Tulip Season Page 3

  Next to that photo rested their wedding picture from nine years ago in a gold-tone wood frame. The bride and the groom both wore their wedding gear; a red silk sari and gold jewelry for Kareena, and an off-white brocaded sherwani and contrasting black churidar for Adi.

  Kareena had once told Mitra the story of Adi's family. Adi was an only son, heir to a fortune. Growing up in New Delhi, he had intelligence, if not good behavior, and bagged many academic honors. His mother spoiled him, the God Krishna incarnate, as Indian mothers of that generation were accustomed to do. Even on the day he'd punched a sickly classmate at school, she treated him to sweet rounds of besan laddoos.

  In his late twenties, Adi had met Kareena. By then, a successful executive, he fell hard for her. Adi's wealthy family didn't approve of their relationship. “Her mother is low class,” they'd said, “practically a whore. How can the daughter be any good? Just wait and see—she won't stick around.”

  “They were so petty,” Kareena had told Mitra in a strained voice at the time. “How can they speak like that about my mother? She's a respectable woman. She has her own mind, so they don't like her.”

  Adi had decided to marry Kareena against their wishes and given up his huge inheritance for her sake. His family disowned him. Not only that, his uncle sabotaged his efforts to obtain a coveted position with an electronics firm by taking the job himself. Adi endured a year of that type of humiliation before giving up.

  Eight years ago, Adi and his new bride had left India and flown to the opposite side of the world, as far away from his family as he could possibly go. He settled in the Pacific Northwest, where he found a plethora of opportunities. Before long, he formed his own software outfit. There was a price to be paid: long hours, constant travel, and worry about finances. In spite of this, he persisted and ultimately succeeded. He created “value” for his customers. He had “recurring revenues.” Even though a success, he was still pariah to his family. Rumor had it that these days, although he often jetted to India on business and phoned his family from his hotel room in Mumbai, his mother would not take his call.

  Mitra's memory faded as she noticed the emperor walking in through the door. Attired in an impeccable navy suit and black leather shoes, Adi wore no socks, which was part of his fashion statement. His eyes were red-rimmed with exasperation possibly at some luckless underling behind on a project.

  He frowned when he saw Mitra, bumping awkwardly into the edge of the desk, and took his swivel chair on the other side. In light-challenged Seattle, his deep tan usually elicited envy, but today a grayish cast dominated his complexion. The eyes were sunken, as though his spirit had flown out of them.

  “What brings you here to see me?” he asked in a business-friendly manner.

  “Where is Kareena?” Too worked up, Mitra threw another question back at him. “Why haven't you called me?”

  Easy, Mitra. Don't panic. Don't push. Don't hurl so many questions all at once. Adi was, after all, a Bengali. Their ancient culture had come of age—Mother's words echoed in Mitra—under the benevolent gaze of a blazing sun in an abundant land laced with magnificent rivers. Crops were easy to grow and so people had copious leisure time, which led to dazzling rituals and a penchant for art and philosophy. To the Bengalis, rushing was not only alien, it was gauche. Even in this speedy era, Bengalis tried to prevail with soft gestures, moral reasoning, and delicate persuasion, rather than blunt confrontation. Mitra shouldn't be so tense. She should try to behave like a silkily polite Bengali lady.

  Adi straightened, put his elbows on the desk. “Calm down, Mitra,” he said in a voice rising slightly. “Your core competency is handling dirt. You play with weeds, worms, slugs, and horse poop. You grow lovely petunias. I'm not saying it's menial labor, but neither is it nuclear physics or private investigation. Go back to your weeds and leave this situation in more competent hands, like mine.”

  His remark stung her, but she observed him. The eyes were shifty, the hands were stiff, and the mouth was gloomy.

  “I can't help but be involved, Adi. What about the stranger she was seen with at Soirée?”

  He touched his wedding ring, a small gesture that distracted him for a moment. “I'm not worried about that. She's a big girl. She can take care of herself.”

  “Could I ask you why you filed a report with the police then?”

  Avoiding her gaze, he studied his Day-at-a-Glance calendar.

