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

by Allen, Anne R.

  Marvin had a way of telling the truth so it sounded like a lie, but I knew the part about Ronzo talking to the police was true.

  I turned to Silas and Plant. "It's true about Ronzo trying to contact the police. He said he found out you can't really report a homeless person as missing. Because they're pretty much missing already. The police call them 'transients'. There's no way to prove they didn't simply move on."

  "What is Ronzo's connection with this homeless man Tom?" Maybe Silas was finally taking the conversation seriously. "Are you talking about that toothless old drunk who panhandled in front of my Morro Bay bookstore?"

  "Ronzo reached out to all the homeless guys," Marvin said. "He was asking about a photo of a local homeless man that, um, a fan had sent him."

  Marvin seemed to be backing away from his own involvement in the story.

  "Marvin says Ronzo came to California on a quest for a dead rock star." I realized how stupid that sounded even before it was out of my mouth.

  "Dead rock stars. Dead hookers in Jacuzzis. Oh, my." Plant sipped wine. "I should be taking notes. Sounds like a great screenplay."

  I didn't know what to believe. Marvin's slithery reality made everything he said suspect.

  "Tom was feeding Ronzo information," Marvin said, ignoring the snark. "For a price. Every day he'd have some new bit of information about J.J. Tower—completely bogus, of course, but Ronzo kept meeting him. Until the day Tom didn't show up. Which was the day before Harry's house went up in flames."

  "I fail to see the connection," Plant said.

  I sipped wine. I was having a hard time following Marvin's story, too. It was past my bed time.

  "I knew Harry was planning something," Marvin said. "The Feds were closing in on him. He needed a way out. What's better than faking your own death? Especially if you have a handy body nobody will miss. And a girlfriend whose father owns an ocean-going vessel."

  Disgusting as Marvin's suggestion was, it made bizarre sense. Ronzo did say he was going to interview some fisherman on Monday. Could it have been Fantasia's father?

  Plant seemed to lose a little of his cocky skepticism. He had to be thinking of the awful screams he heard the night before the fire at Harry's.

  "Where did this man live? This homeless man? Was it around here?"

  "Down there." Marvin pointed down the hill toward the creek. "There's a homeless camp behind Harry's vineyards. He used to invite them up to the house for the leftovers from his barbeque. Only the men, though. He said it was because he didn't want any women and children seeing my girls, but I think he was shopping."

  "Shopping?" Silas tone was still derisive. His dislike of Marvin seemed to exceed Plant's.

  "Yes. Shopping. For a body. Somebody who wouldn't be missed. Somebody with no teeth to check with dental records. Whose body can be decorated with your jewelry and burned to a crisp. Tom had no teeth. Sharkov wore dentures. My girls said it made things, um, interesting when he took the choppers out..."

  I found it hard to swallow my wine. As much as Marvin seemed to be enjoying this, his scenario was beginning to make awful sense.

  "You believe Harry Sharkov was that cold?" Silas still sounded unconvinced.

  "A man who stole from every single one of his friends? Destroyed their lives? I think he's capable of anything," Marvin said. "So does Ronzo. Especially after I showed him Tom's old camp."

  "Is that where you and Ronzo went when you disappeared so mysteriously from the wine tasting?" More pieces of this puzzle were beginning to fit together. "You two went to the homeless camp?"

  "I specifically asked Ronzo not to bring you with him on Sunday." A little Marva came into Marvin's voice. "Sorry if I was rude, dear. And you did look fabulous in that Chanel dress. You always do. Actually, where I took him was about a quarter of a mile from the main camp. It was easy to access from the winery where they were having that fundraiser. It's just on the other side of the creek from here. Tom had been kicked out of the main camp for breaking their rules, apparently."

  "What did you find? Did you and Ronzo see anything to suggest Tom hadn't simply moved on?" I ignored the remark about my outfit. But now I knew how Ronzo figured out I was wearing couture.

  Marvin nodded. "The place was burned to nothing, but we found some clues. Dentures. Neatly locked away in a metal box. They had to belong to Tom. So we don't believe he's still alive. Tom took the dentures out of his mouth to beg, but he was damned proud of those pearly whites. He'd never leave without them."

