Such a Perfect Family, page 14
Diya’s laughter in the kitchen of my condo, the way she’d told me to watch as she flipped the egg “like a maestro”—only to splatter it all over the floor.
We’d laughed like lunatics while cleaning it up, just two people who were stupid in love. My wife had been so different back then, so full of a radiant light. Coming home to New Zealand, I realized with the gift of distance, had stolen a piece of that light from her, replacing it with shadows black and ominous.
Why?
Was it the same reason she’d spoken Ani’s name when she thought she was dying?
Was it why her parents were dead? Because official confirmation or not, I knew the senior Prasads had to be dead. What other reason could there be for two respected doctors to vanish off the face of the planet on the same day their home burned to the ground?
Head chaotic with questions to which I had no answers, I ate the fruit and roti, then buried the eggs in the backyard, so as not to insult my hosts. I made a note to drop the mango under the tree, too, just another fallen fruit.
“What’ll we find if we dig up your metaphorical backyard?” Callum Baxter’s hard green eyes drilling into me in that tiny interrogation room where he’d held me for far too many hours. “How many women have you scammed?”
Dropping broken foliage over the small area I’d dug up to make it blend in with everything else, I went inside to wash my hands…and only realized I was gritting my teeth when I looked in the mirror. “Fuck you, Baxter, you piece of shit.”
He hadn’t won then, and he wouldn’t win now, not even in my head.
Chapter 30
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Jan 1
Time: 01:07
I can’t believe we’re into the new year and Tavish Advani is walking around free. Fuck, he’s probably at some New Year’s party now. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to track down how and when Susanne Winthorpe died.
Their names haunt me.
Virna Musgrave.
Jocelyn Wai.
Susanne Winthorpe.
All dead.
All with only one man in common.
I’m going to get that bastard if it’s the last thing I do—that’s my goddamn New Year’s resolution.
Chapter 31
A grizzled man of maybe seventy sat in a rocking chair on the front porch of the blue house a five-minute drive from the Prasad home, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, and his head a shining baldness but for two silvery stripes down the sides.
“Kamal?” I asked after exiting the car when he just watched me with dark eyes that didn’t blink enough for my liking.
Cop, definitely a cop.
“I’m Tavish,” I said when he didn’t respond. “Diya’s fiancé.” As far as I knew, the Prasads hadn’t told anyone that we were already married, and I’d honor their wish with the people here until Diya woke and we could talk about what to do going forward.
Stopping in his rocking, he took the cigarette out of his mouth. “You bring them home.” He coughed after that raspy order given in heavily accented English. “Sarita and Rajesh and Bobby. Ashes should be scattered on their home water.”
Kamal clearly had none of Ravi’s hope when it came to the three missing family members. “Diya will make that decision,” I said. “When she wakes up.”
His expression twisted. “Bad?”
“Bad.”
Exhaling, he got up. And though his back was a little bowed, he walked easily enough as he turned to go into the house. “Yash’s wife made lemonade.”
Taking that as an invitation, I walked up to take the other chair on the porch. The view from that vantage point was of the gravel road and what looked like farm fields beyond it. I couldn’t tell the crops from this distance but could see what looked like a tractor working the land on the fallow far edge.
“Beans,” Kamal said after walking out with a single glass of what looked like cold lemonade and putting it into my hand.
He was still smoking his cigarette, the scent of nicotine drifting my way on the warm but not unbearable morning air.
I thought of Susanne, of how she’d taken such pleasure in what would end up being her final cigarette, drawing in long drags and making smoke rings with her mouth as she exhaled. Where Jocelyn had smoked with an addict’s passion, Susanne had managed to avoid that pitfall, had only smoked around me maybe five times overall.
Each cigarette had been a slow display of pleasure.
That night, she’d been wearing the glittering red cocktail dress she’d chosen for our date to a bar as sophisticated as she was, her lipstick perfect and not a strand out of place in the elegant twist in which she’d put her hair.
I had loved her so much. Enough to kill her.
Nothing else could’ve made me do what I’d done. Only love of the kind that was a vine around the heart that couldn’t be removed. Susanne had been inside me. Where Diya now lived.
“Thanks.” I took a sip of the drink in an effort to push away the memory of what I’d done, sighed at the tart sweetness. “Tastes fresh.”
“She uses those. Good girl. Knows how to make it right.” He pointed at a tree on the other side of the porch, heavy with tiny yellow citrus fruits. “So, why’re you here? Shouldn’t you be with Diya and Shumi?”
The fact that he’d added Shumi’s name to the list told me that he was well up on the news.
I gave him the same excuse I’d given Ravi, but he didn’t buy it. “You could’ve done that later. I don’t know how the police in New Zealand do things, but I know they’ll be looking at the forensic evidence—and that includes any remains. No funerals anytime soon.”
“No.” I drank a little more. “The thing is, Diya said something about Ani when I found her after the fire. I didn’t know if it was important and there was no one there who’d tell me—Shumi’s parents said they didn’t know anything, and her brother didn’t have much information.”
