So Much For Buckingham: The Camilla Randall Mysteries #5

by Anne R. Allen

  But I shuddered at the possibility he'd been killed. Especially if the knife in the photo on my door was meant to be a warning that I was next.

  I hadn't thought of that, and I wasn't entirely pleased that Peter had added that worry to my already overflowing collection of anxieties. But I knew he wasn't being unkind. His warnings about the Croatian mafia were certainly heartfelt. I hadn't asked him what happened to his own Croatian henchperson, Jovan Ratko, but I assumed the parting hadn't been entirely amicable.

  I kept to the speed limit on my way north. In fact, part of me didn't want to go back at all. I wasn't going to enjoy being alone in my cottage. Home wouldn't feel safe now.

  I wanted this whole nightmare to be over. For Plantagenet to be home safe and Silas to come to his senses and the book review nonsense to evaporate.

  And mostly I wanted to erase Ronzo from my brain. To forget I ever knew anything about him and his tattooed behind.

  Maybe I should get a room in a motel and not go home at all. Before this, I'd always felt safe in my little cottage, hidden away behind the store. But now all I could think of was how isolated it was back there.

  I could afford a motel now, thanks to Peter's money. I owed most of it to Silas, of course, but I could afford a night or two.

  I had to stop thinking of it as Peter's. It was mine. The royalties I'd earned. Paid by Sherwood Ltd.

  No. I needed to get home. I had a cat to feed. I couldn't very well leave the poor thing in the store all night without food or water. It was important for me to be brave, at least for Buckingham's sake.

  Even if it meant confronting Croatian mobsters.

  ~

  But I needn't have worried about Buckingham. When I got home, the cat was on the bench in front of the store, cozying up to Hobo Joe. Joe was playing his guitar and busking—strictly forbidden by city laws, but I never reported it. Joe played beautifully, and I knew he didn't waste the money on anything silly. He lived in a clean and sober camp.

  And right now, I was awfully glad to see him.

  "Hi Joe!" I waved at him as I pulled into the driveway. "Hear anything from Dorothy?"

  "Na," he said. "She's back in her plastic world. Hustle-bustle and sleep-when-you're-dead. Not my thing."

  I parked and went over to the bench to retrieve Buckingham. I wondered if Joe had heard about Ronzo. He had been something of a thorn in Joe's side for a while, trying to connect Joe to the dead rock god J. J. Tower.

  Ronzo had been right, of course. But Joe described the hard-living J. J. as a "dead guy I used to be." Both Ronzo and I had agreed to keep his secret.

  Joe usually asked about "Bonzo"—as he called him. But not today. I hoped he didn't know.

  I stood for a moment and listened to the haunting melody Joe was playing. I took a handful of dollar bills from my wallet and scattered them in his guitar case, hoping it would prompt other people to add to them.

  "That's beautiful. What's the song?"

  "It don't have a title yet. Still working on it. I got a band now. Did I tell you?"

  I shook my head as I tried to coax Buckingham to leave Joe's side.

  "Five guys. Mostly other street folks like me. We play bluegrass and roots music. We call ourselves the Boll Weevils. You know, 'just a-lookin' for a hooome'. "

  Joe had a nice laugh.

  "We even got us a gig," he said. "We're playing tomorrow at the Red Barn in Los Osos."

  "Is that a club?"

  "Nope. It's a barn. Just an old barn. But they do concerts there. You should come. They ask for a fifteen buck donation, but there's going to be a whole bunch of bands."

  I would have liked to stay and listen some more, but I needed to check my messages, feed myself and Buckingham and get to sleep early. I was exhausted.

  Even the fear of shadowy Croatian gangsters wasn't likely to keep me awake tonight.

  Chapter 56—Plantagenet

  Plant wanted to take back every nasty remark he had ever made about British food. The feast at the local pub where the Winchesters were hosting the rehearsal dinner for their son Callum's nuptials was delicious.

  The beef was tender and juicy. The peas were fresh and not overcooked. The Yorkshire pudding was light and delicious with the dark, rich gravy.

