Voodoo, Lies, and Murder (7 page)

Romeo sat down at the table in front of me, jarring my thoughts back to the present. The sight of him took my breath away. Tall, sexy. Cinnamon skin and green eyes from his Spanish/Irish parents. Plus, he was one of the nicest guys in the world. We'd both worked on the Special Operations Team on the force, and before we'd got together romantically, we'd been great friends. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed him until now.

"Hey." He gave me a killer smile.

"Hey yourself." I smiled back, but it wobbled a bit on my face. "So…how've you been?"

"Pretty good. Work's crazy." He gave me a you-know-how-it-is shrug. "You?"

"Same."

"I've missed you." He pierced me with his eyes.

Okay, maybe I'd just wimp out and not tell him about my wedding. I know, I know, but how could I hurt him all over again? So what if I'd missed him, too? I still loved Romeo, I mean, it's not like you can just turn off your feelings like a tap, is it? But I loved Brad more, and deep down I knew I was meant to be with Brad.

"Sorry." He glanced away. "I shouldn't have said that."

I reached out and touched his hand. "I'm the one who should be sorry. You know—"

He held up the hand I'd touched to stop me, shaking his head. "Don't say anything. It's better that way." He took a sip of latte. "So, you're investigating Chantal's disappearance?"

I nodded, relieved for the change of subject. "What have the police found out so far?"

He shook his head. "As you probably know, her car was abandoned at the train station but CCTV didn't catch anything. It was parked in a blind spot of the camera. CCTV inside the station wasn't working at the time, and none of the staff remember her buying a train ticket. Apparently, she was supposed to be meeting a friend the day she disappeared, although we questioned all of them and none had arranged to see her." He sat back in the chair, stretching out his long legs in front of him.

"What did you think of the ex-boyfriend, Steven Shaw?"

"He seems pretty harmless. He was working the day she disappeared."

"He lied to me about not seeing Chantal recently," I said. "He definitely knows more than he's telling."

"Interesting."

"James Langton's a wealthy guy, but since there've been no ransom demands, it doesn't seem like a kidnapping," I said. "Unless it went wrong."

Romeo nodded. "A kidnapping doesn't feel right to me. As you can imagine, Langton's made a few enemies over the years with members of the community opposing his developments. Quite a few people are pissed off with his latest City Park Complex project. They don't want their sleepy, quaint street turned into a vast housing complex."

"Which brings me to Alfie Cross. He organized an action group to try and stop the planning permission being granted. Maybe he held some kind of grudge and took things a bit further than a spot of vandalism to Langton's sign."

"We spoke to Alfie. He's a bit aggressive when it comes to saving his community, but I don't think he would've done anything to Chantal. He did some prison time for a couple of assaults in the past, but his alibi checks out. He was at a yoga retreat for two days when Chantal disappeared."

"A yoga retreat?" I snorted. "Aren't people who do yoga supposed to be all calm and Zen-like? Vandalizing property and assaulting people doesn't sound very calm."

"He's apparently turned over a new leaf since he did his time for assault." He paused, thinking. "Another development company, Sage Development, was originally supposed to be buying the plot that's going to house the City Park Complex, but James Langton beat them to the punch, upping his offer for the land to a ridiculous figure. Sage Development weren't too happy about it."

"Are there any other business rivals not happy with Langton?" I spooned the froth from my mochaccino into my mouth.

"No, but there's a rumor that Langton Developments have lost a lot of money recently. With the recession going on in the last few years, they were overextended on some big developments. They've slashed all the prices on sales for their housing developments, but people just aren't buying new houses anymore. So with all the delays in cash flow, Langton Developments could be in some serious financial trouble if they don't pull something out of the bag in the next few months."

"So where did he get the money to buy the City Park Complex plot and build it if they're in trouble?" Which brought my thoughts back to Chantal's trust fund. If James Langton was short of cash and needed some to finance a new project that might save the company, three million quid would come in mighty handy. The timing of Chantal's disappearance was suspicious since she was due to get the money in ten days, and if something happened to her…well, the money reverted to Daddy Langton.

