Quiet in Her Bones

by Singh, Nalini

  “Are you saying there was domestic violence?”

  I took time to have a long hit of the sweet, sugary drink. It was a rush to the system. “Not as you’d think of it. My father didn’t beat my mother. They were violent to each other with words the majority of the ­time—­along with the odd smashed glass or other thrown object. A lot of screaming of ugly words punctuated by the breaking of inanimate objects.”

  “Do you remember any of those words?” Neri asked, her dark eyes watchful as always.

  “He called her a whore and she laughed and said he was the one fucking his secretary on the boardroom table like some cheap porn star.” My lips kicked up at the quick blink Neri couldn’t quite hide.

  Yes, Neri, there’s always a ton of trash hidden behind the glamour and the wealth.

  “I realize you were young,” Regan said, “but were you aware of infidelity on the part of your father? Or were those just angry words?”

  “Oh, he was definitely banging his secretary. She came by the house a couple of weeks after Mum disappeared, and I heard her in his study, crying and saying she felt used. Poor girl thought she was going to be the next Mrs. Rai.” My mind stirred. I’d almost forgotten my father’s fling, it had been so ridiculously cliché. But ­now …

  What might a hopeful woman do to get rid of an inconvenient wife?

  36

  “I see. And I apologize for this but I need to ­ask—­what about your mother’s lover, the one uncovered by your investigator? Do you have any idea who it might’ve been?”

  I considered what to say. Hemi had admitted they’d had an affair, but Hemi apparently also had a ­rock-­solid alibi, and I didn’t want to send the police down blind alleys with ­time-­wasting theories. On the other hand, given the way Hemi had spoken about my mother, he deserved a little pain. “Hemi Henare.”

  Detective Regan sucked in a breath. “That’s a strong accusation against a man beloved by the community for all that he does.”

  I wondered how much of the bluster was real, and how much an act to egg me on. “I heard them ­talking—­my mother and Hemi.”

  “You heard a lot of things,” Neri said without inflection.

  “I was a nosy little shit, if that’s what you mean.” I grinned. “I spent a lot of time at home in my early teens. I didn’t have many friends to hang out with.” Riki had been the closest.

  Shoving away the noxious burn in my gut at what I’d done to him, I said, “Also, my home was a fucking soap opera. I kept my ears open.” Pausing, I thought: to hell with it. I threw Hemi all the way in the deep end. “Hemi also had a gambling problem then. He got himself into a bad ­financial hole.”

  Regan was a master at keeping his reactions tempered, but I caught the way his pen skipped a beat as he made a note. “If I could take you back to the events of that night,” he said smoothly, “was anyone else in the house? Didn’t you have a live-­in maid at that point?”

  “Lily, yes.” Knowing hands on my skin, a kiss pressed to my nape. “But she was let go two weeks prior to that night.”

  “Let go?” Neri zeroed in on my phrasing. “By your mother?”

  I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t throw Lily to the sharks. “Like your colleague said, I was a kid. I just know she was there one day, gone the next.”

  Neri’s expression said she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t push the point.

  “Other than your father’s secretary at the time, and Mr. Henare,” Regan said, “were there any others who might’ve felt they had a claim on ­either your mother or father?”

  “Adrian Black.” I hadn’t forgotten him. “He was my mother’s pet for a while. Who knows what he thought was going to come out of it.” Nina Rai would’ve never thrown in her lot with a pretty young fitness instructor.

  Not after she’d grown to like wealth and power and privilege.

  “I was poor once, Ari. It sucks.” A kiss to my cheek. “When you’re poor, people can buy and sell you like you’re a thing. Oh, we give it other names. Shaadi is one of them, but in the end, it’s a transaction. These days, I make the transactions.”

  “On another matter.” Detective Regan was looking at his notebook as he spoke. “You have a motorcycle license?”

  “Yes. Haven’t used it for a while though.”

  “Do you know Shane Kent?”

