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

by Allen, Anne R.

  While Dorothy/Doria ranted, I sorted through the implication of all this. From what I remembered from that news story, those subs were being built for some of the most dangerous organizations on the planet. Drug cartels, FARC, the Tamil Tigers, Al-Qaida.

  And Ronzo had probably paddled right into their clutches.

  With Plant and Marvin about to do the same stupid thing.

  I dialed Plant's number. He didn't pick up.

  I knew they had iffy cell reception up on that remote part of the coast. I looked at my watch. The two of them could be sitting ducks, paddling along the coast, waiting for some terrorist or drug lord to shoot them.

  If they hadn't been shot already.

  Chapter 79—Narco-Subs

  The first feeling that hit Doria when she heard Harry was alive was a powerful urge to send him back to his grave in the most painful manner possible.

  The second was an even stronger urge to rush back to the homeless camp and give Joey a big kiss and tell him how wrong she'd been to doubt him.

  The third was an overwhelming need for Oxycodone.

  But she seemed to be cemented to a stack of book boxes, so none of those actions looked particularly doable.

  Camilla was talking into the phone as if the world were not spinning out of control and they hadn't all been thrust into utter chaos by that phone message.

  Camilla seemed to be talking to Silas.

  "Yes. I said narco-subs. Harry was…is…involved with narco-subs. Yes. He's alive. At least Ronzo thinks so. He might be at your motel. And Plant is paddling a kayak somewhere in the vicinity of Ragged Point with that idiot Marvin, about to wander into the middle of God-knows-what…"

  Camilla looked at Doria and rolled her eyes. Not unsurprisingly, she seemed to be having trouble getting Silas to believe her story.

  "No. I don't have a clue. They talked about renting a kayak at San Simeon Cove. Shouldn't I should call the FBI or somebody?"

  Doria shook her head and waved her arms. That would lead nowhere but disaster.

  If Harry were alive, she really needed to stay dead. They'd probably want to throw her in jail with him. And he'd find a way to blame it all on her. And run off with that girl. What did Ronzo call her? 'Fantasia'. Right. Her name would be Fantasia.

  Camilla finally seemed to get what Doria was trying to say with the arm-waving.

  "Maybe not," she said to Silas. "The FBI isn't such a great idea. Because well, they'd think we were nuts, wouldn't they? If we tried to tell them Doria and Harry are alive…"

  There was a long pause.

  "Yes. Well, I think Doria is alive because she's sitting here in the back room waving her arms at me…"

  Doria waved harder. She didn't need for one more person to know who she was.

  Camilla looked exasperated. "Yes, I guess I'm harboring a dead fugitive. Yes, she's really Doria Windsor. I'm not making this up! Come listen to Ronzo's call yourself."

  She slammed down the phone in a very un-mannerly fashion.

  "Silas doesn't believe you?" Doria reached for Camilla's hand, motioning she needed help getting up from the book pile.

  Camilla shook her head as she helped Doria to her feet.

  "Are you okay? Do you need an aspirin or something?"

  "I don't suppose you've got any Oxycodone?" Doria figured it didn't hurt to ask.

  "How about Vicodin? I'm taking it for my stab wound. It's probably illegal for me to give it to you, but since we're already breaking so many laws…"

  "Anybody working here?" said a voice from the store.

  Camilla and Doria both ran in to help their customers.

  ~

  About a half hour later, big, burly Silas lumbered in. He gave Doria a penetrating stare and looked her up and down.

  "No wonder that lamb came out so well last night," he said with a half-smile.

  Camilla shushed him as she finished ringing up a sale for a couple of tourists in otter tee-shirts.

  "Come on," she said, leading Silas to the back room. "I can't believe Plant didn't leave you a note."

  "He did." Silas rolled his eyes. "It made even less sense than you do. He wanted me to call the Sheriff's office. You don't call the Sheriff and report a crime that hasn't happened."

  "Maybe you'll believe it has after you listen to Ronzo."

  ~

  A few minutes later they came out of the back room, both looking determined.

