When We Believed in Mermaids(42)

“Sounds great. Let’s go.”

She takes a few steps, then halts. “Oh, wait. The girl wanted to talk to you.”

“The girl?”

“Yes. The pretty one with all the hair? She said she wanted to see you when you arrived.”

“About?”

“I don’t know.”

We both half-heartedly peer into the busy restaurant. “I’m sure it will wait,” I say. “I’m starving.”

“Me too.” She links arms with me energetically, and we stride up the hill, exchanging small bits of news. A case she’s been working on has come to fruition at last. She knows about the house, and I tell her about the day with Rose, checking things out.

At the tapas bar, we settle outside on the bricked alleyway, away from the crowds standing three deep at the bar, mostly made up of well-dressed millennials from the local offices. “Popular,” I comment.

“It’s Friday night.” She orders a martini for herself and sparkling water with lime for me, and we start with roasted Padrón peppers and stuffed olives with bread. Overhead, the sky among buildings is a golden spill of light, bright with distant rain. I feel myself relax. “Tell me,” I say. “Do you have a theory about who killed Veronica Parker?”

“The Maori actress?”

“The one who built Sapphire House.”

“Right. She was also Maori. It’s one of the things that set her apart.”

“I remember.”

“She’s a fascinating figure.” Nan pops an olive in her mouth, eyeing a man in a very formal suit. In general, people dress well for work here, unlike the more casual United States. “I don’t know why someone hasn’t done a big book on her by now. New Zealand girl makes good in Hollywood, falls in love with another native New Zealander at the Olympic games. They have a mad love affair for years, and she’s murdered.”

“Don’t forget he died too.”

“Right. It was only another year or two, right?”

“Yeah.” The peppers are small and mild, my favorites in all the world, and they’re perfectly roasted and salted here. I nestle one into an envelope of soft bread and take a bite. “Maybe it was his wife?”

“They cleared her almost immediately. She was with her family or something. I don’t remember exactly.”

Gweneth is a fanatic for the history of Auckland, and the three of us have speculated before, over book club snacks and various meals. I was grateful that the two of them liked each other. My two best friends, and as close as I could get to replicating the experience of being a sister.

“Not the wife. Not Veronica’s sister,” I said, ticking them off. “Not George. Then who?”

Nan lifted a shoulder, skeptical. “My money is still on George. They never found any evidence, but he was notoriously jealous. In the case of a violent death at home, it’s nearly always a loved one who did it.”

“But he adored her.”

“Yes, but he was under a lot of pressure to—”

“No. I just don’t see it. There were never reports of domestic violence, no violence at all.” Enjoying the discussion, I lean my elbows on the table. “My father was a jealous man, but he would never have killed my mother.”

She inclines her head. “I don’t know that I remember you mentioning this before.”

I realize that I was speaking of my actual father, not the father I made up. For a moment, a chill halts me. I’ve never been so careless!

But Nan is looking at me expectantly. Maybe it will ease my sense of loneliness to tell the parts of my story that I can. “I don’t think about it very much”—which is a lie; I compartmentalize, but they all haunt me anyway—“but he was. Traditional Italian man, of course, and my mom was not at all traditional. They had a volatile relationship. She was quite a bit younger than he was and very beautiful. Very, very, very, very beautiful. Had this voluptuous figure that my dad liked to see in expensive, fitted dresses.”

“Go on.”

“I think she liked him to be jealous.” I take a sip of lime-flavored water, opening the door to that world ever so slightly. I’m cautious, afraid of the flood of things lurking, but a minuscule bit of tension I haven’t been aware of holding gives way. “It was how she controlled him. Men were always flirting with her, coming on to her, and she encouraged it.” I see her in my mind’s eye in a slim red dress with a low, square neckline that showed off a lot of cleavage, laughing on the patio overlooking the ocean. My father fetched her, grabbing her by the wrist and tugging her behind him to a dark alcove beneath the wisteria that grew in thick ropes over the pergola. He pushed her against the post, into the leaves and flowers, and kissed her. I saw their tongues and the way they pressed their bodies together. My mother laughed, and my father let her go, swatting her behind as she sashayed back out to the patio and all their guests.

Enchanted by her power, I sashayed right behind her, imitating the swing of her hips and the way she tossed her hair. I wore a chiffon negligee she’d cut down for me, and the sheer black fabric flowed around my nine-year-old body in a way that was exhilarating. To feel it all the more, I spun around in a circle, sending it spinning outward, knowing my shorts and bikini top were mostly hidden. Air touched my belly, my thighs. Nearby, a woman laughed, and a man clapped lightly. “Suzanne, your daughter is a natural.”