  A shiver along my spine, a sudden cold on my skin. “Shane? That’s a blast from the past. Yes, I know ­him—­or I did. He’s the son of a friend of my father’s. A couple ­of—­no, three years older than me.” And coincidentally, the young male I’d seen locked in an embrace with Riki. “We haven’t really kept in touch. Why’re you asking about him?”

  Detective Regan looked straight at me. “According to Mr. Kent, his family asked yours if you’d look after a number of valuable items they’d shipped to New Zealand prior to their return from a posting abroad. That included a Ducati motorcycle.”

  Something scraping along my upper back, heavy metal pressing down on flesh.

  Shaking off the eerie sensations, I thought of the gleaming black machine with blue accents that haunted my dreams. “Yeah, the bike used to be parked in the garage next to my mother’s Jaguar.”

  “You’ve told us that you didn’t go out that night.”

  Rain dripping down my neck in clammy runnels, pelting against the visor until I could barely see, the road a shimmer of light.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “If you’re asking me if I drove out and killed my mother for money, the answer is no. My mother set up an account for me when I was a baby, and she talked my father into seeding it with fifty thousand dollars. Then it just became easier for my father to give me money for birthday and Christmas gifts, and my mother would put money into it, too.” It had been a way to funnel funds away from my father’s eyes. “I had a hundred and fifty grand by the time she disappeared.”

  Neri’s sudden stiffness gave away the truth; they hadn’t known that choice piece of information. She was young, Sefina Neri, hadn’t yet learned to wear the masks I switched out like shirts. Regan ­though … yes, he had masks of his own.

  “Also,” I drawled with a cocky smile, “if I was going to kill a parent, I’d have killed my asshole father rather than my mother.”

  When Neri nearly smiled, I had to fight not to clench my hand.

  Did she see through the arrogance to the black fear?

  I funneled my agitation into action, pushing back the sleeves of my fine ­forest-­green sweater.

  “We’re not accusing you of anything, Aarav.” Regan’s eyes were pure kindness now. “We’d just like to hear how the Ducati ended up damaged badly enough that your father bought Mr. Kent a new one.”

  My mind raced, my pulse threatening to join in, but my brain had always been my biggest asset. “I was sixteen,” I pointed out. “I didn’t have a license.”

  “But you did know how to ride. Didn’t Ariki Henare teach you the previous summer?”

  “Don’t get taken in by my media hype, detective. I’m no James Bond. I wasn’t confident enough to go out into a storm.” I forced a languid appearance paired with a small smile of amusement. “The most I ever did with Riki’s bike was ride it up and down the Cul-­de-­Sac in clear weather.”

  “Could your father have ridden the bike?”

  That, I realized, was the question to which they wanted an answer. “My father?” I’d never given the idea a single thought; I should have. “Yes. He used to ride a bike when he was a university student.”

  “You’ve said your memories of the time around your mother’s disappearance are intense,” Neri began.

  “Hard thing to forget.”

  “Can you go through what you did in the days immediately afterward?”

  “Not much. I wasn’t very mobile with the stitches in my ­leg—­especially after they got ­infected—­so other than asking Diana if she’d heard from my mum, I stayed in and waited for her to come back home
.”

  The two officers exchanged a glance. They obviously thought they had something, but what it might be, I couldn’t guess. What the hell was suspicious in the idea of a teenage boy lying in bed while his leg pulsed with pain? I’d listened to the ongoing rain and hoped to hear the growl of a Jaguar engine.

  Regan closed his notebook. “Is there anything else you’d like to add to your statement?”

  “I’ve given you everything I can remember.” Laid bare this way, it wasn’t much. “What are the chances? Of catching the person who did this to her? The person who left her to rot in the forest?”

  “It’s a cold case, and you can understand that the time window since the homicide does impact our investigation, but forensic techniques have come a long way in the past decade. It’s possible we’re in a better position to solve this than we would’ve been then.”

