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)
“Yes, and I told Aunt Susanne he was too young and she was being predatory.” Grace wanted to laugh as the detective’s face fell again at her switching around of the players. “I was right—and wrong. He was very vulnerable—but he was also very able to handle my aunt, in a good way.”
What she didn’t add was that she was sure he’d learned to be that tough on the inside due to his mother. Audrey Advani might be America’s favorite siren, but Grace had always felt as if it was all an act, a thread of meanness beneath the surface. “My aunt and Tavish had fun together.”
The detective’s eyes narrowed. “You’re awfully interested in defending him.”
“You think I have a crush on him?” Hugging herself, she said, “I’m gay, Detective.” Hard even now to say those words aloud. “It took a letter from Aunt Susanne—she’d put it in with the deeds to the properties—for me to admit that to myself. My mom, Aunt Susanne’s sister, died when I was a teen, and my paternal family is very conservative. I grew up being taught that it was a sin to be gay.”
She rubbed her hands over her arms, even though she knew the cold was inside her. “I’d tell you if he tried anything on me, but the truth is that Tavish and I still meet to talk about Aunt Susanne. We both loved her.”
He had more questions for her, and none of her answers seemed to satisfy him. When he did finally give up and leave, she took a few minutes to walk around the snowy garden on her own…and she thought about how Aunt Susanne had made her leave the apartment the week of her death, how she’d booked Grace an all-expenses-paid tropical vacation because Grace “needed to get out of the sickroom and drink some margaritas”…and how she’d ordered herself a respite nurse from a service.
She’d made sure neither Tavish nor Grace would find her.
But Grace had found something else. A single tiny pill on the floor of the condo after she was permitted to go in to fetch an outfit for her aunt to be cremated in—Aunt Susanne had left instructions on what it was to be, of course.
Grace had been crying when her eye caught on the pill lying on the carpet just under the bed. She was a senior nurse, one with a degree in pharmacology. She’d recognized the pill and she also knew that there was no way Susanne could have gotten her hands on it herself—her aunt had lived in a world without those connections.
Susanne Winthorpe wouldn’t even have known how to get her hands on cocaine, much less something this exotic.
If the cops had discovered this pill or anything connected to it, the coroner wouldn’t have ruled her death a simple suicide so quickly, with no autopsy necessary. Which meant Aunt Susanne had made sure to get rid of any evidence before she ingested the pills…except for this one that had fallen and become lost in the rich dark of the carpet.
The pills in the bottles found around Aunt Susanne’s body? Theater to cover the actual drug she’d taken to die.
Grace had walked out with the pill, later dropped it in a public toilet and flushed it away.
Grace and Tavish, they had a bond nothing could break.
Not after those hours they’d spent together in Singapore as Susanne screamed in pain and the night wouldn’t end.
Chapter 41
Ajay turned the half-empty cup around and around in his hand. “I think Rajesh uncle punished Bobby in other ways, too. But I don’t know the specifics.”
“Look, Ajay, I don’t know if I should say this…”
The other man looked up, his eyes shiny behind his spectacles. “It’s okay. I know Bobby hurt Shumi.”
My heart kicked.
Lifting a hand, Ajay dashed away the tear that had begun to fall. “I tried to talk to her when I noticed bruises on her the last time she visited us without him, but she said it was fine, that I had nothing to worry about. She was always so conscious of not damaging the Prasad family’s reputation. They were so important in the Indian community. Everyone looked up to them.”
…a good family…No reason to ruin their name.
“At least you tried.” Quite unlike Kamal and everyone else involved in covering up Ani’s murder.
“One time,” Ajay added, “we all went camping together when Bobby was maybe sixteen? Shumi fell down a gravel embankment. Scraped up her legs, bruises everywhere. She said she wasn’t paying attention and slipped, but I know she was out walking with him. I saw them leave together—I might’ve been a little kid, but I know what I saw.”
“She still didn’t tell on him? Even though she could’ve been badly injured?”
Ajay shook his head. “I don’t know the hold he had on her, but she really didn’t see any other men or boys. Always just him. Even after he got in trouble when he was sixteen, and my parents weren’t sure about him despite his family, she stuck to him.”