by Sibel Hodge
I let that information sink in without giving away that it was news to me. ‘A minute ago you thought I’d killed Heather.’
‘Don’t be impertinent,’ she huffed.
I held my hands up in the air in mock surrender. ‘Well, it looks like you’ve got it just about all sewn up. You didn’t need my help, after all. I bow to your superior knowledge.’ I made a couple of bowing motions, just for the hell of it.
She stood up, rested her fingertips on the desk, and leaned in toward me. ‘You are dismissed.’
I shot one hand in the air. ‘Please, Miss, can I go to the toilet before I leave?’
She narrowed her eyes at me.
I lowered my hand. ‘I take it that’s a no then?’
My shoulders relaxed with relief when I walked out of the police station. I thought Janice Skipper was barking. Barking mad and barking up the wrong tree.
I slipped into the Lemon and called Hacker, asking him to find out what he could about Charlie Biggs, then I headed to Asda, hoping to finally catch Paul Clark in the act. While I was there, maybe I could pick up some chocolate cake, too. No, make that double chocolate cake with chocolate chips, gooey chocolate sauce, and lashings of cream. Hell, after the shocking day I’d had so far, I deserved it.
I scanned the supermarket, looking for shelf-stacking activity. I didn’t find any, but I did find the chocolate cake of my dreams. I placed it carefully in my basket and headed over to the customer service desk.
‘Hi, I’m looking for Paul Clark. Is he working today?’ I asked the lady behind the desk.
‘I’m sorry, but he’s not with us any longer. He left a few days ago.’
‘OK, thanks.’
After I’d paid for the cake, I stepped out into the warm sunshine and felt a tap on my shoulder. I swung around and came face to face with Tia.
‘So you’re still following me,’ I said.
‘Well, the police won’t tell me anything.’ She looked down at her Fandango leopard skin pumps. ‘And I’m really worried about Dad. I can’t just sit at home and do nothing.’ She eyed my extra large cake. ‘Are you going to eat all of that?’
‘I was planning to.’
‘Do you want to share it?’
My heart sank to my feet. Not because I had to share my prized cake, but because I felt really sorry for her. It must be tough, all the worrying and wondering about what had happened to her dad, and even tougher that she may never get to find out who she really was and get closure on all the unanswered questions she must have. ‘Your place or mine?’
‘Awesome! Come to my place.’ She beamed at me. ‘That way you can do the spell at the same time.’
‘Er…I thought I told you that I don’t believe in all that kind of thing.’ I had to admire her determination, though. When Tia got her mind set on something, I didn’t think she’d give up in a hurry.
She gave me a watery-eyed puppy look. ‘Will you do it for me? I don’t know anything about trying to find a missing person. I figure I could do with all the help I can get.’
I rolled my eyes at her theatrical tone. ‘OK.’ Sometimes I’m such a sucker.
****
I ate three pieces of cake while Tia pushed her first slice around her plate. As I munched, I debated whether or not to tell her that the blood at Fandango’s office matched his blood type. Although it looked more and more likely that Fandango was dead, I really didn’t want to worry her any more than was necessary until I was completely sure. Plus, I’m a coward sometimes, too.
‘Did you find out who Carlos Bagliero is?’ She gave up pushing the cake around and put the plate on the coffee table.
‘No. It looks like his records have been wiped by someone.’
‘Who could do that?’
I had a hunch about it, but I didn’t know if it would make things better or worse for Tia. I decided to keep it to myself for now. ‘There are plenty of possibilities. I’m more concerned with why they were wiped. I think it all links to this secret that Umberto was carrying around with him.’ I scarfed down the final morsel of cake on my plate, then stuffed my hands in the pockets of my combats to keep myself from shoveling the rest of the cake in. ‘Unfortunately, Heather is dead.’
Tia’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, my God! Does this mean that Dad is dead too?’
