Stolen Lives (9 page)

“How old was she?”

“Pamela’s age. Fiftyish. But carrying it well.”

Jade stared at Raymond in disbelief. “Pamela’s fifty?”

“Sweetie, Pamela is actually fifty-one.” Raymond winked at her. “Botox. She’s been having injections for years. And the odd bit of surgery. Trust me on that. The hairdresser knows all the naughty little secrets.”

And makes sure they don’t stay secret for too long, Jade guessed. A pity there was no Hippocratic Oath for hair-care professionals.

“Is there any way I can get into Tamsin’s house?” she asked. “I saw a gate in the fence between your property and hers.”

“Well … ” Raymond regarded her with what Jade considered to be perfectly justified suspicion. This was Jo’burg, after all, and she was a virtual stranger.

“I’ve got a key for it, because I feed her koi when she goes away. It won’t get you into her house, though. Only the garden.” He picked up the suede bag that lay on the shelf next to his scissors, took out a bunch of keys, but didn’t hand them over straight away. “You’ll have to go through my house to get to it.”

Jade nodded in a manner she hoped looked reassuring. “I’ll lock everything up again.”

“Will you bring the keys straight back?”

“Yes. I won’t be long.”

Raymond sighed. “Here they are. But please be careful. My house … ”

“I’ll be careful.”

Jade turned to go and then turned back again to give the hairdresser a business card from her wallet.

“Please call me if you remember anything else. And if Tamsin isn’t home by tonight … you might want to start feeding her fish again.”

10

It was a short walk from Raymond’s tidy kitchen to the gate in the garden fence. Jade unlocked it, then locked it carefully again behind her. Somewhere nearby she could hear the hum of a lawn-mower, but it wasn’t coming from this garden.

There was a splash from the koi pond as she passed it on her way to Tamsin’s front door, and she saw a brilliant flash of orange in the water.

To her surprise, the front door was unlocked. It opened smoothly and she stepped inside.

Tamsin’s place was as messy as Raymond’s had been organised. Every available surface was littered with objects. The small hall-table alone was home to several bunches of keys, a large framed photograph, a fly swat, three bottles of perfume, a romantic novel, a crumb-covered side plate, a cigarette lighter, two unopened packets of Silk Cut, and a bank bag half-filled with marijuana.

The photograph looked like it had been taken at a party or a nightclub. Nightclub, Jade guessed, looking more closely at the poster in the background which advertised the occasion as The Bacardi Breezer Birthday Bash. In it was a young brunette that Jade guessed was Tamsin, wearing a pink lacy blouse, with her arm around an unsmiling man in a black leather jacket.

Tamsin was pouting sulkily at the camera. The man had thick dark eyebrows, a low hairline, and the first word that came to mind when Jade looked at him was “unsavoury”.

If this was her boyfriend, Jade guessed she’d inherited her mother’s attraction to sleazeballs.

She moved carefully through the house, past an expensive-looking wall unit piled high with magazines and cds mixed by djs she’d never heard of, picking her way over discarded clothing, shoes and underwear. The dressing table in Tamsin’s bedroom was cluttered with perfume bottles, and her double bed looked like a breeding-ground for fluffy toys.

Tamsin lived alone, that was clear. There was barely enough space for one person under the mound of stuffed animals, never mind two.

The entire house smelled of stale cigarette smoke.

The woman was maybe twelve years younger than her, but standing and staring in bemusement at the chaos that surrounded her, Jade felt uncomfortably like her disapproving grandmother.

It was difficult to be sure with all the clutter, but she couldn’t see any obvious signs of a struggle.

No sign of Tamsin, either, although Jade noticed that the tiled floor of the shower was still wet, and so was the pink towel crumpled on a chair in the bedroom. So she—or somebody—had been here recently.

Jade couldn’t find a cellphone or a handbag anywhere.

There was a laptop on the desk in the second bedroom, but when she booted it up, she found it was password-protected, so she turned her attention to the stack of papers next to it.

“Heads & Tails Interview Form,” the printed pages read.

Jade scanned the form. So this was part of Tamsin’s admin job at the strip club. The questionnaire began with a section for the applicant’s height, weight, build and colouring. Then it moved on to other details. Previous employment, place of birth, current residential address, identity number or passport number, and contact numbers of closest relatives.

