“And the girl . . .” Kiko shook his head. “Nope, I can see now that she’s not Kate. They passed under a streetlight, so I can see her better. God, she’s young, way younger than any of the group. Maybe sixteen?”
“Yikes,” Dawn said, thinking that if she had a little sister that age, the older guys would’ve had a mouthful of fist if they even touched her.
Natalia seemed to understand what Dawn’s “yikes” meant. “Here, the age of consent is sixteen.”
Dawn had already read that somewhere, but it didn’t make her feel any less protective.
Kiko continued. “Before they actually got to the station, there was a dark street, an alley . . . I can’t see any signs to ID the exact place, but no one is around. Looks like the back of a restaurant, with empty delivery crates and vegetables dropped on the ground. And then . . .”
He opened his eyes, smug as a thug who knows he’s being dug.
“Then . . .” Dawn said.
“Then a crowd of young girls walked up. Seven of them in matching skirts, boots, shirts, and ties. Very swank. One girl—she had long brown hair, blazing eyes that looked purple . . . She just started talking to them, like they were in a bar and not in a deserted, vegetable-rotting alley. She had this clipped, upper-crust accent. Harrods. Know what I mean?”
Dawn nodded. “Sounds like they’re the same type of girls as the one Justin was hanging out with—Posh Spice Girl—except this group’s got their act together.”
“Exactly,” Kiko said, clearly thrilled that he was providing good material. “The thing is, the brunette seemed to be focusing on the girl Justin was with, almost like the guys were of secondary interest.”
Natalia had gotten out her notebook and was scribbling furiously. “Did this brunette and her group . . . You know. Do what ‘clients’ do?”
She’d hit the jackpot with Kiko, his eyes lighting up. “I’m just getting to the best part. The brunette invited them to this nearby club, and when she smiled she had . . .”
He pointed to his teeth, then executed a soft, dramatic cackle.
Natalia dropped her pen and then picked it up, flowing right back into note taking.
Dawn nudged Kiko for trying to scare the newbie.
Loving it, he added, “But when Justin looked at her again, the teeth were back to normal. I mean, they were slightly messed up like most of the chompers you see around here, but they were teeth.”
“Think the drugs had anything to do with what Justin spied?” Dawn asked. “He could’ve been tripping and seeing weird tricks of what light there was.”
“He could’ve been.” Kiko’s expression said he doubted it.
“And then?” Dawn asked.
Although Kiko’s grin didn’t change, something in his eyes did.
“Anything more?” Natalia asked, her pen still.
He shut his eyes again. “Justin and his buds hung back to pop a couple pills while his female friend went off with the toothy brunette and her crowd. The guys followed them into a club down the street—loud music, strobe lights, confusion. Then one of Justin’s pals disappeared with the girls, and . . .” He opened up. “Everything fades out after that.”
Natalia and Dawn traded glances, and the new girl put her notebook down.
“It all has to mean something,” Kiko said, “because that’s what Justin thought about when I whispered the key word.”
Vampires. But was Justin’s state of mind reliable?
“Your visions can be symbolic and cryptic,” Dawn said.
“But my touch readings have been straightforward.”
“They weren’t so much with Frank.”
A muscle jerked at Kiko’s jaw. He knew Dawn was right because, last year, when they’d been searching for her dad, the psychic had been able to access Frank by touching his shirts. The readings had been scrambled and painful for Kiko, even throwing him into an intense, altered state of consciousness some nights.
Regretting that she’d put a damper on his success, Dawn said, “I wonder if we can get Frank to contact Justin for some follow-up questions tonight. I sort of alienated our interviewee back there in the coffee shop and I doubt he’d give any of us the time of day again.”
“Tell me about it.” Kiko had come out of his brooding long enough to comment. “It looked like you went all puppet master on him. Is that mental punch of yours morphing?”
He had no idea how much she’d wondered about that, too. “Who knows.”
Natalia kept her peace, taking in everything, as Kiko brightened up a bit.
