“Tomorrow. I’m meeting them at their office, and we’re going for cocktails, but I’ll break the appointment if I have to. It all depends on what Harry has to say.”
We moved.
Minnie seduced the clerk at Wigmore again with camera smiles and folded pound notes while Janie and I hustled the bags up the stairs. I set to cleaning up the mess the vandals had created, and Janie and Minnie headed off to Selfridges’ food court. There was only a can of coffee and half a bottle of gin in Harry’s cabinets. “I don’t think he stayed here very much,” noted Janie. “And it’s such a lovely flat.” She bought daffodils for the kitchen windowsill and waved at the workers across the street at the IBM building.
I even found an adapter in one of Harry’s drawers and was finally able to plug in my laptop computer. I had E-mail from Steven Hyatt. I shared it with the others, reading aloud and editing out the part where he said he loved me.
“Steven says they’ve finished shooting the last scenes, and he’s headed back to Hollywood. He just sent this. Looks like he’s been out of touch in the outback and only arrived back in Sydney. Anyway, he’s on a plane by now. Oh, and he got my message that we’re in London, and he hopes we’re having a wonderful time.”
Minnie rolled her eyes. “Write him back and tell him we’re having a ball. Tell him we’re working on a new script for him about kidnappers and murders and crazy mothers. Tell him that in the end, the butler does it . . . with the upstairs maid.”
“Minnie! I can’t write him that.” But I did.
Around noon, Edmund joined us for sandwiches from Selfridges’ take-away counter and refused to take money for the day’s adventure. “Coo, I’m part of this now. You’ve already paid me enough for two weeks’ work, anyway. This day is on the house. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
We were in our places by one-thirty.
“It’s two o’clock, and no train,” I complained to Minnie.
“When have you ever known a train to run on time?”
“There it is. Oh, here it comes. I’m getting nervous.”
From her taller vantage point, Minnie looked around at the crowd. “No Harry. No Masud.”
“And no Sledge?”
“Well, if he’s as tall as you said, then no. No one is looking me in the eye, anyway.”
The long silver train snaked into the station and the automatic doors hissed open. Passengers got off, and those behind us pushed to let us know we were holding up the queue. Minnie took a deep breath and said, “Okay, let’s get on this car. Mind the gap.”
“I can’t believe you said that.”
People pushed in close behind us, and I grabbed for a strap as the train took off. I missed the strap and lurched into a man in back of me. “I’m sorry,” I said. He grunted a reply and pushed me toward the front of the train. “I said I’m sorry,” I repeated as I looked around for Minnie. I saw her behind me, blocked by half a dozen passengers, her eyes wide open with fright. Following her gaze, I looked down to see that the man pushing me was an awful beggar looking fellow; his hair stood out from his bald crown in dirty rolls of tangled knots and he was wearing clothes so filthy that they were colorless.
I stifled a scream as the derelict kept pushing me from behind. I looked vainly for an unoccupied seat, but they were all full, and everyone was ignoring my plight. The two of us wound up behind the Plexiglas partition at the front of the train. Two small empty benches were in front of the glass. I sank down on one of them. “What do you want? Just leave me alone,” I said, my anger finally coming to the forefront.
“Will you marry me?”
“I beg your pardon. You have a nerve . . . oh, Harry! It’s you.”
“At your service, luv.”
“You look terrible. It’s a good disguise. I just don’t know what it is that you’re disguised for. Everyone said you were dead. Did you know that your mother thinks you’re dead?”
Harry interrupted me. “Keep looking down. Don’t look at me. We don’t have much time.”
Instinctively, I looked around instead of down as instructed. “I don’t see anyone. Not anyone suspicious. Not Masud, anyway.” I looked at Harry out of the corner of my eye and saw him scratching his dirty head like he didn’t have a care in the world. Chunks of matted dirt fell to the floor between us, and I didn’t have to pretend to be disgusted.
