Voodoo, Lies, and Murder

by Sibel Hodge

  "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?

  CHAPTER SIX

  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."

  "Was Liza especially close to any of her colleagues?"

  Sarah shook her head. "No. Liza was a bit of a loner at work. Head down, work your ass off, and get on with the job was Liza's motto. You're welcome to talk to the staff but, honestly, none of them knew what she was working on."

  Damn. I felt like I was taking one step forward and two frustrating steps back all the time. "Liza's best friend, Chantal, has also now gone missing. I'm pretty sure that they're both linked somehow."

  She gasped. "That's terrible."

  I handed her a business card. "If you think of anything else, please give me a ring."

  "Of course."

  I shook her hand, pondering what she'd said. Liza might not have told her editor, and she obviously hadn't told her friends, since Chantal seemed to be trying to find out as well—but what about her parents? Would she have told them? Only one way to find out.

  * * *

  Even though it had been six months since Liza had vanished, her parents were in pretty much the same state as Nicole and James Langton. I doubted you could ever really get over the loss of your child, especially when you didn't know what had happened to them. Could you ever get any kind of closure in those circumstances?

  Jeff and Val Bennet were in their late fifties. They were pale and gaunt and moved in slow motion, as if they'd had the life sucked out of them.

  "Can I get you something to drink?" Val asked me.

  "No, thanks." I smiled and sat down opposite them on a hard-backed sofa. "I'm really sorry to hear about Liza."

  Val sucked in a breath at the mention of her daughter's name.

  Jeff's gaze drifted to some pictures on top of a stereo system.

  "Is that Liza?" I followed his gaze.

  He nodded blankly.

  I stood up and wandered to the pictures. Liza was the opposite of Chantal. Blonde, blue-eyed, pale skin, but still very attractive. One picture showed her as a little girl on a swing, missing a couple of front teeth. In another, a young Chantal and Liza were grinning at the camera, arms wrapped around each other in front of a gray-stone house. In a more recent one, Liza was holding up an award to the camera, an ecstatic smile on her face.

  I picked up the one of Liza with the award. "What did she win?"

  Val smiled with pride. "It's funny, ever since she was little she knew she wanted to be a journalist. She always got het up about injustices going on in the world. That picture was taken at the National Media Awards last year. She won Best Human Rights Story about a piece she did on sex trafficking."

  "What an amazing achievement. A girl with a conscience—a great quality to have." I replaced it and picked up the one with Chantal and Liza together.

  Val pointed at the picture. "That was taken at our summer house in Dorset. Every single school holiday we'd take Chantal and Liza down there. They loved it. They had a great time playing at the beach. I could never get them off there when it was time to go home. I had to bribe them with ice creams." She stared out of the window at something I couldn't see, a distant memory in her mind. "When they got too old to want to go away with us, they would still go down there sometimes for a girls' weekend to get away from everything."

  Jeff stood up abruptly. "That will never happen again, will it?" He looked accusingly at me, as if somehow it was my fault. "I keep expecting her to walk through that door any minute, but she's never coming back."

  "We don't know that for certain yet, Jeff. She could be anywhere." Val reached for his hand, but he brushed it aside.

  He shook his head, his eyes bulging. "Of course she's not coming back. It's been six months. Don't you read the papers? Don't you know what goes on in the world? If she hasn't come back by now, something terrible has happened to her," he spat, directing his anger toward Val now.

  "Then he pressed his clenched fist to his mouth and rushed from the room.

  Val closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them she said, "I'm sorry about that. It's hard. It's just so unbelievably hard not to know where she is or what's happened to her. In some ways…" Her voice caught in her throat. "In some ways it would be better to find a body. Then at least we'd know for certain." She turned anguished eyes on me. "Does that sound terrible?"

  I sat next to her and patted her hand. "They're perfectly normal emotions to go through when a loved one goes missing. It's like you're in some kind of limbo until you can find out exactly what happened. I know you don't want to think about the worst. You try to cling onto hope, but you need an answer. I promise you I'm going to try and do everything to find that out. I need to ask you some questions, though. Are you up to it?"

  She nodded, fresh tears appearing in her eyes. She rummaged around up her sleeve, grabbed a tissue, and dabbed at her eyes.

