The Runaway Husband

THE RUNAWAY HUSBAND very witty mystery fiction JULIE HIGHMORE Published by THE BOOK FOLKS London, 2023 © Julie Highmore Polite note to the reader This book is written in British English except where fidelity to other languages or accents is appropriate. You are invited to visit www.thebookfolks.com and sign up to our mailing list to hear about new releases, free book promotions and other special offers. We hope you enjoy the book. THE RUNAWAY HUSBAND is the second standalone mystery in the EDIE FOX DETECTIVE AGENCY series by Julie Highmore. Look out for the first, THE MISSING AMERICAN. More details can be found at the back of this book. For Carol Contents ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN NINETEEN TWENTY TWENTY-ONE TWENTY-TWO More fiction by Julie Highmore Other titles of interest Subscribe to our newsletter ONE I was sitting on Brighton beach during the first week of September, willing the heatwave to end. ‘Just two more pebbles,’ I told Alfie, desperate to leave and find shade. He was throwing them into the sea, or attempting to. He was so rubbish at it that some ended up behind him. I’d google five-year-olds’ throwing skills when I got back. ‘Ouow,’ moaned Alfie. ‘Not two pebbles. More!’ ‘How many, then?’ He opened his palm and pointed at fingers, whispering as he counted. ‘Twenty-fourteen?’ he asked, all liquid-brown eyes in a halo of dark curls. Alfie was no prodigy, but he was always the cutest kid wherever we went. How sorry I felt for other grandparents. ‘And then we can leave?’ I asked. As he ignored me, our dog sniffed around a topless woman and her fully clothed male friend, the smell of their warm pizza having drifted our way. ‘Bear!’ I yelled, realising too late that it sounded like ‘Bare!’ ‘Cool dog,’ said the woman, lobbing a crust his way. ‘Thanks.’ I pointed at the sea and said to Bear, ‘Swim!’ The massively wet and hairy Portuguese water dog my daughter had paid a small fortune for galloped back into the waves to rejoin Alfie’s game, snapping at the flying pebbles without actually catching one and cracking a tooth. Bear was nowhere near as dumb as he looked. While I was checking the weather forecast on my phone, hoping for a cold snap, it rang. It was my partner in crime, Mike, calling from Oxford. ‘Hey, Edie. How’s things?’ ‘Hot,’ I told him. ‘That’s how they are.’ ‘Same here. Great, isn’t it?’ ‘No!’ He laughed. ‘Oh, yeah. Forgot.’ Early summer, I’d bought a mini freezer for the office and packed it with ice cubes. With its door open wide and a fan beside it, we had air conditioning, of sorts. ‘I should move to Lapland,’ I said. ‘No, don’t do that. Well, not yet.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘Are you sitting down?’ ‘Er, yeah.’ My mind shot to a dark place. Had the office burned down, or was it my house? ‘Looks like Fox Wilder might have a case,’ said Mike. ‘Like, a real one.’ ‘Really?’ We hadn’t had anything at all for two months. It was as though adulterers and lost cats took the summer off. Luckily, we all had other sources of income. Emily – late twenties, school dropout, ex drug addict, and clever – studied part-time and worked in the shop beneath our office. Mike – mid-thirties – acted and tutored, and I project-managed my Oxford house refurb, kind of. Also, when not in Brighton grannying, I’d done quite a bit of supply teaching. After the trauma of our first big case eighteen months ago, being back in the classroom, making tiny togas and getting seven-year-olds not to mumble the lines of their Romans play had been good, comforting even. Unfortunate events had caused me to want to give up on the agency, but Mike had talked me into letting it toddle along, saying he’d put money in to expand, market etc., once he’d sold his house in Surrey. I’d tried telling him he was asking too much, but he wouldn’t have it. I tucked the phone under my chin, opened a bottle of water, and took a swig. ‘Tell me more.’ ‘A woman called Jessica emailed saying she needs to find her husband, who’s been missing for weeks. Said she’d tell us more tomorrow.’ Bear came bounding up, stopped two feet away, and shook lovely cold seawater over me, almost as though I’d trained him to do that. ‘Interesting. And that’s all she said?’ ‘Yep. I’ll forward you her email.’ ‘It’s OK, I’ll have it on my phone. When’s she coming in?’ ‘I haven’t suggested a time yet.’ ‘If you make it late morning, I’ll be there.’ ‘You sure?’ ‘Alfie’s back at school tomorrow, so I could head home this evening.’ ‘That would be great.’ Alfie had managed to throw a pebble at his own cheek and ran towards me howling. ‘Better go,’ I told Mike. ‘See you tomorrow.’ ‘Yeah, I’ll let you know what time. Drive safely.’ ‘I’m sorry?’ I said, but he’d gone. Were men ever told to drive safely? Alfie sobbed beside me, so I kissed his sore spot better, part-dried the dog, packed everything into my rucksack, and took us to a beach café for two ice creams and a doggie bowl of water. While Alfie and I licked at rapidly melting cones, I wondered again why Brighton City Council hadn’t thought of trees along the promenade. My daughter’s house – inherited from her father, who’d inherited it from his grandmother – was on the Hove end of Brighton. It was a grand-looking, terraced, four-storey, five-bedroomed Victorian affair that Terence had rented out for decades but apparently never visited. Luckily for me, it had a self-contained basement for visitors. It was all a bit dated, but that was how Maeve and her partner Jack liked it, and they’d changed very little since moving in, not even the tired William Morris wallpaper. ‘I know you’re going for