Lost Cause (A Daisy Dunlop Mystery ~ Book 1) Read online

  Daisy grabbed Solomon’s arm and dragged him from the room. She didn’t let go of him until they were back in the elevator. “What is wrong with you? It’s no wonder you’re so bloody aggressive. You need to stop eating that health shit and get some red meat into you. The man was helping us.”

  “He was flirting with you. When you worked here, did he ever…?”

  “Did he ever what? Molest me? Ask me on a date? Or, heaven forbid, flirt with me? Most men flirt, Solomon. It’s natural. When you’re not acting like a gorilla, you do it too. There’s a big difference between flirting and inappropriate behavior, and I do know where to draw the line.”

  “Your friend Clive doesn’t. He has very strange ideas about how to handle female employees, especially in bed.”

  The door to the elevator opened, and Daisy stomped out. “How do you even know that? Is that what all that Plaza Hotel bullshit was about?” She stopped and slapped a hand over Solomon’s mouth. “Don’t say a word. I don’t want to know. I don’t need that picture in my head next time I see Clive.”

  When she got to Solomon’s SUV she stood, hands on hips, tapping her foot. Now she knew why Toby needed to be found she was even more determined to get some background information on him. Why had he gone missing? Had it been Elliott’s fault, and the paternity test was the old man’s way of getting Elliott to find him? And if he didn’t would Elliott prove to be someone else’s kid? Too many questions. One thing she did know, though, was that grown men didn’t easily completely disappear without any money.

  Chapter Seven

  Solomon drove in silence. Once he got back to the office he was going to start working on his own case, and leave Daisy with the missing heir. He had to admit she was showing some aptitude. First lesson of being a P.I., build contacts and use them. However, he preferred she not do it by flirting and seducing the information she wanted out of other men. Hopefully she would hit another brick wall, and he could move on with his plan to have her quit from boredom.

  What he really needed was an excuse to get out of the office for a couple of hours. The less time they spent together the better. She would drive him nuts; or rather her being right about his behavior would drive him nuts. He knew what he was doing. His reaction was extreme when it came to other men flirting with her. Her bare legs were in his peripheral vision. Perhaps if she agreed to dress in a nun’s habit he would be less prone to bouts of testosterone enraged jealousy on Paul’s behalf.

  Daisy’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Cheer up. It might never happen.”

  He glanced at her. “What might never happen?”

  She smiled. “Whatever it is that has you so gloomy. We’re finally onto something. I can feel it in my waters.”

  “What?”

  “I mean we have some information that could crack this case wide open. Feeling it in my waters is something my mam used to say. Didn’t your mam say it?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Not that you remember your mam, or not that you remember her saying it?”

  “The latter.”

  “So you do have a mam, then? I did wonder. Any other family?”

  He shrugged. Some information he preferred to keep to himself.

  “You must know if you have family. Is there a daddy Solomon and other Solomon siblings? Come to that, is Solomon your first or last name?”

  “Neither.” He pulled into the parking space behind their office and climbed out of his SUV before she could grill him some more.

  She caught up to him when he got to the office door. “Neither? What kind of answer is that? So why are you called Solomon, then?”

  “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  Her laughter made him smile. One thing about Daisy, unless you cocked up monumentally she was usually quick to bounce back. She seemed genuinely excited about the case, and might even have thawed a bit toward him. However, no amount of happy on her part would make him spill details about his family.

  He shoved the key in the lock. “Will you be all right by yourself for a bit? I’ve an errand to run.”

  “I thought we were going to get to work together on our cases?”

  “I have a case, Princess, with a retainer and a promise of payment. You have an heir to hunt that might lead to no monetary reward at all, unless you’re the first one to find him. Now, don’t go anywhere. When I get back I’ll see if you’ve made any progress.”

  When the door swung open she stepped inside and he followed.

  “Progress how?”

  “I’d start digging into why Lord Mardon suspects Elliott isn’t his son.”

  “Good idea.”

  Solomon continued through the office and down the corridor.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need to change.” No way was he spending the rest of the day dressed in his best getup.