  "Did she tell you what story she was working on recently?" I asked.

  "No. The police asked me that as well. I've been trying to think if something she said in conversation could give us a clue as to what it was, but she was keeping it under her hat, just like she always did."

  "She won the award for the Best Human Rights Story. You must've been very proud."

  "Yes. Liza liked getting involved in the stories that could make a difference to people's lives. She'd covered all sorts of things, from the lack of women's rights in the workplace to the sex-trafficking industry and child abuse in children's homes."

  "Did she ever receive any threats about any of the stories she wrote?"

  Val took a minute to think. "No. At least, she never told us if she had."

  "And she didn't mention anything about voodoo?"

  "Voodoo?" Val's eyes widened with fear. "Do you think her story was about voodoo?"

  "I'm not sure yet. It's possible."

  She clasped her hands together in front of her face. "Oh my God. What did she get herself into?" It was more a statement than a question so I didn't reply, and besides, I didn't have the answer to that yet.

  I glanced back at the photo of Liza and her award. "She must've been very dedicated."

  "She was. If there was something terrible going on in the world, she wanted to write about it and let everyone know." Her eyes watered. "I can't believe Chantal's gone missing now, too. They were very close. More like sisters, really. Is Chantal's disappearance related to Liza, do you think?"

  I nodded. "I think so. I think somehow Chantal found out what Liza was working on and something happened."

  A hand flew to a slim gold crucifix around her neck. "That's terrible. I know how Nicole and James must be feeling at the moment. The anger and frustration. The worry and hopelessness." She fingered the cross. "I keep praying that they'll both come home safely," she whispered.

  "Apart from the story she was working on at the time she disappeared, was there anything else going on in her life? Did she have a boyfriend? Did she have any problems?"

  She was silent for a while, seemingly struggling to cope with her grief. Finally, she said, "No, she had no problems that I knew of. She lived for her career and it was going really well. She didn't have any financial problems, either. And she didn't have time for a boyfriend, but she was happy with that at this stage in her life." Val turned anguished eyes on me. "She had everything to live for."

  Yes, it seemed she did, but someone else apparently didn't agree.

  * * *

  I was just pulling up outside my parents' house when Dad swung his battered Land Rover onto the drive.

  He opened the door, grinning, holding up a bag stuffed full of Burger Land food. "Amber! Three times in one day! Want another burger?" He waved the bag at me. "A perk of the job."

  I grinned. "No, I'm trying to give them up."

  He slammed the door with a loud thud and frowned in amazement. Me refusing food, especially junk food, w
as unheard of.

  "I don't want to put weight on for the wedding."

  He nodded. "Ah. So you've set the date, then?"

  "Nope."

  "Don't tell your mother. She's been dying to buy a hat for ages." He let us in the front door.

  Sabre, their nutso ex-police German Shepherd, came bounding out of the kitchen and jumped up, launching his front paws onto my shoulders, slobbering all over my face.

  "Yuck! Sabre!" I tried to push him away, but he wasn't budging.

  Dad wafted the Burger Land bag under his nose and ran into the kitchen. That got Sabre's attention pretty quick. He let out a noise that sounded like yum and hurtled after Dad. As I rounded the corner of the door, I saw Sabre's claws trying to get a grip on the slippery tiled floor. He skidded to a halt in front of a cupboard and bashed his head on it. Then Sabre did something that sounded like a sigh and passed out.

  "He's always doing that," I said. "No wonder he's got a screw loose if he keeps banging his head."

  "He'll be okay in a minute."

  Sabre opened his eyes and sat up, staring at the Burger Land bag in Dad's hand with longing.

  "He's not allowed any. He's supposed to be on a diet, too," Dad whispered, as if Sabre could understand what he was talking about. "The only way to get him off people is to give him a doggy treat, so he's been piling on the pounds."

  Now he mentioned it, Sabre was looking a little porky. "What are you going to use instead to get him to behave?"

  "Celery sticks."

  "Celery sticks? What, and he actually eats them?"

  "He loves them. I came up with that little idea," he said proudly.

  "Amber!" Mum came into the kitchen and gave me a hug. "Want some cake? I've just made a nice coffee and walnut sponge."

  "Oooh, yeah." Then I remembered the diet. "Er…actually, I'll pass."