  And most of all, the ale was superb. He didn't know when beer had ever tasted so good to him.

  Vera Winchester fluttered around the room, making sure all the guests were properly seated. She'd put Plant at a table with two local firemen—Callum's colleagues—and their wives, plus a woman who appeared to be one of Vera's garden club friends. The garden club woman had been speaking at length on the subject of petunias.

  Plant was more than grateful to her for taking the conversation responsibilities on her ample shoulders. He did not want to explain what he was doing at the wedding of a fireman in provincial Lincolnshire dressed like a gangster with a wasting disease.

  Especially since he wasn't quite sure himself.

  From what he could gather from Vera, he was still under suspicion but they didn't have enough evidence to officially charge him. He would have been held for the full 96 hours, since he was a foreigner and a murder suspect, if Vera hadn't appeared to vouch for him.

  For which he would be eternally grateful.

  Now she fluttered by his table, looking a bit distracted.

  "Everything all right?" she said. "Has everyone met Mr. Smith? He's a friend of my boss, Henry Weems."

  Plant had never met Henry Weems, but he was happy with the little white lie. Vera was kind not to introduce him as the suspect in the reenactor murder, which was probably how the rest of England would see him.

  One lucky thing about his clownish costume was that people weren't likely to identify him as an Oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriter.

  The garden club woman had changed the subject to tales of her son, who had apparently been unhappy about the festivities at the Old Hall last Sunday.

  "Henry VIII stayed at the Swynsby Old Hall too, you know. He met Catherine Parr there. Our Oliver is furious there's all this fuss about Richard III. He thinks Shakespeare was quite right about Richard. Oliver has been holed up in his room ever since the event on Sunday—in a dreadful state. He says he's caught a stomach bug, but I'm sure he simply drank too much of that mead. Just an excuse to drink, some of those reenactments. And of course last Sunday's do turned so tragic..."

  Plant had trouble swallowing his bite of beef. He'd be happier if the conversation could return to gardening. He tried to formulate a sensible question about petunias, but one of the firemen spoke first.

  "That was a bad business at the Hall," the firemen said. "Nancy-boys killing each other. They're all barking, those reenactors. Who'd want to re-live history—go back to a time with no loos and no baths? What a smelly lot our ancestors must have been."

  Plant took a gulp of beer and tried to keep his face bland. Thank goodness he was wearing a suit no "Nancy-boy" would be caught dead in.

  "Oh, you're right there," the garden club woman said. "Our Oliver didn't half stink when he came back from the Hall on Sunday. In fact, he tossed his whole costume in the bin. It was covered with sick. He'd worked for months on that costume. Jasper Tudor is his character. The Duke of Bedford. Brother of Henry VI. I asked him why he couldn't reenact a commoner. That crushed velvet cost him a pretty penny. As did those ridiculous hand-made shoes. And now it's all gone—a stinking mess tossed in the skip."

  "A duke? Your son played a duke at the Old Hall on Sunday?" Plant still wondered about the enigmatic Richard's comments about "the dukes" in the tower.

  "Oh, yes. He'd have none of the commoner stuff. He loves to lord it over his mates in the Retinue. The Glendower Retinue they call themselves. Oliver is so proud of his Welsh roots. Not that I think much of the Tudor Society blokes he spends time with. They all go on their computers and say the most shocking things to each other. The Plantagenets are worse. They've even sent Oliver death threats for standing up to them. He showed me the vile th
ings they said to some poor American lady who's fond of the Tudors. Disgusting. They said they were going to kill him for defending her. I told him it's all nonsense, but he's high strung and he gets upset. I told him he should find a different hobby. It could cost him a job one of these days. Employers look at those bloggy things. He needs to get himself a better position, does Oliver. He can't be a gardener all his life. His Da wants him to move out. After all, he's nearly thirty..."

  "Where does he work?" asked one of the firemen's wives. "I hear they're hiring at Tesco."

  Her husband gave something between a grunt and a laugh.

  "Tesco must have an opening for a driver in Doncaster. That's where that poor bloke worked what died at the Old Hall."