  *

  Daisy shrugged off her jacket and tossed it on the back of her chair. She glanced down the corridor and watched Solomon unlock and disappear into his secret lair. Resisting the temptation to snoop, she pulled the will from her bag and threw it on the table before putting her bag under the desk. Finally, she pressed the button to fire up her computer. The screen flickered to life, demanding her user name and password. She entered both and then crossed the office.

  Before she did any investigating she needed coffee. She wandered down the back corridor toward the kitchen, slowing her pace as she passed the usually locked room. Her fingers itched to try the handle, but she knew if she shoved the door open and spied a naked Solomon inside, he would go mental and she would need therapy. In his jeans she would gauge him a seven out of ten on the cute-butt-o-meter, but that didn’t mean she needed to see the thing in the flesh. No bum on earth could compare to Paul’s fantastic, chart-topping ten.

  The sound of the office door opening made her spin on her heels. Belinda’s head appeared. “Is it safe?”

  Daisy backtracked. “Belinda. Sure, come in.”

  The blonde stepped into the office and glanced around. “Is he in?”

  “Solomon? He’s out the back slipping into something more comfortable. Hopefully a gag and straitjacket.” Daisy trudged back to her desk. “Take a seat. He won’t be a minute.”

  “I didn’t come to see him. Not really.”

  “Not business, then?”

  “Coffee. The shop is dead so it doesn’t take two of us to look after it. As I’m the boss I was going to give myself the rest of the day off, and then I saw you both drive in and thought you might like to take a break and have a coffee with me across the street. I’m guessing Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dangerous is difficult to work with. Intense men can be such a handful. Anyway, I thought half an hour of mindless chatter might be a stress reliever.”

  “Daisy’s going nowhere.”

  Belinda spun around and Daisy grinned. The man was like a panther. She would have mentioned Solomon was approaching, but the woman hadn’t taken breath long enough for Daisy to say anything.

  “Solomon? I was just chatting to Daisy.” Belinda was doing well. Her voice was calm and level, but no one could withstand the death stare for long. Sure enough, the poor girl’s face turned a deep shade of red.

  “Daisy chats far too much.”

  Belinda shoved her hand out toward Solomon. “We’ve spoken a couple of times, but we’ve never officially been introduced. I’m your neighbor. Next door. Belinda the florist.”

  “I thought the shop was called In Bloom?”

  “It is. In Bloom. I’m Belinda. Belinda the florist.”

  He raised an eyebrow and took her hand. “So you said, Miss The Florist. I’m the intense man known as Mr. Dangerous, amongst other things, apparently.” Daisy thought she did a great job of hiding her snort of laughter with a cough.

  Belinda glanced from Solomon to Daisy and back again. “Perhaps you could both join me for coffee.”

  Solomon smiled. “I’ve a better idea. Why don’t you go and buy a coffe
e and bring it back here. If you’re with Daisy she can’t escape, and it’ll save me handcuffing her to the desk.”

  “Gosh, handcuffing. Do you handcuff a lot?”

  Daisy snorted. “More than is normal for a single man in civilian life.”

  Belinda fiddled with the buttons on the front of her pale green shirt. “Oh my. I’ve never been handcuffed.”

  “Would you like me to handcuff you both to the desk before I go out?”

  “Handcuff me with Daisy?”

  “Unless you’d prefer to be handcuffed with someone else?”

  Belinda pulled her hand from Solomon’s grip. “Someone else? What…? No. That’s…that’s fine… I’ll go and buy coffee.”

  Solomon chuckled as she skedaddled across the room and out the front door.

  Daisy leaned back in her chair. “That was mean, toying with the poor woman like that. And yet you have a problem with my flirting. When was the last time you saw me turn a grown man into a puddle?”

  Solomon raised an eyebrow and then headed toward the front door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “Later.”

  “Do you want me to wait up for you?”

  “I want to find you right there with your butt in the chair and some evidence of work being done, so don’t be planning to spend the rest of the day discussing me with Miss In Bloom.”

