‘Yes.’ Jeet dragged a chair across from Maya, reached over and pointed to a smiling young Asian woman standing at the center of the group. ‘This was taken before the Diwali holiday last year.’
Anna, a petite woman, wore a black skirt, white blouse and a radiant smile, the smile of someone who lived a simple but rich life. Her eyes held a special light in a face surrounded by a mid-length bob of thick, straight black hair, complete with bangs, what looked like a pricy salon job.
‘She was the sweetest person you ever met.’ Jeet took a shaky breath. ‘Unassuming and kind, got along well with my other employees. Took her job seriously and was always on time, which is not the case with every person I hire. Willing to work overtime, unless she had an appointment for a haircut.’
Haircut: Maya noted that. ‘By the way, did you get a text from Anna?’
‘Text? No. My assistant broke the news to me.’ Jeet dabbed her eyes with a tissue. ‘I was paralyzed, couldn’t speak or do anything for a while. It was like losing a close relative. Later, when the police called, we were all bewildered. None of us had the will to take care of the shop, so we closed. One gentleman, our regular customer and a strict vegetarian, left an irate message on the phone. He’d missed his cashew squares made by his favorite sweet-maker, his “protein for the day.”’
Maya breathed in the dry, dense air that had surrounded Anna as she’d toiled in the shop’s kitchen. The mystery she’d left behind was equally dense. Maya kept a questioning gaze on Anna’s photo.
‘Her parents were Tibetan and she was raised here in Seattle but she could produce our delicacies,’ Jeet said. ‘She’s the one who kept my business going. She thickened the milk more patiently than I ever could, added the right splash of rosewater and shaped the mawa into perfect rounds. At the end of the day, she always remembered to pack the broken pieces for the food bank. Her kitchen duty was her service to the people. But that wasn’t enough. She went beyond. Yesterday, the whole universe got to see her love of her roots in action.’
‘So you’ve noticed her devotion for Tibet?’
‘Oh, yes. Although she’d never been there, she had the hope of visiting, maybe even living there someday. The Potala Palace in Lhasa had a special attraction for her. She’d seen a photograph of it shot by the late photographer Galen Rowell at an art exhibition and been smitten.’
‘Could her death have been prevented?’ Saying so, Maya watched Jeet carefully.
Her face ablaze, Jeet looked away. ‘Yes – I mean, no. I don’t know. I don’t know everything. She was an employee, not a relative. And there were times when …’ Unconsciously, Jeet covered her mouth with a hand. Seeing a pair of customers who had just blown in, she looked relieved, excused herself and rose. ‘I’ve got to go now. Thanks for coming by.’
And there were times when … Maya read guilt in Jeet’s gestures and in her leaving this crucial sentence unfinished. Yet she couldn’t keep the retailer away from her operation.
‘I’ll be back.’ She thanked Jeet, bid her goodbye and walked out, smelling the sweet scents and perturbed.
EIGHT
Two young, white-robed women, one a malaria scientist, the other a sweet-shop worker, stood next to each other. They knelt down willingly, a yellow blaze swirling around each, the smell of flaming muscle tissue settling over the area. In a matter of minutes, they were gone, only their burned flesh and memories were left.
Had they taken any mood-altering drugs? Maya wondered.
Might Sylvie’s boyfriend have any clues?
Maya would at least like to get acquainted with him.
The next morning at about ten, still picturing the fiery deaths, the evil chanting ringing in her head and wondering about the role, if any, of narcotics, Maya phoned Atticus.
After exchanging niceties, she said, ‘What can you tell me about Sylvie’s boyfriend?’
‘Oh, Ivan.’ Atticus’ voice was grim. ‘Sylvie once invited me to join the two of them for dinner. I didn’t much care for him, and I can’t tell you why – chemistry, you might call it – but I could see Sylvie had fallen for him. First serious boyfriend. She was glowing.’
‘How can I meet him?’
‘I thought I saw the dude walking around Green Lake the other day when I was standing on my balcony. He’s a junior scientist, pumps iron at a health club by the lake during his lunch hour. Quite the body builder. But … I don’t mean to sound like a father, but … I’d stay away from him, if I were you.’
At around noon, the sun’s rays battering her face, Maya read the neon signboard above the entrance of a fitness club near Green Lake.
