Free Randall #01 - The Best Revenge by Anne R. Allen Page B

in her arms. A plastic one with handles would have been easier for walking, but when the boy bagging the groceries said “paper or plastic,” he grabbed for the paper with such vehemence that she knew he had to be one of those ecology people, so she took the bag to avoid upsetting him.
    Now she rested the bag on a metal newspaper vending machine to better balance its weight and wondered if maybe she should have driven the car after all.
    As she picked up the bag again, she caught sight of a picture on the front of the evening newspaper. It was a photograph of Jon-Don Parker. Over the picture was the headline, “TV SEX SYMBOL FOUND DEAD IN BEVERLY HILLS HOME”.
    She put a quarter in the machine with shaking fingers.
    The paper said that Jon-Don Parker’s body had been found by his cleaning woman at 9:00 AM and that the police said his death was probably due to an overdose of heroin and cocaine—see TV SEX on page six, section (A).
    She folded the paper quickly and stuck it into the grocery bag as she tried to ignore the roaring in her head. She hoped Wave and Jennifer would be back by the time she got home. She didn’t want to be alone any more.
    The house, however, was empty. She put away the groceries and mixed up a package of the pudding before she looked at the paper again. She really didn’t believe that the information in it would go away, but she hoped it wouldn’t seem so terrible with chocolate pudding.
    But it did. In fact, a thorough reading of the unnecessarily vivid details under the heading TV SEX on page six make her wish there had been nothing in her stomach after all. She stared at the photogenic face of Jon-Don Parker as Lieutenant Darrell and tried to erase the memory of her irrational attacker of last night. She turned the page. There were several more pictures of Jon-Don, including a blurry one showing him with his arm around True.
    “Fashion model True, believed to be the last person to see Parker alive, is being sought for questioning,” the caption said.
    Camilla shuddered, wondering if what True and Tooter went out to “score” last night had killed Jon-Don. Putting down the empty pudding bowl, she flipped through the rest of the paper, wishing that Wave, or even Jennifer, would come home. She resisted the urge to turn on the TV news. She didn’t want to see Jon-Don’s face again.
    But another picture of him grinned from the front page of the entertainment section of the paper. As she quickly turned the page, a small headline caught her eye: “SET OF SAMOA! A CONCENTRATION CAMP, SAYS FIRED WRITER.”
    Camilla’s breath came in short gasps as she read on:
    “Plantagenet Smith, the former Broadway wunderkind , who collaborated on the musical Boadicea! five years ago, arrived last night at LAX with fresh horror tales of the production woes of director Guido Malatesta’s Samoa , now in its fourth month of filming on location near Pago Pago.”
    “‘Malatesta would better be employed in law enforcement in a small South American dictatorship,’ Smith told reporters, echoing the sentiments of actress Brooke Shields, who at one time was slated to play Margaret Mead in the big-budget epic…”
    Camilla dropped the paper, ran to the phone and dialed, only to get an unlikely busy signal. She redialed, more carefully this time, but the signal was still busy. She listened to the buzz for some time before she put down the receiver. A busy signal had to mean somebody was home. Plantagenet was home—in Laguna Beach.
    Only an hour and a half from where she was right now.
    ~
    She ran to her room and changed into a Mary McFadden afternoon dress that Plantagenet had always liked and tried to do something with her hair. She tried the phone number again, and it was still busy. After a few calming breaths, she went out to her car and found the map on which she had traced the route to Laguna Beach a dozen times. Turning the key in the ignition, she headed for the freeway and Laguna Beach—and the