Chapter 13
Aleki had left a duffel bag for me with someone he knew at the hospital, and shot me a text: Hey man, they said you were up in the ICU and I wasn’t sure if I could get in. My auntie JJ has your stuff with her at the nurse’s station in Maternity. Call me if you need anything—I mean it.
His aunt proved to be a matronly Samoan woman who gave me a silent pat on the hand when she handed over the battered duffel bag.
Aleki hadn’t just gotten me the T-shirts I’d asked for; he’d bought me a toothbrush, toothpaste, even a razor and some soap, along with a set of sweatpants, a hoodie, and a box of protein bars.
I couldn’t think of anyone in LA who’d have done this for me, who’d have been so thoughtful about it. And my family was based in the city.
The people I’d called friends…they’d gotten the gloss and shine of Tavish Advani, investment adviser and child of A-lister Audrey Advani. None of them knew me. Several had, however, picked up the phone when the Musgrave case hit the headlines.
False sympathy. An avaricious desire for drama and gossip.
Not their fault. I’d chosen to make friends with them, hadn’t I? I’d chosen to be the kind of man who surrounded himself with people who boosted my ego with their own status and glamour. Chasing love, my therapist had told me when I’d decided to go get my head shrunk after Jocelyn’s death.
“You really have to stop associating with vacuous people who say all the right things and fill up your days with meaningless company,” the bespectacled woman had advised.
“What you need is the opposite. Not a shallow crowd but one or two people who see you down to the bone and call you on your bullshit.”
She would’ve liked Diya…but she would’ve liked Susanne most of all.
Susanne, Jocelyn, Virna, all had been touchpoints in my life before the luminous supernova of Diya, but it was Susanne who’d left the biggest, deepest mark.
Remember me after I’m gone, Tav. Be disgraceful now and then in my memory.
I’d never forget the woman who’d been the making of me.
She’d be so disappointed in what I’d done, what I’d become after her death.
After sending Aleki a thank-you message, I found a room in a motel not far from the hospital.
While food wasn’t topmost in my mind, my body reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and it was now after dark.
Diya and I had been planning to have lunch together, picking our meal from the leftovers.
All we’d have had to do was put a few things on an oven tray, heat them up for ten minutes.
“I can’t wait! I saw an entire box of those tiny croissants filled with smoked chicken in the fridge.” Diya had rubbed her flat abdomen. “I hardly ate any of it last night because I didn’t want my stomach to start pooching. The waist of my lehenga was way too tight to forgive a few pastries.”
I’d rolled my eyes. “Baby, your idea of pooching is my idea of sexy.”
A scowl ruined by a smile before she’d run to sit on my lap and kiss me like it was the first time all over again. “Mmm, you taste like coffee.” Soft, breathy words. “I could eat you up.”
That was how we’d ended up back in bed, and she’d been late for her shower.
Had that been the moment that sealed her fate?
Because earlier, she’d talked about riding along with me to pick up the cakes, but after we’d made love in the morning sunlight that slanted in through the apartment’s triangular windows, she’d decided to stay home, do her hair routine.
I hadn’t even thought about it, had just told her I’d be back soon.
Now she lay fighting for her life.
My stomach lurched, but, aware I had to function if I wasn’t going to end up in an interrogation room, leaving Diya alone, I ordered delivery from a Thai place, then had a shower.
The food arrived ten minutes after I’d finished; I sat and ate it with methodical focus while skipping through the motel’s extensive list of channels until I finally hit on an evening news recap.
The fire was the lead item.
“Rotorua residents were shocked to hear of a fatal house fire in the Lake Tarawera community earlier today. The house belonged to husband and wife Drs. Rajesh and Sarita Prasad—two of the four partners of the Rotorua Fertility & Gynecological Group. While fire crews were able to stop the blaze from spreading to neighboring properties thanks in part to the Prasad property’s extensive lawns, the Prasad house is in ruins.
You can’t see the property from where I’m standing at the top of the drive, but we were able to get footage from the lake earlier, and as you can see, the damage is catastrophic. Neighbors report finding pieces of the home in their own yards, and we spotted debris floating in the lake.
The police have confirmed that they’re currently in the process of recovering human remains from the site, though it will take some time before they’re able to confirm the identities of the victims. However, from what the neighbors have told us, and what we’ve gleaned from the shocked and distraught staff at the fertility clinic, it’s highly likely that both doctors were inside at the time of the incident.
We’ve also been able to ascertain that two people did survive the fire and are in critical condition in Rotorua Hospital. Unconfirmed reports state that the two survivors showed signs of non-accidental injuries.”
