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DEBBIE JOHNSON
The Mysterious Case of Cupid and the Drag Queen Part of the Love…Maybe Eshort Collection: The Suspicious One
Avon
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2015
Copyright © Debbie Johnson 2015
Debbie Johnson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © February 2015 ISBN: 9780008135058
Version: 2015–01–23
Table of Contents
Now
My name’s Jayne McCartney. No relation, despite the accent. In case you were wondering. Which you might not have been, but most people do.
I’m a private investigator, and I work from an office on the fifth floor of a once-grand building on a once-grand-and-getting-there-again city’s waterfront. The windows are crusted with dust and grime from the small continents of traffic that flow past every day, and I can tell the time by the chimes of the Liver Building clock.
Right now, for example, I know it’s after 10 p.m. The big bass drum sound of the hour turning woke me up. Not that being unconscious qualifies as being asleep, I suppose. It might have looked the same, except on this occasion it came with a whacking great lump on the back of my head and a matting of blood in my hair. A good look for a chick in her thirties. I might go clubbing.
First, though, I have to master standing up. And finding my phone. And dialling the number of DCI Ken McGowan at Ball Street CID. Despite having a concussion and approximately seventeen fingers on one hand, I manage. Voicemail. Of course. It is after 10 p.m., after all. He’s probably out clubbing.
‘Call me,’ I say. ‘I know where the Chihuahua is.’
One day earlier
‘His name’s Cupid,’ said Harley Golightly, as he handed me what I could only describe as a soft porn photo of a very small, very ugly dog. The lighting was soft focus; the background a bed of black satin, and the pooch was wearing a tiara and a diamond encrusted collar. Apart from that it was naked, the slut. Which was better than a pearl necklace, I suppose.
Harley Golightly was sitting with his partner, Dorothy Glamore. I don’t know why, but I had a sneaking suspicion that they may not have been using their real names. And they definitely weren’t using their real hair colours. They were both men, and both wearing uncomfortably tight leather trousers. At least they were uncomfortable for me – their boy bits were so obvious I didn’t know quite where to put my eyes.
‘He’s … lovely,’ I said, imagining for the tenth time that day that I’d won the Lottery and was on a Caribbean cruise with a flotilla of Calvin Klein underwear models.
Instead, I was in the admittedly fragrant back room of a bar in Liverpool’s pink district. Investigating the case of a missing Chihuahua. Such is life. I used to be a detective sergeant, a babe in blue, and I never got sent to check out Chihuahuas then.
I suspected the law had more important things on its collective mind these days. A copy of the Gazette lay open on the smoky glass-topped coffee table between us. The front page was a report on the abduction of Coco Doyle, the seven-year-old daughter of a local businessman. In this case, the business was drugs – but let’s face it, that wasn’t Coco’s fault. Neither was her name.
‘So, when was the last time you saw Cupid?’ I asked, dragging myself back into the here and now. No matter how surreal it was.
Harley tugged a pink tissue from a zebra print box by his side, and dabbed delicately at eyes that already bore the residue of soggy mascara. Dorothy tenderly tapped his hand, trying to reassure