by Sibel Hodge
I gulped. Uh-oh. I was going to get a humongous curse for this!
"Er…I…the cat went to jump up on my lap and knocked the tea out of my hand." I bit my lip. "I'm really sorry. It was an accident."
"That's funny, Snowy's never sat on anyone's lap before. He hates it." She did the narrow-eyed thing again. It didn't do much to enhance her good looks. "You're very accident prone, aren't you?"
I figured it was a rhetorical question, so I didn't answer.
She put Snowy back on the floor. He gave me a filthy look then went into a fur-licking frenzy. "You should be careful. One day an accident might be dangerous." She emphasized the word "dangerous."
A cold shiver danced up my spine. My neck gave an involuntary twitch.
"Let's do the reading. I haven't got all day," she said gruffly, and we sat back down again. "I need to call upon my spirit guides." She closed her eyes and her head flopped forward onto her chest, her hands clasped tightly together. Then her eyelids sprang open, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. She threw her head back, her lips distorted with weird moaning noises coming from deep in her throat. This carried on for a few minutes.
I glanced at Brad, whose face was expressionless, taking it all in. I mouthed the word fake to him.
Then, in a manner that I can only call miraculous, she relaxed again and started acting normal. Well, as normal as she could for a creepy black magic woman, I suppose.
She passed me a set of cards, but these weren't the usual kind of tarot cards I'd seen before. These had numbers on them made out of skulls.
"Shuffle them," she ordered.
I shuffled the cards and handed them back to her.
She took a card from the top of the deck and placed it on the table.
Ten of skulls.
"Happiness will soon come. Either something pleasant or joyful will happen, or a situation will come to a happy conclusion." She laid out another.
Eight of skulls.
"Beware of a new path, as it may lead to misfortune or danger." She glanced up at us both, making sure we were taking it in.
I eyed the cards warily.
She laid out another one.
Six of skulls.
She tapped the card. "A festive atmosphere. This card could signify an enjoyable social gathering."
Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. She wasn't fooling me. She was definitely a fake.
She was just about to lay another card down when I felt Snowy nudge his head against my leg. I glanced down and he looked at me all cute-faced and purring. Oh, bless him, just because he looked ugly and was owned by an evil voodoo priestess didn't mean he wasn't a nice cat. And I felt really bad for chucking that disgusting tea over him. I reached my hand down to stroke his head, keeping my eyes on Marie. Then I felt something hot and wet on my right leg and boot.
"Agh!" I glanced under the table to find Snowy spraying on me. I pushed him away with my foot and he glared at me, growling.
Marie looked at Snowy and chuckled. "He doesn't like you."
No kidding.
"Have you got a piece of kitchen roll I can use to wipe this off with?" I asked.
"I think you used it all up. Ain't karma a bitch?" She grinned at me, and the hairs on her mole twitched. "Back to the reading." She barked and laid out another card.
Sixteen of skulls.
"This card represents loss. This could be in the form of losing someone you love, a friendship, a financial loss, a job, or a home."
Well, that pretty much covers everything.
"Even death," she hissed.
The way she said it made my skin scrawl. I fought the urge to scratch myself.
"I'm going to read the asparagus now." She stood up and went to the fridge.
Brad and I exchanged a confused glance. Did she just say asparagus? Nah, she couldn't have.
She came back with a bunch of asparagus spears.
"You're going to read…asparagus?" I stifled a laugh.
She looked up sharply, clucking her tongue at me. "Yes, haven't you heard of veggiestrology? I'm also an asparamancer. You can read the future by seeing the pattern they form when they land."
"How…interesting." I raised an eyebrow as she threw the spears on the floor.
Brad and I leaned over the table to get a look.
She studied the spears on the dirty carpet thoughtfully. Then she pointed at me. "You can't make up your mind."
That part was true. Still, she'd just made that up. She couldn't really predict the future.
She tilted her head, examining the spears again. "Troubles you've been having in the area of love and happiness should be lifting soon."
