Randall #03 - Sherwood Ltd. Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword by Saffina Desforges.

  Chapter 1—The Man in the Green Hoodie

  Chapter 2—Poor, Out of Luck, and Friendless

  Chapter 3—No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

  Chapter 4—Little Beige Lies

  Chapter 5—Sherwood, Ltd.

  Chapter 6—Not Right for Us at This Time

  Chapter 7—Robin Hood Airport

  Chapter 8—Fairy Tale Villages and Mutant Zombies

  Chapter 9—Welcome to Sherwood

  Chapter 10—Down the Rabbit Hole

  Chapter 11—The Merry Men

  Chapter 12—A Two-Headed Shilling

  Chapter 13—Good Manners for Bad Times

  Chapter 14—The Major Oak

  Chapter 15—Full English

  Chapter 16—Rubber Gregory

  Chapter 17—Quiz Night

  Chapter 18—Getting Sorted

  Chapter 19—A Nice Cup of Tea

  Chapter 20—Damsel in the Dungeon

  Chapter 21—The Outlaws of Sherwood

  Chapter 22—Lincoln Green

  Chapter 23—The Fangs of Sherwood Forest

  Chapter 24—Lost Boys

  Chapter 25—Vermin

  Chapter 26—Three Times Naught

  Chapter 27—The Wendy House

  Chapter 28—Greenwich Mean Time

  Chapter 29—The Whole Chicken

  Chapter 30—Tricksters

  Chapter 31—The Panic Button

  Chapter 32—Gisborne

  Chapter 33—The Arrival

  Chapter 34—Cuddly Predators

  Chapter 35—The Witch and the Gunslinger

  Chapter 36—Honor Among Thieves

  Chapter 37—Shagging the Devil

  Chapter 38—Wolfshead

  Chapter 39—A Handy Dungeon

  Chapter 40—Out of the Woods

  Chapter 41—King Canute

  Chapter 42—Dungeon Master

  Chapter 43—Fairy Thimble Cottage

  Chapter 44—The Swords of Sherwood

  Chapter 45—The Way We Live Now

  Chapter 46—Home is the Hunter

  Chapter 47—A Matter of Life and Death

  Chapter 48—Leader of the Pack

  Chapter 49—The Real Maid Marian

  Chapter 50—The Green Fairy

  Chapter 51—The Third Man

  Chapter 52—Fakes

  Chapter 53—Dr. Alan Greene Makes a Phone Call

  Chapter 54—Distressed Damsels

  Chapter 55—A Spot of Weather

  Chapter 56—My Life as a Plush Bunny

  Chapter 57—Summer Rain

  Chapter 58—The Trespasser

  Chapter 59—Swynsby-Under-Trent

  Chapter 60—Not Precisely All Right

  Chapter 61—Old Friends

  Chapter 62—Drowned Rats

  Chapter 63—An Arrest

  Chapter 64—Peanut Butter and Jelly

  Chapter 65—Gay Best Friends

  Chapter 66—Madri-Gal

  Chapter 67—Clueless Pills for Breakfast

  Chapter 68—Out of the Way

  Chapter 69—The Great God Peter Pan

  Chapter 70—Three Murders

  Chapter 71—Chamomile Tea

  Chapter 72—Storybook Barbies

  Chapter 73—Lady Bountiful

  Chapter 74—Into the Woods

  Chapter 75—Fairy Thimbles

  Chapter 76—Professional Liars

  Chapter 77—Dorcas

  Chapter 78—Grey Goose

  Chapter 79—A Night Visitor

  Chapter 80—Advance

  Chapter 81—Nothing but a Lubber Lost

  Chapter 82—Coyote Redux

  SHERWOOD LIMITED

  by

  Anne R. Allen

  © Anne R. Allen, 2011. All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. The resemblance of any characters to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Published by Mark Williams international Digital Publishing

  Foreword by Saffina Desforges.

  (UK bestselling author of Sugar & Spice and the Rose Red crime thrillers.)

  When you see the name Sherwood you automatically think of Lincoln green, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and Robin Hood and his merry men.

