Permanently Booked (4 page)

Like a ghost.

“What are you doing here?” the guy demanded, in a low, gravelly voice. He narrowed his already-squinty eyes, closing and unclosing the clippers.

Why was he doing that? Maybe the guy was some kind of psycho killer, like the ones in those late-night horror movies? She tried to block Dorothy’s view, as her friend came up behind her.

“We’re friends of Lorella Caldwell,” Dorothy told the creepy guy, giving Summer a tiny push aside. “It looks as if she isn’t home, and we’re so disappointed.”

“Mrs. C doesn’t live here anymore,” the guy said. “I take care of this place for the new owners while they’re up North. The Johnstons.”

Summer glanced back at the deserted house. By the looks of things, he wasn’t doing such a hot job. Back in LA, he’d be fired pronto. “Are they coming back, uh, soon?” Hopefully not, for his sake.

The guy shrugged. “Dunno. They’re always changing their minds. You gotta leave now.”

“Oh, of course.” Dorothy made no move to go. “Sorry to have bothered you. So you worked for Mrs. Caldwell, too?”

“Yeah. Nice lady. Real quiet. No visitors, except for that brother of hers. That’s who he said he was, anyway.”

“Brother?” Summer said. “Does he live in Milano?”

“Dunno,” the guy said. “Drove an old black sports car with Florida plates. Just caught him here the other day, snooping around in the bushes. Coulda got his head chopped off.” He held up the clippers, and demonstrated on a small, dead branch hanging over the porch railing.

Yep. This guy was definitely a psycho. Either he didn’t know his old boss was dead, or...maybe he’d tracked her to Hibiscus Pointe and killed her himself. Maybe Lorella hadn’t paid him or something.

“How odd that he wasn’t aware his sister had moved,” Dorothy said, thoughtfully.

“I set him straight on that,” the caretaker said. “He won’t be coming around here again.”

Lorella’s brother was probably buried somewhere under the dead rosebushes. “Well, guess we’d better get going,” Summer said, quickly. “Come on, Dorothy.”

“Thank you so much for your help, sir,” Dorothy called over her shoulder, as Summer hustled her friend as fast as she could down the uneven walk. The stones were barely visible through the scratchy, brown grass. Lorella must have taken Milano’s rarely-enforced watering restrictions pretty seriously.

Things were a little different back at Hibiscus Pointe. The fountains there spewed twenty-four-seven and the grass was greener than the felt on the mini-putting green outside the main building.

Maybe that was one of the reasons Lorella decided to move there. Or maybe she just didn’t want to take care of her ugly, haunted house anymore. Who could blame her?

Summer was just opening the car door for Dorothy when she spotted a pair of eyes peering over the wood fence. Kind of like the nosy neighbor guy on that old TV show
Home Improvement
, where you never saw the rest of his face. But this person, judging from the curly white head with the pink visor, had to be a woman.

“Hold on a sec,” Summer said to Dorothy. “I’ll be right back.”

She jogged toward the fence—by now the psycho guy with the clippers had disappeared around the side of the witch house—and the white-and-pink lady had vanished, too.

Summer peered over the faded brown fence. She was careful not to touch it, because it was probably full of splinters.

The woman on the other side was crouched down in a row of red and yellow tulips, pretending to be invisible. “You know I can see you, right?” Summer asked.

Lorella’s former neighbor stood up and took a few steps back into her yard, half tripping over a flat of unplanted purple pansies. She just stood there, blinking nervously a few times. “Are you the Johnstons?” the woman asked, finally.

“Nope,” Summer said. “We’re friends of Mrs. Caldwell’s. Well, my grandma is, anyway.” No need to mention Lorella was dead, in case Nervous Nellie hadn’t heard yet. “Did you know her?”

“No, not at all,” Nellie said. “I mind my own business, you know.”

Yeah
,
I
bet
, Summer thought. “You don’t know where Mrs. Caldwell’s brother lives, do you?”