Brad elbowed me and mouthed, Set the date!
I rolled my eyes at him.
"You will find something that's lost," she said.
I nearly snorted at the vagueness of it. That could mean anything. Keys, mobile phone, biro, the socks that always get sucked into a giant abyss at the back of the washing machine, never to be seen again.
I'd had enough of listening to her rubbish. "I heard on the news your niece, Chantal, went missing," I said, faking wide-eyed innocence. "I'm sorry to hear that."
Marie glanced up sharply. "Yes. It's bad news."
"Do you know where she is? You and all the family must be so worried," I said.
She nodded. "I'm sure they are." She picked up a piece of asparagus in her hands, turning it round and round, not answering the question.
"I mean, if you can see into the future and all that, can't you tell what happened to her?" I waved a hand around casually.
"You don't always get to see the things you want." She studied me once again like she could see into my soul.
Goose bumps rose on my skin.
"Can't you see anything about her disappearance at all?" I pressed her.
Her eyes flashed with anger. "You ask a lot of questions, don't you, missy?"
"If we wanted something bad to happen to someone, could you do it with your voodoo?" Brad interrupted.
She cocked her head in Brad's direction, interest piqued. "What sort of something?"
Brad leaned forward conspiratorially. "Well, we weren't exactly honest with you earlier."
"Really?" she said in a sarcastic tone of voice.
He paused for a moment. "You see, my girlfriend here is already married and her husband won't give her a divorce. Could you arrange for something bad to happen to him to get him out of the picture?"
Marie sucked her lips for a few minutes, eyes summing up Brad and me. "You don't need me for that. I can see you've killed before." She stood up, giving us a glare that could've seared through glass. "Now get out of my house and don't come back," she spat in a voice loud enough to raise all her zombie mates from whatever in-between world they were living in.
Ooooh! Grumpy knickers!
Wait a sec, how did she know he'd killed before? No, she couldn't be genuine, surely. Could she?
Brad and I strode back down the hallway to the front door. Snowy was sitting on a pile of books, watching us leave. I gave him a wide berth in case he decided to aim his pop-up lipstick in my direction again. This place was freaking me out.
I breathed in gulps of fresh air as we strode to the Hummer. Spider's Web and his gang were sitting on a wall next to it. Brad nodded at Spider's Web. Spider's Web nodded back, then the gang all wandered up the road.
"Well, that was fun." I got in the passenger seat. "Ew, she is one creepy woman." I did a mock shiver and looked down at my smelly, wet foot.
"If she knew I'd killed people before, what else did she know about us?" Brad put it into gear and screeched off down the road like he was freaked out, too. Not much scared Brad, but I had a feeling Marie had got under both of our skins.
"I think she knew exactly what we were doing there. Hacker was right about her." I sighed, snorting in fresh air through my nose. I couldn't get the rotting smell of decay out of my nostrils. "So much for my plan. She didn't give anything away about what might've ha
ppened to Chantal. Maybe we need to break into her house to see if there's any evidence Chantal was there. We might find some kind of altar inside with human sacrifices."
"I know Chantal was there." Brad glanced at me.
I turned to face him in my seat, ears pricked up. "What? How do you know?"
"Those lads who were so kindly looking after the Hummer in our absence. I showed them Chantal's picture and persuaded them to tell me if they'd ever seen her go into Marie's." He paused for dramatic effect. "A couple of weeks ago, they saw her on the doorstep, ringing the bell. They remembered her because they thought she was pretty hot."
"Did they see her go in?"
Brad nodded. "Marie let her in."
"Then we definitely need to break in and have a look around."
"I'll get a guy to watch the place. As soon as we know the coast is clear, we'll check it out."
"In the meantime, I need to change." I pulled a face at my stinky foot. "Then I'm going to pay a little visit to James Langton."
My phone rang as we pulled into Hi-Tec's car park. "Hey, Dad. How's it going?"
"If I have to ask 'Would you like fries with that?' one more time, I'm going to scream!"
