mind. That position was permanently occupied by a woman called Nina. “Yes.”
“She had to leave to pick up her daughter from school. She wasn’t feeling well, poor thing.”
I frowned. It was rare for Pari to miss school. The last time around, it had taken a case of bronchitis. I hoped it wasn’t that serious this time.
“Is this it?” Pink-haired pixie pointed at the plate and the bottle of Coke. Condensation ran down its sides.
“Yes, thanks.” I led her out and to the stairs.
She politely kept to my pace instead of racing upstairs.
“You can leave it on the coffee table in the living area.” I wasn’t about to invite her into my bedroom, and I made sure to stay out in the hallway while she was in the living area.
Once she was out, I thanked her again.
“No problem.” She lifted a little on her socked feet before heading back to the stairs. As she made her way down them, pigtails bouncing, I thought of Lily. She’d been around the same age when she’d come into this house, but she’d never been this . . . unbruised. Life had already left a mark on Lily long before she met the Rai family—but we hadn’t exactly helped her.
I decided to settle in the lounge.
First I had a hit of Coke. Then I began to jot down notes.
Where’s the money?
I circled that question multiple times. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was a lot. And while I now had an idea of how Lily might’ve financed the purchase of the café, I didn’t have confirmation. There was also Adrian, with his sudden acquisition of a gym. Where did a personal trainer of bored rich women get that kind of money? I hadn’t forgotten the Henare family’s miraculous reversal in fortunes, either.
There might be no paper trail that proved financial problems, but there wouldn’t be, would there? Not if they’d fortuitously come into a quarter of a million dollars.
Paul and Margaret didn’t need money, but hadn’t I heard whispers of some kind of problem with Isaac’s property? It had been because of his second divorce—that wife, I was fairly sure, had taken him to the cleaners.
Check Isaac’s financial situation at the time.
I flipped back to the previous day’s notes.
Ask Mia and Beau if they saw anything that night.
The note was in my handwriting. The thing was, I couldn’t remember writing it.
My temple throbbed.
Putting the notebook aside, I just sat there and tried to breathe. What medication had I taken yesterday? Anything that might screw with my head? Yeah, probably. I had to be more careful there. But for now, I had to take the migraine stuff. I could feel the black waves of pain hovering in the distance, just out of sight.
I got up, grabbed the notebook, and managed to get to my room and onto my bed.
After finding the migraine pills, I let them melt on my tongue, allowing my brain to wander at the same time. I didn’t remember closing my eyes and surrendering to the darkness. I dreamed of a motorcycle skidding on a wet road, of rain hitting the visor of a helmet, of cold hands gripping tight to the handlebars as the roar of the engine was swallowed up by the storm.
My throat was raw from shouting and my entire body so wet it was as if my bones were swimming. The light from the motorcycle reflected off a parked car, and I saw the round headlights of an oncoming one through the thick sheets of rain. The motorcycle threatened to skid . . . and then it was skidding, right into the path of the oncoming car.
32
My eyes snapped open, my heart pounding as hard as the rain on tarmac.
Sweat pasted my shirt to my back.
Sitting up, I grabbed the bottle of water on my bedside table and chugged it down.
Fucking pills.
I almost dropped the water bottle as I went to put it back down, my hand was shaking so hard. Managing the act at last, I sat there and stared at the painting on the opposite wall. It was one of those abstract pieces with lots of angles and lines. My mother had given it to me as a birthday present.
“You can’t carry wealth in diamonds, so I’ll give it to you in art. This is worth ten thousand dollars.”
I hadn’t been impressed by the present, not when what I’d actually wanted was a top-of-the-line computer system, but I’d put up the painting among the