Three days later, after Pookie went home and some of the dust had settled on what I’d taken to calling the Kama Sutra Caper, the three of us, Derek, Robin, and I, drove back to Dharma. On the phone, Mom had whispered that Guru Bob had asked her to perform a banishment ceremony, but she wasn’t sure she had the heart to do it in front of Robin. I suggested we wait and gauge the state of Robin’s prakriti, or mind-body-soul constitution, before deciding.
Sitting in my parents’ living room, we shared the sordid details of the downfall of Shiva Quinn with Mom and Dad, Austin, Gabriel, and Guru Bob. Austin sat on the love seat holding Robin as close to him as he could get her.
I found myself focusing on my brother again. It was as though he had truly grown up while I wasn’t looking. Yes, I’d always known he was good-looking, but a sister tended to forget a brother’s mere cuteness in the face of age-old sibling rivalries. But watching him now with Robin and seeing the way he gazed at her and laughed with her, I couldn’t be happier that they had finally found each other.
He was a wonderful man—and lucky, too, because Robin was a delightful, talented woman with a fantastic sense of humor and a wide-open heart. The fact that her own mother had never recognized Robin’s amazing qualities was Shiva’s loss—and one more big black eye for her, as far as I was concerned.
I was going to get weepy in a minute if I didn’t shake off those thoughts. Glancing around the room, I could see the stress and confusion in everyone’s eyes. Except Gabriel’s. Nothing seemed to surprise Gabriel, including the pain of betrayal.
It was Guru Bob whose reactions wrenched my heart the most. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen him express negativity. Ever. But watching him now, I could see anger and great sadness mar his features as the details of Shiva’s duplicity emerged.
We had Derek’s Interpol friends to thank for filling in a number of blanks in Shiva’s story. For instance, the big man who died in my home was Yuri Borkov, a Russian operative who had received a tip early on that there was highly embarrassing information on the market that could disgrace people at the top levels of the Russian government. He’d had no choice but to follow every lead.
Shiva later confessed that she’d been the one who leaked the flash drive information to the Russian. She wanted a kickback from their side as well. And why not? She needed the money. She wasn’t getting any younger, and wealthy men were starting to lose interest in her. When she realized she couldn’t count on her wealthy lovers to keep her in the high life much longer, she took matters into her own hands.
When Robin heard that, it was the last straw. I agreed it was a pathetic, arrogant, and egotistical excuse for doing what she did, but it was the closest Shiva had come to revealing the true motivation for her actions.
“I still can’t believe it,” Robin said, her tone a mix of bewilderment and scathing anger. “I know she didn’t do the killing herself, but she set everything in motion, and a lot of people died just so she could line her own pockets. And I saw her pointing that gun at Jeremy. She was so desperate, who knows if she would’ve gone ahead and used it, just to get her hands on that butt-ugly scarf and the stupid flash drive.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Mom said, “I’m so sorry. I’m having a hard time believing it myself.”
“I know, Becky,” Robin said, and sniffed a few times. “My own mother was a double or triple agent. It’s so bizarre. It’s like I stepped into the Twilight Zone or something. I mean, Shiva was never what you’d call maternal, but still . . . I keep expecting someone to jump out and tell me it’s all been a giant misunderstanding, that she was actually one of the good guys and . . . I never really knew her, obviously.”
And that was Shiva’s fault, not Robin’s, I thought, angry all over again at her mother’s treachery. Robin insisted she’d given up years ago on ever being close to Shiva, but I knew it wouldn’t be easy for her to overcome this major revelation.