So Much For Buckingham: The Camilla Randall Mysteries #5 (9 page)

I picked up the phone again.

"I don't see anybody," I said. "But they could be hiding."

"Are these people threatening you, ma'am?"

I let go of the door handle and looked in horror as the screen door moved away from me, seemingly on its own.

Then it banged again.

I looked down. There was Buckingham, with his claws hooked in the screen, pulling back the door.

He unhooked his claw and gave me a look that said, "You can't be this stupid. Open the damn door."

"I, um, maybe it's not..." I felt my face flush. "I'm so sorry. It seems to be a false alarm. Sorry. It's only my cat. Don't bother the police."

"A unit has already been dispatched, ma'am."

I closed my phone and gave Buckingham a stern look.

"I'll let you in on one condition," I said to his smug little white-mustached face. "When the rapist reviewers come for me, you will use those claws on them."

Buckingham gave me a quick glance, then scampered inside to jump on my favorite chair and curl up for a nap.

When the police arrived, I felt like a complete idiot. The two nice officers didn't want to take my word for it that the scary thing banging the door had been a cat. They insisted on taking a tour of the cottage and the bookstore.

I showed them the email, but they said it didn't constitute a "credible threat."

But after they left, I realized it felt pretty credible to me. I made sure the deadbolt was secure on the door and didn't let Buckingham out, even when he asked.

"You're staying here with me, mister," I said. "I'm not facing this alone."

––––––––

P
lant slept a bit on the train—aided by the first few pages of the soporific script by Alfred Duffield.
The Kingdom of Perpetual Night
was as pretentious as its title.

It did indeed open with the protagonist (described in excruciating detail) waking to his phone alarm, dressing and showering before going to his boring job as a janitor at a London West End theater, complete with the suggestion of soundtrack and camera angles.

The character even read his horoscope. Plant had heard quite enough about astrology for one week. Crazy Neville was still on his mind.

And the surreal effects of jet lag hadn't disappeared entirely. He kept imagining that a man in a rumpled suit in the seat behind was staring at him. The man carried a fancy camera case and looked like one of the reporter herd from the hotel sidewalk. But it didn't seem likely Plant's bad joke could be that big a story.

He managed to nap a little more, but he did not feel much more rested by the time he arrived in Swynsby-on-Trent. And his bruises hurt.

Without the use of his phone and Google maps, he had no idea how to get to the Sherwood Ltd. building, or if it was in walking distance, so he hailed a taxi.

Luckily he did remember the address was on Threadneedle Street. Such a cozy English name.

Swynsby seemed a gritty little town, nothing like the storybook villages he'd passed through in Southern England. The buildings were mostly dirty red brick, probably nineteenth century, from the look of it. But the River Trent was magnificent—a wide, fiercely-running waterway that Camilla told him had been the model for George Eliot's "Floss" in
The Mill on the Floss
.

She had also assured him that her old friends, technicians Liam and Davey, were likely to be on the premises, even on a Sunday, since they lived full time in makeshift flats in the sprawling old factory.

But when the taxi deposited Plant at the seedy, featureless brick building, he thought the place looked pretty much abandoned.

He wondered if the taxi driver had got the street wrong, but after a moment he made out the faded painted letters on a rusty sign above the main entrance, identifying the place as "The Maidenette Building." He remembered Sherwood Ltd. was housed in a former ladies' underwear factory.

This had to be the right place.

The whole complex was surrounded by a chain link fence, locked with a big, new-looking padlock. Trash and discarded plastic bags drifted around the entrance, and the driveway and parking lot were piled with so many broken beer bottles and crushed cans the area looked as if it had been used as a garbage dump for some time.

No car or delivery truck could navigate that parking lot, so the Sherwood people probably weren't shipping out any books or getting deliveries. Or trash pick-up.

He walked along the street, looking for another entrance, but found none. In fact, nothing identified the building as the home of Sherwood Ltd., publishers. But he could see what looked like some office equipment through one of the filthy windows, along with tea mugs on the desks and somebody's half-eaten sandwich.

