Don't Cage The Birdie (Book 2)(rough first draft)

Chapter 8. Useless

Returning to the car James found Brewster and Ming leaning against it, arms crossed, talking quietly. They stood up as James approached. 'Find anything?' he asked, coming to a stop.

'If his car's in the shop he can't go anywhere,' said Brewster proudly.

'Yeah,' said James. 'That's what it meant. Except our two friendly neighbourhood watch heard him drive up to Claudia's house around the time she was murdered. Except, and this is what gets me,' said James, gritting his teeth together angrily, 'they heard a car but no gun shot.'

'That doesn't make sense,' said Ming. 'They're not quiet.'

'No they're fucking not,' snapped James. 'They also haven't seen Marjorie since the day before Claudia's death. Mrs Edith Aldritch saw her miss the bus and then later in the backyard. She also claims she saw the man who lives at number 45, Sydney Binding, in Claudia's back yard yesterday morning and that's why she called the police. So what I want you two to do is go back to the department and I want you to find out everything you can about where Marjorie went to school and if she has any friends or people she'd go to in trouble. For all we know she might not even have been in the house when her mother died and might not even be aware she's dead. I also want you to find out everything you can about Sydney Binding and the Aldritch's. They seem nice but they're too nice, yar?' said James, mimicking their accent.

'Sure, Holland,' said Ming, moving over to the driver's side door. 'And what are you going to do?'

'I'm going to head back to Cazenovia and pay another visit to Nigel Mole. See if he's been able to recall anything useful.'

James found his way back to Cazenovia via a stray taxi that passed his way. Nigel Mole's house still presented as rich and pretentious and the looming building cast both literal and metaphorical shadows over James as he walked up the garden path to the door. He turned at the door and watched his taxi drive back down the drive way and he wondered briefly if he should have asked for it to wait.

He rang the bell for the house and waited, realising that he spent way too much time waiting at doorways for people to answer their door. How much easier would it be to call people and make them come to him for him to ask questions of. It would be so much simpler to stay in his office and not move.

Eventually the door opened after he pressed the door bell and kept his finger pressed to it.

A dishevelled Nigel Mole opened the door, face flushed. He was once again wearing the same dressing gown as he had been the day before and a dinner suit underneath despite it was before midday.

'Oh,' he said, seeing who it was. 'Detective. You're back.'

'Mmm,' grunted James in affirmation. 'I have some follow up questions, if you don't mind. Do you mind if I come in?'

'Uh,' Nigel Mole looked back over his shoulder, face paling. 'No,' he said, phrasing it as a hesitant question. James raised an eyebrow and Nigel's face flushed again. 'No, no,' he said, more firmly. 'It's nice outside.' He closed the door behind him and stepped out onto the porch to join James.

'How can I help? Have you arrested that schmuck Dean yet?'

James shook his head. 'I'd rather talk about Marjorie.'

'Huh,' said Nigel, face crinkling into a frown. He shook his head. 'I haven't seen her, if that's what you want to know,' he offered.

'It was,' said James, sighing. 'We haven't found her yet and don't know where she is. Do you have any idea where she might be?'

'Hmm,' Nigel juggled the sound in his throat, lips pursed as he thought. 'Let's take a walk,' he said.

The two men headed off down the driveway, James following Nigel across the lawn towards the jetty on the water. When they reached it, Nigel shook his head. 'Nope,' he said in reply to James' earlier question. 'I don't know where she is.'

'Did she have any friends?' pressed James, irritating rising within him. 'Friends from school? Friends from elsewhere?'

Nigel shook his head. 'Nope,' he said. Then his eyes lit up. 'I believe she just started at Nottingham High School but it's summer holidays so I don't know how that helps.'

No one would be there but it was a lead and James could find someone to track down the classes and find out where Marjorie was enrolled. If Ming and Brewster were doing their job they would already have that information by the time he got back to Manhattan. He had just hoped that Nigel could have given him something immediate to work on. All in all the day had been eventful but also a waste of time.

'Do you know of anything else that could help us?' asked James, pressing and hoping once again for some sort of lead. 'It's imperative that we find Marjorie as soon as possible.' He didn't want to mention to Nigel that if someone had taken her they only had a short space of time to gather leads of her whereabouts before it was too late and the leads went cold. That was working on the assumption that she had been taken. If she was just at a friend's place then things were fine, but he had no way of knowing that.

Nigel stared off into the distance in thought and James' brain ran at a million miles a second, running through all the information he had gathered that day, sorting it into baskets allotted to worth. Someone had driven to Claudia's house, Edith Aldritch swearing it was Dean despite not having seen the man himself. Dean asserted his car was in the shop and that was easy enough to check, James just had to get the details from him. So either or someone had driven to Claudia's house. They could find CCTV on the street corners near the shopping centre at the end of the street in the community centre or the gas station. They might be able to get a registration plate of all cars entering and exiting the street on the night of the murder.

'I can't think of anything, Detective,' said Nigel. 'My mind, it's old,' he said.

The way he said it made James break from his thoughts. I'm sure it is, he thought to himself drily. There was no way that it was but that was the game Nigel wanted to play. 'If you think of anything that might be relevant at a later date, please let us know,' said James. Nigel nodded, glancing quickly over his shoulder back at the house.

'I also,' said James slowly, following the man's gaze up to the house, 'wanted to ask your indulgence to use your telephone to call a taxi. I neglected to ask mine to wait.' There was something in the house and being able to enter it to use the man's phone was a great excuse to get inside and have a look around.

Nigel's face paled again, breathing coming in ragged bursts. 'There's a phone in the boat house. Handy like that. I'm an old man. If I get stuck it's good to have you know? I will call a taxi. Get it here toot sweet. Faster than if you call.'

'How convenient,' murmured James. And it was. Not just for the old man but also to have been led away from the house perhaps for that reason. The man was smarter than James had given him credit for.