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

Adie’s mind drifted to the mention of the mink coat. She’d read about furs in books she’d read, but she had no idea what a mink’s fur looked like. To her, the very idea of wearing the skin of a defenseless animal was abhorrent. And she was very pleased it had lost its popularity. Fake fur was better in lots of ways, the fact animals didn’t give their lives for it was by far the best.

Jig’s big blocky head propped itself up on the edge of her bed and big brown eyes stared up at her. Was he picking up on her angst or was this his way of letting her know he wanted to go out?

Curious about what a mink coat looked like, Adie took her cue from Jig to go down to the kitchen where her laptop usually sat. While she put on coffee to brew and let Jig outside for a run, she pulled up the internet and first entered Jack the Stripper into the search engine. After scanning the details of the serial killer, she quickly agreed with Minerva. The prostitutes who worked the streets seven miles from inner London were all small, fragile women; nothing like Georgie. A serial killer tended to keep to a certain victim type.

After getting herself a coffee, she got down to researching what she was really interested in. She entered mink coat into the browser. She was horrified to find such coats were still being sold for a thousand pounds upwards. How had she thought the fur industry was dead? It seemed to be alive and doing very well. And the furs came in a variety of colors, although when she looked up the animal itself she found they all seemed to be dark. Although there was a white version in the colder climates.

While it was acceptable for Georgie and Minerva to have wanted mink coats back in the 60s, it seemed horrifying that people still wanted them today given all the coverage there was on cruelty to animals. Her surfing led her to pictures of cute little critters kept in small cages. Row after row of them. In Denmark alone 17,000 were killed each year for fur coats.

“What are you looking at?” Cage asked, probably brought down to the kitchen by the smell of brewed coffee.

He went to the French doors to let Jig in before making for the coffee pot.

“Mink. I thought people didn’t wear real fur coats anymore. It’s awful the way they’re treated. Like chickens. I feel sick just looking at them in their cages. What kind of life is that?” Adie cried, tears pricking at her eyes.

Cage came up behind her so he could press into her shoulders with his big hands. “What got you interested in minks, of all things?”

“Minerva mentioned Georgie having one, and I had read about them in books and wondered what they looked like. Now I know mink coats come in lots of colors but the creatures all seem to be dark brown, mostly. I’m not sure…”

“Probably dyed, I guess,” Cage said, massaging Adie’s shoulders in an effort to soothe her.

“Oh, of course,” she murmured, a little of her distress fading beneath Cage’s caring touch.

“You seem to be going off on tangents. First that brush and now fur coats? What’s going on with you?” he asked as he rubbed sore spots she hadn’t realized she had.

For some reason she didn’t want to share Georgie’s awful secrets with Cage. She already knew how personally he took the crimes of men. So, she opted for almost the truth.

“I don’t know. I get engrossed in the period. Furniture doesn’t interest me, as you well know by now, but the little things that make up a life, do. I can’t explain it. It just makes me feel closer to the past. Closer to those people I never knew. My family. Their friends… I don’t know. And then I find out about minks, and my stomach wants to revolt. It’s awful what we do to animals. It’s awful!”

“It’s awful what we do to our own kind. Haven’t you got it, yet, Adie? Humanity is just wrong.” His tone drew her away from her concern for the minks, back to her friend.

There was so much bitterness in his observation. What had life done to him to make him so cynical and angry with humanity? It wasn’t like he had a bad childhood or anything. He had loving parents and affectionate siblings. That they weren’t blood didn’t seem to matter to those in that big, happy family.

“I think humans have both good and bad sides to them. Some people lean more in one direction than the other. But I don’t think it makes us all wrong. I try not to be a bad person and I know you aren’t bad, either. From what I’ve learned about my uncle, he’s basically a good man. Yes, he is technically a murderer, but I don’t think that makes him bad. He did what needed to be done to keep me safe from my stepfather. And I might have ended up like that girl in your class if he hadn’t made Chad pay.”

Cage sat on the wooden chair beside her and turned Adie to face him. “You think going all vigilante on that prick was a good action?” His eyes were pits of dark fire.

Hers were pools of sadness. “I’m not a judge. I have no right to make judgments about other people’s actions. All I know is that if he hadn’t killed my stepfather I would be way more messed up than I am now. If he hadn’t beaten up Chad, I would have likely killed myself. What he did to me eroded what little self-esteem I had. Finding out he got his just deserts let me have closure. For