I glanced up, unable to concentrate on both the file and Tia-babble at the same time. I knew what sort of show she was talking about. I'd seen them before, although never with Nicole, but I didn't believe in all that mumbo-jumbo and thought it was all faked for the cameras. "Tia, those shows aren't real. They're just staged." I handed the file to Brad for him to look at.
Tia gasped, a hand flying to her chest, as if she'd been mortally wounded. "They are real! I can prove it. Chantal told me things about my mom that she couldn't have known."
Sadly, Tia's mum died when she was young. If Tia wanted to believe it was real, then who was I to burst her bubble? I let it go. "Okay, I've never heard of Chantal or Nicole, but I've heard of James Langton."
"Langton Developments is one of the biggest development companies in the country," Brad said. "Shopping plazas, huge housing developments, hospitals—you name it, they've built it."
"When did Chantal go missing?" I asked.
"Five days ago," Tia said.
"Have Nicole and James reported her disappearance to the police?" Brad asked, skimming the file.
"Uh-huh." Tia nodded. "But Nicole said the police don't take adult missing persons seriously until it's been a week, so they're not really doing much. And she heard Amber is the best investigator around, so she wanted her to get involved in trying to find Chantal." Tia grinned proudly at me. "She's offering a big bonus to find her daughter."
Brad raised an interested eyebrow. "What sort of bonus?"
"A million pounds," Tia said.
Brad whistled.
"Wow. I hope she doesn't broadcast that at the moment." I shook my head. "She'll have all the nutters coming out of the woodwork claiming to have seen Chantal."
"Nope. The bonus is only for you, Amber." Tia stared at me, wide-eyed. "Hacker has some more information for you about her. Apparently, he knew Nicole back in Haiti. Oh, and there's a present on your desk."
Oh, crap. "It's not spiders again, is it?"
She shook her head.
"Or a fox's nose?" I took a deep breath in. Yep, I got all the best presents!
"Nope. You'll like these." She grinned at me and followed as Brad and I took off down the corridor.
"Yo," I said to Hacker as I dumped my bag on my desk in the office I shared with him.
Hacker glanced up from a mass of screens and keyboards surrounding him. He was a computer whiz kid and had more electronic equipment and a bigger backup system than Houston. He was the spitting image of the rapper Snoop Dogg, complete with plaits and gangsta rapper hoodies. Today he wore one with
Rap Is Not Dead
plastered on the front in gold lettering.
"Yo." Hacker finished doing a few keyboard strokes, then glanced up at Brad and me.
Brad nodded back. "Hacker."
Hacker and Brad went back a long way, having met when Hacker was serving in Brad's SAS unit.
"Agh! The chocolate éclair fairy's been," I squealed, eyeing the open box on my desk. Six delish-looking éclairs with thick icing, oozing cream. Now that was what I called breakfast!
"Told you you'd like the present." Tia grinned.
I could've kissed her. I would get my choccie fix after all. Hurrah! I picked one up and offered the box around. Since Hacker and Brad were obsessive about health food, they didn't take one. Tia grabbed one and tucked in.
Brad perched on the edge of my desk, arms folded, shaking his head at my éclair.
"What?" I asked. "Chocolate comes from cocoa, which is a bean, and everyone knows beans are healthy."
"So, what's the story with Chantal?" Brad asked Hacker, ignoring my weird woman logic.
Hacker leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. "Okay, I knew Nicole and her sister Marie back in Haiti. Everyone in Haiti knew the La Fru Fru sisters. Both of them are
mambo—
voodoo priestesses."
Visions of sacrificed chickens and freaky rituals with snakes popped into my head. Knowing my luck, someone would be sending me snakes as a present next. Not that they bothered me at all. Well, unless they bit me. Agonizing pain and being paralyzed to death weren't exactly on top of my wish list.
"Around twenty-five years ago, Nicole La Fru Fru met James Langton and she married him and moved to the UK," Hacker carried on. "Marie soon followed. Both of them have been here ever since. Chantal is twenty-five and the only daughter of Nicole and James. Five days ago, Chantal vanished without a trace."
"Has she ever disappeared before?" I asked.
"Apparently not, and in order to find out what happened to Chantal, you might have to look into the voodoo angle." Hacker gave an ominous pause.
"Go on." I nodded at him.
"How much do you know about voodoo?" Hacker glanced at us all.