  She stared at him hard. Again, she was blowing it. Adi would not open up to a strong woman he viewed as a threat. She needed to be delicate, like the blush-white blossoms of baby's breath that lit up the corner of her yard.

  “Do you think Kareena needed a break and decided to sneak away for a few days?” Mitra asked in a gentle tone. “There have been times, like at your birthday party a few weeks ago, when she looked like she could use a break.”

  Adi glared at her with a deep frown that was somehow tragic, somehow frightening. “Everything is fine between us, Mitra, just fine.”

  Mitra heard the staccato rumbling of a dump truck cruising by. Adi had some nerve telling her everything was fine with Kareena when he hadn't heard from her in more than forty-eight hours. Get real.

  “Have you checked her closet?” Mitra asked. “What about her purse, cellphone, and credit cards? Is her toothbrush gone?”

  He jerked at the question. “Her clothes are all there, but her purse and cellphone are missing.”

  Would he even recognize her alligator handbag, jeweled mules, the flowing shawls she favored over the structured feel of a coat, or a newly acquired camellia scarf? Would he be able to detect her perfume? Mitra believed he only remembered the totality of Kareena's being.

  “Have you checked her recently visited websites? And all the e-mails she'd sent and received lately.”

  He shook his head, but stayed silent.

  “Have you opened her safety deposit box? Has she taken her passport out?”

  “I don't know where the key is.” He paused. “Do you know how stressful this is for me? First thing this morning I got a call. They asked me to ID a body at the morgue.”

  A scalp-prickling moment. “What?”

  Adi fiddled with his elaborate watch. “They found a woman's body in an alley in Pioneer Square. It wasn't her.”

  “Omygod!” Mitra shook her head. “I don't know what I'd do if—”

  “Look, Mitra, I have a busy day. I have to chair a six-hour offsite. Technology stocks have run into speed bumps. We need to get our cash-burn rate under control. It may be necessary to de-hire some people.”

  She almost choked at the expression he used for firing an employee. De-hire. Was that how he thought about the body pulled from the alleyway—de-lifted?

  “This is a life-or-death situation, Adi, not business as usual. Time is not on our side. We need to put our heads together and mobilize our community.”

  He looked her in the eye, as though loosing an arrow. “Hold on now, Mitra. I don't even want my friends to get wind of this, never mind the whole community. Don't you know how things get blown out of proportion when the rumor mill cranks up?”

  She folded her arms. “Losing face is more important to you than asking for help to find your wife?”

  His silence conveyed a latent hostility. In a way, she got it. Their community was small. It had at most two degrees of separation between people. Word spread quickly and rumor insinuated itself in every chit-chat. Still, in this dark situation, how silly, how counter-productive, Adi's pride seemed.

  Maybe he suspected she didn't fully trust him, or perhaps there were things he'd rather conceal from her. He might be wondering what she knew that he didn't.

  His cellphone beeped. Adi dug it out of his pants pocket, switched it off, shoved it back in its place, and made a motion to rise.

  Strange. What if it were a call from Kareena or the authorities? What was he hiding? She needed to talk more with him. “Shall we meet again this evening?”

  Adi stood up, pushed a few papers acro
ss his desk. His silence indicated a no answer. Why wasn't he doing his best to locate his czarina, the woman on whose behalf he sacrificed the love of his family?

  Mitra stayed seated and stared at him until he nodded and said, “At Soirée around 8.”

  Why Soirée, unless he wanted to look for her there? How empty the place would seem to Mitra if she went back there without Kareena. But she didn't want to risk a change of location. It would give Adi an excuse to weasel out of their meeting.

  She got up. He bid her farewell, not with his usual supercilious “Ta ta” but rather a low and serious, “I expect you to keep quiet.”

  SIX

  BACK TO HER HOUSE, disregarding Adi's warning, Mitra began calling friends and community members from her list. Everyone seemed spooked by someone missing in their midst, but in the end she managed to persuade eleven people to form a task force. Although she was the youngest in the group, she agreed to lead the effort.

