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

by Nhys Glover

  Cage had selected another sheet of paper, probably the interview with Everett, and was scanning the typed information it contained. He nodded after a moment, confirming that what Adie had just read out was all the headmistress had said.

  Adie began reading again. “Because both flatmates believed the ex-husband could be responsible for her disappearance, having heard him on more than one occasion to threaten Wyatt’s life, and because of the headmistress’ reservations about the man, Fredrickson became our prime suspect. At first interview (06/06/65)…”

  Adie paused to give Cage a chance to locate the relevant interview then went on. “… Fredrickson could not remember what he was doing on the date Wyatt disappeared, but he subsequently produced a lady-friend, (Ruby Embers interview 12/06/65) who claimed he was with her that weekend. This alibi seems suspect.”

  Once again she paused so Cage could find the second interview and that of his alibi. Ruby Embers? Really? If ever there was a dodgy name it was that one.

  He’d just found the documents when there was a knock at the door. With easy grace, Cage rose from his spot to answer it. Moments later, a server was wheeling in a trolley of sandwiches and a thermos jug of coffee.

  After tipping the man generously, Cage passed her the turkey salad sandwich cut into small triangles and black coffee. Pushing the papers aside, she squeezed her plate and mug onto the coffee table. For the first time, she realized how hungry she was. They hadn’t bothered with the awful cellophane-wrapped food on the train, so she hadn’t eaten since a very early breakfast at the farm.

  While she munched away at her freshly made sandwich, she continued to read aloud between bites.

  “Our secondary suspect was one Owen Jeffers, the owner of The Den nightclub where Wyatt danced several nights a week. There is some evidence to suggest that prostitution may also have taken place on the premises, but neither Jeffers nor any of his employees have been charged with that offense.

  “What we do know is that Jeffers had a loud argument with Wyatt after her shift at the club in the early hours of Saturday morning. No one can say what the argument was about, but one dancer suggested that Jeffers had tried to get Wyatt into his bed and she refused. ‘He tried the same thing with other dancers and sacked anyone who refused his offer.’ (Mandy Tibbs 12/06/65)

  “Wyatt never returned to the club, causing the other dancers to assume she’d been dismissed. Jeffers, when asked about the argument, claimed he’d dismissed Wyatt because of poor attitude and complaints from patrons. He denied propositioning the woman. His alibi for the Saturday she went missing was that he was working at The Den from midday onward. As no one remembers seeing him on the premises that afternoon, his alibi remained unsubstantiated until a shop owner across the road reported seeing him outside his premises that afternoon around 2 pm. As the exact time of Wyatt’s disappearance is unknown, it is impossible to determine whether Jeffers’ alibi fits the timeline. He was definitely at work that evening and through to the early hours of Sunday morning.”

  Adie paused in her reading and looked across at Cage. “No wonder Minerva felt guilty for not reporting Georgie missing. It looks like too much time had elapsed for any viable clues to be found. The missing passport and bag seem suspicious. But that ex-husband sounds like a real piece of work.”

  “And getting custody of his son in those times was difficult,” Cage said thoughtfully. “He had to have pulled some mighty big strings to get his way. Sure, her choice of careers wasn’t great, but a mother was always considered a child’s principal caregiver back then. Men’s rights tended to be overlooked.”

  Adie nodded energetically. “I thought that too. It’s driving me crazy how much nepotism seems to happen in this country.”

  “Not just here. I think it’s just as bad back home. Money and power matter.”

  Chapter 4

  “Is there a copy of the interview with the alibi for the ex?” Adie asked, glancing down to see if there was anything else worth mentioning from the interim report, which she noted had been signed by the detective Cage had mentioned.

  Cage shuffled through the interviews and came up with the one he was looking for. “Okay, I think this is it. The woman Fredrickson spent the weekend with was a Ruby Embers. If that’s not a stripper’s name I don’t know what is. It can’t be real. I wonder why her actual name wasn’t recorded.”

