Chlöe knew she was playing with fire, stopping to grab coffee and muffins in Rondebosch instead of hitting the road, and the risk wasn’t paying off. If she … if they didn’t get going in about ten minutes, she’d be late. She’d vowed that Voinjama would never enter the building and find her assistant had yet to show up.
So far she’d kept her word. So far she’d kept her word about a lot of things, at least until last night … when once again she’d been sucked in, chewed up and spat out like old, flavourless gum.
In a bakery on the other side of the street, Chlöe watched her ex-girlfriend fritter around the confectionery display, picking out the choicest bits. The sight made Chlöe’s throat clench a little. She’d been handpicked like that, plucked from an array of supple beauties, set aside for carnal delights until her usefulness expired. Am I really such a gullible hedonist? she thought. Was she that much of a blind slave to her baser passions that she couldn’t let go, or be let go, gracefully?
‘Hey, I know you.’
Chlöe turned around, the devious itch that came on every time she heard a pretty voice tickling the back of her neck. The stone-grey eyes smiling into hers were needled with amber and framed with batwings of shoulder-length hair. Her pulse skipped. She’d wanted to be disappointed.
‘Um, sorry, I don’t think so.’ She huddled deeper into her coat.
‘Yeah, I do know you. Well, I’ve seen you, at least. We weren’t formally introduced.’ Three dark moles on the girl’s neck did a fetching dance as she spoke. It was all Chlöe could do to keep her eyes off the inviting slope down the V-front of the girl’s sweater.
‘Remember, a couple of weeks ago? You came to UCT campus to hustle Serena away for a scary chat. You were with a tall black girl, the one with the lips and all that neck.’
Transfixed, Chlöe watched the girl’s mouth move. Now this was a lovely pout, natural, and none of that sticky gloss rubbish. It matched her aura of home-grown, farm freshness. Free State, probably; Chlöe had hard evidence that the girls were hot out there. The wind whipped the girl’s cascade of onyx hair into a frenzy, and she casually twisted it into a ponytail at the nape of her neck and swept the lot over one shoulder.
Chlöe gulped. Pay attention and stop perving. Of course, she remembered now. This was one of Serena Fourie’s friends. A member of the flock she was with the day they came to campus.
‘How’s your investigation going?’ the Farm Beauty said.
Chlöe’s eyes narrowed.
The girl gave a short laugh. ‘Sorry, am I not meant to ask? Is it a big secret? Serena plays it quite close to the chest when it comes to her family. Thinks they lower her prestige or something. Whose family doesn’t?’ Farm Beauty sighed. ‘But she’s not very good at hiding her emotions. She was really shaken up after you guys left.’
‘Did she have reason to be?’
Farm Beauty smiled scornfully. ‘Well, no offence, but you guys did ambush her in the middle of her day. You could’ve been more graceful and considerate about it. Serena’s really sensitive.’ She softened. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I’ve known Serena since we started first-year Law together. It was really tough when her sister went missing. I get a bit overprotective when I see how much it still affects her.’
Chlöe felt a wrench of jealousy and longing. At most, she could count on two fingers the female friends invested in her life. Whether Vee liked it or not, she was now number three. It had been two years since Chlöe herself had prowled UCT grounds, and since then her social circle had become no less shallow. She wasn’t good with women friends, and they tended to not be cool about her sexual preferences.
‘What were you guys questioning her about?’ the girl said.
Chlöe crossed her arms. For real? Did this chick think she could pump her for information? Even you are not that hot, my love.
‘I only ask because,’ Farm Beauty plunged on, ‘I was there around the time when Jacqueline went missing. I … I think I was somehow involved.’
‘What? Involved how?’ Chlöe perked up.
It was FB’s turn to swallow and look uncomfortable. She shivered and drew her trench coat tighter around her waist. ‘Like I said, me and Serena have been friends since first year. We were roommates in Tugwell. The night her sister disappeared was so strange. It took me a while to remember this.’ FB scratched her forehead. ‘Serena got a call. It wasn’t late; we’d just had supper, round seven-ish. She took the call in the bathroom for privacy ’cause those rooms were like prison cells. She got so weird after she answered, and then she went in the loo and locked the door. Didn’t come out for, like, fifteen minutes.’
‘Did you hear what the conversation was about?’
‘You mean, did I eavesdrop? No. I don’t do stuff like that.’ FB looked offended. ‘Anyway, afterwards she left the room for a while and when she came back her face was like …’ She shook her head and pursed her lips. ‘Serena goes calm and freaky when there’s trouble. She gets this aura like she’s thinking really hard. She told me, in a very quiet way, that she had an urgent errand to run and asked if she could borrow my car.’
