I frowned, my fingers tight on the can of Coke. “Surely she wasn’t saying that Bobby killed her daughter because of a summer fling? They were kids.”
“Most people said that privately, but no one said it to the lady’s face—I mean, she was grieving, right? Anyway, she said that her daughter was on the swim team, the best swimmer of the entire group, and there was no way she’d have drowned unless someone helped her.”
Finishing off his soda, he crushed the can in one hand. “That television interview, her husband sat there mostly silent, but she cried and said how the police had hushed it all up because the boy’s parentswere important doctors and she was a checkout operator, her husband a mechanic.”
Richard shook his head. “I mean, it was crazy talk, but that’s probably what the cops have dug up.” His expression grew dark. “Easier to blame a dead man than look for whatever psycho it was who went into that house and did that.”
I nodded, but my mouth was dry, my heart racing. That was two dead children I’d now connected to Bobby.
“Sorry, man, I have to get back to the job.”
“Right, sure. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.” I chewed over his words as we walked back to where we’d parked. “One more thing, Richard, and this is really awkward…but Shumi’s family is saying Bobby abused her.”
Richard’s jaw worked. “He would never lay a finger on her. He was super traditional in that way—that the man is the one who looks after his woman. Back in high school, he used to be a favorite with the girls for how he helped them carry their books or opened the doors.
“We’d laugh at him, but he’d grin and say, ‘You suckers aren’t getting kissed under the bleachers, are you?’ ” A sudden smile. “He was right. He had so many girlfriends all through school.”
“Not Shumi?”
“Her parents sent her to a girls’ school about half an hour from our coed one, and he was a teenage boy. Never cheated on her after they did officially hook up at uni, though.”
I wasn’t so sure of Bobby’s fidelity given everything else I’d discovered about him, but Richard had already been confronted by too many uncomfortable truths. I waved him off with, “I think I’ll walk along here a bit longer.” The surreal landscape with its whiff of sulfur and deadly hazards suited my mood.
Finishing off my Coke, I dropped the can in the trash before I began to walk.
When my phone rang a minute later, I glanced down to see my lawyer’s name. “What’s Ackerson saying now?” I asked Ngata when I answered.
“I’ve got sources, and those sources are telling me she’s attempting to request all kinds of financial records about you from the US. Is there something I should know?”
My stomach twisted, sweat breaking out along my spine. “I used to have a gambling problem,” I said. “Pissed away everything I earned and took out a mortgage on my condo—when it sells, I’ll only clear a hundred grand.” No point hiding that when Ackerson had to have received the tip from Baxter in LA.
“But I’ve been clean since before I met Diya.” Mostly because my father had made it plain that the cops would otherwise use my addiction to convict me of murder.
Two very rich women are dead under suspicious circumstances, and you’re bleeding money, he’d said.I’d fucking convict you, too. Shut. It. Down.
Even though the program to which I’d admitted myself was top-of-the-line, it hadn’t been easy to fight the urge…but then I’d met Diya, and she’d become my new addiction.
I was fine with that—she was the kind of addiction who could get a man through life.
“This isn’t good, Tavish,” Ngata said. “It just increases what Ackerson sees as your financial motive. Talk to your father, get him to transfer you a wad of cash. No way for anyone to know if it’s a gift or a loan—and it’s an indication of your resources.”
“I saved Diya,” I reminded him. “Don’t let Ackerson forget that.”
“She’s going to say you were forced into it because of the neighbor who was with you.”
I fisted my hand. “I can’t wait for my wife to wake up and tell that cop she’s full of shit.”
“I hope for your sake that one of the women does wake up. Call your father.”
Frustrated and angry after he hung up, I strode back along the pathway while smoke curled up from the stone all around me, a small private hell.
Ani.
Rhiannon.
Shumi.
Three women Bobby had hurt. Two dead. One barely clinging to life. If those three existed, so would others. And now, thanks to Richard, I knew of one woman who would’ve tried to keep track of the boy she blamed for the murder of her child.
