So Much For Buckingham: The Camilla Randall Mysteries #5 Read online

  Did gay terrorists get same-sex virgins?

  No. That didn't make sense. If Neville were a mad bomber, why would he have warned Plant away from his handiwork?

  Whatever the case, Neville had succeeded in saving him. If the man hadn't been so distracting, Plant would have made it back to his seat and he'd be one of the people moaning on a stretcher or limping out of the lobby looking like a combat survivor.

  But he would have liked to have his raincoat. He shivered and looked around for somebody to ask about where he might go to retrieve it.

  The walking wounded were being herded out of the theater and into a queue where they waited to get into a bus that seemed to be a kind of mobile infirmary.

  A policeman motioned Plant toward the medical bus.

  "Thanks, but I don't need a doctor," he told the policeman. "I'm fine. Except my raincoat is still inside. I was on my way to the bar when I heard the explosion. No damage down there that I could see. What happened in the theater? A bomb?"

  "Move along to the queue." The policeman showed no expression. "We need to ask a few questions. Just routine."

  Another man in a plaster-powdered tux came up behind Plant.

  "Everybody's talking about bombs, but I was in the middle of the orchestra," he said. "I saw the Dress Circle fall. Looked like an accident. Termites, I shouldn't wonder. They've been brought to England by idiots with their marijuana plants from the Canaries. The balcony probably simply gave way. Like at the old Apollo Theatre a few years ago. Some of the West End theaters are aging wrecks behind their facades. "

  "So nobody was killed? The damage...doesn't look like a bomb?" Plant brushed the plaster off his own shoulders. It would be nice to know he hadn't been flirting with a bomber.

  "If it was a bomb, it wasn't a big one. The damage is nowhere near as bad as it could have been. I'm seeing cuts and limps, but so far no fatalities. No need for panic. Of course you can't convince this lot of that..."

  The tuxedo man gestured at the television crews who were gathering behind a line of police tape.

  Plant found himself nudged into another queue. This one seemed to lead to a policeman who was asking people for their identification. It was beginning to rain again.

  And his raincoat was probably under a pile of rubble.

  Where he would be too, if it hadn't been for Neville.

  Who was either clairvoyant or a terrorist.

  Or maybe a hallucination.

  He thought it over. He did not want to believe he'd been conversing with some paranormal entity. That would mean Glen Jones had won.

  And he didn't want to believe he'd been attracted to a terrorist, either.

  So he decided to go with hallucination. Sleep deprivation, jet-lag, and vodka had made his brain pretty mushy. It might very well have invented an attractive little gay pixie to keep him company. Why not?

  In fact, it occurred to him that perhaps none of this was happening at all. Yes. That was the most logical explanation: he was still napping on the plane and this was a dream.

  And if he wasn't having a nap, he desperately needed one. He hadn't had any real sleep in over 24 hours. But in order to get to his hotel bed he'd have to brave the army of reporters.

  As soon as he ducked under the yellow tape, one of them accosted him.

  "Is this the work of terrorists?" a bland-faced young man asked.

  As if Plant would know. But if it wasn't a bomb, he didn't want to fuel any rumors.

  "The people I've talked to seem to think it was an accident," Plant said.

  "But what do you think, sir?" said a woman wearing camera-ready make-up.

  Why did these people always interview the victims? They were the ones who had been ignorant enough to get caught in the disaster.

  Plant shrugged and shaded his eyes from the lights.

  "Who knows? Maybe it was the ghost of Richard III," he said with a sardonic grin. "Shaking up the Old Vic to protest what Shakespeare and his Tudor patrons did to the reputation of the last Plantagenet king. Maybe King Richard meant to let people know he didn't like being reinterred in the Midlands after languishing all those years under that Leicester parking lot."

  Plant realized immediately he'd made a mistake. Not only was his joke rather unfunny, but he had given the reporters a sound bite. Now the whole lot swarmed around him.

  He wasn't going to see his bed anytime soon.