  That made sense. But I didn't see any ties to Harry Sharkov in the story except the location of the camp.

  Of course that didn't mean Ronzo might not have got himself in trouble.

  "Ronzo said something about wanting to interview a fisherman about Tom's death. Was that Fantasia's father? If that man knew Ronzo was involved with Fantasia's pimp, maybe the fisherman did him some harm—nothing to do with Harry Sharkov."

  "Mistress Nightshade is not a pimp." Marvin gave an emphatic shake of his head. "Besides, I know Ronzo was fine after talking to Fantasia's dad. That was fairly late on Monday night. It took him all day to find the guy, though. When he's not at sea, apparently Daddy Dearest does a lot of drinking. In a lot of places."

  "And what did Ronzo find out?" Silas said. I could see he was starting to see some sense in Marvin's ramblings, too.

  "Ronzo said the old guy hadn't seen Fantasia. But one of his boats was missing. Which confirmed my suspicions."

  Plant had been furiously attacking the foil and cork on another bottle. He turned back to Marvin.

  "You think Harry Sharkov stole a fishing boat? And nobody noticed? They have harbor police you know. And the Coast Guard…Besides, the man owned yachts. Several… and a goddam boat-building company."

  "All of which the government seized." Marvin sighed as if he were dealing with a slow child. "But the missing boat wasn't a big fishing trawler. It was more like a dingy with a motor. So if Harry and Fantasia took it, they didn't go far. I thought maybe they had a rendezvous with a yacht in the harbor."

  Silas put a hand over his glass as Plant tried to pour. "Sorry, but I think it's time to call it a night. Marvin, I hope you find your friend, but it's late."

  I was sleepy too, but I didn't want to let him go just when things were starting to make sense.

  "What exactly did Ronzo tell you after he talked with the fisherman on Monday?"

  "I didn't take the call. I was busy with, um, a sick friend," Marvin gave me one of his evasive glances. "He left a message. He told me about the missing boat and said he had a hunch and he was going to try to get some proof Harry was alive. He said he'd meet me on the beach in San Simeon on Wednesday. I honestly had no idea what to expect, but obviously, I expected it to be ocean-related."

  "Do you think he went out in a boat himself?" Ronzo hadn't struck me as the sailor type.

  "I didn't think so. That's a sloping beach, not a harbor deep enough for a ship to spirit Harry off to South America. But after two days, that was the only lead I had." Martin gave a weary sigh. "That's why I went back up to San Simeon today. They have kayak rentals on that beach. But they didn't have any record of Ronson V. Zolek renting one. They keep careful records so people don't run off with the merchandise, and they swore he didn't rent from them—I made them check their records for the week. I asked other people on the beach and nobody remembered a lone guy from New Jersey hanging around."

  "Does he know anything about kayaking?"

  "Not that I know of." Marvin suddenly looked very girlish—not in a phony way. "If Ronzo ends up dead, it's my fault. I'm the one who got him out here."

  Whatever Marvin's capacity for bending the truth, he seemed genuinely worried about Ronzo. Fantasia, too.

  "Why don't you come out to my car, and I'll give you his things. Maybe you can find some clues."

  We said our goodnights to Silas and Plant and walked out to my Honda, parked in the driveway.

  I kept sorting through the puzzle pieces. Nothing fit toget
her. Did it make sense that Ronzo would have taken a kayak out on the open ocean, trying to connect with some yacht with Harry on it?

  Marvin rummaged through the things in the trunk, but didn't seem to find anything he was looking for.

  "I can't see much out here in the dark. How about a notebook? A little blue notebook? He was always writing things in there."

  Ronzo's notebook. When did I last have it?

  Dorothy had been reading it in the car on the way here. She must have dropped it in her purse.

  "My new employee has it. But the whole thing is written in Gregg shorthand, which I can't read. Can you?"

  Marvin shook his head.