“Sonia, do I have it correct, there are indications of foul play?”
“Yes, David. Police have announced a press conference tomorrow afternoon at four where they intend to share further information. For now, they’re focusing on identifying the victims and beginning the first stages of what is no doubt going to be a very complex investigation.”
There was nothing else of note in the rest of the report, but for the images of the house itself.
The reporter had found her way onto the lake in time to get footage of the home while it was still burning, then had stuck around to get shots of the blackened and ruined aftermath, with the fire hoses pumping out foam to dampen the last embers.
The house was gone. So was the garage apartment.
All the photos pinned to the huge corkboard in Diya’s suite in the main house.
All the tiny animal figurines she’d collected since girlhood.
All the black-and-white images from her maternal and paternal grandparents’ lives in Fiji that her mum was so protective of because they had no backups beyond physical negatives—which had also been in the house.
Gone.
A family’s entire history erased from existence.
I switched off the TV and tried to make some sort of sense of it all. I couldn’t, my head thick with foggy thoughts when I finally fell into a restless sleep.
—
Jocelyn sat across from me in the dream, a cigarette in her mouth as she dealt cards with the speed of a Vegas dealer.
Glossy black hair in a sleek bun, high cheekbones further defined by makeup, those striking green-black eyes that had first led a sixteen-year-old girl from her humble village in Henan Province, China, to the catwalks of Milan and Paris.
Then later, straight into back-to-back hit movies.
Even at sixty-one, she was considered a timeless beauty and still had a number of deals with companies that wanted her to wear their clothing and jewelry at various high-profile events.
“You don’t smoke those!” I blurted out. “You always say they’re cheap rubbish.”
“I borrowed it from some odious man, love. Every dealer should have a cigarette, after all.” She pretended to stub the unlit cigarette on the table before just leaving it there.
“How much do you want to bet?” Her accent was “European,” as she’d put it—a mélange of her original accent and all the other places she’d lived and worked.
“Calling it European sounds so much better than saying I’m a vocal mongrel,” she’d said with a laugh one night as we drank together.
Jocelyn Wai was known for her bawdy humor, but in private, she could go straight to crass.
I’d liked that about her, liked that she had no filter.
“Bet, Tavish,” she said again, drawing out my name as she always did until it sounded more like Ta-veesh. “Come on, this suey isn’t going to chop itself.”
Pure Jocelyn. Taking the racial epithets and comments that had been directed her way before power and fame and making them a part of her signature snark.
Too real. Too much.
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” I tried to push away from the table but the chair wouldn’t move.
“Oh really?” Jocelyn’s husky laughter drew my attention back to her. “Because of her? The love of your life? That insipid child? Oh, please. You were already bored of her before this unfortunate…accident. Such a shame she survived.”
“Shut up!” I flipped the table over, scattering the cards. “I love Diya!”
Jocelyn smiled. “You loved me, too, once.” Sorrow in her eyes. “What happened, Tavish? Did I get too old?” Her face began to crack and rot in front of me.
“Joss, no! Joss!”
But she wasn’t listening, her now-skeletal face focused on the cards she was dealing into empty air. “I screamed as I fell. The air cut like ice against my skin even though it was a warm night. Did you hear me?”
Flames licked around her, the scent of burned flesh in the air.
And suddenly, her face was Diya’s, the hands that dealt the cards coated in blood.
“Diya!” I jolted up in the flimsy motel bed, my scream yet reverberating in my throat and the sheet pasted to my sweat-soaked skin.
The clock blinked 3:07 in the morning.
The time of Jocelyn’s fall.
When even LA had been silent and quiet, no one awake to hear that scream.
“I wasn’t there,” I reminded myself. “I was at Danny’s apartment, crashed out on his couch because we’d tied one on that night.
” My heart continued to thunder. “I wasn’t there.
” It was a mantra I’d repeated over and over while waiting for Detective Gina Garcia to call me back to the station for an interview.
Hands shaky, I shoved off the sheet and walked into the bathroom.
The compulsion to check my buried offshore account using my phone was almost overwhelming.
That was my one rule: to never ever access that account using any device that could be traced back to me.
Only once I’d successfully maneuvered the money through various channels would it be safe for me to touch.
Until then, it might as well be poison.
I stepped into the shower, turned the water to cold.
“Fuck.” The shock snapped me out of the last hazy pieces of the nightmare, shoving my brain from the obsessive line of thought that could land me in a prison cell. “I didn’t kill Jocelyn,” I said aloud. “I did not kill Jocelyn. I loved Jocelyn.”
But not as much as I loved Diya.
I’d never loved anyone as much as I loved Diya.
Not even Susanne.