A loud smash of sound, pieces of crockery and coffee flying everywhere. Alice stared at me, ignoring the stains on her designer workout gear. “Aarav, no.” Both hands flew to her mouth, her nails short but painted a hot pink.
“I wish it wasn’t true, but it is.” I took in the coffee dripping off her cupboards, the frozen way she stood, and wondered. “You were good friends with my mother, weren’t you?” The third in the triad. Diana and Nina first, with younger, more gauche Alice adopted in later. The junior party to their years of experience.
“I’d say it was more she took me under her wing.” Looking around, she groaned. “This’ll take forever to clean up.” She got busy picking up the shards, while using copious amounts of paper towels to wipe up the mess.
Her Lycra-covered butt waved in my line of sight as she worked and I was certain it was deliberate, an attempt to distract. Unlike with Diana, Alice had never seen me as a child. I’d already been a tall and strong thirteen when she and her family moved into the Cul-de-Sac.
But I was beyond distractions.
I’d been on the verge of asking if I could talk to Elei, find out what she’d seen that rainy night so long ago, but I was no longer sure I wanted Alice in the room when I asked the question. Not that Elei was likely to give me anything if she’d kept quiet all these years, but I had to ask.
Shanti. I’d use Shanti to get to her.
I’d use anyone and everyone to uncover the reason why my mother was nothing but decaying bones.
My father’s black BMW was missing by the time I returned home, but Shanti’s white Audi sat in the drive next to my rental. She never put it in the garage herself; she was scared of scratching the expensive car. Given her way, she’d probably have chosen a cheap runabout, but Ishaan Rai had an image to uphold.
Some would say he’d given her freedom by supporting her in her quest to get a license, but they didn’t see how Shanti sat hunched in the driver’s seat, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. I’d never known her to go anywhere but to the local shops, or to the school to drop off or pick up my half sister. If my father actually cared about her, he’d have hired a driver—it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford it.
“Shanti,” I said, after tracking her down in the kitchen, where she was turning off the stove. “You want me to pick up Pari?”
Her face lit up as it did every time I made the offer. “Oh, Aarav, do you mind?”
“Of course not. Should I go now?”
“Yes, their bus should be back from the trip by the time you arrive.”
“Traffic’ll be heavy coming back, so don’t expect us early.”
Shanti gave me a secretive smile. “I understand.”
I smiled back, both of us aware that I’d be taking my half sister out for doughnuts or ice cream on the way back. Just before I left, I said, “Where’s Dad? Meeting?”
“He had a phone call and he left. He didn’t sound happy.”
Nothing new for my father there, I thought as I walked out to the sedan. After settling myself into the vehicle, I headed out. Leonid and Anastasia were at the bottom of their drive—situated right before the gates—talking with Leonid’s brother. My father called the family the Russian Mafia.
Given Leonid’s interesting tattoos and the people who dropped by his place, my father might be right. Or, since Leonid had a fair dinkum Aussie accent and one of his visitors had been a face I recognized as a major Australian mogul, he could just be a smart businessman who enjoyed ink and had interesting friends. Personally, I liked the way the thirty-something-year-old put his twins in a stroller and took them for daily walks.
More importantly for me, the family were recent transplants to the Cul-de-Sac, having purchased their property from the estate of old Mr. Jenks only three years prior. Mr. Jenks had been eighty-seven at the time of my mother’s disappearance, and frail even then.
Today, none of the three raised their hands in hello, too deep into an intense conversation. Maybe I’d throw reality and logic to the side, and write a short story about a Mafia family forced to relocate to suburban New Zealand who end up killing the hit man sent after them. They then have to hide his body before their neighbors arrive for a barbeque.
Done right, it’d be pure black comedy gold … and fuck! I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until I passed the spot where my mother had lain buried for ten long years. Only a lone police vehicle remained, the road open to traffic.
I didn’t slow as I passed.
I had to think. I had to remember.
It’d been raining that night, such a heavy rain. Lightning had cracked the sky as she drove away. I’d screamed out her name, but the wind had snatched it away. She was already gone anyway, red taillights in the dark.
No cigar smoke.
It was a sudden flash of knowledge.
My father liked to blow off steam by having a cigar and his favorite spot was out in front of the house. He’d sit in his favorite outdoor chair and watch what little of the main Cul-de-Sac drive was visible from that spot. I hadn’t smelled his cigar that night. Even though I’d heard the front door close twice.
It was possible the rain might’ve masked the smell, but I didn’t think so. Those things were pungent.
My hands clenched on the steering wheel so hard my knuckles showed white against skin. The rug. I couldn’t forget the missing rug. He’d been so proud of that handmade rug, having bought it on his first trip to India as an adult. “Pure silk, boy. One of a kind.” Then, suddenly, it was gone and we never talked about it.
I turned into the street that housed Pari’s private girls school. Cars lined both sides. Knowing the crush that awaited me if I got any nearer the school gates, I parked a little ways back, then got out with my cane.
