Maybe it was the effects of my cold, but I found the attitude of both women equally surreal. We had no evidence Peter had left. His body could be rotting right there inside the factory, or lying in some drainage ditch nearby.
“The bodies…” I said. “We heard on the radio that some bodies had been found here on Threadneedle Street, drowned?”
Vera shook her head sadly. “Oh yes. Quite a few. A tragedy.”
I could barely get the words out. “Who…? Have they been identified?”
Vera looked teary. “Not all the cats have been claimed, but most of the dogs have. Liam and Davey were worried sick about Much. Finally they had the sense to ring me.” Her expression brightened. “And you’ll be happy to know our little ratter is back to health and running about my house trying to kill every dust bunny in sight.”
“We’re talking about people-bodies,” Rosalee said with a condescending snort. “On the radio they said some drunk got drowned at the Merry Miller…”
“Yes. Such an awful story,” Vera said. “But he didn’t drown. Electrocuted, poor chap—an old pensioner who came out of the pub, well into his cups, and tried to outrun the water in his electric scooter.”
I tried to look suitably tragified, but I was desperate for more personal news.
“You mentioned Liam and Davey. They’re all right then?”
Vera brightened. “More than all right. Those two have been heroic. They saved the computers—or most of them. Me old adding machine, too. I don’t know what I’d do without it. They carried it all up an old ladder through the hole in the canteen ceiling and stored everything in the attic, where they didn’t get a drop on them. Neither did Liam and Davey. They stayed up there all night, until the water started draining.”
So. Liam and Davey had been in the factory during the flood, too. They must have come with the shipment from Hull as planned. They should have some idea if Peter got out safe.
Rosalee broke into a sunny smile. “So everything’s okay? My book can come out like it’s supposed to…?”
“Not precisely all right,” Vera said with a sniff. “The warehouse is a disaster. It’s a few feet lower than the rest of the building, so it became a stream bed. The water rushed through, taking everything. Our print inventory is gone—everything we had stored.”
Everything. I realized that meant I had no hope of salvaging any of my possessions. I had nothing left, and nowhere to go except back to Rosalee’s cottage. She was all that lay between myself and on-the-soggy-streets homelessness—not a comforting thought.
But Rosalee’s mind moved on one track only.
“But what about publishing my book? I want to know how soon things will get back to normal.”
Vera gave a look of waning patience.
“So do I, Miss Beebee.” She turned to me. “You’ll have to ask Davey and Liam about the state of things in the rest of the building. They’re at the Merry Miller now, helping Brenda with her clean-up in exchange for room and board. Alan Greene is nowhere to be found. Men like that are never around when there’s real work to be done, are they?” She gave a harrumph in Rosalee’s direction. “When the inspection’s done, Davey will examine the machines for damage. Meggy and a few of the others are coming in tomorrow. We don’t yet know what we can salvage, but if you two would like to help…” She gave another pointed look at Rosalee.
“Let’s go to the pub,” I said to Rosalee, eager for any possible news of Peter. “There’s obviously nothing we can do here until the inspectors finish.”
“Wait.” Vera stopped me as we started toward the Merry Miller. “There’s a parcel for you. The postman delivered it this morning.”
I watched Vera run into the office. This was more than odd. I couldn’t imagine who might be sending a package to me at the Maidenette Building, since nobody knew I was here. I hadn’t even given the mailing address to Plant.
Chapter 61—Old Friends
Vera presented me with a package with a postmark from Newcastle-on-Tyne, and a return address I didn’t recognize. I ripped it open and could hardly believe what I saw: my computer case, wrapped in many layers of bubble wrap.
I opened the zippered compartment on the side of the case and there it was: my contract, with Peter’s signature on it—and Henry’s too. Now I had proof. Not that it mattered much at this point. I surveyed the debris around me. It wasn’t likely that Sherwood could publish anybody’s book for some time.
I pulled out my beloved flamingo pink laptop, set it on the hood of the car and booted it up. My eyes stung when I saw the familiar Windows logo and then my own familiar screensaver—a picture of the Connecticut countryside where I grew up.
