Randall #01 - The Best Revenge Read online

  “Who is it?” She checked to make sure the chair was still wedged under the doorknob. Mother ought to be home by now, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  “It is Despina, Miss Camilla. Madame is angry you did not tell her another guest is arrived for luncheon.”

  Camilla moved the chair and opened the door. Despina, wearing an apron over a five-year-old Halston, looked harried.

  “Yes. Also is Mr. Smith here. Madame says what are you going to do with him?”

  “Plantagenet is here? Thank God. Is Mother with that Chickenburger person?”

  “Yes. He is most demanding. I told her last time he was here. I do not put branches in the bourbon. He gets olive, twist or cherry like anybody else.”

  “Last time? Lester Stokes has been here before?”

  “Oh yes. In fact he came the day that Mr. Randall…” Despina stopped herself. “I am sorry. I shouldn’t speak of it.”

  “That man was here the day my father died?”

  Despina nodded. “They were to ride after luncheon. Mr. Stokes went to the stables with your father, but he perhaps changed his mind. He came back huffy-puffy and drove away.”

  Lester Stokes did some sort of business with her father on the day he died. Camilla thought of Jonathan Kahn’s accusations. Had Stokes tried to get her father involved in something criminal? She wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe that’s why Dad hadn’t been careful with the gun. Maybe Mr. Stokes had made him angry too.

  Whatever had transpired, she refused to be in the same room with Mr. Stokes again—ever. She surveyed her room. Most of the floor was still scattered with discarded clothes, but her matched Vuitton cases were neatly packed.

  She was ready to go.

  “Please send Mr. Smith up and tell Mother that neither of us will be having luncheon.”

  ~

  When she opened the door to Plant’s knock, Camilla could see something was amiss. The always-elegant Plantagenet wore a distinct stubble of beard, and a suit wrinkled enough for the impossible Jonathan Kahn.

  She couldn’t blurt out her troubles now; he obviously had his own.

  “You look so sad and—rumpled,” she said. Was it a bad fight with Edmund?”

  “It wasn’t a good one.” He squeezed her in a bear hug. “My darling Camel,” he looked her up and down. “It is a sad and rumpled world out there, and obviously, we’re both dressed appropriately.”

  “I didn’t want to look, well…”

  Would he understand how the Mr. Stokes thing made her want to go out and buy a nun’s habit?

  “‘Curvaceous’ or ‘luscious’?” Plantagenet kissed her forehead. “My dear Camel, just because the odious Mr. Kahn couldn’t take his eyes off your figure is no reason to dress as if you didn’t have one.”

  “Do I look hideous? I could change.”

  “You look beautiful. But I’m not sure I’d choose the pink mink with that outfit…”

  She tore off the jacket and threw her arms around him.

  “I love you, Plantagenet.” She hugged him tightly.

  “I love you, too, Camilla. I wish you knew how much.” He kissed her forehead and gently pressed his lips on each damp eyelid. “Please don’t cry any more, darling. Jonathan Kahn is not worthy of your tears.”

  She had to tell him. “

  It’s not about Mr. Kahn’s stupid article. My mother has this friend…” How did she explain the ickiness with Mr. Stokes?

  “You can’t feel guilty about the strings your mother can pull, darling. I personally am very happy that Jonathan Kahn will never write for a newspaper again.”

  “What are you talking about? You’ve spoken to Mother about the article?”

  “Just now. Downstairs with Colonel Sanders. Your mother has lots of friends. Powerful friends. We won’t be hearing from Mr. Kahn for quite some time.”

  So her mother had silenced the relentless Mr. Kahn. Was it because of his cruel remarks, or because he was digging up dirt about Dad? Camilla wished she could talk to her mother about it—to know for sure that Dad wasn’t involved in this horrible Savings and Loan thing. But she couldn’t talk to Mother about anything these days.

  Plant gave her a squeeze and she felt sniffly again.

  “It’s not Mr. Kahn I’m crying about. It’s the Chickenburger person. He treated me like a hooker…”

  “I’m sure that’s the way they treat all women in the trailer park he grew up in, darling. The man is not exactly our sort,” Plant laughed. He absently started picking up her discarded clothes and hanging them in the closet.

