One of Those Malibu Nights (18 page)

Retrieving it, she smoothed it out. She was looking at a receipt for property taxes received from Ronald Perrin on a dwelling named the Villa des Pescadores, Nuevo Mazatlán, Mexico.

She stood for a minute, letting it sink in. Then with a yelp of joy she grabbed the Chihuahua and swung her high in the air, dancing around the room.

“I think I’ve got it, Tesoro,” she yelled gleefully. “Like Professor Higgins in
My Fair Lady … . I
think I’ve got it.”

If she were quick she might just get ahold of Mac at the airport. She punched in his number but his phone was turned off. He must already be in the air. She tried Roddy
next, relieved when he answered. Excited, she quickly spilled out her story to him.

“Sweetie,” he said patiently, “I’m in Napa Valley, wine tasting with my boyfriend. Mazatlán’s a long shot, not worth ditching my weekend for. I’ll be back Monday. I’ll check it out then. If RP’s really in Mexico we’ll go down together, have a few margaritas and ‘bring him back alive’ as they always used to say in the western movies.”

Sunny got the strong feeling he wasn’t taking her seriously. “But he could disappear between now and then …”

“If he’s really
there
. Sweetie, we just don’t
know… .
”

She was getting nowhere. Frustrated, she said goodbye, then paced the floor some more. Time was ticking by. Anything might happen. This was too good a clue to miss. It was up to her to take the initiative, and besides she quite fancied herself in the role of girl detective. Make Mac proud of her, she thought with a grin.

Dumping the dog on the sofa she made a few quick calls, threw some clothes into a carry-on, and packed Tesoro, wailing, into her doggie travel bag. She dropped her at the posh kennel near the airport where the staff knew all Tesoro’s likes and dislikes and where she knew the dog would be treated like the princess she was.

In under an hour Sunny was at the airport. She was on the trail of Ron Perrin.
She
would be the one to find him. She would find out what made RP tick and see what he knew about his missing wife.

STAR CHECKS OUT ON HER NEW MOVIE—AND SO WILL THE PUBLIC.

Allie read the headline sitting in a corner of an autoroute café near the medieval walled town of Carcassonne, looming on the horizon, turreted and battlemented like the façade of a Disney theme park.

She was on her third cup of coffee and her second croissant with a Michelin map spread across the table in front of her, trying to work out a route. But since she had no clear idea of where she wanted to go, other than simply disappear, it was proving difficult.

She glanced round the café. Nobody was taking any notice of her, everyone caught up in their own breakfast coffee.
Anyhow they would not have recognized her. That first night in the small motel off the Autoroute du Soleil she had taken the scissors to her long blond hair, cutting until all that was left was a short untidy mess that she had dyed brown. Unmade-up and with her dark cropped hair and in square-framed eyeglasses she looked like a child’s idea of a schoolteacher. And in jeans and a baggy T-shirt, she was just another eccentric woman with a bad haircut, driving on her own through France. Nobody had even looked twice at her. It was a first in Allie’s life and she liked it.

Draining the last of her coffee she went back outside to the parking lot and the baby blue Renault. Lying next to it in the shade of a tree was a dog. A large dog. It had a German shepherd-type head and a stocky Labrador body, and was shaggy furred and muddy. It looked up as she approached but did not move.

“Hi, dog,” Allie said, nervously. “Or should I say,
Bonjour, chien?”

The dog’s eyes were fixed wearily on her. His tongue lolled and he panted even though he was in the shade. She wondered if somebody had dumped him. Thrown him out of their car? No longer wanted? Make it on your own, buddy, they’d probably said.

“Okay … So …okay,” Allie said. She always said, “so okay,” when she was thinking. “I guess you’re hungry. You wait here. I’ll be right back.”

In the café only coffee was available. Lunch was served between noon and two and the rules were the rules. Since she couldn’t buy the dog a steak she bought a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches from the dispenser and a bottle of water, then went into the boutique and purchased a pottery bowl with
BIENVENUE À CARCASSONNE
written on it.

When she got back the dog was still there, his head sunk between his paws. He lifted his eyes and looked at her. He obviously expected nothing and was used to it being that way.