“Lorella doesn’t have a brother,” Nellie said. “No family at all.”

Summer didn’t find that idea depressing, like everyone else seemed to. She had plenty of family, thanks to all her dad’s marriages, and she couldn’t stand any of them. Except her sister Joy, of course, and their dad, when they weren’t trying to mess up her life.

Her mom, Harmony, was okay, too, but who knew where she was these days? The crystal store on the pier must not have worked out so well. “No brother, huh? That’s funny, I thought I met him once.”

Nellie pulled her pink visor farther down over her face and stepped back toward the fence. “Oh, you mean the young man who was always visiting,” she said, in a gossipy voice. “That’s not Lorella’s brother. He’s her boyfriend.”

“How young?” Summer asked. It was hard to imagine Mrs. Caldwell as a cougar.

Nellie leaned in closer. “Not a day over sixty.”

Huh. Well, that was no big deal. Lorella had to have been in her seventies. “Yep, that’s the guy we need to talk to, all right,” Summer said. “Do you know his name?”

“Oh yes.” Nellie nodded eagerly. “It’s Charles Bell. He teaches at Santa Teresa Community College. Lorella used to work there, you know, in the English Department office.” The woman was straight up against the fence now. “If you ask me, I think the two of them were having an affair.”

“So he’s married?”

“Well, I don’t have all the details,” Nellie said. “Lorella wasn’t much of a talker. But I can just tell those kinds of things, you know? That man was definitely poking around here, just the other day, and she moved away about a month ago. She must not have told him she was leaving.”

Was Lorella’s younger boyfriend a stalker? He had to have been up to something. Summer brushed a damp strand of hair off her face. It was a good thing she never burned, because the sun was even more broiling now. Dorothy had to be getting really hot back there in the car. They needed to put on the AC and buy her a bottle of water somewhere.

“Hey, it was great to meet you and everything, but I’ve got to go,” she said to Nellie. “Keep an eye on things around here, okay?”

“Oh, I always do,” the woman said. She sounded proud about it, too.

“If Lorella’s boyfriend shows up again, call the police, okay?” Summer added. “He might be dangerous.”

Had this Charles Bell guy needed to get rid of Lorella because of their steamy affair? Maybe she’d threatened to tell his wife. Or—

Three sharp honks sounded from the MINI. Oops. Dorothy was looking a little impatient, fanning herself with her hat.

Summer ran toward the car and leaped behind the wheel without bothering to open the door. Piece of cake.

She’d always wanted to do that, like the two crazy brothers in those old
Dukes of Hazzard
reruns she watched at three in the morning, when she was getting in from the clubs.

“Hey, guess what?” she said to Dorothy. “We’ve got ourselves another lead.”

Chapter Four

“Mrs. Westin!”

Dorothy heard Jennifer before she saw her step off the elevator on the second floor of Hibiscus Gardens Building One. The Resident Services director ran toward her down the carpeted hallway, her arms full of books, canvas tote bags, and brochures.

“Hello, Jennifer. Let me help you with those, dear.” Dorothy shifted the wine bottle and bouquet of flowers in her arms, and reached out to take the tote bags and at least a few of the heavy-looking hardcovers from the young woman’s grasp. “
War and Peace
? My goodness.”

“These are Lorella’s materials for the book club launch,” Jennifer said, still a bit breathless. “I was hoping maybe, if you and Summer were still willing to take things over...” Her voice trailed away, sounding hopeful.

“We’ll be happy to help out,” Dorothy said, unlocking the door and ushering Jennifer inside. “Just set the rest of those things down somewhere in the living room.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Westin. Wow, you have your condo fixed up so nicely. The layouts are all the same in the Gardens, but yours looks so cozy and—Eek!” Jennifer jumped back as a swift, fiery orange ball of fur, claws, and teeth flew toward her from the couch. “Oh my gosh, what is that?”

