The Missing Party-Girl: A Rags-to-Riches Cozy Mystery Romance

by Nhys Glover

  His grip was warm, dry, and just the slightest bit rough, as if he wasn’t consigned to a desk 24/7.

  “Yes, and this is my friend, Cage Donovan, a private investigator from the States.”

  After a moment caught in his calculating gaze, Adie dropped his hand and looked away. She wasn’t good with meeting people at the best of times, and this didn’t feel like the best of times. Though she hadn’t done anything wrong, she felt as if she had. Some might call that a guilty conscience, but she had nothing to feel guilty about.

  Did she?

  Adams moved on to shake Cage’s hand, and this exchange was more perfunctory. Her friend was not given the visual third degree. Was this because he shared a similar career path to the detective or because she was the one who needed to be under the magnifying glass for some reason?

  “My superintendent asked me to locate a cold case file for you, Miss Reynolds. I hope you know how unusual this is. We don’t normally give the public access to our files, even old ones like this,” he said sternly.

  Adie suddenly realized why she was being treated like a criminal. Adams didn’t like nepotism. He’d probably dealt with the Old Boys Brigade on and off throughout his career. This was yet another example of it at work.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she stammered, her confidence evaporating. “It wasn’t my intention to break the rules. My aunt died recently, leaving me the bulk of her estate. She asked only one thing of me: that I try to find out what happened to certain people from her past. One of those people is Georgina Wyatt. As I know nothing about police work or missing persons, I asked Hugo Davenport, the executor of my aunt’s estate, for help. I wasn’t aware there was anything wrong with what he arranged for me.”

  He stared at Adie for a moment longer, as if expecting her to confess to some terrible crime. When she said no more, he grunted and looked down at the manila folder in front of him.

  “Although my superior directed me to make this file available to you, I cannot, officially and in good conscience, show it to you. However, if I was to step out to get refreshments for us all, and you were to use those five minutes to photograph the contents of the file, I would be none the wiser. Of course, if any of those photographs later turned up somewhere they shouldn’t, I would have no hesitation in arresting you, Miss Reynolds. Do I make myself clear?”

  His stern tone had Adie shaking in her designer-label boots.

  “I… Yes, of course,” she stammered again.

  Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe Hugo had overstepped. What if she’d made an enemy by using the Old Boys Network to help her?

  The man stood, adjusted his suit, and headed for the glass door. Adie cast a furtive glance around the bull pen. Everyone seemed to have their heads down, focused only on their work.

  Could they risk stealing a look into the file when they were so obviously on display? Maybe it was a trap.

  Turning back to Cage, she noted the file they wanted had been pushed within reach of him as the detective moved from behind his desk. Using his back to hide his actions, Cage slid the file down onto his lap, quickly pulling out his phone. In no time at all, while she watched in guilty horror, he took a photo of each of the pages in the file.

  It wasn’t a very big file. Adie would have thought a missing woman would have required more investigation than what was on a few typed pages. Yet what did she know of police investigations, in the UK or at home?

  While she kept anxious watch out the windows, Cage finished his task, pocketed his phone, and replaced the file on the detective’s desk. By the time he was finished, the sweat was rolling off Adie’s brow, and her hands were shaking so badly she didn’t think she’d be capable of holding a cup of coffee without spilling its contents. She made a lousy spy!

  Cage looked across at her, his expression annoyed. “If you look any guiltier they’ll all be in here, looking to find out what we’ve been up to. Have you no guile at all? This isn’t as bad as Adams is making out. He’s just following the letter of the law and covering his own back. It happens all the time. He probably resents having his time wasted more than he does being made complicit in this minor infraction.”

  Adie nodded numbly, trying to keep it in perspective. It wasn’t as if this was a current case they might somehow compromise. Most of the people in it would be dead by now, or at the very least in nursing homes. Even if it ended up as a front page story in the paper, it wouldn’t mean a criminal would avoid punishment. It might embarrass the metropolitan police, but that would be about all.