  Chapter 19—Camilla

  I had to accept the fact I now had a cat. I hoped Buckingham would be happy living outdoors. I could not deal with cat hair and claws messing up the antique furniture that was all I'd inherited from my once-wealthy family.

  I also couldn't deal with the smell of a litter box. My cottage was tiny. Six hundred square feet. I had no place to put a cat box.

  On Saturday evening, Buckingham trotted behind me as I locked up the store and walked the gravel path that led to my cottage.

  It was obvious the animal expected to be invited in, but I explained to him that he could be in the store or outside, but he wasn't to come in the cottage.

  He looked up at me and let out a polite meow.

  "I suppose you think it's my job to feed you," I said.

  He sat on the front step and began to lick a paw. Washing up for dinner, no doubt.

  I went inside and found a can of tuna in a kitchen cupboard, spooned some into a Pyrex dish and placed it on the front step by the door.

  Buckingham took one bite and sat back looking up at me as if he were waiting for the wine list.

  Water. He probably wanted water. I filled another dish from the tap and put it down next to the tuna.

  Buckingham continued to stare at me.

  Okay, maybe he liked privacy when he ate. I went inside and made myself a sandwich with the rest of the tuna.

  I'd been checking my phone every five minutes, but I hadn't checked my email for a few hours. Maybe Plant had sent something. I booted up my laptop.

  Nope. Nothing from Sherwood, either, of course.

  But there were plenty more toxic reviews. On Book Reviews dot Com, Owain Glendower and somebody called Jasper Tudor seemed to have got themselves into a "flame war" with DickonthePig, Libra Rising, and Alfred the Cake. It was horrific, but also pretty laughable. Luckily, they dropped any mention of me early in their Tudor-vs-Plantagenet battle in the comment thread. Owain and Jasper quoted a lot of Shakespeare, and the other two used mostly incomprehensible British slang, but they all threatened each other using obscenities that nearly seared my eyeballs.

  Why did the Internet bring out such bad behavior in people? I closed my laptop and decided to watch the TV news instead.

  I had a TV now—an old DVD-combo hand-me-down from Silas and Plant—plus cable, which would be cut off if I didn't get my royalties soon.

  I poured myself the last of the Chardonnay and took it with my sandwich into the little living room.

  But I nearly spilled the wine when I saw Plant—there on the TV screen. He was wearing his new Ralph Lauren tuxedo. But it was covered with what looked like the world's worst case of dandruff.

  The announcer said there had been an accident—or maybe a bomb—at the Old Vic Theater in London.

  Plant looked relatively uninjured, although his hair was mussed, which almost never happened.

  A reporter asked him about the bomb and Plant said something odd about Richard III. I wondered if he might be in shock.

  The explosion—or whatever it was—had happened on Friday night in London, which would have been early afternoon yesterday in Morro Bay. Just about when I'd been talking to him on the phone.

  Maybe that's why the call got cut off.

  And here I'd thought Plant had simply been cavalier about my distress. I should have known better. I reached for my phone and called him again, feeling awful. He might be lying injured on some hospital bed. The newsman said something about people being treated at a nearby London hospital.

  The phone rang and rang and went to Plant's voicemail, again.
/>   Should I find the hospital website and call them?

  But that would be expensive, especially since I'd probably be put on hold and use up all my minutes.

  I had to phone Silas. He couldn't be so angry over something that happened twenty years ago that he would have no concern for the man he'd just married.

  I decided to take a chance and dialed Silas's number.

  Voicemail.

  I started to feel panicky. Maybe there would be more information about this bombing, or whatever it was, on British news sites. I went back to my laptop and started Googling.

  The Guardian had a long article about the theater incident, but didn't offer much information I could use. They said only a handful of people had been hospitalized. Most had been treated in some sort of portable clinic. No injuries were life-threatening, they said. The reporter seemed to lean toward calling it an accident.

  Somehow that made me less worried than if it had been a bomb. Plant was probably fine.

  But then why wasn't he answering his phone?