Rosalee gave an annoyed snort. “Somebody sent you a computer? How come? I thought you were like, totally poor…”
Davey’s friend in Newcastle had come through. I didn’t know how I’d pay the invoice that was included, but I wasn’t going to think about that.
In my grateful mood, I gave Rosalee a quick hug. “How can I be poor when I have such wonderful friends? Let’s go find our heroes so we can thank them. It sounds as if they saved the day for all of us.”
Liam and Davey were sitting in their old booth at the Merry Miller, eating heaping plates of grayish cauliflower cheese and mash. I showed them my rebuilt laptop and gushed gratitude. Davey seemed pleased that his friend had come through, and accepted a polite hug. He was even welcoming to Rosalee, as was Liam. Disaster seemed to bring out their social skills.
But Brenda was another matter. She stormed over to the table and gave Rosalee a poisonous glare.
“I can’t believe you dare show your face in here,” she said. “I thought you two would be sailing to America by now—taking Hollywood by storm.”
Rosalee plunked herself down next to Davey and gave Brenda a dismissive snort.
“You’ve got me confused with somebody else, lady. I’m not going back home. Not ever, if I can help it. I want to be English. I can’t get health insurance back home: never in my whole life. I’ve got a pre-existing condition.”
Health insurance. So that was Rosalee’s game. No wonder she’d been so angry when she found out Colin had a wife. She wanted to marry an Englishman to qualify for the National Health Service. Maybe she’d been hoping to marry Alan after her Colin plans fell through. That might have been why she’d finally agreed to get cozy with him.
But Brenda was having none of it. “You’ve got a pre-existing set of brass bollocks, is what you’ve got. Alan told me all about you two, how you’re going to sail off to America and make millions, then your da will make him a Hollywood star. You’re welcome to him, ducks.”
Liam managed to soothe Brenda enough to point out that if any of that were true, Rosalee wouldn’t be here hoping to order some of her lovely cauliflower cheese, and that Alan had probably been telling another of his tall tales.
“I don’t have a clue where Alan is,” Rosalee said, “And I don’t care. I’m so totally not into kink.”
Brenda gave her a skeptical look.
“He’ll be in Nottingham with Henry,” Davey said. “Anything to avoid real work.”
Brenda looked unconvinced, but she agreed to bring lunch and a couple of beers. As she started to leave, she spoke to Rosalee over her shoulder.
“You tell him I’ve got his things, and they’re going to the resale shop if he don’t make things right with me.”
Rosalee huffed a bit, but I ignored her as Liam and Davey launched into their tale of saving the office computers from the rising torrent by hoisting them up to the loft above the canteen as the waters rose around them. The warehouse had already started to flood when they arrived from Hull, so they’d sent the lorry driver back with the unspecified “merchandise”—which I took to mean more designer knock-offs. But they hadn’t been able to save anything else inside, they told me in apologetic tones. They’d barely got out alive, Liam said, because Davey went looking for Much.
It was a colorful story, but frustrating for me
since they made no mention of Peter. Everybody had finished lunch by the time I could finally ask about him.
Liam scraped at his plate, his eyes hooded. Davey took out his tobacco pouch and began to roll a cigarette.
“Dunno where he’s got to,” Davey said. “We lost track of him during the flood.”
“Probably off sailing with Ratko,” said Liam. “They’ve bought a boat, you know. A yacht. Got it moored in Hull.”
I looked from Liam to Davey and back. “Peter and Ratko are off sailing somewhere? They’re safe then?”
The men would not meet my gaze. They obviously knew a good deal more than they were telling.
Chapter 62—Drowned Rats
When we got back to the Maidenette Building, Vera ushered the four of us into the office, but she said the warehouse and factory area were still being checked by the electricity people. She set us all to work with mops, rags, and buckets, and by mid-afternoon, we’d got the worst of the muck out of the canteen, and the office looked like a place of business again. Davey and Liam started bringing the computers down from the attic.
At about four o’clock, a big truck and a new team of men arrived in the parking lot. The truck had a large hose attached.
