Quiet in Her Bones Singh, Nalini (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖

It was time to find Aurelie Reddy.

49

The school bus hadn’t yet arrived when I found a parking spot behind a couple of other cars. I knew, because parked across the road was a Mercedes painted a bilious shade of pastel mauve.

I almost laughed.

The woman who sat inside had a sleek and groomed blonde bob, and was focused on her phone. She jumped when I rapped my knuckles on her window. I was expecting that wary caution women display when startled by strange men, but her pupils flared with recognition. Throat moving, she swallowed before lowering her window.

She wore a V-­neck merino sweater in frosted pink, a ­heart-­shaped pendant of pink sapphire sitting on her breastbone. “What do you want?” ­Bitten-­out words, her head swiveling this way and that to take in the other waiting parents. “That was my past life. I’m happy now. Please leave me alone.” Desperation edged out what had started off as righteous anger.

“I just want to talk.”

Her breath came short and sharp, the black of her pupils almost swallowing the blue of her irises. “I’ll meet you later. I promise.”

I could’ve let it go, but I knew I’d never have a better advantage than at this instant, when she was so panicked. “Or I could sit in your passenger seat for ten minutes and be gone before anyone gets nosy and comes asking. Just pretend I’m a relative of your husband’s.”

Skin paling at the reference to her husband, she shot another desperate look up and down the street. “Okay, fine.” The locks disengaged.

She didn’t comment on my leg when I entered, her focus no doubt on getting me the hell away from her as soon as possible. “Please.” Her voice trembled, her perfect makeup threatening to crack. “I finally have a good life. Don’t screw that up.”

“All I want to know is what you were doing in the Cul-­de-­Sac the night my mother disappeared.”

All remaining blood drained from her face. “Oh God, oh God.” The blue shimmered. “I should’ve never gone. I was so young and so stupid.” Scrabbling at the little box of tissues she kept in the cup holder, she dabbed at her eyes. “I can’t cry. The children.”

“Just answer the question and I’m gone.”

She was breathing so fast I worried she’d hyperventilate herself into a faint, but she took a couple of deep gulps of air and got to it. “I was planning to knock on your front door and confront your mother, tell her that Ishaan and I were in love and that she wasn’t being fair to him by holding him to the marriage.”

Her laughter was jerky and brittle. “He played me, and he played me good. I really believed we were ­star-­crossed lovers being kept apart by a vindictive wife who was using his son against him.”

“But you never came to the door.”

“I knew about the corporate ­dinner-­party they were attending, and about how the gates closed at a certain ­time—­I timed it so I’d arrive before they shut. That part went according to plan.” Her chest rose and fell in quick bumps. “Afterward, I sat in my car, psyching myself up. Then they came home.”

She squeezed the steering wheel. “Your mother got out in the drive and slammed the door to stalk into the house through the rain. God, she was ­stunning—­and blazingly confident. I knew she’d laugh in my ­face … and I also realized right then that Ishaan would never settle for an ordinary woman like me when he had a wife with so much fire.”

“Nice story.”

“It’s the truth!” Sweat shining on her brow, eyes darting to the rearview mirror as a bus turned into the street. “Please don’t drag me into this. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Why are you so scared?”

“My husband and his family are ultraconservative,” she blurted out. “It was a big deal for him to marry someone outside of his culture. He thinks I was a virgin when we got together. Please, please, don’t ruin this for me.”

“I’m not interested in your marriage, only what happened that night.”

“I sat in my car, and cried, okay? That’s what I did. I realized how stupid I’d been, believing a man like Ishaan would want me for anything but a little fun.” Her fingers trembled as she flipped down the visor to look in the mirror. “God, my face. I have to calm down.”

“So you’re telling me you turned around and left? Sure.”

“I didn’t leave. I was frozen.” She powdered away the perspiration with a hand that shook. “Then the storm ramped up and I got scared about driving in that kind of weather.” A pause. “I saw something. I never told anyone.”

My pulse kicked. “What?”

“The rain was ­awful—­you remember, don’t you?—­and I’d parked a ways down the Cul-­de-­Sac so no one would notice ­me—­I’d borrowed a dark compact from a friend for that night.”

Nice bit of premeditation there, but she was so obviously panicked that I didn’t think she was capable of lies.

“I couldn’t see clearly, you have to believe me.”

I nodded; the rain had been ferocious that night, coming down in silver sheets of glass. “Go on.”

“I saw your front door ­open—­”

“It’s not visible from the street.”

“What?” Lines furrowed her forehead. “It was, I swear. There was a great big gap in the trees.”

My memories rolled backward, all the way to the diseased tree my father had hired an arborist to remove a month prior to my mother’s disappearance. “Yeah, you’re right. Go on.”

She looked so grateful it almost made me feel bad. “The door was open, backlighting your mother’s silhouette as she stumbled out. Her gait was off, and she wasn’t moving like she should.”

My gut clenched.

“Then the lights of a Jaguar parked on the street flashed, as if the alarm was being deactivated. I’d seen that car on the street, had been all but certain it was hers.” When red stained her cheeks, I knew she’d considered damaging the vehicle.

But she didn’t confess to that. “I thought she