  “Please, you’ve got to take me away from here! I can’t spend another minute in this house. Let’s drive to Virginia today. Together. You can fly back tomorrow.”

  “I’d love to, darling.” Plant gave a lopsided grin. “But I’m afraid I’m a little short of cash—and Edmund has confiscated the credit cards.”

  She hugged him tightly. “I have plenty. Please come. I need you. Really. Plant.”

  He gave her another kiss—a longer one this time, sweet and soft. Why couldn’t she meet a straight man who could kiss like that?

  Plant retrieved a Perry Ellis dress from the floor and hung it carefully on a hanger.

  “Only if we’re taking the DeLorean,” he said. “And you have to let me drive.”

  “I’m absolutely taking the DeLorean. It’s all I have left of…Dad.” She choked on the word. “He never had time to spend with me. Now I think I never knew him at all.”

  “Maybe no one did,” Plantagenet said quietly. “Maybe he didn’t want them to. Some people are like that.” He hung an Yves St. Laurent gown over his arm and stooped to pick up its matching jacket.

  “But why?”

  “Some people can’t say who they really are—even to themselves,” he said, as he carried his burden slowly back to the closet.

  ~

  Camilla wrote a quick note for Despina to give to her mother.

  “Decided to leave early,” she wrote. “To avoid the snowstorm.”

  She figured a simple lie was preferable to the complicated truth.

  It was probably best forgotten. After all, she wasn’t likely to run into Mr. Stokes again. He was not—as Plant put it—their sort.

  ~

  A few hours later, as they zoomed across the Tappan Zee Bridge, singing along with a staticky-radio Bruce Springsteen, the incident with Mr. Stokes had faded to a kind of icky dream world, along with all the other horrible things she didn’t want to think about—like her father and the banking scandal.

  But one image wouldn’t go away. Mr. Stokes in the barn with her father. The gun. She was sure the toxic Mr. Stokes was capable of anything. She buried the picture as far down in her brain as she could. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  At first she hoped she could talk about Lester Stokes with Plant, but he was working so hard to keep the mood cheerful, she hated to bring up something so nasty.

  She’d never been able to tell Plant about the bad sex with Aldo, either. Some things were too embarrassing to talk about.

  Which must have been the way he felt about his fight with Edmund, because he still hadn’t explained his rumpled condition.

  “Tramps like us, baby, we were born to…damn.” Plantagenet eyed the other side of the Hudson with dismay. “I’m afraid we haven’t missed the storm, after all.”

  The landscape looked as if it were about to be swallowed by a dark, malevolent cloudbank. Large, wet flakes gathered on the windshield and traffic slowed as the snow continued and night approached. By the time they reached New Jersey, Plantagenet’s body was hunched with tension as he tried to make out the road ahead. The radio still played, but it had become an annoying distraction. Camilla punched a button, hoping to hear a local weather report, but instead, a deep-voiced country singer sang something painfully sad about trucks. His accent sounded so much like Lester Stokes’ that she clicked off the radio with a shudder.

  Plantagenet gave a sudden howl so loud that she immediately restored
the radio to the suffering trucker. But he didn’t seem to be shouting about the radio.

  “Perth Amboy!” he shouted. “New Jersey!”

  His face stretched into a demented grin. Maybe his mind had snapped. She’d been selfish not to ask him about his problems with Edmund.

  He sang in a crazed Wagnerian tenor. “Piz-za! Piz-za! Pizza with pep-per-oni!” His hand fell heavily across her shoulders and pulled her body against his. “No-o goat cheese for me. No-o truffles or Brie, just pep-per-oni pizza from Papa Mur-ray—”

  He swerved onto an exit ramp.

  “Plantagenet!” she screamed. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Pizza,” he said in a normal tone. “We’re getting pizza. Aren’t you ravenous?”

  “I guess so.” She was, actually, although she hadn’t thought about it until now. “But Plantagenet, are you all right?”