Romeo shrugged. "At the moment we have no cause to look into any of his possible financial problems, but I'm sure Hacker would be able to." He raised an eyebrow.

I filled Romeo in on the trust fund. "Hacker's working on James Langton's financial accounts at the moment."

"So, what, you think James killed Chantal to get his hands on the money?"

I shrugged. "It's possible. If his business really is in trouble, a three-million-pound cash injection could be just what he needs. But I think there's more going on." I showed him the love letter. "You can keep it, I've got a copy."

"Bloody search officers missed this." Romeo read it, shaking his head.

"And I think she could've been pregnant." I told him about the pregnancy test, the card for the Second Chance Clinic, and the Holbrook Clinic's name written on the back.

"Maybe Steven lied to you about not seeing her lately because they were still having sex and she got herself pregnant. The Second Chance Clinic works with a lot of prostitutes," Romeo said. "They offer birth control, STD screening and treatment, and terminations. I've never heard of the Holbrook Clinic."

"Well, from what Hacker dug up on their website, it's not clear exactly what kind of procedures they carry out."

"I'll look into it, too." He read the letter again. "So, who's the guy?"

"I'm going to get Dad to check out Steven's handwriting to see if it's from him."

"Does your dad know him, then?"

"He's doing a neighborhood watch stakeout at Burger Land. Apparently, someone's stealing from the till." I rolled my eyes at him.

"I bet your mum's pleased." He grinned. "Not."

"Hmmm. Still, at least it's stopping him from getting bored."

"Somehow, I can't see Chantal having an abortion at this Second Chance Clinic. Maybe she was just getting advice."

"Or maybe she wanted to go somewhere no one recognized her because she didn't want her parents finding out, or the wife of her one-night stand, if he was a married guy." I downed the rest of my drink and licked my lips. "And I don't know how her being pregnant ties into this yet, if at all."

Romeo gazed at the lip-licking with a lazy grin.

I stopped abruptly in case I gave him any ideas. "What about the disappearance of Liza Bennet? Chantal was obviously upset about it and had started trying to find out what happened to her. Do you really have no leads on it?"

Romeo sighed. "I wasn't working her case, but I looked into it. Liza's an investigative journalist. Apparently, she was working on a big story, but her editor and colleagues didn't know what it was. She left the office one day to meet a so-called source and was never seen again."

I sat back, fingers tapping the table, thinking. "She just vanished? Like Chantal? It has to be something to do with the story she was working on."

"Liza kept all the notes for her stories on her laptop, which has never been found, either."

"And she never told anyone what she was working on?"

"No. She was paranoid about someone else stealing her scoop."

"Maybe Chantal managed to find out what happened to her."

"Seems likely. We checked Liza's phone records. Most of the numbers checked out okay, but there was one number she called on the day she disappeared that we couldn't trace an owner for. It's a pay-as-you-go mobile so it could belong to anyone."

My heart did a little tap dance. "What was the number?"

He told me.

It was the same number I'd got from Hacker that Chantal had called the day she'd gone missing.

"Have you tried ringing it?" I asked.

He nodded. "Loads of times. It just rings and rings. No answer and no voicemail."

"Damn."

"Exactly."

"So we now have two girls who've disappeared in suspicious circumstances and they both called the same mobile number," I said, knowing there was no way we could ever trace an owner for a throwaway phone. "You know Nicole is a voodoo priestess?"

He nodded. "From what I can gather, it's much like any other religion."

"Apart from the animal sacrifice bit." I pulled a face.

"Well, yeah."

I leaned forward, elbows on the tables. "What if they were into human sacrifice, too?" A horrible feeling crept over me, chilling me to the core, despite the sun streaming in through the windows. "Nicole's sister, Marie, apparently does left-handed voodoo—black magic. What if Liza and Chantal were sacrificed for some weird ritual?" My brain started hearing
dodododododododo
from
The Twilight Zone
.

