What might a hopeful woman do to get rid of an inconvenient wife?

36

I see. And I apologize for this but I need to ask—what about your mother’s lover, the one uncovered by your investigator? Do you have any idea who it might’ve been?”

I considered what to say. Hemi had admitted they’d had an affair, but Hemi apparently also had a rock-solid alibi, and I didn’t want to send the police down blind alleys with time-wasting theories. On the other hand, given the way Hemi had spoken about my mother, he deserved a little pain. “Hemi Henare.”

Detective Regan sucked in a breath. “That’s a strong accusation against a man beloved by the community for all that he does.”

I wondered how much of the bluster was real, and how much an act to egg me on. “I heard them talking—my mother and Hemi.”

“You heard a lot of things,” Neri said without inflection.

“I was a nosy little shit, if that’s what you mean.” I grinned. “I spent a lot of time at home in my early teens. I didn’t have many friends to hang out with.” Riki had been the closest.

Shoving away the noxious burn in my gut at what I’d done to him, I said, “Also, my home was a fucking soap opera. I kept my ears open.” Pausing, I thought: to hell with it. I threw Hemi all the way in the deep end. “Hemi also had a gambling problem then. He got himself into a bad financial hole.”

Regan was a master at keeping his reactions tempered, but I caught the way his pen skipped a beat as he made a note. “If I could take you back to the events of that night,” he said smoothly, “was anyone else in the house? Didn’t you have a live-in maid at that point?”

“Lily, yes.” Knowing hands on my skin, a kiss pressed to my nape. “But she was let go two weeks prior to that night.”

“Let go?” Neri zeroed in on my phrasing. “By your mother?”

I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t throw Lily to the sharks. “Like your colleague said, I was a kid. I just know she was there one day, gone the next.”

Neri’s expression said she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t push the point.

“Other than your father’s secretary at the time, and Mr. Henare,” Regan said, “were there any others who might’ve felt they had a claim on either your mother or father?”

“Adrian Black.” I hadn’t forgotten him. “He was my mother’s pet for a while. Who knows what he thought was going to come out of it.” Nina Rai would’ve never thrown in her lot with a pretty young fitness instructor.

Not after she’d grown to like wealth and power and privilege.

“I was poor once, Ari. It sucks.” A kiss to my cheek. “When you’re poor, people can buy and sell you like you’re a thing. Oh, we give it other names. Shaadi is one of them, but in the end, it’s a transaction. These days, I make the transactions.”

“On another matter.” Detective Regan was looking at his notebook as he spoke. “You have a motorcycle license?”

“Yes. Haven’t used it for a while though.”

“Do you know Shane Kent?”

A shiver along my spine, a sudden cold on my skin. “Shane? That’s a blast from the past. Yes, I know him—or I did. He’s the son of a friend of my father’s. A couple of—no, three years older than me.” And coincidentally, the young male I’d seen locked in an embrace with Riki. “We haven’t really kept in touch. Why’re you asking about him?”

Detective Regan looked straight at me. “According to Mr. Kent, his family asked yours if you’d look after a number of valuable items they’d shipped to New Zealand prior to their return from a posting abroad. That included a Ducati motorcycle.”

Something scraping along my upper back, heavy metal pressing down on flesh.

Shaking off the eerie sensations, I thought of the gleaming black machine with blue accents that haunted my dreams. “Yeah, the bike used to be parked in the garage next to my mother’s Jaguar.”

“You’ve told us that you didn’t go out that night.”

Rain dripping down my neck in clammy runnels, pelting against the visor until I could barely see, the road a shimmer of light.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“If you’re asking me if I drove out and killed my mother for money, the answer is no. My mother set up an account for me when I was a baby, and she talked my father into seeding it with fifty thousand dollars. Then it just became easier for my father to give me money for birthday and Christmas gifts, and my mother would put money into it, too.” It had been a way to funnel funds away from my father’s eyes. “I had a hundred and fifty grand by the time she disappeared.”

Neri’s sudden stiffness gave away the truth; they hadn’t known that choice piece of information. She was young, Sefina Neri, hadn’t yet learned to wear the masks I switched out like shirts. Regan though . . . yes, he had masks of his own.

“Also,” I drawled with a cocky smile, “if I was going to kill a parent, I’d have killed my asshole father rather than my mother.”

When Neri nearly smiled, I had to fight not to clench my hand.

Did she see through the arrogance to the black fear?

I funneled my agitation into action, pushing back the sleeves of my fine forest-green sweater.

“We’re not accusing you of anything, Aarav.” Regan’s eyes were pure kindness now. “We’d just like to hear how the Ducati ended up damaged badly enough that your father bought Mr. Kent a new one.”

My mind raced, my pulse threatening to join in, but my brain had always been my biggest asset. “I was sixteen,” I pointed out. “I didn’t have a license.”