Maybe someone was still inside.

He got as close as he could to one of the windows and shouted.

"Liam! Davey! Are you in there?"

He heard nothing but the bells of a distant church.

He shouted again, feeling more and more like an idiot. A chilly wind had come up and the sky was darkening.

More English rain was on its way and here he was, all alone, with no raincoat.

––––––––

O
n Sunday, my day off, I found myself feeling grateful to Buckingham. Making a trip to the San Luis Obispo Petco to buy cat food, a bed and other supplies for my new housemate took up some time I'd otherwise have spent worrying.

Not that I didn't manage to get in some anxious thoughts along the way. As I drove home, I felt the worries piling up as fast as those toxic book reviews.

And the awful stories about Jer-Z-Boy. They were all over the news now. Everybody knew about Ronzo's video.
Rolling Stone
had issued an apology. If poor Ronzo was going to get a funeral, his family would probably need to keep it a big secret.

I hoped they were safe. I knew he had been close to his grandmother and his vast collection of cousins.

So far nobody seemed to have put together the fact Ronzo and I had been friends. It would be so awful for people to hate me for yet another thing I had no control over. Of course it was possible that "Hinckley Lutterworth" was some
nom de guerre
Ronzo had used. But the name seemed so snobby and unlike him—plus there was no mention of it in any of the news stories.

That email threat seemed to have more to do with my own tribe of book-haters than Ronzo's misdeeds. It must have been sent by one of those weird Tudor people like Libra Rising or DickonthePig.

All the messages I'd left for Plant were presumably piling up too. He still hadn't returned them. I wanted desperately to know for certain that he'd survived the bombing or whatever it was. He'd looked a little shaky in that news clip. And he hadn't made much sense. He might have got a concussion or something.

The Guardian
website said what happened at the Old Vic had been an accident, but the
Daily Mail
said it was obviously the work of the IRA, up to their old tricks. The London
Times
favored Al Qaida or ISIS. But at least they all agreed there had been no deaths or major injuries.

And I still had no word from Silas. I would find it hard to forgive him for continuing with the silent treatment all this time. He must know by now that Plant had been at the Old Vic when the balcony fell.

After all, he was officially Plant's next of kin now.

I'd left another message for Silas this morning, begging him to let me know what he'd heard. But he hadn't replied, even with a text. I Googled that Hawaiian spa place Glen owned, and it looked pretty jungle-y. Maybe it was too remote to get reliable cellphone service.

But that was a stretch. It was in Hawaii, not Vanuatu.

My resentment toward Silas grew by the day. If he hadn't bailed on his own marriage, Plant would be safe in some luxury London hotel bed having hot married sex.

And I'd have his virtual shoulder to cry on in emails and texts that got answered. I so much wanted him to tell me I didn't have to be afraid of some Internet trolls who probably lived in their mother's basements and simply had tragic mental health issues.

I wondered if Plant might be recovering at his hotel. I could phone him there. If I could remember the name. Had he told me? A call to England would be expensive, but if I could ring him in his room, and hear he was all right, I'd feel so much better.

But I wasn't sure he'd ever told me the name of the place. He'd said it was "a very modern-looking hotel near the theater district." There had to be dozens of them.

I drove back into downtown Morro Bay feeling more worried than ever.

At least I had something for the cat. I'd bought food and dishes and a brush and what looked like a cozy bed—charging them to my one card that wasn't yet over the limit.

As I turned into my driveway, I decided to spend the rest of the day relaxing as best I could. I'd listen to the local NPR station's classical music and read a good book. One perk of owning a bookstore. I always had my pick of reading material.

But as I pulled up to my parking space behind the store, I felt fear tighten my throat.

The screen door of the cottage was swinging in the stiff sea breeze. I was always so careful to click it shut.

The inside door was unlocked, too.

I knew I'd locked it.

I put down my purchases on the front step and grabbed my garden shovel before venturing inside.

Nobody there. And nothing seemed to be missing.