  Maybe that would be enough.

  At that moment the door crashed open, making Adie jump. She let out a little cry as she did so, and jerked around guiltily.

  Adams stood in the doorway with three mugs of steaming coffee in his hands. His expression had soured even more since he’d left.

  He placed the mugs down and closed the door behind him.

  Adie didn’t attempt to take one of the mugs that, from the look of them, contained milky tea, not coffee. Her mistake was laughable. Of course a British policeman would drink tea!

  “We have a problem,” Adams said, returning to his seat and subtly sliding the manila folder back in front of him as he did so. “I was just informed that the digital copy of this file was accessed not long ago. No one in this century has accessed this file, and then it’s accessed twice, in a matter of days. That is very… troubling.”

  He scowled at Adie, as if she was the one who’d accessed the digital files.

  “What Ms. Reynolds didn’t mention is that her aunt decided to make a bit of a game of this search. If she doesn’t succeed in uncovering the missing woman, a million pounds of prize-money will go to her husband’s nephew. It was designed to keep Adie working on the mysteries, but it has become something far more sinister. There have already been attempted break-ins at her home, and her dog has been poisoned. Robert Winsley is doing everything in his power to stop Adie from succeeding in her quest.”

  Adams frowned even more intently. I could almost read his mind. He didn’t need this rich woman’s treasure hunt causing him problems. It already looked as if there was a police officer who’d been bribed to give Winsley what we’d used our connections to acquire.

  “What does this man expect to gain from breaking into your home and killing your dog?” Adams demanded, after an over-long pause.

  “The digital recordings made by my aunt before her death. On each, she outlines the next mystery I need to look into. I expect he thinks that if he knows ahead of time what the mysteries are, he can find a way to stop me solving them.”

  “And you think you have a chance of solving a cold case that fully trained and experienced detectives failed to solve fifty years ago?” Adams scoffed.

  Adie shrank a little into her seat. “Probably not. But I’m not going to let Winsley win. I don’t want the money. I plan to donate it to charity. But I won’t let him get his grubby little hands on the prize. Not after what he did to my dog.”

  Adams gaze softened. “It’s unconscionable to poison pets. Any animal, in fact. In your situation, I’d also be pulling all the strings I could to make sure the man didn’t win.”

  He paused and looked up, his expression thoughtful. “Have you any idea how this Winsley chap knew what to look for? Has he managed to get copies of these videos by some other means, do you think?”

  Cage shook his head. “Not as far as we know. Hugo Davenport has the only other copies, and mine are well hidden at the farm. Even if he succeeded in breaking in, he wouldn’t find them.”

  “Then how…?” Adie started, unable to see how Winsley could know anything about Georgie Wyatt.

  “He’s part of the Old Boys Network,” Cage answered confidently. “And all he had to do was put out the word that he wants to know what Hugo is up to. Someone who knows someone would have given him the information, in return for a favor. Or maybe to get one up on Hugo. Who knows?”

  The detective nodded his agreement. “That’s the way it works. I doubt my su
perintendent would have let it drop, given the line he was already crossing for Miss Reynolds’ executor. But someone could have overhead them talking at the club, or been listening in on a call or read an email… It’s amazing how easily information can get out. Believe me, the Metropolitan Police have enough trouble with reporters getting leaked information. It happens far too often for our liking.”

  Adie sighed. “So, Winsley has what we have. He knows what we’re trying to do. How can he stop us? Surely, he wouldn’t kill a witness or something…”

  Grunting loudly, Adams shook his head. “I know nothing about this Robert Winsley—although you can be sure I will be making it my business to find out all I can about him after you leave—but I doubt someone with his connections would need to resort to murder. He may bribe witnesses or even threaten them, but he wouldn’t need to risk murder.”

  Cage and Adie exchanged troubled looks. She didn’t know what this would mean for their search, but it wouldn’t be good.

