Sulin said, ‘We’re not interested in your theory, Mark.’
‘Under their court,’ said Mark. ‘They had it resurfaced. Perfect place to hide a body. I told the police: Guys, you need to dig up that tennis court. I think they probably will. You heard it here first.’
‘But, wait, they resurfaced it back in January –’ began Debbie.
Mark barrelled on. ‘Not only that. I saw Stan, covered in dust, bloodshot eyes, buying chocolate milk at the mini-mart down on Hastings Street two days after Joy went missing. I said, Stan, what happened to you? He ignored me. Literally ignored me as if I didn’t exist. Told the police about that too.’
‘You think he buried her body and then went and bought himself a chocolate milk?’ asked Sulin.
‘That’s exactly what I think,’ said Mark. ‘Burying a body is thirsty work!’
‘That’s not funny,’ said Debbie.
‘It’s not funny, Debbie, it’s an absolute tragedy,’ said Mark cheerfully. ‘I also told the police they should look into that son of theirs, the one driving about in the poser cars who supposedly makes all his money doing “online trading”。 He used to deal drugs. Know that for a fact because he sold them to my son.’
‘Troy?’ said Debbie. Troy had dated her daughter. She knew Troy had dated a lot of people’s daughters but she still had a soft spot for him. ‘That was when he was a teenager, Mark, I think we’ve all moved on.’
‘I told the police they needed to look at possible money laundering, maybe an international white collar crime syndicate, who knows how he makes all his money.’
‘So, wait, now you’re saying you think Troy had something to do with his mother’s disappearance?’ said Sulin.
‘Anything is possible, ladies!’ Mark shifted the racquet bag on his shoulder and sauntered off. ‘See you on the court!’
‘Oh, fuck you, Mark Higbee,’ said Sulin, and Debbie was fairly confident this was the first time that particular word had ever crossed her friend’s lips.
chapter thirty-two
‘Do you reckon the husband had an affair?’ asked Ethan.
He and Christina were walking from the car down the endless gravel driveway of a stately home to take a statement for their schoolboy arsonist case, but they were discussing, as they usually were these days, the Joy Delaney investigation.
‘With this Savannah girl? It’s a possibility,’ said Christina. ‘There’s a whole lot that family isn’t telling us.’
‘Protecting their father?’
‘I assume so,’ said Christina. ‘Or protecting themselves.’
She did a mental line-up of the four Delaney children as potential suspects.
Amy Delaney: Skittish as a small-time criminal.
Logan Delaney: Calm as an experienced one.
Troy Delaney: Smooth as a slippery salesman. （Except Christina didn’t know what he was selling and she felt like maybe he didn’t know either.） Brooke Delaney: Circumspect as a spy.
Could one or more of them be responsible for their mother’s disappearance? Or was it more likely that one of them aided and abetted their father?
‘If my father had an affair with a young girl and then my mother went missing,’ mused Ethan as they stepped onto an arched and columned portico fit for a prince or a poor, misunderstood little arsonist, and rang the doorbell, ‘I’d throw him straight under the bus.’
‘Me too,’ said Christina. She bit on the ragged thumbnail she was meant to be leaving alone for her wedding day.
So why, then, were the Delaneys being so cagey?
She said, ‘Did their mother let them down in some way?’
‘Mothers can do that,’ said Ethan, and she was wondering if he meant that in a general or specific sense when the arsonist’s mother opened the door, her son’s guilt written all over her exquisitely renovated face.
chapter thirty-three
Last October
Troy couldn’t make himself care or focus. The market was quiet, but not that quiet. His heart wasn’t in it. He’d made only one trade in the last two hours. That was a signal he should stop for the day, according to his own rules, and rule number one was Follow Your Own Rules.
He looked away from his monitors at the floor-to-ceiling windows where a solitary seagull wheeled across a cloudless pale blue sky. The rippling harbour loomed ahead of him like a landing strip. He’d landed a 747 at Salzburg Airport once. It was a flight simulator experience. A gift for his thirtieth birthday from his ex-wife. The instructor said he had excellent instincts. Troy was now confident he could land a plane if the pilot got in trouble and the （beautiful, panicked） flight attendant came running from the cockpit begging any passenger with flying experience to come forward.