  “No. I’m not all right. I am all wrong,” he said with bizarre cheer. “I have been wrong for some time. Completely wrong. But I am about to change. Change everything. And the first thing, the very first thing I am going to do is—get into the right lane!”

  He had been weaving insanely through city traffic and suddenly cut in front of a large van, skidding as he made a turn, nearly plowing into a bank of brown slush.

  “There it is! There it is! He’s still here!” He miraculously regained control of the car. “What I am going to do, Camel, my darling, is give you the most mouth-watering, most delectable, most all-time great pizza you have had in your short life. Here we are.”

  He pulled in front of a shadowy building next to a Greyhound bus station, where dirty old men huddled, sharing a bottle wrapped in brown paper. Next door was a seedy-looking eatery, with red-checked curtains hanging in the grimy window. Over the door a neon sign declared it “Papa’s”. Underneath, not centered, were the words “Apizza Pie.” Next to the “Papa’s,” on painted wood, barely discernible in the fading light, was a sign that said “Murray Edelman’s Pizza and Deli.”

  “Very funny, Plant,” she said. “Now let’s get out of here before we get mugged.”

  “They wouldn’t dare mug me, Camel, darling. I’m from the neighborhood. I used to work here—at Papa Murray’s—every day after school. For two whole years.”

  “You did not! You went to Exeter, remember?”

  “I remember I told you that. But I lied. I lie a lot. But not about pizza. Come on.” Camilla watched in horror as Plantagenet pushed the button that lifted the gullwing doors of the DeLorean and the old tramps stared.

  “Plant, I am not getting out of this car.” The joke had gone far enough.

  “Please, darling. This is important to me. I have something I want to say to you. I’d like to say it at Papa Murray’s. Please?”

  She shivered but didn’t budge. Plant finally lowered the doors.

  With a fierceness she’d never seen in him, he grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. His wild eyes reflected the red glow from the store’s neon sign. She tried to look away, but he held her with his feral red stare.

  Then he kissed her, not gently like before, but with a passion that seemed to possess him like a demonic force. She tried to catch her breath as he kissed her eyes, her mouth, her neck, and then her mouth again, probing, invading.

  She gasped for breath and tried to pull away. Plantagenet couldn’t be doing this. Not now. Not after Lester Stokes. And Aldo. And nasty Jonathan Kahn.

  “Camilla, I love you,” he murmured hoarsely.

  She pushed him away. “Well, I don’t love you. Not when you’re stupid like this. I want to get back on the Parkway. Now. Are you coming with me or not?”

  He stared at her, his eyes dark and cold now.

  “Maybe I should just take a bus back to New York.”

  He opened the doors again and pulled the keys from the ignition.

  “Maybe you should.” She took the keys.

  He gave her one last, pained look and got out of the car.

  She watched him run through the snow and disappear behind the red-checked curtains before she moved to the driver’s seat, lowered the doors and drove the DeLorean into the storm and the gathering dark.

  Chapter 4—The House Of Nevermore

  Five months later, as Camilla fought traffic on Route 95 on her way back to Darien, she still didn’t understand what had been going on with Plantagenet that night in New Jersey, but she hoped he was over it. Summer vacation would be awful without him. There was nobody else she could rely on to take her to New York clubs or parties.

  She wasn’t looking forward to this vacation. Her mother’s communications had been cryptic, which probably meant she was busy with a Project. If it was redecorating the Hall again, summer would be pure hell.

  Plantagenet had better be back to normal.

  She’d had a postcard from him, right after she got to school, saying he’d got back to New York OK. Plus he’d sent a Groundhog’s Day card. It had been Groundhog’s Day, two years ago, when she first met Plantagenet at Kiki Longworth’s sub-deb party.

  The thought had been sweet, even though the card didn’t make much sense. It showed a cartoon of a large rodent in Shakespearean dress, looking at its shadow. The caption read, “Who is wishing thee a happy Groundhog Day?” Inside, the printed message read “iamb, iamb, iamb!” Underneath Plant had written only one line— “Have decided I must learn to cast my own shadow, Camel, dear, if I am to end the winter of my discontent.” He’d signed it, “all my love, Plantagenet.”