  Maybe something was wrong with it. I checked my email. Plant would certainly have Wi-Fi at the hotel. He'd said something silly about not taking his laptop so he and Silas would have fewer distractions. I hoped he'd changed his mind when the trip changed from honeymoon to theater tour.

  Oh, good. I had one new email. From a U.K. address.

  I started to feel relief. It had to be either Plant or somebody from Sherwood.

  It wasn't Plant's usual email address, but there was his name at the bottom. "Plantagenet O." The "O" must be a symbol for a hug. He'd never used it before, but these were hug-inducing times.

  But the message was anything but huggy.

  "The rape train is coming. Your raped and mutilated corpse will be in tomorrow's Bay News. We will choke you with Hinckley Lutterworth's severed penis. Libra will rise."

  There were two attachments, photos. When I enlarged the first I saw a 1930s California bungalow-style stucco cottage. Mine. The second was a picture of my store.

  I started to shake. Partly with fear and partly with rage. These rapist, misogynist monsters had been here. In my very own courtyard, taking photos of my house. They could be out there right now. And worst of all, they were impersonating my best friend. Obviously they wanted me to feel entirely alone.

  Which I pretty much did.

  My first instinct was to call the police. But then I realized they would probably just laugh at me. People made stupid threats on the Internet all the time these days. You could see them in the comments of every online news article. In fact, I remembered reading that the Supreme Court had recently ruled that making online threats was perfectly legal if the threatener didn't mean to carry them out.

  How was I supposed to know if this faux Plantagenet really intended to rape and murder me?

  And who on earth was Hinckley Lutterworth? Was that some alias Ronzo had been using when he was on that awful GoreFest website?

  Why didn't these people have lives?

  I took a breath, trying to pull as much air into my lungs as possible. This was probably just a prank. Like the stupid Amazon reviews.

  The screen door banged.

  And banged again.

  If this was a prank, it was entirely too close to home. It was time to call the police, no matter what the Supreme Court said.

  Part III—The Kingdom of Perpetual Night

  Chapter 20—Plantagenet

  Plantagenet woke feeling as if he'd been on the losing side of a bar fight. He had bruises on his arm and his knee ached where he'd fallen on it.

  He must have been in shock last night.

  It might have been wiser to let those National Health people look at him in that portable clinic, but after he'd talked endlessly to the dimwitted reporters and given his identification to the police, all he'd wanted was to get back to the hotel to sleep. And get warm. He'd been nearly soaked through by the time he got back to the hotel.

  They never let him go back into the theater for his raincoat.

  He'd had odd dreams—in which Neville featured strongly. Neville kept telling him to go to Swynsby. At one point, he appeared dressed up in the Richard III costume Kevin Spacey had been wearing.

  "I'll see you in Swynsby," Neville-as-Richard said in an ominous tone.

  Whatever Neville was—clairvoyant, hallucination or terrorist—Plant decided he should probably heed the advice and go to Swynsby. Not because he believed in dream messages—and he certainly had no desire to reconnect with Neville—but he needed to go for Camilla's sake.

  He was here in England, less than two hundred miles from Swynsby-on-Trent, and he could do a good deed by tracking down Camilla's royalties. He needed for this benighted journey to have some useful purpose.

  He should take the train up to Lincolnshire today.

  Not that he relished the thought of more travel. He felt groggy from his accumulated lack of sleep, and longed for a twenty-four hour nap.

  But he dutifully dressed—just a casual blazer and khakis, hopefully suitable for the country—and fortified himself with a hearty "full English breakfast."

  He packed a few things into his carry-on bag in case he had to stay overnight. He brought his Armani jacket and dress slacks in case he had a business meeting with the Sherwood people. He packed his valuables, too. He was fairly sure his locked room was safe, but one could never be sure.

  The ever-helpful desk clerk, Alfred, looked up the train schedule for Northeastern England and found a train leaving in an hour that stopped in Swynsby. He even phoned for a cab to pick Plant up in 10 minutes.

  Plant gave him a grateful smile and told the saga of his iPhone disaster.

