‘It’s been my pleasure,’ said Joy automatically, but truthfully, because up until tonight it had been her pleasure. Her absolute pleasure.
For an excruciating moment they all held their positions, as if they were actors in a terrible theatre production and someone had forgotten their lines. Joy wouldn’t have been surprised to hear an audience member cough.
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Savannah suddenly, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Joy would never know if they were real or fake, if she truly was or wasn’t sorry, because Savannah suddenly patted the side of her handbag decisively, drew herself up, and left the room, left the house, exit stage left, just like Stan. She disappeared into the dark night from where she’d first come.
chapter forty-seven
Now
‘That was the last time I saw Savannah,’ said Troy Delaney.
‘Did she return the money?’ asked Christina.
Detective Senior Constable Christina Khoury was in what her mother would describe as a ‘tetchy’ mood.
She didn’t have a body like she’d thought she’d had the day before. The call had come through almost immediately: Not yours. Skeletal remains.
This woman had died at least thirty years previously, back when Christina was a child, trying to decide whether she wanted to be a police officer or a marine biologist when she grew up, and why had she not stuck with marine biology? She could have been floating about looking at starfish right now.
Furthermore, a member of Joy Delaney’s tennis club, a Fiona Reid, had just called in with the wonderful news that she’d seen Joy, yesterday afternoon, getting off the train at Central, looking as hale and healthy as could be, although sadly she hadn’t seemed to hear her name when Fiona called out to her.
Because it wasn’t her, you fool, thought Christina.
Meanwhile a psychic had just gone public with the news that her feeling was that Joy was alive, but being held captive, somewhere near water, or possibly in the desert.
Christina did still have her motive. Joy Delaney’s hairdresser, Narelle Longford, had contacted police the moment she heard about yesterday’s discovery of the body, and she had shared all the information that her client had ever shared with her, including the story of a decades-old secret, revealed last year by their young house guest, who was not in fact a random stranger at all.
Stan’s children had shared precisely none of this with Christina. They knew it made their father look bad and had chosen to say nothing up until now.
Christina studied Joy Delaney’s second son, a good-looking man buffed by money and success, no doubt adored by his mother, but a man who had fallen with absurd ease for a young woman’s blackmail.
She and Ethan were talking to him in his luxury apartment. The blindingly beautiful views from the huge windows were an irritation, like distractingly loud music. She found herself wanting to say, ‘Can’t you turn that down a notch?’
‘She actually did return the money,’ said Troy. ‘She sent me a cheque in the post. I tore it up. Never banked it.’ He shifted slightly in his chair, which looked spindly and cheap to Christina, like an office chair from the 1950s, but which was apparently something to be impressed by, according to Ethan, who had asked Troy if it was a genuine something-or-other and it was a genuine something-or-other. Why even bother asking? Troy was the sort of guy who took pride in overpaying for everything. Even blackmail. ‘I suspect it would have bounced but I don’t know that for sure.’
‘Why didn’t you bank it?’ asked Christina.
‘After she left, I started to feel sorry for her,’ said Troy. He tapped a beautifully manicured thumbnail against his teeth. ‘She’d obviously had a troubled childhood, and we were all cruel to her when she came to our house as a child, unwittingly cruel to her, but still, we were, and the more I thought about her, the more I realised how much we had in common.’
‘What did you have in common?’
‘Both our fathers chose Harry Haddad over us,’ said Troy. He smiled wryly as if he wanted to give the impression that it didn’t matter now but he couldn’t quite pull it off, the childish pain still visible. ‘She said something about how painful it was whenever Harry was on television, and I feel exactly the same way: I always change the channel whenever I see that guy’s smug face.’
‘Just to clarify: is anyone in your family in contact with Harry Haddad?’ asked Christina.
‘Not that I know of,’ said Troy, the distaste clear on his face.