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

to be sleeping in her own bed again. London had gained them nothing, but at least she now understood a little better what she was looking for. If there was something in Minerva’s journals, she’d be more likely to see it now.

She grinned across the piles of furniture at her friend. “Any luck in the other room?”

Cage continued to smile at her. It was like seeing the sun come out from behind the clouds.

“Nope. I guess we’ll have to get the guys in to clear a bigger space,” he said, still smiling.

Had she known all it would take was a pink bedroom suite to make the sun come out again, she would have made more of an effort to find it. But then, maybe it wasn’t so much the suite as his melancholy finally lifting of its own accord. The ghost of that dead girl was gone. For now, at least.

Adie scrambled out from between stacks of antique chairs, carrying a prize she’d found in a draw. She had no idea why she found them interesting. But she’d long ago stopped worrying about her choices. Now she just went with whatever took her fancy and left it at that. After all, she didn’t answer to anyone anymore.

“Look what I found,” Adie said, holding up the silver-backed brush, comb and mirror set.

“What’s the big deal about them?” he asked, not critically but not impressed either. “The silver is probably the only thing valuable about them.”

“I’m not sure. I just… They’re interesting. Look, there’s even strands of hair in the brush. I wonder whose it was. I wonder what she was thinking as she brushed her hair a hundred times before bed every night. That’s what they did back then. I guess these soft brushes made hair shine more than modern brushes.”

“They didn’t have conditioner, so they had to get the natural oils spread through the hair,” Cage informed her, helping her climb over the last impediment between them.

“How very unromantic of you,” Adie grumped, finally finding a spare space to stand unhindered.

“What’s romantic about brushing your hair?” He picked up her thick braid to finger the silken tendrils that always seemed to escape. “The hair itself, on the other hand, is very attractive. Long hair like yours, especially.”

Adie’s mouth fell open. Was he paying her a compliment about her appearance? What about looks meaning nothing?

As if reading her mind, Cage dropped her braid and assumed his stoic demeanor. Adie let out a soft sigh of disappointment. It was always two steps forward one step back with him.

“Probably time for lunch. And Jig needs to go out,” Cage said.

It wasn’t until they’d almost finished their healthy lunch of chicken salad wraps that Cage raised the subject of the Mystery again.

“When are you going to start on the journal? 1965, right?” Cage asked.

He hadn’t pushed her about it since they’d come home. Maybe he’d sensed she needed time to settle back in to her world before challenging her to do more.

“This afternoon. The weather is awful, so there’s no chance of a walk. I may as well settle in with a good book. Or whatever Minerva’s journal qualifies as. I know I’ll be giving Winsley more of a lead, if I don’t knuckle down and get something done.

“Although his lead didn’t get him very far. He got to two people, neither of whom did as he ordered. Of course, it doesn’t matter that they ignored the ‘roach, they still didn’t move us any closer to solving this crime.”

“There’s still a chance there was no crime,” Cage reminded her.

“I know. I have to keep all doors open. But I can’t get past the fact that, even if she’d gone on some wonderful weekend getaway with a rich boyfriend, she wouldn’t have stopped writing to her son or failed to pick him up from school. From everything we’ve heard she was a loving and dedicated mother. A bit of a flake, sure. But her son came first.”

Cage nodded. “You like her, don’t you?”

Adie looked up from her empty plate in surprise. “Like who? Georgie? I never met her, how can I like or dislike her?”

“We make up our minds about people we don’t know all the time. Movie stars… oh, wait, you never saw any movies. Well, the rest of us make up our minds about movie stars, or people in history. People we hate, like Hitler. Or love, like Eleanor Roosevelt. We take a bunch of facts and judge the person, without ever actually meeting them.”

Adie considered this point of view for a moment. Most historical figures never engendered any emotion in her. But the two he cited were exceptions. Hitler she hated because of the terrible things done on his orders. The foul diatribes in his book and what he spewed from podiums. She didn’t need to know someone like that to know she’d have hated him.

The same could be said of the beloved president’s wife. Everything she said and did marked Eleanor as a woman to be respected and admired. Loved? Maybe that was a stretch. It might be better to think of it as loving what she stood for. Loving the woman she presented to the world. All those in the public eye had one face they showed the world and one they kept private. Adie and everyone else had to believe that the outer reflected the inner. That actions reflected intention.

She gave herself a shake. How had she become diverted from what was important? The Mystery was waiting to be solved, and even though she’d never met Winsley, his words and actions had made him loathsome to her. He couldn’t be allowed to win!

While Cage went back to clambering around the rooms, she headed for her bed with journal in hand. A low thrum of excitement filled her. Reading Minerva’s journal, like