“Good job,” Davey said. “They’re going to pump out the dungeon. It’s filled to the brim and there’s no drainage. I sneaked into the factory yesterday to salvage some of my gear, and you wouldn’t believe the stink.”
“Probably full of drowned rats,” Liam said.
I shuddered.
There was a shout from the men with the truck, as a couple of others ran out of the warehouse into the parking lot.
“Two!” somebody shouted. “We got two of them.”
Vera peeked out the window, looking grim, and Liam and Davey said nothing. I felt cold all over.
“What the hell is going on?” said Rosalee, who had actually been uncharacteristically quiet and helpful during the afternoon. “You guys know something. What’s going on out there?
A white medical van pulled into the parking lot.
Two bodies, was all the paramedics would tell us. Two white males. One wearing an eye patch. And the other—I couldn’t bear it—a man with long, shaggy hair, dressed in a business suit. Rosalee and I stood with Vera, Liam and Davey in the parking lot—all of us motionless, barely breathing. We watched in terrible silence as the paramedics loaded the draped bodies into the van.
“Peter.” Vera said in a monotone as the van drove away. “It has to be. Peter and that awful old sailor. The one with the eye patch. Meggy said she’d seen him about on Friday, asking after Peter and Mr. Ratko.” She choked on her last words, and bit her hand to stifle sobs.
“Barnacle Bill?” My mind raced too fast to let my emotions erupt. “Barnacle Bill was here—on Friday afternoon?” That would have been when the crates had been packed into the warehouse—when I first went to Puddlethorpe with Rosalee and Colin. So my suspicions—and Gordon Trask’s—had been right. Peter and Barnacle Bill must have been in league all along: two old partners in crime—scheming together in that dungeon when the flood came. I could hardly bear it.
“Barnacle Bill.” Vera repeated. “Peter kept saying the name. I thought I was hearing wrong. That’s the title of an awful old music hall song.” She reached in a pocket for a handkerchief. “Maybe that’s who he meant, when he said “we”. I thought he meant himself and Mr. Ratko.” Her lip trembled. “How horrible—the two of them, trapped down there, whilst we were happily finishing up a nice piece of Stilton…”
Davey and Liam stood immobile, their faces a stony gray. This was obviously not part of the plan they had been keeping secret.
I could say nothing, as my heart constricted with a pain too raw for tears.
Chapter 63—An Arrest
I drove back to Fairy Thimble Cottage with my computer on my lap, clinging to it like a life preserver. If Peter was dead, I was pretty much adrift here, and the computer was my only connection to my old life. I had to find some place with Wifi. I wasn’t going to wait until power was restored in the Sherwood offices.
I didn’t even want to see the Maidenette Building again. I couldn’t banish from my mind the terrible image of Peter and Barnacle Bill in that dungeon, with the water rushing down on them. What had they been doing down there? Maybe they’d been cleaning up Ratko’s horrible mess. And where was Ratko? He wouldn’t have left Peter to drown. Maybe he was dead, too—his body floating somewhere in the sewers of Swynsby, with the unidentified cats and dogs.
I wished I had been able to get Liam and Davey alone to ask them what they really knew—if they knew anything at all. It was possible they didn’t. They had been as shocked and upset by the discovery of the bodies as I and Vera.
Poor Vera. Whatever happened now would be hard for her. Maybe her family would finally persuade her to quit the “Smutworks.” Maybe everybody would quit. Jobs were scarce in this part of England, but almost anything would be preferable to playing minion to Alan Greene. Even if we all stayed, it wasn’t likely Sherwood Ltd. would stay afloat long with a pathological liar at the helm.
Rosalee seemed happily unaware of the disasters ahead for her publishers. She was entirely preoccupied with “that bitch at the pub.”
“I’m never going into that place again,” she said as I took the exit for Puddlethorpe. “Nobody talks to me like that. She is so-o-o too old to be Alan’s girlfriend. She has to be like, over forty. What did she expect? And all that crap about him and me going off to make millions in Hollywood? With my dad? Dad’s doing three to five in Soledad for extortion. He can’t even get blackmail right. Such a loser. My mom had the world’s worst taste in men.”
