Bronze: A Romantic Suspense Novel (Blackwood Elements Book 8)

by Elise Noble

  Sally put down the paperback and thought for a moment, chewing her lip. “Last year, the police said my friend Beth murdered her ex, but no way did she do that. He tried to rape her, and it wasn’t the first time. How can pushing someone down the stairs in self-defence be murder?”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She OD’d before the trial.”

  Fuck. “I don’t want anyone else to die.”

  Not in this particular case, anyway. Well, apart from Owen Mills. Mimi had already checked out his room at the hospital. Sure, there was a police guard outside, but that was just a minor inconvenience.

  “I think Marilyn worked in Durack,” Sally said. “She was eating breakfast twenty minutes ago. You know her?”

  “I know her.”

  “Wait, I’ll come with you. This is kind of exciting, huh? Playing detective?”

  Some days, Mimi woke up wanting to right every wrong in the world. Other days, she didn’t want to get out of bed at all. But she’d tried retiring and got bored after six weeks, so what did that leave? She wasn’t cut out for a desk job.

  “Right. Kind of exciting.”

  CHAPTER 20 - MIMI

  WHEN SALLY EXPLAINED the situation to Marilyn, half a dozen other girls listened in, and by the time Mimi finished her cup of coffee, they were already calling their friends and acquaintances with the mystery woman’s description. Two hours later, Mimi had sat in on a self-defence class run by one of their few male volunteers, caught up on her emails, scheduled a hostage rescue simulation for her team, and ordered cat treats on the internet.

  Mimi headed up the Australian branch of Emmy Black’s Special Projects division. They handled all the shit that nobody else in Blackwood wanted to touch. For years, Emmy had overseen everything herself, but with business booming and Australia such a long flight away from her US base, she’d brought Mimi on board to help out.

  An experiment in delegation, she’d called it to start with. If it didn’t work out, they’d agreed to part company, no hard feelings, but a year and a half on, Mimi was enjoying her new role more than she thought she would. Being able to pick and choose her jobs was an improvement over being forced to accept orders she often disagreed with, and Emmy had become a friend. It was nice being able to pick up the phone and talk with someone who understood.

  Movement by the door of the dining room caught Mimi’s eye, and she looked up to find Sally approaching with what seemed like half of the residents in tow. A delegation.

  “Her name’s Bayley,” Sally said. “With a Y in the middle.” She looked around at the others. “We think so, anyway, don’t we?”

  Murmurs of agreement came from all sides.

  “Can you start from the beginning? Please?”

  “One of Sammi’s friends thought she remembered a real skinny girl who used to work in that area. Hung out by Mikey’s.”

  “She ran away from home, my friend thought,” Sammi piped up. “Always seemed nervous.”

  “Never really fitted in,” another girl said. “Like she came from a good family and took a wrong turn.”

  “Is she still around? Does anyone know how to find her?”

  “Nah, we spoke to her old roommate, and she disappeared right after that guy got shot.”

  “Disappeared?”

  Mimi had visions of another body, this time young and female.

  “Not like that. She said she was getting out of the business, that she’d had enough.”

  “Did she say what she was going to do instead?”

  A shrug. “Not really.”

  “Do you think her roommate would talk to me?”

  “Yeah, I told Kirsty you were okay, and she said she’ll be home until twelve, then she’s got to go to her waitressing job.”

  Mimi wrote her address down, promised to visit again soon, and jogged out to her car. Could Bayley-with-a-Y be the breakthrough they were looking for?

  “Sorry about the mess,” Kirsty said, swinging the door open wider once Mimi had explained who she was and why she was there. “Laurie said you might come over, but I’m not sure I can help much. I haven’t seen Bayley in three years.”

  Mimi glanced around the place. The mess didn’t come so much from untidiness, more from peeling wallpaper and a stained carpet. The outside of the apartment building wasn’t much better. Kirsty herself took care over her appearance—her red hair was tied back in a high ponytail, and her manicure looked fresh. But her eyes were tired.

