Randall #03 - Sherwood Ltd. (24 page)

“Yes. The Professor has suggested some massive rewriting, and she’s hired me to help. It might not be so bad when we’re through…”

Peter shook his head.

“It’s rubbish. Your book should be printed by now, and ready to ship. I have orders…” As he searched through another pile of papers, manuscript envelopes began slipping off the desk. He rescued them only to have another stack fall. “Henry has no business sense. I thought I was safe leaving him in charge, but…” Something clattered to the floor. Peter picked it up—a tin of rat poison.

I shuddered, thinking how close Henry had come to poisoning Much.

But it was all right now. Peter was back. The real Peter. Not the one who had been demonized by his enemies and mythologized by his friends. Just Peter. A slightly unorthodox, outrageously charming English businessman.

I helped him retrieve the papers and pile them back on the desk. Our hands touched. With a laugh, he grabbed me and pulled me to him.

“I’m ashamed of what this company has been doing to you. Please say you’ll forgive me?”

I set down my empty glass and took both his hands in mine.

“Yes Peter,” I said. “I can forgive everything. Except maybe the hair.” It really was awful in that Alan Greene rat tail. “I think it’s time you let your hair down. Release your inner Fabio.” I reached to pull off the elastic that bound his sun-bleached locks. I fluffed his hair around his shoulders, feeling like a 1950s movie hero romancing the mousy librarian. I giggled. He giggled too, then drew me to him in an intense kiss. With lips locked, we sank onto the futon. His hands moved under my blouse. I let them.

The desk phone rang. Peter jumped. As he picked up, I buttoned my top, feeling chilly and embarrassed. I could stop this right now. I could plead sleepiness and make my bed in the canteen. Except I couldn’t. Peter was too dazzling, with his glowing tan, and his gilded hair flowing.

The absinthe dazzled me, too. When I finished my sweet green drink, Peter held up the bottle, offering a refill. I let him fill my glass and went back to studying Tom’s painting. Tom hadn’t painted the inside of the tree as it really looked—decaying and empty. The opening in his Major Oak was a dark, mysterious void—a spooky portal to another realm.

Peter finally hung up the phone, and with great drama, unplugged its cord.

“Business is done for the day, Duchess.” He turned to give me a deep, lingering kiss. As he enveloped me in his arms, I felt the solid muscle of his body under his sweatshirt. A month at sea had made his slim body fit and sinewy. I felt a primal urge to give myself to him—this alpha male, strong enough to fight off danger with his bare hands. A man who could protect me.

All right—he was a criminal. So was Robin Hood, after all. And there I was, in Sherwood. In the arms of a merry outlaw. Under the spell of a green fairy.

I couldn’t help myself.

I woke to a sunny morning, smelling the yummy toast aroma from the maltings. From out in the street came the music of a calliope, playing a familiar tune, oddly menacing, although it tinkled away like a children’s melody—plink plink PLINK, plink plinkity plink… drifting from out on Threadneedle Street. Moving slowly. An ice cream truck maybe.

I watched Peter’s chest move up and down in sleep and realized that for the first time since I’d arrived in England—maybe for the first time since my divorce—I was happy to be where I was. I didn’t want to budge. I only wanted to be here: with him. Peter made me feel thrilled and safe at the same time—like a ride in Disneyland. All the disasters in my life had led me to this man. I remembered the double rainbow we’d seen on our day of exploring Swynsby. It had felt like such a joyous sign. Maybe it had been.

The things Gordon Trask said couldn’t be true. I was angry with myself for believing him. Maybe his stories had sounded more reasonable to me because he was an American, talking to me in the accents of home. But the man had to be paranoid—a “nutter” as Peter called him. The self-admitted dog-poisoner had tried to poison my mind as well. And my fears had made me ripe for poisoning. But now I knew Peter was kind and rational. Maybe the only rational person at Sherwood.

The sort of man I could love, if he let me.