Harry sounded angry when he responded, “Yes, I heard what Masud did to you. I’ll get them for that, Honey.”
“How did you hear about the kidnapping? I don’t want anyone getting anyone. I just want us to all be safe and this to be over. When will it be over, Harry? Masud said you killed his brother and that he was going to kill you. Is that why you were living in Padre? You were hiding from Masud?”
“Hush, dear, and listen to what I say. There’s a stop coming up, and I want you to get off and take your friend, the pretty one.”
“Minnie,” I said and then I hushed and listened.
THIRTY–FOUR
“I ‘m going to adopt a king,” Janie said as she came down the hall after her shower. She was towel drying her hair, and before either Minnie or I could come up with one smart retort, she added, “He’s for my book. I have decided to go ahead and write my own mystery book, and I’m going to use a king.” She took the towel off her head and looked at us. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“The king as the detective. I like it,” said Minnie.
“Oh, okay. Well, I need a good king, but I can’t decide which one. I don’t know much about kings. I don’t even know who came first — or who’s old and who’s new.”
“You go by the numbers, I think,” I told her. “Like Charles I came before Charles II.”
“I know them. They’re the dark ones with the big hair who lost their heads. Everyone knows them. I want an obscure king to be my hero. That’s why I need you to help me.”
Minnie blew into the air toward her feet as if the gust would hasten the drying polish on her toes. “Oh, I don’t know much about kings, Janie.”
And I nodded my head in agreement.
“That’s okay, all I want you to do is draw one for me.”
“I don’t do portraits, either,” Minnie laughed. “Maybe I could manage a caricature.”
“I mean draw from the stack,” and Janie thrust a deck of cards toward us. “It’s the official Kings and Queens of England deck. I’ve shuffled them. Now you pick me a king.”
“What if I draw a queen?”
“Then we’ll put her back in the stack. Go on, Honey. Pick a card.”
I complied and handed her Richard III.
“Oh, I know him, and we can’t use him. He’s been overdone. Here, your turn, Minnie.”
“Edward VI.”
“It says here on the card that he died when he was fifteen. He won’t do.”
I leafed through the cards. “Here’s one for you. Henry I. He’s one of the few in here that say he was a just and competent ruler.”
“Yes, I want a good one so he can ferret out the bad. Henry I. Okay, Henry, you’re mine.” She read Henry’s card as she headed toward the bedroom. “Wait, how do I find out about him? For background and all?”
Minnie was putting all her pedicure equipment back in her pink cosmetic bag, one of many she carried around the country, and said, “I’d try the Barbican. It’s kind of like a time line museum. You walk through by ages. I learned more about English history there than anywhere else. You can look up the address in my Fodor’s.”
“Great. Leave it for me when you go? Today is my day to be a tourist in London. Isn’t it great to have life back to normal? You, going on an audition with Edmund and Honey meeting with the book people? Harry alive and . . . Oh, maybe not everything is back to normal. But, bottom line, he’s alive. You know, Honey, you’ve been a bit mysterious about when you’re seeing him again. In person. Not in disguise. I mean we’ve come through a hurricane, survived a tornado and one kidnapping. We’ve even come to a foreign count
ry to find him. All you said last night was that everything was fine. I think we’re due an explanation here.”
I drank a sip of my coffee and waved my own toes in the air; Minnie was kind enough to do double pedicures. “Mysterious? Was I? I didn’t mean to be.” I guided the conversation. “I’ve been trying to think about whether I should say yes to him — about getting married.”
I was embarrassed when my ploy worked.
“Getting married? He asked you again? Oh, let’s do it on this trip. I know the greatest chapel, the Winchester Registry. I went to a wedding there once.” Minnie was already planning her bridesmaid dress.
Janie cut to the core of the matter. “And just where does that leave Steven Hyatt? And don’t forget that, although we dearly love Harry, he is a murderer. Don’t you want to know the rest of that story?”