  “At the moment, we know next to nothing about her. She lived here with you? Or somewhere else?”

  “Yes, here for six months, but she mostly kept to herself. I used to hear her crying at night, but she never wanted to discuss it, you know?”

  “Why do you think she cried?”

  “Honestly, she never said much. She was always so quiet. Most of the time, I didn’t even know she was here.”

  “But if you had to guess… Was she upset over the present or the past?”

  Kirsty picked at her bracelet, a cheap gold chain with plastic charms dangling from it. “Both, I guess. She told me her dad died.”

  “Anything else about her family?”

  “Not much. I think she had a brother, but he never visited. Thinking back, she hardly ever socialised. She seemed to prefer being on her own.”

  “No boyfriend?”

  “Not that I saw.” The catch on the bracelet broke, and it fell to the floor. “Dammit. You know what line of work we were in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll know that being single wasn’t exactly unusual. There aren’t many guys who’ll date a girl who sleeps with assholes for money.”

  “Did Laurie tell you much about why I’m here?”

  “Not really. Just that you’re looking for Bayley as a witness to a crime, and I should talk to you because you’re a good person.”

  A good person? Mimi turned her snort of laughter into a cough. Well, that just went to show how perceptions could differ. Not many “good people” had body counts in triple figures.

  “Rumour has it that Bayley may have had dinner with a murder victim right before he died.”

  “Dinner?” For a moment, Kirsty frowned, puzzled. But then her forehead smoothed out. “Was it a Friday? It was a Friday, right?”

  Was it? Mimi had to get her phone out and scroll back three years in her calendar to check. This was why Rix was the detective and she was the assassin. Rix would have known that detail right away.

  “Uh, yes. A Friday.”

  “That was the Friday-night foodie. At least, that’s what Bayley used to call him. He always paid her for the whole evening, but he insisted on cooking her dinner and watching TV instead of…you know. She reckoned he couldn’t get it up. Lonely old guy, just liked the company, probably. When she first started going over to his place, she told me about him. Wanted to know if that sort of arrangement was normal.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  “That it definitely wasn’t normal, but if she could make that kind of cash by talking instead of fucking, she should go for it.”

  “She saw him every week?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think most weeks. She always dressed up nice, and I never saw her for the rest of the evening. We used to work the same area, so I used to see her around most nights when we were out.”

  “But she quit?”

  “Yeah, about three years ago.”

  “Can you give me an approximate date?”

  “Sorry.” A shrug. “Bad memory.”

  “Was it summer or winter?”

  “Uh…” Kirsty’s mouth bunched up as she thought. “Summer? When she left, I had to find someone to take her room, and nobody wanted it because the AC was broken.”

  That fitted. Jasper John had croaked in February.

  “Did she say anything about her future plans? Did she get a new job?”

  “I don’t think so. It was sudden, her decision. She seemed really nervous for a week or so, then sh
e said she was leaving.”

  Nervous over having witnessed a murder? “Any idea what scared her?”

  “We almost got busted. One minute, we were hanging around, waiting for customers, and the next, there were cops everywhere. We had to run, and she twisted an ankle. It puffed up huge and went all yellow. Looked like a cantaloupe.”

  “Was that before or after…?” Mimi gave herself a mental kick. Asking whether the bust was before or after the murder was pointless when Kirsty didn’t know Jasper John and barely even remembered the season. “And you’re sure she didn’t say where she was going?”

  “Not really. She said she wanted to see the world, and that was it. I thought she’d be back after a few weeks when she worked out how much travelling cost, but she never came.”

  “Why did you think she’d come back here? Did she pay rent up front?”

  “She gave me a month in lieu of notice, but she left a box of her stuff here. Asked me to keep it safe until she collected it.”

  Mimi’s ears pricked up. “A box of her stuff? Do you still have it?”

  “In my closet. But some of it got damaged when the roof leaked.”

