The Cinderella Cleaning Caper (1)

Under the gentle blanket of night, the silver moon, she shines her light…

The carillon of West Side’s clock tower played the familiar lullaby, a time when all good children were ready to go to bed.

Dance with the stars in your dreams, until Father Sun shines bright…

As the sound of the bells faded away, Riley Rowley checked his gold pocket watch. Nine o’clock already, he thought, as he folded up the day’s newspaper and put it into the kindling pile. It had been a slow day, and he was ready to get to bed.

As he crossed the sitting room to close the curtains, there was a muffled bang followed by a shriek, coming from his father’s office behind the kitchen; a room that (he thought) hadn’t been entered in months. Riley sighed as he turned around and picked the kerosene lamp he had been reading by from the end table.

The door to the office was open by the tiniest margin, but Riley could see a candle’s light dancing inside. He pushed the door open.

“Lilly, why are you in here?” Riley asked.

A chair had been pushed up to a bookshelf, and there were two heavy leather bound volumes on the floor. The culprit, a small girl with her light brown hair in pigtails, was clutching a large maroon leather-bound book in her arms, like a favorite teddy bear. Riley noticed a candle burning in a candle holder on the end table, and that his father’s easy chair bore signs of recently being sat in. He locked eyes with his little sister.

“I…I was putting this back,” Lilly said, “and…it slipped out of my hands, and I tried to catch it and knocked the other ones over…Honest.” She was a true master of the innocent look, and her hazel eyes blinked nervously.
“Let me see,” Riley said, as Lilly relinquished the book. He recognized the book immediately, despite there being no markings on the cover—it was one of his father’s diaries, kept during his long career as an Imperial Detective.

“What were you doing with this?" Riley said. He put the diary back onto the shelf, then bent down to pick up the other books.

"Just…reading it," Lilly replied. She looked down at her bare feet.

Riley nodded, looking sternly at his younger sister. “Lilly, I don’t want you in here making a mess of things," he said, hesitantly. “It’s not what Papa would have wanted.”

“He would have wanted you to keep being a detective,” Lilly murmured, as she got down from the chair and pushed it back towards her father’s desk. “That’s why I want to help.”

“Lilly, detective work isn’t a game,” Riley said.

“I KNOW,” Lilly said, glaring up at her older brother. “That’s why I’m studying. I’ve been reading about all of Papa’s cases.”

“Lilly, our father did some very dangerous work. You shouldn’t be getting into his diaries,” Riley said. He decided to play the “concerned parent” card. “Besides, the clock just struck nine. You have school tomorrow. If you want to help me, you need to go to bed so you’re ready for school tomorrow.”

Sullenly, Lilly took the candle from the end table. “Bro. When are you going to be a detective again?” she asked.
Riley looked over his father’s office, left (mostly) intact since the day of his untimely passing. “I’m not ready yet,” he said, looking sorrowfully at his little sister.

“It’s been six months,” Lilly said. Her words hung in the air, said with a voice that seemed a lot older and wiser than her age (“nine going on ten.”) With no response, she turned towards the door.

“I’m going to bed now. Good night, Bro.”

She exited the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Riley listened as her footsteps thumped up the stairs and to the second floor, leaving him alone in his father’s office with his thoughts.

He looked down at what had been his father’s desk. There was a fine layer of dust coating the desk, the green glass shaded desk lamp, and even the bottles of ink that had been purchased and never opened. As he took up the kerosene lamp and looked over the bookshelves, he noticed evidence that his younger sister had been reading Father’s diaries for quite some time. There were tell-tale marks in the dust where Lilly had carefully removed the books, then just as carefully put them back, and every so often a fingerprint from her small hand. How many times had she managed to sneak down here without him knowing it?

There was one last book that was propped upright on his father’s desk. It was covered in dust and cobwebs, and was distorted from being undisturbed for months. It was the diary for that year. Hesitantly, Riley picked up the book and opened it to March 5, the final entry. He inhaled deeply as he read his father’s words, and heard his voice echo in his memory:

March 5, 1927

Still very cold and icy out. Must check on new lead today though, case may hinge on it.

A single tear rolled down Riley’s cheek. He wiped his face with his arm, sniffed and continued to read.

Riley Rowley was a sensitive and compassionate young man at heart, even if he had to regularly deal with the dark side of humanity while working with his father on cases. In his nineteen years, he had experienced the death of both his parents—his mother had died five years ago—and assumed the mantle of caretaker for his younger sister, Lilly. They were siblings in name only, because Lilly had been adopted by the family when she was just a toddler and Riley had been twelve years old. However, anyone off the street would take one look at the pair and immediately assume that they were related. They were both brown haired, but Riley had dark brown eyes while Lilly’s were hazel. Riley’s tall stature was inherited from his father, while Lilly was somewhat small for her age. If she were still alive, Lilly would likely resemble her adopted mother, although Riley often wondered what her birth parents were like.

