So Much For Buckingham: The Camilla Randall Mysteries #5 (18 page)

Peter went to the cottage to do whatever magic he seemed to think he could work to discredit the horrible photograph.

The store was full of customers, but I didn't notice any sideways glances or other signs my clientele had seen the Twitter photo. Mercifully, my customers tended to be old school and not very tech-savvy. Some had probably never heard of Twitter.

But I was still hungover and my head felt as if demons were hammering inside.

At noon, both Jens sauntered in, almost as if nothing had happened.

I gave them a huge smile.

"I'm so glad you're here. I was afraid I'd lost you both because of that awful nonsense."

I took their hands and pulled them behind the counter.

"Listen, I can explain..."

Jen B. interrupted. "We know it's not your fault. But you do have super-bad judgment, especially considering you're the Manners Doctor."

"I convinced Jen not to quit," Jen A. said. Her tone was businesslike. "But if we're going to come back to work, we want Friday off. Both of us. JenSation has a gig. We're not playing until five, but they want us there at three-thirty and we have to rehearse. We're a little rusty."

I was happy to give them Friday off, even though it meant I'd spend one of my busiest days alone in the store. I gave them both a little hug.

Jen B. didn't really hug back, but she pulled a cat treat from her pocket and gave it to Buckingham. Then she started straightening the Sci-Fi section, so she seemed to consider herself clocked in.

Jen A. hung around, pointlessly re-arranging things on the counter next to the register. It wasn't her day to work, so I knew something was up.

Finally she spoke.

"You've got to understand it wasn't only Jen. Her boyfriend Elijah went totally postal. He demanded that she quit working for you. But I said you couldn't possibly have had anything to do with it."

I relaxed a bit.

"I'm so glad you understand. The photo isn't of me at all. Honestly. I knew about it, but I thought it had been destroyed." I lowered my voice, hoping none of the customers could hear. "That whole thing was staged to blackmail my ex-husband years ago. It's a photo of...a professional dominatrix dressed up to look like me. My ex-husband liked that sort of thing, apparently, although he never told me."

Jen gave a snort. "Oh, the S/M thing on Twitter? That's so obviously bogus. Besides, everybody's got a sex tape out these days. No, Jen and Elijah are upset about that blogger you were dating. You know, the 'Zo What' guy?"

She fanned out the bookmarks I had just straightened.

"Ronzo?" I could barely say his name.

"That's the one," Jen said. "And I'm pretty teed off, too. All that work we did to get on his blog! We borrowed money from a bunch of people to make the video for him, including Elijah. He's one of those PETA animal-rights guys and he totally flipped when he found out. She told him you probably didn't have a clue what Ronzo was up to. But Elijah went all Looney-Tunes. I told Jen she should break up with the ass...hat. He won't let her eat any meat, so she's blimping out from eating all those carbs..." She glanced around to see if the patrons had heard her almost use the rude word. "But still, you should have told us."

"It wasn't that Twitter photo that made Jen want to quit?"

Jen shook her head. "Na. That thing is totally Photoshopped. Besides, it's no big to be into that
Fifty Shades of Grey
stuff these days. But your friend Ronzo—we can't believe you didn't even tell us about it."

I could hardly look at her. I could only nod in agreement. How much did they know about Ronzo's sordid story?

"I wasn't sure you needed to know about Ronzo's suicide. It was so awful..."

Jen shook her head. "Look, we're sorry he's dead and everything. But that man murdered kittens! I mean...ick!"

I did not want to have this conversation.

"I agree. It's horrible. You've got to believe I had no idea what sort of man he was. I thought he loved animals. And I thought he loved me..." I put on a stiff smile. I was not going to cry in front of Jen.

She put a sympathetic hand on my arm.

"I know it's not your fault. It must be so horrible to find out you were hooking up with a disgusting criminal like that. But he did talk like some kind of a crook, didn't he?"

I was relieved to see a customer approach the counter. I would have liked to point out that Ronzo's New Jersey accent didn't make him a criminal any more than Peter's English one made him a gentleman, but I didn't want to be put in a position of defending Ronzo.

I also didn't want to let on that Peter was a criminal too.