"The thought crossed my mind, but I don't think it's likely. Nicole and Marie hadn't spoken in years. Chantal had never met Marie, so I think it's unlikely she's got anything to do with her disappearance."

I seriously hoped so, because the possibility was way too scary. "Did you question Marie?"

"Yes, and while she's—how can I put it?—incredibly weird and creepy, she tells the same story, that she's never seen Chantal. Marie and Nicole had a falling-out before Chantal was born and they haven't been in touch with each other since. So far, there's nothing to link them to each other at all. According to the file I read, some officers also questioned Marie's son, Andrew, and he says he's never seen her either."

Hello! My ears pricked up. "Andrew? Is his surname Scott?"

"How did you know that?"

"Andrew Scott was the doctor listed on the business card for the Second Chance Clinic, and now you're saying that Marie has a son called Andrew. It just seemed like too much of a coincidence for my liking. And, as you know, I don't believe in coincidences. I didn't make the connection before because he must've taken his dad's surname, not Marie's. If Chantal had never seen Andrew or Marie, like Nicole said, then how come she had his business card?"

"Good question."

My mind started sprinting out of control, remembering a case from 2001 where the torso of an unknown African boy had been found in the Thames. He'd been murdered in a voodoo-style ritual killing, and the case was never solved.

What the hell had Liza and Chantal got themselves into?

I was convinced that whatever led to Chantal's disappearance was something that had been going on long before she went missing, and the clue must be in what happened to Liza. I needed to talk to Liza's boss, so I got the number of the
Post
from Hacker and called Sarah Simpson, editor of the biggest national paper, and arranged a visit.

As I entered the busy office, phones were ringing off the hook, reporters were scurrying around the open-plan room trying to stick to deadlines, and the hum of keyboards clattering filled the air.

"Hi. Have a seat." Sarah waved a hand toward a chair piled high with newspapers as I entered the office. "Oh." She noticed the papers and added, "You can put them on the floor. Sorry about that."

I scooped them up and put them in a corner of the floor that wasn't already covered with yesterday's news. Sitting down, I said, "Thanks for seeing me."

She shook her head. "Anything I can do to help." She leaned her elbows on the desk. "We're all so shocked about Liza."

"Apparently no one knew what story she was working on? Is that right?"

She nodded, glancing out through the glass windows into the busy office. "Investigative journalism can be a cutthroat business sometimes. No one wants to do all the hard work only for someone to scoop you at the last minute. A lot of my reporters don't tell me what they're working on until a story's ready to go to print and I give it the yay or nay. Liza had had a story stolen from underneath her before, and she was probably more paranoid than most about letting anyone know what she was investigating."

I leaned back in the chair, sighing. "What kind of stories did she normally write?"

Sarah tipped her head to the side. "Liza was mostly into human interest stories. Abuse of power, women's rights, trafficking, war crimes, slavery, atrocities like what's happening in Darfur, that kind of thing."

"That's a pretty intense list." And a list that could spark off a lot of heated feelings from someone who wanted things kept quiet.

"Exactly. She could've been writing anything." She shook her head again. "I don't have the first idea how to try and work out what. It seems like the police couldn't find out, either. If they'd found her laptop, it would've been on there. I just feel like I'm partly responsible." She rubbed at her forehead. "She was working for me, after all. I'm going to have to make it a new policy that all my journalists tell me what they're doing from now on to avoid anything as horrible happening again. They're a secretive lot, though. As I said, it comes with the territory of protecting their stories and sources."

"What about scandalous stories? Politicians fiddling their expenses? Actors having affairs? Did Liza work on anything like that? It sounds like that wasn't something she'd normally work on, but I guess with investigative journalism, you have to go where the story is, right?"

She was silent for a moment. "True. She did a story once, early in her career, about a politician who was having a homosexual affair, but she didn't say anything about that kind of story to anyone here recently. Like I said, she went more for the gritty, tear-jerking kind of media."

"Did she mention whether she'd had any threats?"

"No, she never said." Sarah's phone rang. She picked it up, yelled into it something about not being able to extend a deadline, plus a few expletives, and hung up. "Sorry about that."