So Much For Buckingham: The Camilla Randall Mysteries #5 Read Online Free PDF Page B

from Silas or Camilla.
    No calls.
    Lots of people were waiting outside to get into the sold-out performance. Plant realized he should probably have scalped Silas's ticket for a tidy profit rather than go through Alfred for a simple refund.
    But no. It was probably wiser not to take any chances with his karma right now. He needed all the good juju he could muster. After all, here he was, a jilted, lonely middle-aged gay man, standing alone in the rain a world away from his home and friends.
    Silas's New Agers would probably say he was atoning for something awful in a past life. Or that Betelgeuse was retrograde in his travel sector or whatever.
    But Alfred was right about his choice of seats. When he was finally ushered in, Plant found himself in the second row of the Dress Circle, with a great view of the stage.
    An unsmiling, rather good-looking young man in a classic beige trench coat sauntered in and took Silas's empty seat just as the lights dimmed for the first act. At least he was slim. He didn't take up the entire arm rest like the big man on the plane. He carried a large satchel, but put it politely on the floor.
    Plant managed to ignore him as he became mesmerized by Kevin Spacey's growling, twisted Richard. It was a brilliant performance—the personification of a sociopath—but it made Plant feel even more immersed in negativity and chaos than ever.
    And the man in the trench coat would not stop fidgeting. Plant could swear he felt the little man's eyes staring into the side of his head. The man seemed to be looking everywhere but at the stage.
    Coming to England had begun to feel like a bad decision.
    Plant wondered if he should have checked his horoscope.

Part II— The Poisonous Bunch-Backed Toad

Chapter 9—Camilla
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    O n Saturday morning, my head felt as if it had been trampled by elephants. I'd forgotten that even good cognac can do damage if you try to match somebody like Marva drink for drink.
    No wonder Ronzo had wanted to die. His life would have been over anyway. Who would read a music review blog by a sociopathic kitten torturer? I wondered if he'd taken the blog down himself or if Rolling Stone had deleted it.
    Not that it mattered. The blog was dead, and so was Ronzo. I had to accept it now. If he had been murdered, he pretty much deserved it.
    After several cups of coffee, I managed to get dressed and stumble over to her store. Luckily it was only a few yards from my cottage. The store and cottage had both been units of a 1930s motel—now long gone except for these two buildings.
    My buildings. I owned them now. Or at least I had given Silas a down payment and was trying desperately to cobble together enough money to keep them.
    Some days being a shopkeeper was a bigger challenge than others. Today it was huge. I didn't know how I was going to smile politely at my customers this morning and pretend my world wasn't collapsing around me.
    How could I have fallen in love with somebody who could do something so twisted?
    I wanted go back to bed and bury my head in my pillow and cry for days. I desperately wanted to mourn the Ronzo I loved, even if he hadn't been real.
    But there was no time for grieving. A bunch of new bills arrived in the morning mail. There was no way I could pay them.
    I was going to have to find something else to sell from the store. Tourist items or knick-knacks. Nobody bought books in stores any more. This was the era of the e-book. Everybody bought from Amazon. Sometimes they even came into the store and looked at a book, then took out their tablets or smartphones and bought the book online. They didn't even seem to know how rude they were.
    Postcards didn't sell either. These days people took selfies in front of Morro Rock and posted them on Facebook.
    Maybe I could sell snow globes. Or floaty pens with little otters in them. Maybe some nightlights made from sea shells.
    But I didn't have a penny to spend on new inventory. In fact, I couldn't pay the