“The best.” I’d done my research before I hired him. “He never flat-out said my mother was dead, but I could see it on his face.” Still, I’d hoped. “If nothing else, it might help you confirm that she died the night she disappeared.”
“Do you have any issue with us talking to the investigator directly?”
“No. I’ll tell him to cooperate.”
“Thank you.”
I should’ve ended things on that polite note, but I opened my mouth and said, “Why did no one look into my mother’s disappearance at the time? Was it just because of the money?”
A pause before she said, “That, added to no missing person report from next of kin, and a detective on the verge of retirement. He wrote up the allegation of stealing, noted it as a nonviolent domestic matter, and shelved it.”
Her tone was professional, but I could hear the anger below it. So I let it go. Because that officer’s mistakes weren’t hers to wear. When I asked for more information about the case, all she’d say was, “It’s too early.”
At this point, I even believed her.
After hanging up, I called the investigator and told him of the discovery of my mother’s remains.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I’ve sent your report to the police. They might give you a call.”
“Sure. You want me to tell them everything, even what’s not in the report?”
The world went motionless.
14
What’s not in the report?”
A pause. “Hey, you asked me not to put it in there.”
My pulse turned into a throbbing beat on my tongue. “Remind me.”
“Sure. Not like I could forget the case—usually, I’m tailing cheating spouses or sniffing after money going where it shouldn’t. This one was different.”
I gritted my teeth to keep from snapping at him to get to the point.
“Afternoon before she disappeared,” he said at last, “Nina Rai checked into a hotel room with a man. She and the man both came out of it alive, and were seen kissing by hotel staff before they parted in the parking lot. Tall, dark-haired guy. I was never able to ID him. All hotel security footage long since deleted.”
Tall, dark-haired.
The description fit so many people she’d known. “Yes, go ahead and share the information with the cops.” That my mother’d had an illicit lover wasn’t exactly a shock.
“Ari, my Ari, you know what your father’s like.” Lounging beside the pool, but not in the little red bikini that day. In a black halter-neck one-piece that she’d paired with a white sunhat that featured a black ribbon around the brim, and huge Jackie O sunglasses, sunshine gilding her skin. “You know not to listen to what he says.”
“It’s not true then?”
She’d taken a sip of the vodka martini I’d prepared for her, just the way she liked. “Would you blame me if it was?” Sliding off the sunglasses, she’d looked at me with eyes dark and liquid. “For finding happiness somewhere else?”
“Why don’t you guys just get divorced? Half my friends’ parents are divorced. No biggie.”
“It’s complicated, mera bachcha.” A kiss pressed to my cheek as she called me her child with so much love in her voice, a waft of perfume that stole my breath.
At fifteen, I hadn’t had the words to explain my tormented confusion. My mother had hated my father and vice versa, and yet they’d refused to part. Instead, they’d just found new ways to hurt each other.
“Was there anything else you didn’t put in the report?” I asked the PI, wondering why I’d asked him to omit the hotel finding.
“No, that was it. Guess it was the only thing you didn’t want your father to see.”
I sat there long after I’d hung up, while the darkness pressed against the glass of the balcony doors. Had I sent the file to my father? I couldn’t remember, and when I hunted through my archived emails, I found no indication of a send. I’d probably changed my mind, not wanting to tip my hand when I had so little.
I pressed at the throbbing in my temple.
Not a migraine, just the usual stress headache. I self-medicated with candy from the desk drawer I kept full of various forms of sugar. A piece of fudge, half a bar of dark chocolate, and I felt better. But my head was too full to think straight. So of course I decided to mess with my manuscript.
Several hours later, I was lying awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling, and thinking of a beautiful woman who’d been