Well, yes, I did. And as soon as I could get them on their way, I would know it. Harry had been specific about my coming alone to meet him. Not that he didn’t like Janie and didn’t want to meet Minnie. “It will be safer with just one of you,” he’d whispered across the aisle of the shaking train. “Come alone, please.” That’s why I didn’t dare tell them all of Harry’s conversation. I knew my friends and knew they wouldn’t let me out of the flat without their protection.
I changed the direction of the conversation again. “Speaking of Steven Hyatt, I had another E-mail from him. He’s just arrived back in the States and wants to know what’s going on over here.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That we’re having a wonderful time and wished he was here. You think for one minute that I’m going to tell him that I was kidnapped and knifed? He’d be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, and we don’t need that.” I didn’t tell them that Steven, afraid I’d get back together with Harry, had also asked me to marry him in his Email. Some women enjoy such a dilemma. It just gave me the cramps.
“And I checked my bank balance on-line. It’s still showing zero, so it was a good idea for us to move here. At least we’re saving on hotel costs.”
The two women got into a discussion of the high cost of everything in England, and that distracted them from their questions about Harry. I wished for the sake of my churning stomach that I could forget them, too.
In the end, I left Wigmore Street first. I just couldn’t wait any longer for them to finish getting dressed. I hurriedly found a pink flowered dress that I thought would pass for business attire and ran out the door, telling them I would be late, late, late if I didn’t scurry. I went straight to the street phone box and dialed the number for Dragon Flight. I had more trouble knowing how much pence to insert in the slot than I did telling the man who answered that regrettably I would have to postpone our meeting.
Then I hurried to The Breakfast Scene to meet Harry.
It was closed. I hit myself in the head with my palm. “Duh, of course, it’s closed. That’s why it’s called The Breakfast Scene.” It was going on the two o’clock time I had promised to meet Harry, and the sign on the door said the restaurant closed at one. “Oh, wherever is Harry?”
“Talking to yourself is a sign of dementia,” said a voice behind me.
“Harry!” I spun in my tracks to see him.
“Surprise. It’s me.”
“Sledge!”
“Want to see your Harry? Come with me.”
THIRTY–FIVE
“Yes, I did kill Masud’s brother.”
That was Harry’s direct answer to my frustrated attempt to make sense of a well-dressed Sledge Hamra taking me by the elbow outside the flat on Wigmore Street and hustling me into a waiting taxi. He’d soothed all my protests and multiple questions with the same canned answer: “Ask Harry.”
And ask Harry I did.
The second I saw him. The real Harry. No disguises. Just plain old redheaded Harry, with a laugh ready to spring from his throat. Maybe a bit more formal, no beach cutoffs in this area of London, but the same casual, laid-back style.
Sledge Hamra had paid off the cabby at an intersection near Leicester Square and tugged me into an alleyway that led to a backstage door of a theater. “Harry’s in here,” he’d promised as an enticement for me to enter quietly and not make a scene on the street.
I followed, hoping that it was a live Harry I would see.
A very live Harry grabbed me as Sledge and I entered the building. He glanced at the private investigator to receive the reassuring nod that I took to mean that we had not been followed, and then my Harry gave me the most passionate embrace and kiss he’d ever given me. I responded with genuine emotion to the kisses, it was like a waking dream to be kissing Harry again. I would have enjoyed it more had I not known we had a watcher to our reunion. I opened my eyes to see an amused Sledge Hamra watching us.
“Who is he?” I asked as I pointed to my escort.
“Sorry. Honey, meet Al Hamra, one of the U.S. Navy’s finest SEALs — and my good friend.”
“He tricked me. You tricked me.” I declared as I pulled myself out of Harry’s arms.
“Had to — for your own sake. Al’s been your bodyguard for a while now because . . . well, it’s a long story.”
“Pretty poor excuse of a bodyguard if you ask me,” I said. “I’ve got some questions for you, too, buddy.” And I pointed my mother’s accusing finger at the tall man.
