Such a Perfect Family, page 22
She sucked in air. “That bastard is finally dead.” Her voice held nothing but contempt and satisfaction.
“Yes,” I agreed even though I wasn’t too sure of that, “but he still hasn’t paid for Rhiannon’s death. Have you seen how they’re memorializing him in the papers? Smart young businessman, employed hundreds of people, brilliant member of the community.”
“It’s all lies.”
“Could we meet and talk? I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say.”
It was a testament to the intensity of her faith in her convictions—or perhaps a testament to her obsession—that she didn’t ask me anything about myself, just gave me her address. Luckily, it ended up being only twenty-five minutes away from where I’d parked, and I was soon in what looked to be a family-style neighborhood of old wooden houses.
No fancy landscaping, but the lawns were neatly cut and scattered with brightly colored kids’ toys. A few houses boasted basketball hoops attached to garages, and one had a Persian carpet hanging over the verandah railing, as if they’d been expecting sun, only to be hit by a cloud-heavy afternoon.
The scents that drifted through my open window told me someone was cooking dinner, and it involved a combination of spices unfamiliar to my tongue. Two kids who looked to be around seven or eight rode bicycles beside their T-shirt-and-tights-clad mothers; both women were laughing, delighted by some inside joke.
The group of four stopped in front of another house, waved to the older man who was out there washing his car.
A little black dog with a white muzzle ran out to greet the kids, its tail wagging.
Hands tight on the steering wheel as the small group retreated in my rearview mirror, I realized I was nearing Andrea Smithy-Carr’s home. Slowing down, I soon found myself pulling up in front of a small house with peeling gray paint and an overgrown lawn.
Chapter 50
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Jun 10
Time: 13:07
Had an extra hour today so pulled out the file again, to see if we’d missed anything. There’s one thing. That neighbor who found Virna Musgrave? He mentioned that he’d had a guest staying with him that week who’d just left—that was why he was walking his dog later than he usually does. He’d dropped off his friend at the airport.
We never interviewed the guest. Seemed no reason to since they were gone well before the accident, but since it looks like this file is staying cold, I might as well see if I can track them down to tie off the loose end. Wife says she’ll divorce me if I don’t give up the obsession, so I’ll have to do it while at work—can’t even mention the name Tavish Advani at home without riling her up.
Chapter 51
A board mounted on two thick posts stood amid the weeds in Andrea Smithy-Carr’s front yard. Hand-painted on it were the words Justice for Rhiannon. Below the blocky header flowed tiny writing in what looked like marker pen that had been traced over and over as it faded. From what little I could read, it was a diatribe against the authorities for covering up the murder of her daughter.
I’d already figured out that Andrea Smithy-Carr wasn’t exactly stable, but I hadn’t realized the depth of her obsession until this instant. But I was here now, and she was opening her front door even as I set foot on the mossy and cracked path through the grass, so she’d clearly been watching for me.
A brace covered her left leg to the knee.
“Don’t mind the grass,” she said. “The boy who cuts it has been sick this past week.”
The grass was knee height; it hadn’t been mowed for months. Given that this seemed like a friendly neighborhood to the outside eye, I wondered if her neighbors had been put off from helping her because of her unrelenting obsession—the board, for one, was an eyesore for a street that seemed to be trying its best to keep up a certain level of appearance.
But I just nodded. “I’m Tavish.”
“Andrea.” Gait halting but stable, she invited me into the house.
The carpet was a dingy and faded beige, and the furniture had the appearance of charity shop goods, but no dust covered any of the surfaces, and—alongside the delicious smell of fresh baking—I could smell a lemony scent I associated with cleanliness. The fireplace was empty and filled with pine cones, the mantel above it lined with trophies that had been polished to a shine.
The trophies sat alongside photos of a smiling black-haired girl.
“Rhiannon won those.” Andrea pointed at the trophies. “Swimming and dance.”
“She was talented.”
“Would’ve been on the national team if she’d been allowed to live.” Her face was hard when I glanced at her, but she said, “I made scones. I’ll put on coffee.”
“I can help. Your leg…”
She waved me down. “Almost healed now.” From the slow way she walked toward the kitchen, however, I figured that for a significant exaggeration. “Just got home from the rehabilitation unit two days ago. They bunged me in there for five days.”
At least that cleared up one small fear of mine: Andrea Smithy-Carr might be unstable, but she was physically incapable of having harmed the Prasads. “What happened to your leg?”
“Fell,” she called out from the kitchen. “Stupid little hole in the backyard. Must be a rat or something. I’ll be putting poison out, don’t you worry.”
I made noises of sympathy while thinking about that little dog.
Then, while she made the coffee—instant, it looked like from what I could see of her movements—I took careful note of the photos and trophies but found nothing in them to answer my question.
“Let me,” I said when she walked in with a tray.
Smiling, she accepted the offer. “Your mother raised you well.”
My mother didn’t raise me at all, but I knew how to play this game and gave her a gentle smile. “Those scones look great to this starving man.” She’d split them in half and put whipped cream and jam in separate little pots—she’d also provided what looked to be vintage cake plates for each of us.