‘I’m sorry, Tia. I don’t know yet.’ I gripped her hand. ‘But don’t give up hope. Hope’s the only thing you can cling on to.’ I silently wondered again about what I’d been mulling over from the beginning. If Fandango was dead, where had his body been dumped, and why hadn’t it turned up yet? And if he wasn’t dead, where was he hiding, and who was hiding him? He seemed to have disappeared into thin air for the second time in his life. But that was just impossible, wasn’t it? Everyone had to be somewhere, regardless of whether they wanted to be found or not. He couldn’t just vanish off the face of the earth again.
‘This is so awful. I can’t believe this is happening. Do you know who killed her?’ Tears sprang into her eyes.
‘I’ve just come from the police station. They think that Samantha James was involved.’ I didn’t want to mention Samantha’s involvement with the hit-man.
Tia stood up, shaking her head. ‘My step-mother?’ She walked to the window and stared down to the canal below. ‘Do you think she was involved?’
‘Well, apparently Umberto left her half a million pounds in his will, so that could be a motive. Samantha had cleared out all her savings recently, which makes me think that something was going on, but I got the impression Umberto looked after her financially all these years anyway. Why would she suddenly decide to kill him? It just doesn’t feel right to me.’
Tia turned around and gave me a grim smile. ‘That’s Dad all over. He’s always been the generous kind.’
‘Do you think that Umberto could’ve been involved in drug smuggling?’ I told her about the cocaine I’d found at his office.
She looked shocked. ‘Absolutely not. Dad hated drugs. Of course, the fashion industry is rife with cocaine use. Dad knew that a lot of the models use it as an appetite suppressant to stay thin, and it helps them stay awake for long hours, so they can keep working. Even the stylists and designers use it, but Dad saw what it did to people, and he was always adamant in his hatred for it. I remember him giving me a pep talk about it once when I was young. I’d never seen him get so heated and upset about anything before. He told me how he’d seen drugs ruin the lives of people really close to him. I think it affected him really badly.’
Nevertheless, Fandango obviously wasn’t squeaky clean. I doubted that this was all some kind of weird and wonderful coincidence. The evidence so far suggested that he was involved in some kind of dodgy criminal dealings. Just how dodgy remained to be seen.
‘But people change. You’ve been studying in the States for a long time. You didn’t get to see your dad that often. Don’t you think it’s possible that he could have got involved in drugs?’ I said.
‘No. If you could’ve seen how upset he was when he told me that story, you’d know how disgusted and opposed to it he was.’
If Tia was right, then that seemed to knock my drug smuggling theory right out the window, unless Heather was the mastermind behind it. It also stood to reason that if Fandango felt that strongly about drugs, he couldn’t be this new, secret Fetuccini family Godfather, because the mafia probably counted drug smuggling as their number one criminal activity.
‘Heather had some sort of financial problem, as well. In the last nine months, she withdrew seventy-five thousand pounds from her bank account. That leads me to suspect that she had a drug habit. But even more strange is that she had a Swiss bank account with a five million pound deposit made on the day your dad disappeared. Do you think he would’ve been generous enough to give her that money?’
Tia shook her head. ‘He’s generous, but not that generous.’
‘The money probably came from this Carlos Bagliero, then. I found a note in her apartment with his initials, and it als
o mentioned the five million pounds she received. It’s possible that Heather was smuggling drugs with the fashion collection, but Umberto also received payments from the Fetuccini mob family for something, too.’ And that brought me in a full circle back to the money laundering possibility I’d dismissed before. I rubbed at my forehead. Whatever had happened, it was something that had spiraled desperately out of control. This whole case was getting more and more confusing. What had I overlooked? What angle hadn’t I considered?
‘You need to do this spell. I think it will give you some psychic insight into what happened,’ Tia said.
I groaned and gave in. ‘OK, but don’t tell anyone I did this.’
She clapped her hands together, relief flooding her face, and rushed into the kitchen. ‘Come on.’
I reluctantly got to my feet and followed her.
She opened the kitchen window, then retrieved an ashtray from a cupboard and placed it on the beech kitchen worktop. Next, she crumpled up a piece of paper and deposited it in the ashtray.
‘What’s that?’ I pointed to the paper.
‘We have to burn something connected with Dad. This is an old letter he sent to me.’ She got some crushed cloves out of the cupboard, sprinkled them in the ashtray, and then added grated nutmeg.
