Cath Staincliffe: Stone Cold Red Hot

“Were you aware of any boyfriends at the time?”

“No, well nothing serious. Of course there was endless speculating and giggling but I was never privy to any secrets. I was just the next door neighbour with a car. Now I don’t know if Frances still hears from Jennifer, have you got her number?”

I shook my head.

“Right,” she stood up and crossed to the table by the sofa, picked up the phone. “She’s not far away,” she said as she pressed the buttons, “she’s in Burnage. Lovely girl, four kiddies. Mary?” she spoke into the phone, “its Norma Clerkenwell…I’m fine…you? Listen, I’ve someone with me who wants to get in touch with Jennifer Pickering, from next door to me, does your Frances ever hear from her now? No. She’s not said anything. Well, apparently they haven’t, not in all this time. I’d Roger here the other day and he says they’ve no address or anything. It is a shame, it is…yes, especially with Barbara so poorly. Look, can you give me Frances’ number and this lady might want to ask her a few questions – trying to trace Jennifer, you see. Great.” She wrote the number down on a pad by the phone. “Thank you Mary, bye for now…and you, bye bye.”

She tore off the paper and gave me it. “Mary says Frances has never mentioned Jennifer. That’s her number. She’s still Frances Delaney, married a boy with the same name.”

On the way out she opened the door to the front room to show me her wares. She’d put a large work table in the centre of the room and it was scattered with clumps of fabric, jam jars full of paint, trays with beads and coloured glass nuggets, small mirrors and assorted picture frames. Tools and brushes were stuck into a collection of vases in the centre. There was a smell of glue and varnish.

“Looks like chaos doesn’t it,” she joked, “you can see the finished results over there.”

The far wall was smothered with an array of fancy picture frames and mirrors, everything from tiny, stylish mosaic-edged mirrors to padded, frilled and be-ribboned portrait frames. There were plaques too, painted with house names and numbers and, at waist height, a long shelf held vases and jars decorated with vibrant glass mosaics.

“They’re great,” I pointed to the vases, “I love the mosaics.”

“They’re selling like hot cakes at the moment,” she admitted. She edged her way past the table and picked up a small urn-shaped vase. “Here,” she held it out, “do you like this one?”

“Oh, no,” I protested, “I can’t.”

“It’s good PR,” she insisted, “when your friends admire it you can tell them where you got it. Word gets round, it all helps the business.”

“Thank you, it’s lovely. You manage to make a living out of it?”

I thought of my friend Diane, a textile artist and printer whose income went up and down like a yoyo.

“Now, I do. I’ll just wrap this.” She pushed back her long, grey hair and rummaged in a carrier bag for some bubble wrap. “The first few years were very hard. I made a loss for the first three. But I’ve a couple of big contracts with gift shops – that gives me a fairly regular return and the craft fairs and commissions top it up.” She tore some sellotape from a dispenser and stuck it round the bubble wrap. “There.”

“Thank you, it’s lovely.”

“And I’ll give you one of these,” she took a business card from a box on the table. “I do orders to design, too.”

“Swap you,” I fished one of my cards from my pocket.

She helped me to manoeuvre my bike out of the door and down the steps to the path. She wished me luck with my search for Jennifer. “I do hope you find her,” she said, “I’d love to know how she’s turned out, I always thought she’d make something of herself, you know.”

I couldn’t make up my mind whether to keep the mosaic vase at the office or take it home where I’d see more of it. I dithered for a while. It looked great on the filing cabinet next to the cactus and the yucca, the tiny deep blue, turquoise and orange tiles complemented the colours in the room but not many of Mrs Clerkenwell’s potential customers would see it there. I would leave it at work until I’d finished the job for Roger Pickering, a sort of talisman for the case. Then, whatever the outcome, I’d take it home and show it off.

I rang the number for Frances Delaney but there was no reply. I glanced at the clock. She’d probably be doing the school run. It was that time already.

Lisa MacNeice rang me that evening. She sounded very cautious. Probably thought I was trying to flog her a new kitchen or a conservatory.

“I’m a private detective,” I explained, “I’m trying to trace Jennifer Pickering on behalf of her family and I’d like to come and talk to you if I may.”

“Jennifer! Is this a wind-up? What’s your name again?”

I told her. “You can check with Roger Pickering if you like,” I said, “he’s still living at home.”

She reeled off the Heaton Mersey number. “I can remember it after all this time. It’s OK,” she continued, “the private detective lark sounded a bit weird and I had some unwelcome attention from the press last year, dishing the dirt, you know. I thought it might be more of the same.”

“No, it’s not.” I was intrigued; what dirt had been dished? I was dying to ask but I bit my tongue. “In fact Roger’s been to see your parents. That’s how I got your number in the first place – you can confirm it with them if that would help.”

“No, it’s OK,” she said, “if you had been the press I’d be able to hear you squirming by now, spinning some yarn, either that or you’d have hung up. So you’re looking for Jenny, I haven’t seen her since I left home, I’ve no idea where she is now.”

Oh no. I was disappointed. I’d been hoping for a break, wanting to hear that Jennifer had kept in touch with her friend and that Lisa could give me her phone number and address. Just like that.

“I realise it’s a long time ago,” I said, “but as yet I’ve no recent sightings to follow up. I’m having to go way back. When is the best time for you, if I were to come over?”

“Evenings, I’m usually home by seven.”

“Eight o’clock,” I suggested, “tomorrow or the day after?”

“Tomorrow, yes.”

She gave me directions from the motorway and we said our goodbyes.

I was burning with curiosity about her references to the press? Perhaps I’d hear more about it when I met her. Or I could trawl around the news sites on the Internet, Ray was online now and I was having fun and getting frustrated at what I could and couldn’t glean from it. If all else failed my friend Harry who was an investigative journalist turned Internet whizzkid would help out. He got a kick doing that sort of thing for friends, said it was light relief.

It occurred to me that I could search for Jennifer Pickering on the Net too. If she had e-mail it could be quite easy to find her address. It was too late in the day to try it now, I always spent twice as long staring at the screen as I’d anticipated, but I made a mental note to give it a go the next day.

I went down to the cellar to ask Ray if he’d be in the following evening – he hadn’t mentioned anything but his relationship with Laura involved plenty of last minute arrangements. He had headphones on while he worked, he was varnishing a cherry wood corner cupboard. He’d used fretwork for the doors and it looked beautiful, intricate like lace.

“Ray.”

He straightened up and slid his headphones down.

“I have to work tomorrow night, someone I need to interview, I’ll be leaving about 7.15.”

He nodded. “I’ll be here.”

“I shouldn’t be too late back. That’s looking good.”