So Much For Buckingham: The Camilla Randall Mysteries #5 (30 page)

But we both froze at the sound of a high pitched scream.

I looked across the parking lot and saw a couple fighting. I saw the flash of Jen's blond hair.

And Elijah.

––––––––

A
fter he was seated in a pew between Liam and Davey, Plant tried to smile serenely and behave like a proper wedding guest.

But his mind was busy sifting through what he had just heard.

This is what he knew now: Oliver had in all likelihood killed Neville, and he'd threatened to kill Declan as well. And Plant couldn't help wondering if Oliver's other online nemesis—Alfred the Cake—might not be Alfred Duffield.

Good thing Alfred and Declan were safe in the dismal hole of the Swynsby jail.

Organ music swelled and the wedding procession started down the aisle. The church was gorgeous, with a domed pastel ceiling that might have arched over Jane Austen or William Wordsworth. In fact, Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Elliot, might have attended this very church.

Plant wanted to be suitably reverent. But his brain flooded with memories of his own ill-fated wedding less than two weeks ago.

What was worse, a big, bald man sitting a few pews in front of him had a back like Silas's, except for the missing hair. Silas had the same huge broad shoulders—built up from a childhood on a working ranch. The bald man was even wearing a Burberry raincoat like the matching ones he and Silas had bought for their London trip.

He must be hallucinating again. How could hallucinations seem so real? He still had confused feelings about Richard III's ghost. The apparition had made so much sense. So many things about this last week made no sense at all, but that hallucination had spoken so sensibly.

He focused on the happy couple at the altar—they did look radiant—but he kept mulling over the horrors he'd been through since his own wedding—two weeks of bizarre chaos ending with his conversation on the church steps with Oliver/Owain.

Whatever he was called, the man seemed to be a psychotic murderer who thought poisoning an old friend was suitable retaliation for a few online threats.

Plant fought the urge to run out of the church to tell the police what he knew.

But chances were slim they'd believe him. He was the "Hollywood Nancy-boy" who was accused of the murder. They'd assume he'd made up Oliver's story out of whole cloth. Nobody had overheard Oliver's confession that he knew of. And they wouldn't have understood the implication of his remarks about gardeners and medieval herbs.

The ceremony itself was mercifully short. Plant knew he'd be expected at the reception, which was to be held in the parish hall. He supposed he'd better go, or Vera would think he'd escaped her custody. He'd have to corner Pradeep and get him to set up a meeting with Sanjay this afternoon, so he could tell him what he'd discovered about Neville's murder.

The unbalanced Oliver was obviously a danger to the public. Plant hoped the police would find enough evidence to arrest him right away.

Plant waved at Pradeep, who was wheeling out of the church beside a sturdy looking blonde woman with a small baby on her hip. She must be Meggy. Camilla had mentioned her. She'd had an abusive husband before she and Pradeep discovered each other.

Liam and Davey rushed to greet Pradeep and Meggy. It looked as if this must be their first reunion since the trip to India.

Plant lingered a moment in the emptying church. Here he was in England, surrounded by magnificent architecture. Who knew when he'd be back here? Probably never. He had spent a good deal of his savings on his own wedding, and his career was in tatters.

Like his marriage.

The marriage that never was.

He felt his eyes sting in a flood of conflicting emotions. Was he always going to find weddings this sad? He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and walked out of the church with the last of the stragglers.

The bald Burberry man stood at the bottom of the church steps. Plant realized stress was definitely playing tricks with his perceptions again, because the big, burly man now looked even more painfully like Silas. He could have been his twin—his tanned, bald twin.

The man gave a sudden wave and bounded up the steps toward Plant.

"Plantagenet! Oh, thank god! You're here!" He threw his arms around Plant and squeezed him so tightly Plant nearly lost his balance.

"Silas? It is you? What happened to your hair?"

Not the best opening line. But it was better than, "where have you been for the last two weeks, you philandering bastard?"

"Shaved it. Got in touch with my inner Mr. Clean." Silas rubbed his shiny pate. "That was the whole problem, you see. I had no idea. The anti-baldness drug I was taking..."

"Did Glen suggest the hairdo?" Plant knew his tone was icy, but he had no idea how he was going to forgive Silas for all of this. "So you two would match? Two Mr. Cleans together. How romantic. Where is he, by the way?"