"It's a religion, much the same as Catholicism," Brad said.
Hacker nodded. "True. Voodoo is a form of worship and spirituality like any other religion. In fact, there's a lot of Catholicism mixed up in voodoo. If you mention voodoo to people, most of them will think about black magic, and there is an element of that, because, like any religion, there are people who use it for bad things instead of good, but that's not what voodoo should be about. Voodooists believe that nothing happens by chance. Everything happens for a purpose, and that purpose is determined by the many spirits that surround us. In order to appease these spirits and make sure bad things don't happen, we perform rituals or consult a mambo like Nicole to restore harmony."
Back to the dead chicken thing again. Ew. "Like animal sacrifice rituals?" I pulled a face.
Hacker clutched the dead chicken's foot he wore round his neck for protection. "Animal sacrifice is a part of it for some spirits, yes. But there are many rituals, such as simple offerings, prayer, spirit possessions, and dance ceremonies."
"That's what Nicole did on her psychic show on TV," Tia breathed with excitement. "She gets possessed by spirits who have messages for people."
"Uh-huh," I said skeptically.
"Well,
I
think she's genuine." Tia poked her tongue out at me.
I poked mine back. Childish, I know. "Okay, so if she's psychic, why doesn't she know where her daughter's gone, Miss Smarty-Pants?" I grinned at her.
"I told you before—it's not like you can just turn it on and off at will." Tia scrunched up her nose. "Sometimes you get psychic visions and feelings and sometimes you don't. You can't control when it's going to happen."
Brad glanced over at me thoughtfully. "I'm having a great psychic vision about something that's going to happen tonight."
My temperature shot up a few thousand degrees just thinking about it. I broke smoldering eye contact with him and turned back to Tia. "So if you can't turn it on and off at will, how come she gets possessed by these psychic spirits at the exact time her TV show airs, hmmm?"
"The show is pre-taped, not live," Brad said. "Maybe if the spirits aren't calling that day, they won't record it."
I gave him a disbelieving look. "Is being psychic a part of voodooism?" I asked Hacker.
"Not in the sense of having a TV show, no. In that respect, Nicole is an oddity. But in ceremonies a mambo is often possessed by the spirits, also known as loas, who will give prophecies on the future or advice on how to help with certain problems or situations."
"So she may or may not be a fake psychic?" Brad asked.
Tia shook her head so hard I was surprised she didn't get whiplash. "Not a fake," she said through a mouthful of éclair.
"I've seen Nicole do things back in Haiti that shouldn't be possible," Hacker said. "Things that have no explanation other than voodoo power. She's definitely not a fake priestess. "
"Okay, what else?" I asked him, starting to think we'd be here all day debating the finer points of psychics.
"In voodoo, there is one supreme god called Bondye who reigns over the whole universe. Since we can't communicate directly with him, there are hundreds of other spirits called loa that we have to make sure are happy."
"Wowzer. That's fascinating." Tia stared up at Hacker with loved-up goo-goo eyes.
"So, basically, it's all about rituals that are designed to protect you and show respect to the spirits or give thanks to them?" I asked as I finished my third éclair (I know, I know, slightly piggish!). I wiped my hands on a paper napkin. "You'd better take this away before I eat the whole box." I shoved it in Tia's direction.
Hacker sat forward in his chair, making his plaits wobble. "Yeah. Voodoo focuses on respect and peace. Most voodoo beliefs center around love and support for your family and community, generosity, and helping each other. Greed and dishonor are traits that should have no part in our lives. And there's a big healing element involved, too. Often mambos will perform healing rituals using spells and herbal remedies."
"See, I told you spells were good." Tia grinned at me.
I rolled my eyes at her. "Don't even think about it. I told you after the last time I'm never doing one of your spells again."
"Getting back to Nicole's sister, Marie," Hacker went on, "mambos don't normally practice left-handed voodoo, what we call black magic or bad voodoo, using this to curse or harm other people. But where there is good in the world, there's also evil. A bokor is someone who uses voodoo to cause misfortune or injury, even death. These people are extremely powerful." Hacker clutched the chicken's foot so tight his knuckles paled. "At some point after Nicole and Marie arrived in the UK, Marie turned her back on good voodoo and became a bokor." He paused for emphasis. "Since then, Nicole hasn't spoken to Marie or had anything to do with her."