I needed to shove to the back of my mind the fact that—as of this morning—I was something of a law-breaker myself. I had laundered money. I'd deposited Peter's cash in my account and sent an electronic check to his Australian bank to pay for his plane ticket. He'd promised some official paperwork from Sherwood that would identify the payment as royalties for my books, but I still felt guilty.

If somebody asked me where I got the money, I was going to have a hard time explaining why my publishers paid me in cash through an Australian fisherman named Piotr Stygar. I had to pray Peter got back to England safely and could straighten things out.

I gave my customers a big phony smile as I rang up a copy of Sue Grafton's
O is for Outlaw.

Thank goodness they didn't know I was an outlaw, too.

––––––––

P
lant tried to will himself to go back to sleep and resume his nap. Had he dreamed up that actor? He must have, in some sort of semi-snoozified state.

But no sort of sleep would come now. He might as well stay awake and wait for his evening meal, such as it was.

He lay in the half-frozen, half-dark and worked at forming rational thoughts. He didn't feel rested. He would have felt rested if he'd been asleep and dreaming, wouldn't he?

He thought back to the Josephine Tey book, and imagined re-reading it in his head.

The villain of her piece was not William Shakespeare, but Sir Thomas More, whom she described as a consummate liar and propagandist for Henry VIII.

"Thomas More was a venom-tongued worm and a prevaricating blackguard," said a voice.

The actor was back. He paced the cell again, still in that costume.

"How did you get in? Does Sanjay know you're here?" The man seemed now as real as Sanjay.

"You asked if we executed Buckingham," the man said. "Yes, we caught the whoreson and cut off his traitorous head. But we couldn't predict that Henry Tudor would continue to spread the slander, reanimating Buckingham's lies. When Tudor's son had Thomas More put it all in writing, our reputation was doomed for eternity. Do you know what that means—to be thought a villain forever?"

If this man were indeed the actor from the Old Hall, Plant needed to get him to talk about the matters at hand. But the man was obviously a bit on the loony side. It would be wise not to anger him. 

"If the Duke of Buckingham killed the princes in the Tower in order to frame Richard, do you think that's why somebody killed the Duke at the reenactment?" Plant hoped that came out as tactful. "I don't mean the real duke. I mean Neville portraying Buckingham. Please, will you testify at my trial? You could explain everything! Will you help me? What's your real name?"

"My name is Richard Plantagenet, by the Grace of God King of England and France and Lord of Ireland."

If he were an actor, he got points for his regal demeanor.

"Look, I understand you want to stay in character, but please, can't you tell me what you saw in the Old Hall that day? You have to tell the police. They think I did it, you see. They think I'm a murderer. You know Neville was dead before I even went up those stairs."

The man gave Plant a penetrating stare.

"They finally gave me a state funeral. I was glad of that, but it was a bit of 'too little, too late', wasn't it?"  After all those years they left me lying under a car park, they could have done more. Benedict Cumberbatch was lovely, but I was hurt the queen didn't attend. And I would have preferred to rest at Westminster Abbey with my Plantagenet kin. Or York Minster. They might have returned me to York. And it was all financed by private funds. Nothing from the British government. Don't you think it's time they gave me a full apology?"

The man's voice had taken on a dreamy quality. Maybe he was a dream. Maybe Sanjay was too. Plant had no idea what was real any more.

"Please! Can you help me? I need you to tell the police the truth. Don't you see how important it is?"

"Shut up Yank! I don't want to tell you again." The officer pounded on the door again.

And Plant was alone again.

––––––––

T
he Jens might have known about my relationship with Ronzo, but as of Monday afternoon, the media hadn't connected my name to the GoreFest kitten murderer Ronson V. Zolek.

Thank goodness.

I asked the Jens to keep quiet about the fact I'd dated him. Luckily, they seemed as eager as I was to keep the information under wraps.

In fact they were being very tolerant, under the circumstances. Jen B. didn't even flinch when Marva arrived in full Manners Doctor drag around five in the afternoon with Peter in tow.

