A Madness of Sunshine

by Singh, Nalini

  Anahera wondered what he’d say if she told him she could afford the things in here. He’d probably call her a liar without saying a word. For some reason, that made her want to ­laugh… and then she remembered the jewels Edward had bought her during their marriage. Anniversary gifts. A glittering bauble for each year.

  She’d left them all in a ­safety-­deposit box in London.

  Will didn’t react to the clerk’s condescending manner except to take out his ID and say, “I need to talk to someone about identifying a piece of jewelry.” His tone was so even and unruffled that it was deadly.

  The clerk visibly paled. “Of course, Detective,” he said and picked up a nearby phone to murmur into it.

  Another man walked out from the back seconds later, followed by a woman. Of East Asian descent, they were as identical as it was possible for two people of different genders to ­be—­the same sleek hair, the same wide but fine bone structure, the same color suits. Charcoal, not black. Both paired with crisp white shirts.

  “I’m Shannon Chen and this is my brother Aaron Chen,” the woman said, holding out a hand toward Will.

  Not just siblings. Twins. Anahera would bet every cent she had on that.

  Releasing Will’s hand after the introductions between them were over, Shannon Chen reached out for Anahera’s.

  Anahera accepted the handshake, intrigued by this woman with the dark and brilliant eyes and her silent brother. “Anahera,” she said without adding anything further.

  “Detective, Anahera,” Shannon Chen said, “if you’d please come into the back to our private sitting room. We have an international client and her family arriving in ten minutes and I’d rather they not see us being questioned by the police.”

  “No problem,” Will said. “We’ll follow you.”

  A faint smile on the other woman’s face before she and her brother led them back into the private sitting ­area—­though no one made any move to actually sit.

  Instinct telling her that Shannon Chen liked the look of Will, Anahera lingered in the hallway outside the actual room. She made a point of looking at the abstract painting on the wall, the pigment carved in austerely straight lines, but her ear was tuned in to the conversation happening within.

  37

  “I’m attempting to track down the maker or seller of this watch,” she heard Will say. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t attempt to lie to me. This is a serious missing person investigation and if I find out that you withheld information, I won’t hesitate to charge you. It doesn’t matter if you have friends in high ­places—­they’ll drop you like a hot potato if it turns out our missing person was the victim of foul play.”

  His voice was matter-­of-­fact rather than threatening.

  “Our customers are used to privacy,” Shannon Chen replied, “but we don’t use that as a shield. The nature of our business means we’ve previously been targeted by ­thieves—­I’d much rather you and your fellow officers not think of us as criminals.” The words were crisp and professional, even a little sharp, but Anahera noticed Shannon Chen had chosen her words with care. She hadn’t said that they weren’t criminals, only that they preferred not to be thought of as criminals.

  A subtle distinction and maybe no distinction at all, but it was interesting.

  “As for this ­watch…” A pause. “I don’t recognize it and I know all of the pieces we’ve ever made or traded. Aaron?”

  Another long pause, as if the watch was being examined. “No,” said a deep male voice that was oddly soft. “The style is too delicate for one of mine. I prefer harder edges. Shannon’s wearing one of my designs.”

  Anahera had noticed Shannon’s watch when they shook hands. It was more blocky than she might’ve expected on such a slender wrist, but it suited Shannon Chen. There was a sense of power to her and to the watch both; it was likely her brother had made the watch specifically for her. Anahera had seen far more delicate pieces in the showroom.

  Will had clearly noted the same. “It’s not worth putting your entire business in jeopardy to protect one client,” he said in that mild tone he could turn lethal. “Think carefully before you answer my question. Is this one of yours?”

  “I don’t have to think, Detective. This isn’t one of ours.” Shannon’s tone had cooled from professional to glacial. “However, I recognize the workmanship. I’ll write down the address for you.”