  They had her. Bayley had to be the girl they were looking for; Mimi was sure of it. All the pieces fitted together. But now they had to find her.

  “Can I take a look?”

  “Don’t see why not. It’s not like she wants it. Can you do me a favour? If you find her, tell her I need my closet space back.”

  “Her name’s Hanna Pearson.”

  Mimi dropped Hanna’s library card onto the table over Russell’s hospital bed, complete with her photo on the back. She’d been pretty in a gaunt sort of way. Good teeth, but even though she was smiling, her eyes looked sad.

  Mimi had stopped at the library on the way back and used a self-service kiosk to check Hanna’s borrowing history. She’d last used the card two days before Jasper John’s murder, and she’d run up hundreds of dollars in fines for the three books she hadn’t returned. Two thrillers, one romance. Until then, she’d visited the library once a week, regular as clockwork, a voracious reader getting her fix. Mimi had dropped a hundred dollars into the donations box on her way out—enough to cover the cost of the missing paperbacks. Reading was important, and as a young child, all of her books had come from the library. Her mama had worked hard, but money was always too tight to buy anything but the essentials.

  Russell looked like shit, which was only to be expected, but he sat up a little straighter with the news. Then winced. Mimi had never been shot in the lung, just the leg and an arm, but bullets hurt like a bitch. Probably she should’ve brought a box of chocolates or something, feigned sympathy, but Akeem seemed to have turned the room into a fucking jungle and there wasn’t room for so much as a card.

  “Hanna Pearson? Are you sure?” Rix asked.

  “Of course I’m fucking sure. Otherwise I’d have included a qualifier with that.”

  A “might” or a “maybe.” Duh.

  “How did you get her name?”

  “Talked to people.”

  “Where is she?”

  “If I had all the answers, you’d be out of a job, Detective Rix. Apparently, she went travelling, so she could be anywhere.”

  Russell was already typing. Give the boy a gold star for effort.

  “Can I see that library card?” he asked.

  Rix slid it over, and Russell studied it for a second.

  “She’s in Mexico.”

  Everyone stared at him.

  “How’d you find that out?” Mimi asked.

  “Facebook.”

  Fucking Facebook. Mimi burst out laughing, and now everyone stared at her. She quickly arranged her features into a scowl as Russell turned his laptop around.

  “She joined six months ago. I guess she thought it was safe by then.”

  Figured. After Kylie ran, the Jasper John case went quiet, and there’d never been a comprehensive search for Hanna let alone a request that would warrant her extradition as a witness. After two and a half years of lying low, dipping a toe into social media didn’t seem like an outlandish thing for her to do.

  And the pictures on the Facebook profile did bear a strong resemblance to the girl on the library card. The hair was different, but that was a triviality. Mimi had to agree with Russell’s assessment that they were the same person.

  “How do you know she’s in Mexico? There’s no location on her posts.”

  Russell scrolled down the feed. “No, but see here? She took a picture of a street artist, and unless I’m very much mistaken, the building in the background is the church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán in Oaxaca. My brother travelled around Mexico before he moved to Egypt, and that was one of the places he visited. It’s part of an eighteenth-century monastery.”

  Luke held up a Wikipedia entry on his phone. “He’s right. It’s the same building.”

  Mimi had to admit that technology had its uses, although she still favoured human intelligence. And it didn’t really surprise her that Russell was a history buff.

  “So, Hanna’s in Mexico. Then I guess someone needs to go and fetch her.”

  CHAPTER 21 - KYLIE

  “YOUR LAWYER’S HERE. Hands out.”

  I’d been in jail for exactly two weeks, and apart from a brief court hearing where I confirmed my name and lack of address, three cold showers, and the uncomfortable meetings with Jarrod Fulton, my Blackwood-appointed lawyer, I hadn’t left my cell. My blood-covered bathrobe had been exchanged for prison greens, already too big because I’d barely eaten, and sleepless nights meant I knew every crack on the ceiling, every smudge on the wall.