I pushed all of Trask’s nonsense from my mind as just more of the craziness that had taken over the company. I wondered how Peter would react when I told him the details of the past two months: how I’d been literally starving. He still didn’t know I hadn’t been paid the promised advance, or even the few pounds for my reader job. I wished talking about money didn’t embarrass me so much. I’d have to think of a non-whiny way to bring it up in conversation.

But when Peter woke, he wasn’t in a conversational mood.

“Bollocks!” he said, looking at his watch. He jumped to his feet and glowered at me. “Why didn’t you wake me, Duchess?” He scrambled into a pair of trousers. “It’s half ten. My meeting is at noon. In Hull. I can only pray there won’t be hordes of Sunday beach-goers clogging the motorway.” He buttoned up a cream-colored shirt. “Sorry to run, lass.” He pulled his hair back into its elastic band, slipped into a well-cut blazer I hadn’t seen before, and zipped his duffle.

I sat up and tried to ask him when he’d be back, but he stopped me with a kiss.

“You’re beautiful in the morning, Duchess.”

He grabbed his duffle and briefcase, and was gone with a slam of the door.

I lay on the futon, listening to the plinky melody, which had started up again out on the street. Now I recognized it: the theme from
The Third Man
: the old Orson Welles film about an evil Englishman named Harry Lime—a con artist and cold blooded killer who sold fake pharmaceuticals to war-ravaged Berlin.

Fake pharmaceuticals. Isn’t that what Gordon Trask said Barnacle Bill had been smuggling?

No. I wasn’t going to let my mind go there. I was glad the weather was sunny. That helped mitigate the creepiness of being alone in the Maidenette Building, with out even Much around for protection.

Without access to my Wendy house, I had to dress in the serviceable, but now rather grimy suit I’d been wearing since Friday, washing up with the few necessities I’d taken to Puddlethorpe in my tote bag. I’d brought along some changes of underwear and a couple of tops, so I could get through one more day, but I’d soon look like a homeless person if I couldn’t get at my things.

Of course, in actual fact, I was a homeless person. I wished I’d told Peter about my dire straits before he left. But instead I’d let myself be bewitched. My own damned fault. Now I’d have to wait until Liam and Davey got back. I should have asked Peter when he expected them. My brain did turn to mush around the man.

I had a good thought. At least I had access to the office now. Since it was a Sunday, I’d have free use the computer.

I made myself a cup of tea while it booted up. I was comforted to see a message from Plant. He said he’d been eating lots of greens and staying off the Grey Goose and felt healthy enough to go back to work at the theater.

But his news about Felix wasn’t good. Things looked dire, since poisoning was such a personal sort of crime—and Felix had easy access to the drug that killed Lance. The D.A. was painting a convincing case for jealousy as a motive. Apparently Lance had been seeing somebody in the East Bay who had talked him into leaving Felix and the store and moving to Berkeley, where he had a job with medical benefits lined up.

All very sad, but it directed my suspicion away from Peter. In fact, I couldn’t help thinking that Felix might actually be guilty, especially if Lance was leaving him for some lover in Berkeley—and a job with health insurance.

Besides, I was very close to being in love with Peter and I could not bear to be in love with a murderer.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t sufficiently convinced of that to share my feelings in my email to Plantagenet. Instead I wrote about the dramas at Fairy Thimble Cottage and Sherwood Forest and the deception wars between Rosalee Beebee and Colin the Cowboy.

When I finished, I wandered back toward the warehouse, hoping that in daylight I might see a way to squeeze between the crates. I opened the doors and heard a sudden noise from the dungeon.

A shout—then a string of curses.

Alan came running up the stairs, his face white. “Bloody fucking hell! Did you know about this? Have you seen what that Serb bastard has done to my dungeon?”

I shook my head. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s bloody wrong? Take a look for yourself.” He pointed down the stairs. “I’m going to call Henry. We’re gonna get the coppers in here. Get Peter Sherwood and his bloody ethnic cleanser locked up where they belong.”

I peeked down into the dark and descended slowly. Had Peter decided to use the dungeon for storage, too? I didn’t want to have to get into a long explanation of the new storage business with Alan. Just being around him made me feel slimed.

