Such a Perfect Family, page 9
That was the one thing Audrey Advani couldn’t bear: the march of time, the relentless wrinkles of age. My mother would probably have a standing appointment for Botox injections if she didn’t understand that a great actress needed a face capable of a subtle and intense range of motion. So instead, she got fillers and wore makeup with religious fervor.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her naked face.
“I guess you and Diya haven’t had time to talk about everything,” Ajay was saying.
Memories unraveled inside me, an endless photo-booth strip, preserved in cerebral celluloid forever. We’d spent hours night after night murmuring chapter after chapter of our stories to each other until one of us finally couldn’t fight sleep any longer. We’d been in a hurry to catch up on all the years that had gone before we walked into each other’s lives.
But…eleven weeks wasn’t enough to share an entire lifetime’s worth of memories. And some secrets we’d both kept. The knot in my abdomen was proof of that. As were the brown plastic bottles that had melted in the fire. I’d never asked and she’d never told, but I’d looked up the drugs, gone down the list of possible reasons why they might’ve been prescribed.
Anxiety.
Depression.
Intrusive thoughts.
Hallucinations.
Schizophrenia.
Bipolar disorder.
Psychosis.
Did Ackerson know about those medicines? Would she attempt to pin the blame for the murders and the fire on my beautiful, luminous star of a wife?
My tendons twisted, tight enough to snap.
“Tavish?”
“No,” I said to Ajay’s quiet query, forcing my voice into calm. “We were still learning each other, and now…”
The other man’s eyes grew glassy. “Yeah.” Coughing, he looked away and took a deep breath. “Anyway, Ani was Diya and Bobby’s adopted sister.”
My stomach dropped. This wasn’t a random memory Diya had forgotten to mention; it was a core facet of her identity.
Chapter 18
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Dec 19
Time: 11:08
Second interview with Tavish Advani was more frustrating. He came with his lawyer, who happens to be his father—Anand fucking Advani. Same Anand Advani who got Celia Byers off for the murder of her married lover. Woman was covered in blood and had the gun in her hand. Jesus.
Tavish didn’t say much during the interview, with Anand blocking most of our questions. We couldn’t hold him. Have nothing on him. Can’t actually blame the man for shutting up—Jason Musgrave’s poisoned the well there with how he’s been shooting his mouth off in the media.
At least the journalists have the good sense not to leak Tavish’s name—no proof, but I’d say they probably got their hands slapped by their bosses after Advani senior threatened them with a lawsuit if they crossed that line. Not that it matters; the implications are all there in the headlines—especially now that they’ve dug up his connection to Jocelyn Wai.
Gina Garcia’s still on leave, so I’ll have to wait a bit longer to get further background on that case.
And still no word on where all his money is going.
It definitely didn’t go toward financing his condo—at least not openly. Perez was able to confirm it was purchased by a corporation, which then transferred the deed to Advani’s name, free and clear. He’s trying to see behind the corporate setup, find out where the money actually came from, because he doesn’t think it was Mom and Dad after all.
Says he’s not getting “happy family vibes” there. Gotta agree. Audrey Advani is seen a lot with her elder son, Raja, but neither of us has been able to find a recent photo of her with Tavish. Then again, could be the corporation is Daddy Advani’s baby. He’s certainly showing up for his boy.
Perez’s theory is that Tavish Advani is funneling “ill-gotten gains” through various corporations to clean them up. If he is, he might’ve outsmarted us—we’ll have to pull in the finance cops if Perez has no luck.
Time: 14:00
Got a call back from Emilio Vasquez, Advani’s old college roommate. Apparently they’re still in touch online but not really close after Vasquez relocated to New York. Per Vasquez, Advani was always “choosy.”
“Could have any girl he wanted,” Vasquez said. “It wasn’t just the looks. Don’t want to sound like an asshole, but I’m not exactly ugly. But Tavish…he just knew what to say to the girls, how to make them feel important and beautiful. Hell of a thing to watch. I figured maybe it was the acting genes—you know, from his mom.
“I used to be happy to go out as his wingman because he’d attract the women and sometimes I’d get lucky after a disappointed girl turned to me as a consolation prize. I didn’t mind. I was a dumb college kid who wanted to get laid.”
Per Vasquez, Advani didn’t have a steady girlfriend that he knew of in college, but— “He was definitely seeing someone off campus. He took a gap year toward the end of our course, so I wasn’t with him for that. But before that, he used to vanish all the time on weekends and come back grinning like a man who got real lucky. When I asked, all he’d say was that her name was Suzi, Suzi W.”
Suzi W.
It’s some kind of starting point at least.
Chapter 19
“I only know bits.” Ajay thrust both hands into the front pockets of his jeans, his shoulders hunching up. “Shumi mentioned her to me once, said how sad it was that baby Ani had died at only three, or I would’ve had an in-law close to my age. Ani was two years younger than Diya.”
“She died as a child?” It made more sense now that Diya hadn’t mentioned her to me; to her, it would’ve been a lifetime ago.