  ~

  The iron gates to Randall Hall stood open as she drove up the narrow, winding road to the gray stone building she had always called home. She thought about how Plantagenet usually started making jokes when they reached this point, calling the Hall “the castle keep” or “the House of Nevermore”. Now, for the first time, she could see it through his eyes. The crenellated stone towers did look forbidding, as if ravens should be perched on the battlements quoting enigmatic finalities from Edgar Allen Poe.

  At least the gates were already open, which meant Mother must be expecting her after all. She had tried to call home several times in the past couple of weeks and never got an answer. But her mother had a copy of the college catalogue, so the date of the semester’s end was sure to have made its way into the leather-bound appointment book.

  However, an annoying number of vehicles were parked in the circular drive in front of the house. One was a large truck identified with the name Sotheby Park-Bernet.

  So the redecorating had begun.

  But even worse—much, much worse—behind the Sotheby’s truck was a white Cadillac with vanity plates from the state of Arkansas that read, “CHIK 1.”

  Camilla slammed the brakes. She could not face this. Dealing with her mother in one of her decorating frenzies would be bad enough, but being confronted with Lester Stokes would be unbearable. How could Mother have invited that horrible man into their house again?

  Camilla drove back to the fork that led to the stables. She would visit Lord Peter and have a comfortable chat with her old friend Hank, the stableman, who always called her “Princess” and never acted as if she was in the way the way her dad always did.

  “Hank! I’m home!” She jumped from the car and ran toward the gray, weathered stables. “Lord Peter! I’ve come home!”

  But the door to the main barn hung open, swinging in the wind on one rusty hinge. It gave an ominous creak. She could hear no other sound.

  “Hank?” she called again. Everything inside was dark and silent. All ten stalls were empty. The air smelled damp and foul.

  She ran to the cottage where Hank had lived since before she was born. But the small stone house was empty and silent as the stable. Peeking in the window, she could see that even the furniture was gone.

  Feeling desolate, she walked back to the car. There could only be one explanation: Hank was dead. It must have been something horrible, because he wasn’t old—not much older than her mother. It was unforgivable that Mother hadn
’t written about it.

  Now, anger gave Camilla enough courage to go back to the house, Lester Stokes or no Lester Stokes. As she marched in the open doorway, her mother was directing a number of workmen carrying the Steinway grand out of the music room into the foyer. Behind her was a large, unmistakable figure, dressed in snakeskin boots, a cowboy hat, and an awful pale blue suit.

  “Mother, why didn’t you tell me?” Camilla said, her voice still choked from grief.

  “Dear, whatever are you doing in Connecticut?”

  Her mother stared at her as if she were something that had just returned from the grave.

  “Summer vacation, Mother. It happens every year.” She steadied her voice. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  Her mother burst into tears.

  Camilla had never seen her mother cry. Ever. Not even when Dad died. She felt as if she might throw up.

  “Get out of the way there, young lady. Those men have a heavy load,” Lester Stokes said, his too-white teeth flashing.

  Camilla stepped backward through the doorway and watched as the men carried the piano into the waiting van. She looked back and saw her mother, still sobbing, clinging to Mr. Stokes’ shoulder.

  “Now look how you’ve upset your mama,” Stokes said. “Is that what you came here for, girl—to upset your mama?”

  “I’m here because this is where I live.” She started up the staircase to her room.

  “Not anymore, you don’t,” Stokes said.

  “What are you talking about? Mother, what the hell is that man talking about?”

  Her mother said nothing as the workmen reappeared and walked slowly back to the music room.

  “Don’t ever let me hear you talk that way in front of your mama,” Lester Stokes said. “Don’t you think she’s having a hard enough time as it is—watching every stick of furniture she owns going out that door—without you coming around talking like a truck driver and making trouble?”

  “Why is she getting rid of the furniture? What is going on here?” Camilla had to hang onto the banister for balance. Nothing made sense.

  “That’s what being broke is all about, little lady. You got to sell things.”