  I’d also become well-acquainted with my own mind. The fear and the guilt. If I could’ve turned back the clock three years, I’d have walked into Superintendent Clarke’s office and handwritten a confession. Not because of what happened to Michael, Shane, and Owen—they deserved everything they got, even if Michael’s bloodied face did haunt my nightmares—but because of Russell. He’d been shot because of me. He’d almost died.

  Jarrod said Russell had been rushed into surgery, that a bullet had been removed from his chest but he was recovering now. Each time I asked how bad it was, Jarrod glossed over the details. Which meant it was seriously bad. But as long as Russell was alive… The updates on him were the only reason I spoke to Jarrod at all. I didn’t want Blackwood’s assistance anymore. They’d done nothing but help me, and in return, I’d turned people’s lives upside down. Far easier to accept my fate. Living in a cell was preferable to living with the knowledge that another person I cared about had been injured.

  “Okay,” I told the guard, then held my hands ready for cuffing.

  When I first arrived, the guards had glared at me like I was some kind of monster. The cop killer. They looked out for their own, and I still had the bruises to prove it. But I didn’t complain. What was the point? The glares gradually subsided, replaced by scowls and barked orders. In their position, I probably wouldn’t have liked me much either, so I couldn’t blame them for their attitudes. They didn’t have all the facts. They were just doing their jobs as I’d tried to do mine.

  Click. The cuffs went on.

  For past visits, they’d led me into a room smaller than my cell, bare except for a metal table and chairs, but this time, I was shown into a bigger room. No table. No chairs. What was going on?

  “Why is she wearing handcuffs?” Jarrod snapped. “Take them off.”

  Well, this was different.

  I thought the guard might argue—he looked as if he wanted to—but he complied. Words were muttered as I rubbed some feeling back into my wrists, then Jarrod guided me towards another door with a hand on the small of my back.

  “What’s happening?” I whispered.

  “They’re just finishing up the paperwork, and then you’re free to go.”

  I stopped mid-stride. “What?”

  “Unless you want to stay?” Jarrod smiled, but it didn’t really fit his face. He’d alw
ays struck me as Mr. Gravitas. Kind but oh-so-serious. “Though I don’t recommend that.” He pushed another door open. “Keep your head down.”

  “What?”

  My vocabulary was sorely lacking. I only had one word left.

  “Keep your head down.”

  I didn’t have time to process that or ask further questions before the flashes hit me. There must’ve been a hundred people taking pictures as Jarrod bundled me through the crowd and into a waiting car. I couldn’t see properly anymore. The bright lights seared into my retinas, leaving me blinded. People called my name, shouting questions I couldn’t understand since they were all yelling at the same time.

  “Hey.”

  Oh my gosh. I knew that voice.

  I blinked furiously, trying to clear my vision, and Russell’s blurry form appeared in front of me. Was this a dream? Was I even awake? I reached out for him, but he held up a hand.

  “Careful. I’m a bit bashed up.”

  He was there? He was truly there? Someone slammed the car door, and tears rolled down my cheeks as people started banging on the blacked-out windows. Jarrod climbed into the front and ordered the man behind the wheel to drive.

  “You came?” I said. “You really came?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t do flings.”

  My heart swelled up so big I thought it would burst out of my ribcage, which would’ve been awful because one person with a chest injury was quite bad enough. As the car pulled away, I scrambled up onto the seat and straddled Russell, careful not to touch any part of his torso.

  “You came.” I cupped his cheeks in my hands and kissed him, a wild clash of tongues and teeth that left me breathless. “You came.”

  “Of course I did. I love you.”

  How did I have any tears left in me? I laid my forehead against his. “I love you too. So, so much. But I don’t understand—how am I here? What happened?”

  “That, darling, is a long, long story. It’s probably best if we tell it over dinner.”

  “Dinner?”

  “At the Black Diamond. Apparently, Akeem’s already replaced the floor in Emmy’s villa and patched up the bullet hole.”