  If you’re a baby-boomer the theme from the old Richard Greene series will surely be floating through your mind as you read this. Younger readers may be thinking Michael Praed, Jason Connery or Russell Crowe.

  But the Robin Hood legend is part of our culture, whichever side of the Atlantic you’re on. We all know it. We all love it. Which is why you will just love Anne R. Allen’s Sherwood Ltd.

  Those of you who have read Anne’s previous books in the Camilla Randall Mysteries series will know the background to the Manners Doctor, as Camilla is known. But there’s no need to be familiar with Camilla’s past to enjoy this latest romantic-comedy adventure.

  Anne R. Allen herself is a celebrated blogger about writers and writing, so no surprise her novels often have literary themes. We last saw Camilla Randall in the hilarious romantic comedy Ghostwriters In the Sky, fighting not entirely imaginary menaces amid a writers’ conference in California.

  Sherwood Ltd takes up Camilla’s adventures from there, with the Manners Doctor turning up in England in pursuit of a publishing deal that may or may not exist, in what may or may not be Robin Hood country, and among men only some of whom are merry.

  As for Robin… You decide.

  S.D.

  Chapter 1—The Man in the Green Hoodie

  Anybody can become an outlaw. For me, all it took was a little financial myopia, an inherited bad taste in spouses, a recession—and there I was, the great-granddaughter of newspaper baron H. P. Randall, edging around in alley-shadows, about to become a common thief.

  Okay, I was only stealing trash: a clear plastic bag stuffed with enough bottles and cans to redeem for a quart of milk. I’d seen it from the window of my friend’s San Francisco apartment where I was doing a little uninvited house-sitting. All I’d found to pour on my morning flax flakes was a dusty bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Not the best fortification for a day of job-hunting.

  I stretched an arm into the dumpster, but the bag of recyclables was just beyond my reach. Praying the gathering dusk would make me invisible to passersby, I kicked off my heels, hoisted myself to the dumpster’s rim and—with a triumphant clatter of Pellegrino bottles—extricated my treasure, safely unobserved.

  Except by some dog who had materialized behind me in the alley—a skinny, bedraggled thing—investigating my discarded shoes with a hungry snout.

  “You’re not to eat those.” I balanced on the edge of the dumpster, keeping my toes out of biting range. I adore dogs, but this one had odd, not-safe eyes.

  A light flared from the street end of the alley.

  I froze.

  “Are you all right up there?” A man moved toward me—all spiky hair and bony shoulders, silhouetted against the lights from out on Castro Street. I managed to twist around to a sitting position, clutching my trash bag. I hoped I wasn’t poaching on his territory. The homeless, like everybody else, would have rules of etiquette. What irony if an etiquette expert were to be attacked for bad manners.

  The man struck another match and reflected flame glinted off steel-rimmed glasses as he lit a pipe. The scent of tobacco wafted above the garbage stink. He came closer. I clutched the glass-filled bag, ready to use it as a weapon.

  “The coyote,” he said: “The trickster: ‘always poor, out of luck, and friendless’—Mark Twain said that, I believe.” His accent was British. Reassuring. “I’d hoped to see a bit
of the wild life of San Francisco, but that’s not the sort I had in mind.”

  An ulp moment.

  “That was a coyote?” I tried to breathe normally as the animal slunk away. “They don’t eat people, do they?” Thank goodness I was wearing my most conservative pants suit. I didn’t want to appear connected with “wild life” of any kind.

  “I’m told they like to nibble on human feet.” The man gave a half-smile.

  I wiggled my naked toes and shuddered. “Thanks for scaring it away.”

  “I’m no expert on coyotes, mind you.” He puffed on his pipe. “We haven’t many in Nottinghamshire.” He was tall and good-looking, in an unkempt, What-Not-To-Wear sort of way: Oxford don meets Pirate of the Caribbean. A little older than me. Mid-forties, maybe. He wore a hooded green sweatshirt with the Golden Gate Bridge embroidered on the chest. Probably a tourist. I relaxed a bit.