  She invited Mrs. Barman, a prominent community member, to this evening's “Missing K” committee meeting. The buxom, retired history professor with thinning hair said, “Why are you meddling in their marriage? It's a private family matter. Let the family take care of it.”

  “I'm like family to her,” Mitra said before terminating the conversation. “I want to bring her back safely.”

  Hoping to clear her head, Mitra wandered into her yard, to the row of flower patches. Petunias were pushing up and out toward the light. They'd soon explode into a storm of burgundy. The daffodils, white with frilly orange cups, had began to wither, their fleeting season almost over. No matter. Soon it'd be time to usher in the tulips.

  She turned toward the tulip patch. To her dismay, some of the shoots were stunted. Others looked withered. The buds were still closed and a trifle wan. She shook her head. Not only could she not find Kareena, but she was also losing touch with her beloved bulbs.

  She wandered back indoors, over to her bedroom. Herr Ulrich floated into her mind, a man who had turned out to be tender and pliant on those silky sheets. She wished she could confide in Kareena about him. She would exclaim: A shy thing like you?

  Right now, somewhere in the brown-gray jumble of a construction site, Ulrich's taut body pushed, lifted, and stooped, the angles of his face accentuated by the strain. Did he pause for a split second, stare out into the distance, and re-experience Mitra's lips, her skin, her way of curling up with him?

  Too soon to get moony about a man, Kareena would surely advise her.

  Just picturing Ulrich, however, warmed her body. Not just the electric tingling of sex, but going beyond to a kind of communion. Sitting and talking, eyes only for each other, holding hands, knowing each other's innermost secrets, the occasional silence between them full. She never would have thought a single night could bring two people so close together.

  Piano music soared from the Tudor across the street and encouraged her. Mitra reached for the receiver, her gaze falling on the blank Post-It pad next to the phone. Ulrich hadn't jotted down his phone number or even his last name.

  He'd promised he would, but he hadn't.

  Her dreamy interlude broke.

  She noticed a pill lying on the floor, small, round, and yellow. It must have fallen from Ulrich's pocket. What was this med for? Did she even want to know? She stood still for a moment, then picked up the pill, and threw it into the wastebasket.

  Late that afternoon, the search party huddled at her house, gloomy-faced, eleven of them. Mitra looked around the room. Veen swirled the fennel tea in her cup absent-mindedly. Sue, short for Suparna, kept her eyes lowered. Usually she had plenty of gossip to spare. Jean's dark hair skimmed her gold hoops. A loquacious woman, she simply asked, “Do you suppose Kareena is voluntarily missing?”

  “Yes, she could have run away,” Mitra said. “But suppose she didn't. We must look for her.”

  “What if she doesn't want to be found?” Jean said.

  “Can we make assumptions and regret later?” Sue said.

  Mitra talked up the urgency of the situation and assigned each person a task: preparing and handing out leaflets, combing the parks and neighborhoods, and urging the India Association of Western Washington to step in. Veen, such a helping soul, took on more than her share of responsibilities. When Pradeep, a Microsoftie and a newcomer to the community, volunteered to build a website, www.LookingForKareena.Com, everyone cheered him.

  Around 7 P.M., the meeting was adjourned. The task force members filed out the door, promising to carry on their respective tasks and reporting the results to Mitra. Their goodbyes rang with sadness.

  Mitra walked out the back door and slipped into her greenhouse: a spacious room with barn-style roof and glass-paneled walls and strewn with plants in containers of various sizes. A pine-like fragrance filled the air. Plants were her refuge, her salvation and, fortuitously, her vocation, but today she'd neglected them, which she now regretted.

  She picked up a hand-sprayer and misted the trays, dispensing growth-producing moisture to the germinating seeds and fragile sprouts tentatively poking up through the soil. For a moment, she pondered the miraculous ability of even the tiniest seeds of pansies, snapdragon, violas, and marigolds to execute the complex chemical instructions that aided their development. A honey bee hummed over a seed flat, performing its mundane but integral part in the symphony of creation. All around her, the life force was triumphant: surely that'd happen with Kareena, too. Whatever the cause, her disappearance would be temporary, explainable, reversible.