Sleeping for so many hours, then sitting in Alice’s kitchen, had given my leg enough of a rest that I didn’t have any major problem making my way to the heavy iron gates. It still didn’t feel great to put my weight on it, but the doc had said I had to start trying, so I got on with it. No way in hell did I want to be stuck in my father’s house forever. Dr. Binchy had been adamant he wouldn’t release me from hospital if I was going to be living alone.
I frowned.
Why would Dr. Binchy make that demand when I was fully capable? A broken foot was hardly the injury of the century.
“Bhaiya!” The high-pitched voice cut through my thoughts, a small skinny girl running toward me. My little sister always addressed me by the Hindi word for brother. She was also one of the very few people in the world I truly liked.
I intended to settle a bunch of money on her when she turned eighteen, so she could travel or study as she liked. She was also the main beneficiary in the will my lawyer had made me draw up after my influx of cash.
The money would ensure Pari never had to bargain for her freedom.
I held up a hand so she could high-five it. Afterward, as we drove to the doughnut shop, she regaled me with tales of her day exploring the iconic cone-shaped peak of Rangitoto, the dormant volcano that sat, a majestic and quiet threat, in the Hauraki Gulf. And for a while, I forgot about bones, about a missing rug, and about why Dr. Binchy wouldn’t discharge me without reassurance that I wouldn’t be alone.
13
We ate the warm doughnuts sitting in a small park—it was edging to winter-dark even though it wasn’t yet six, but hadn’t quite crossed the line. Mothers with young children smiled at us as they gathered their offspring from the playground equipment in preparation for heading home. Having Pari with me didn’t make me immune from suspicious stares—but having Pari plus a bum leg worked wonders. A couple of the younger mothers even recognized us from previous visits and waved.
I waved back with a cheek-creasing smile.
“Honey is never wasted, Ari.” My mother, pouting in the mirror as she put on her scarlet lipstick, the color a perfect match to the fluttery red dress that she was wearin
g for brunch out with Diana … and Alice. “Your father snarls at everyone, and while people are polite to his face, they’ll stab him in the back at the first opportunity. Respect is one thing. Being liked and respected, that’s true power. People will do anything for you if they like you.”
Alice had been twelve years my mother’s junior. Diana, in comparison, had been thirty-seven to my mother’s forty-one when my mother disappeared. Far closer to her in age and experience. The only major difference was that my mother’d had me when she was twenty-five, while Diana had waited till thirty to start her family, but even the divide in the ages of their children hadn’t stood in the way of their friendship.
The two of them had been bonded by indestructible glue by the time Alice came along.
No wonder I’d all but forgotten that Alice had occasionally been invited to their girly dates. All of them in pretty dresses, off to champagne brunches, or to get their nails done. All three of them in my mother’s Jaguar.
“What’s wrong?”
I looked down at my sister. The big brown eyes she’d inherited from her mother almost overwhelmed her narrow face, her skin a warm shade of deep brown, and her hair a rich black Shanti had woven into two neat braids on either side of her head. She’d tied them off with ribbons that matched Pari’s school uniform.
My sister was young enough that the whole discovery of a body might fly over her head, but then again, she had more empathy in her small body than I’d ever develop, so who knew. I’d leave it up to Shanti to decide what to tell her. “My leg,” I said. “It hurts sometimes, but the doc says I have to start trying to use it.”
A smile dusted with sugar. “Your head got better. Your leg will, too.” Then she jumped off the wooden seat and asked if she could play on the swings for a while before we went home.
I nodded, but I was thinking about the migraine from earlier today. Whiplash could be a bastard. Which reminded me.
Taking out my phone, I called Dr. Binchy’s office and left a voice mail requesting more of the migraine medication. I needed to think clearly with my mother’s bones finally out in the open. I couldn’t afford to go down with a splitting head. Shoving my hair back from my forehead afterward, I found my fingers brushing over a ridge of scar tissue.
I pressed, probed.
It was from when I’d fallen off my motorcycle during my aborted attempt at a university degree, but it felt thicker and weirdly sensitive. I took away my hand before I irritated it any more. Had to be all the medication they’d pumped into me directly after the accident—and the shit I was taking now. I couldn’t remember anything about the first few days following the crash but I knew they’d put me into a medically induced coma.
Probably because a branch—that was it, a branch—had punched through my chest.
Funnily enough, that grisly wound had mended far faster than my foot. No damage to the heart, though the lungs weren’t quite at full capacity. Right now, however, my most important organ was my brain.
Ten years was a long time, but it wasn’t long enough for the truth to disappear forever.
Once home, I left Pari talking a mile a minute to her mum and walked upstairs to my suite. With every step I took came the acceptance that no matter the depth of my loathing for my father, I’d never been able to cut ties with him. Part of me had always been waiting for a moment of revelation, an explanation of that scream, though neither one of us had ever brought it up.
The stakes had changed now, all the questions on the table.
I went straight into my bedroom, to my desk in front of the balcony sliders. Taking a seat, I booted up my laptop and input the passcode, then navigated my way to the encrypted file titled Ma.
Inside was the report of the private investigator I’d hired after my first big royalty check. The report wasn’t long, but it was thorough. The man hadn’t been afraid of pushing a few boundaries and he’d found his way into databases he had no business accessing.
