Kernel of Doubt: A Neela Durante Mystery Read online

  “You’d be looking out the window and singing even without dishes to do,” Neela said.

  “You know it.” Dottie scrubbed intently at a roasting pan “Nothing else to do around here.”

  Neela laughed even though Dottie hadn’t meant it as a joke. “Nothing to do? Dot, I have never seen your hands be still in my entire life. You always have something to do.”

  Dottie turned to her, gloves dripping on the linoleum. “You know what I mean. There’s not much fun around here except the homespun kind.”

  “I guess that’s true anywhere,” Neela said.

  “Oh, whatever, Neels. You have no idea. You lived in New York.”

  “I lived in Ithaca. It barely even had a movie theater.”

  “Here in Fryer we barely even have any men.” Dottie turned around and scrubbed furiously. “Robin got the only one.”

  Neela snorted. “There are plenty more wherever Rick crawled out of. You really want to live in a camper behind the house with a deadbeat like him? I’m guessing you could sign up for that on Ladies’ Night down at El Segundo.” El Segundo was a bar in Fryer that catered to farm workers, bikers, and meth heads. Borrachos of all kinds, as Papa said.

  “Oh, you have no idea what it’s like! You have Teo!” The way Dottie said Teo’s name was the way some girls mooned over celebrities in Tiger Beat. “I’m fat and forty, not exactly prime real estate.”

  It slipped out before Neela could stop herself. “He left me, Dot. We’re getting a divorce. And you’re not that fat.”

  Dottie dropped the enameled tin cup she was drying onto the floor. It clattered under the table where Neela was sitting, and she reached to hand it back to her sister.

  “Chipped the rim,” she said, “but it’ll still work. Better wash it again, though.”

  “How could you let him go, Neela?! He’s too good to be true. No offense, but I don’t even know what Teo saw in you,” Dottie blurted out, just as Orinda came in off the porch.

  “No offense? That’s just about the most offensive thing you could say, Dot.”

  Neela gave her a grateful look. Leave it to her youngest sister to be her protector. Orinda slung her school bag underneath the table and sat backward in a chair, wrapping her arms around its tall, straight back.

  “I just meant she’s no fun, and he’s all kinds of fun. Opposites attract, I guess.”

  Orinda rolled her eyes and leveled an impish look at Neela. “How long have you been split up?”

  “Since we moved to Sunflower Springs, pretty much. So a year, a little more? I didn’t want to tell anyone until I knew it was final. But it is now.” Neela bit her lip. “He has Molly.”

  “Oh, Neels, I’m so sorry.” Orinda hugged her awkwardly from the chair.

  “Me too,” Dottie said. “This is bumming me out, though, so let’s do something fun. I know—we can surprise Papa when he comes home! Should be any time now.”

  Neela followed her sisters to the living room where they all wedged behind an ancient green horsehair sofa that had inhabited the back wall of the living room for as long as Neela could remember. Half the springs were collapsed on one side, so sitting on it was like riding a hippopotamus or some other large and unpredictable beast. The lumpy psychedelic afghan on the back was perfect camouflage for three heads peeking at the doorway.

  It took longer than Dottie predicted for the others to return, and by the time the front door banged open, Orinda was picking skin off the bottom of her foot, and Dottie was humming “Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair” for the twenty-seventh time at least. Neela had a cramp in her leg when she tried to stand up.

  “Surprise!” the three of them shrieked as they jumped out from behind the couch. At first, nobody noticed Neela between her two sisters, Dottie taller and more enthusiastic, Orinda louder and out in front of the group. It was Rick who saw her first.

  “Hey, isn’t that”—he pointed vaguely toward Neela—“the other one?”

  Wendy and Robin pounced on her, knocking her back onto the green couch, which protested their combined weight with a sigh and a puff of dust. Dottie and Orinda couldn’t help themselves and piled on top, and one of the legs flew off the couch and landed somewhere behind the piano. The whole sofa collapsed and the five women tumbled to one side, giggling. Neela could hear Papa laugh until he started to cough, and when she lifted Wendy off her, she caught sight of Mama laughing so hard that she had to sit down in the middle of the living room floor to recover. Rick grinned and pulled out his phone, snapping pictures while the five sisters untangled themselves.