  "Then I think we'll have to put it off until tomorrow. I've had a pretty tough day. I'm still supposed to be resting." I indicated my wounded arm.

  Marvin seemed to take no notice. "How about six A.M.? I'll come back at six tomorrow morning and we can go over this stuff in the daylight and your friend can translate the notebook, okay?"

  I said yes, mostly because I was too tired to argue. I couldn't imagine Dorothy would be happy to be awakened at six A.M. to do duty as a decoder for a wildly improbable detective project.

  But if anything in Marvin's far-fetched story was true, that notebook might be the only clue to what happened to Ronzo.

  Assuming Ronzo hadn't drowned himself following Marvin Skinner's crazy hunches.

  Chapter 71—Zombie Jamboree

  Doria's head spun. Joey Torres. Alive. After all these years.

  "But you're supposed to be dead. I believed you were dead. Betsy didn't. Damn her, she's always right. She always said you didn't die in that fire, and that's why…" Doria almost let the words slip: I could never love anybody else. But she didn't.

  It's what Betsy always said. Harry, too.

  But Doria had always told herself it was nonsense. Joey was dead. You couldn't love a corpse. She hadn't seen him for twenty years by the time he died. He was somebody else by then. A coked-out rock star.

  Harry only used Joey to justify his own infidelities. And he'd always been fascinated by conspiracy theories and stories of people who faked their own death.

  The old man with Joey's eyes gave a belly laugh.

  "Nope. I didn't die. I let people think I had. My life had gone so wrong. All those people died because I had to make the special effects bigger. Better! More radical!"

  He laughed again and put an arm around her shoulders.

  "Dorothy, we're a couple of corpses, you and me. Zombies. Come on to my tent. Where the zombies live. You might find out being dead can make you feel more alive than we ever did when we were rich and famous."

  "We're zombies?" Doria felt giddy. She started to giggle.

  Joey giggled too. "Remember when we saw that wicked cool zombie flick, and your mom said you couldn't go, so we had to pretend we were seeing Hello Dolly…"

  Doria's giggles wouldn't stop.

  "But when we got home, we kept singing 'Zombie Jamboree' instead of 'Hello Dolly' and your mom figured it out…"

  Doria's mind let loose a stream of memory. A tune came to her, with a load of nonsense words. Then a Caribbean rhythm. She started to sing, "I don' give a damn 'cause I done dead already…."

  Joey roared with laughter and gave her a big hug as he joined in with the old Calypso song— "Back to back, belly to belly. Zombie Jamboree."

  They half-danced and half-stumbled down the hill to the willow thicket.

  But when they came to the willows, Joey stopped and shushed her with a raised finger.

  "They turn in early here. Kids have to get up for school in the morning. Follow me." He pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and pointed to a thin path through the leafy tangle. "I got a primo little private site right by the creek."

  Doria followed him through the darkness. This was insane. But seemed so right.

  Joey.

  Betsy kept telling her it had always been Joey. Maybe it had. Maybe her guardian angel had made all this happen so she could find Joey again. She touched he necklace. Joey's necklace.

  "Look," she said, holding the little gold pendant so it glinted in the moonlight. "I still have it, Joey."

  He fingered the little gold angel. "I saved a whole summer for that thing." His voice sounded choked.

  She thought she saw the glint of a tear in his eye before he turned to push aside some willows and lead her onward.

  His little campsite looked welcoming in the moonlight. He had a patched but serviceable dark green pop-up tent with a cleared area in front, covered by a tarp. It was equipped with two camp chairs and a folding table. He opened the tent flap and shone the flashlight beam around. The place looked amazingly neat and cozy, with blankets smoothed out on a sizable inflated air mattress, a little table with a kerosene lamp, clothes hanging from a pole, and in all the corners were books—piles of paperbacks, some without covers, but all neatly stacked.

  An inviting interior. It didn't even smell bad. He'd been burning incense or something.

  "How cozy," she said. "And all those books!"

  "I read a lot," Joey said. He turned on a battery-powered lantern and set it on the table outside the tent door. "You wouldn't believe the wicked great books I find in the dumpsters. Stupid bookstores tear the covers off and throw brand new books right into the trash."