I chuckled.
"But I managed to check out Steven's handwriting and compare it with that love letter to Chantal."
"Yes?" I breathed with excitement.
"It's not a match. Steven didn't write it."
So the questions was, who the hell did? And how, exactly, did it contribute to Chantal's disappearance?
CHAPTER EIGHT
I headed back home to grab a new pair of jeans and boots. Marmalade greeted me at the front door with a dead mouse in his mouth, looking pretty pleased with himself.
"Hey, boy. Catching lunch?"
My stomach growled at the thought of food. With everything going on I'd completely forgotten it was that time of day.
He dropped the mouse, narrowing his eyes at me accusingly, like he'd had to resort to a spot of mouse killing because I never fed him. He sniffed the air, then crept closer to smell my UGGs. He narrowed his eyes, glared at the offending item, and hissed at it. Was that a reaction to Snowy's pheromones or a sixth sense about Marie and her bad voodoo? They said animals were extra sensitive to things, didn't they? Often I'd catch Marmalade staring at things I couldn't see. What could he see now that might help me crack this case?
One pair of jeans, a backup pair of UGGs, and a generous squirt of perfume later, I was in the kitchen, devouring a ham and cheese toasted sandwich, silently praising whoever invented the toasted sandwich maker.
I pulled out the lists Hacker had given me for Chantal and Liza's phone records and studied them as hot, melted cheese dribbled down my chin.
In the last few months, Chantal had phoned the number for the Second Chance Clinic twice. Liza had also called them. They'd also both called the Holbrook Clinic. I looked closer at Liza's calls. A couple of months before Liza vanished, she'd phoned someone called Emily Jacobs.
I finished the sandwich, fed Marmalade some scraps of ham, and wondered why that name was sending alarm signals in my brain. Emily Jacobs. I hadn't come across it before.
Then I had a mental head-slap moment.
I pulled out the list of initials and dates that Brad had found in Chantal's apartment:
MP - 28/01
DL - 15/02
CT - 01/03
EJ - 27/03
LS - 0787 5567893
Questions buzzed around in my head. Could the EJ on the list be Emily Jacobs? And if so, what did she have to do with all this? Was the big story Liza was working on to do with the Second Chance Clinic and the Holbrook Clinic? What had the two girls discovered? Where were Liza and Chantal? Were they dead? Was this anything to do with voodoo sacrifices?
I reached for my mobile and dialed Hacker as Marmalade jumped onto my lap and licked the crumbs off my plate. "Yo," I said when he picked up.
"Yo."
"Any luck in cracking the code from that list?"
"Not yet."
"I think the initials EJ might relate to an Emily Jacobs. Can you see what you can dig up on her?"
"I'm on it." He paused. "I heard you had fun at Marie's house earlier."
"Uh-huh. I'm pretty sure she knew what we were doing there."
"I hate to say I told you so, but…"
"Yeah, yeah. We're going to poke around inside her house when she's out to see if there's any trace of Chantal or Liza."
"Rather you than me."
"I'd rather swim with sharks or spend the weekend at Guantanamo Bay than go back there again." Next time I went I'd make sure I was wearing my Wonder Woman knickers. Not sure if they held the same kind of powers as the original ones, but I wasn't taking any chances. "You come up with anything on the Holbrook Clinic yet?"
"Still working on it."
"Okay."
"Yo."
"Yo back atcha!" I hung up and glanced at a blob of cheese that had fallen onto my plate and gone hard. It was in the shape of a ring. A wedding ring, in fact. Maybe it was a sign? Was my toastie trying to give me a message?
I shook my head to myself. A sign from a toastie about whether to get married or not? I was going nuts. Well, more nuts than I already was.
* * *
Next stop, Langton Developments. The imposing glass building was announced by a new, undamaged silver sign that was so big and shiny it was hard to miss. The place gave off an air of success and wealth, hiding the fact that the business was in trouble. I wondered just how far James Langton would go to save his company. Would he kill his daughter?