No banking activity.
No sign of my mother on the voting rolls.
Lapsed driver’s license.
No evidence that she’d ever put down a deposit on a rental apartment.
Expired passport, with no indication of travel outside the country. I have no idea how he got that particular printout, but he’d attached it to the final report.
New Zealand was an archipelago—you couldn’t leave it without a passport unless you were on a private vessel that could evade the authorities. Maybe a yacht. But my mother had hated sailing. Despite that, I’d nurtured the vague, romantic hope that she’d hitched a ride to a distant beach where she could spend a quarter of a million dollars in peace. It wasn’t huge money by my family’s standards of wealth, but it would’ve set her up for a long time if she was clever about it.
I didn’t expect to find anything new in the file, but I was searching for information I could give the investigating officers. Just because I was doing my own digging didn’t mean I couldn’t also use the resources of the police.
In the end, I attached a decrypted copy of the report to an email, then dug out Constable Neri’s business card to get her email address. Then, I called her. Yet again, she answered at once. I wasn’t stupid. I knew the quick response wasn’t because I was the grieving son. That had very little to do with her attentiveness.
“Aarav,” she said. “What can I help you with?”
“It’s the other way around.” I leaned back in the office chair I’d ordered off a website, had delivered. “Two years ago, after I got some money in hand, I hired a private investigator to look into my mother’s disappearance. I’ve just emailed you his report in case it’s helpful.” It’d also show that I wasn’t hiding anything.
“Thank you,” she said after a small pause—she was probably checking her inbox. “I thought your book was a hit closer to three years ago?”
“Publishing works on strange timelines. No one expected Blood Sacrifice to go so big. My initial contract was for ten thousand.” To cut through the complexities of publishing accounting and put it bluntly, my publisher had been sitting on millions by the time I got paid; as a result, when the money finally came through, I’d literally become an overnight millionaire. “Book was also out for two months before it hit the first bestseller list.”
“Word of mouth?”
“Yes.” The kind of viral spread a small debut author with no marketing budget and a publicist who barely acknowledged his existence could only dream of. Before I knew it, my book was being translated into languages like Lithuanian and Hebrew, and my agent was telling me she’d brought a big film agent on board so I didn’t get shafted on the movie option.
The option turned into an actual movie that released six months ago.
Thanks to the movie agent, I’d received an executive producer credit and more big fat checks. And the money continued to come in from the various territories. It’d eventually dry up if I failed to produce a second book, but if I continued to follow Margaret’s financial advice about the money I already had, I’d be set until the day I died. Probably shouldn’t have bought the Porsche or the swanky city apartment right off the bat, but at least I had a couple of assets now.
“I’ve just skimmed the report.” Constable Neri’s husky voice. In another life, I’d probably have hit on her—or tried to seduce her to get information. But Neri wasn’t going to fall for that, so I’d taken the option off the table. I’d get what I needed another way. “I know this guy. He’s good.”
“The best.” I’d done my research before I hired him. “He never flat-out said my mother was dead, but I could see it on his face.” Still, I’d hoped. “If nothing else, it might help you confirm that she died the night she disappeared.”
“Do you have any issue with us talking to the investigator directly?”
“No. I’ll tell him to cooperate.”
“Thank you.”
I should’ve ended things on that polite note, but I opened my mouth
and said, “Why did no one look into my mother’s disappearance at the time? Was it just because of the money?”
A pause before she said, “That, added to no missing person report from next of kin, and a detective on the verge of retirement. He wrote up the allegation of stealing, noted it as a nonviolent domestic matter, and shelved it.”
Her tone was professional, but I could hear the anger below it. So I let it go. Because that officer’s mistakes weren’t hers to wear. When I asked for more information about the case, all she’d say was, “It’s too early.”
At this point, I even believed her.
After hanging up, I called the investigator and told him of the discovery of my mother’s remains.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I’ve sent your report to the police. They might give you a call.”
“Sure. You want me to tell them everything, even what’s not in the report?”
The world went motionless.
14
“What’s not in the report?”
A pause. “Hey, you asked me not to put it in there.”
My pulse turned into a throbbing beat on my tongue. “Remind me.”
“Sure. Not like I could forget the case—usually, I’m tailing cheating spouses or sniffing after money going where it shouldn’t. This one was different.”
I gritted my teeth to keep from snapping at him to get to the point.
“Afternoon before she disappeared,” he said at last, “Nina Rai checked into a hotel room with a man. She and the man both came out of it alive, and were seen kissing by hotel staff before they parted in the parking lot. Tall, dark-haired guy. I was never able to ID him. All hotel security footage long since deleted.”
Tall, dark-haired.
The description fit so many people she’d known. “Yes, go ahead and share the information with the cops.” That my mother’d had an illicit lover wasn’t exactly a shock.
“Ari, my Ari, you know what your father’s like.” Lounging beside the pool, but not in the little red bikini that day. In a black halter-neck one-piece that she’d paired with a white sunhat that featured a black ribbon around the brim, and huge Jackie O sunglasses, sunshine gilding her skin. “You know not to listen to what he says.”
Quiet in Her Bones Page 7