  “I guess all they cared about was that she was backing up Fredrickson,” Adie suggested, shrugging a little.

  It wasn’t as if she knew much about policing. She didn’t even read Mysteries or Police Procedurals.

  “So what does she say?” Adie went on.

  Cage read silently for a moment before answering. “Not much. She does say Fredrickson came over for the weekend. They went out to dinner and then clubbing, before spending Saturday night at her apartment. Sorry, flat. He left Sunday evening.”

  “That sounds as if he arrived later on Saturday, if the only things she could say was dinner and clubbing.”

  Cage looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “He arrived just after lunch, so she said. They entertained themselves at her flat before going out later.”

  The penny dropped. Of course. If he spent the weekend, they were likely having sex when at the flat. She could be so dense sometimes!

  “Can we see if there’s any record of her anywhere? If she’s still alive... that sort of thing.”

  Cage nodded. “If she’s still alive, she might be more willing to tell us what actually happened that weekend. If she’d been paid off or was covering for a boyfriend, who later dumped her, she might be more willing to come clean now.”

  He returned to his laptop on the floor and began accessing information. “Okay, there really was a Ruby Embers born in 1946 in Brixton. That makes her Minerva’s age, and she was only eighteen at the time she was interviewed. Barely legal.” His disgust was apparent.

  “Is she still alive?” Adie asked with excitement.

  If she was Minerva’s age, she could very well still be alive.

  “There’s no record of death. Hang on… okay, we have a recent address here in London. I’ll check it another way,” he said, getting serious and pulling his laptop onto his lap so he could type faster.

  After a few minutes, while Adie busied herself reading through a few of the other sheets on the coffee table, Cage looked up, his expression triumphant.

  “Bingo! She’s living in an assisted living complex in Spitalfields. Feel like taking a trip to visit her?” Cage asked. “I can give the place a call and see if there are visiting hours or any other restrictions.”

  Adie nodded excitedly. This was the first piece of real police-work she’d ever done. The idea of questioning someone involved in an old crime was thrilling!

  Cage rang the complex, and after a few questions he hung up. “No problem. Miss Ember, she’s still a ‘Miss’ it seems, is wheelchair bound but sharp as a tack, so the nurse told me. She doesn’t get many visitors, so she’d likely be happy to have someone call by at any time before dinner. That’s at six, it seems.” Cage looked at his phone. “It’s just one now. Let’s go.”

  “Should we have other places to look at as well?” she asked. “While we’re out.”

  Cage nodded. He consulted his laptop again, this time pulling up Google Maps. “Okay, I have the address for The Den nightclub. And the flat the girls shared in Soho. What if…”

  He stopped talking while his hands again flew over the keyboard with the kind of ease Adie could only envy.

  When he looked up he was smiling in triumph. “There’s a flat for sale in the same building the girls lived in. We could get a look at it, if you want. We could even do the walk between Georgie’s nightclub and the flat. She would have had to walk or get a cab in the early hours after a shift. Not the safest neighborhood, I imagine.”

  For a moment Adie considered the possibility. Would a flat in Soho have changed a great deal in fifty years? Cosmetically, yes. But the layout, size and outlook would all be
the same. It might help her get into Minerva’s head when she was reading the journal, if she’d seen her flat. Or a similar flat in the same building.

  “Okay. We could pose as buyers. I’m starting to feel like a real PI!” She laughed.

  “We don’t always playact and bend the rules to do our job,” he muttered in annoyance.

  Adie grinned. “But it’s the fun part of the job, you have to agree.”

  Cage shrugged, letting go of his annoyance. “I’ll give the estate agent a quick call. We can go see The Den and the flat in Soho after we visit Ruby Embers. Seriously, who would name their kid Ruby when the family name’s Embers? The other kids might be Rosy and Garnet.”

  Adie laughed again, her excitement building. “You get hung up on the oddest things!”