  “Well, well,” Papa said. “Welcome home.”

  Papa. Neela hardly recognized him. It had only been a little more than a year and he was altered completely. His coppery skin, which never saw a wrinkle, was drawn and gray. He had lost twenty or more pounds, and his denim work shirt swam on him. He wrapped Neela up in a hug, and she felt his fragile ribs and sharp wrists.

  “Papa, are you sick?”

  “Yes, Nee-ja,” he said, using her old baby nickname that smashed her name and the Spanish word for daughter into one pet name. “But I am getting better.”

  Neela saw her sisters exchange looks. Something was unspoken. She was afraid to ask and didn’t.

  “Where are your bags? Did you put them upstairs yet?” asked Wendy. “Where’s Teo?”

  The world stopped turning for a minute and the questions settled like dust motes around her, turning in the silence of the living room.

  “He’s not coming,” she finally said. “My bags are in the car.” She and Wendy linked arms and went out to retrieve them. When they got back inside, it was clear Dottie had told everyone the truth, and even Wendy wilted under their sympathetic gaze.

  “What?” Wendy asked. “What happened while we were gone?”

  “It happened while she was gone,” Orinda said.

  “We’re getting divorced,” said Neela flatly, and marched up the stairs.

  The upstairs was an attic with four bunks that Papa had finished with boards he pulled out of an old barn on the property. The room remained largely the same as it had been when Neela inhabited the bottom bunk on the right. She threw her bags onto it and heard a squawk of protest behind her.

  “That one’s mine!” said Orinda.

  “It was mine first,” said Neela, rolling her eyes. “Which one is open now?”

  Orinda pointed to Robin’s old bunk, upper left, and Neela moved her things over.

  “Isn’t it funny,” said Dottie from the stairs, “how there are always enough bunks to go around? Robin moves to the camper with Rick, and here you show up to fill the spot. How long are you staying? Just until you mend your broken heart?”

  Neela shook her head. “I’m not here for my heart. Work asked me to take a leave of absence. My co-worker committed suicide, and I kind of lost focus. So three weeks, a month? That’s as long as I can float on savings. But I don’t know if I can go back at all. My boss thinks I’m crazy—maybe they all do. It’s humiliating.”

  Dottie curled up next to Neela and put an arm around her. “I hope you stay this time.”

  “There are no jobs here, Dot, or I would.”

  Dottie sighted. “I know I shouldn’t say that to you, or even feel it myself, but I hope you do. We really need you. And those people who think you’re crazy...well, I guess they haven’t met the rest of us!”

  They laughed on the top bunk until Neela’s stomach hurt and Dottie had hiccups. Orinda shooed them out so she could do homework at the little green desk by the window, the one with a sewing machine inside that Dottie used for her little projects, stuff like curtains for the kitchen or a dress for a school dance. For all Dottie’s frivolity, she had a talent for making things homey.

  Once downstairs, Neela was somber again as she saw her too-thin father on a chair where they had left him. She sat on the floor and rested her head on his knee.

  “Nee-ja, we’ve missed you,” he murmured as he stroked her hair.

  Neela cl
osed her eyes. “If I had known you were sick, I wouldn’t have taken the job in Sunflower Springs—I would have stayed in Davis. At least it’s closer.” She felt like a stack of old photographs, regret on top of regret.

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I wanted you to go with a clear heart.”

  Robin stopped, came in, and shooed Neela away. “Papa needs to rest,” she said, and put her arm around his waist to lead him into the bedroom. “Another time.”

  When Robin returned from the bedroom, she set everyone to work on folding laundry. Neela lost herself in the meditation of housework and felt no more regret. She was home, and she never wanted to leave. Maybe a simpler life was just what she needed.

  When they finished the folding, Neela and Robin went to the kitchen to heat up some soup for Papa and found their mother crying at the kitchen table. A thin white envelope was resting on the tablecloth between her forearms.