  “That’s predicated on there being forensic evidence to analyze.” Time could do a lot of damage, erase a lot of things.

  “Very true. Please be assured that we’re doing everything ­possible—­the car is being examined inch by inch and we’ve brought a forensic anthropologist on board to ensure we hear everything your mother has to tell us.” He stared at me as if expecting me to be ­what—­startled? surprised? scared?—­at the revelation, but all that lived in me was steely resolve.

  “You have our numbers,” Regan continued. “Don’t hesitate to call if you decide you want to share anything else.”

  I saw Neri’s eyes linger on the scar on my right elbow as I let them out the door, found myself rubbing at the spot afterward. I’d fallen off my bicycle at some point in my teenage years, cut a great big gash in the flesh. It must’ve been after. Because I had no memories of a maternal kiss on the forehead as I was engulfed by a cloud of perfume.

  “Ari, what’ve you done to yourself? Aao, let me see.”

  My mother had been a terrible mother when judged against traditional markers, but she’d known how to love her son.

  Throat thick, I made my way onto the balcony perched outside the living area. Auckland City spread out below me in a scramble of metal and traffic with bright splashes of winter green. The waters of the Hauraki Gulf sparkled and glittered in the distance, while a chopper flew in from one of the outlying islands. The cold winter winds whipped at my skin, reminding me of another night when I’d stood here in the wind.

  Paige had stood beside me then, her hand wrapped around my upper arm, and her head on my shoulder. “What does it feel like? To know that tonight, tens of thousands of people around the world will walk into a movie theater and see the inside of your psyche?”

  I’d chuckled. “I write fiction, darling.”

  “Yes, but it has to come from somewhere.” Fiery green eyes ablaze against the cloudy light. “You don’t write about puppies and rainbows. You write about murdered mothers and lost children.”

  Transcript

  Session #9

  “Thank you for seeing me again after my outburst the other week. I would’ve never touched you.”

  “I must admit that I did question whether or not I should take this appointment. The rage I witnessed in ­you … You realize it’s not normal? You have ­deep-­seated issues and coming here will only work if you’re willing to be honest about them.”

  “Yes, I am. Willing to be honest, I ­mean … I missed being able to talk to someone after you cut me off. I didn’t realize how much it was helping me work through things until I couldn’t anymore.”

  “Good. But another outburst like that one and we’re done.”

  “Understood.”

  “Your rage seemed to stem from my attempt to further our dialogue in relation to your mother. Are you ready to talk about her today?”

  “Yes.”

  [pause]

  “My ­mother … she was beautiful and sensual. No, that’s wrong. I should be honest. She wasn’t ­sensual—­she was an intensely sexual creature. At times, I think I was as hypnotized by her as my father.”

  37

  Murdered mothers and lost children.

  A huge generalization based on a single book.

  But looking back, I accepted that Paige had been right. The same theme ran through my three unpublished and shelved manuscripts, though I couldn’t see it in my current project. Maybe now that my mother had been found, I could lay those ghosts to rest.

  Leaving the balcony, I considered what I knew so far, then decided to see what I could dig up about Alice’s wife. Cora wasn’t much for social media and had no real online footprint other than what Alice had shared, and that one mention in the local news. No other references to the “mugging” where Cora’s hand had been crushed.

  Should I have given that information to the police? Possibly.

  But then I’d have had to tell them how I’d obtained the information, implicating Riki. ­Or …

  Frowning, I considered my options. I could just give the police bread crumbs to follow.

  What if those bread crumbs led to Riki?

  Guilt gnawed at me again, far more strongly than I might’ve expected. An assault conviction would ruin Riki’s military ­career—­after all, he had nothing to prove that he’d been blackmailed into doing violence.

  How could Cora have known it was him anyway?

  According to Riki, he’d been wearing a ­balaclava—­and since the police had never come after him, it was reasonable to assume Cora hadn’t known the identity of her attacker. It made even less sense that she’d have figured out my mother had been behind it.

