Out Of Control

“Amalia…” Daisy sighed. “Look, the guy has come all the way from England. I mean, I’ve never been that jazzed about the biography, but you and Martin both wanted it. I can’t tell him it’s off just because you had a dream.”

“This dream was very, very real. I saw Frank as if he was standing in front of my eyes. He said bad things will happen.”

“What kind of bad things?”

“You don’t want to know,” Amalia said. “But very, very bad. I was wrong. Daisy, please, you have to tell this Nicholas no.”

“Okay.” She hung up the phone. It rang almost immediately. Amalia again. Even over the phone she could hear her stepmother wheezing.

“Okay, okay. Use your inhaler. I’m going to meet him tomorrow. I’ll tell him. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later.”

As she grabbed her keys and started for the door, the phone rang again. Guessing it was Amalia, she grabbed it.

“This is American Express,” a woman said. “We’re calling to make sure you actually made a purchase that’s about to be charged to your account. It’s a little out of the ordinary for your spending habits and…”

“What’s the purchase?”

“A salamander.”

“A what?”

“Thirty-five hundred dollars. From the Culinary King.”

Daisy scratched her head. A salamander was some kind of reptile, right? Then enlightenment dawned. Toby had apparently ordered another expensive toy that Wildfire couldn’t do without. “No,” she said. “Don’t approve it. I need to talk to the buyer first.”

As she sprinted to the truck, she glanced up at the sky. “Okay, what gives? Have I offended someone up there, or something?”

CHAPTER FIVE

NICK WAS SO RELIEVED at not only making contact with Daisy, finally, but actually setting up a time to meet her that he couldn’t focus on anything that required sitting quietly at the computer. Laguna was still waiting to be explored, and it seemed a perfect time to find out more about the world Frank Truman had once inhabited.

He left the apartment, strolled around the tree-lined streets for half an hour or so, people-watched the bronzed and beautiful from the vantage point of a sidewalk café and walked some more. On a side street off Pacific Coast Highway, he came to the restaurant Daisy had mentioned. He walked into the courtyard filled with a jungle of greenery. The front door was locked, but he could see through into the sleek glass and chrome dining room and part of the kitchen beyond where a chef was working.

The chef saw him and waved. In one of those bits of serendipity that occasionally brighten the day, the chef, it turned out, was none other than Toby Fowler, and he was only too glad to help in any way he could.

Thirty minutes later, Nick had drawn at least one conclusion about Daisy’s ex-husband. After listening to him hold forth on everything from the most flavorful wood to use for smoking meat (apple) to where in Laguna to meet “the hottest chicks,” (Main Beach), Nick had decided that, for all the talk about other women, Toby was still struggling with unresolved feelings for his ex-wife.

One clue was his apparent inability to stop talking about her. No matter the topic, everything eventually led back to Daisy. He watched Toby sharpen a lethal-looking knife—Daisy hadn’t wanted him to buy it, of course, which was further proof, according to Toby, that she knew nothing about running a restaurant. As Toby talked, Nick tried hard to reconcile Daisy, the golden child in the paintings, with Daisy the ex-wife of this stocky, muscled man with the bleached blond crew cut. Somehow he couldn’t quite manage it.

Toby was rattling on about how Daisy never did this and was always doing that. Why, Nick wondered, were solutions to the romantic agonies of others (get over her, for God’s sake, she’s clearly not worth it) so much more obvious than one’s own? Perhaps he should consult Toby on whether or not to encourage Valerie’s visit.

“The thing with Daisy is, if she believes something’s good or bad or whatever,” Toby said, “no way can she accept there might be another way of looking at things.”

“How exactly do you mean?” Nick asked.

“Like her father, for instance.” He stopped. “Look you didn’t hear this from me, okay? I don’t want Daisy coming down on me for dissing her father, but everyone knows he was nutty as a fruit cake. Would Daisy admit that though? Uh-uh. He was eccentric. Different. Emotional. Nuts? Not a chance.”

Nick was interested. “Did you know him?”

“I stayed out of his path as much as I could. Didn’t want to be around him. Daisy put up with stuff from him that no one in their right mind would take. I was the one who had to calm her down after he’d yelled and screamed at her for something or other. He was this famous artist though, so it was okay for him to yell and scream. Anyone else would have the police knocking on the door.”