Dorothy hurried over to shoo her large-boned, unrepentant tomcat toward the bedroom. “That’s Mr. Bitey. He’s a bit jittery around guests sometimes. I do apologize if he gave you a fright.”

“Mr. Whitey?” Jennifer’s worried brown eyes shot around the room. “But he’s, um, orange, right?”

“No, the name really is Bitey.” Dorothy sighed. “I adopted him after his owner moved into assisted living. He was something of a forever-home placement challenge, the cat rescue people mentioned. But the two of us get on swimmingly now.” As long as he received prompt meals and frequent snacks.

“Oh. That’s nice.” Jennifer settled herself gingerly on the floral couch, discreetly arming herself with a crocheted pillow.

“Has there been any more word on what happened to Lorella?” Dorothy set the bottle of wine she’d bought for Dash’s dinner party down on the counter and began to unwrap the sadly wilted grocery store flowers from their plastic wrappings. Hopefully, she could revive them with a burst of cold water.

“Not really,” Jennifer said. “Detective Donovan told me they need to notify the next of kin. I don’t think Mrs. Caldwell had any family, though.”

“No children or siblings?” Dorothy asked. “A brother, perhaps?”

Jennifer shook her head. “Not that I know of. This is why it’s so important for people to fill everything out on their New Resident Let’s-Get-to-Know-You forms.”

“Do you still have the form Lorella gave you when she moved in to Hibiscus Pointe?” Dorothy stuck the bouquet into a vase and added one of the little vitamin packs she kept on hand for floral emergencies.

“I do, back in my office,” Jennifer said. “I keep all the residents’ information in those big loose-leaf binders on the bookshelves behind my desk, sorted by year, and also alphabetically. But I’m afraid the contents of those are strictly confidential.”

“Oh, of course.” Hibiscus Pointe kept their resident files more secure than most doctors Dorothy knew. But wouldn’t Jennifer need to turn over any information she had at all on Lorella Caldwell to Detective Donovan?

The Resident Services director picked an invisible piece of lint from her skirt. Dorothy carefully snipped the stem of a particularly morbid-looking daisy, waiting.

“I looked at Lorella’s form quickly this afternoon, but it was mostly blank,” Jennifer said. “Of course, if anyone really needed it, a lot of the get-to-know-you information for new residents goes into our
What’s Your Pointe?
newsletter when they move in.”

“Ah yes.” Dorothy busied herself gathering up dead leaves from the sink. “I’ll have to dig up my back copies.” That might be quite a job. Lately, she’d been placing them in the giant green recycling bin at the end of the hall on a fairly regular basis. After she’d read them, of course.

“So tell me more about Lorella’s plans for the book club relaunch,” she said, bringing two glasses of ice water out to the living room. Mr. Bitey, she noticed, had reasserted himself a paw’s length from the corner of the couch. She seated herself next to Jennifer, just in case she needed to head the jealous kitty off again.

“Well, we didn’t talk about them much, really,” Jennifer said. “Specifically, anyway. But I do have what Mrs. Caldwell wrote in her article.” She reached carefully across the couch, with a wary glance at Mr. Bitey, and took a brochure from one of the tote bags. “Here’s a copy of tomorrow’s newsletter. Mrs. Caldwell was hoping for a good turnout of residents for the organizational meeting on Friday. But I’ve heard the last time we had a book club here at Hibiscus Pointe, things didn’t go very well.”

No, they certainly hadn’t. Dorothy quickly perused the article. “It says here that the club will meet twice each month. My, the reading list sounds quite...ambitious.”

Perfect for anyone who felt inspired to read and discuss some of the longest classic novels ever written within two weeks.

“Did you go to any of the meetings when Helen Murphy ran the book club here?” Jennifer asked. “That was before I started working here.”

“Yes, I was a member,” Dorothy said. In its previous incarnation, the Hibiscus Pointe Book Club was a deadly dull affair, and entirely too exclusive, in her view. Strongly opinionated members were unwelcome, as were those whose reading tastes failed to meet with Helen Murphy’s approval.

