A groan from the crane, a shout from the driver turned operator.
The canopy shivered.
6
First came the massive metal hook. Followed by a bunching of ropes. And then the first sight of the harness. Cradled within it, like a child in a carrier, sat a car that had cost three hundred thousand dollars when my father bought it for my mother.
“Appearances matter, son. We can’t have Mrs. Ishaan Rai in a cheap Japanese import.”
That same night, he’d slapped her so hard that she’d fallen to the ground, and she’d thrown a glass at him. It had shattered on the wall, a shard flying up to slice a thin line beside my eye.
I hadn’t made a sound. I wasn’t supposed to be there.
Later that night, while I was curled up tight under my superhero-branded blankets, I’d heard other noises. I’d been seven then, hadn’t quite understood. Only later had I realized the meaning behind those grunts and pants and tiny breathless screams.
“Hold it steady!”
The Jaguar emerged from the possessive embrace of the forest with a slight rocking motion.
The midnight green of the paint had been dulled and rusted by its years in the trees, the fenders no longer gleaming, the tires flat and eaten away, but the biggest damage was to the front. It had been crumpled in, the hood lifted partially off and twisted.
As if the car had gone headfirst down the steep bank and hit with force. Turning a sleek rifle into a snub-nosed revolver.
“Did the airbags deploy?” I asked.
“Signs are that all safety features worked as intended.”
So it was possible my mother had survived the impact only to die alone and cold while rain pounded down on the metal of the car and lightning cracked the pitch-black sky. If she’d been alive at all when the car slid down the bank. Because I’d heard the front door slam twice. And the house had gone silent in the aftermath.
“We’ll have more news once . . .” Neri hesitated. “There’ll be a comprehensive examination.”
Ten years was a long time for evidence to age and fade. For flesh to disappear. For everyone to forget that Nina Parvati Rai had been a living, breathing woman who’d loved music and cooking and had a mind like a computer.
In another life, she could’ve been a professor.
In this life, she’d been a rich man’s wife.
Now, she was just bones.
The car trembled as it was wrenched from the arms of the forest. Dirt clumped the undercarriage and the doors were sealed with police tape to ensure they wouldn’t accidentally open. The forensic people must’ve already processed those areas.
As I stared at the driver’s-side door, it struck me that there was one question I simply hadn’t thought to ask. “Was she in the driver’s seat?”
Detective Regan had never actually said that.
Neri had a good poker face, but she hadn’t expected the question. The answer was there in the flicker of her eyelashes before she regained control. “You’ll be fully briefed once we conclude our inquiries.”
My mother hadn’t been in the driver’s seat.
Someone else had been in the car that night. And the police knew it. The whiskey bottle, the ring, the rest of what they’d shared, those were nothing but pieces of the truth meant to lull us into cooperation while they undertook a murder investigation . . . one that almost certainly had Nina’s husband and son in the crosshairs.
The car swung wildly right then, and for a moment, I thought the Jaguar would smash to the forest floor, just as my mother had done all those years ago.
* * *
—
Constable Neri gave me a ride home, but I asked to be dropped off about a twenty-minute walk from the house. Ten minutes for a man with two fully functional legs.
Neri glanced at my booted leg. “You sure that’s wise?”
“I need time to process and I can’t do that in a house with my father. You saw him.”
Sharp, dark eyes. “Not a happy marriage.”
“Interrogate me later, Constable.” It came out hard. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Today, let me grieve.”
No shame in her expression, nothing but an acute alertness that was a warning. I’d have to be careful around her and her boss both. She wasn’t, I judged, the type to fall for a bit of superficial charm wrapped up in the smell of money. Neither would I be able to blind her or her senior partner with my “just a writer” routine.
I’d have to think harder, be smarter, in order to stay on top of the investigation.
“You appreciate that this will be a complicated process,” she said. “We’ll need your cooperation.”
“Did you find the money?” A quarter of a million dollars gone from my father’s safe. Stacks of hundred-dollar bills he’d kept as insurance against some unforeseen event. He still did the same thing. I’d figured out the combination to the safe years ago, even though he’d replaced the entire system after my mother’s disappearance. My father wasn’t a terribly imaginative man—not in certain ways.
Constable Neri gave me a blank stare. “As I’ve made clear, we can’t disclose evidentiary findings.”
“You didn’t find it.” It was a guess, Neri’s poker face back in place, but what were the chances you’d murder a woman only to leave behind a huge stash of cash that no one could trace? Zero. “You know where I’ll be if you want to talk.”
Getting out of the vehicle, I braced myself on the top, then moved across to the back passenger-side door. Neri said nothing as I pulled out my crutches before shutting the door. She didn’t do a U-turn until I’d walked up the road and was clearly visible.
The engine noise soon faded, leaving me cocooned in a hushed silence.
All these trees, all the green, it was why properties here were so coveted. Titirangi homes didn’t reach the eye-watering prices of the mansions in Herne Bay, or the sprawling estates in the South Island, but the rich who built their homes here preferred privacy above all else.
Rarely did the streets that snaked through the Waitākere Ranges Regional Park ever come up in those articles about New Zealand’s wealthiest streets. That was because the wealth here was hidden behind a shield of green, and spread out over a considerable distance. No one knew of the stunning architectural homes built deep in the trees until those homes went up for sale. Most were lone sparks in the wild, the Cul-de-Sac with its cluster of quiet wealth concealed by a long drive, a rare breed.
My mother had been the flashiest member of the enclave.