Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
The house seemed to whisper in melancholy as I closed and locked the door behind me. As if it knew that its owners were never again coming home except as ashes. “Diya will come back,” I promised the spirit of the house. “She’ll open you up and let the sea winds sweep in.”
With that, I turned toward the banana grove, intending to hand Ravi the key.
The wind chime began to play.
I froze, staring at the unmoving leaves of the mango tree, and of the banana palms. There was no breeze to move the slender metal tubes that hung from the chime, not even the whisper of one. The morning was a still photograph broken only by the metallic shimmer of the chime dancing…and the faint echo of a little girl’s laughter in the air.
That’s Ani. That little baby never left here. I think she plays under the mango tree.
Chapter 36
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Jan 8
Time: 20:11
What interests me about Susanne Winthorpe is that, according to an off-the-record chat with her oncologist, her cancer wasn’t terminal, but she went from diagnosis to death in under a year. She did refuse treatment, but even without treatment, she should’ve had a good couple of years at least.
The Singaporean authorities ruled her death a suicide, and if there was an autopsy, I haven’t yet been able to get hold of the report. Whatever they found in an autopsy—if there was one—it didn’t change their conclusions. And I can’t run any further tests. Her body’s gone, cremated as per her wishes.
How hard would it be to find a way to poison an already dying woman? Weak immune system, probably not preparing her own food. And Advani was staying with her for the last months of her life. On the flip side, why take the risk if you knew she was a dying woman anyway?
Impatience might be the answer. He was barely twenty-two when she died. Could be he got sick of being stuck at an invalid’s side, got sick of pretending to care. He’d already missed his final year of university—though apparently he managed to do enough courses remotely that he did get his degree only six months after he should have. Not the same as partying it up with your class, though, is it?
So maybe there was resentment there, too.
I asked her doctor if he had any of her blood or tissues left, anything on which we could run further tests, but no luck. He barely saw her after her diagnosis—just for a bit of pain medication and that was about it.
End result is that I still have nothing except some disturbing circumstantial evidence.
Susanne Winthorpe (Advani aged 19.5–22): Died by suicide. Would’ve otherwise died of natural causes (untreated lung cancer) per the official record.
Jocelyn Wai (22.5–23.6): Dead of a fall ruled accidental due to drug intoxication (a mix of ecstasy and alcohol), her case closed with nothing in it to force a reopening.
Virna Musgrave (25.7–26.2): Dead. Vehicle tampered with; likely homicide.
That gap of over two years between Jocelyn and Virna worries me. Who haven’t we found? Who else is dead?
Time: 23:17
I forgot about Susanne Winthorpe’s niece. The lawyer mentioned her, said she acted as Winthorpe’s nurse at the end—and that she appeared close to Tavish. Fuck, I hope the woman is alive.
Chapter 37
My phone rang on the way to the airport. The name on the screen read Ackerson.
I ignored it, not ready to talk to her when—in the practical sense—I was in no better a position than when I’d sat across from her in that interrogation room. Ani’s story couldn’t help Diya until she woke up and was ready to talk about it, and it couldn’t help me at all.
As for Shumi…was it possible that after Bobby had attacked everyone with such murderous violence, she’d break, tell the truth? Who knew? Right now, there wasn’t any way to know if she’d even wake up. I could only hope she did. Because her memories of Ani’s murder mattered.
Three years older than Diya, she’d have been eight at the time, old enough to remember all of it. Even if she refused to talk of what had happened at the Lake Tarawera house, if she admitted what Bobby had done to Ani, it’d shine a spotlight on his violent nature. It would also put this tragedy in the territory of an annihilation driven by old emotion and old secrets, instead of a cold-blooded crime with a financial motive that put me in the crosshairs.
I squeezed the steering wheel in lieu of smashing my head against it.
I’d been such a self-destructive idiot all those years after Susanne’s death! What had I seen in the dopamine rush of gambling away every dollar that had come into my hands? It’d be easy to keep on blaming Jocelyn for the part she’d played in dragging me deeper and deeper into that world—because she had, oh, she had. Witty, sarcastic, fascinating Joss had wanted a fellow addict at her side, one she could control.