  Voices drifted in from the showroom, the language Korean from what Anahera could make out. The clerk answered in the same language, though he was clearly not ethnically Korean. She’d pegged him as more likely to be Indonesian. “Good service,” she said quietly to Shannon after turning to see Will sliding the watch back into the evidence bag. “How many languages does he speak?”

  “Five at last count.” The other woman smiled at her, the act unexpected. “You don’t sell jewels that start in the six figures without offering service of the highest caliber. Now”—­she shifted her attention back to ­Will—­“if you don’t mind, Aaron will show you the back way out while I go and greet our clients.”

  “Thank you for the help.”

  Shannon Chen headed to the doorway. “Come by sometime when you’re not in the mood to interrogate and we’ll have lunch.” She’d already passed Anahera, her perfume a subtle, elegant, and expensive musk, when she paused suddenly and glanced back. “I knew I remembered that face. Your husband bought your engagement ring from us when we were based in Auckland, showed me a photo of you.” Her eyes dropped to Anahera’s left hand, but she was too professional to mention the lack of either a ­wedding band or that tastefully extravagant engagement ring.

  Despite the courtesy, Anahera barely made it down the chipped concrete of the back steps without screaming. “It’s like Edward’s ghost is following me around today,” she said the instant she was alone with Will in the delivery bay behind the building.

  She shoved her hands into the pockets of her anorak, fisting them to ­white-­knuckled tightness. “And how creepy is it that the brother doesn’t speak until the sister tells him to?”

  “Twins can be that way. It’s like they each take on certain duties. With the Chens, Shannon is the talker and the leader while Aaron takes care of everything in the ­back—­and is probably the only person Shannon truly trusts.”

  Sudden dark heat burned at the backs of Anahera’s eyes. She looked desperately toward the light at the end of the small street, needing a way out. She couldn’t break down, not here, not now, not with this cop with his hard eyes and his body that made hers threaten to wake.

  “I’m going to get the car,” Will said, stepping ahead. “No point in you walking back, too. Wait by the parking sign on the street and I’ll pick you up.”

  Always a cop.

  Seeing too much.

  If he’d pushed, she’d have pushed back harder, her rage a smashing wave.

  But he was giving her room, was taking the first steps to the busy street beyond.

  “I miscarried twins.” The words she’d never once spoken shoved out of her throat. “I was far enough along that I had the bump, that the doctors could tell me I was carrying twins. But I waited to tell the people at home.” Some London friends had known, but those friends lived in a different world than the people of Golden Cove. “I wanted to surprise Josie and Nikau and the others with a great big ­six-­month bump. And then I never told anyone at all.”

  Shifting on his heel to return to her, Will looked at her not with sympathy, not with pity, but with an understanding as desolate as it was angry. “It never fucking stops hurting, does it?”

  Jesus, God, someone finally got it. “I keep waiting for it to stop, but no, it never does.” And on days like today, when she’d come up against a pair of twins, the wound dug its way in and twisted.

  What would her twins have grown up to be like? Would they have been like Shannon and Aaron Chen, two people so in sync that they each had a specific role in the relationship and in the world? Or would her twins have been
so different from each other that it was difficult to even tell that they were siblings? Anahera would never know. “Did you lose a child?”

  “He wasn’t mine, but I lost him anyway.” Voice rough and fingers curled viciously into his palms, Will nudged his head toward the street. “Let’s go. The address Shannon gave me is on the outskirts of town. We may as well pick up your laptop before we leave.”

  Walking out with him and into the chaos of life, Anahera blinked against the influx of noise. “You’re certain Shannon gave you the right person?”

  He handed over a piece of paper. On it was written an address; below that the words: The koru paired with the minuscule ruby embedded in the back is her trademark.

  38

  “This is it.” Will brought the SUV to a stop on a leafy suburban street, outside a white villa fronted by a manicured lawn and the bare limbs of dormant roses. “Your laptop should be safe enough to leave. This is an exclusive area, no street crime to speak of.”

  “Did you already have this place on your list?”