Except that she’d said Ani’s name as she lay bloody and wounded in my arms.
Ani…they said…about Ani…not…
“I don’t know how she died.” Ajay pushed up the bridge of his glasses. “Shumi only ever mentioned her in passing, and I was a teenager at the time and not interested in finding out more. But I remember that Shumi said how she couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Rajesh uncle and Sarita auntie to lose a child, even if she was adopted.”
“Do you know why they adopted her or from where?”
“It was local—back when we all lived in Fiji.”
I frowned at the mention of the group of Pacific islands that—as I’d learned after meeting Diya—had a significant ethnically Indian population due to the vagaries of history. “All of you? For some reason, I thought Shumi was born here.”
“No, and neither was I. We were neighbors with the Prasads out in the boonies. That’s where Bobby and Shumi first met.” A slight smile. “God, she’s always been crazy for him.”
The smile faded. “But I wasn’t even two when Ani died, so I don’t know any other details. I’m sorry.” He removed his hands from his pockets, then didn’t seem to know what to do with them. “Why are you interested in Ani anyway?”
I didn’t see any point in lying. “When I found Diya, she mentioned her.”
“Oh.” Tears appeared in his eyes; Ajay hadn’t inherited either his mother’s intense ability to lock away her emotions or his father’s grim resolve.
“I guess it’d be natural to think about her sister when she was so hurt,” he said, “especially if she knew her parents were gone, too. And probably Bobby, too. God, can you imagine what Diya and Shumi must’ve seen?” His voice cracked…and I noticed for the first time that he always used Shumi’s name, rather than the word for elder sister.
Diya had never used Bobby’s name except when first introducing him, always referred to him using the word for brother—“bhaiya.” It was just how she’d been brought up. But Ajay had clearly not been taught to refer to his sister with similar deference.
Probably nothing, just a difference between two families, but it struck me as odd, especially as both had come from the same small region. Some things were just expected when you grew up in the same culture in the same area.
“Ajay, beta!”
Ajay looked up at the sound of his mother’s voice. “I better go. They’re not doing as well as they’re pretending.” He held my gaze, his expression pleading. “I know they’re coming off as stiff and—”
“It’s fine.” I squeezed his shoulder. “I get it. I can be like that myself sometimes. I still haven’t cried even once—I’m scared that if I do, I’ll be useless.”
All the passion leaching out of him, Ajay turned to walk back to the motel rooms. His shoulders were hunched in, his hands thrust into his pockets once again, the height of him truncated by the curve of his spine.
As I watched, he stood in the open doorway to the two-bedroom suite and took a deep breath, as if bracing himself, before he walked in. Poor kid. Only twenty-one if I had my mental math correct, and having to handle his parents’ grief and worry on top of his own.
Getting into my vehicle on that thought, I drove back to the hospital, but there was no change in Diya’s status, her face serene in her wounded sleep. As I sat beside her, my hand on hers, I thought about what she’d actually said. It hadn’t just been Ani’s name, hadn’t just been a moment of her life flashing before her eyes.
She’d been trying to tell me something.
Ani…they said…about Ani…not…
I couldn’t make any sense of that, but it was all I had. And I knew I had to follow that fragile thread—even more so after I was called into the police station for a formal interview by Detective Ackerson.
I’d forgotten to make that call to my father, forgotten to get a lawyer. No matter. I could handle this first interview on my own—all I had to do was keep my cool and remember what Dad had told me prior to my first ever conversations with the cops in LA.
“Never flinch,” Anand had advised after Jocelyn’s fall, his brown eyes as hard as granite. “Cops are like wolves on the hunt. A single drop of blood and they start to smell victory.”
I’d almost asked him if he’d learned that lesson from his wife. In the realm of film and television, my mother was an actress touted as the best of her generation, her reputation one of warmth and kindness. Behind the closed doors of my parents’ strikingly modern Malibu home? The mask came well and truly off.
Audrey not only scented blood, she drew it with vicious efficiency.
Of the three men who lived or had lived in that home, it was my brother, Raja, alone who’d experienced Audrey as she was to the outside world. Ironically enough, in the end, my childhood had proved a gift—no cop could come close to the cold manipulation that was Audrey’s stock-in-trade.
“So.” Detective Ackerson’s tone was polite, even kind, but her eyes drilled into me in the confines of the interview room. “You’re doing contract work for a finance magazine.”
“Yes.”
“Were your in-laws aware of the downgrade in your employment status?”
I hated this windowless box of a room marked up by God knows what, my mind pushing to shove me back into the hellish seven-hour interrogation by Detective Gina Garcia that my father had told me I needed to white knuckle because if the case went to court, we’d have evidence of my cooperation as Jocelyn’s grief-stricken lover.
Give it up, Tavish. We both know you two had a volatile relationship—what went wrong that night? Did she do something that drove you to push her off the balcony? Provocation can be looked at as a mitigating factor, but you have to be honest.
Gina Garcia was the kind of tough-talking cop who didn’t let up. She just kept on pushing, her questions unrelenting. Drops of water wearing away stone.