Kamal snorted. “Those two. Of course they know. But Ajay wasn’t even two when it happened.” He tapped the ash from his cigarette into a dented metal ashtray on the little table between us. “It’s old history. Nothing to do with now.”
“It was on Diya’s mind after she was hurt,” I insisted. “And, honestly, she’s not doing well. She’s still in the ICU. If there’s something she needs me to do so she’ll be at peace, I want to.” It was a stab in the dark, the latter, but I’d spotted the yellow string tied around his wrist, caught the scent of incense coming off him—Kamal was religious, and for the scent of incense to be strong enough to cut through the acrid puff of nicotine, he had to have prayed that morning.
It would matter to him that Diya not pass on in distress.
Another puff before he crushed out the butt in the ashtray. “They were just children. No point in making anything of it.”
My heart thundered, and though I wanted to push, I stayed silent, both of us watching the tractor.
“My son, Yash,” Kamal said at last. “I wanted him to become a police officer like me, but this is what he wants to do. Stupid. How’s he going to emigrate overseas driving a tractor and growing beans and whatnot?” A shrug. “His wife works in a bank, so maybe she’ll talk sense into him.”
Leaning back in his chair, he began to rock again. “They were playing outside, Bobby and Shumi and Diya and Ani. Nobody much watching over them—we didn’t, not back then. They knew not to go into the water alone, and usually just climbed trees or ran through the fields trying to find gooseberries.”
The images were the stuff of hazy, happy childhood memories, but Kamal’s face was grim.
“No Ajay,” the older man added. “He was a little too young, but even if he hadn’t been, that mother of his wouldn’t have allowed it. She had all the control, with her husband off in Suva for work most of the year. I always said he’d grow up weak with a mother like that—woman had him tied to her apron strings from the day he was born.” A glance at me, a silent question.
“I’ve only just met him,” I said, thinking of how Mrs. Kumar had called him back to the motel room. “He seems okay on the surface.”
Kamal’s lip curled. “I pity the woman who becomes his wife. Ajay will always do what mummy says—she made him that way.” The rocking increased. “I wasn’t home that day, was at the station house by the koro. You would’ve passed it on the way here.”
I remembered the small blue-and-white building across from the village where I’d seen the boy running for his ball, nodded.
“It was Sarita who called me. She was at home after a night shift at the little clinic they used to run, having a sleep while her mother- and father-in-law looked after the children. Rajesh was on day shift.”
“They all lived together?”
“Yes.” Picking up the cigarette packet on the table, he slid out another slender tube, put it to his lips, but didn’t light it. “Shumi came running home, said Ani was hurt, so of course Sarita’s in-laws woke her. She was a doctor. But there was nothing anyone could do—baby Ani was dead.”
Diya must’ve been so scared and confused, I thought. “What happened?”
“In the report, I wrote that she fell against a rock while playing, smashed her head.” He lit the cigarette now, cupping his hands around it with the ease of a longtime smoker. “Big crack in the head.” A shake of the hand to douse the match, the first puff of new smoke. “Her lips were blue by the time I got there.”
The visceral sensory memory of backroom poker games pushed aside the echo of Susanne enjoying her last cigarette. The nicotine had been so thick in the air at some of those games that it had been a visible cloud—but I’d never indulged. One self-destructive addiction was more than enough. “But you don’t think it was an accident.”
“It wasn’t.” Flat words. “There was another rock nearby. Blood and hair on it. The Prasads were a good family, Sarita a dedicated young mother. And what use was there in punishing a child for being angry for a moment?” Another puff, while my mind tumbled. “The Prasads did good thing after good thing for the locals. And they’d suffered so much already. No reason to ruin their name.”
So this small-town cop had covered up the murder of a child. Even knowing the consequences of his choice, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t have done exactly the same. “How did you…”
A shrug. “It wasn’t hard. I was the senior policeman, and it was believable. No morgue here, so we had to drive her to Labasa and the doctor there knew me since I was a young officer, accepted what I said. Terrible accident.”
“Weren’t you afraid he’d do it again?” It took all my strength to keep my voice even. “Kill someone else?”
“He?” Taking out his cigarette, Kamal stared at me. “It wasn’t the boy. Little Diya got jealous of her cousin-sister being gifted a new doll and hit her. She was so small herself, had no idea what she was doing.” He sighed. “She was standing there with the doll in her hands when I got there, her dress all splattered with blood. Yellow hair and blue eyes, I remember that doll had yellow hair and blue eyes.”
Chapter 32
Susanne
Nothing tasted right anymore, not even the ginger drinks Tavish made her with such care. Susanne sipped this one nonetheless, unwilling to hurt his feelings.
“You’re in pain.” He tucked another pillow behind her. “How bad is it?”
Sighing, she put the drink on the bedside table. “It feels as if my spine is crumbling inside me.” She hadn’t been to the oncologist again, already knew what he was going to tell her—the cancer had spread, likely to her bones. “Be a sweetheart and open up the curtains a bit more.”
Tavish moved to do as she’d requested, Singapore a spread of glittering buildings and water on the other side. “You should see Dr. Chua,” he said when he turned back to face her. “This is moving too fast. He said you’d have longer.”