In a few short months, Helen had found herself in a book club of one. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately, in Summer’s case—she’d taken up the reins of the Residents Board. Everyone agreed that position was much better suited to her directorial talents.

“Mrs. Caldwell was really serious about the classics,” Jennifer said. “I guess that’s not a big surprise, since she worked over at Santa Teresa College.”

So Lorella and Charles Bell had once been colleagues. “My, I see all kinds of literary gems here,” Dorothy said, glancing down at the book club reading list again.
Wuthering Heights
,
Jane Eyre
,
Anna Karenina
...each to be read within two weeks. “I assume she was in the English department, then?”

“Yes, as an administrative assistant.” Jennifer said. “That’s what she listed on her information form. But she had a PhD, I think.”

Interesting. Lorella hardly seemed like the sort of person who might find herself in any kind of serious trouble, Dorothy told herself. But obviously, someone had wanted her out of the way—permanently.

Had Lorella startled that same person in the stacks, up to no good? But why would anyone be involved in some nefarious activity in such a small—and very public—place? There wasn’t much traffic in the library, and even less in the business center, but still...

Most likely, the killer had grabbed a weapon from somewhere in the library to do her in. No one carried heavy gold bookends around with them.

It definitely seemed like a crime of passion, as if the person hadn’t planned the murder. He or she must have acted in some sudden, uncontrollable fit of rage. But...hadn’t the murderer struck poor Lorella on the back of her head? She might not have seen her attacker coming. Dorothy hoped not.

What might the person have been angry about? Money? Family matters? A romantic entanglement?

Again, neither of those seemed likely to apply, in Lorella’s case. By all appearances, the librarian had lived quietly and frugally, and had no family. But one never knew...Could Charles Bell have killed her in some jealous rage or lovers’ quarrel? And who was The Snake that Trixie had warned her of, before she quickly decamped in her rented RV with an unsavory companion?

“So, what do you think, Mrs. Westin?”

Dorothy snapped to attention. Jennifer was looking at her expectantly, and she hadn’t heard a word the young woman had said. “Sorry, dear. I’m afraid I lost track of our conversation, for a moment or two.”

She hated lending the idea she was inattentive to conversation—or worse, prone to “senior moments.” But sometimes age did come in handy.

“That’s okay, Mrs. Westin,” Jennifer said. “I don’t think any of us are ourselves today, after”—her Rose Quartz lips quivered slightly—”what happened to Mrs. Caldwell. Do you think we should cancel the first book club meeting on Friday?”

“Absolutely not,” Dorothy said. The sooner she and Summer got things rolling, the better. The book club would be a perfect cover for learning more about Lorella Caldwell’s shadowy world. Her murderer might even show up to the meetings. Maybe the person hadn’t gotten what he or she wanted yet. Or maybe they were eager to ensure that whatever secret Lorella might have stumbled upon had gone to the grave with her.

“That’s only two days away.” Jennifer still looked worried, but then, the poor girl was always concerned about something. “The newsletter comes out tomorrow, and as you can see it’s already printed, but maybe I could—”

Dorothy reached over to pat Jennifer’s arm. “No need to change the date,” she said. “Summer and I will pull something together for Friday. Carrying on with the book club as Lorella planned will be a lovely tribute to her, don’t you think?”

“I guess you’re right,” Jennifer said. “I’m not sure that there will be any kind of other memorial.”

“There, then that’s settled.” Dorothy sat back on the couch and took a sip of her ice water.

Jennifer’s cell phone sounded at her waist, and she quickly silenced it. “It’s Roger,” she said, with a sigh. “I’d better go.”

“Of course.” Dorothy rose to see her guest out, expertly blocking Mr. Bitey’s paw with her shoe to prevent him from shredding the young woman’s panty hose—or worse. “You try to have a nice evening, now, Jennifer. Everything will be just fine.”