Allie knelt beside him. She poured the water into the bowl and put it in front of his nose. The dog scrambled to his feet and began to lap.

He had not, Allie guessed, had a drink for hours. Maybe even days. Unwrapping the sandwiches, she pulled out the ham and tore it into pieces. She put it on the ground in front of him. The dog took one sniff then, delicately for such a large animal, began to eat. Watching him, Allie marveled. He didn’t snatch or wolf the food down. Even under stress, this was a civilized dog.

When he’d finished he sat back on his haunches, looking at her. She thought she caught a glimmer of gratitude in his soft eyes. She put out a hand and lightly touched his fur. It was harsh with ingrained dirt.

“Good boy,” she said, refilling his water bowl. She pulled
the rest of the sandwich apart and put it down in front of him, watching as he devoured it.

“So. Okay then …” She gave him a farewell salute. “We’re on our own, you and I, boy,” she said. “I wish you good luck.”

The dog regarded her gravely.

“Okay, so okay.
Au revoir, et bonne chance, chien.”
She climbed quickly into the Renault, glancing at him in the rearview mirror as she drove out of the parking lot and onto the autoroute heading north. The dog was still sitting there, his eyes fixed on the departing car.

“Okay. So it’s okay,” she told herself nervously for the umpteenth time. “He’ll be all right. I mean, he’s just a dog, somebody will find him, look after him …”

She slowed down. Cars flashed past her, their drivers hooting angrily. She was remembering Mac Reilly’s story of how he’d found Pirate almost dead, and how the vet had told him that once you had saved someone’s life you were responsible for their soul forever. She told herself she was a fool, crazy, mad. She was having a hard enough time getting her own life together and nobody was coming along to save
her
soul. Not Ron. Or even Mac Reilly.

She swung the Renault onto the off ramp, crossed under the motorway then reentered going south.

Back at the autoroute café the dog was still sitting where she had left him, next to his water bowl with
BIENVENUE à CARCASSONNE
painted on it.

The brakes squealed as she pulled up, got out and opened the passenger door. Her eyes met the dog’s.

“So okay,” she sighed. “Get in.”

The big dog was firmly planted on the front passenger seat, eyes fixed on the road in front of him as she drove down the autoroute.

“Sit down and make yourself comfortable,” Allie said, giving him a little pat.

His gaze shifted sideways. He looked at her then he slid wearily down until most of him was on the seat, the rest just sort of spilling over.

“You speak English?” she asked, surprised. He gave a little whimper.

“Ah, at least you have a voice,” she said, smiling. “I don’t know where we’re going, you and I,” she added, “but I guess from now on we’re in it together.”

She stopped at the next small town where she found a tiny auberge which, like many places in France, accepted dogs. The owner recommended a
salon de beauté
for
les chiens
, where they gave Allie black looks, exclaiming over the dog’s condition. “Madame must take more care,” the owner said frostily, until Allie explained that she had just adopted him from the side of the road.

The woman recommended a vet, and Allie told him the same story. He gave the dog a thorough examination, said
he was badly nourished and had also been mistreated, probably beaten; there were wounds on his back. He gave the dog some shots, gave her an antibiotic gel for the wounds and pills for nutrition, and she bought enough food for a month.

Her dog was now a different animal from the one she had picked up only hours ago. His big shepherd head lifted at a more confident angle; his coat had emerged from the bath as a silky golden brown that almost matched the color of his eyes. His big paws were manicured. His ears were clean. He had his own water bowl and a metal dish that she filled with food which he ate like a perfect gentleman, then lay quietly beside her in a nearby restaurant while she devoured her own bowl of cassoulet, the local specialty, feeding him chunks of the duck meat and sausage, which he accepted with a grateful wag of his bushy tail.

Back at the auberge her dog accompanied her upstairs to her room, nails clattering on the wooden steps, and when she had showered and climbed into bed he lay on the floor, his eyes turned her way.

“Just checking, huh?” Allie said, pleased with him.

When she woke in the night she heard him breathing quietly as he slept. She smelled the clean dog smell of him and loneliness retreated a notch. This dog was all hers and nobody would ever take him away from her. Even though he still did not have a name. She smiled. But now, neither did she.