Oh, but he was having a hard time handling her mortality. “It’s too late now, Tavish,” she said gently, and patted the spot beside her on the bed. “I can feel the disease eating at me in greedy bites.”
He came, picked up the drink. “Have a little more,” he coaxed. “You’re losing so much weight—I tried to bulk this up with protein powder and honey.”
Susanne took another sip to please him but couldn’t stomach the taste. Nudging it away, she said, “I’d have had maybe a twenty-five percent chance of beating this if I’d started aggressive treatment straightaway, but I chose another path, and unfortunately, I gambled wrong.”
It wasn’t that she hadn’t had some good time after the diagnosis, just that the time had been too short, the end of her life a sharp and jagged descent rather than a gradual slope. Now the only thing left to discuss was how she would spend her final days.
In pain, slowly losing control of God only knew what function.
Or…“Tavish, my sweet boy, I need you to do something for me.”
Chapter 33
A rattle from inside Kamal’s house that felt like a drum in my head, the world too loud, too bright, the words the older man had spoken bile in my throat.
It wasn’t the boy.
Yellow hair and blue eyes…
…her dress all splattered with blood.
A thin and wrinkled woman in a loose floral dress followed the noise onto the porch. “You need to take your medicine.” She shoved a bottle into Kamal’s hand with those words spoken in Hindi, her tongue as sharp as the edge of a knife.
Grunting, Kamal said, “Fine, I’ll get the water.”
My mind was still roaring when the woman spoke after her husband was gone. “Only English?” The question was hard and flat.
I somehow managed to comprehend what she wanted to know, and found the right words to string together in my grandparents’ mother tongue. “No. I…understand Hindi. Speaking…not…so…” I just shook my head at the end.
That seemed to be enough for her, however, because she began to speak in rapid-fire Hindi it took all my concentration to follow. “I never thought it was Diya beti—or that it was about a doll. She used to play for hours with Ani, shared all her toys. Diya loved Ani.” She sniffed. “That brother of hers, now, he was a bully. No surprise after the way his own father bullied him.”
I stared at her, my focus snapping back into brilliant color. “You…” Halting, I fought to find the right words. “You…think…Bobby…hurt Ani?”
“Not my place to say. I’m not the police officer.” She picked up the ashtray and threw the butts into a little trash can under the table.
“Please,” I said.
Rubbing her back, she rose. “I’m just saying Diya beti didn’t talk too well even at five. They wouldn’t take her at the school even when they took other children her age, said she had to start talking properly first. But Bobby sahib, oh, he could talk and talk—and that Shumi, she thought he was better than a movie star.”
A roll of her eyes. “The girl would’ve parroted anything Bobby told her to say. And I know my husband likes to talk about the blood on Diya’s dress, but the poor child could’ve just been standing there when it happened. Or the boy could’ve put it on her on purpose. He was vicious even back then, and Diya didn’t talk at all for days and days after.”
“Meera!” A yell from inside the house as the tractor trundled over to this side of the field. “I can’t find the other pills!”
The woman turned on her heel but pinned me with her gaze before stepping inside. “They’ll find out it was that Bobby who killed his family. They haven’t found his body, have they? That’s what it said on the news. Only signs of two people in the doctors’ house. And the boy was so angry on the inside. Poor baby Ani just got in his way and he scared Diya into staying quiet.”
She waved her hand at me. “You go now. Kamal will sleep again after his pills. Come later if you want, but he didn’t keep any papers if that’s what you’re after. Just what’s in his head, and the stubborn old goat won’t budge from the idea that it was Diya who did it.”
I rose shakily to my feet.
Was that it?
Bobby had lost it again?
Was that what Diya had been trying to tell me? That he’d done the same thing to the family that he’d done to Ani all those years ago?
Just lost it, gone psychotic.
I’d never seen the other man act the bully, but then I’d only known him a matter of weeks. Anyone could put on a mask for that long.
“Hello!” Yash called out from the seat of the tractor he’d brought to a standstill parallel to the road. “Come to see my father?” His biceps pushed against his black T-shirt, his beard short and neatly trimmed, and his smile friendly enough. “He’s in a good mood, isn’t he?” An amused laugh.
Shoving my brain back into gear, I walked over to the edge of the field so we could speak without shouting. “I’m Tavish, Diya’s fiancé.”
“Oh.” His smile faded into somber quiet as he leaned forward on the steering wheel before flowing from his first language into what was most comfortable for me. “How are they? Diya and Shumi?”
I folded my arms. “In the ICU.” It was all I could say and even that came out gritty and painful.
Dark eyes pinched at the corners, Yash just gave a clipped nod. “Cops have any idea who did it?”
“No, but your mother seems to think it was Bobby.” No filter, my brain in shock.
“Yeah, Amma might be right.” A vein pulsed at his temple. “We were in school together—Bobby and me—when they lived here.” Lifting his left arm, he showed me a small scar on his inner forearm. “He did that. Cut me with a sharp rock when I wouldn’t give him some jalebi Amma had got me from the market.”
“Everyone else seems to have a high opinion of him.”
