Sharp Turn - Marianne Delacourt [22]
‘I’m outside,’ I said. ‘The police won’t let me in.’
‘I’m coming.’
At first glance, she seemed composed: still in work attire and full make-up, which hid her extreme pallor and bloodshot eyes. Once she was closer, though, I could see her trembling.
‘Can you tell me what happened?’ I asked gently.
While she gathered her thoughts, I watched Constable Blake shepherd a half-dozen very embarrassed men onto the veranda for questioning. I wondered how many of them would be recognised by the curious neighbours peering out their windows at the disturbance.
I scanned the line. No one I knew except for a guy I recognised from my previous visit. Mr Zegna Suit looked like he’d cornered the market on shame.
A few moments later, the men were joined by a line of Madame Vine’s girls. The police made them sit a distance from the men.
Madame Vine cleared her throat and took a breath. ‘I was in my office. Audrey answered the door to a caller. From what the police have said, there was probably no one there so she stepped out on the veranda to look into the garden.’ She gave me an imploring look. ‘I’ve told her not to do that. We get a lot of pranksters. More of late since the threats started. I’ve told her to open the door on the chain then shut it if no one’s there.’
‘Do you have security?’
Madame Vine nodded. ‘Leonard had heard a noise in the back garden. He was out there looking into it because the security camera was down. Audrey answered the door instead, and when she stepped out someone . . . shot her . . . from the street.’
‘Were they in a car?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. No one saw it.’
She began to shiver in the way people did when suffering deep shock.
‘Madame Vine, you need to sit down. We can talk tomorrow.’
‘No. Now. While it’s fresh,’ she insisted. ‘Tomorrow . . .’
Tomorrow would be all police and newspapers.
Tomorrow she’d begin mourning her lover.
‘Okay.’ I opened the notes section on my phone.
‘What happened this evening? Anything unusual?’
‘No. It was quiet.’
‘No prank calls earlier?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have any idea why someone would . . . m-murder . . . Audrey?’ I’d never dealt with this kind of thing before and it was hard to say the word. ‘Do you think the killer was after her, or could it have been a random event?’
‘I really don’t know.’ Her voice began to sound faint again. ‘Tara, you can see things others can’t. Tell me, please, do you notice anything here amongst the clients? Or the girls?’
I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was hard to read paralanguage at night, so I made a show of scanning the customers, the girls and the police. From across the garden, I could only see a smudge of distortion around their bodies: their energy heat. The customers were giving up a lot of that, while the police were cooler and less disturbed. The girls were the most interesting: two of them had barely visible energy lines, almost as if the event hadn’t stirred any emotion in them at all.
‘Who are the two girls at the end?’ I asked.
She looked over. ‘Kate is the blonde, and Louise.’
‘What were they doing . . . err . . . at the time . . . of the . . . shooting?’
Madame Vine pressed her fingers to her forehead. ‘They were in the lounge, I believe. Neither of them had a customer.’
I thumbed their names into my phone. ‘I’d like to talk to them both. Could you arrange it?’
‘Of course. Do you sense something?’
‘I can’t say yet. I’ll know more when I’ve spoken to them. Is there anything else you can think of that might be a clue?’
Whitey came back before she could answer. ‘You’ll have to move, Sharp. We’re extending the crime scene to include the street. Miss Vine, would you please go inside? One of the detectives is waiting to speak to you.’
Another profound shiver shook the woman’s body. I reached out and patted her hand. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’
She nodded and walked unsteadily back to the house.
‘She needs medical attention,’ I hissed at Whitey.
‘Don’t tell me my job,’ he snarled back, and began widening the taped-off area so that I had to move.
‘Freakin’ idiot,’ I muttered over my