  "Oliver didn't mention he knew him. But perhaps that's why he's been in such a black mood since Sunday."

  Plant quietly ate Yorkshire pudding between careful smiles, but his brain was racing. This Oliver person might very well have seen Neville. He might even have been in that smelly tower. Vera must know the family. Maybe she could arrange for him to have a conversation with this Oliver person.

  "I hope you don't think we're a bunch of bloodthirsty nutters here in Swynsby, Mr. Smith," the other wife said. "We don't all get up in fancy dress and kill each other."

  "Speaking of nutters..." The garden club lady cleared her throat. "The bride's brother is going to make a toast."

  They all went silent as a young man stood and looked nervously around the room before raising his glass.

  Plant nearly choked on his pudding.

  The young man had the face of Richard III. His Richard III. The one he'd seen in the Old Hall. The one that had appeared in his cell. He even had a slightly raised right shoulder. He started to speak in a thick Midlands accent that Plant could barely understand, but the voice was the same as that reenactor.

  He had found his witness.

  Either that or he had gone completely insane.

  Chapter 57—Camilla

  When I woke the next morning, I was relieved to have a text from "Piotr Stygar".

  "On the shuttle bus from Heathrow to King's Cross. Then Swynsby. All is well."

  So Peter had survived Customs and was safely in England. But all didn't feel well to me. I was glad Peter was safe, of course, but I'd spent the night with terrible dreams. Peter was right: I'd been wrong to dismiss the knife throwing as another prank.

  But now I thought I saw Croatian gangsters everywhere. Not that I had any idea what they might look like. Every time anybody came into the store, I felt as if I was going to jump out of my skin.

  The Jens didn't help. Jen B. was scheduled to work, but didn't show up for nearly an hour. Finally Jen A. came instead. She explained that Jen B. had a terrible fight with her vegan boyfriend Elijah and they'd broken up the night before. Something to do with shoes.

  Jen thought I should know all about it.

  "You're the one who told her to break up with him," she said. "You told her if you had to choose between a man and your Manolos, you'd choose the shoes. I told her you were absolutely right. But Elijah went totally Vader. He's such a jerk."

  Jen was only able to substitute for two hours because she had a class, so I had a crazy-busy day. I didn't get back to my computer until dinner time.

  I booted it up, eager to hear from Peter about Plantagenet.

  But there was nothing from either of them.

  There was, however another anonymous email. The address wasn't the same as the death threat from the Plantagenet Circle.

  This one had a simple Gmail address from somebody who called himself "concernedcitizen".

  But it made me go cold all over.

  "We know where you live, you murdering whore. Payback is coming. We have garden gnomes."

  After I calmed down enough to eat dinner and read a little, I still felt jumpy from the email.

  In spite of my promise to Peter, I didn't feel I could call the police again for another stupid email threat. I was sure they'd tell me it was "not credible" again. If something like "we'll choke you on a severed penis" was sub-standard as far as threats were concerned, "we have garden gnomes" would hardly pass muster.

  I could have shown them the knife, but I had no way to prove it came from the same person as the emails.

  I didn't want to go to sleep. Somehow I felt safer staying up, fully dressed. If I was going to be murdered, I didn't want to be lying helpless in my bed.

  I kept my cell phone next to me ready to dial 911.

  I didn't even know who these people were. They could be the anti-Tudor people, the Badly Behaving Author people, or Ronzo's Croatians.

  This email wasn't much different from the hundreds of threats I'd had on Amazon and Book Reviews dot Com, and it used mostly the same language—except this person knew how to spell "murder"—and didn't seem to have confused me with Prince Charles' second wife.

  This one was calling me a murderer. That made it scarier. People felt okay about killing murderers.

  I supposed somebody who connected me to Ronzo might think I was a kitten murderer by association.

  But not a lot of people knew about our romance.

  I poured myself a glass of the wine Peter had bought and sat down in front of the television news. Maybe there would be something about Plantagenet. Or even about Ronzo and his Croatian gang, if there was one. I needed more information. The not-knowing was making me crazy.

