There Goes The Bride (17 page)

Toni began by calling at Mircester’s main supermarket. She walked right around the back of the building to where she knew the staff often stood outside, having a smoke.

Two of her old school friends were there. A thin, scrawny, spotty girl called Chelsea hailed her. ‘If it isn’t our famous tec. What you doing, babes?’

‘I’m looking for Trixie Ballard. Seen anything of her?’

Her companion Tracy, small and fat with lank hair, jeered, ‘Oh, sure. With all the cops in Britain looking for her?’

‘Just wondered,’ said Toni and walked hurriedly away. She realized that if she questioned them about hotels where Trixie might have found work, they would gossip all over the supermarket and, if Trixie was in hiding in one of the hotels, she might get to hear of it.

The time to hit the hotels would be just after ten o’clock, when guests would be expected to vacate their rooms. At the posher hotels it would be midday. At least Mircester was only a market town. A big city like London or Manchester would be a nightmare.

She checked her list. There were five hotels. The George was the biggest but she couldn’t imagine them employing someone without a social security number.

Then there was the Palace – same thing. The Country Inn was a possibility.

She went round to the staff entrance. A woman in a white overall came out and dumped rubbish in one of the bins and went in again. Toni went off and bought a white overall, put it on, returned to the Country Inn and boldly walked in by the service entrance and up the stairs.

She went up and down stairs and along corridors, checking into rooms where the maids were working, but could not see any sign of anyone who looked like Trixie. In fact, most of the voices she heard sounded Polish.

Toni finally gave up and went back to her car. Two hotels left, the Berkeley and the Townhouse. The Berkeley was actually a motel out on the ring road. That seemed the more hopeful of the two.

It was built like an E with the central bar missing. All she had to do was park in the courtyard to get a clear view of the maids coming in and out as they worked on the various rooms.

Not one of them looked like Trixie. Without much hope, she drove to the Townhouse. It was a small seedy-looking hotel.

Time had passed and surely the rooms would have been cleaned. Toni drove to the side of the hotel where she had a good view of the service entrance and waited. By late afternoon, the maids began to check out. There were about six of them but no Trixie.

She checked into the office for the final briefing. ‘Maybe we’ll give it one more morning tomorrow,’ said Agatha, ‘and then that’s that.’

Sharon caught up with Toni outside. ‘You’re looking right dismal these days, Tone. Is it that fellow, Perry?’

‘It’s part that. He had the cheek to send me flowers and keep phoning. He’s finally given up. The liar kept saying it was a setup and he’d never seen the woman before.’

‘What’s the other thing?’

‘I’d like to be my own boss again.’

‘You could ask Agatha,’ suggested Sharon. ‘’Member she originally offered to set you up?’

‘I want to be totally independent of Agatha. After all she’s done for me, I don’t feel like taking on any more gratitude. And I wouldn’t be free of her. She’d be round checking the books and giving unwanted advice.’

‘Tell you what,’ said Sharon. ‘There’s a sloppy movie,
To You My Love,
on at the Odeon. It’s a bit of a pinch of
Sleepless in Seattle.
We could grab a burger and then go there.’

Toni grinned and put an arm around Sharon’s chubby shoulders. ‘Sounds good to me.’

Agatha watched them from the office window. Toni was wearing a black T-shirt, short denim skirt with a broad belt slung low over it and flat sandals. The sun glinted on her fair hair. Sharon was in her usual ragbag of fashions, chattering away animatedly.

I wish I were as young as that, thought Agatha moodily. They’re off, out for the night, and I’m going home to my cats.

The film did not have a strong enough plot to hold Toni’s attention, although Sharon, clutching a giant tub of popcorn to her generous bosom, seemed enthralled. Toni remembered when things at home were bad with her drunken brother, she would often escape to the cinema.

She sat up straight and peered around her. Would a girl like Trixie do the same? Of course the poor girl could be lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

Before the end of the film, she whispered to Sharon, ‘I’ll meet you outside.’

Sharon gulped and nodded in agreement, tears running down her face, as she stared avidly at the screen.

Toni positioned herself outside. The movie had received bad reviews and the cinema had been only one third full.

She took out the photo of Trixie and studied it. The girl could change her appearance but she had a small black mole at the right-hand corner of her mouth. I’ll focus on that, thought Toni.

And then, as people began to come out, Toni spotted a girl with a hood drawn over her head. She caught a glimpse of a little black mole. Sharon came up to her. ‘You missed a great ending . . . What?’

‘I’ve seen Trixie,’ hissed Toni. ‘Let’s follow her.’

They hurried after the hooded figure. The girl walked to the marketplace and waited. A van drove up with
GREEN FINGER NURSERIES
painted on the side. Trixie got in and the van drove off.

Toni and Sharon raced to Toni’s car. ‘I know that nursery,’ said Toni. ‘It’s out on the Bewdley Road. We’ll go there and see if we can get a better look at her and then we’ll call the police.’

They parked a little way away from the nursery and got out. ‘I must get a closer look,’ said Toni. They cautiously approached the garden nursery. The air was full of the sweet smell of flowers and plants. The van was parked outside a low bungalow. ‘You wait here,’ hissed Toni. ‘I’ll creep up and look in at the window. I hope they don’t have dogs.’

Toni moved silently forward across the parking space in front of the bungalow. Behind the bungalow, long glass-covered sheds glistened in the moonlight.

She crouched down and peered in a window which was lit up. A man and woman and a girl were sitting at a kitchen table. The woman was pouring tea. Staring at the girl, Toni realized that if it hadn’t been for that tell-tale mole, she might never have recognized Trixie. She was wearing glasses and her hair was dyed blonde.