When Lilly had been adopted, Riley had asked his parents exactly why she had come into their family, especially since his mother was past childbearing age at the time. (Riley had been born when his parents had been in their late thirties.) Their explanation had been somewhat vague, but Riley understood that she had been given to the Rowleys for protection. If he pressed, the explanation was dismissed, but even more bizarrely, Riley would find his mind growing fuzzy every time he thought about Lilly’s history. Lilly understood her circumstances, and due to that referred to Riley as her “bro,” instead of calling him brother. At first, Riley resented the little girl, and even lashed out at her during a time when his classmates at school were bullying him. Eventually, after the death of their mother, they were forced to grow closer together.

Their father, Jasper Rowley, was a well-respected Imperial Detective, and a person that anyone, no matter what their circumstances were, could turn to for help. He had been licensed for over 30 years, and had a great deal of solved cases—and satisfied clients—in his portfolio. It had been a great source of pride for him when his son Riley told him he wanted to follow in his footsteps at age five, and again, at age 15, when Riley decided he was going to sit the Imperial licensing examination.

While the examination was open to any citizen of the empire 18 years or older, a minor would be allowed to take it with written recommendation from a member of the city’s assembly. Many of Jasper’s contacts were all too willing to write a recommendation for such a brilliant young boy. Despite some drawbacks on exam day, Riley passed both the written and interview portions of the exam on his first try, and was officially sworn in as Veritas City’s youngest Imperial detective in a decade.

However, the pride of passing the examination was fleeting, as mere weeks later Penelope Rowley was diagnosed with a disease that rapidly robbed her of her strength. In a span of two months, she went from a vibrant woman to a shell of her former self. Jasper Rowley seemed to age overnight, himself, as detective work took a backseat to providing for his ailing wife. The entire family silently accepted the fact that this was the end, and Penelope Rowley passed on leaving her husband, teenage son and very young adopted daughter.

Life eventually returned to normal for the family. After a time, the Rowley Detective Agency was reopened, with Jasper and Riley working side by side on major cases. Despite their heavy workload, Jasper Rowley never failed to spend time with his family every evening. They would be sitting in the sitting room or the office—Riley working on school homework and Lilly playing with her dolls—and Jasper would come in holding a cardboard box.

"Who would like to play a game?" he would ask.
Riley would usually drop whatever he was doing and run over to his father, who set the box down on a table or his desk. At first, Lilly was more interested in feeding her doll a piece of cake crudely drawn on paper, but as she grew older she started asking, "Can I play, too?" and running to her father along with her older brother.

"Very well, you two," Jasper Rowley said. "I’m going to lift this box and count to three. When the count is over, I’ll put this back down, and it’s up to you to tell me what you see inside."

He lifted the box to reveal an assortment of items, gathered from the drawers and chests inside the house. To challenge his children, Jasper used different objects in different numbers each day.

"One, two, three."

Jasper put the box back down exactly where it was, startling the two children. "All right. What did you see?"

Riley’s eyes rolled in thought. "An apple, a peanut in its shell…"

"A, um…A little book?" Lilly added helpfully.

"A clothes pin and a fountain pen," Riley said. "Then…hmm. There was that little book Lilly mentioned…Oh, yes. A postage stamp."

"And, and a brown coin!" Lilly said. "And a little bit of paper."
"I didn’t see that," Riley protested. "Um…there was also a little pocket knife, and…I think that was all."

"Well then," Jasper said, "is that everything? Do either of you remember seeing anything else?" The two children shook their heads, and then with a flourish, Jasper lifted up the box.

"There!" Lilly pointed a chubby finger towards a small piece of torn paper, only about an inch long. It looked as if it had torn loose from the little book.

"I didn’t even see that," Riley said.
"Honestly, neither did I," Jasper said. "It must’ve fallen in the box when I was gathering up everything I was testing you on." He reached out and patted the little girl on the head.

"That’s a good eye you’ve got there, Lilly," Jasper said. "Keep training those eyes of yours. One day, I want you two to be able to look at something for just a second and tell me exactly what you saw a week later. That’s the first rule of being a good detective: Be observant and remember."

Both of the Rowley children developed keen observation skills thanks to Jasper Rowley’s nightly game. While Riley had several years’ head start on Lilly, Lilly was the one who picked it up even quicker, even managing to find minor details about an individual object that both Riley and his father missed. One time, Jasper Rowley had put a present he was giving to his wife for her birthday—an enamel peacock with its tail spread—underneath the box. While both the children guessed correctly, Lilly had even counted the number of feathers on its tail. “Maybe I should have you be my helper, too,” Jasper said, as he patted his adopted daughter on the head.

Those days were gone now. His father’s death still weighed heavily on Riley’s soul, and his days were not filled with investigations, interviews and forensics, but making sure Lilly was healthy, had enough to eat and got to school safely every day. Riley took down their house’s sign, turned away callers and referred his father’s unfinished business to other trusted colleagues throughout the city. He had feared that because of his young age, Lilly would be sent to live at a workhouse, but his friends helped him work past his fears.

The entry ended abruptly, and March 6—and every other page beyond that—was blank, and would remain blank for all eternity. Riley stared down at the page, knowing in his heart that he needed to carry on his father’s legacy…but it wouldn’t be the same.

All alone, in his father’s darkened office, the tears came.