  "I feel as if I'm a time-traveler from another century," he told Alfred. "I'd forgotten what it's like not to be able to look up trains or call cabs with one's own phone."

  He went on to explain that he might not be back until Monday or Tuesday. Not that anybody was likely to ask about him, but now that he had no phone, he wanted somebody—anybody—to know where he was.

  "There's a pub my friend told me about called The Merry Miller. It's near the company I'm going to visit. I think I remember they have a few rooms. I might get one if I need to stay overnight.

  Alfred gave a small smile. "After your bit on the Beeb last night, it might be wise to escape the London press for a day or two."

  "My bit?"

  "You warmed the hearts of many Ricardians when you spoke to the BBC reporter, Mr. Smith." Alfred said. "There's no agreement on whether it was a bomb or an accident, but everybody loved your suggestion that Richard's ghost might be stalking that piece of Tudor propaganda Will Shakespeare wrote. And we certainly welcomed what you said about Richard's burial. It's shameful they've dumped him back in Leicester. Westminster Abbey should have taken him, but at least he might find a more appropriate home at York Minster."

  Alfred got more animated as he spoke—more like an eager college student than the Downton Abbey-style servant he had seemed earlier.

  Not that Plant was pleased with his revelations.

  "I, um, was just making a joke really. Not a particularly good one. I think I was more in shock than I realized."

  How awful his offhand remark had made its way onto the BBC news. And he found it disconcerting that Alfred mentioned York Minster. Wasn't that the place Neville had made a toast to?

  "Richard of York Belongs in York," he'd said.

  Things did continue to be surreal. He wondered how long it took to get over jet lag.

  "Do you think the media might come looking for me?"

  "They already have." Alfred pointed toward the street. "Quite a few. They're herd animals, reporters. I made them wait outside, of course."

  He indicated a knot of people with camera bags outside the hotel's glass doors.

  "Good god," Plant said. "I had no idea. I'm sorry I've made so much work for you."

  "Happy to help. Your work is brilliant. Wilde in the West is one of my favorite films."

/>   "I'm amazed you recognized me." Plant basked for a moment in this glint of the fame he'd once enjoyed. "Nobody ever recognizes the writer."

  "I do. I'm a screenwriter myself." Now Alfred's stiff-upper lip butler's smile broadened to a big, toothy grin." Might I show you my work? The Kingdom of Perpetual Night. I think you'll find it's very timely, given the events of last night. If you showed it to the right people, it could make us both rich."

  Plant's spirits fell as Alfred pulled a dog-eared script from under the desk. This happened in Southern California all the time, but he hadn't expected it here.

  He gave a shrug that didn't quite say yes or no and glanced through the lobby toward the street, hoping to see his taxi.

  "Um, maybe you could email it to me? Just send it as an email attachment. I can give it all the attention it deserves when I get home to California."

  All the attention it deserved would probably be scrolling past the alarm clock opener through the first five pages of desultory dialogue, then relegating it to the trash.

  "The title is a line from Richard III." Alfred continued, undaunted. "The Duke of Clarence talks about 'that grim ferryman which poets write of' which takes us 'unto the kingdom of perpetual night'. When I think I wrote my screenplay before any of this happened! But now, it's like I predicted the future. Anything related to Richard III should be pure gold after last night..."

  What was it with gay Englishmen and Richard III? Was it some sort of code?

  "I'd afraid I don't have much clout in Hollywood anymore." Plant did not want to have to carry the script all the way to Swynsby and back. "You know the old saying, 'You're only as big as your last picture'. Unfortunately, I was one of the writers on "Oscar Wilde, Werewolf Hunter".

  "Never heard of it."

  "Exactly."

  Plant stepped away from the desk, hoping to escape, but it was too late.

  "Here's your cab." Alfred pushed the script into Plant's hand and waved at a man in a cap who had just come in through the lobby door. "Now you'll have something to read on the train. Seriously. Read it. If you can get the film made, I'll split the profits fifty-fifty!"