Chapter 38
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Finally pinned down that two-year gap in Tavish Advani’s love résumé. Man wasn’t dating. At all. Grief from Jocelyn Wai’s death? Possible—though from all appearances, they didn’t seem to have a true-love type of deal. Not like he apparently had with Susanne Winthorpe.
I just got off the phone with her best friend, one Cecilia “Cici” Summers.
She couldn’t say enough good things about Tavish.
“I teased her about dating someone so young, but when it came down to it, Sue was right—he made her final months so happy. She loved being with him, though in the end she was sorry for ever having come into his life. He took it so hard, you see. Was broken up about her loss. She’d started it all as a lark, a little hot fling, as she’d say, but she ended up becoming his first real love. ”
I didn’t know how to bring up how quickly he’d moved on, but I didn’t have to.
Cici did it herself. “That terrible relationship he was in with Jocelyn Wai? All the partying and drinking? Grief, that’s what it was.
He was looking for Susanne in her, poor boy—had no idea that Jocelyn was a piranha.
We didn’t run in the same circles, but I heard through the grapevine what she was like—a hard, hard woman, that one, taking young lovers and using them up, then throwing them away. ”
Never thought of Tavish Advani as the victim; Cici is right about Jocelyn’s track record.
Her boyfriend before Advani was a B-list actor in his twenties who died of a cocaine overdose during their relationship (though she was out of the country at the time).
That type of toxic relationship, though, it can lead to violence.
Gina’s a good cop—if she thinks Advani had something to do with Wai’s death, I believe her. Knowing something and being able to prove it in court are two different things—especially if you have a DA who doesn’t like to file anything but slam dunks.
Cici states that Advani always comes to the memorial dinner she holds for her friend at a “glitzy place Sue would’ve loved.” She also has no qualms about Susanne’s final days. “Sue died as she lived—on her terms. Never doubt that, Detective.”
Susanne’s niece—Grace Green—had nothing bad to say about Tavish, either, and she was in the thick of it during Susanne’s decline, literally lived in a self-contained suite in the same apartment.
She was also adamant that Tavish never made any moves on her. I’m not sure I believe her. I might pay her a visit in person, see if she’ll open up further.