At some point, I realized, Andrea had been a wholly different woman.
“Dig in,” she said after I’d placed the tray on the coffee table, her faded eyes bright all at once. “I hardly get visitors these days after Roger buggered off with his mistress.” She sat down in an armchair, while waving me to the couch opposite. “People think I’m a crazy lady. The neighbor kids run past my house like it’s some witch’s cabin.”
Startled by her awareness of how she was viewed, I looked her full in the face. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you saw what no one else did—and because no one listened to you, two more innocent people are dead and another two badly wounded.”
She slammed her fist against the arm of her seat. “I knew it. He was behind the fire, wasn’t he?”
“I’m trying to prove that.” Though I hadn’t eaten anything since a quick protein bar this morning, I didn’t reach for the scones, instead holding her gaze as I said, “I want to tell you who I am, want to be honest from the start. I’m Diya’s husband.”
Her pupils expanded, but I spoke before she could. “The police are trying to blame me for the fire even though I wasn’t anywhere near the house at the time. They don’t want to blame rich and successful Bobby Prasad, and I’m new to the family, from outside the country. But I know he beat his wife, and when I learned about Rhiannon, I had to talk to you—you’re the only person who might understand.”
Andrea’s breathing was jagged now. “Of course it was him.” A whisper, as if in revelation. “His parents must’ve seen what he was at last, and he lost it on them.”
The funny thing was that she might even be right—the inciting incident could have been the fact that Rajesh and Sarita had somehow gotten wind of Bobby’s financial troubles. Not a planned crime, but one born in the moment. That would explain the chaos of it, and how Diya and Shumi had managed to make it out alive.
“I need to know if you’d be willing to speak to the detective in charge,” I said to Andrea after a sip of the weak but hot coffee. “She doesn’t believe me, but you’ve been saying Bobby was dangerous since day one.”
“Yes, yes. I want to show you something.” When she bustled off as fast as she could on her hobbled leg, I ate a still-warm scone I’d made up to my liking.
It actually tasted good instead of turning to dust in my mouth—because unhinged or not, Andrea would make a great witness against Bobby. People would understand that it was a mother’s grief that had driven her to this sad facsimile of a life. Her husband’s desertion would only intensify the sympathy.
I was eating a second scone by the time she returned with a white cardboard box. Rectangular, it was bigger than a shoebox but still clearly only big enough for documents alongside small physical items.
Sitting down across from me, she put the box on the clear part of the coffee table. “I’ve been keeping records. Just in case the day came when people finally began to pay attention. And now here you are.”
I put the half-eaten scone aside as Andrea began to take out newspaper clippings. Some were so yellow and faded that I was scared they’d fall apart, others new enough to leave newsprint on my fingertips. All had to do either with Rhiannon’s death, with Bobby, or—most recently—with the Lake Tarawera fire. She’d even saved the newspaper notice of Bobby and Shumi’s wedding, and the publicly available financial reports from his company.
It was the kind of box kept by a stalker.
Nothing in it could help me, but I listened intently as she went through it piece by piece, just in case. It was dark outside and my head was pounding when she said, “Do you see? It had to be him. It’s all right here.”
“Yes,” I said, before glancing at my watch. “I’m so sorry, but I have to make the drive back to Rotorua—I don’t like to leave Diya alone too long.”
“Oh yes, that lovely girl. I have her letters, too, but not in this box. Hold on.”
Interested now, I did wait, and she soon returned with a group of letters stored neatly inside a clear plastic file folder. “Little Diya and my Rhi were pen pals.” She smiled. “I loved that they were doing something so old-fashioned, used to get Rhi pretty stationery for it.” A pause. “I was so proud of my girl for being so kind to a younger child who idolized her.”
Taking out a letter, I smiled at the rounded childish writing on the first envelope, and at the stickers placed on every part of it aside from the spots for the address and stamp. The letter inside was a single sheet full of girlish excitement about a movie that Diya was going to see with her brother and Shumi, and about how she missed Rhiannon sooooo much, and wished they could hang out together all the time.
We’d be best friends every day instead of just in the summer!
My heart ached.
Andrea took my hand, squeezed, and it wasn’t until then that I realized I was crying. “She’ll be okay,” she said, her voice trembling with years-old grief. “If there’s any justice in this world, that sweet child will be okay.”
* * *
—
I was exhausted when I arrived back in Rotorua, but I stopped by the ICU regardless. Security knew me by name at this point, even asked about Diya. When I made it to her, I wanted to believe that she looked better, had more color in her skin, but knew I was likely just seeing what I wanted to see.
Afterward, I went to check in on Shumi—the Kumars had let the staff know I had their continued permission to visit, and to be updated on my sister-in-law’s medical status.
The nurse with her—a warm woman who had been kind to me from day one—looked up from charting Shumi’s vital signs when I entered. “Hi, Tavish.”
“Hi, Maria. Any updates?”