  “Someone has a high opinion of himself.”

  “I’m not blind, and in case you get any ideas, I’m not interested.”

  “In Belinda?”

  “In women in general.”

  Daisy sat upright and stared at him. “What? Solomon? What are you saying?”

  The door slammed behind him, and Daisy stared at the space he had just vacated. What was he saying? Paul seemed to think Solomon was into girls. He couldn’t be gay, could he? No, that would be ridiculous. As far as she knew you couldn’t be in the army and be gay. Was that why he was so secretive? Surely not. If he was he hid it well. She’d never seen him with a woman, but he sure as hell knew how to flirt with them. Perhaps he had performance issues. He could have been injured. What did she know about him? Nothing. Not even his real name. Every question she asked he parried. He had secrets, she could smell them.

  Chapter Eight

  By the time Belinda got back with coffee, Daisy had started a search for the dirt on Elliott Wareham’s parentage. Surely if there had been mutterings, someone would have said something sometime. Of course Elliott was in his forties, so a lot older than Lord Toby. The Internet wasn’t around back then. She did stumble across a family history website for a Littlemeister Family that had links to the Warehams. The site showed the various branches of the Wareham lineage. She should be able to work out who would benefit if Toby stayed missing and Elliott was proved illegitimate, but it showed nothing untoward about Elliott’s parentage.

  There weren’t any dates for births, deaths, or marriages. Apparently speculation that the next Duke of Mardon was a bastard wasn’t interesting enough to be included on the site, or the Littlemeisters were too afraid to mention it for fear of reprisals. Years ago Daisy had helped her mam do some digging into grandma Dobbins’ side of the family, much to Aunty Katherine’s consternation. The old lady kept muttering about a dark past. The only dark past they’d discovered was generation after generation of men that went down the pit. Digging for coal wasn’t the dark past they’d been hoping for.

  Belinda placed the coffee on Daisy’s desk and glanced over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  Daisy hesitated. Should she tell her? Why not, it was hardly a big secret.

  “Grab the chair from Solomon’s desk, and I’ll tell you.”

  Belinda put her coffee next to Daisy’s, and then pulled the chair over and sat.

  “Did you go to school around here?”

  Belinda nodded. “St. Swithin’s.”

  “Got any brothers who went to Langdon College?”

  Belinda shook her head. “Sorry, no brothers. But I did see some of the Langdon boys from time to time. They all seemed very dashing to a bunch of teenage girls forced to live in a virtual nunnery.”

  Daisy recalled the papers on Maggot Marlborough’s desk. “School dances, by any chance?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I don’t suppose you happened to meet Tobias Wareham, did you?”

  Belinda smiled. “Oh yes. Rather more than a meeting actually.”

  Daisy grinned. “Jackpot. Did he ever tell you anything weird about his family?”

  “Why? What exactly are you up to? Are you trying to find Tobias?”

  “I’m heir hunting, like they do on that TV show. Have you seen it?”

  “Bits of it. Heir hunting sounds far more exciting than making up funeral wreaths and wedding bouquets. What can I do to help?”

  Daisy lifted her cup of coffee and took a sip. “Tell me everything you know about Toby and his family.”

  “Okay, I’ll trade you.”

  “For?”

  “Everything you know about Solomon.”

  Daisy nodded her agreement. She felt sure Belinda was about to get duped. What Daisy knew about Solomon could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

  “I met Tobias when he was at Langdon College. The older boys used to join in with St. Swithin’s Girls’ College for dances. I guess they wanted us to learn to be comfortable in social situations with the opposite sex. Tobias was extremely comfortable. In fact I seem to recall he was comfortable with almost all of the sixth form girls. Or he was until he got to me.”

  “A womanizer?”

  “A cad for sure.” Belinda sighed. “He was quite the dashing young man, and he came with a title. Most of the girls were desperately in love with him.”

  “But not you?”

  Belinda shook her head. “Not at first. Not really. My feelings were more lust than love. I wanted a good time, and Tobias knew the in and outs.”