  Cage grinned and shrugged. “What can I say? Odd things attract my attention. It makes being a PI fun. After playacting and bending the rules, of course.”

  Adie considered this gem of information for a moment. She’d never heard him talk about his work being fun. All she knew was that he’d been her watcher from a distance ever since he left the forces eight years ago. What other cases he took on, while he watched over her, she didn’t know.

  “Cab or Tube?” Cage asked as they headed for the door pushing the trolley ahead of them. They’d replaced their empty plates and mugs on it and planned to leave it just outside their room.

  They’d ridden the Tube from Kings Cross Station to Westminster. It had reminded her a little of the New York subway system, except that the train carriages were rounded. The carriages and the tunnels had been very tubular, making the name The Tube seem perfectly fitting.

  As to cabs, she’d seen a lot of the big black boxes on wheels that passed for taxi cabs in London as they’d walked from the Tube station to New Scotland Yard and then on to the Savoy Hotel on the Strand.

  Vehicular transport seemed to crawl along, she’d observed, making it faster to walk. If it had been raining or the distances had been greater, they would have opted for a cab that morning. But everything in Central London was close by, and walking had been her go-to form of travel most of her life, so it had made sense to walk. It had been more fun, too. Not to mention cheaper.

  “Can we walk?” she asked.

  Cage shook his head. “Not if we want to get to all the places on our list. Spitalfields is a couple of miles to the north east of here.”

  She nodded reluctantly, even though she knew she’d have no trouble walking a couple of miles. But if time was an issue then she supposed a cab would work. Cage did have his credit card, after all. It was probably not all that expensive to take a cab. And it was kind of silly worrying about the cost of a taxi when they were staying in a suite at The Savoy Hotel, one of the iconic landmarks of London.

  “We can see some of the sights as we go. Like Tower Bridge and that Gherkin building. A cabbie would know what tourists liked to see.”

  Adie nodded, feeling a little better. Someone who knew their way around was probably a great idea.

  The Concierge called up a black cab for them and Cage helped her enter the very roomy back section of the vehicle. It really was more like the old fashioned horse-drawn hansom cab she’d see in pictures than a real taxi.

  Cage told the driver, a bald, round-faced man with a jovial smile, where to go and added that they’d love to see any sights on the way.

  “Spitalfields ain’t much of a tourist destination, guv’na,” the driver pointed out in a broad accent she took for cockney. “Not for the likes of you, that is.”

  “We’re killing two birds with one stone,” Cage answered, his Californian accent so very different from the other man’s.

  “Fair enough, one scenic tour on the way to Jack’s stompin’ grounds it is.”

  “Jack?” Adie said, her brows furrowing. “Is that your name?”

  Their driver laughed uproariously. “No, Miss. I’m Barry. And I was talkin’ about Jack the Ripper. Spitalfields and White Chapel was the Ripper’s playground.”

  Adie shivered. That was a part of London’s past she did know something about, if only from her reading.

  Her expression must have given her away because the cabbie laughed good naturedly again.

  Craning his head to look back at them, he went on. “It’s a much trendier part of London than it used to be back then. Art galleries, cafes, that sortta thing. The place had a major facelift after the Blitz did its work in 1940/41. The East End docks were a crucial link in the supply route for the country back then, so taking them out was supposed to be our downfall. Shows what the Jerries knew!” the man scoffed.

  The war again. It seemed that even after all these years World War Two still seemed to have significance to these people. Adie supposed that having your homes bombed night after night would imprint itself on a nation’s psyche. A bit like 9/11 had been imprinted on the American psyche.

  With her nose pressed up against the window, she listened to their personal tour guide explain about the sights they were seeing as they passed them. They ambled along the Thames, seeing the Tower Bridge and the lumbering stone structure that was the Tower. In front of the Tower was a large empty area that Barry explained was the ice rink in winter.

  Adie had always wanted to learn to ice skate, but such pleasures had been denied to her. After all, pointless entertainment was the devil’s playground. Or so her mother’s church insisted.