  “Yes. We were going to hit it last.”

  Anahera glanced at the other side of the street, her eyes on a new build that had been made to match the style of the older homes. A few more years, Will judged, a little more age on the plantings around it, and it would lose that unpolished new shine, begin to truly blend in.

  “It doesn’t look like the jeweler advertises.” Anahera turned back to the villa. “How did you find out about her?”

  “I’m a detective.”

  A hint of a smile on her face. “Touché.”

  Will wasn’t expecting the smile, or how beautiful she was when the light hit her eyes. Getting out of the vehicle without replying because he had no idea what the fuck to do with his response to her, he met her by the villa’s small white gate. Her smile was gone, her face back to its usual difficult-­to-­read state, and her hands stuffed into the pockets of her anorak.

  Going through the gate and up the drive lined by those roses that appeared dead, he knocked on the front door. The woman who opened it was sixty and well preserved, her skin a smooth, unblemished white as a result of a liberal dusting of powder and her eyes an acute blue, her silkily white hair pulled back in an elegant knot. She wore a string of small pearls against a ­long-­sleeved ­knee-­length dress in a dark navy wool. “Yes?”

  “Siobhan Genovese?” Will held up his identification.

  The woman took his ID, scrutinized it carefully. “If you wouldn’t mind,” she said, “I’ll ask you to wait here while I verify that you are who you say you are.” She shut the door in their faces without waiting for an answer.

  “Not the trusting type.” Anahera’s tone was ­bone-­dry.

  “If she has the kind of gems I suspect she has in there, that she even opened her door is surprising. As is the fact she doesn’t have a security grille. On the other hand, not many people know she exists.”

  One minute, two, before the door opened again.

  “Thank you for waiting,” Siobhan Genovese said. “Please do come in, Detective Gallagher.” A questioning glance at Anahera. “I assume you can vouch for this young woman?”

  “Yes.”

  Apparently satisfied with that, Siobhan Genovese led them into a beautifully appointed living room, the colors shades of blue and gray. It was the kind of tasteful and quietly wealthy arrangement with which Anahera had become intimately familiar in Edward’s London home and in the homes of his friends.

  To be fair to her gifted liar of a husband, he’d told her she could redeco­rate as she liked, but Anahera had hesitated over even the heavy damask curtains she’d hated.

  God, she’d been so young.

  So conscious of her ­poverty-­stricken past and lack of knowledge about the moneyed world in which she found herself, a lone Māori girl far from a thundering turbulent sea that sang a song of home and of grief both.

  “Please sit,” Siobhan said, taking a seat of her own in a lush gray armchair with curved edges of a dark gold that bore the patina of age. “How may I help you?”

  Will told her why they were there before handing over the watch. “I know this is one of yours,” he said quietly in that way he had, so that you felt as if you were the entire focus of his attention. “What I need from you is the name of the buyer.”

  Siobhan Genovese examined the watch with care, running her fingertips over the glittering hardness of the blue stones that edged the face, then flipping it over and brushing her thumb across the tiny ruby embedded in the back. “Very few people recognize my signature,” she said as the much larger ruby on her right ring finger shone bright as fresh blood. “I handmake all of my pieces, which means there aren’t many around for people to compare.”

  Will shook his head, the action gentle. “My sources are mine, but I will tell you that you do stunning work.”

  Frost in her responding words. “Part of the reason I’m still in business despite my astronomical prices and slow production rate is that I value my clients’ privacy.”

  Taking the watch back, Will said, “A young woman is missing.” He held those searing blue eyes. “Someone you know gave her this watch. You need to tell me the identity of that person.”

  “If I ask you to get a warrant?” was the soft rejoinder that held a steely will.

  “I’ll do ­it—­but such things have a way of going public. I’ll need to list your address and why I’m seeking the warrant.”

  “That could be counted as a threat, Detective.” Siobhan crossed one leg over the other.