Terence Jordaan certainly did a thorough job of checking up on his staff, that was for sure. Everything seemed to be done by the book.

She took her cellphone out of her pocket and dialled Tamsin’s number. She waited till it started ringing and then walked from room to room, listening for a ring tone, or the muted buzz of a vibrating phone.

Nothing.

After eight rings, it went through to voicemail. Jade didn’t leave a message, but she remembered Pamela saying that she had when she’d phoned her daughter earlier in the day.

Pamela had sounded confident that Tamsin would be waiting at home, ready to go. So, if the woman who had pretended to be Tamsin’s aunt had listened to the phone message, she would have known that the girl’s disappearance would be discovered very soon. Jade sensed a small movement behind her and spun round.

Nobody there. Just the bedroom door that she’d pushed wide open, slowly swinging back to the half-closed position in which she’d found it.

Breathing deeply, she opened the door that led to the garage. A bubble-gum-pink Mazda mx-5 sporting a vanity plate was parked there. Custom-painted, she supposed.

Jade stood in the hot, airless confines of the garage, feeling sweat start to dampen the back of her legs and trickle down her cleavage. She tried Tamsin’s phone again, but it wasn’t in the car either.

Only when she walked back inside the house did she notice the piece of paper lying on the tiles just inside the front door. A mauve notelet which must have been pushed under the door earlier, but been moved out of her sight when she’d opened it.

The paper had a logo at the top. “Lerato’s Manicures”. Below it, handwriting in a script so bubbly that Jade was surprised it wasn’t popping off the page.

“Hey doll, the gardener let me in! Did u forget it was Tuesday?! Lol!! Tried phoning u but no luck! See u next wk, hope u ok, luv Ler!”

Jade put the piece of paper back down on the floor, shaking her head because this cheery little message confirmed her worst fears.

She had been hoping that, by some lucky chance, Tamsin had not been home when the “aunt” had come looking for her. That she’d been staying at a friend’s house, and had perhaps mislaid her phone.

But would Tamsin have missed what seemed to be a long-standing weekly appointment with her mobile manicurist? Jade didn’t think so. She knew what Sandton girls were like about their nails.

She’d have to report her missing now, and hope that her phone was with her and that the police could triangulate its signal before the young woman suffered any harm.

Assuming, of course, that no harm had already been done.

11

Half an hour later, having returned Raymond’s house keys to him, Jade arrived back at her cottage. She paid the driver using the money that Pamela had given her, noticing that the taxi fee didn’t even make a dent in the thick wad of notes.

The road seemed quiet, but the uneasiness that Jade had felt in Tamsin’s house persisted.

Jade had thought this would be a straightforward job. Look after the rich lady until her husband turns up, dead or alive. She’d never imagined that it would involve a gun-toting biker trying to murder Pamela.

And why do it that way? A shooting like that would never be a guaranteed way of killing somebody, especially not in those circumstances. Why hadn’t the gunman waited until Pamela arrived home, or, at the very least, was stopped at a traffic light? Then he could have pulled up beside her—easy to do on a motorbike—aimed and fired before roaring away.

Perhaps he had intended to scare Pamela, rather than kill her. Oddly enough, though, Pamela had seemed more scared before the shooting than she was afterwards.

Jade frowned. She was starting to wonder whether Pamela had known that something was going to happen that morning. She had just locked the front door behind her when she heard an odd noise from outside—a soft, persistent rustling.

She froze, holding the keys tightly, listening.

It was a small sound, but it hadn’t sounded like the wind, and in any case there wasn’t even the slightest breeze.

There it was again. It was coming from round the side of the house.

Jade unlocked the door again, walked quietly along the paved garden path and rounded the corner.

The noise seemed to be coming from one of the flowerbeds. Last year it had filled up with colourful blooms after spring arrived. This year, thanks to what David called her “gardening disability”, only the toughest, spikiest shrubs and bushes had survived. Even their new spring leaves were wilting in the fierce, dry heat, but the foliage was still dense enough for somebody to hide in.

There it was again. A tiny rustle.

