Betrayal of Innocence (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 1)

“No,” Justin sighed.

“You are,” Vanessa accused. “You are protecting her because you think I am a trouble-maker.”

Justin sighed heavily when Vanessa looked at him with such disappointment he wanted to apologise.

Vanessa, too angry to speak, remained silent as she stormed across the yard to the rear of the old barn. Once there, she didn’t follow the path to the trees that would take her home. Instead, she made her way to the back of the barn.

“Now where are you going?” Justin asked from behind her.

“I do not believe my whereabouts are anything to do with you. I have committed no crime and am a free person. I can do whatever I want,” she replied pertly. “This is private property. My father’s private property, not yours and not Curtis’s, no matter what he thinks.”

“But you can’t go snooping around other people’s belongings,” Justin snorted.

“I am just going to look. There can be no harm in it. If you don’t like it, or want to help, feel free to leave me to it,” she replied crisply. “But you are not in any position to stop me.”

If Curtis had been around she wouldn’t have risked checking the barn. With only Lisa at the farm, she had little to fear, and so didn’t waste another moment arguing with Justin. She made her way around the side of the barn and watched the door to the milk parlour for a moment. When Lisa passed the window and headed toward the back of the building where the cows stood in neat rows waiting to be milked, Vanessa slid through the partially open barn door.

“You really don’t think someone who has something serious to hide, like his wife’s corpse, would be so stupid as to store it in the barn, do you?” Justin asked as he followed her.

“Do you have to make so much noise?” Vanessa snapped, carefully ignoring his suggestion that Geraldine might be dead. She didn’t relish the prospect of finding her sister’s body but if it gave her the answers she needed, she had to keep looking and risk it.

“What are you looking for?” he asked curiously as he wandered around the huge building and studied the various pieces of farming equipment lying haphazardly across the floor. It was evident a lot of it hadn’t been moved for a very long time but that didn’t stop Vanessa from checking under every item and scouring every dark corner.

“Don’t touch anything,” he ordered.

“Why?” Vanessa demanded.

“Because you are going to leave traces that you have been here if you do,” he replied.

Vanessa scowled at him and followed his line of vision. At first, she didn’t see what he meant, but then watched him silently reach around her and stroke a cobweb. It released a shower of dust about them which tickled her nose and made her want to sneeze

.

“There isn’t going to be anything in here,” he assured her.

“How can you say that?”

“Look, I have been doing this job for a very long time. Believe me when I tell you that you are not going to find anything in such an obvious place like this. Besides, nothing has been touched in here for a long time. Look at the dust. Look at the floor. There isn’t the space to drag a body anywhere. Even if he carried it in here, and I am not, for one second, suggesting she has died, but if she has been killed, he wouldn’t be able to walk through this equipment without falling over something, especially carrying a body. Besides, where would he put it? There is nothing in here to hide it behind. You have searched every corner. What do you expect to find?”

Utterly defeated, Vanessa sighed. “I just need to rule it out,” she replied solemnly. “At least if I know I have been in here and checked it, I know she isn’t here. I wouldn’t want to search everywhere else and not find her only for her to be here.”

“What about the rest of the buildings? You can hardly search them with Lisa here, she will tell Curtis. If you instigate a search you have to complete it in one go and not leave any stone unturned. If you miss something, or have to come back, he would have the opportunity to move the body and you would never know about it.”

Vanessa studied him. “You speak with such authority,” she whispered sadly.

“It is a sad but necessary part of my job,” he replied carefully. “I am afraid that looking for missing people is part of what I do.”

Vanessa nodded. “I have to search the rest of the buildings.”

“He would have to be a very stupid man to bury his wife in the buildings so close to his house, don’t you think?” he retorted. “Especially given there are miles of empty fields around here. Now, unless you are prepared to search every field as well as the buildings, you are going to have to accept that there might be more professional people who are used to dealing with circumstances like these. People who know what they are doing and how to get the necessary information out of Curtis, without him seemingly knowing about it.”

“How?” she demanded.

“I am afraid that is confidential,” he replied swiftly.

Vanessa stared at him when the awful realisation dawned that she might never find out what had happened to her sister.

Justin saw the look on her face and immediately regretted his harshness. He was used to dealing with situations like this whereas she was not. He should have been more sympathetic to her desperate need for information.