Except Buckingham. I did hope the stupid cat hadn't decided to take off now that I'd invested my last few dollars in him.

"Hello?"

A jacket was tossed over the back of one of my dining chairs. A hooded sweatshirt. What kind of a burglar left behind an article of clothing and didn't take anything?

I had a thought. Sometimes Ronzo had worn a hoodie. When he wasn't wearing his silly suit.

Could it be?

My heart quickened, filled with a crazy hope that Ronzo might be here, alive and well—and that somehow he hadn't been the murderous Jer-Z-Boy after all.

"Hello? Is somebody there?"

I tiptoed into the sitting room, unable to fight the feeling that somebody was lurking. But things seemed to be pretty much unchanged since this morning. I didn't remember leaving that water glass unwashed on the coffee table, but I might have. I'd been in sort of a fog since this whole thing started.

Still clutching my shovel, I tiptoed into the bedroom.

A battered green backpack lay on the floor by the door.

And in the bed, covered with my Laura Ashley quilt, was a man—long-haired and scruffy—his arms curled around Buckingham. They were both sound asleep.

The man was not Ronzo.

––––––––

P
lant needed to find the Merry Miller. And hope he'd remembered the name of the pub correctly.

He shouldered his carry-on bag—now overstuffed with Alfred's script—and walked away from the river and toward what looked like the center of town. 

An old man riding a motorized wheelchair zoomed past him on the cobbled street. He slowed and looked at Plant.

"You look a long way from home, lad. Ye lost?" He gave Plant a scowl that suggested being lost was a dire offence in this part of town.

Plant asked about the Merry Miller.

"Just round the corner ahead. You can get a decent bit of shepherd's pie if you're hungry. But stay away from the beans on toast!" The man put a hand to his belly. "She's famous for her beans on toast, is the landlady, and they go down a treat, but you'll regret it after."

He motored off, still scowling.

Plant rounded the corner and saw the sign for the Merry Miller ahead. It looked charming—much more inviting than the other buildings in the neighborhood—half-timbered in medieval style, with bottle-glass windows.

He almost had to stoop to get in the Hobbit-scaled door. But he liked the cozy feel of the place. A soccer match was playing on a television mounted on one wall and patrons watched as they nursed their pints or dug into plates of bangers and mash and a mess that must have been the famous beans on toast.

What was the landlady's name? Camilla had written about her a number of times in those long emails she sent when she was adventuring over here. She sounded like a tough old broad with a taste for younger men. Belinda, maybe? No. Brenda.

There she was, behind the bar. Formidably built, with hair dyed an improbable shade of red.

The place went quiet as Plant walked up to the bar. Several people stared with what felt like hostility. Plant wondered if they could tell he was a tourist. Probably the carry-on bag gave him away. Or maybe they were homophobic. It was sort of a backward place. Camilla had described Lincolnshire as "the Arkansas of England."

He tried to ignore the stares. The food smelled good and he was awfully hungry. He hadn't eaten since his "full English" this morning and now it was past three.

He sat at the bar and ordered some shepherd's pie and a pint of the local brew. He also asked for a bit of the pickled beetroot, which was billed as "special of the day." He offered Brenda his friendliest smile.

She did not reciprocate.

Maybe the hostility was directed at his clothes. The Ralph Lauren blazer and khakis, very casual for him, probably looked out of place in the working-class bar.

"I'm here on the recommendation of a friend." He smiled carefully. "Do you remember Camilla Randall, an American author who stayed in Swynsby several years ago? She was published by the Sherwood publishing company down the road."

Brenda gave him a scrutinizing stare, then turned to fill a beer mug from one of the kegs behind her.

"I remember that one. A bit airy-fairy. Always got up like a fashion model. They called her the Duchess. But Vera Winchester liked her. Vera's a good sort. Too bad what happened there. Hard to be out of a job at Vera's age."

Brenda put the pint of dark ale in front of Plant on the bar.

Vera. The office manager. Camilla said she was the backbone of the company. If Vera was out of a job, it was not good news. Things must be as bad as the condition of the building had suggested.