But I’d walked out of her interrogation room and I’d walk out of this one.
“Sarita and Rajesh understood that I had to establish myself in my career here and that it could take time,” I said without acrimony. “They did the same when they moved to New Zealand.”
It had been a slender strip of common ground between us, Dr. Rajesh Prasad going as far as to slap me on the shoulder and say, “It’s hard to change countries and start all over again—it makes me feel good that our Diya’s found a husband who loves her enough to make the effort.”
It had been the night before the party, the two of us out on the back patio. The sun had set, the water motionless under the dark orange light that was already fading to charcoal at the edges. “I do, sir,” I’d said as two black swans took to the water, twin ripples in their wake. “Love Diya. And she wants to live here, so that’s what we’ll do.”
He didn’t need to know that Los Angeles had become hostile ground to me after Virna’s accident. The world of wealth and fame in which I existed had seemed far more angered by her death than by Jocelyn’s. For Joss, they’d wanted lurid stories and endless gossip. For Virna, they’d demanded justice.
Hypocrites.
“Care to tell me why you left your previous position?” Ackerson asked in a calm tone, her expression neutral, nothing accusatory about it.
Talk to me, it said, I’m no threat at all. Too bad for her that I’d played this game against far more experienced foes and won.
I just had to hold my nerve.
Chapter 20
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Dec 21
Time: 14:27
Lunch with Gina was productive. Turns out the gossip rags weren’t making things up—Gina did look at Advani as a suspect in the Jocelyn Wai case. But Wai’s fall was eventually ruled an accident.
Off the record, Gina stated that she doesn’t buy the accident theory, but her hands are tied. “Advani had a rock-solid alibi. Didn’t even have to rely on his drunk friend to back him up—the friend’s apartment complex is high-end, has security cameras in all the public zones.
“It showed him coming over, the two of them going out to buy beers, then Advani opening the door to accept a food delivery. No sign he ever left the building. And no sign he ever reentered Jocelyn Wai’s after he walked out earlier that night—her building had even more cameras. We checked his phone location anyway, but nada. It was at the friend’s place the entire time.
“If he did it, he’s a brilliant psychopath. Scariest thing is he was only twenty-three and maybe six, seven months, when Jocelyn died. If you’re right about him being involved in Virna Musgrave’s death, that’s two women in the space of, what, three years? What’s the word for an unmarried black widower?”
As for motive—that’s tricky, because there’s no financial one. He wasn’t in Wai’s will. But Gina estimates Wai spent probably half a mil on Advani over the course of their relationship.
“They lived large, were snapped at all the hot spots, and I don’t think he was paying for it—that would’ve wiped him out, even at his salary. No, our boy has a way of hooking up with wealthy women, and having those women show him a good time—then die on him. You know how he got his Venice Beach condo, right? Look up Susanne Winthorpe.”
I expected Suzi W to be some hot stripper or dancer.
Yeah, got that one really, really wrong.
Chapter 21
“I left my job because of the impossible hours and asshole bosses,” I said to Ackerson, the lie so generic it told her nothing. “Being a junior in those firms is brutal. A constant churn of burned-out twentysomethings. I wanted more out of life—I was deciding what to do next when I met Diya. Seemed like a sign from the heavens to take a big leap and head out here.”
No one from DeJong, Greyson, & Wijesinghe would ever refute my statement, not when it said nothing many others hadn’t said before. In their line of work, reputation was everything, discretion the name of the game—and burning people out was a badge of honor rather than a black mark.
“Our caliber of clients,” portly Greyson had said to me when I began at the firm, “do not wish to do business with a firm known for its loose lips. Keep them zipped.
“Doesn’t matter if you learn that Mr. Smith needs more investment income for his secret second family out in San Diego, or that Ms. Rock Star is screwing her entire crew of backing dancers every Wednesday and needs to pay off a blackmailer. None of your business. Your business is their money and keeping them happy so they never want to switch to another firm.”
If the firm hadn’t bowed to pressure from the LAPD, they sure as hell wouldn’t do it for a cop in another country. Detective Callum Baxter might suspect I’d been fired, might even have a source in that poisonous dickwad Jason Musgrave, but it meant nothing without official confirmation. Even that official record, if ever opened, would simply show an elegant resignation letter.
DeJong, Greyson, & Wijesinghe hadn’t survived this long by being anything but ruthless. Fighting my forced “resignation” would’ve just left me with a permanent stain on my name in the circles that were my livelihood. This way, if any future employers ever reached out, HR would just say the firm and I weren’t “a good fit”—though privately, the firm had no doubt gotten the word out among their top-tier friends to steer clear of me.
It didn’t matter how good I was at making money, I’d shit the bed when I’d become not only romantically involved with Virna, but financially involved.
I’d never again work in those gilded halls.
“Do you know if your wife has a life insurance policy?” Ackerson asked.
I’d been ready for her to resort to her tactic of switching topics, but not for this particular question. My answer was startled—and honest. “I don’t think so? We never discussed life insurance, so if she has a policy, it’ll be from before we met.”
