Page 104 of Catch a Kiwi
Not what I’d had in mind for this night, but nothing had gone to plan in the weeks since I’d met Summer, so no difference there. The worst part was watching her go straight back into I’ll-fix-this mode. The minute the ambos summoned by the cops took Erica away, while the cops were still standing there, in fact, Summer was saying, “She’s going to need somebody there with her. Too scary to be in the hospital alone. Can you drive Delilah there, Roman? Try to get her parents’ number from her, Delilah, because they’re probably frantic by now if she still lives at home. I have no idea how old she is.”
“Hard to tell when somebody’s barfing,” Delilah said helpfully.
“Anyway,” Summer said, “when you get back from dropping off Delilah, Roman, you can go back to sleep, so that’s one good thing. She can Uber back. Give Roman back his credit card, though, Delilah.” She’d already bunged the girl’s sheets into the washing machine, in fact, and had the duvetcover off. Now, she sniffed the duvet itself, made a face, and said, “Right. That’s another load.”
The older of the two cops, who were standing in the bathroom with Delilah and me, making it pretty crowded, said, “Before you start on any of that, we’ll need information from all of you.”
Summer said, “Oh. Right. Sorry.”
When I gave the cop my name, he looked at me from under some eyebrows that probably had their own postcode and asked, “Where were you at the time this happened, sir? At the bar with the girls?” His body language shifted, too, as if he were assessing my threat potential.
Which was his job. Breathe in, breathe out.
I said, “I was somewhere else for the night. Not with them.”
Summer said, “He wasn’t thereorhere.”
“Pardon?” the cop asked.
“At the bar or here at the house,” Summer said. “Neither was I. We’d only just got here when you showed up. Didn’t you tell them, Delilah?”
Delilah said, “What, I was supposed to get my statement letter-perfect? Hey, I’ve been up half the night, and besides, doesn’t that just make the cops think you’re lying? Dude,” she told the cop, “I told you which bar. Why aren’t you over there? I told you those two guys helped me get her home, too, not Roman. What, I made them up?”
“And you don’t know their names,” the cop said.
“Yes, I do,” Delilah said. “Colin and Baz. There you go. Itoldyou.”
“Their surnames,” the cop said.
“No,” Delilah said. “We didn’t exchange passports and life stories. We were at the beach, and then playing darts. Go look at the bed they used if you don’t believe me. Sorry, Summer,but they left kind of a mess in the bathroom, too.” Of course they had.
“And your permanent address is in …” The cop turned back a few pages in his notepad. He was one of those deliberate fellas, the kind where you want to finish his sentences for him.
Delilah did just that, in fact. “Dunedin. Not exactly permanent, though.”
“Where in Dunedin?”
Delilah said, “It’s been about one week. I don’t have the address memorized. Why are we still talking about this? Who cares?”
Summer said, “Hang on,” stopped pouring toilet cleaner into the bowl, and checked her phone. “Here you go.” And gave it to them.
“And you live in Dunedin as well, sir,” the cop said. “So this is …”
“A holiday home,” I said, grabbing the toilet brush from Summer and muttering, “Stop that.” To the cop, I said, “Only booked for the weekend.”
“A holiday home,” the cop repeated. “For the weekend. But you weren’t here.”
“No,” I said. Summer was starting to look outraged. In another minute, she was going to be trying to take care of me, too.“Only Delilah was here. And the others, as it turned out, Erica and … those two blokes. Summer and I were at the Clarence Hotel in Tauranga.”
“On the same night you’d hired this place,” the cop said. “Hired it to throw a party for teenagers?”
Delilah said, “Like that would ever happen. You clearly don’t know my cousin, and you sure don’t know Roman. Or, what, you think we’re lying andRomandrugged Erica? First, why would he do that and then call the cops? That’s got to be, like, Police Logic 101. Nobody does the crime and then callsthe cops! Second, he’s ultra respectable. Look at him. Look at how he’s dressed. He’s about forty years old! He works in his home office until late at night, probably every single night, and his idea of a good time is working out in his home gym or, for areallywild and crazy splashout, going for a hike.”
The cop said, “And you know his daily routine how, miss?”
“Because Summer and I lived with him.Withoutexchanging sexual favors. We cleaned the flood damage in his house, and for entertainment, he and Summer fought about everything. It wasn’t exactly erotic, even when Summer sat around in her robe and showed cleavage and all. Probably because Romanisold, and pretty grumpy, too, and Summer’s repressed her sexuality due to traumatic life experiences.”
I was not enjoying this line of chat. I’d opened my mouth to say something, and so had Summer, but Delilah wasn’t giving us a chance. “But let’s say you don’t believe that. What’s your alternative theory? I came home and saw what was happening, or SummerandI came home and saw it, like Miss Perfect would ever be at a bar until four A.M. unless she was doing missionary work or something, andwecalled the cops but are also protecting Roman? That’s like some kind of complicated thriller plot. Occam’s Razor, dude. The simplest answer is usually right. Besides, can’t you just check with the hotel? It was, what, a few hours ago? Even a night clerk can probably hold the memory of the two of them—checking in with no baggage, like, guess why!—for a couple of hours. Also, here’s a startling idea. You could actually check with the bar. They probably have camera footage of Erica and whoever it was. Everybody has camera footage now, right? Maybe they have a recording of the guy slipping whatever it was into her drink, but are you looking at that? No, you’re standing here letting the trail get cold and suspecting Mr. Roman Boring Old D’Angelo instead. I’mreally wondering about New Zealand police training here. I’m just saying.”
