My nervousness had nothing to do with moral judgments about ladies of the night. As far as I was concerned, you did what you had to in life; I saved the kick in the nuts for the bad guys. No, my angst was more about what they would think of me, Tara Sharp, western suburbs private-school girl with the posh voice. Maybe the sequinned beach bag wasn’t such a bad look after all.
The woman who answered the door was dressed in an elegant black suit, sheer stockings and to-die-for black heels. She could have been thirty or fifty, depending on how closely you looked. I had the advantage of being able to see her aura. It was a nice sunny-day blue with the faintly fuzzy edge that older people tended to get, which inclined me to think she was closer to fifty.
‘Madame Vine? I’m Tara Sharp.’
The woman frowned, sucked in her cheeks and stepped back to let me inside, then clip-clopped off down the polished wood corridor at an impressive pace considering the height of her heels. I followed more slowly, trying not to gawk at the plush lounge area or through the open doorways into the equally opulent bedrooms. This was no tenner-a-trick joint.
Ms Clippety-Clop halted in front of an ornate door and knocked.
‘Entrée.’
‘It’s Ms Sharp, Madame Vine,’ my guide announced, in a voice plummier than Joanna Lumley’s. She ushered me in, shut the door behind us and waited. My guide, it seemed, was merely the PA.
I stared at the woman seated behind a large, decoratively carved cedar desk. Madame Vine was round-ish, with her hair cut in a bouncy blonde bob. From what I could see from this side of the desk, she was dressed in a silk caftan and a LOT of bling; fingers, neck, wrists, ears. Old style, though. No piercings. If I didn’t know better, I’d have picked her to be in real estate.
‘Ms Sharp?’ she said.
‘Madame Vine,’ I squeaked.
The two women exchanged a look, then Madame Vine smiled at me the way an animal handler might at a new, frightened zoo inmate. ‘Why don’t you sit down? Thank you, Audrey.’
Audrey nodded, and walked into an adjoining room. As she passed Madame Vine’s desk, the two women’s auras blended snugly together. There was something more than the usual work relationship going on there.
I plopped into the brown leather armchair and cleared my throat. Time to be a businesswoman. ‘Err . . . Lloyd Honey said you wished to discuss some potential work.’
‘Aaah, Lloyd. Dear man.’ Madame Vine slipped one outrageously long, diamanté-studded fingernail between her lips and sucked on it, then removed it to stroke an equally ridiculously long eyelash. ‘He claims you have a unique ability to read situations. Is that so, Ms Sharp?’
‘Tara, please. And yes,’ I said, ‘my business is reading paralanguage and kinesics. I usually lean towards investigative jobs but I do consider other things. What did you have in mind?’
Madame Vine got up from her chair and moved around to stand directly under the air-conditioning vent. She couldn’t have been much over five feet tall and her shrewd, plump face was shiny with moisture. A red aura punctuated with blue flashes fanned her ample frame. I mentally reviewed the aura colour code Mr Hara had taught me. People with red auras tended to be materialistic and pragmatic. The brilliant turquoise flashes signified energy and influence. This woman could probably move mountains if she set her mind to it.
‘I run a superior business, Tara, and I’m always looking for ways to improve the quality of the service we give. And to be honest, the global financial crisis hasn’t been kind to the more . . . expensive establishments like us.’
I nodded encouragingly and she went on.
‘I sense some . . . problems amongst my girls but haven’t been able to get to the bottom of it.’
‘What kind of problems?’ I asked.
She hesitated. ‘Someone in my employ is disgruntled. Dead animals on the doorstep, threatening text messages, that sort of thing. I wondered if you might be able to work with them for a few days, maybe a week, and see what you can learn.’
‘Work with?’ What the hell did that mean?
Madame Vine picked up a long, thin, ivory-handled envelope knife. ‘The girls get together regularly in the client lounge. I can introduce you as a new employee – that way they’ll be relaxed about your presence.’
‘Let me get this right. You’re suggesting that I pretend to be one of your . . . workers?’
She gave me a keen smile. ‘You wouldn’t need to take on any clients. Just participate in the mingling part. The remuneration would be substantial.’
I clutched my sequinned beach bag, trying to ignore the thought of my mother’s reaction if she heard about me ‘mingling’ in a brothel. My sweat snap-froze on my skin. It suddenly felt hard to breathe.
‘I-I’m not sure this is really my line of work. And frankly, Madame Vine, I’m sure your girls would see through me in a heartbeat,’ I managed to gasp out.
‘I can see my proposal has taken you by surprise. Perhaps you should think on it and we can talk again?’ she said.
I nodded and sprang up eager to be on my way.
Madame Vine pressed her intercom. ‘Audrey. Please see Ms Sharp out.’
Audrey appeared, taking care not to trip over the fringe of the silk floor rug. Her eyebrows lifted slightly and her aura surged towards Madame Vine’s. I felt a slight snap of a mild electric shock as their energies met, before she led me out into the corridor. These two definitely had it going on.
As I passed the archway that opened into the front lounge area, I couldn’t resist a peek inside.
Two men sat at the small bar. One, his sharp-looking Zegna suit not quite hiding a middle-aged paunch, was skimming a newspaper. He glanced at me then kept on with his reading.
The other was drinking from a bottle of Coke while he pored over paperwork of some kind. And, God save me, I knew him.
My mouth fell open. ‘Whitey?’
His head jerked up, a pie halfway to his mouth. ‘Sharp?’
It was a bit hard to know where to go from there.
I knew Greg Whitehead – Whitey – at school. After graduation he’d asked me out on a date and, to my utter disappointment, had turned out to be a horny toad. I’d avoided him ever since. But Whitey became a cop, and not so long ago he turned up to a crime scene I’d accidentally stumbled upon. Short story; long outcome. A photo of Whitey and me appeared in the local paper that made his jealous wife, June, furious.
Now it looked like Whitey had found another way to well and truly piss her off. And, as usual, I happened to be in the right place at the wrong time to see it.
‘It’s only ten in the morning! Can’t you keep your fly zipped until after lunch?’ The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Mr Zegna suit sank down further behind his newspaper.
‘Are you offering your services?’ Whitey fired back.
‘Not if you were the last shag on earth.’ Ignoring Audrey’s disapproving look, I flounced out the front door on enough indignation to float a hot air balloon.
Sharp Shooter Page 25
