Darius insisted on calling a lawyer for Ash. There was no way her grandfather should be speaking to the police without an attorney present if he was a real suspect.
Vanessa Zamora, Ivy’s sister Dahlia’s wife, was a criminal defense attorney. Calling her wasn’t necessary. Ash had known of his right to an attorney and had called Vanessa himself. She was already there.
“You knew about a restraining order against my grandfather.” Tempest paced across the floorboards of the tree house deck, fuming. “And you didn’t think to tell me? When did this even happen?”
Darius reached out to squeeze Tempest’s shoulder, but she pulled away. “Corbin had done something offensive—no surprise there—and Ash couldn’t let it go. Lost his temper and shouted at him.”
“What am I missing?” Sanjay asked. “That’s not enough for a restraining order.”
Darius ran his hand across his face. “The problem was … he let himself into Corbin’s house to yell at him.”
Sanjay blinked at Darius. “He broke in?”
“What did Corbin do?” Tempest asked. “Grandpa Ash is the least unreasonable person I know.”
“Except that he bakes off-the-charts spice into his donuts,” Sanjay muttered under his breath. “That’s hardly reasonable.”
Darius stretched his neck from side to side but took a moment before answering. “Around the first anniversary of your mom vanishing, the media was looking for anyone who would talk to them.”
“I remember.” Tempest felt her pulse jump. That first anniversary had been a terrible time, nearly as bad as when her mom had vanished. By the time a year was nearly up, they’d accepted that Emma Raj was dead. The most likely thing to have happened was suicide. That’s where all the evidence had pointed. Only that had been a lie. Tempest now knew her mom hadn’t taken her own life. Nor had her aunt Elspeth died in a stage accident in Edinburgh.
“Corbin Colt,” her father said, “was one of the people eager to talk with the press. He told them how close he and your mom had been.”
“But they weren’t.”
“Ash was furious. Emma was the type of person who was friendly with everyone, but to imply he was good friends with her so he could get back in the spotlight through our tragedy? It was too much for Dad.”
“I’m surprised a judge granted the restraining order against a grieving father for the momentary lapse in judgment of going onto Corbin’s property to yell at him.”
Sanjay looked up from his phone. “According to the internet, Ashok Raj physically assaulted Corbin Colt.”
“How did I not know this?” Tempest could barely breathe. She spun around in three pirouettes, nearly crashing into the deck’s dining table. It was the only thing she could do to ease the feeling of frustration filling her body and soul.
“Because it never happened,” her papa said when Tempest stopped spinning and came to a squeaking stop inches in front of him. “Not exactly. You’d already left for Vegas by then, and you’d gotten good at not looking at the abundance of internet rumors. I didn’t want to pull you back into it, especially since Ash wasn’t arrested. Because he didn’t exactly physically assault Corbin Colt. He simply threatened him. That was enough for Corbin to stumble backward and twist his ankle—even though no reputable doctor could find anything wrong with his foot. Corbin tried to get Ash arrested for assault, but the officer who arrived knew your grandfather from seeing him around town on his bike, so he understood what had really happened: a grieving father shouted at a jerk. End of story. But Corbin couldn’t let it go, so he presented enough evidence for a restraining order. None of us wanted to worry you.”
“You didn’t want to worry me? I would have stopped him from examining the body if I’d known he could have been accused of the crime.”
“You’d never have been able to stop him,” said Sanjay.
Tempest was so angry she’d forgotten he was there. “You don’t think I could have—”
“As the outside observer to the family, I can see some things more clearly than you two can.” Sanjay adjusted the cuffs of his tuxedo, flicking off an invisible speck of lint. “Ashok was a doctor for, what was it, forty years? Right. There’s no way he’d turn his back on a man with a stab wound who was right in front of him. It’s more possible to imagine the four impossibilities than to imagine Ash doing nothing when he thought he could help.”
“He was clearly dead,” said Tempest, causing her dad to wince.
“Lots of people can seem dead when they’re not,” Sanjay pointed out. “Haven’t you read about those bells placed in coffins during times of the plague? It’s pretty easy to be wrong about near-death and death.”
“That coffin story is apocryphal,” said Tempest, unsure if it was, but Sanjay had a large enough ego already. “But I take your point. I just wish he’d get home already.”
Darius’s phone rang. He picked up before it could ring a second time. He spoke a few disjointed words, but Tempest couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation. She could only see the sheen of sweat forming on her papa’s face. He clicked off, but it took a moment before he could meet Tempest’s gaze.
“There was nothing Vanessa could do. They’re holding your grandfather overnight. He’s the main suspect.”