‘To go where? Did you ask?’
The black waterfall shook from side to side. ‘Couldn’t. I wanted to, but the look on her face was like, tjo, don’t dare. I asked if she wanted me to come along but she said no. So I gave her the keys. I was really worried about her, but also about my car. It was a new, blue Toyota Corolla I got from my parents for doing so well in matric. The new-look ones, not the old granny type. But it cost too much to run it, you know how student life is. You have a car and all your friends turn into bloody mooches and expect you to drive them everywhere, then they never chip in for petrol. I needed hard cash a lot more than I did a car so I decided to sell. I’d advertised it and had a buyer who was gonna pick it up in two days, so I really didn’t want anything happening to it to bring the price down. But I trusted Serena. I had to, she begged me.’ FB took a deep breath and stopped.
‘Then what happened?’ Chlöe prompted.
‘Nothing.’ FB shrugged. ‘That was kinda it. She took the keys and left, was gone for hours. I tried to wait up for her, but I kinda had other commitments …’ A blush livened her cheeks. She dropped her gaze demurely. ‘I was meeting this girl, and we … hung out until pretty late.’
She ‘hangs out’ with girls! She likes girls! Chlöe bit down on a grin of triumph.
‘I got back to the room after midnight. Serena was already in bed and the car was fine. Next day, I tried to ask what had happened, but she insisted everything was cool and stonewalled me, so I dropped it.’
‘Do you remember what day this was? It was ages ago, but–’
‘Twenty-second of September,’ FB replied immediately. ‘A Saturday. I remember because I was really freaked out, seeing as I’d never sold something as big as a car before. Afterwards I felt like a baller; I kept counting all that money and looking at the receipt. I have it somewhere, the receipt. The guy, the buyer, was a car dealer. He was supposed to pick it up on Monday and pay in cash, but he couldn’t make the full amount by then so we pushed it to Tuesday.’ FB rubbed her hands together to warm them. ‘By Monday, rumours were already circulating about Jacqueline Paulsen and by the end of the week it was in the paper. They said she had last been seen on Saturday. I couldn’t help wondering …’
Chlöe did the maths: by Monday the twenty-fourth, Jacqui was officially a missing person. Last seen at about 5 p.m. on Saturday. The very evening her half-sister got a mysterious call and then sped off all cloak and dagger.
‘It had to have crossed your mind that Serena took your car for something dodgy. You suspected it or you wouldn’t have brought any of this up. Why didn’t you go to the cops?’
The girl bristled. Chlöe couldn’t help but lust over how the amber splinters of her irises glowed when her blood went up. ‘I said I thought I was involved, not that I was an accessory! And I only remembered the incident long after it happened and didn’t think it was significant. Even now it sounds so thin. I want to help. When I saw you across the street and remembered who you were …’ Colour spread across her cheeks again and Chlöe felt gratified that it wasn’t the only reason she’d felt compelled to strike up a conversation.
FB collected herself. ‘Look, not for one minute did I think Serena did anything … criminal. It’s just not her way. She always said her sister Jacqui was, like, low-class and a loose cannon, she needed to get her life together. I figured she helped her to leave. Start over somewhere, like in the movies.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s mad, but that’s all I could come up with.’
Chlöe considered. It did indeed sound like madness; another loose end jangling around. And it went quite a way to letting Ashwin Venter off the hook, which she really didn’t like. Venter was guilty – proof was all they needed.
‘I have to go.’ FB wrote on a piece of paper from her pocket and handed it over with a bashful smile. ‘In case you wanna ask me more questions. Or y’know, hang out.’
‘Isabella’ was scribbled above a cell number. Definitely looks like an Isabella, thought Chlöe, watching her walk away. Moves like an Isabella, too. Her phone’s ringtone snapped her out of it. Chlöe quaked when she saw the caller identity.
‘Where are you?’ Portia Kruger demanded. Her voice sounded strained to breaking point.
‘Uh, Ms Kruger, I just–’
‘Get to Kingsbury Hospital right now. Voinjama’s been run over.’
‘What? Oh my God!’
‘I think it was deliberate. Whatever you two have got mixed up in …’ There was a shaky intake of breath and muttered curses. ‘Kingsbury. Know where it is? Take Main into Claremont, turn into Wilderness Road–’
‘Y-y-yes, I know it, I know it!’ Chlöe jumped behind the wheel and gunned the engine. She sped past two traffic lights before remembering she’d left behind breakfast, a bewildered ex-girlfriend, and quite likely the ashes of a toxic relationship. Chlöe realised she didn’t have the stomach for any of it. By the time she reached Claremont, her encounter with the gorgeous third-year Law student had faded to a nagging red blip flashing in the basement of her memory.