Langton's secretary, Oliver, met me at reception and we rode the glass lift to James's office. Oliver was a tall, skinny guy, mid-thirties, with thick glasses that magnified his eyes about a squillion times. In fact, he was so skinny his Adam's apple looked the size of a melon in his scrawny little throat. He had a habit of squinting his right eye after he answered a question.
"How well did you know Chantal?" I asked him.
"Oh, just through work. We didn't socialize or anything—apart from work parties, of course." Squint. "It's terrible that she's disappeared. She was a lovely girl." Squint, squint. His voice was high-pitched and, like Steven Shaw, he was very effeminate in his mannerisms. I was pretty sure Oliver was batting for the other side.
"How did she seem to you before she disappeared? Was she depressed? Worried? Anxious?" I squinted back at him. Damn, he had me doing it now.
"Well." He rested a hand on his hip and leaned toward me, as if letting me in on a big secret. "In the last few months she wasn't here much. She only came in to work on getting the planning permission completed for the City Park Complex, which we finally got two weeks ago. Mr. Langton thought she could do with some time off to…" He paused, searching for how to put it. "Well, to get her head together again. Of course, you know about her friend, Liza, disappearing as well?" He carried on without waiting for me to answer. "Poor Chantal was devastated about that. Devastated." Big squint.
"Did Chantal ever mention that she knew what happened to Liza?" I said as the lift doors pinged open and we walked down a long corridor with large potted palms.
He shook his head. "No. She never said anything to me."
"Do you know if she was seeing anyone?"
"I'm sorry, I can't help you there. We didn't share our private lives with each other." He paused. "But now that I think about it, she did get a delivery of flowers here a few weeks back, so she obviously had some kind of admirer."
"What about people who didn't admire her? Is it possible someone she worked with had a grudge against her?"
He paused for a moment. "Not against Chantal, no. She was a sweet girl. But…" He glanced around to make sure no one was looking and lowered his voice. "James had to make some redundancies recently. What with the global recession going on, Langton Developments is suffering just like everybody else. One of the other architects, Philip Gates, was made redundant and he didn't go quietly."
&nb
sp; "What do you mean he didn't go quietly? What happened?"
"Well, Philip kind of threatened James."
"In what way?"
"Philip had just had a little baby girl and he was obviously worried about being able to provide for her and his wife if he was made redundant and couldn't get another job. He told James that he'd 'show him what it felt like.'"
"Are those the exact words he used?"
Oliver nodded and squinted at the same time.
I let that sink in, wondering what he could've meant. I'll show you how it feels to worry about your daughter? I'll show you how it feels to be so useless that you can't help your daughter? I'll kidnap Chantal to prove a point?
Oliver knocked on James's door.
"Come in," James's voice filtered through from the other side.
"I'll leave you to it." The secretary left me with a final squint and disappeared back up the corridor.
I walked into James's modern office. It was flanked on two sides by glass windows, giving it a great view, but it would become a sweaty suntrap in the summer. A leather sofa was arranged against one wall, with an identical one opposite it. Above the sofa on the wall were framed awards that their developments had won. In the center of the room was a large-scale model of a building.
James put his pen down and walked around his huge wooden desk, which was inlaid with a glass top. It was littered with papers and rolls of plans. I bet the cleaners had their work cut out every night trying to remove fingerprints from all that glass.
"Hello, Amber. Do you have any news about Chantal? Nicole and I are worried sick." He ran a hand through his immaculate hair.
"Not yet, but I've got some more questions for you."
He let out a soft sigh, and I couldn't tell if it was because he was relieved I had no news, or relieved that I didn't have bad news.
"Have a seat." James indicated the sofas opposite the model. "Would you like tea or coffee?"
"No, thanks." A vision of Marie's foul liquid sprang to mind. I'd had enough encounters of the tea kind to last for one day, thank you very much.
I nodded at the model building. "Is that the City Park Complex?"
"Yes." He smiled proudly, as if talking about his own child.