A shake of her head. “Her poor brother asked the same—he only left two hours ago after I told him he had to get some sleep. And Mrs. Kumar can hardly bear to see her daughter like this—she was in and out for two short visits today, and looks like she isn’t eating. Such a sad situation.”
Nodding, I touched Shumi’s hand for a moment. “Hey, Shumi, it’s your favorite brother-in-law.”
The nurse continued to write on the chart. “Were you two close?”
“Never got the chance. I only came into the country a short time ago.” I took a deep breath, the medicinal air familiar by now. “Do you think they’ll remember everything when they wake up? From the day of the fire?”
She was compassionate enough not to tell me that they might never wake up. “I’m not sure. Diya did have that head trauma, and Shumi almost drowned, according to the paramedics…We’ll just have to wait and see.”
A silvery shimmer of wind chimes, a child’s laughter.
I jolted to look in every direction around us. “Did you hear that?”
“No, what?”
The night was as quiet as Ani’s breath.
“Nothing.” Heart pounding, I dug up a faded smile. “I think I need some sleep, too.”
* * *
—
I expected to spend the night haunted by ghostly wind chimes, but instead, it was another, far more familiar ghost that came to visit me.
“Joss,” I breathed out.
Breathtaking, selfish, dangerous Jocelyn Wai smiled at me, ready for her pound of flesh. “You didn’t think you got away with it, did you, my young lover? I swore I’d haunt you forever for what you did to me. It hurts when you fall that far, that fast. I felt my bones break when I hit the pavement.”
Chapter 52
Jocelyn
“Tavish, top me up.” Jocelyn held out her tumbler.
“This is your third whiskey of the night,” her handsome, dark-haired lover said as he splashed the amber liquid into the fine crystal.
“What? Only three?” She leaned her head against the tall back of her antique armchair and laughed at his stern look as he capped the bottle and put it on the mantel. “I’d hardly know you were Audrey’s son, with how uptight you can be.”
“Audrey hardly knows I’m her son,” was the droll response, Tavish leaning one arm against the mantel.
The man wore a suit well—this one was a dark gray she’d had custom fitted to his slim but muscular frame. “You know what she said to me?” Jocelyn said after a sip of the whiskey.
“Who? My mother?” A cocked eyebrow. “Let me guess, she tried to talk you into casting Raja in your next project. Just FYI—he’s into Botox now, could stand in at the wax museum as one of the exhibits.”
Jocelyn laughed again, this time from deep in her belly. God, but he was clever, his words sharp enough to draw blood when he wasn’t watching them—and he’d learned not to watch them with her. Charm grew boring very quickly, but that kind of vicious sharpness? Oh, it was delicious.
“No, that was the last time,” she drawled afterward. “I had to remind her that I only helm my own productions once a year—the rest of the time, I’m a gun for hire, just like her.”
“Oh, I bet she loved hearing that.”
Jocelyn shrugged; she didn’t much care for Audrey the fucking Saint of Hollywood. “She said I should be ashamed, that I was old enough to be your mother. I pointed out that she’d been bouncing on younger cock only a month ago.”
Tavish gave no indication of a reaction to the crass reference to his mother. “It’s only because you’re leading the Oscar stakes,” he said. “She doesn’t usually keep track of my life.”
Jocelyn was never gladder that she hadn’t had kids than when she ran into the unhappy and self-destructive children of her peers. She generally didn’t sleep with them, either. Tavish, however…he might be messed up, but he wasn’t self-destructive in the true sense. He was out for number one.
Jocelyn had always followed the same philosophy. “Did you win in Vegas?” She’d been annoyed to miss the jaunt.
“A little.”
“Truly, Tavish, why am I wasting so much of my skill on you if you’ll just piss it away?” She put down the whiskey. “Bring out the cards. I’ll show you how to beat the house until you fucking own the house.”
A tightness to his lips, the first indication of anger she’d ever seen in him.
Quite frankly, it thrilled her the same way the poker tables thrilled her. The unpredictable danger of it, the awareness of dancing on the razor’s edge. “Oh, Mr. Tavish Advani doesn’t like to be told what to do.” She smiled with all her teeth. “Well, tough luck—I’m the boss bitch in this relationship. Now, come sit at my feet like the little puppy dog you are.”
That was the first night she ended up with his hands around her throat.
The high was better than poker or cocaine.
Chapter 53
I woke myself out of a nightmare, my throat so raw that I knew I’d been screaming. It would’ve been Joss’s name. It always was.
The clock blinked 3:07.
I saw the concrete coming at me, felt it fracture me to pieces. Just like that fire fractured your in-laws. Funny how that happens around you, isn’t it?
My entire body revolting at the poisonous echo of her voice in my head, I ran to the bathroom and threw up what little I had in my stomach.
Afterward, I sat in bed, just staring at the door as I waited for the night to end. The nights when Joss came for revenge…they were the worst ones. And she didn’t let go once she had her hooks in me—just like in life.
To escape, I’d had to tear those hooks from my flesh.
I didn’t even know when my tired body kicked me back into the dark…but it wasn’t Joss waiting for me on the other side.
I stood in the grove where Ani had died, even though I’d never set foot in it.
