Sharp Turn - Marianne Delacourt [37]
‘Two gigs at once, boss. We must be getting a good reputayshun,’ he said.
We? I swallowed to moisten my suddenly dry mouth.
‘Maybe. Look, I’m going to talk to two of Lena Vine’s workers, Kate and Louise. I want you to poke around while I do.’
‘Gotcha!’
‘Be subtle.’
‘My first name. Subtle Wal.’ He burped for emphasis.
I parked outside the brothel and slung my wrap across the front of my dress to tone it down a bit. The police tape was gone from the street, but a section of the garden was still cordoned off and a police officer stood by the door. We skirted the tape and told the policeman that we had an appointment.
Roc, the security guard, answered the bell and he and Wal low-fived each other.
‘This is my boss, Tara Sharp,’ said Wal by way of introduction. ‘Boss, meet Leonard Roc.’
Leonard was a big, muscled guy with a jaw thick enough to chop wood on. Hello, HGH! He held out a hand as big as a shovel to shake mine. ‘G’day.’
His aura had thin streaks of white snaking through it like cracks. He wasn’t long away from a major illness. It hadn’t reached the no aura stage that, in my experience, meant he was dying but he was on that path. Part of me wanted to say something but I’d learned that lesson a while ago. Stay out of strangers’ lives.
‘Hi,’ I said.
Lena Vine came up behind him and he stepped out of her way. Only a day had passed since I’d seen her and yet she seemed to have lost kilos. Her face showed signs of sleeplessness and trauma and her aura boiled unhappily.
‘Come this way, Tara,’ she said.
I followed her to a room opposite her office, which turned out to be the staff lounge. Not as opulent as the front lounge where the clients waited, but comfortable and clean. A pretty fair-headed girl around my age sat in one of the chairs, flicking through a magazine. I could see immediately that she wasn’t really paying attention to it.
‘This is Kate,’ Lena said. ‘I’ll close the door and make sure you’re not disturbed. When you’ve finished, open the door and I’ll bring Louise in.’
I parked my butt opposite Kate and sucked in her ambience. That turned out not to be the best idea. I got hit with an unpleasantly sticky sensation.
‘Thanks for talking to me, Kate. Madame . . . Lena is very anxious to find Audrey’s . . . you know.’
Kate lifted her eyes to meet mine. Her gaze was uninterested and slightly out of focus. ‘Whatever.’
I sucked in a breath. ‘Can you tell me what you remember about the evening?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Like I haven’t told the police a hundred times already.’
‘Yeah. But I’m not the police, so just tell it like it was.’
‘Who are you? A PI?’ She showed a flicker of interest.
‘Just a friend of a . . . friend of Lena’s.’
‘Oh.’ Boredom returned. ‘Well, I was in the lounge . . . painting my nails. I saw Audy go past and open the door. She didn’t come back in. Then someone else went out. Then everyone started screaming.’
‘What did you do?’
She stared at me, as if struggling to understand my question.
‘What – did – you – do?’ I repeated.
‘Nothing. The others were all doing it. Poor old Audy.’
She licked her lips and tried to express some emotion but couldn’t seem to sustain it. It was like talking to a rag doll. Ten minutes later I hadn’t got much further and called it quits. Her answers had gotten vaguer and vaguer. I took another look at her aura. In the artificial light the other night, I’d thought it missing altogether, but could now see it was just so diluted it was almost invisible.
She drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her nose. Suddenly, I knew what was wrong. Kate was stoned. Not obvious, incapable stoned. More like practised and still functioning – just.
I got up abruptly and opened the door. ‘Thanks.’
She seemed mildly surprised and then shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
Louise replaced her on the couch within moments. She was as fidgety and tense as Kate had been chemically flattened, her aura running in a tight grey bead around her body.
‘Hi, Louise, I have some questions about the other night.’
‘I’ve told the police what I know,’ she said flatly.
‘Please,