Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) by Livia Day Read Free Book Online

to look in her room,’ I said.
    Why yes, I am a nosy person.
    You can tell a lot about a person from their bedroom. French Vanilla (I couldn’t call her Annabeth, just about the only fact we knew about this girl was that she wasn’t Annabeth French) kept a tidy personal space, with a real patchwork quilt thrown over the top of her bed, piles of uni books on a shelf, and a laptop on the desk. A stack of postcards were neatly piled up beside her desk, a rubber band holding them in place.
    ‘Hey,’ I said thoughtfully, sitting on the bed and picking up a psychology textbook. ‘Melinda said she was a student. How does that work? Did she steal Annabeth’s identity to attend university in her name? What would be the benefit of that?’
    Xanthippe nodded, already opening the laptop. ‘Maybe she was paid to do it. Annabeth’s dumb at exams, pays someone else to do uni for her, literally buys herself a degree.’
    ‘So hard to pull off,’ I argued. ‘I mean — so much paperwork. Was she getting Centrelink payments too? That’s major fraud.’
    ‘Let’s just see, shall we?’ Xanthippe made a cursory inspection of the desktop. ‘This is tidy too. Neat sort of person.’
    ‘You’re neat, that doesn’t mean you’re hiding a big secret.’ Or did it? I wouldn’t put it past Xanthippe.
    ‘Tabitha, if you don’t want to be here…’
    ‘I do,’ I said indignantly. ‘I can snoop with the best of them. No conscience here, I am all about the random invasions of privacy.’ I eyed the wardrobe, but that felt a bit too randomly invasive.
    ‘Bags postcards,’ I decided, snatching the bundle. Postcards were good. Anyone could read a postcard, it was hardly an ethical issue at all. Postcards practically begged to be read by complete strangers.
    ‘They’re from Jason,’ I reported a little while later, after flipping through several. ‘Well, we knew that. Melinda told us…’
    ‘I don’t know that I believe a word those two say,’ said Xanthippe. ‘They’re too nice. I don’t trust nice people.’
    ‘I’m nice,’ I pouted.
    ‘No, Tabitha, you just smile a lot because you sell more coffee that way. Deep down, you’re as cynical and broken as the rest of us.’
    Hmm, interesting point. I wasn’t sure if I agreed with her, but we weren’t here to debate my personality. I kept reading the postcards. ‘He definitely thought Annabeth was living here. Asks her to give up uni — she knows she’s going to hate it, why doesn’t she just come home … ooh.’
    Wow. I almost never blushed, but this was… ‘Okay, who writes stuff that personal on a postcard?’
    ‘Is it smutty?’
    ‘It’s past suggestive and heading towards smutty. Teenagers these days! Can’t they just sext like normal people?’
    ‘Good for Jason,’ she said, and then I saw her expression change as she recalled that Jason had been arrested for Annabeth’s murder, back in Flynn. ‘Oh, crap.’
    I looked down at the postcards. ‘I shouldn’t have touched these, should I? I mean, they’re evidence. The police can — fingerprints, and…’ Fuck. Bishop was not going to be pleased. ‘We really need to get out of here.’
    ‘Hang on,’ said Xanthippe, producing a memory stick. ‘Just let me copy these files.’
    ‘Oh, you’re so not.’
    ‘I want to find French Vanilla, don’t you?’ A few minutes later she shut the computer down, pocketing the memory stick again. ‘I have no problem with turning all this over to the police, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have my own investigation.’
    ‘You hate working in a café, don’t you?’ I accused.
    Xanthippe nodded solemnly. ‘I have developed a phobia of sugar packets. It’s time for a new challenge.’
    ‘Private detective?’
    ‘If the awesomely retro fedora hat fits…’

6
    random_scotsman posts in Sandstone City:
     
    WHO IS FRENCH VANILLA?
    One week ago, Annabeth French (19) from Flynn , Tasmania was found dead in a lake near her family home.