Blackmail. Extortion. I had a brain flash. Maybe Alan Greene had used blackmail to get control of Sherwood. Gordon Trask talked as if he’d got rather chummy with Alan while staying at the Merry Miller, so he might well have got an earful of Trask’s stories about Peter’s criminal past. If Alan had carried the tale to Henry, and threatened to reveal his knowledge to Swynsby’s bankers and city fathers, that might provide a plausible explanation for Alan’s bizarre climb to power at the company. Nothing else did.
Maybe Peter’s death would liberate Henry—and Sherwood—from Alan Greene’s tyranny. Except… I had a flash memory of Henry in that awful rubber outfit. If Alan had pictures, Henry could be enslaved forever.
Plus, there was a warehouse full of counterfeit handbags to explain. Poor Henry.
But I couldn’t work up a lot of sympathy for him.
In fact, I couldn’t work up much feeling at all. Maybe I was in shock, or denial—the first stage of grief. Somehow I couldn’t believe Peter was dead. None of the events of the last week seemed quite real. But maybe that was because of my head cold, which seemed to have built a wall of congestion between my brain and reality.
“Let’s stop for coffee someplace,” Rosalee said as we drove through another picturesque village—this one with the oddly sartorial name of Old Somercote. “I’m totally beat from all that cleaning.”
I was happy to agree, especially since Rosalee was still generously picking up my restaurant tabs. I stopped at a quaint little café, envisioning scones and tea, but was surprised to find the inside sleek and modern, offering Starbuck-style espresso drinks and trendy sandwiches made with pancetta and goat cheese. At first I was disappointed to see global culture had invaded even a place called Old Somercote, but changed my mind when I realized that many of the patrons were tapping away on computers.
Internet access, at last! I booted up my computer while Rosalee ordered us a couple of lattes and panini.
I was overjoyed to see three messages from Plant. The first, written in text-speak from a new phone, said his doctor had given him permission to drive back to San Francisco for the last week of rehearsals for his play. He’d had to promise to walk every day and not indulge in as much as a whiff of Grey Goose. Silas dictated he could have just one glass of red wine a day. And no red meat. Just as well, since he coul
dn’t afford any of his usual luxuries any more, he said. His co-payments for the hospital stay were astronomical.
But he still had a home, insurance, and money for wine, I thought, with a small amount of bitterness. And he’d been able to replace his stolen phone. He might be facing bankruptcy, but Plant didn’t have a clue what it was to be poor.
But I was going to have to tell him—and tell him soon. It was time to grovel and ask to borrow money from Silas for a ticket home.
A second message, dated a few days later, detailed Plant’s most recent tiff with Silas—mostly over diet and exercise, plus Silas’s endless business traveling, especially to the Berkeley store, where he apparently still had an ardent admirer in one of the clerks. Plant’s comments got testier as he went on. By the last paragraph he said he’d pretty much decided to end it. With his bad heart, he said, he needed a calm, sensible relationship with somebody who came home from work every night.
I was in complete agreement, since my husband Jonathan’s long absences were one of the main reasons for our marriage’s collapse.
However, the third message, sent just today—obviously texted from Plant’s phone—changed everything:
“Silas arrested by idiot SFPD. Lance murder. Lance was screwing Silas’s #1 Berkeley fan. S**t.”
Chapter 64—Peanut Butter and Jelly
I stared at my screen, unable to type—barely able to breathe. Two intense feelings hit me simultaneously:
1) Sympathy for Plant, and the ordeal he must be going through.
2) My growing fear that Silas might be guilty.
If Silas’s Berkeley boy toy had been involved with Lance, he had a motive. Romantic jealousy combined with anger at Lance for stopping the sale of Felix’s store could add up to a motive. I was overwhelmed with worry for Plant. With his heart condition, this stress could kill him.
“Are you done?” said Rosalee, who had been monologuing about the general untrustworthiness of men. “I’m not going to sit here all day while you surf the damned Internet. I have a headache.”
Randall #03 - Sherwood Ltd. Page 21