  “What is it?” Neela asked. “Did you get a letter?”

  Mama shook her head wordlessly.

  Robin picked up the envelope and grimaced. “The doctor’s bill.” She opened the envelope to read it, gripping the paper until her knuckles were white. She looked over at Neela. “I don’t want to tell you the amount due. If I do, you’ll have to go back to work.”

  Neela felt the weight of the world fall onto her shoulders once more. “If I have to go, I have to go, whether you tell me or not.”

  Chapter Five

  On her first day back at Broad Earth, Art asked Neela to take over the R&D department.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask in the wake of what happened,” Art said, “but the department is falling apart without Miles. They need a kick in the pants, and I know you won’t hesitate in the kicking department. You certainly polished QA into a neat little diamond.”

  “I’m out of objections,” Neela said. “I’m crying ‘uncle.’”

  Arthur was proud, like a dog with a chicken bone dug out of a flower bed. “I’ll let the team know. If you box up your personal things, I’ll have them moved to your new office. You don’t feel strange being in Miles’s office, do you? It hasn’t been cleaned out except for the things that they took for the investigation, but you’ll probably need to go through his files to catch up on his projects. I didn’t want to take anything out until you sorted out what you needed.”

  Neela shook her head. “No, it’s fine.” And maybe I’ll discover some indication of why he did what he did. Some clue.

  “Do refrain from any actual kicking of the other scientists,” Art said dryly. “If you feel the urge, let me know, and my boot will deliver the message.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” said Neela.

  Art showed Neela to her new office in the east wing. The window looked at greenhouses, the parking lot, and highway beyond it. Cars slid by in the sunlight like drops of mercury. The view wasn’t all bad.

  “Normally in R&D, the scientists pair up with a development partner, as Miles found two-person teams are the most efficient, especially when one member is new to the department. However, since you aren’t exactly new, I think you’ll be more comfortable spending your first few weeks working solo. I want to see what you come up with when left to your own devices.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you will develop one of your ideas with a partner scientist.”

  Neela wondered aloud, “Who will that be?”

  “Me,” Art said. “Everyone else already has a partner.”

  “GUESS WHO MY OWN PERSONAL R&D buddy is going to be?” Neela asked Demetrius.

  Demetrius didn’t bother guessing because his mouth was full of chocolate pudding.

  An-Yi answered for him, “Art Campbell?”

  “How did you guess?” asked Neela.

  “Ummm.” An-Yi blushed. “Well. He asked me about you, since he’s seen us eating lunch together. He asked about your family, and your, um, living situation.”

  “He asked if I was still married?”

  An-Yi nodded.

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him you were getting divorced,” said An-Yi. “I thought that was the closest to the truth.”

  Neela nodded, pained. “I wonder why he wanted to know.”

  Demetrius snorted pudding out his nose. An-Yi handed him a napkin and laughed a little, at the pudding or at Neela’s ignorance, or maybe both.

  “Do you really wonder?” asked Demetrius. “Is it a huge mystery to your brilliant scientific mind?”

  “I thought Art mostly tolerated me,” said Neela, dismayed at where the conversation was heading. “Plus, isn’t he about a hundred years old?”

  “Look again,” said An-Yi. “Sometimes through a lens of affection your vision improves.” She smiled at Neela, and then smiled longer at Demetrius. He didn’t look away from her, even after she went back to her lunch.

  Neela watched them, trying to understand the subtext, but finally gave up puzzling and asked. “Something is going on and I’m missing it. Want to fill me in?”

  They looked at each other again, as if deciding what to say, which irritated Neela to the core.

  “Spit it out!” she said, arms crossed and ready to leave. “I don’t do well with secrets.”

  Demetrius gave her a long look. “For someone who doesn’t do well with secrets, you sure have a lot of them.”

  “What secrets do I have? My life is so well known that even a silly stats girl can discuss the details with my boss on the elevator!” Neela was mad.