  Camilla pulled Doria aside and whispered out of earshot of the customers. "We need to go up the coast. To a motel Silas owns up near Ragged Point. "

  Doria had only been up that way once, on a drive with Harry. It was a lovely but terrifying highway that ran through Big Sur.

  "Is that where you think Harry is?"

  Camilla nodded. "We're going to check the property for activity from up on the road. If anything weird is going on, we're going to have to call the Sheriff, so I think it's best if you close up the store pretty soon and go. Maybe in about an hour. Don't make a big deal. Just turn the closed sign and tell people there's a family emergency if they ask."

  "Are you sure?" Doria felt bad to be losing sales after Camilla had been so nice.

  Camilla nodded. "In a little while this place could be swarming with cops. Don't come back unless it looks safe. Take care of yourself. I'll miss you."

  Doria gave Camilla's hand a squeeze. She and Silas were both remarkably kind.

  Doria had no idea how she'd get back to Lucky and Bucky's camp, but she knew that's where she had to go. Joey wasn't the criminal. Harry was.

  And right now, the only home she had was in a tent with Joey Torres.

  Chapter 80—Dangerous Dudes

  When we got to San Simeon Cove, the kayak rental man said Plant and Marvin had rented two boats around ten A.M. and they were due back soon. It was nearly four.

  "Let's go up to the old motel then," Silas said. "I have a feeling the only suspicious activity we'll find there will be Plant and Marvin pretending they don't hate each other, but let's make sure."

  Silas said the motel and cabins had been constructed by the same crew who built my little cottage, but the place had always been more primitive and rustic. It didn't even get wired for electricity until the 1960s.

  "I couldn't figure out why a guy like Sharkov would want it," Silas said as he drove his SUV up the fog-shrouded coast. "The buildings are tear-downs and the road gets wiped out by landslides every time we get a rainy winter. I'd have to do massive work to make it anything but a primitive camp. But it's where I spent my childhood summers. I didn't want to let it go."

  I looked out at the glorious cliffs and the foaming ocean below and could see why Silas wanted to keep a piece of this landscape. But my worries about Plant and Marvin—and yes, even Ronzo—kept me from feeling rapturous about the famous Big Sur scenery.

  Silas obviously didn't share my sense of doom, and he seemed to think the possibility that Harry might be alive was up there with alien abductions and visits from the Tooth Fairy

  I tried to make him see how it would be perfect place for Harry to make a secret get-away.

  Silas laughed. "You haven't seen this place, Camilla. It's not exactly Harry Sharkov's style. Besides, if he faked his death and planned to sneak off to some South American haven, don't you think he'd be long gone?"

  Silas had a soothing, paternal manner, and I could almost believe him. But between Marvin's missing persons, Doria's narco-subs and Ronzo's phone call, I was pretty sure Harry was alive. My hope was that we could get close enough to see some kind of activity, take a photo and send it to the local Sheriff's office. Even with no evidence of Dangerous Dudes, if we saw anybody lurking around, they would be trespassing. Silas would be well within his rights to report it as a crime.

  If we got a shot of the old Shark himself, we could contact the FBI.

  But whether we reported trespassers or resurrected Ponzi-schemers, we'd be getting help in keeping Ronzo, Plant and Marvin out of harm's way.

  But I wasn't pre
pared for the treacherous road or the thickness of the undergrowth. Even in Silas's Lexus RX, the unpaved surface of the access road was bone-jarring. I started to feel panic as I realized how far from civilization we were going.

  Silas didn't seem to share my apprehension. Mostly he wanted me to forgive him for the incident with Marvin last February, which was obviously still a big issue between him and Plant. He kept talking about how he'd had too much wine, and "found himself" at Marvin's house after one of Harry's parties. He explained he hadn't expected Marvin to come on to him, because Marvin was there with a girl named Fantasia.

  "Fantasia? So you believe she's real?"

  "As real as you can call a girl with implants the size of cantaloupes."