I gave the concoction a skeptical look. ‘Are you sure this is supposed to do anything?’ I didn’t think it would achieve much, but Tia seemed to really believe in all this stuff. Maybe it might help to take her mind off things if she thought she was contributing something.
‘Of course it’s going to work.’ She pulled open kitchen drawers, searching around for something. ‘Where are they?’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Matches. We have to burn all this.’
I rummaged in my rucksack and found a lighter. ‘Will this do?’ I asked as my phone rang. I handed her the lighter and flipped the phone open. ‘Yo,’ I said to Hacker. ‘What have you got for me?’
‘Charlie Biggs is a nasty piece of work. He’s mostly into loan sharking, but it’s rumored that he also offers a murder-for-hire service. He was suspected of carrying out a hit on a wealthy stockbroker a few years ago on the instructions of the stockbroker’s wife. The case was thrown out of court on a technicality.’
‘Great, thanks. Have you got anything else?’
‘Nope.’
‘OK, then. I have to go and burn things now, bye.’ I shut the phone with a loud slap and turned to Tia. ‘Right, what exactly am I supposed to be doing?’
‘This is a spell to gain knowledge and overcome obstacles. You have to light the paper, and when it’s burning, you have to read these words.’ She handed me a piece of paper with hand written notes on it. ‘After it’s all burned, you have to carry the ashes with you until you solve the case.’
I read the note and glanced up at her. ‘And people think I’m nuts.’
‘What have you got to lose?’
I sighed, lit the paper in the ashtray, and read out loud. ‘I look deep within me, and call upon the power within me. All knowledge is here for me. I will overcome all obstacles and pass freely through resistance. Everything I want to know is revealed and made clear to me.’ I watched the paper crackle and burn, slowly disintegrating into ashes along with the nutmeg and cloves. Then I watched as the ashtray cracked into five pieces, and a sudden gust of wind blew through the window, swirling the ashes in the air all over the kitchen. I grabbed a glass bowl from the worktop, trying to collect the remaining ashes in it. It was going pretty well too, until the bowl slipped from my grasp and smashed onto the floor.
‘Uh-oh,’ I said. ‘That’s probably not a good sign, is it?’
Tia retrieved a small, plastic Tupperware bowl from the cupboard and scooped up what was left of the ashes, which wasn’t much at that point. ‘I think it is a good sign, actually. It means there’s lots of positive energy around you.’
‘Mmm,’ I said, not quite believing her as I looked around the kitchen, which was now completely covered with a layer of ash, not to mention the chunks and splinters of glass. ‘Maybe I should be going now.’
‘Here.’ She smiled as she handed me the plastic bowl. There was just a tiny pinch of blackish-grey powder inside. ‘Do you want to take the rest of the cake too?’
Tempting. ‘No, thanks. I think you’re more in need of comfort food than I am.’
‘Can I come with you? I really don’t want to sit around here thinking about things anymore.’ She did the puppy dog eyes again and I sighed.
‘Sure. Why not?’
22
Was this day ever going to end? It felt like it had been going on forever in some weird kind of eternal Groundhog Day loop. I felt the beginnings of a dull ache forming behind my right eye. Had I really been shot and killed this morning, and I’d been transported to some kind of afterlife where I had to finish things off before my spirit could move onto the after-afterlife world? Or maybe I’d been sent to hell. No, hell was probably a lot warmer than this. Either way, I was quickly losing the will to live.
‘Where exactly are we going?’ Tia’s voice broke into my surreal thoughts.
‘I have to try and get a picture of one of our clients doing back flips and somersaults.’
‘Huh?’
I waved a hand. ‘I need to get a picture of him doing something that proves he hasn’t damaged his back.’
‘Oh, no. We’re not going back to the washing machine lady’s house, are we?’
‘Yep. But we’re not going to touch anything. We’re just going to sit outside in the car, nice and quiet, until I get my photos.’
And that’s exactly what we did. We sat in silence, listening to the cooling ticks of the engine, until I heard a whimpering male voice coming from inside Clark’s house. The sound carried through an open window.