I opened the door to a scene that assaulted all my senses. I could barely breathe from the stench. The little room looked as if it had recently housed a pack of wild beasts. The manacles and cages had been torn from the walls, bolts and all. They lay on the floor, smashed and bent along with bits of shattered brick. The photo equipment lay smashed under them. The rubber fetish suit, ripped to shreds, hung from the light fixture. The dog collars and whips and paddles had been piled and covered with something that smelled and looked horribly like dog poo. And on the inside of the wooden door, impaled by a large knife, was a dead rat, bloody and dripping.

After I screamed, I saw the words written next to the rat corpse. They said, painted in large red letters, “Death to Vermin.” It was signed, “Ratko.”

I stood shaking in the stairwell, trying to quell my own panic. I didn’t realize Ratko had come back with Peter, but of course he would have.

He would have gone down to the Rat Hole, expecting to relax in his cozy home. Instead, he’d have found the dungeon. I wondered if Peter knew what he’d done.

By the time I got back up the stairs, Alan was gone—probably to call Henry. I hoped Ratko was safely off in Hull with Peter, or there might be violence.

I wondered what was in Hull. Another shipment of whatever was being stored in the warehouse, probably. Having Ratko involved made it all seem more dangerous. If only I’d asked Peter more questions—like how long he’d be gone, and what was being stored in those crates. Was it guns or drugs—maybe fake pharmaceuticals?

In the chilly light of day, I realized Gordon Trask could have been right after all. Maybe Peter was in business with Barnacle Bill, and he wasn’t a Robin Hood sort of Englishman at all, but Harry Lime.

I couldn’t fight off the feeling that Barnacle Bill was probably the person Peter had rushed to meet in Hull. Peter and Ratko and Bill could very well have conspired to bring a shipment of contraband into England from Croatia on the
Marynia
—a shipment now sitting in the warehouse of the Maidenette Building. In fact, the real prize might not be the yacht itself, but the cargo.

I had to know what was in those crates. Now. Before anybody came back.

I’d seen a claw hammer down in the dungeon mess. Probably the tool Ratko had used to wreak his destruction. It would do to pry open one of those crates.

I ran down to retrieve it, holding my breath against the stench.

Hammer in hand, I tiptoed toward the warehouse door, hoping I wouldn’t run into more of Ratko’s horrors. But the crates were just as they’d been last night. I could push the door open enough to squeeze inside. The crates were stacked too high to see over, although I could see well enough between them to make out that my Wendy House was intact. In fact, the warehouse was still pretty empty. The crates seemed to have been stacked in front of the door to block the entrance—on purpose.

I tried pushing on the crates, but they wouldn’t budge. They were about a meter square, made of sturdy wooden slats, and nailed tightly shut. Nothing was visible through the slats but what looked like more containers—cardboard ones—with shipping labels in Cyrillic lettering.

Anger and curiosity made me strong. Taking the hammer to a couple of slats, I managed to pry off one, then a few more—enough to pull out a carton. I slid it out carefully and peeled back the tape, trying not to damage the packing slip. Now I could see a bit of what was inside, wrapped in brown paper and bubble wrap: something leathery.

Okay, it didn’t seem to be drugs. Or guns. I breathed a sigh of relief as I finally got the flap open. As soon as I got it out of the wrapping, I recognized the object inside: a Hermès Birkin bag—or something close enough to the real thing that a manicurist in Milton Keynes, or a
barrista
in Brooklyn would hardly be able to tell the difference.

Peter and his friends were smuggling designer knock-offs.

I took a deep breath and tried to sort through my feelings. I now had to admit that Gordon Trask had been right about one thing: Peter was a smuggler. The Cyrillic labels showed the bags had most likely been made in one of the former Eastern block countries. The Croatian port of Pula would probably be a convenient spot to ship them.

I remembered Barnacle Bill’s bizarre remarks about my designer clothes during that terrifying first encounter. Something about asking if Peter had given them to me, and if Peter had told me they were “the real thing.” That certainly suggested Peter and Barnacle Bill had been in the business of selling designer knock-offs in the past.