Al “Sledge” Hamra shrugged. “Can I help it if I’m better in the water than on land? I’m not a bodyguard, just a friend helping out a friend.” He held up his big hands in protest. “Hey, if you’re going to be angry at anyone, please make it Harry.”
So, I turned to Harry again who motioned for me to sit down on an oversized chair in the small room he’d guided us to. “No one will disturb us here. It’s a script reading room, where the cast and director do read-throughs on the script when they begin production or when something’s being built onstage.” He sat on one end of a long, blue velvet couch, and Sledge perched on the arm of the other end.
“Okay, I’ll buy that. ’Cause what I’m hearing here sounds like a bad script to me.” I sounded harsh because my real self just wanted to grab Harry and love him till the cows came home, but I figured this was not the time or the place.
The men looked at each other, and Sledge gestured to Harry to continue his story. “Right. Well, as I said, luv, I killed Masud’s brother . . .”
“Or I did,” interrupted Sledge.
An exasperated Harry said, “We’ve gone over that, Al. I killed him.”
I tried to get comfortable in the big chair but finally had to pull my legs up under me to keep them from dangling on the ground. “Masud thinks Harry did it”
“He thinks Harry did it because that’s the only name he had to go on.” said Sledge.
“It’s like this,” said Harry. “It was during the Gulf War. Al and I were collaborating on some Iraq recon missions, and we were doing one in Basra — with another guy from my squad — when we were discovered. And this other man, Robin was his name, and I were captured.”
“What happened to you?” I asked Sledge.
“I was across the street, had gone there to make some calculations . . .”
“Calculations?”
“That was our assignment. To get the coordinates of a building known to house military personnel and equipment. Laser coordinates for a bombing mission. We tried to be so careful so we wouldn’t get any civilian homes or businesses.”
“You just marched in and measured things?”
Harry finally let loose with the laugh he’d been hiding. My heart warmed at the sound of it, but I was still more angry and curious than forgiving. “No, no, lass. We were in disguise. You wouldn’t have known me. My skin was as dark as Masud’s, my hair was black, and I wore black contact lenses. We’d swum in during the night from our ship in the Gulf.”
“You swam in? How far out was your ship?”
“About twenty-five miles, and no, we didn’t swim all the way. A helicopter flew us nearer the beach—we’d
taken out most of their radar by that time in the war — then we swam in.”
“It’s not like we hadn’t done it before,” said Sledge. “We were the best at doing recon.”
“Then what went wrong?”
“What usually goes wrong? Someone was where they weren’t supposed to be, according to our information. And a crew showed up to take us. It was just Robin and me, as I said, Al was out of it, across the street.”
“I saw it all, though. They fired at Robin and Harry. Hit them both.” Sledge paused and added casually, “So, I just went in and got them, or Harry, anyway. Couldn’t rescue Robin.” He had a regretful grimace on his face as he talked. “Turned out these were a group of terrorist trainees, not military. Masud’s brother was shot and killed. Military might have chalked it up to war games, but Masud took it as a personal vendetta.”
I was awestruck at the courage of these men. Quietly, I asked, “And how did they get your name, Harry? How did Masud know it was you?”
“Robin,” he answered just as quietly. “And trust me, he didn’t give up my name lightly. We heard later when we found out Masud had targeted me.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes. We went back in quickly with reinforcements, but he was dead. Well, Al went back in, I was in hospital.”
“How did you know Masud was after you?”
Al answered, “There was an attempt on Harry’s life while he was in the hospital. We caught the man, and he finally talked.” He sounded bitter as he went on. “We know how to make prisoners talk, too, but this guy is still alive.”
“How come Masud wasn’t after Sledge?” I couldn’t call him Al.
“Robin was new on the squad. I don’t think he even knew my name,” answered Sledge.
“That’s when you came to Padre?” I asked Harry.
The Complete Honey Huckleberry Box Set Page 49