A shoot quivered.

Jade squinted, but all she could see was an endless mass of green and brown. She stepped forward. At which point the leaves gave a decisive shake and the Jack Russell from the house down the road scrambled out, scratched the grass with its hind legs, and trotted over, wagging its stumpy tail.

“Hello, little boy.” Jade could hear the relief in her own voice.

She squatted down and stroked its short, smooth coat.

“How did you get in here, I wonder?” She gently grasped the dog’s collar and read the name on the brass disc. “Bonnie? With that name, I guess you’re not a boy.”

Jade stood and buzzed the gate open.

“Home, Bonnie,” she said, in a commanding tone.

Bonnie ignored her. In fact, she sat down on the paving and wagged her tail even faster.

Jade sighed. “ok, come with me. Let’s take you back.”

She picked up the dog and walked determinedly out of the gate, checking the quiet dirt road in both directions before she walked the short distance to the bungalow down the road. She rang the bell outside the gate, but there was no answer. There were no cars in the driveway, and the gardener had obviously gone home.

“So how did you manage to get out, then?” Jade wondered.

Looking round, she spotted a furrow under the electric fence where the dog had obviously dug her way out. But each time she pushed the little dog back inside, she just turned around and wriggled straight back out again. After the seventh attempt, Jade gave up.

She returned to the cottage with Bonnie gambolling alongside as if on an invisible leash. The dog trotted straight into the kitchen and turned to stare at Jade, her small sides heaving.

“Are you thirsty? It’s hot enough, isn’t it?”

Jade filled a china cereal bowl with water and placed it on the floor next to the fridge. Bonnie bent her head and lapped at it eagerly.

“I’m sure you’ve got a perfectly good bowl of water at home,” Jade said.

The dog didn’t respond. After she’d had enough, she headed off into the lounge and began to explore the cottage’s cool interior.

“All right,” Jade called after her. “You can stay here until I go. If you help with security.”

She hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and now she was starving and desperate for a cup of coffee. She’d grab a quick bite here, then drive to Pamela’s house and pack up some clothes and toiletries for her.

She put the kettle on and opened the fridge. There were two tomatoes and a cucumber in the vegetable drawer. On the top shelf was half a block of cheese wrapped in tinfoil and an unopened box of tofu that she’d bought during an especially health-focused shopping spree. She’d successfully managed to ignore it since then, and she managed to do so again now.

Did she have pita bread in the freezer? Yes, she did. An easy decision, then.

She popped one into the toaster, and sliced the cheese and vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Bonnie reappeared when she heard the rustle of foil and sat at her feet, her tail wagging at top speed.

Jade looked down at her sternly.

“No. I am not feeding you,” she said in a firm voice. “This is not your home.”

She took the pita bread out of the toaster, chose a Nando’s chilli sauce bottle from the selection in the cupboard and spread a thick layer of the fiery orange liquid over it. Then she added the cheese and vegetables and, just for luck, finished off with another dollop of the sauce.

She sat down at the kitchen table and, holding her makeshift sandwich in both hands and tilting it to avoid drips, took a huge bite.

As she put the pita back down on the plate and picked up her coffee, Bonnie started to bark. The small dog hurtled towards the security door and shot through the bars and out towards the gate, punctuating her progress with a volley of high-pitched yaps.

Jade stood up so fast she nearly knocked the table over, and hurried to the window. Who had arrived?

She stared at the beige Toyota Corolla outside her gate. The driver hooted impatiently. Bonnie’s barking grew louder, and she darted from one end of the gate to the other.

It was David.

“What do you want now, you bastard?” Jade mumbled through her half-chewed mouthful of food, feeling her heart give a little leap and then accelerate, a physical reaction that she couldn’t control, despite her efforts. “Why should I even let you in, Mr Get-a-bicycle?”

She ran to the bathroom, swallowing the last of her mouthful of sandwich as she went. Despite herself, she had to have a quick look in the mirror. Did she have food stuck in her teeth? No. Sauce on her face? Yes, there was a bright orange smear on her chin. She wiped it off, ran her fingers through her hair, cast a glance at the perfume bottle on the glass shelf, but resisted the urge to apply some.