  “Needless to say, keeping my part in this quiet becomes even more essential. If this man knows you have come here to get the file…”

  “But we didn’t get the file, did we?” Cage said confidently. “You told us you couldn’t help us, and you haven’t. It’s distressing to know Winsley has what we don’t, but it’s hardly the fault of the police that they can’t help us.”

  It took a moment for me to catch up with what they were saying to each other.

  “Then why have you got the file, if not to give it to us?” Adie asked the detective, trying to figure out the spin we were manufacturing.

  “I wanted to know about the cold case you two were asking after, so I pulled the file. I had no plans to give you anything. And I didn’t,” came the quick response that was so coldly formal I believed it, even though I knew it wasn’t the truth.

  Or not entirely the truth.

  “Exactly. Now we’ll leave, disgruntled that we’ve made the trip down here for nothing, being very verbal as we do so,” Cage added, standing up and preparing to leave.

  Adie rose more slowly, still chewing on what was happening. This could end up being a real problem for everyone concerned.

  Cage opened the door and gestured for Adie to leave ahead of him.

  Loudly he said, “We came a long way to get this information. It’s a fifty-year-old cold case, we’re asking about, not something current.”

  “I’m sorry, but as I’ve said several times already, I have rules I must follow,” said DCI Adams officiously, accompanying us to his open doorway. “It’s against policy to give the public access to police files that are less than a hundred years old. That someone has accessed these same files in the last few days is very troubling. I will be following up to find where the leak came from, you can be assured of that.”

  “But that doesn’t help us. Winsley has information we don’t. He’ll stop me from solving this mystery!” Adie bleated, her anxiety fueling her play-acting.

  “That is not my problem, Miss Reynolds. I’m very sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

  And with that Adie and Cage left the detective, fully aware that there had been lots of interested ears tuning in on their discussion, just as they’d hoped.

  Chapter 3

  Adie leaned over the coffee table in their plush suite, hardly aware of the thick carpet beneath her feet or the satin feel of the love seat beneath her. It was just before midday and room service would be bringing up their lunch shortly. The noise of the city was muffled to almost nothing by the triple glazed windows that overlooked the Strand.

  Cage had spread the photos they had printed of the police report over the coffee table.

  It had been a wonderful surprise to discover their suite not only had two bedrooms but also a small personal office, complete with printer. It had been a simple matter to upload the pictures to the printer and create a hard copy of them. Cage had then done something to the printer so that no record remained on the printer’s memory. He also deleted the pictures from his phone.

  Now they sat admiring their handiwork and worrying about what Winsley was making of his prize. Would he make more sense of it than they did? Would he find answers that they couldn’t?

  Looking at the images of yellowed, typed pages was like looking back into the past. The old-fashioned typeset was blurred around the edges, words crossed out with a series of Xs when a mistake was made. Back then, they used typewriters. And they hadn’t even had Liquid Paper to cover up mistakes. Any copies they needed were made using carbon paper because there were no photocopiers.

  Was that why the letters looked blurred? Was this a carbon copy of the original? There were also handwritten additions here and there on the pages. Combined with the forms themselves, it all seemed very officious and outdated. It made her realize just how far they’d come, from a technological point of view, in the last fifty years.

  But once she got over the excitement of looking back into the past, she settled in to start reading.

  “Okay we have suspect and witness interviews. From the look of it, there were no recordings of the interviews,” Cage said, studying a couple of pages closely.

  “I think recordings were a fairly recent thing,” Cage went on, looking up the information on his laptop sitting on the floor beside him. “Yeah. 1991. That’s wild. How much went unreported. The tone and delivery gives away so much more than what’s actually said. And even that was likely imprecise, as I doubt too many cops used short hand. They’d have to rely on their memories for a lot of it. ”

  Adie nodded. “So we’re only reading what the interviewer jotted down and then had transcribed?”

  “I think the cop who did the interview probably typed it up himself afterwards. Seriously hit and miss approach. I know they’d get a witness to read through a statement after it was typed up and then sign it, but still. Highly inefficient.” He tutted a few times to indicate his thoughts on past policing methods.

