Vagrant turned up a day before short detective (7)
I believe the answer is:
nomadic
'vagrant' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'turned up a day before short detective' is the wordplay.
'turned up' is a reversal indicator.
'day before' becomes 'mon' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should believe this answer much more).
'short' means to remove the last letter.
'detective' becomes 'dick' (informal term for a detective).
'a'+'mon'='amon'
'amon' reversed gives 'noma'.
'dick' with its final letter removed is 'dic'.
'noma'+'dic'='NOMADIC'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for nomadic that I've seen before include "Wandering from place to place, with no permanent home" , "Not settled" , "Not settling" , "Given to wandering like travellers or Bedouins" , "always moving?" .)