“Can you imagine the possibilities?” he asked. “You could jerk people around even better, Dawn.”
“It was probably just a glitch.” Did they have to talk about this?
She turned to Natalia, who raised her notebook and pen again. “Frank doesn’t have any kind of PI license, so he can use a fake name while telling Justin he’s trying to find a missing niece. He can make a search for Posh Spice sound like a personal mission, and Justin should respond to that.”
Natalia was wearing a doubtful look.
“What?” Dawn said. “It’d be a bad idea to march up to Justin and announce that Posh might’ve partied with ‘clients’ and we’d like to find her, please. It’ll be bad enough that Justin gets two weird personal visits so close together. But Frank can use his silver tongue to explain that away.”
Natalia thought that over, then took more notes. But she didn’t say she understood, and Dawn wondered if she was altogether on board.
Kiko started to walk off, and they followed, the jasmine scent lifting away while the trio merged with the crowd on the pavement.
“For some reason,” Natalia said, “I thought you were real private investigators. That’s what I sensed.”
Dawn dodged a woman with a massive baby carriage. Faux-British Kiko would’ve called it a “pram.”
“Things are different now,” Dawn said. “Back in L.A., after the boss recruited Kiko and Breisi, he made sure they had enough investigative work hours and education to qualify for licenses. Even while they pursued acting careers on the side, it was a part of their training while he homed in on the ‘clients.’ Thanks to some fancy work by the boss here, Kiko can work as a PI, but even back in California, we sometimes needed to come up with a less freaky reason to interview people than reality provided. It doesn’t mean we’re not investigators. We just aren’t official right now.”
“Were you a PI, Dawn?”
“No. I guess I’ve always been a shadow associate. I never had the time or inclination to fulfill any licensing requirements, so I’m actually more . . . physical aid.”
“I see.” Natalia fell a step behind Dawn.
Kiko added a comment over his shoulder. “Listen, if you’re not comfortable with how we go about it . . .”
She caught back up. “I . . . am.”
But she sure didn’t seem like it as she hunched into her red coat.
They’d come to the railway station, which wasn’t a big one spacewise, even though it saw a lot of traffic. Since it was about lunchtime, they grabbed sandwiches from a small stand and got on a train headed back to Victoria Station.
Their scheduled interview with Kate Lansing’s stepmother wasn’t until 2:30 PM, so they had time to stop by headquarters, where they grabbed naps. Then they took a quick tube trip up to the old St. Dunstan-in-the-East church ruins, which served as a miniature public park these days.
Mrs. Langley had asked them to meet her here, and Dawn suspected that the request had come about because the woman didn’t want to host them in her Tufnell Park flat.
When they arrived at the ruins, a wiry, hatchet-faced man in a gray wool sweater stood with his arms barred over his chest at the entrance near the health clinic that had claimed residence on the old church’s premises.
The Friends took up the perimeter as the ugly guy watched the team pass. Nodding civilly—Dawn was totally getting good at that—they found themselves in a serene courtyard with damaged gothic gray
walls coated by scraggly ivy and light beards of moss. A burst of scarlet gold trees, flowers, and bushes circled the center, where bricks were laid around a low, raised fountain that burbled over the hustle of the city outside.
A skinny woman with gray hair tucked under a floppy tweed hat sat on one of the wooden benches, a book open on her lap. She wore glasses low on her long nose, and she moved her thin lips while reading.
They were the only ones in the public park, so Dawn made some noise by shuffling through a patch of fallen leaves.
The woman glanced up, folding her book closed with veined hands and keeping her place marked with a long-nailed finger. She was reading spiritual quotes.
“Mrs. Lansing?” Dawn asked, guessing their subject’s age to be in the late fifties. The woman hadn’t kept herself up that well and, for some reason, Dawn had expected a hipper stepmom judging from Kate’s youth.
“Hello,” Mrs. Lansing said in an anemic yet refined voice.