  Finally, the cabbie journeyed down a very narrow laneway only wide enough for one vehicle. The yellow lines on either side showed that no parking was allowed on that street. They drew up in front of a multistory brown-brick building with ornate bars on the first floor windows. Graffiti marred the walls of some of the other buildings around it, but not on this one.

  “I could wait for you. Not the easiest part of the city to get a cab,” Barry offered.

  Cage nodded, taking the cabbie’s card as he handed over cash for the fare so far. “Find somewhere to wait nearby. We shouldn’t be long. I’ll call you when we’re ready to leave.”

  “Will do, guv! Will do!” the short balding man said with a bright grin.

  He was expecting a big tip from this day’s activities, Adie could tell.

  They entered the lobby and were quickly directed to the third floor where Ruby Embers had her apartment. The place smelled faintly of disinfectant and the mustiness she associated with old people. The floors were all linoleum squares that had seen a lot of hard wear.

  The large elevator took them up to the third floor. Adie understood why it was so large when they reached the third floor. Waiting for the elevator were EMTs with a man on a gurney, oxygen mask over his face. The sick man had skin so paper-thin and pale he looked dead already. His gasping breaths told her he wasn’t. Not yet, anyway.

  She smiled at the sick man as they stood aside to let the EMTs and their patient onto the elevator. He didn’t even register she was there.

  “Getting old sucks,” she mumbled, more to herself than Cage.

  “Yeah, but the alternative sucks even more,” he said in a matter-off-fact tone that she found jarring.

  They wandered down the hall until they came to 307. Cage knocked loudly on the door.

  “Come in!” called a high, shrill voice from within.

  They did as they were bid and were greeted by the most outrageous sight Adie ever expected to see anywhere.

  The living room had been turned into something out of the Arabian nights. Lush, gauzy fabrics covered the windows, while the walls were painted a dark blue and spotted with gold and silver stars she remembered getting for awards at school. Gold seemed to cover every surface, except the floor, which looked as if mirrors had been stuck to it and then covered with a protective coating. As they walked across the floor Adie felt like she was in some weird upside down world.

  “Ah, yes. My floor fascinates people. It’s like walking on a still pool of water, isn’t it? I just love, love, love my little hideaway!” a shrill voice sang.

  Adie too
k her eyes off the floor and found the owner of the voice. A skeletally thin woman wearing a garish red wig sat atop a gold wheelchair covered in unicorn heads. The woman wore an eye-searing purple kaftan with thick matching makeup. She looked like a burlesque performer who’d spent way too long in the sun.

  “Miss Embers?” Cage asked, just to make sure we were in the right place.

  “Yes, yes, that’s me!” the woman answered, waving her arms dramatically, in much the way Theo, my personal shopper, had done back in New York. “Call me Ruby!”

  Her accent had the rounded vowels of the aristocracy, but Adie doubted she had come from such a background. Maybe working on the stage had given her that accent.

  “This is Adeline Reynolds and I’m Cage Donovan. We’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right,” Cage said, pasting a smile on his too-handsome face.

  The woman might be old, but she was far from dead. Cage had her fanning her face and simpering in no time flat.

  “Of course, of course. Please, come in. Take a seat. I love, love, love visitors!”

  Adeline looked about for somewhere to sit and discovered a small two-seater sofa against the wall. It was covered—you guessed it—in shiny, gold fabric.

  Cautiously, Adie perched on the edge of the sofa and leaned forward onto her knees. Cage sat at her side, slinging his arm over the back of the gilded monstrosity.

  “Do you remember a man called Michael Fredrickson?” Cage asked, all business, for all his casual body-language.

  Ruby busied herself pouring green liquid into what looked like old-fashioned champagne glasses. The glasses sat on a small table beside her wheelchair. When they were filled she held one out to Adie and then another to Cage, all without asking if they wanted a drink.