Plant looked around, hoping not to see Glen's buffed little body in the crowd. He didn't think he could bear that right now.

"Glen Jones? He's in Hawaii, of course. Running his New-Agey clinic. Most of the stuff he does there is pure hokum, but getting off the grid for a week did me a lot of good..."

Plant gave him another cold stare.

"Well, I thought it had done me good," Silas said. "Until I heard from Peter—I mean Piotr—and I found out about the bomb at the Old Vic and your arrest. My god, Plant, what an ordeal. Are you all right?"

Plant nodded, but he did not feel all right. He felt like punching Silas in the face.

"Peter...Mr. Stygar phoned you?" The crowd thinned around them. People were moving toward the parish hall. Liam motioned vigorously for Plant to join them. He shook his head.

"Thank goodness for Piotr Stygar," Silas said. "He's why I'm here. He got hold of the main desk at the clinic and insisted they pull me out of yoga class. The clinic has a firm no-electronics policy. It's part of the healing process. We had to leave our phones and laptops locked up in a vault in order to get into the place. We had no access to any media."

"No electronics? No TV? So you didn't know anything about...what I've been through? None of it?"

Such a simple, plausible explanation. Of course that didn't justify Silas running off in the first place.

"No electronics, TV or even newspapers. Of course I didn't know. Do you think I would have stayed there chanting 'om' while my husband was rotting in a foreign jail?"

"But that's what you did, isn't it?"

Silas looked stricken.

"I...well, yes. I didn't know when I got on the plane for Hawaii that I'd be incommunicado for a whole week. I just wanted to detox from medications and alcohol. Glen was so convinced his treatment would solve my...problems. But once I was there, I figured I'd better go through with the whole program. I'd been so worried. I thought I'd never...I thought I was old and over the hill."

Plant sighed. "We'd drifted apart. I know I spent too much time working on the wedding..."

Silas glanced around to see if they were being watched, but most of the guests were gone. He grabbed Plant's hand.

"It wasn't your fault. It was me. Or rather...it was my meds. That's what I found out after a week of detox. It was the anti-baldness stuff I was taking. Finasteride. It's why I was...growing the boobs. And had no libido."

Plant had noticed Silas's chest had got flabby, but he figured he was suffering from overwork and stress from the lawsuit. And he'd ascribed their lack of a sex life to the same thing. He felt a catch in his throat realizing how stupid he'd been not to ask Silas what was wrong.

"You left me to go on our honeymoon alone because you were growing boobs? You couldn't tell me you were having health problems? What kind of man do you think you married? You know that 'better or worse' thing is supposed to cover this stuff, don't you?"

"I thought I'd lost it. Like, forever. Then when Glen told me you were bi...and you'd been in love with Camilla, I thought you belonged with her, not some over-the-hill fat guy..."

Plant looked at Silas through the blur of tears. Everything Silas was saying began to make sense. He threw his arms around him. He didn't care who saw.

"You big idiot. You thought I was in love with Camilla?"

––––––––

I
could see Elijah trying to pull Jen into a dark Prius that had slunk silently into the parking lot behind us.

"Stop, you creep," I shouted. "Leave Jen alone!"

"You know those people?" Ronzo looked ready to spring into action.

"That's the guy who set fire to my store!"

Ronzo took off across the parking lot and I grabbed my phone to call 911.

But of course my phone was still out of commission.

And before Ronzo was half way across the lot, Elijah gave out a bloodcurdling scream and held his hands to his eyes.

Jen, with a spray bottle in her hand ran toward us.

"Vince! Camilla! Help! Elijah has gone, like, totally cray-cray."

Jen grabbed Ronzo, while Elijah kept screaming.

"Has he got a gun?" Ronzo said.

Jen shook her head.

"He hates guns. But he might have a knife."

Apparently Jen knew Ronzo as "Vince". He must still be using his cousin's identity.

Ronzo approached Elijah with his street-wise swagger. I was pretty sure he could take Elijah in a fist fight.

"I sprayed him in the face with my Victoria's Secret 'Love Spell'," Jen showed me a small purple plastic bottle. "I remembered you told me you fought a guy with a can of hairspray once. This is the first thing I grabbed in my purse. "

"I can't see, dude," Elijah yelled to Ronzo. He sounded like a small boy about to cry. "Bitch attacked me with toxic chemicals! I can't drive when I can't see. Somebody has to drive me home."