  He reached in and grabbed his guitar. "You want a song? Like the old days?"

  It was like time-traveling. "Sing 'This Land is Your Land'. That's what you were singing the night we met. Remember? The sing-along—I think it was an anti-war protest or something."

  Joey laughed. "That wasn't the first time we met Dorothy. Not by a long shot. You don't remember?"

  She shook her head. Had she really forgotten something so important? That made her feel old. She sat down in one of the camp chairs, lowering herself carefully, trying not to stretch the skin around her incision.

  "I sat behind you in class for a whole semester. I kept waiting for you to turn around and notice me."

  "What class?"

  "Business. It was called business, but it was mostly typing and shorthand. Only two other guys in the class. My dad made me take it. He said I'd better learn business because he could never afford to send me to college. But it was also a great place to meet chicks."

  A small memory floated into Doria's mind. "That's right. You helped me with bookkeeping. But I didn't know how cute you were until you got up in front of everybody and sang…"

  He strummed a cord and started to sing. She sang with him. Toto barked from somewhere in the willows and came scurrying down the path. Tyler and a few people from the camp joined them.

  One of them was Bucky. He sang loudly and off-key with great enthusiasm.

  If he smelled the wine on Doria's breath, he didn't say.

  After a couple of songs, Joey announced it was time for bed.

  "Kids need to get some sleep. They got school tomorrow."

  When they'd gone, Doria felt a chill. Not only from the departure of the warm bodies and camaraderie, but she felt a sudden fear of being alone with Joey. Would he expect her to be intimate? She wasn't ready for that. Even if she didn't have a half-healed surgical wound to worry about.

  He opened the tent and set his guitar inside. He held the flap open.

  "It's not exactly Home magazine material, but it keeps pretty warm inside," he said.

  He picked up the lantern and set it on a small table by the mattress. The tent was so neat and organized. It appealed to all the nesting instincts that had made her become a decorator in the first place.

  "It's actually…" she didn't know what to say. She wanted to let him know she was impressed with his ingenuity and neatness, but all the words that came to mind sounded condescending.

  "It's…home." He said quietly. Come on in, Dorothy. There's room for two."

  Chapter 72—Into the Mist

  When the alarm woke me at 5:50, I admit to letting out a few curses into the misty dawn. Why had I agreed to meet Marva/ Ma
rvin at six o'clock in the morning? This was insane. I had to get to the bookstore by at least eight to get the place tidied up after the crazy cash mob day.

  I dreaded waking Dorothy and telling her I'd volunteered her for early morning shorthand-reading duty.

  And my arm hurt. I checked the bandage. I should probably change it later, before I went out for the day.

  I scrambled into one of the outfits Plant had bought me. I still hadn't got to the storage unit to get my clothes. I pulled my hair back in a barrette and didn't bother with make-up. Everything was harder with only one fully-working arm.

  What I needed now was coffee. I figured I'd start the pot first, then go wake Dorothy. I hoped she'd be rested. The poor woman had no idea what she'd signed up for coming to work for me.

  With a few sips of Peet's Arabian Mocha-Java in me, I poured another cup, added milk and carried it down the hall to Dorothy's room. A caffeinated bedside chat might be the best way to ease her out of bed.

  But as I walked by the front window, I saw Marvin's pick-up truck pull into the driveway. I opened the door and motioned him to be quiet. Poor Plant and Silas deserved their rest, even if I was stupid enough to go along with the man's schemes.

  He bounded in, grabbed Dorothy's coffee cup and gave me an annoying grin.

  "Fabulous. You made me coffee! Great. We need to get right to work. I have news. First, I called the car rental people at the airport. The car I saw at Sebastian's in San Simeon—it really is the car they rented to Ronzo. He has it until the end of the week. The GPS says it's still in San Simeon."

  "What about that stupid blog? Have you made sure he's not back in New Jersey writing snarky stuff about us?" I half wanted that to be true.

  "No activity from him on his blog. Lots of comments though. Everybody loves his story about you."