  As Mitra rearranged the trays, her thoughts stretched to the weeks ahead. When the flower starts were sturdier and could tolerate the rigors of outdoor life, she'd transfer them into the backyard of her adopted grandmother Glow. It would be one more step in the process of designing a garden for Grandmother, a place for repose and emotional restoration.

  Mitra heard the house phone ring. In her haste to set the hand-sprayer aside, she misjudged. The plastic bottle toppled and landed on top of an eight-pack, smashing the lobelia sprouts and spilling crumbly dark soil on the floor. She stifled a sigh. Then she sprinted to the phone, grabbing a towel and wiping her hands as she went, her insides throbbing in the hope of hearing Kareena's hello.

  SEVEN

  HOW COULD ADI DO THIS? He canceled their 8 P.M. meeting at the last minute, apologizing that he had a “product roll-out” the next day and needed the rest.

  “Do you suppose Kareena has wandered off?” Mitra asked and listened for his reaction.

  “Yeah, I think she's flown somewhere for an impromptu vacation,” he said in a voice that held no humor. “She's punishing me for not taking her to Fiji last February. Don't worry. She'll get a big scolding from me when she gets back. And a trip to Fiji. That'll be my deliverable.”

  Another business-speak, possibly another lie. Mitra analyzed Adi's speech and voice pattern: he swallowed words; his voice often faded; he projected fake cheer. He was hiding something.

  “Just to be sure, why don't you hire a private investigator?” she asked.

  Silence. Had he murdered his wife and hidden her body? It gave Mitra the shakes to even contemplate such a possibility.

  “Are you telling me everything, Adi?”

  He said nothing. She heard a click from the other end.

  Her stomach grumbled. She'd subsisted the whole day on nothing more than a few crackers. She decided to make an investigative trip to Soirée. A glass of wine might just be the treat she needed.

  She pulled into a parking place only a block away, next to a rock garden lit up with the rosy buds of a heather bush, and checked her watch. Despite the catchy name, Toute La Soirée—all evening—closed at 9 P.M., less than an hour from now.

  Inside, the busy café pulsed with after-work chumminess. She threaded her way through, concentrating on finding an empty seat, as well as looking for clues.

  The table she and Kareena usually wanted was taken by a couple; how could it be otherwise, at this prime hour? Mitra was half-hoping for a minor
miracle, but finding that parking spot must have filled her evening quota of luck. She gave a close look at the couple. They were each having a slice of strawberry shortcake. Mitra found even the thought of such sugary excess revolting.

  Oh, no, it was Adi, dressed in a worn polo shirt, and looking slightly upset. He wasn't resting at home, after all. Accompanying him was a blonde who wore rather festive, crystal-accented chandelier earrings.

  Should Mitra approach Adi, point out his lying?

  It might have to do with the bleeding strawberries on their plates, but she felt sick in her stomach, nausea and a rumbling. She had no choice but to dash out.

  On the way to the door, she knocked over a chair, which she put back in its place, so embarrassed to make a racket that her hands shook. Then she almost collided head-on with an Indian man who had just entered the shop. Young, dark, and devastatingly handsome, he had all the bones stacked just right, as Mitra's mother would put it. Clad smartly in a silver woolen vest, this prince headed straight for the take-out counter. His impressive carriage and smoldering eyes caused a stir among women patrons seated nearby. A college student-type tried to catch his glance. He touched the jute bag, an Indian-style jhola, dangling from his shoulder, in a practiced gesture.

  Mitra slipped out the door, too drained to absorb anything further. After taking a deep breath, she hopped into her car, and peeled out onto the road. Please, Goddess Durga, get me home in one piece.

  It drizzled but mercifully traffic was light. Within minutes, she pulled into her garage. As she stepped out of her Honda, her mind flashed on the enchanting prince from the café.

  Hadn't Veen mentioned that Kareena was last sighted with a handsome jhola-carrier at that very spot?

  Adrenaline shot through Mitra's body. Why couldn't she have been more alert? Stuck around longer to scrutinize Kareena's mysterious companion?

  Should she drive back? Her watch said 9 P.M. Soirée had just closed.