  “Not a lot of coyotes in Manhattan either,” I said. “I’ve just arrived in San Francisco myself.” My instinct was to offer a hand and introduce myself, but:

  1) I didn’t think it wise to give my name to an alley-person—no matter how educated and/or attractive.

  2) I didn’t want my dumpster-dive to make its way into the press.

  3) My free hand was occupied with keeping myself from sliding, derrière-first, into the smelly trash below.

  I decided it was time to make a quick exit. But a passing headlight showed the glitter of broken glass on the pavement below. Not nice for jumping on in bare feet.

  “Let me help.” The man stuck his pipe in his teeth and reached up to circle my waist with big, powerful hands. He lifted me down gently. “Did you drop something valuable in the skip there?” He smelled of peach tobacco and Scotch.

  “Just some recycling.” I avoided eye contact and made my way toward my shoes. I wished his touch hadn’t felt so electric.

  “You risked life and limb rather than pollute? Are you sure you’re not a native?” He offered a supportive arm and friendly grin as I stepped into my pumps, but I resisted the urge to flirt. My soul-crushing divorce—plus a fizzled rebound romance—had cured me of trusting good-looking men. Even polite ones. Besides, this was the Castro; the man had to be gay.

  He re-lit his pipe. “You’re here for a bit of a holiday then?” His accent wasn’t BBC English, but something edgier—more northern.

  “No. Work,” I said, lying by omission. I picked up the bag. “I must run.”

  “What sort of work do you do?”

  My least favorite question. Since MetroFeatures dropped my column six months ago, I hadn’t done any actual work—unless you counted nursing my dying mother, staging a ridiculously lavish funeral, fighting the foreclosure on my apartment—and dealing with those condescending debt consolidation people.

  “I write.” I gave him a dismissive smile and moved toward the building.

  He laughed. “Indeed! I don’t suppose you have an unpublished novel lying about? Something a bit steamy?” He puffed his pipe. “Perhaps involving whips and chains?”

  My head pounded. Of course. A stranger in a city alley at night—what made me think he wouldn’t be a pervert? With a quick pivot I took off toward the stairs.

  I could hear him running behind me.

  “Lass! I’m sorry!” I could feel his breath on my neck

  I launched the trash bag in the direction of his solar plexus and ran as quickly as stiletto heels would allow. I heard my Pellegrino bottles shatter as the bag fell short.

  The man wasn’t fazed a bit. “Don’t go!”

  One of his big hands clamped onto my wrist. With the other, he reached into his pocket.

  Oh, great. He had a gun.

  Chapter 2—Poor, Out of Luck, and Friendless

  The man’s grip on my wrist tightened. In the shadowy dark, I couldn’t see what kind of weapon he had taken from his pocket. If it was a gun, it was small. Maybe a knife.

  I looked around for a blunt instrument. I refused to be murdered here, without even an ID: an anonymous dead garbage thief.

  But with a creepy move, he stuck his hand into the pocket of my jacket. I could feel the heat of his hand through the gabardine—no gun or knife—so what did he want?

  A wallet? Keys? Yes: he probably intended to burgle the apartment.

  But I’d show him not to mess with a New Yorker. I faked a trip-and-fall movement, yanked off my shoe, and aimed the steel-tipped heel at his eyeball.

  His turn to run.

  “Get lost, creep!” I hurled the shoe at him, then slipped off the other, clutching it like a hammer. I shot up the back stairs, turned the deadbolt, and ran to the kitchen sink, not sure if I was going to be sick.

  Was it the English accent that made me think the man safe? Or the mention of Nottingham? I’ve always had a thing for Robin-Hoody stuff.

  I set the bronze leather Prada pump on the counter. It looked as alone and useless as I felt. I gulped some water and told myself to stop whining.

  Things could be worse. I could be homeless.

  But my friend Plantagenet Smith had this lovely San Francisco pied a terre he wasn’t using. At least that’s what he said in his last e-mail before my phone and Internet service got cut off. He was staying at his boyfriend’s beach house in Morro Bay until he finished his screenplay. He usually wrote slowly, so I figured I had at least a month.

