished medieval-looking frame right out of Count Dracula's castle.

  Toto made himself a little nest in the plush and lay down.

  The clothes looked like the usual fetish outfits. They featured lots of leather and grommets. But Mistress Nightshade had been truthful about one thing on the phone: the outfits felt like real leather, not the fake plastic kind. There was also a pair of real sheepskin chaps and a nicely cut black suede bustier. But the surprise was all the other costumes, hung in zippered plastic bags, each labeled with the name of a celebrity or a character from a film.

  Every bag contained a dress or suit, a wig, bag and matching shoes. She saw bags labeled "Martha Stewart", "Sarah Palin", "Hillary Clinton", "Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil", "Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction", "The Manners Doctor", "Charlize Theron's Evil Queen", "Julia Roberts' Evil Queen"… and yes, she'd made the list: "Doria Windsor."

  She unzipped the bag with her name and found a dark, bobbed wig that mimicked her signature 'do. Along with it was a little black dress by Michael Kors like the one she wore for one of her most popular magazine covers and a pair of alligator Prada pumps she used to adore. But they were obvious knock-offs—like that faux Birkin bag. And the shoes were huge. Seriously huge. Maybe a size 13 wide.

  Doria checked the "Manners Doctor" garment bag and found a Chanel jacket dress that looked like something she'd seen a few seasons back, plus a faux Chanel bag and a pair of strappy Manolo Blahnik knockoffs—huge, like the others.

  Okay, things were pointing more and more to Marvin himself being Mistress Nightshade. That phone voice Doria heard in the hospital had sounded non-gender-specific.

  Whoever he/she was, Mistress N. seemed to entertain clients by dressing up as famous powerful women.

  Interesting: most of the other costumes seemed to be equipped with handbags. All except "Doria Windsor's."

  That faux Birkin—maybe it was part of the Doria Windsor costume?

  That would suggest that somebody—probably Marvin—dressed in a Doria Windsor costume had been at Harry's house the day of the fire. Perhaps supervising an orgy.

  Doria didn't have time to contemplate the implications of her husband hiring a dominatrix to dress up as her and "discipline" him.

  What loomed largest in her mind was the realization that Marvin made that phone call to her in the hospital.

  And he wasn't owning up to it.

  He knew a whole lot he wasn't telling her. And he was toying with her.

  Which meant…it was time to get out of his house. Lickity split.

  Chapter 58—The Secretarial Handbook

  After the motel manager and I got the stuff loaded into my car, I took Ronzo's notebook from my pocket and flipped through it, hoping to find a clue about his disappearance.

  I knew he used it for things like addresses and appointments, so it might hold a clue to where he'd gone. But since it had seemed so precious to him, I couldn't figure out why he would have left it.

  I was pretty sure I had an unsold copy of the Merriam Webster Secretarial Handbook back at the store. I wondered if it had a chapter on Gregg shorthand.

  If I went back to the store, I'd sort of be breaking my promise to Plant, but I knew I couldn't rest until I had some idea of what had happened to Ronzo.

  So instead of getting on the freeway to go to Silas and Plant's house, I turned around and drove back to the bookstore. I figured I'd only stay a minute or two—just to get the Secretarial Handbook.

  But I figured wrong.

  A small crowd had gathered outside the store.

  "Why won't the police let you open?" a well-dressed woman said. "There's the government again—taking money away from small businesses."

  "We want to support you because of what you've been going through," said a scruffy young man.

  It looked as if I'd have to wait a few more hours until I got to decipher Ronzo's notebook. And I'd have to forget those doctor's orders. And my promise to Plant. This was my first day as the owner of my own business, and these people wanted to spend money in my store.

  I unlocked the door, removed the "Closed for Police Investigation" sign, and let my customers in.

  Chapter 59—Being a Ghost

/>   Doria tried to form a plan for her escape. First she had to deal with a little matter of clothing. At the moment, she was wearing Marvin's old pajamas and his lavender bathrobe. Not suitable for a trip into town.

  She'd have plenty of money for clothes if she could get the money for her diamond ring.

  So she had to get to George and Enrique's store immediately.

  Even if they only gave her a little down payment, she could buy some decent clothes, get a room and prepare to deal with the law enforcement people.

  She looked through the clothes in Marvin's dungeon closet. The Michael Kors knock-off in the Doria Windsor garment bag might be suitable. But no—of course she didn't want to look like Doria Windsor until she was ready to present her resurrected self to the world.

  She flipped through the garment bags. Most of the clothes were huge—size 14 or larger. But the Chanel suit for the Manners Doctor was boxy, so it might work with some safety pins. And there was a nice wig. Doria had often been tempted to go blonde. This would be fun.

  She took the bag back to her room.

  The outfit wasn't half bad. With the wig and some make-up, she could be mistaken for the Manners Doctor at fifty paces.

  The Manners Doctor. That's who she saw through the window of George and Enrique's jewelry store that night. Camilla Something. Old money. Her family owned a pseudo-Gothic pile out in Connecticut somewhere. She must have a vacation home around here. She'd been married to that dreadful TV muckraker on Fox News. Probably got a pretty penny in the divorce. This would be the perfect place to hide away until the public forgot about her connection to the TV newsman.

  Doria admired herself in the mirror as she formulated her plan. Looking like a local celebrity might be handy right now. A good way to keep herself "dead" until she found a good lawyer.

  A little panic set in when she realized what she was giving up—this nice bed, Marvin's medical help, and three meals a day.

  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.

  Chapter 60—Cash Mob

  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.

  Chapter 61—Fakes

  Doria was surprised at how short a trip it was into town. She gave the cabby the twenty and told him to keep th
e 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."