  “I asked that ‘silly stats girl’ to marry me,” Demetrius said, low and clear. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

  It was. And it wasn’t.

  NEELA SPENT THE AFTERNOON moving her office from the west wing to the east. Art stopped by to see how things were going and to invite her to a staff meeting the next day. She was more terse with him than usual, out of embarrassment over the whole lunchtime conversation, even though An-Yi was right. Art was only slightly too old for her, balding and with glasses that tended toward grandfatherly in a good way. He didn’t even have the decency to act put out about her rudeness, and it gave her no satisfaction whatsoever.

  Her things all fit on one lab cart stolen from Cassie’s work station, to be returned before she would miss it. Neela put her books on the new shelves and then sorted them into subject matter, and then alphabetically by author. She was not the type to alphabetize, usually, but it was soothing to arrange and rearrange the books to her own specifications. These books wouldn’t fall off the shelves and get out of order when she wasn’t looking, or, god forbid, marry some pudgy pencil-pusher from the second floor.

  How had it happened so quickly? Neela had only been gone a week. Five lunches, ten rides in An-Yi’s car, and they were getting married? It didn’t make sense until she realized it must have begun long before her trip home, back before Demetrius hugged her in the elevator, while he was still wrapping her up in his warm smiles every morning. Maybe, after inviting Neela in for a beer and being rejected, he called An-Yi instead. Maybe, when Neela could only talk about her failing marriage, Demetrius was thinking about when to ask An-Yi on a date. Maybe, when he was waiting for Neela to finish working and drive him home, Demetrius sat on the edge of An-Yi’s desk on the second floor and kissed her neck.

  But why did he keep their relationship a secret for so long?

  “I guess you wouldn’t call me. You probably didn’t want me to know that you’re back,” Chalk said, poking his head around the door.

  She threw a book at him, a smallish one. He caught it with surprising dexterity, and she must not have hidden her surprise because he shrugged.

  “Little League,” he said. “You have a pretty good arm, yourself.”

  “What do you want?” asked Neela.

  “To be loved, like anyone else.”

  “Droll. Let’s see, are you here to gloat, whine, or beg a favor?”

  Chalk considered this for a moment. “Are those my only options? I was thinking more of offering assistance
with the technological aspects of your trans-wing move, since you know nothing about computers even though your job requires you to use them constantly. But I see you have everything covered, so I’ll just sit here and whine about how I have nothing to do.”

  “I see you are choosing option one, gloating?”

  “Actually, option three, begging a favor. A rockabilly band is playing at the Waffle Nook tonight, and I have two tickets. Want to go?”

  “Oh, not you, too!” Neela pretended to bang her head on the desk.

  “Not a date.” He shrugged. “I just don’t want to go alone. I should have known that my very presence at a musical event would preclude your interest in attending. I’ll ask Art.”

  “Why not Cassie?”

  “Cassie? Be serious.”

  “Okay, I am being serious. I’ll go with you. Not a date,” Neela said. “But I can use a friend right now. I don’t even have a dog to go home to.”

  A night out with Chalk. She would never live this down. Demetrius would say—well, he wouldn’t say anything, because he would never know.

  SHE WENT ALL OUT FOR the evening, in defiance of what some people might expect of her: rolled her hair up into a ’40s hairstyle, put on red lipstick, hacked the dog-chewed straps off her high heels and tied them on with ribbons.

  “I wish it was still winter,” Chalk complained when he picked her up. “I’d feel much more comfortable touching you with gloves on.”

  “Thank god you aren’t wearing them, then.”

  “I didn’t know you believed in God.”

  “I believe in any god that keeps your hands off me,” said Neela, grinning. Truthfully, she had to admit that he looked sharp in his pressed jeans, pale hair slicked back, and a jacket over his crisp white shirt.

  “I think you misunderstand me. What I meant to say was that you look attractive this evening, and I would offer you my arm, if my arm were appropriately covered,” said Chalk.

  Neela took the compliment, since she hadn’t gotten one in a while, and assured Chalk that she’d confine her grip to his sleeve above the elbow. He seemed relieved.