She didn’t stand, but she did extend her hand as they all introduced themselves, providing false names, of course. Dawn actually had some nicely forged U.S. press credentials on her because she’d used the journalist ruse before, but Mrs. Lansing didn’t ask for anything.
And Dawn didn’t offer, because if there was a big rule of hunting, it was to never give more info than you had to.
After the interviewee had spent one extra, interested glance on Kiko, they sat on an adjacent bench. Dawn had taken care to have her crucifix necklace in full sight, yet it had no vampy effect when the older woman spied it. She did offer an approving smile though.
Kiko clenched and unclenched his fingers, and Dawn guessed he hadn’t gotten any clear readings from shaking Mrs. Lansing’s hand. Then, as if to put that behind him, he took a digital camera out of his outer jacket pocket since he was playing “photographer” while Dawn and Natalia would serve as reporters for two different articles.
The man they’d seen at the entrance wandered into the courtyard, leaning against the clinic wall as he stared at Kiko. His chin seemed to fold up disapprovingly to his mouth, making him look like one of those shrunken apple heads.
Mrs. Lansing noticed the direction of their gazes. “My brother. He’s been very helpful.”
“Is he keeping time for your interviews?” Kiko asked.
“That and making certain that there are no photographs. I’m sorry if I didn’t make it clear earlier that I wish to have none taken. They unsettle me, as if I’ve become a breed of celebrity to be captured. I discovered a swarm of flashbulbs outside my flat this morning after you called.”
Kiko put the camera away, even though it would’ve been nice to get a picture for Costin. “No photos then.”
“Thank you.”
Dawn held up her PDA. “Do you mind if I record?”
The woman hesitated, so Dawn put that away, too, getting out a pad of paper instead.
“No worries,” she said, much to the woman’s apparent relief. “I’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”
Natalia already had her own trusty notebook out, and she was sketching Mrs. Lansing. Dawn measured the woman up, too: the reddened eyes, the pallid skin of someone who still hadn’t gotten over a shock, a weak chin that seemed to be thrust out so she wouldn’t cry. . . .
Earlier, Kiko had called her a fame whore, but she wasn’t striking Dawn that way. And she’d been thinking they would encounter someone meaner, too, based on how Mrs. Lansing had treated Kate.
Still, how many mothers—step or birth—could give interviews so soon after their daughter’s unthinkable death?
“We’re sorry about your loss,” Kiko said, starting the ball rolling. “Thank you for talking to us about Kate.”
Mrs. Lansing slid a bookmark between the pages of the spiritual quotations. “I’ve agreed to interviews because I hope to make other mothers more aware—and not only in Britain or . . .”
She looked to Natalia.
“Romania,” the new girl supplied, lifting her chin slightly.
Mrs. Lansing didn’t seem to pass the type of Roma judgment Natalia had clearly been expecting. Instead, she kept talking.
“Wherever it may be, all families could certainly benefit from Katherine’s story.” The woman laid both hands on her book, like she was drawing strength from it. “I cannot bring myself to think of how they found her. She was only eighteen. Eighteen. If I had known Katherine might end badly . . . If I could have done anything to prevent it . . .”
Dawn tried to sound reassuring. “You wouldn’t believe how much this interview is going to help, Mrs. Lansing.”
And that was the absolute truth—just not in the limited way the other woman was referring to. They were going to catch her stepdaughter’s murderers and then some.
There was a lull, the chirping of birds and the singing of the fountain hardly covering it.
Natalia had moved on to sketching the park itself, glancing around the courtyard, her smile wide and genuine.
Mrs. Lansing seemed to connect with her appreciation. “I’m thankful you agreed to meet me here. I’m a solicitor in an office nearby, and one of the upsides is being able to spend lunch in this garden. I come here when I need the world to slow itself down because there’s always comfort to be had within these walls.”
She smiled at the new girl, and Dawn could tell she’d taken to Natalia because of this one little moment of them both loving the park.
“I understand this was once a church.” The second psychic was putting Mrs. Lansing at ease whether she knew it or not. “How old is it?”
