"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, was 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."
She looked at me like I'd just walked in covered in dog poop. Her jaw dropping open, she put a hand on her hip, tilting her head and examining me with a frown. "Okay, what's wrong? The only time you ever stopped eating is when you broke up with Brad." She gasped. "Oh no. You two haven't broken up again, have you?"
"No. Relax. I just want to make sure I can get into the wedding dress I've got my eye on, so I'm cutting out junk food."
Another gasp. "You've picked out the dress! Fantastic." She clapped her hands together. "Can I buy my hat now? I've seen this really beautiful one on sale. It's peach with a little flower arrangement on the side and it would look perfect with the peach silk dress I've seen. And—"
"No. We haven't set the date yet." I cut her off before she got more carried away and sat down at the shaker-style island in the center of the kitchen.
She rolled her eyes at me. "You mean
you
haven't set the date. If it were up to Brad, you would've been married months ago. What's the problem, honey?" She sat down next to me. "I know you want to, so what's stopping you?"
I shrugged. "I just don't want history to repeat itself. What if we get married and
then
we split up?"
"You won't." She wagged a finger at me. "This time it's for keeps. He loves you. You love him. Now set the date and let me buy that hat." More finger wagging.
"Anyway, Dad, I wanted to ask you something about Steven Shaw." I masterfully changed the subject. Go me!
"Oh, yes, I meant to ask why you were at Burger Land today seeing him." Dad switched the kettle on. "You want coffee, or have you given that up, too?"
"I'm never giving up coffee."
"You've never given up cake before," Mum butted in. "So if you're giving it up you must be subconsciously thinking about setting the date." She gave me a you-can't-fool-your-mum kind of grin.
It was my turn to eye roll. She wouldn't let up when she got her teeth into something. Maybe she was right and my subconscious had made my mind up for me, but if my conscious mind kept thinking about it, I would just worry myself to death and go round and round in circles like I'd been doing for the past few months. Probably better just to not think about weddings and concentrate on the case. Yep, that was it. No more thinking or talking about weddings at all. There. Banished from my mind.
Subconscious, are you listening?
"What do you think about Dad doing surveillance at Burger Land?" I asked her, steering the conversation away from my love life again.
"Actually, we've reached a compromise. Which is what
marriage
is all about." She glared at me when she said the M word. "Your father can do his neighborhood watch stuff during the day, as long as we get to spend quality time together in the evenings and weekends." She smiled at him.
"Plus, you get lots of free food." I eyed the Burger Land bag on the kitchen worktop and something seemed to click in Sabre's head. He leaped up, grabbed the bag, and ran out of the room with it.
"Sabre!" Dad ran after him, closely followed by Mum and me.
Sabre legged it through the open patio door in the lounge and out into the garden, bounding around the lawn in a figure of eight as we chased after him. After a few minutes of tearing about, panting (Sabre
and
us), Dad managed to grab his collar, holding on for dear life, but Sabre wasn't having any of it. He bucked Dad's hand off, causing Dad to lose balance and fall slap bang in the middle of Mum's vegetable garden. Sabre, sensing he could make a clean getaway with the distraction, disappeared into the house.
Mum's hands pressed onto her cheeks. "My vegetable patch! That bloody dog!"
"So the celery sticks really seem to be doing the trick, then." I grinned at Dad.
Dad frowned, dusting himself off. "I need to rethink my game plan." He shook his head as we followed a trail of ripped-up Burger Land bag and crumbs back into the kitchen.
Sabre sat there like butter wouldn't melt, licking his lips and staring innocently at us while his tail wagged, whipping on the floor with loud thuds.
Dad pointed a finger at him. "That's it! No dinner for you tonight."
I swear Sabre gave us a look as if to say, "Am I bothered?"
"So, anyway, back to Steven Shaw," I prompted Dad. "Did you know him before he asked the neighborhood watch program to help?"
"No." Dad poured instant coffee into three mugs, topped them with water and milk, and stirred while simultaneously glaring at Sabre. "He didn't want to report the thefts to the police. He wanted to deal with it internally, so he asked if I could do some surveillance there." He handed Mum and me a mug, grabbed one for himself, and sat down at the island. "So far I haven't seen anything suspicious going on."