Randall #03 - Sherwood Ltd. (28 page)

She waved her hand, dismissing the thought and went on.

“What Peter wanted was last month’s accounts, which he couldn’t find. That wasn’t a surprise to me, since Henry’s head has been all in a muddle since Alan Greene took over. Peter must have called five times. I kept telling him to try the desk Alan had been using, and Henry’s—but he said he had cleared out both of them, and finally… well, I turned off the telephone. Or rather, Callum did. I’d made a nice shepherd’s pie that was getting cold…” Vera bit her lip. “So we finished our tea, and had a bit of Stilton for afters. Then I did the washing up…”

Rosalee gave an impatient stomp. “Yadda yadda. So what happened to Mr. Sherwood?

Vera gave her a cold look and went on with her story.

“It couldn’t have been more than an hour later that I turned on the telly and saw the awful flooding. I rang the office, but nobody answered. I tried Peter’s mobile, but he hasn’t restarted his service, and…” She gave a heavy sigh. “I haven’t heard from him since. I don’t know if he ever found those accounts. They’re certainly gone now.” She gestured at the muddy mess inside.

I tried to keep my voice calm.

“But you know Peter was in the building? During the storm?”

If Peter had interrupted Vera’s evening meal, that would have been around seven o’clock—hours after the rain started. The water would have been building up around the clogged riverbank by then.

Vera gave a half-smile. “Peter said he was planning to leave at any moment. He and Mr. Ratko. He was in an awful rush to leave Swynsby. That’s why he kept ringing, you see.”

So. Peter had been planning to take off again without a word to me. I took a breath as anger joined my mix of emotions. “He was leaving again? Without saying where he was going?”

Vera nodded. “He told me they’d be back Monday week, but didn’t say where they were off to—or when they were planning to leave. Or perhaps he did… and I didn’t hear. I had me menfolk talking my ear off at the same moment.”

“So you don’t know if they left…or not?” I tried not to sound hysterical.

Vera sighed. “I have to believe Peter left before the flood and he’ll come back when he hears what’s happened.”

Rosalee, who had been peering through a window into the office, turned and gave them an eye-roll.

“Oh, right,” she said. “Mr. Lowlife Sherwood is going to show up for clean-up day? Alan said he was moving some big smuggling shipment. If he’s not dead, he’s probably off celebrating with his gangster friends.”

So Alan knew about the “shipment.” And so did Rosalee. Not good news for Peter, wherever he was.

But Vera dismissed it all with a head shake.

“That’s twaddle, Miss Beebee. Another of Alan Greene’s fairy stories. Everything Alan Greene says is twaddle. You should stop up your ears. That’s what I do.”

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.

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.

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.