  Daisy chuckled. “I bet he did.”

  “I had no plans to marry into the landed gentry, even though Mummy would love to hobnob with the real upper crust. I think that’s probably why Tobias and I lasted as long as we did. He knew I wasn’t into him for his title, and he was happy to have a girl who would sleep with him despite who he was, not because of it. Tobias had a great sense of humor and appeared a little wayward, but I prefer my men rough around the edges. More like Mr. Dangerous.”

  The news that Solomon had declared his disinterest in women in general, and the blonde florist in particular, would be a disappointment to Belinda. However, Daisy would keep that information to herself, for now. No point in interrupting Belinda’s walk down memory lane, or put her off track by telling her the bit of rough she had her eye on wasn’t looking for some upmarket totty.

  “Toby?” Daisy nudged.

  Belinda sighed. “He turned out to be a little more than I expected.”

  “Really? What? In the trouser department?”

  Belinda’s coffee sloshed dangerously close to the edge of her cup as her body shook with laughter. Daisy rescued the cup and placed it back on the desk before she was called upon to perform an emergency clean-up of Belinda’s pristine white pants.

  The poor girl wiped her eyes and sucked in some air. “Criminy, you are so funny, Daisy.”

  “I am?” As far as Daisy was concerned she was just doing her job, asking questions.

  “You are. Anyway, back to Tobias. I had no complaints about him in the trouser department, as you so eloquently put it, however, the brash, confident womanizer turned out to be something else altogether.”

  “What?” Daisy was on the edge of her seat.

  “He was a very deep-feeling soul. His heritage hung around his neck like a millstone. The thought that someday he might inherit the family heap, as he called it, along with the responsibilities of being the Duke of Mardon depressed him deeply. He wanted to surf the beaches of Australia, trek th
rough the Andes, drive the length of Route 66. He wanted to be free of the weight of his family’s past.”

  “Why would he become the duke? What about Elliott?”

  Belinda shrugged. “He never said anything more.”

  “So if he found out he was the rightful heir to the family throne do you think he would have run off to escape the whole thing?”

  “I’ve got no idea. I only saw him once after he went up to Oxford. I met him for the day. He was busking in Leicester Square. It was during the summer holidays. He was dressed like a hobo and living in a squat, but he said he had never been happier. I took him back to my hotel room, and we ordered room service.”

  “And?”

  “He was talking about dropping out. He’d got into a lot of causes like animal rights and gay rights. I think he saw himself as a modern-day hippie. I told him he was mad, but he said as long as he had his Strat he would always be happy.”

  “Strat?”

  “Guitar. It was a white vintage guitar rumored to have been owned by Jimi Hendrix and autographed by Keith Richards. Probably worth a fortune, but life was never about money for Tobias.”

  “I guess when you’ve got plenty of money you can afford to be blasé about it.”

  Belinda smiled. “You think people born with silver spoons in their mouths don’t worry about money?”

  Daisy shrugged, not wanting to appear judgmental.

  “They do, Daisy. Well, some of them do. Even if they have a lot they worry it will all disappear and they’ll have to learn to live without it, or alternatively, they’re like Tobias and wonder if people only want them for what they have. I think he was searching for love. He didn’t seem to get any from his parents.”

  “How so?”

  “The Duke had Tobias’s life all mapped out and had no time to listen to what his son actually wanted to do. His mother was a lush. Seems the duke never got over the death of Elliott’s mother and had little love for his new young wife. She’d done her duty when she had Tobias. Once the old man had his heir and a spare he could see no further use for her.”

  “What do you think happened to Toby?”

  Belinda smiled. “I hope he found his dream.” She took a long drink of coffee and placed the cup back on the desk. “If you want to know if he’s alive or dead, I’d look for his guitar. Find the guitar and you’ll find Tobias. He would never part with it. There’s a shop called Fretland somewhere in town that’s supposed to be a guitar specialist. He used to rave about it. Not sure it’s still around, though, but if it is they would be a good place to start.”