With so much bushland around us where the dog could dig a hole to do its business if its owners couldn’t be arsed cleaning up after it, there really was no excuse to befoul neighboring properties. It didn’t help that the dog was a badly trained menace. Add all that to some of its owners’ other behavior, and Brett and Veda were disliked by everyone in the Cul-de-Sac. Except maybe by Mellie.
Isaac’s current wife was a dimpled delight who seemed to find the entire world a joyous place. Of course, I was of the opinion that Mellie’s “sneaky cigarettes” had nothing to do with tobacco. As far as I was concerned, only someone who was as high as a kite would strip naked then dance in their backyard in the middle of winter.
“Didn’t Calvin report them about the dog?” I put down my fork.
“Council officer came, gave them a fine, and they didn’t give a toss. I have a mind to report them to the Law Society.”
“Not sure allowing your dog to do his business where he likes will be of interest to the Law Society.”
My father gave me a strange smile. “You’d be surprised. The Fitzpatricks aren’t holding pot parties every weekend anymore, are they?”
I’d forgotten that. Unlike with Mellie’s amusing shenanigans today, “old” people zoning out on pot hadn’t been of much interest to my teen self. But my father was right—the weekly debaucheries had come to an abrupt halt some months before my mother’s disappearance.
Her disappearance was the defining point in my life. I remembered the time before and after with crystal clarity. But I didn’t recall the exact date the parties had stopped because I’d never paid that much attention to them in the first place.
But it reminded me of something else. “Didn’t their old dog . . .” I left the sentence unfinished, even though Pari appeared distracted by the task she’d set herself of carefully cutting the skin off her piece of chicken.
My father nodded, confirming he remembered the dog had been found run over on the street. “It was half senile by then anyway.”
We didn’t speak further until Shanti had hustled Pari from the table.
My father leaned back in his chair, an after-dinner tumbler of cognac in hand. “Police tell you anything else? I had a missed call from the woman cop, but didn’t get a chance to reply.”
I shared the confirmation about my mother not being the driver, watching him with laser focus the entire time.
His fingers tightened around the tumbler. “No one could’ve known she took that money. Even I didn’t know until twelve hours after she walked out. And I searched the house top to bottom. Only place it could’ve been was in the car.”
I had hazy memories of him swearing as he’d torn the house apart. With my leg still hurting from that injury, I hadn’t helped—but I hadn’t minded when he’d come into my room and turned it inside out. Desperate for proof that my mother hadn’t left me, I’d wanted him to find the money. “You tracked down her safety-deposit box, too.”
“At least I got back a few diamonds. She had nowhere else she could’ve stashed the money.”
“She trusted Diana.”
“I thought of that—but Diana would’ve come forward when I laid the theft charge. No way she’d have allowed Nina to be smeared.”
He was right; Diana just wasn’t the kind to allow something like that to go unchallenged. And if my mother had given her the money for safekeeping, then hadn’t contacted her as agreed, she’d definitely have kicked up a stink.
“Who do you think would have had reason to take the money? Hypothetically speaking.”
“Your mother was a slut.” Bullets shaped like words. “You knew it, too. No point pussyfooting around it.”
I said nothing, just waited to see where my father intended to go with this.
“She probably hooked up with the wrong person and he killed her for the money she stole.” A shrug. “Don’t ask me, boy.”
Boy.
A signal that I was to end the conversation and go back to my place in the world. Far beneath my father. I thought about confronting him again about the scream I’d heard that night, but knew better than to do so without something to use as leverage.
Ishaan Rai hadn’t become such a successful businessman by crumpling in the face of challenge. He’d lie without hesitation, tell me I’d imagined it—because what proof did I have aside from a decade-old memory?