Frankie Holden investigates The Case of the Missing Dog

By Mercedes Blanche

Frankie Holden is a female Parisian detective with a drink problem and no reliable man. Opportunity brought the chance to make a lot of money by finding a top fashion model’s missing poodle called Lucien. It had been snatched by a ruthless Arab gangster called Waheed, so needed someone tough to help her get it back. Frankie knew just the right person. Yet, when something seems too good to be true...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mercedes Blanche
• Release date: Oct 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463384121

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Frankie Holden

Investigates:

The Case of the Missing Dog

By

Mercedes Blanche

Copyright: Mercedes Blanche 2018

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This story is intended as a work of drama and all characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

To all women trying new things everywhere

MB

1

Two paracetamol capsules scramble searched out of her purse was usually enough to begin the journey towards relief from the throbbing pain caused by the crazy over-drinking session last night.

Her next move was sort of instinctive. Reaching out and fumbling around in the half-light, she found an opened bottle of flattened tonic water that sat patiently waiting for her to take a good swig to sail down those oh-so necessary pills.

Being a modern girl, she’d always opted for orally taken tablets, unlike previous generations that were given pessaries from the pharmacy. She asked one of her more fun aunts why they did that. Her naughty answer was, if you have to be ill, why not take some pleasure from it. Frankie didn’t fully understand her meaning at that time. Now she did.

While downing the drink, her idling mind wandered to a moment of self-awareness.

‘Frankie Holden; please tell me why you continue to do such degrading things? You’re still a young (ish) woman and clearly desirable, maybe! Well, maybe not at this moment. And yet, you remain almost resolutely single. Why is that?’

In truth, she didn’t really want to answer those sorts of awkward questions. Not today. On the plus side, she’d often been praised for a strong work ethic and excellent results in solving many difficult cases. That was a nice thing to hear from clients, but, for now, she just couldn’t be assed with any of it. All she wanted was to crawl back into bed and ignore this shitty world for a while. An indulgence, sure, but she believed it was truly deserved.

The trouble was, this was not her bed or even her apartment. Regardless, the luxury of staying in bed this morning was not to be hers, and for several reasons.

Firstly, on awaking, and to her instant horror, she’d found herself lying next to some ghastly random guy she wouldn’t have dated in a million years. To add insult to injury, his snoring could’ve woken the dead or rallied a drove of pigs. He was nothing less than disgusting. That truly made her feel great.

‘Not again,’ she muttered in self-loathing, ‘those damn beer goggles will be the end of me!’

Oh God! She now gasped as she considered something far worse: did they have sex?

Possibly, but she certainly wasn’t going to wake him to ask. Why the hell would she do something as humiliating as that?

Frankie had no idea of his name, nor cared to, let alone to ask such an intimate question.

Gently sliding out of bed to avoid waking ‘whatshisface,’ this overhung woman desperately scanned the murky room to find her strewn-about clothes. Once located, those crumpled garments looked as if they’d been wrapped around a grenade just before somebody pulled the pin. It was unlikely any iron could smooth those out again.

Laying them out quickly on the edge of the bed, she began to silently dress. Her disgust made her feel like crying, but she held back on the tears because of the rising surge of anger toward herself.

The expression on her face would show anyone to just stay away today. The thing was, she had to make a special effort to arrive before her holidaying assistant returned, that had no keys to open the office. That was a bloody nuisance.

As she walked barefoot along the hallway with the heels of her shoes clutched firmly in her hands for stealth, a wall mirror presented itself. What she did next was totally unwise, and yet, she felt almost compelled to do it.

Glancing briefly to her left, Frankie received a truly horrendous reflection by return.

‘Oh, Merde!’ she exclaimed, ‘I look like the damned Medusa.’

Deliberately dropping her party shoes to the floor with a clatter as if they were to blame for everything, she slipped them on forcefully while messing with her hair in an effort to obtain some sort of neater form, all the while silently pleading for this reflective object to be kinder.

‘Oh, Frankie, what the hell are you doing with your life?’

This was said with some sadness to her voice. There could be several answers to that question if shared out to an audience familiar with her current lifestyle. But this was not the time for such recriminations or stinging replies, that would only make her feel worse than she already did.

Slamming the front door loudly in a sudden rise of temper, she’d received the mischievous urge to wake him up. Why should she be the only one having to endure an early start? Let’s ruin that bastard’s sleep.

After ten minutes of riding the bus into town, Frankie soon found its rhythmic and hypnotic movements were causing her to slip into an almost trance-like state. That was preferable to her throwing up. She didn’t want to ruin this fine and sunny Parisian morning, yet she knew it could happen. Let’s hope she made it to work first.

In her daydreaming, she didn’t notice the progress of the bus’s route or the various passengers getting on and off until it encountered a large pothole that shook the entire bus from front to back. It caused most of the passengers to have bodily collisions as they were thrown about inside and made them yell out in anger at the careless driver. This unpleasant jolt brought Frankie back to reality with a start.

While recovering her composure, an abstract thought curiously ran through her brain. She wondered if the term: ‘bus of shame’ was an actual thing, as opposed to the more well-known: ‘walk of shame.’ Maybe there was or perhaps she’d started a brand new saying.

‘Oh, for goodness sake, think of something else, will you? You can be a right silly cow sometimes!’

Her grumpy brain barked this rebuke out with alcoholic bad humour.

Frankie shook her head with some vigour, hoping the movement may bring back her senses. It did, partially, which was fortunate, and just in time to realise the next stop was hers.

Getting up from her seat, she had to push her way past the many standing passengers that were still moaning about the ride and stubbornly unwilling to move.

Eventually managing to get off, she was relieved to know it was only a few minutes’ walk to the office and pleased it wasn’t raining. She’d recently lost yet another umbrella, the third this year.

Breathing deeply, she purposefully strode along in her tall heels, dearly hoping the morning air would unfog her booze-addled brain and possibly help her feel slightly less horrendous.

The rotten problem now, was that blisters were forming on her heels from those torturous yet highly-fashionable shoes. She rarely wore such footwear, but they were retaliating like crazy because they didn’t like the cobbled streets of Paris at all. On the brighter side, she knew there were some comfy ‘flats’ waiting for her at the office, now only two sore-footed minutes away.

Climbing the old and groaning wooden stairs up to the office came as a huge relief to Frankie and her poor ravaged feet. She quickly found her keys and opened the door joyfully as if a wonderful prize was waiting on the other side.

On looking around, the office was still untidy, (her fault), but everything seemed to be as she’d left it yesterday. Perhaps a description of how the Romans had left Carthage might fit the view.

The place predominantly smelled of stale coffee. So, in an effort to impress the impending arrival of Violette, who was her assistant and good friend, she quickly opened all the windows before moving into her own office to do the same.

‘God, I feel wretched,’ she vented out loudly through the opened window, but her cry was heard by no-one except some pigeons resting on a window sill, who rapidly all took flight in understandable fear of this booze-soaked woman’s husky voice.

‘Maybe I do look that scary,’ she announced with sad resignation seeing their rapid retreat.

Moving to her desk, Frankie reluctantly looked down at the ever-growing pile of correspondence but resisted the temptation to read any of it. They were probably all bills, in fact, most were rudely phrased, final