There it was again. That horrible, burny feeling somewhere deep inside that something bad was going to happen. In the days that followed, I wished I'd listened to it more closely.
"Can I come with you to see Nicole?" Tia's huge blue eyes pleaded with me. "Purleaaase."
"I knew it! Those éclairs weren't a present at all, they were a bribe! You're busted."
Tia had the good grace to look sheepish, and chewed on her lower lip.
I was about to protest but then I figured, why not? If Tia could get some psychic vibe about what was going on then it might make my job easier. Not that I was exactly hopeful about it, but maybe Tia would connect with Nicole on some heebie-jeebie level.
"Go on." Tia bumped me with her shoulder. "She gave me a message from my mother at one of her psychic shows. The least I can do is return the favor if I get any feeling about where Chantal is."
"Okay. But don't touch anything. You know what happened the last time you came on an investigation with me."
When I was looking for her dad, Tia had insisted on tagging along and we'd inadvertently blown up a washing machine and a warehouse building. But even though she seemed like a quirky, head-in-the-clouds kind of girl, she wasn't afraid of anything, and all this talk about voodoo was making me feel spooked. It would probably be a good idea to have someone watching my back. And maybe Tia's screechingly loud clothes would frighten off any freaky spirits and stop them from turning me into a zombie.
"Great!" Tia clapped her hands together.
I grabbed my rucksack, which contained all kinds of practical investigatorish tools, and we headed out to my Toyota with Tia clutching the Langtons' file close to her chest.
"Where do Nicole and James live?" I cranked the car into gear and sped out of the Hi-Tec car park.
"Farnham House," she answered without looking at the file. When it came to office stuff, Tia seemed to have a photographic memory.
* * *
Farnham House wasn't really a house. According to their house insurance file, it was a humongous twenty-eight-bedroom mansion. An impressive winding drive through perfectly manicured lawns went on for a mile before we even got a glimpse of the whitewashed walls and entrance pillars.
It had been used as a hospital in World War II. Spooky. If Nicole really was psychic, I bet she saw lots of people floating around in white sheets.
"Wowzer!" Tia gasped, staring at the sheer size of it.
James Langton was a successful property developer, so I would imagine they'd be rolling in it, but I wondered how much of the money had come from Nicole's voodoo priestess sideline. Hacker said mambos were like healers, helping out the community with health issues or problems going on in their lives. I thought James Langton would be the sort of person who wouldn't be too impressed at waifs and strays turning up here at all hours asking Nicole to do a spell because their unemployment check hadn't arrived yet, or for Nicole to cure them of some infectious disease.
I knocked on the heavy wooden door and it was opened by a young black woman wearing a black and white maid's outfit, complete with a white cap.
"'Ello?" she enquired in heavily accented French.
"We're here to see Nicole and James Langton. It's about Chantal," I said.
"I spoke to Nicole earlier," Tia butted in eagerly.
"Oui. Of course." The girl nodded timidly. "Come in." She stood back and let us into the large hallway that could've contained my entire old poky apartment. "Follow me, please." She hurried across flagstone floors, passing impressive floral displays of white lilies resting on antique tables, and numerous carved wooden doors that were closed.
At the end of the hall, she knocked on a door and said something in French that I didn't understand. The only two things I remembered from my French class at school were a couple of emergency phrases we'd learned for a French exchange holiday—"I've got my period" and "I've got diarrhea." Probably not too helpful in this case, and strangely enough, I'd never actually used them since.
I caught a muffled "Oui" from behind the door and the maid let us in.
The room was dark, despite the sunny day outside. Heavy and expensive-looking curtains were drawn, covering most of the large windows, giving it a creepy feel.
More French from Nicole and the maid drew the curtains back as Nicole stood to greet us.
I'd been expecting someone with a snake wrapped around her neck or a goat's skull on top of her head, wearing a black smock with white skulls and bones on it, but Nicole looked pretty normal. She had black skin that was so smooth it looked like melted chocolate, oval-shaped, slanted brown eyes that were puffy from crying, and regal cheekbones and jaw. She carried herself with great posture—shoulders back, spine straight, chin jutting upwards slightly. I suspected she was in her fifties, but she could easily have passed for a woman twenty years younger. Maybe they should be bottling secret voodoo potions for anti-wrinkle cream. They'd make a fortune. I tried to work out if she'd had Botox or not. Nope, didn't look like it. Maybe drinking goat's blood was the key to her flawless skin.