  I felt myself drifting off to sleep where I sat, with Buckingham on my lap, my wine unfinished.

  Shouts from the courtyard startled me awake. Someone banged on the door. I smelled smoke.

  Buckingham scampered off to the bedroom.

  I wished I could scamper, too. I spoke through the door with a shaky voice.

  "What do you want?"

  "To get you out of there! Camilla, open up!"

  It was Hobo Joe. I opened the door.

  "We gotta get you the hell out of here. The guy across the street is calling 911. Grab your car keys."

  "What's going on?"

  "Your store. It's on fire."

  Chapter 58—Plantagenet

  Plant watched the nervous young man with King Richard's face give a rambling speech about princesses kissing frogs and how his sister was his princess and Callum was not actually a frog, but he'd thought so at first. Somehow he got a mention of Princess Diana in there, and started in on what promised to be a rant about how she'd been murdered.

  People at the table began to whisper.

  "Such a tragedy about Declan," one of the firemen's wives said. "He was a promising lad, but he was in a car accident or some such thing. It's left him with that limp and something wrong with his back."

  "Accident or no accident, the boy's a drug addict, pure and simple," her husband said with a harrumph.

  "Whatever, I feel very sad for his poor mum—not to mention the bride." Oliver's mother made a failed attempt at a whisper. "Declan and Oliver used to do the reenactments together, but Declan got caught up with the Ricardians when they found King Richard's body over in Leicester, and so he dropped the Retinue. There was a terrible row. But last I heard the Ricardian Guild wouldn't have him either. He wanted to play Richard and they wouldn't let him. Not after he joined in with those bully-boys from Doncaster who attacked the Sherwood building and put poor Vera out of work."

  Plant's brain zinged. Everything started to fall into place.

  "This Declan," he said. "Could he have dressed up like King Richard at the Old Hall reenactment, even though he wasn't there as part of the Guild?"

  At that moment, Vera's husband George jumped up and began his own—mercifully short—toast in a rich, booming voice that drowned out poor Declan's rant about Princess Diana and a conspiracy involving Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.

  Faces all around the room smiled with relief.

  The young man blushed and fled from the room.

  "Wait!" Plant couldn't lose him now. He jumped up and tried to run after him, but by the time he'd padded
out to the parking lot in his clown shoes, Declan had vanished.

  A moment later, Plant heard a motor scooter zoom out onto the street.

  He'd lost his witness again. But this time, he knew who he was looking for: Declan, brother-of-the-bride.

  A real live human being.

  Sanjay would be able to find him now. Assuming Sanjay was real, too.

  Chapter 59—Camilla

  Joe hustled me to my car and told me to "get the hell out of here before this puppy blows." He shoved his guitar in the back seat and tossed my purse and phone on my lap. "Go!"

  But I couldn't. Not without Buckingham.

  "My cat. I have to get him..."

  "I'll find the damned cat. You get the car out of the path of those flames. Look."

  I peered through the thick smoke that filled the courtyard and driveway. I could see flames coming from the roof of the store.

  "How will I find you? Where will I go...?" My groggy mind could hardly grasp what was going on.

  "Bank parking lot at the end of the street. I'll meet you there. With Bucky." Joe slammed the door and ran into the smoke-filled cottage.

  I backed out and tried not to scream as I saw the roof of my store ablaze. The front windows were scrawled with some kind of spray paint. I could make out the words, "WHORE" and "MURDERER". There were more, but I knew I didn't have a second to spare to read them. If a spark fell down on the car, it would be all over.

  I heard sirens coming down Main Street as I took off for the bank parking lot.

  I pulled into a space in the empty lot and worked at fighting my panic. I took a cough drop from my purse to soothe my smoke-scratchy throat. Thank goodness Joe had the presence of mind to grab my purse and phone.

  And now he was risking his life to save my cat. What an amazing man. I understood why Dorothy had loved him, in spite of his bizarre lifestyle. Most homeless people were seriously ill or down on their luck, but Joe seemed to have chosen this life.