  Silas stopped when we came to a turn-off road that wound steeply down toward the beach. Our way was blocked with a rusted iron gate. An ancient wooden sign hung on it that said in faded rustic lettering, "Ragged Point Motor Hotel and Guest Cottages."

  Silas pointed to the glove compartment of the SUV.

  "I should have some binoculars in there. Let's check things out before we go any farther."

  I found the binoculars in a little leather case.

  "So you finally believe me? You think Harry could be down there with South American henchpersons?"

  Silas laughed again, but his voice had some tension to it.

  "Not really. But I can imagine some smugglers might be trespassing and camping in the old motel. Our cove is the perfect place to land a panga boat full of drugs. The Coast Guard finds them abandoned along this stretch of coast fairly often.

  He looked through the binoculars and played with the focus wheel.

  "I don't see anybody down there, but some things may have been moved around."

  Silas gave them to me. It took me a moment to adjust the focus. Mostly I saw a collection of decaying cabins, some with pieces of their roofs missing. No people. But tree branches hid things from view.

  Silas opened the car door. "I'm going to check the gate—see if it's been tampered with."

  I decided to get out too. Maybe some fresh air would erase this feeling of dread.

  "It might just be your friend Ronzo snooping around," Silas said. "If there's anybody else, I'll call the Sheriff."

  "Not so good an idea," said a voice from the underbrush behind us.

  "Put your hands up in the air," said another voice. A heavily accented voice. "You too, lady."

  I turned to see what looked like three very Dangerous Dudes emerging from the trees.

  They all had guns.

  Pointed at us.

  Chapter 81—Cherchez la Femme

  Doria kept the store open as long as she felt she could—about an hour after Camilla and Silas left—but she felt an urgent need to see Joey and tell him she knew she'd made a terrible mistake in suspecting him of having anything to do with Tom or Ronzo's disappearances.

  She'd been given some bus tokens by the nice people at the homeless center, and they'd told her how to take the bus back to the center from Morro Bay. Doria hadn't paid much attention of course, because she'd been planning to run as far from Joey as possible.

  But she thought she remembered Bucky said he picked people up when the center closed at 4:30. It seemed she'd have plenty of time to get there.

  But the bus didn't come for a long time and the connecting bus at the County Courthouse took even longer. How could people conduct a business day if they had to spend so much time waiting for public transportation? Being without a car was almost worse than being without a home in this part of the world.

  Because of all the delays, the center was locked up tight when she arrived.

  Doria peeked in the window and the clock on the wall said 4:50. Bucky would be long gone. She tried to hang onto the hope he'd come back later for strays.

  She tried to entertain herself by mentally redecorating the place. The walls inside were painted an odd shade of yellow and the turquoise trim—which was obviously an attempt at playfulness—didn't quite work. It would be so satisfying to attack this place with a bucket of paint and some new fabric for curtains and such.

  She wandered through the children's garden, looking for somebody, anybody to talk to, feeling as if she might jump out of her skin.

  There was an area in the back for five recreational vehicles that had special permission to use the parking lot for overnight camping. The people at Lucky and Bucky's camp talked about them as if they were some sort of elite. They did look more prosperous than the creek dwellers.

  A man and woman sat at a folding table next to their RV, playing cards. They didn't look particularly friendly.

  But they were the only people around. Doria approached them slowly.

  "Do you know Lucky and Bucky?" She tried to keep her voice sounding respectful but unafraid.

  The man looked Doria up and down. "Who's asking?"

  "I, um, was staying at their camp, but I think I missed Bucky. He said he'd pick us up at four. The bus from Morro Bay took forever."

  The woman played a queen. "I guess you didn't hear. Bucky didn't come today. He took off. With the van. I heard Lucky's going to kill him if he ever dares to come home."

  "Lucky and Bucky had a fight?" Doria felt dizzy. How could they be splitting up? They were her last hope. They'd seemed so stable.

  "Have you talked to her—to Lucky? Do you know what happened?"

  The man laughed and lay down his cards. "No. We heard it from the kids. But the story's always the same isn't it? Cherchez la femme!"

  "Bucky ran off with a girl?"