A group of men came running up from the Red Barn.

"What seems to be the trouble here?" A tall man with gray hair seemed to be in charge. "Jen? What's going on?"

I pointed to Elijah where he sat in the driver's seat of his Prius, with the door still open, his hands over his eyes.

"That's the man who set fire to my bookstore last night," I said. "He also tried to rape me about an hour ago. And I saw him try to kidnap Jen. Can somebody call the police?"

Jen let out a wail.

"You tried to rape my boss? The Manners Doctor? Elijah, that is just soooo creepy. She's like, as old as your mom!"

The crowd of men had grown, and a couple of them pulled Elijah from the car.

The tall man put an arm around Jen.

"You gonna be okay?" he asked her.

"Yeah. He didn't do anything. I sprayed him in the face with body mist. Vince came to my rescue." She nodded in Ronzo's direction.

"She was rescuing herself just fine," Ronzo said.

"Sorry you had to miss out on your set," the tall man said. "You have some problem with your cat?"

"Yeah. Crazy cat missed me, I guess. But everything's copacetic now." Ronzo turned to me. "Right? Are we good?"

I took his hand. "Yes. We're good." His palm felt rough, but warm.

We watched the tall man lead the procession back to the Barn. Two men held onto Elijah, who looked more like a small boy who'd been caught raiding the cookie jar than a rapist-arsonist.

The fiddle music ended. The sky had gone dark.

"The Weevils sounded okay without me," Ronzo said. "But hey, I got to play a couple songs with a music legend." He put his arm around my shoulders. "Sounds like your week has been worse than mine. You want to tell me what's going on?"

His arm felt good. 

"That might take a while." I relaxed against his shoulder and realized I'd been shaking.

"I'm a dead guy. I got nothin' but time," Ronzo said.

––––––––

P
lant and Silas walked into the wedding reception just as the police arrived. There were some uniformed officers Plant recognized, followed by Pooh and Piglet.

They walked up to Oliver and told him he was under arrest.

His poor mother looked as if she might have a stroke, but Vera was her efficient self, telling everybody there was obviously some misunderstanding and urging Oliver to go with the officers and not make an unpleasant scene on "such a joyful occasion."

Liam and Davey seemed to think it was all uproariously funny.

"Oliver! What a plonker," Davey said. "He comes to the quiz nights at the pub. Talks like he thinks he's William Shakespeare."

"That twit has always been off his onion," Liam said. "What do they think he's done?"

"Murder," said a voice. It was Pradeep, wheeling up behind them. "Sanjay Brumble just rang me. It seems Alfred Duffield had quite a tale to tell about an online squabble amongst some local reenactors who used online chat rooms and Amazon reviews to insult each other and exchange death threats. Apparently this Oliver chap made good on his."

"They used Amazon reviews?" Plant remembered the nasty ones that had upset Camilla.

"It seems they had fierce battles in the pages of Amazon and Book Reviews dot Com," Pradeep said. "Under the guise of 'reviews' they'd say the most shocking things to each other. And of course any authors whose views they didn't happen to like."

Liam nodded. "They threatened all the Sherwood authors. Especially the Manners Doctor. They were trying to punish us all for a novel we publish called
The Poisonous Bunch-Back Toad
by Hinckley Lutterworth."

"Oh yes," Silas said. "Great book. It's been one of our bestsellers. But now it's impossible to get new copies."

"It will be available again soon," Pradeep said. "Very soon. We hope to be up and running by next week. But the building is a bloody mess. I had no idea these people would do real damage. I thought it was all posturing."

"Unfortunately, they postured all over our building and poor Henry's head," Davey said. "I wanted to kill them all after what they said to Vera."

"I didn't realize the extent of the damage until I got back," Pradeep said. "These people are mostly in their twenties and thirties, and but they act like small boys playing with toy soldiers. Oliver called himself 'Owain Glendower' and fought for the Tudor cause by giving one-star reviews to all books that favored the Plantagenets, and DickonthePig, Alfred the Cake, Libra Rising and all their sock puppets gave one-stars to the pro-Tudor books. But attacking our offices and burning our books...I had no idea they'd do such a thing. I honestly thought if they couldn't find Hinckley Lutterworth, they'd give up."