  “We can’t look at the past through modern eyes. They did the best with what they had,” Adie said, trying to end Cage’s rant.

  He’d been looking for things to blame ever since they’d discovered Winsley was already ahead of the game. It was depressing, and Adie couldn’t help worrying that they’d already lost any advantage they might have had.

  “From what I can see, the detective in charge was a Detective Sergeant Mitchell,” Cage went on. “I wonder if he’s still alive, and if he is, if we can talk to him about his memories of the case. If he has memories of it. I’d have trouble telling anyone about a case I worked on five years ago, no less fifty years ago.”

  Cage went back to his laptop. In a couple of moments of frenetic typing he let out a curse. “Nope. He died nearly twenty years ago. That’s a dead end. Quite literally.”

  Ignoring the bad pun, Adie selected another sheet from the pile that looked more like a report than a witness statement. “I think this is the detective’s findings. Do you want me to read it out or let you read it for yourself?”

  “No, go ahead. You read and I’ll see if I can find the documentation that goes with it.”

  “Okay, so here we go:

  “Georgina Victoria Wyatt, twenty-nine, of Flat 4B 130 Dane Street, Soho, was reported missing by the head mistress of her son’s boarding school on 28th May 1965 when she failed to pick up her child for the Whitsunday long weekend. It transpired that her son, ten-year-old Rory Alastair Fredrickson hadn’t heard from his mother for several months, and he had grown increasingly distressed by her extended and unusual silence.

  “Because of the delay reporting the disappearance, interviewees’ memories were not necessarily reliable and alibis were hard to corroborate.

  “What we do know is that on Saturday 27th March of that year Wyatt left her flat sometime around midday, which she shared with two other actresses, Miss Minerva Reynolds and Miss Tanzy Tyler. (Interviews carried out 04/06/1965). ”

  Cage busied himself selecting the relevant interviews but didn’t interrupt.

/>   “She told her flatmates she’d see them later, at which time they planned to travel together to attend a party at the home of a film producer. When she didn’t return in time to leave for the party both girls went on without her. When asked if they were worried about their friend not returning, they both said Wyatt was unreliable when it came to appointments and they assumed she’d received a better offer.

  “Reynolds said Wyatt may have gone away with a boyfriend at the last minute, because her overnight bag and her passport were missing. She knew nothing about this boyfriend other than he was supposedly rich and powerful, and his first name was Rolly or something similar. Tyler said it was just as likely she received an invitation to another party at the last minute. Wyatt was a ‘free spirit’. It was the reason they didn’t report her missing themselves. They were simply annoyed that she had left them without paying her rent for the month.

  “When asked about the fact Wyatt left her possessions behind, Tyler laughed and said there was nothing of any great value. Nothing they could sell to recoup the rent owed.

  “Reynolds claimed Wyatt was dedicated to her son and would never have left him stranded. Wyatt, from all reports, looked forward to her rare visits with the boy. Although she was unreliable in other areas, she wrote regularly to her son and always attended her assigned visits with him on time.

  “It appears from witness statements that the boy’s father, Michael Fredrickson had custody of their son, and he kept the boy at boarding school, to restrict the mother’s access to the boy as much as for any educational advantages the school provided. It was said to have been a vicious divorce that had both parties petitioning the other on the grounds of infidelity. Because Fredrickson was in a better financial situation to care for the boy, and because of Wyatt’s choice of career as an actress and go-go dancer at a West End club, the father was granted sole custody of his son and the mother’s access restricted.

  “The headmistress, Mrs. Amelia Everett, claimed the boy had found it very difficult to settle at the school and was distraught at being kept from his mother. She voiced her opinion that Fredrickson was a powerful and controlling man who didn’t want his ex-wife to have any contact with their son. Everett said she found the father belligerent and unfeeling when it came to his son’s needs. She felt that only the boy’s mother and paternal grandmother seemed to care about his well-being.”