  The woman laughed. "Yup. Somebody named Dorothy."

  "Lucky's husband ran off with somebody named Dorothy?"

  Now Doria was beginning to question her own sanity. Maybe she was having a bad reaction to Camilla's Vicodin.

  "And her little dog, too," said the man. "Seems this Dorothy keeps taking the camp dog, Toto. They've all run off to Oz, I guess. Or maybe Lucky's gone off the deep end."

  Whatever end Lucky had gone off, Doria felt as if she was falling off it, too.

  Chapter 82—Doria's Corpse

  The awful men tied our hands with nylon rope—not being very careful of my bandages. Then they forced us to scramble down the rocky path to the cabins, which alone was a terrifying ordeal without being able to use arms for balance. The men—all rather well dressed and well-groomed—spoke to each other in guttural Spanish. I couldn't understand a word. If Silas did, he wasn't letting on. His face had become a stony mask.

  The man who seemed to be the leader knocked on the door of one of the more decrepit cabins—a bit uphill from the others. The door opened a crack and he spoke to somebody inside.

  The door opened wider, and another man shoved me toward it. I nearly tripped on the threshold as I lurched into the cabin.

  "Hello there, Doctor Manners," said a voice.

  Ronzo's voice.

  We rounded the corner into a little living room where three people sat, their hands bound like ours: Ronzo, Marvin and Plantagenet.

  I must have made a noise, because one of our captors said, "silence!"

  Nobody said a word.

  Ronzo was also tied by his ankles to a tattered leather Morris chair. His face looked puffy and bruised.

  But Marvin and Plantagenet looked relatively unharmed and sat next to each other on the little loveseat.

  Please," Marvin said, springing to his feet. "Let the Manners Doctor have my seat. I'm perfectly happy on the desk chair." He turned and said something to the leader of our captors in Spanish.

  The reply came from one of the others, who pushed him back into his seat with the butt of a rifle. The other shoved Silas onto the little wooden desk chair. It didn't look as if it would bear up under his weight.

  They pushed me between Plant and Marvin on the loveseat. A tight squeeze that was uncomfortable on many levels.

  The leader of the men grunted something at us and left with two of his henchmen. The fourth man stood at attention at the door,
a rifle in his hands.

  "I don't suppose anybody speaks Spanish?" I said once they'd gone. "Does anybody know what's going on? I take it these are drug cartel people of some sort?"

  "Of some sort," Ronzo said. "Colombians, I'd say, from their accents. They seem to be getting ready to take off somewhere."

  "They're certainly not dressed like peasants," I said. "So I take it they're not growing marijuana. What's going on?"

  "Harry Sharkov is going on," Marvin said. "There is life after death if you're rich and devious enough. I was right. About everything. Harry's alive. Staying in the nice big cabin by the beach. With Fantasia. The bitch."

  Plant gave Silas a dark look. "I don't suppose you or Camilla called the police before making this little excursion, did you?"

  "We talked about it…" I started to say. But I could tell that made Plant angrier.

  Silas didn't look happy either. "Plant, we needed to see if there was anything shady-looking going on. We couldn't call the Sheriff with nothing to report. Camilla got Ronzo's phone message and I agreed to take a look, but we didn't expect armed gunmen."

  "Shady? I guess this might be called shady," Plant said. "A master criminal who's ruined countless lives stages his own death by murdering a homeless man and burning down his own house, then makes a deal with the devil and all his minions to get himself out of the country. Harry Sharkov isn't just shady. He's the Prince of Darkness."

  "So Marvin was right?" I said. "Harry killed Tom and planted his body in the fire?"

  "Yes," Plant said. "Marvin was right. About everything. As much as it pains me to say it."

  "Except how dangerous these dudes are," Ronzo said. "You guys should never have come sneaking around. What were you thinking, Skinner?"

  I heard footsteps and murmuring outside. Everybody froze.

  "Stay quiet," Plant whispered to me. "They don't like us to talk."

  But somebody outside was talking. Quite loudly. A woman. She was screaming at the top of her lungs.