  Watch now safely stored in the inner pocket of his jacket, Will leaned forward with his forearms braced on his thighs. “I have no desire to play a game of ­one-­upmanship, but I’m looking for a young woman who doesn’t deserve to be gone. If you get in the way of that, I won’t hesitate to take whatever steps are necessary, no matter how messy.”

  Siobhan’s expression didn’t change. “You realize most of my business is by word of mouth?”

  “I’m sure you’ve earned more than enough by now to buffer you against any momentary ­dip—­we both know that, as good as you are, the clients will come back even if it gets out that you shared one of their names with the police.”

  An amused smile from the older woman. “People always want the best.” Her eyes went to Anahera. “And who is she?”

  “Her identity doesn’t matter to you. Give me a name, Ms. Genovese.” There was something so unbending in his tone that Anahera’s back muscles tightened.

  This man, she realized, could be ruthless.

  Siobhan didn’t seem to have come to the same realization. “William Gallagher,” she murmured, “why do I know that name?”

  “I was accused of beating a suspect.” No change in Will’s tone or expression. “There was an inquiry.”

  “Ah.” Siobhan gave a small nod. “The fallen hero. Yes, I remember.”

  Anahera had no idea what the two were talking ­about—­whatever the inquiry had been, it hadn’t appeared as one of the top hits when she typed Will’s name into a search engine. She’d read only about his heroism.

  “And do you have the support of your superiors for this investigation?” Siobhan asked, reaching to the small table beside her to pick up a tiny porcelain cup that seemed to hold tea. She didn’t offer any to either Anahera or Will. “I have people I can call, ask.”

  “You might not have noticed,” Will said, “but the police department doesn’t like having inquiries. Especially not corruption inquiries dealing with wealthy and connected people who might’ve gotten away with murder.”

  The slightest tinkle of porcelain on porcelain. “Murder?” Siobhan put aside her tea. “You didn’t say anything about murder.”

  “How many young women do you know who’ve disappeared mysteriously while going about their everyday lives, and then have been found alive?”

  His words hit Anahera in the gut. She knew he was right; part of her had always known the most likely outcome, but she’d hoped. And she con
tinued to hope. Maybe Miriama was being kept captive. A horrific thing to wish, but at least it would mean she was alive, that they could rescue her.

  “I see.” Siobhan placed her hands very carefully on the wool of her dress. “Well, I will likely lose a rather significant client because of this, but murder is where I draw the line.”

  Then she told them the name of the man who’d commissioned the watch.

  39

  “What will you do?” Anahera asked Will an hour later, after they finally broke free of the gridlock caused by a ­three-­car accident. No fatalities, thankfully, but the tow trucks had taken their time getting there and hauling the wrecks off the road.

  Now, they drove through the autumnal darkness. It had fallen with quicksilver speed, a black curtain sweeping across the world. With the lack of light had come a call from Nikau confirming the day’s searchers had found no signs of Miriama.

  “Talk to him again,” Will answered, “try to get the truth.”

  Anahera shoved her fingers through her hair, her heart a drum in her chest that hadn’t stopped thudding since Siobhan Genovese’s revelation. “Vincent’s always been such a straight arrow.” With a wife who didn’t have a single friend in town and whose online presence was ­doll-­like perfection.

  Her stomach churned.

  “I’m more likely to get the truth from him if I can talk to him alone.” Will took a corner, his headlights flashing off the reflective barriers. “I’ll see if I can convince him to meet me tonight, but if not, it’ll be tomorrow.”

  “I won’t say anything.” Anahera might be loyal, but she’d never again be foolishly trusting and blind. “Some of us used to wonder if Vincent felt trapped by his parents’ expectations, but he always did such a good job of appearing happy that we bought it.”

  Will increased his speed to pass a tanker rumbling along the road. “Everyone has secrets,” he repeated after completing the maneuver. “It’s often the people who look like they have no secrets at all who turn out to have the biggest ones.”