  Then I remembered something Diana had said, about Alice confronting my mother.

  I saw her and Nina from the upstairs window out front and could swear they were ­arguing …

  If Alice knew, she could’ve told ­Cora … but at that point, Cora had still had one hand in a cast. The Jaguar had been a manual, not an ­automatic—­she couldn’t have driven it, not with how she’d been immobilized. That limitation didn’t apply to Alice.

  Was that what Elei had seen that night? Her daughter doing something?

  There was no way I was going to break Elei’s silence. Not when it came to her child. So it’d have to be Alice or Cora.

  Alice, I decided.

  Confident demeanor aside, there was something vulnerable about Alice. Something malleable.

  My phone pinged.

  A reminder: Session with Dr. Jitrnicka: 12 p.m.

  Good thing I’d input all these dates and times at some point, because I’d had no fucking idea this was coming up. On the verge of canceling, I thought of Paige’s reddened eyes and retreating form and decided to keep the appointment.

  Rising, I threw my empty Coke bottle in the recycling bin, then locked up my study. It struck me as ironic: no one was welcome inside my office, but here I was, about to go see a man whose job it was to get inside my mind.

  I had a moment at the front door when my gaze went to the coffee table and I had the feeling I was forgetting something, but then it was gone. Just another memory ghost.

  Dr. Jitrnicka’s office was decorated in tones of soothing gray.

  His ­middle-­aged receptionist welcomed me, offered me a cup of coffee. I accepted and sat there adding more caffeine to my system. The doctor had another exit from his consultation room to ensure clients didn’t cross paths, so I wasn’t surprised when his door opened ten minutes later to show his genial face.

  Round eyeglasses, white skin with no real tan, warm eyes of light brown, and a build so tall he had that slightly hunched posture really tall people sometimes get. As if they’ve had to bend over so often that the action’s become locked into their bones.

  His hair was a coarse strawberry blond that had a tendency to wave. It reminded me of the fields of overripe wheat my mother had described to me when I was a child.

  “I used to walk through those fields, running my fingers over the tops while the sun rose over the mountains, and the dupatta of my salwar kameez caught on the stalks.” In her voice had been an ache I
could almost touch. “Such beauty, Ari. Such peace. I’ve never known it since.”

  Dr. Jitrnicka’s voice was far more hearty and open. “Aarav. It’s good to see you.”

  “Doc.”

  “Come on in. I’ll carry your coffee for you.”

  Once we were settled, he, of course, bought up the discovery of my mother’s remains. “Are you up to talking about it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Truly talk, or just give canned responses designed to tell me nothing?”

  “You know me too well.” But I liked the man, was willing to talk. “My feelings ­are … complicated.”

  Dr. Jitrnicka leaned forward, nodded in encouragement, and we talked. It was soothing to do so with someone who had no stake in the game.

  The time passed fast.

  “How are you doing with your new regime of meds?” he asked toward the end, lines between his eyebrows. “I’m not happy with you changing prescriptions, but your neurologist was adamant it was necessary given the possible contraindications with your pain meds.”

  The jumble of pill bottles on the bedside table, the bottles I’d seen without seeing them.

  What exactly was I supposed to be on?

  Alice was driving out of the Cul-­de-­Sac as I drove in. She waved, but didn’t smile.

  The first thing I did once inside my room was look through the pill bottles I’d been ignoring while using up the pain meds. They had long names, but a couple of online searches and I knew their purpose: to balance the chemicals in my brain, ease depression.

  Frowning, I split the pills into two groups: prescribed ­pre-­accident and prescribed ­post-­accident. The latter, I spilled onto the bedspread, then began to count them. As I’d suspected, I hadn’t taken a single one of any of these.

  After I’d put those pills back in their bottles, I did the same check with the earlier prescription from Dr. Jitrnicka. It took a little work to calculate, but even adding in a buffer zone of a week in case I’d renewed the prescription early, it was clear I’d gone off my meds well before the accident.