Toni slowly backed away. When she joined Sharon, she said, ‘I’ll call the police.’

‘We’ll get no glory,’ said Sharon.

‘But they may have abducted her, even though it doesn’t look like that.’

‘You phone,’ said Sharon. ‘I’m going behind that hedge for a pee.’

Once behind the hedge, Sharon took out her mobile phone where she had logged in the numbers of all the important newspapers and television companies and began to talk rapidly.

Toni had managed to get Bill Wong and had urged him not to bring the police with all sirens blaring or Trixie might escape.

Very soon the first of the police cars began to arrive. Toni met them at the corner of the road. ‘Go easy,’ she whispered to Bill. ‘I think Trixie might have had trouble with her father.’

‘You mean abuse?’

‘Something like that.’

‘You stay there and leave the job to us.’

It seemed to take a long time. Then the press arrived in numbers. ‘It was Toni here that found her,’ said Sharon proudly.

‘And Sharon,’ said Toni loyally. They put their arms around each other and stood smiling and flashes went off in their faces.

Then there was a press scrum as the bungalow door opened and Trixie was led out, her head concealed by a blanket. The couple were led out as well, but Toni noticed they were not in handcuffs.

Detective Inspector Wilkes approached the two girls and said curtly, ‘Come down to headquarters. You’ll need to make a statement.’

On the way there, Toni said urgently, ‘Phone Agatha. She’ll want to be in on this.’

‘Why? She did nothing.’

‘She’s the boss. Phone!’

Sharon sulkily pulled out her mobile phone and pretended to dial. ‘No reply,’ she said cheerfully.

‘Did you leave a message?’

‘I forgot.’

‘Well, do it now!’

Agatha was outside James’s cottage. He was not at home. She went back to her own cottage and locked up. She went upstairs and undressed and showered and then decided to put a face pack on.

As she sat on the edge of her bed, waiting for the face pack to harden, she suddenly noticed the red light blinking on the phone receiver, which meant she had a message.

She picked it up, listened impatiently to the well-modulated recorded voice of the operator telling her she had one message and then pressed button one.

It was Patrick. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from a contact. Toni’s found that missing girl and the press are all over the place.’ Cursing, she ran to the bathroom and rinsed off the face mask, struggled into her clothes, rushed out of her cottage and into her car and set off for Mircester.

By the time she got to police headquarters, all she could do was wait in the reception area for Toni and Sharon to reappear.

Two hours went past and then Toni and Sharon came out, looking weary.

Agatha listened as Toni described how they had managed to find Trixie. When she had finished, Agatha said coldly, ‘You should have phoned me immediately.’

‘I did phone,’ said Sharon. ‘There wasn’t time to phone earlier and Toni could have made a mistake.’

Agatha immediately felt mean and petty. She must have missed Sharon’s message. But surely the operator had said there was only one message and that had been from Patrick.

‘It was good work,’ she said. ‘Are the parents delighted?’

‘They’re interrogating Mr Ballard. Toni told me that it seemed as if Trixie had run away because the father had been abusing her. The couple at the nursery thought she was seventeen years old and she said she was waiting for her employment card and that she was an orphan. So they set her to work in the nursery and gave her bed and board.’

When they left headquarters, the press had increased in numbers. Agatha tried to make a statement but they called for Toni and Sharon. Biting her lip, Agatha stood aside and watched her two young detectives get all the glory.

When Agatha finally got home and stared in her bathroom mirror, she saw to her dismay that bits of face pack were sticking to her eyebrows and in the front of her hair.

She had always been the one before who had been blessed with these leaps of detective intuition, she thought. Agatha remembered how she had tried to grab the limelight outside police headquarters and curled up into a tight ball on her bed, in an attempt to make herself as small as she felt.

D
ESPITE THE THREATENING
recession, business was booming at Agatha’s detective agency. The publicity given to the finding of Trixie had engendered a great deal of work. It was time to expand. A surprising number of policemen were anxious to get out of the force, fed up with government targets. If an officer did not achieve a good number of arrests he had little chance of promotion, which meant that the more ruthless were charging normally law-abiding citizens with every petty offence they could think of. They were also overburdened with paperwork. She hired two men in their forties, Paul Kenson and Fred Auster. Paul was thin, gangly and morose and Fred was chubby and cheerful. But they were both highly competent.

Only, Toni and Sharon were becoming increasingly upset. The interesting cases no longer came their way. Agatha had them both back to looking for missing pets.

Phil and Patrick were pleased with the newcomers because both were able to take a much-needed holiday.

Phil had decided to spend his holiday at home, working in his garden.

Autumn was creeping into the Cotswolds. The leaves on the lime trees were already beginning to turn and the harvest had been brought in. But the Cotswolds were enjoying the rare glory of an Indian summer and one Saturday morning Phil’s white hair was bent over a flower bed when he became aware of being watched.

He straightened up and turned round. Toni stood there. ‘What a nice surprise,’ said Phil. ‘I made a jug of lemonade this morning. Let’s sit in the garden.’

Toni sat down in a garden chair in front of a white wrought-iron table. When Phil came out of the kitchen door carrying glasses and a jug of lemonade, Toni said, ‘I can hear the faint sounds of a band.’

‘That’ll be over at the pub. There’s some sort of village fête going on.’

‘No Agatha?’

‘I gather from Mrs Bloxby that she seems to have lost interest in village things. I’m glad to see you. Any particular reason for this visit?’

Toni accepted a glass of lemonade and sighed. ‘It’s Agatha.’

‘Ah.’

‘You might have noticed that ever since I found Trixie and got all that publicity and she hired those two new men, I’m being given all the rubbish.’

‘Yes, I had noticed,’ said Phil awkwardly. ‘You should speak to her about it.’