“Built in eleven hundred,” the older woman said, and for an instant, she seemed to be so much less haunted by Kate’s death. “Then it survived for over five hundred years only to be severely damaged in the Great Fire of London. They did manage to repair it after that. Christopher Wren even added that steeple.” She nodded toward the tower that speared out of the clinic. “Everything you see now was still standing after the bombs struck during World War II.”
Then Natalia asked something that almost blew Dawn out of her boots.
“Did you ever bring Katherine here?”
Instead of jarring the conversation, the segue led Mrs. Lansing to take off her glasses, then answer.
“Katherine and I were never close enough for that.”
Setting aside her small notebook, Natalia leaned her forearms on her thighs. “Was it because you’re her stepmother?”
“Most assuredly.” Mrs. Lansing stared down at her spiritual book. “Her natural mother passed on when Katherine was very young—four years old. I didn’t meet Adam, Katherine’s father, until she was ten. By then, she had come to see the family as consisting of merely her and Adam, and I was the invader. A usurper, in fact, because she had come to believe her mother was a perfect queen.”
As Natalia asked another question, Dawn leaned back, going with the flow. Kiko tensed, obviously realizing that he was just as shut out as Natalia had been at the coffee shop earlier.
“How did Katherine . . .” The new girl searched for a delicate way to continue.
“How did Katherine arrive at such a death?” Mrs. Lansing looked up. “It’s fine to come right out with it. I’ve cried all I can cry, and now I’m enraged. I’m doing everything in my power to make certain this doesn’t happen to any others.”
Natalia nodded, encouraging the woman to continue.
“Katherine was rather rebellious,” Mrs. Lansing said, “as you might have guessed. She delighted in vexing me. I tolerated it while Adam was alive, but he lost his life in a construction accident at Canary Wharf two years ago. He was the foreman, and . . .”
She choked off, and they all waited, looking at each other and wondering if they should comfort this stranger.
But then she took the story back up, and her voice was stronger. “Katherine had elected to continue living with me since she was still in school and had no other close family. But I knew she would require a firmer hand than Adam used. He quite indulged her.”<
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“She didn’t take to your requirements,” Natalia said.
“Not at all. At first, we mourned together. Yet after she finished school, she began staying out later and later, coming home reeling with drunkenness. I knew she was up to no good. I ultimately took a stand one week ago. Secure a job, I said, because I would not suffer a daughter who had strayed so far from what Adam and I had attempted to teach her. I would not suffer a daughter who spent her nights drinking away her youth or who found herself on the dole.”
Dawn thumbed through her ever-expanding mental thesaurus. “The dole” was welfare.
As Mrs. Lansing leaned forward, her back arched. “Live by my rules or leave the house, I told her, because young girls should listen. They should mind what is right and proper.”
Her vehemence made Dawn straighten up on the bench. Here was the stepmom she’d expected.
Kiko had perked up, too, but Natalia remained cool.
“If Katherine had listened,” the new girl said, “she might still be with us.”
Mrs. Lansing looked gratefully at Natalia, then wilted. “Yes, but it all ended with Katherine choosing to leave instead. Yet I believed she would return within a day. I truly did.”
Natalia paused at the building emotion in the woman’s voice, so Dawn asked a question, not knowing whether they were being worked by their interviewee or not. Caution paid.
“Did you keep in contact with Kate at all?”
Mrs. Lansing lifted shaking fingers to her lips, and her brother started walking toward them before she held up her hand.
“I wished to contact her,” the woman said. “But, again, I believed Katherine would return soon, and I needed to maintain my stance. But a day passed. Then two. She’d left no indication of where she might have gone, so I finally rang her mobile, yet she didn’t answer. I then contacted her friends, but they hadn’t seen her since school nearly a year ago.” Their interviewee’s expression fell even more. “I thought she would be back when she tired of this new life. Katherine’s spending habits were rather impetuous, and as soon as she ran out of funds, I would have taken her back. . . .”
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