‘Can you hear that?’ I asked Tia.
‘Hear what?’
‘I hear someone crying out.’ I poked my head out of the car window. ‘I think they’re calling for help.’
‘I can’t hear–’
‘Shh!’ I said, trying to listen. ‘I heard it again.’ I pushed open the car door. ‘You wait here. I’ll go and see what’s going on. Maybe Clark really has got a bad back, and he’s lying on the floor somewhere in need of help.’ I approached Clark’s front door and noticed it was slightly ajar. I paused, wondering if my ears were playing tricks on me. But no, I heard the voice calling for help again, so I pushed the door open. I seriously hoped it wasn’t going to be a repeat of the Bates-Crumpleton scene.
‘Hello?’ I said, entering the house.
‘Help!’ I heard the voice call out from the kitchen.
‘Shut up!’ Mrs. Clark told the voice.
I pushed open the kitchen door and stood aghast, taking in the scene. A red-faced washing machine repair man cowered in the corner of the room while Mrs. Clark pointed an antique looking pistol at him.
‘Oh, good, two repair people.’ Mrs. Clark swung the gun between the repair man and me. ‘Shut the door,’ she said to me.
Oh, boy. No doubt about it, I’m jinxed. I felt a ginormous lump rise in my throat. ‘Er…what seems to be the problem?’ I asked as I pushed the door closed.
‘She’s mad.’ The repair man pointed a shaky finger at Mrs. Clark. He looked like he was about to burst into tears. ‘She won’t let me go until I fix her washing machine.’
Mrs. Clark waddled over to the kitchen table and sank down onto a chair. It squeaked, straining under her weight. ‘Don’t you understand? I have to get it fixed today. I can’t cope any more,’ her voice cracked. She looked around the room at the piles of laundry. They had grown into a mountain since the last time I was there. The gun in her hand drooped as she loosened her grasp on it and rubbed at her forehead.
‘Well, don’t just stand there. Fix it,’ I said to the repair man.
‘I don’t work well under pressure.’ He pulled the washing machine away from the wall and pulled off the casing at the back, keeping o
ne eye on Mrs. Clark.
Mrs. Clark’s chair started squeaking again as she rocked her pudgy body back and forth, staring at the floor. ‘I haven’t left the house for weeks. I have to wait in for stupid repair people who never tell you when they’re going to turn up. Don’t they realize that people have lives? They expect you to wait in all day long, and then they don’t even turn up. And when you ring the customer service number, all you get is: press one for this, press two for that, press nine-hundred and ninety-nine for this. Blah, blah, blah. And after you’ve spent hours hanging on the phone, trying to talk to a real person, they cut you off. I can’t handle it anymore.’
‘Those fuckwits,’ I agreed. ‘Those customer service people should be shot.’ Oops, probably not quite the right thing to say.
‘I don’t want to be married any more. My husband doesn’t do anything to help with the kids. Everything was fine in the beginning when we first got married. Now it’s like he doesn’t care about anyone but himself. It’s just like having six kids to look after! Bloody men, why are they so selfish?’ she said.
I took baby steps toward her, hoping to get the gun out of her hand. Even though it looked too ancient to actually fire anything, I didn’t really fancy getting shot at for the second time that day. ‘Maybe he doesn’t realize that you’re a bit…um overwhelmed with everything. Have you tried talking to him about it?’
She noticed the gun had lowered and lifted it up again in our direction.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
The repair man gasped, dropping his voltage testing screwdriver.
I glared at him. ‘You’re not helping.’
‘Well, why don’t you fix it then?’ he said to me with a trembling lower lip.
‘Yes, you fix it.’ Mrs. Clark motioned me to get closer to the washing machine with the tip of the gun.
I shuffled toward it and whispered to the repair man, ‘What’s wrong with it?’
He gave a manic shake of his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He handed me the screwdriver and practically flew back to the corner of the room.
‘Why don’t you buy another one now, instead of waiting for your insurance money?’ I said, knowing that Paul Clark’s corned beef yoga workout in the supermarket meant they would probably never get the payout. ‘Your husband works, doesn’t he? Er…where does he work, by the way?’