Nick wondered if Martin considered Toby one of Frank Truman’s detractors. Maybe the truth lay somewhere between Martin Truman’s version and that of the mendacious first wife.

Toby brought the blade down with a hard thwack. “You know what else drives me nuts about her? That bunch of freeloading hippy friends she’s got living up on her property.” He disappeared behind the door of a massive stainless-steel refrigerator, emerged with a tray of steaks. “Well, she calls them friends. Problem is, they’re all on the take. You ever been up to her place?”

Nick said he hadn’t.

“She lives in this cabin on about three acres of land off Laguna Canyon Road. It’s worth millions, but Daisy doesn’t care. Her father built the cabins back in the fifties for these big-time artist friends from Los Angeles who came down to Laguna on weekends. Not a load of deadbeats like Daisy’s got living there.”

“Do they pay rent?”

“‘Oh Daisy,’” he said in a mincing voice, “‘my kitty cat got sick and I had to take her to the vet and now I don’t have enough money to pay the rent.’” In another falsetto, this presumably Daisy’s, Toby said, “‘Just pay me when you have the money.’ Right.”

“Maybe she thinks of it as carrying on her father’s legacy,” Nick said. “Helping struggling artists, that sort of thing.”

Toby made a dismissive gesture. “If what they do is art, then I’m Chef Boyardee. They call themselves artists, but none of them has ever sold a damn thing.”

Nick imagined himself approaching Daisy, who apparently had a blind spot for a sob story. Tin cup in his outstretched hand. Please Miss Daisy, talk to me. This biography will put food on my table. I haven’t eaten for months.

“The thing you gotta know about Daisy is she has a heart as big as all outdoors. She kind of went to pieces after her father died. Gained a ton of weight. She’s dropped it, but she doesn’t look the way she did when I first knew her. It’s like she’s, I don’t know, gone into herself.”

“So she doesn’t talk about her father to you?”

Toby shook his head. “Doesn’t talk about him to anyone. After he died, she just stopped talking about him, period.”

“How long have you known her?” Nick asked.

Toby shrugged. “We grew up together, like, but I didn’t really get to know her until about a year before the old man died. She was kind of lonely then, no one else to turn to.”

He’d started cutting the meat into wafer-thin slices, every move careful and exact. A muscle twitched in his cheek, his jaw was tense. Anger offered another clue that Toby still had a thing for his ex-wife. People got incensed at those they didn’t love, of course, but there was a certain quality to the kind of anger that was all mixed up with having once loved the person who has caused your wrath, making it burn with a particular intensity. Toby was clearly smoldering.

“Naturally, she forgets all that now. She’s got all her hippy friends who are happy to listen to her. Hell, it’s cheaper than paying rent, right?” He shook his head. “To be honest with you, Daisy drives me nuts, but…I dunno, sometimes I think it’s too bad we can’t just make things work again. I mean, we have a kid and everything…but Daisy’s so damn stubborn.”

And you’re in love with her, Nick thought. Was it mutual? Maybe just a sticky patch on the matrimonial road? His own experience had proved, ultimately, to be less sticky patch than insurmountable block. He realized that he felt sorry for Toby. If he could have come up with some words of wisdom, he would have.

“You haven’t met Daisy yet, right?” Toby asked.

“Tomorrow.”

Toby rolled his eyes. “Good luck. She’s not the easiest person to be around these days.”

WHY HAD SHE AGREED to meet the guy? Why? It was four o’clock and Daisy was in the kitchen on the phone with a hysterical Amalia, mindlessly devouring a bowl of Wacky-cake batter. She put the bowl in the fridge, leaned against the door and breathed slowly.

“Amalia, listen to me, okay? Just listen.” She moved to the table and sat down. “I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up over this dream—”

“I tell you, Daisy, it was so real. You should have been there to see your father’s face. Please promise me you will tell Mr. Wynne there is no book.”

“I’m meeting him in an hour.” She scratched a spot of hardened candlewax from the tabletop. “Look, don’t get mad, okay? This whole dream thing? You just seem to be, I don’t know, overreacting a little. Are you sure something else isn’t bothering you?”