Apples Never Fall

“I also bought you a ring,” he said. “It’s in my sock drawer.”

She stared at him.

“Obviously I’m not proposing. Not now. Not when my father is about to be arrested for murdering my mother. It’s just that you’re here, looking…”

He gestured up and down at her body as if it were obvious what he wanted to say. She looked down at herself, mystified. She was wearing a comfortable shift dress that he must have seen a hundred times before. Her nose was red around the nostrils from a cold last week.

“Looking so bloody beautiful,” he said, and his voice broke on the word beautiful. Indira was stunned. She had never seen him cry. Not even close.

When they first started dating, he used to call her beautiful all the time, and she’d snap at him because it embarrassed her, it made her feel as if she needed to urgently call out to a derisive audience, Don’t laugh, I know it’s not true! So eventually he stopped saying it, and now it broke her heart to realize that she’d successfully trained her beautiful boyfriend not to call her beautiful.

Logan rested his head in his hands. His voice was muffled. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that. It just came out. I’m so tired.”

“It’s okay.” She put her hand on the back of his neck and leaned in close to his ear. “Everything is going to be okay.”

She didn’t know that, of course. All she knew was that right now she was going to make him eat, and then sleep, and then she was going to stay by his side for whatever horrendous or wondrous things lay ahead.

Chapter 58

“Beautiful day,” commented Ethan to Christina as they drove toward Stan Delaney’s home to arrest him for his wife’s murder.

“It is.” Christina looked out the car window at the cloudless blue sky.

“How do you think he’ll react?” asked Ethan. Ethan’s shirt today was an exquisite teal blue. The color of a bridesmaid’s dress. Christina looked down and saw a small stain like old blood on her shirt. That’s what happened when you got dressed in the dark so as not to wake your partner. It was probably tomato sauce.

“My bet is he’ll be calm,” said Christina. “He will have been given legal advice not to say a word.”

Her phone began to ring with an unfamiliar number. “Detective Khoury,” she answered, preemptively brusque. Nico told her she sounded too angry on the phone. He said not everyone was a potential criminal. He was wrong. Everyone was so a potential criminal. Or a potential victim.

“Hi there, Detective Khoury. How are you?” It was the posh velvety tone of a man who was confident that his social status was superior to that of the vast majority of the population.

Christina was irritated. “Who is this?”

“This is Dr. Henry Edgeworth. I understand you’ve been trying to reach me. I’ve just returned from overseas.” Most people sounded nervous when returning a phone call from the police, but not this wanker.

“Yes, that’s right,” said Christina. Took your bloody time, mate. “It’s in relation to a missing woman. Joy Delaney.”

“Delaney,” he repeated. His silk-smooth voice snagged.

“There was a phone call from your apartment to her on the fourteenth of February this year.”

Christina felt Ethan’s attention on her half of the conversation. He would have worked out that it was the plastic surgeon finally returning their call.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he said. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Can you explain why our phone records show a phone call from the landline at your apartment on that day that lasted forty minutes?”

“Perhaps you’ve got the wrong Dr. Edgeworth.”

“Right,” said Christina. “Or is it possible that someone else could have made a phone call from your apartment? A family member? Your wife?”

He was guarded now. “My wife and children never stay at the apartment. We have a family home in the eastern suburbs. The apartment is just a small one-bedroom near the hospital for when I’m working late. It’s more convenient.”

Yeah, I bet it’s more convenient, thought Christina.

“We have no doubt that the call came from your apartment. We also believe it’s probable that Joy Delaney met with foul play,” said Christina. “So I really need you to think carefully about this.”

Another pause. “Is this the old lady? I saw the husband on the news.”