"We've done the most fabulous interview via Skype," Marva announced. "I explained everything to a very nice man with a late-night talk show on Yorkshire Television. He assured me the story will go right on YouTube and could go viral by tomorrow. Everybody will know it's me in that Twitter picture and not you. The story is going to go in as an update on the celebrity hacking scandal so the major news outlets should pick it up."

Peter gave me one of his smiles.

"I pulled in a favor or two. Actually, my presenter friend was happy to have the story. It's a slow news day, with nothing more to report about the Lincolnshire reenactor murder."

"The Lincolnshire reenactor? Oh, you mean..." I stopped myself as Peter gave me a warning look. I realized I had several customers perusing the back table and more coming in the door. Peter was right. No point in working so hard to dispel the rumors about my sex life if it was going to come to light my best friend was an accused murderer.

Jen didn't seem to recognize Marvin, which was just as well.

"Hi I'm Jen," she said. "That's a great Manners Doctor outfit. I have one too. My friend Jen and I did Manners Doctor costumes for Mardi Gras last year."

She turned to offer a hand to Peter.

"Are you, like, from England? Your accent is awesome, but it doesn't sound like, you know, Harry Potter English."

"That's because I'm Australian," Peter said with an easy smile. "But I've lived in England. I'm from Poland originally. Piotr Stygar."

"Piotr? Is that kinda like Polish for Peter?"

"It's exactly like Polish for Peter," I said. "In fact, I call him Peter. We're old friends from..." I wasn't sure what to say.

"England. We met in England," Peter said. "When Camilla had her first book published by Sherwood Ltd. I'm Sherwood's representative in Sydney."

It was a little scary that Peter's lies flowed so smoothly. But nobody seemed to suspect Peter was anything other than who he said.

Even Marva seemed to like him. "I've got to toddle off," she said, giving Peter a peck on the cheek. "I have a client arriving at four. My business should pick up if this YouTube thing takes off." She turned to me. "Thanks sweetie. He's a gem. Hang on to this one."

I tried to smile.

Somebody had told me that about Ronzo, too.

––––––––

P
lant was awake. And alone. In his awful little cell. Freezing his butt off. His toes were already so numb he could hardly feel them.

King Richard—or his reenactor—was nowhere to be seen. Plant decided again that he must have been dreaming. But it had been nothing like a normal dream. And he was even more tired than before.

His senses told him he'd been interfacing with supernatural ectoplasm of some sort.

A ghost.

But his brain told his senses to shut the hell up. He was not going to say that word. If he had met a spirit from the "Other Side", Glen Jones would have scored a major win.

So dream it was.

He heard a key in the lock of his cell and Sanjay Brumble entered, beaming his absurd smile.

Plant stood, wobbling a bit. He felt tired and disoriented. And very, very cold.

"Is there good news? Please tell me the police have found him—the actor who was playing Richard? Have they talked to him? I'm sure he'll clear up this entire mess."

Sanjay's smile fell.

"No. They have not talked to him. Because there was no reenactor playing King Richard at the event at the Old Hall on Sunday."

Sanjay spoke in a smug, officious voice.

"The actor failed to arrive. The reenactment guild was very disappointed. Richard was supposed to be coming from Humberside, but he had some sort of trouble with his car. A Ford. I don't trust American cars myself."

"But that's not true!" Plant didn't want to sound hysterical, but what Sanjay said was ridiculous and cruel. The actor playing Richard had been right there—upstairs in the Hall at a quarter to four on Sunday afternoon. Somebody else had to have seen the man.

Sanjay sat on the end of the concrete bed.

"Libra will rise," Sanjay said in a ponderous tone. "Will you tell me what this means, Mr. Smith?"

"I don't have the slightest idea. I suppose it's an astrology thing." Plant paced, trying to get warm. What idiocy had the police come up with now?

Sanjay took something from his pocket—a piece of paper with the symbol for Libra drawn on it: two parallel lines with a bump in the one on top.

"Are you going to tell me you don't know what this means?" Sanjay said.

"Of course I do. It's the sign for Libra. It's meant to represent a balance scale. They tell me it's my birth sign. But I'm not into astrology. I couldn't tell you anything about it beyond that."

"Really? Then why do you have amongst your effects some gold jewelry engraved with this symbol?"