Ron Perrin, hungover from last night’s tequila, sat on the deck of the small beach villa, if such a grand word could be used to describe the desiccated concrete building built cheaply many moons ago, and that only he knew about. No one else. Not even Demarco. Or Allie.
Especially
Demarco and Allie.

The Villa des Pescadores, so called because it had once been owned by a Mexican fisherman, was his secret. It wasn’t his
only
secret, but certainly now it seemed to be his best kept one.

Sometimes he thought the square ugly little house, with its yellow walls faded to a patchy butter color, was his true home. A place where a man could be alone with his thoughts, where he could be himself, and where, should he need
company, all he had to do was drive into Mazatlán town and find solace in a bottle of tequila, while enjoying a local spiny lobster with a decent mariachi band to sing along with. Here, life was simple. Nobody knew him except as the eccentric gringo who kept to himself and liked his tequila.

A CD played in the background. He turned it up louder over the crash of the surf. “Will you still love me tomorrow?” Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry sang hauntingly. Sighing, he closed his eyes to listen.

In all the years Ron had owned this place he had never brought a girl here. Or, for that matter, brought anyone. Battered and beat up, its saltillo-tiled floors cracked, its plumbing unreliable—sometimes there was water, sometimes not—and with electrical wires sticking here and there out of the walls, it was just a shack on the beach. Forget Malibu and the miniature rolling stock and the expensive art; forget Palm Springs and Bel Air and all the grand rooms and rich décor and the knickknacks and the gardens. Here there was a terrace just wide enough for a chair and a table, on which he propped his bottle of Corona and his feet. It was the only place that soothed his soul.

He took another slug of the Corona and contemplated the waves pounding in a wall of white foam not too many yards away, thinking of the Malibu home he had shared with Allie. His love. Maybe his one true love. Maybe the love of his life.

Why was it then, he could not tell her that? Why, for
fuck’s sake, had he treated her the way he did? Why did he always have to show off his power and his masculinity with a series of women he didn’t care for? Something was wrong with him, and it was a disease he did not know how to cure.

Sitting here, alone, in a way he never could be in Malibu, where his next-door neighbors’ decks overlooked his, with phones ringing constantly, barraged with endless problems, not the least of which was the reason he was here, he tried to get that feeling of peace again. But this evening it wasn’t happening.

Why couldn’t it all just go away? he thought gloomily. Why couldn’t he simply wipe the slate clean and start all over again? How differently he would do it now. How different he would be with Allie. He would eliminate the bitter memories and begin again, crazy in love the way he’d been when he first met her.

The sound of the waves roared in his ears and hunger made his belly rumble. Leticia usually left him food. She came in a couple of times a week to clean the place, if you could call a somnolent flicking of a broom across the tiles and a quick swigging down with a bucket of water that. Still, she did change the sheets every now and again, and she did do his personal laundry, taking it home with her and returning it the following week. Ron figured that since it took her a whole week to wash his simple shirts, her husband was probably wearing them four days while he got the other
three. No matter, it wasn’t worth worrying about, and people had to live, didn’t they?

He put the Bryan Ferry CD on again, scrunching his eyes as if in pain, mouthing the words. “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.”

His thoughts returned to Allie. He could see her clearly, in his mind’s eye, the way she’d been when he first met her. Almost fifteen years ago now. Could it really be that long?

Anyhow, there she was, the petite blond beauty he’d seen on the screen with a skin that glowed like a ripe peach with the pink bloom still on it, and Mediterranean blue eyes that reached into his soul. He’d “recognized” not only who she was, but the person she was, in that way that happens so rarely, when a man instantly understands this woman is for him. But at the back of his mind, even though Allie had always protested that she loved him, was always the nagging worry that how could a beautiful woman like her really love a man like him: unattractive and rough around the edges?

Yet, Allie had said she did, right from that first night together. They had spent it in each other’s arms in a forested snowbound log cabin in Aspen, away from all the other New Year’s Eve revelers. The Bryan Ferry record had been playing then, as it played in his head now. They had been together ever since. Until lately that is, when the bitterness had risen like bile in his throat, and he had lost her and was verging on losing all his money.