Mortar & Stone: an Elementary fanfiction

Chapter 8

"Rosia Lee; not your real name, I assume?" Thai, Joan thought, as she took in the woman's cat-like eyes, full-lips and high-cheek bones. Mid-to late thirties, possibly forty. She wore an expensive black and white dress that hugged her figure and tiny waist. No wonder their aging mayor was eating out of the palm of her hand. She turned to see, with no small pang of jealousy, that Sherlock was thinking the same.

The woman inclined her head. "Well-deduced," she said with a smirk "I changed it by deed-poll."

"And your real one?"

"I like to keep my past in the past." She said, flicking the curtain of long, black hair over a bare shoulder.

She was not what Joan expected. Someone rougher perhaps, whose appearance and tone one could easily link to a life of hardship, a life that would make a woman choose the path of a social pariah. But not this shrewd-eyed woman before her; she did not fit the mould.

"Can I ask why you chose this, er, career? You seem like a smart woman." Joan asked.

She shrugged, placing a well-manicured finger to her lips in thought. "Why do any of us? Money at first, but I suppose stayed for the sense of power. And we all like power." She gave a sly smile in Sherlock's direction.

Joan saw him give an approving nod, and fought the urge to roll her eyes. "So you admit that was you in the photos with the Mayor?"

"Yes," She answered.

"You were blonde in the photographs. Why the wig?"

"Bob was always paranoid, understandably. His wife is blonde: he thought if anyone saw us there would be plausible deniability."

"We have a phone message from you tipping off the paparazzo who took those photos. Do you deny it?"

"And someone matching your description was seen arguing with him outside his apartment the same day he was shot."

"He wouldn't give me the photos until I gave him more money. He went back on our deal, of course I was angry. I told him I would try to get it to him, but he could not tell anyone about them."

"You realise this throws more than a shadow of suspicion upon you, Miss Lee," Sherlock interjected, "considering he wound up dead less than 24 hours after those photos were not long after."

She sighed. "I didn't kill him, if that's what you're asking."

"Oh we already know that," Joan said.

She balked. "Then why am I here?"

"Someone hired a hitman," Sherlock explained, "and that someone also took the photos, tore them up and scattered them around the body. That person was either very angry with the photographer, or wanted the killing linked back to the Mayor."

"Or both," added Joan.

Rosia's eyes fluttered between them. "Look, the money is good, but I can't be a call-girl forever. I'm getting older, some clients are passing me off for younger girls. I've been with Bob now for about 6 months, and he pays me a salary to stay exclusive to him."

"Which you don't, I'm assuming?" Joan asked.

She shot Joan a smirk. "I'm an opportunist. For now he stays with me out of sentimentality, and tells me he will leave her; but I am not an idiot, he'll get tired of me soon, too. I needed insurance."

"Insurance?"

"I'm working on a book right now, A 'Diaries of a High-End Hooker' sort of thing. Do you know how many publishers will want to pick it up after I have been sprung with the Mayor?"

"And even more once that affair is tied up in a murder investigation."

"That wasn't something I'd anticipated." Rosia said quietly, growing serious, looking down at her hands. "I know it looks bad, but that doesn't mean I wanted someone dead." She twisted her hands in her lap. "You don't think... he did it do you? Bob, I mean."

"We have a number of suspects." Sherlock answered.

"Does Bob know that I tipped off the photographer?"

"He was quite set on protecting your anonymity, until we played him your phone message. After that he became much less concerned for your welfare."

"It's just that... His career means everything to him, and after Jack was... well, I began to worry: what if I'm next?"

Joan scoffed, not buying it for a second, but Sherlock was unreadable. "You were going to release a book about your affair, wasn't he going to find out eventually?"

"Yes, but not until we had broken up, or he got tired of me. I needed some sort of nest-egg." She put a hand over Sherlock's, looking into his eyes. Joan could not believe her audacity, but Sherlock, she noticed, did not move. "Can you assure me that I'm safe?" Rosia asked, "I think I need some sort of protection."

Sherlock stood, pulling his hand away. "I'll speak to the Captain and see if something can be organised."

___________________________________

"Something about this case; I feel like I've heard it before..." Joan said in the hallway, before shaking her head. "I don't know, perhaps the whole 'clandestine escort affair' is too cliché. I don't trust her."

"Could it be that you're threatened by her?" Sherlock asked, "Or that the moral code our society forces upon us has influenced you to intrinsically distrust her? I thought you were above that."

"Could it be that you're biased?" Joan shot back, "Given your taste for her particular occupation?"

He shrugged. "I think she's quite brilliant, when you think of it. If anything I think her skills are being wasted."

"But that's the thing, she was too calculating, too clever; why would a woman like that sell sex to get by?"

"As if the service they are providing is any less valuable than a mechanic or a plumber."

"People still aren't comfortable with those who use their sexuality as a tool."

Sherlock scoffed. "Isn't that the great delusion of our society? Don't we all?"

"No, not everyone; most use it as an expression of love."

"Not true," he gestured toward her, "Take yourself for example, Watson. Have you slept with the good Doctor yet? You haven't, I can tell by your gait; and why not? Tom is a handsome man: successful, virile. You haven't because you don't want to 'give it up' too soon. 'Holding out' gives you the upper hand in the relationship. Give that away too soon and you lose your greatest bargaining chip. So you see? Sex-" he weighed an imaginary object with one hand, then the other, "tool."

Joan scoffed in disbelief. "Have you thought that maybe you are the reason I haven't slept with him?" She hissed. Sherlock's heart stuttered for a moment, before Joan continued, "Every time I'm with him you just happen to call me, just happen to need something urgently. Don't think I haven't noticed, Sherlock. You've made it very clear you don't like him, but unfortunately it's none of your business who I date."

She turned on her heel and stormed down the hallway, only to see Gregson headed their way.

"Uh... Can I see you two in my office?" He asked, looking between the bewildered Sherlock and fuming Joan, "That's if... I'm not interrupting anything?"

"Oh no, nothing at all," Joan said with a sarcastic smile, before following Gregson to his office.