The Missing Party-Girl: A Rags-to-Riches Cozy Mystery Romance by Nhys Glover (read after .txt) 📗

“Not Winsley in particular,” he countered, before the wind went out of his sails. “Okay, if you must know. When I was in high school there was a kid like Winsley. His dad pretty much owned our town. Dad even did a bit of work for his father. Which meant I was the help in Dorian’s eyes. And he made fun of my skin and the fact I was adopted. But I could’ve taken all that because it wasn’t the first time that shit was thrown at me.

“But then he decided he wanted this quiet girl in our class. She was pretty in a geeky way, you know? Big glasses that hid her pretty face. Hair always tied back so you couldn’t see how pretty it was.

“Dorian started seeing her as a conquest. He didn’t want her for herself. It was more the fact that she wasn’t like most girls in our school who were after him. I guess he wanted the thrill of the chase. He started following her around, making outrageous offers, all of which she refused.

“Her dad was an accountant in town, and of course his biggest client was Dorian’s dad. So, in the end, when everything else failed, Dorian threatened to get his dad to find another accountant if she didn’t sleep with him. It would have bankrupted the family. So she did it.

“After that, he told every guy who’d listen just what she was like in the sack. The kids laughed and talked behind her back. She became the class whore, although from what I could make out she’d never slept with anyone but Dorian. He even started talking about offering her to his friends.”

He stopped talking for a few moments. Long enough for me to remember the horrifying moments when Chad, the boy I thought I loved, had so openly rejected me in front of his friends.

“She committed suicide.”

That wasn’t what Adie expected. But she understood why the girl had felt driven to do such a thing. How many times after her rejection had she considered suicide? Humiliation ate at your soul until there was nothing left. Nothing good, that was.

Adie hadn’t gone that far, back then, because she’d heard Chad had ended up being ‘mugged’. It was only recently that she discovered it was her uncle who had given him that beating. She’d always assumed it was God exacting punishment for his crimes.

But the girl Cage had known must not have had an avenging angel in her life like Adie had.

“How old was she?” Adie asked carefully.

“Sixteen.”

Another long, painful silence followed, before Cage went on. “I should have done something. I could have stopped it. But I just looked the other way because it wasn’t my business. And my dad also worked for Dorian’s dad. I thought it would all blow over… But it just got worse when nobody tried to stop him. And then she ended it her own way. When it got so bad she killed herself. And I did nothing to help her.”

Cage glared at me, his dark eyes filled with unshed tears. “So I swore then and there that no fucker was ever going to get what he wanted just because he thought he deserved it.”

Adie slid off her chair to drop down in front of Cage. She rested her head on his knee.

“I’m sorry, Cage. I’m so sorry that happened. But it wasn’t your fault.”

“Of course it was!” he snapped, trying to pull away from her. “I could have done something. I wasn’t a jock. Not as big as I am now. I was a late bloomer. But I could have done something. I should have done something.”

“Yes, maybe you could have. But the way I see it, it was up to her friends and family to do something. None of them did, so it’s not all on you. But I get it. I get why you’re so determined that Winsley won’t win. So we’ll try again. Maybe there is something in Minerva’s journal that’ll help. I won’t give up. Not yet, anyway.”

Cage rested his hand on my head, threading the strands of my hair through his fingers. “You’re really something, you know? You make this job far more enjoyable than I expected.”

Chapter 8

“Oh. My. God!” Adie exclaimed loudly from the front bedroom where she’d been searching for a piece of furniture mentioned in the recent list Hugo had sent her.

Cage, who’d be doing much the same next door, clambered out of a tight space to go to her. “What?”

“I’ve found the pink monstrosities! Oh, no wonder they were hidden right at the back. They’re bilious!” she cried back.

Cage reached her door and peered in, following the sound of Adie’s voice. As soon as he spotted her, he also saw the corner of a pink headboard.

“Didn’t we get a tentative valuation on those? Something like twenty thousand pounds?” Cage asked, leaning heavily on the doorframe.

“Yeah. The designer was a big name, so it’ll fetch big bucks, no matter how hideous. No accounting for taste.”

Cage chuckled.

Adie peered around a closet to get a better look at the man who’d made the sound. It was the first time Cage had showed any amusement since their trip to London a few days ago. Not even Jig’s frantic antics of welcome after their two day absence had drawn a smile from his granite features. Their failure weighed too heavily on his shoulders. What he thought he could do that the police hadn’t been able to do, she didn’t know. But his need to keep Winsley from the money had become an obsession.

Even with Cage’s dour mood, Adie had been thrilled to be home, delighted to see Jig, and over-the-moon