“Baxter didn’t strike me as the kind who’d toe the company line.” In fact, he’d struck me as the exact opposite—a dogged cop incapable of letting a case go.
“Might be he wasn’t clued in. Now he is.” A shrug I could hear in his voice. “Regardless of what Baxter does or doesn’t know, the hierarchy will understand that the instant I file a case, the media will descend on them like rabid dogs.
“No matter if the fund is a wholly separate entity from the force, Musgrave’s donation just has the rotten smell of corruption about it—and you know how popular the department is after that gangland case that fell apart.” I could almost hear his satisfied smile. “I’ll email you a list of non-extradition countries anyway, just in case.”
Pressing my head back against the headrest, I smiled at the inside of the car roof. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Don’t say I never do anything for you.” Another drag of the cigarette. “You need money?”
“No.” I still had twenty-five grand in my official accounts, mostly thanks to my father forcing me to go cold turkey on the gambling after Virna’s death.
That first million I’d won? My salary? The balance in my main savings account?
Gone.
Aside from the twenty-five thousand—a remnant of my final big win—all that remained was the money I’d taken from Audrey. And by the time my father forced me to quit,nottouching that money had been taking its toll on me in sleepless nights drenched in sweat, the need to be back at the tables a constant gnawing in my bones. His intervention still wouldn’t have worked if I hadn’t met Diya…if she hadn’t become my new addiction.
“Your mother called.” Another drag of his cigarette. “They’re filming the new show out in the desert. Says the sand gets between her teeth, in her hair, on her lipstick.” When I stayed silent, he said, “Raja’s boy is babbling now. Pretty sure he almost said ‘Anana’ the other day. That’s me.”
My lips curved, my eyes on the dark gray of the parking lot. “How’s the pregnancy going?” The second pregnancy so soon after the first had been a surprise, but Raja and Elizabeth seemed happy with it.
But my father paused. “Fine, I guess. I’ll find that lawyer for you.”
I didn’t luxuriate in the hint of trouble in paradise after my father hung up. My brother might be Audrey’s narcissistic reflection, but I liked his wife and my nephew. Elizabeth’s only flaw was that she loved Raja.
I drove out of the parking garage.
Rain hit the windshield soon afterward, blurring the golden light thrown by the streetlamp under which I’d stopped when the traffic lights up ahead went red. In the hazy light, I glimpsed the ghostly image of a stunning woman with high cheekbones and lush lips, her hair a wavy mass of ebony against skin that would make Snow White jealous, and her curves legendary.
Even more legendary was her sultry voice.
Audrey used to sing Raja to sleep even when he was eleven or twelve, while I listened with my ear pressed to the wall between our bedrooms. And she used that same voice to campaign for the care of abused and abandoned children.
“No child should have to live without love,” she’d said in one interview. “Every child should know they’re treasured, their dreams important.”
I guess all that goodness got cloying after a while and she’ddecided that not loving me would be her outlet. It had been an active thing, my mother’s lack of love for her second-born, not simple emotional neglect.
“I should’ve never given in to Anand’s begging and had you,” she’d told me while doing her makeup one day when I must’ve been seven at most, her tone offhand. “Raja was all I ever wanted or needed. We had five years as the perfect little family before you came along.”
The wipers swiped back and forth as the traffic started to move again, and I allowed them to swipe away the memories of my strange mirage of a childhood. Smiling appearances before the media, my mother’s arms around both her children.
Those photo ops had been some of the only times she’d touched me.
But Audrey Advani no longer mattered. Not when the love of my life lay in the hospital after using what might’ve been her last moments of consciousness on this earth to give me a message I couldn’t decipher.
Ani…they said…about Ani…not…
Chapter 24
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Dec 28
Time: 01:02
Everyone’s on vacation and too busy to reply to my requests, but I have managed to confirm that Susanne Winthorpe is dead.
Christ.