* * *

Summer strode confidently to the edge of the diving board, made a half pirouette, and bounced once or twice on the balls of her feet above the sparkling pool. The cloudless, late-afternoon sky was equally blue, and not even the slightest breeze rustled the palms.

Perfect.

She brought her arms up, chest level, then over her head, and bounced again, almost breaking the diving board as she launched herself high into the air. After an effortless double somersault, she executed a sharp jackknife and entered the water with crisply pointed toes.

No splash, of course. Just a cool, refreshing rush of H²O. And hopefully no more disturbing flashbacks of Lorella Caldwell’s dead, staring eyes.

She navigated the length of the pool underwater and emerged smoothly at the shallow end. Pulling herself up onto the ledge, she stretched out for a minute or two, letting her body soak up the fading heat of the concrete.

Summer loved this time of day, when all the residents were pregaming for their formal, five o’clock dinner in the Canyons Dining Room and she had the whole pool to herself. Usually, she headed back to her condo afterward for a nap—and maybe a snack and some binge TV—before mapping out which bars or clubs to hit after eleven.

But tonight was Dash’s dinner party, she reminded herself. He and Julian were always tons of fun—well, Dash was, anyway—and Juliette-Margot was the greatest kid ever. They’d have a good time, even with his mom there. Maybe, since ol’ GH-aka-Georgiana Hamel was such a famous mystery writer, she could even give her and Dorothy a few detective tips to help them with their new case.

Summer had never met Dash’s mom, but she’d already figured out that she was older, and that he’d been adopted. From the way her son talked about her, Georgiana sounded a little intimidating. But interesting, at least.

Not like all her most recent stepmoms. How many of those mindless, gold-digging bimbos had her dad married lately, anyway? She’d have to ask Joy, because she’d lost count. And their own mom, Harmony Moon Smythe-Sloan—well, she was more like a sister, really. A kind of spacy one, who traveled around and dropped in and out of other people’s lives whenever she felt like it.

Luckily, Syd was on marital hiatus right now. He must have gotten some sense knocked into him when he hit the Big 7-0.

Something—or someone—was blocking her sun. Summer’s eyes flew open, and she gazed up at the tall, tanned figure of Detective Donovan.

Did he ever take off those Ray-Bans? He should, because he had really nice blue eyes. Sort of the same shade as hers, come to think of it.

“Jeez, you could have said something.” Summer sat up, being careful not to let her tiny, lime polka-dot bikini top slip. It had gotten a little loose after that last dive.

“Sorry.” He held out a rolled navy-and-gold-striped Hibiscus Pointe towel from the unmanned cabana. “I brought you this.”

“Thanks,” Summer said, wrapping it quickly around her waist. “So, what are you doing here?” He wasn’t exactly dressed for a dip, in the same khakis and polo shirt he’d been wearing earlier. Even behind the shades, she could tell he was tired.

“Looking for you,” he said. “I couldn’t seem to reach you on your cell, so I figured the pool was my best bet.”

Summer glanced back at her phone, lying on the wet concrete next to her straw pool bag. Whoops.

“Let’s sit down over there, okay?” The detective pointed toward two lounge chairs at the opposite corner of the pool. “I got us some lemon waters from that fancy dispenser.”

Well, that was nice of him. Was he just going to ask her stuff about finding Lorella this morning, or could this turn into something a tiny bit more social? He sounded all business right now, but she could be wrong.

She usually was, around this guy. All the others she could pretty much read like...well, a book. Usually, guys came right up and hung all over her. They never stopped talking about themselves, and a lot of times they treated her as if she were stupid.

That was where
they
were wrong.

Detective Donovan, on the other hand, never said anything about himself, so she had to stay alert for clues. It was kind of fun trying to guess things about his personal life. So far, the actual solid facts were: he wasn’t married, his grandma lived at Hibiscus Pointe, he liked to fish on his boat, and he ate as much junk food as she did.