  I hadn’t broken in—not technically. I simply used the extra key he keeps in the hat of the garden gnome by the back door. I probably should have phoned from somewhere to tell him I’d taken him up on his offer of hospitality “if you’re ever in San Francisco again.” But it’s hard to tell somebody who met you as a teenaged heiress to zillions that:

  Your mother, the Countess, died destitute.

  Your celebrity ex-husband has declared bankruptcy and flown off to Thailand in quest of enlightenment, affordable health care, and/or cheap sex, not necessarily in that order.

  The hot L. A. policeman you’d been hoping to stay with in California wrote last week to say he’d found his soulmate—a sweet vice detective named Lola—and they’d be sure to invite you to the wedding.

  What was left of your last paycheck has gone to bribe Habib, your passive-aggressive Manhattan doorman, so he’ll keep your stuff in the basement until your former assistant can move it to her cousin’s garage in Queens.

  Your entire net worth is in your pocket: two quarters, an old subway token and some grimy Altoid mints.

  I breathed in the serenity of the tastefully decorated studio, telling myself it would all be okay, even though the job I thought I had at the Chronicle had been eliminated three days before I was supposed to fly out here on a non-refundable ticket. I’d find something soon. The clerk at the bookstore on the corner had been hopeful about an opening. Not that selling gay men’s books and erotic paraphernalia was my dream job, but I didn’t think it polite to judge. I hoped I wouldn’t have to dress in Goth regalia like that clerk, though. Black isn’t my color.

  I poured myself a Campari and soda to soothe my stomach and booted my laptop, cheered to see email from Valentina. Hiding my reversal of fortune had meant cutting off my A-list friends—not a huge loss—but it meant my assistant was my only confidante.

  But Valentina’s note was not warm. “WTF is going on with your stuff? Your terrorist doorman told my cousin Rico he’d never heard of you or your things. Rico’s pissed. He’s still gotta be paid for the gas and his time, so send a check ASAP.”

  I steadied myself as this hit me like a gut-punch. Everything I had left. Gone.

  I poured some of Plant’s Grey Goose into my Campari. But it didn’t help my stomach. Or my heart. Which wasn’t so much breaking as deflating—a hissing, dying little balloon collapsing inside my chest. All the designer clothes, shoes, handbags. The furniture, china and silver I’d managed to save from the family estate. My whole identity.

  I checked my watch. Nearly nine PM—midnight, New York time. No point in calling. And who would I call? The co-op board? Lega
lly, I had no right to store anything in the building after the foreclosure on Wednesday. The police? To report that the man I bribed to commit a crime turned out to be a criminal?

  I sipped my make-shift Negroni and stared down into the alley as I fought despair. No signs of my attacker out there, but the dreadful coyote was back, chewing something: a man’s sandal. My Prada pump would probably be next.

  No.

  I wouldn’t let it happen. I grabbed a flashlight, stepped into my clogs and stomped down the stairs, shouting at the animal. The last shred of my former self was not going to become coyote food. I searched with the flashlight beam to make sure the area was Englishman-free, and located my pump at the end of the alley.

  The coyote hardly looked up from its meal of Birkenstock à la dumpster-slime, even when I shone the light directly in its face. The sandal dripped ooze. I felt sick again, but managed to shoo the animal back into the shadows.

  I approached my shoe with stealth, praying the pervert wasn’t lurking in some hidey-hole. As I bent to pick it up, I heard the coyote growl behind me: a serious, don’t-mess-with-my-lunch growl. With some stomping and shouting, I managed to drive the beast away—but only as far as the dumpster. Finally, after some banging on the dumpster’s metal sides, I thought I saw the creature slink away. I beamed the flashlight into the shadows to make sure it had gone.

  That’s when I saw the body—lying lifeless and twisted on top of a large garbage bag—a man dressed entirely in black, with a pentagram tattooed on his left hand.

  Lance. That was his name. The Goth clerk from the bookstore on the corner. One of his feet was nearly gone—his black jeans ending in a bloody stump.

  Chapter 3—No Good Deed Goes Unpunished