Meet Market
Pool, Weights, Massage, Group Workouts
In a happier time, Maya would have smiled at the ‘Meet’ Market joke, but not now. Somehow she’d have to get into the club and strike up a conversation with Ivan. Given that she was seeing him as a friend of Veen and not as a P.I., she could at least offer him her support.
The floor-to-ceiling windows gave a view of toned bodies in skimpy outfits pedaling away on various machines. A flyer offering a free trial membership was pasted on the front door.
Maya entered, introduced herself to the young receptionist and explained her purpose in visiting, mainly her relationship to Sylvie. After a moment’s silence, the receptionist glanced at the wall clock. ‘Ivan is still swimming – he should finish shortly. By the way, we’re having a membership special. Two weeks of free unlimited access, daytime only. Do you care to—?’
‘Maybe another time. Please, I’d like to speak with Ivan. Now.’
She followed the receptionist down a long corridor flanked by locker rooms on either side, the air sharp with a sweaty odor. They took a right turn and came to a rectangular lap pool smelling strongly of chlorine.
In the water, a lone handsome man swam laps. ‘That’s Ivan,’ the receptionist said amidst splashing sounds before she drifted away.
Ivan squinted at Maya and continued swimming – his arms carving the water – to her end of the pool. When he reached the edge, he boosted himself out of the water and stood on the platform. Chest heaving, his muscular body dripping, skin glistening, he stepped toward a large plastic basket and grabbed a plush white towel. He wiped it over his face and hair and wrapped it around his body. A blue athletic bag sat next to the basket.
‘Hello.’ He looked her up and down, obviously wondering why a fully dressed woman stood there watching him getting out of the pool. His lips curved into the beginning of a smile.
‘Maya Mallick. You’re Ivan Dunn?’
‘That’s me.’ He snagged another fresh towel, dried off a plastic chair, motioned Maya toward it and smiled warmly. ‘Are you from the club’s social team? Somebody has been asking me to join them.’ He spoke with flair; words seemed to churn and dissolve in his mouth like a coveted morsel of food.
‘Yes, the social team, but I also want to get to know you personally.’
Ivan didn’t seem to notice her exaggerated reply, busy occupying the opposite chair and dabbing his face with a corner of the towel.
She capitalized on the opportunity to steal another good look at him, what Uma might call, ‘taking the measure of the man.’ Attractive in an all-American way, Ivan had a head of shiny red hair, smooth complexion, glowing cheeks and sloping shoulders. She placed him in his mid-thirties. He had a presence, a liveliness about him; one would pick him out in a crowd. His eye color changed from pale blue to dove-gray in the wavering light near the pool. She didn’t detect grief in those eyes.
‘I’m not that good a swimmer and won’t be much good for your swim team.’ He stretched out his legs and glanced down at his diaphragm, strong and flat like a board. ‘I only try to stay fit. My brother is a swim champ. He’s won several international fifty-meter freestyle events. Now he coaches all over the world, owns several homes in different continents.’
OK, sibling rivalry. Unfair comparisons made by parents during childhood, a sense of being an outcast in the family, forever
compensating while growing up. ‘But you seem to work out a lot,’ Maya said.
‘I do and I walk the lake, but I need to watch my diet. You know, burgers, fries, donuts and ice cream – they’re everywhere.’ Hands resting on his knees, Ivan finally peered at her with interest, gave a little laugh, and asked, ‘What’s this about?’
‘I’m a pal of Sylvie’s sister, Veen.’
‘Oh,’ Ivan mumbled, lowering his chin.
‘If there’s anything I can do to help …’
‘This has been the worst week of my life – I’m trying to get over it, although there are days when I can’t get up from bed. Today I was late for work.’
And yet Ivan seemed to be coping well, a little too well: he was getting into work, swimming at his lunch hour and smiling at strange women. ‘Still working at the lab?’
Ivan’s eyes had turned gray. ‘Yes. I could have taken time off but judged it best to keep myself occupied. My boss has given me the flexibility to come and go as I please.’
He lifted the towel and began rubbing his head vigorously, mumbling about needing a haircut. Maya pictured Sylvie standing by his side. Yes, they made a lovely couple. Although he didn’t have a similar spark of brilliance in his gaze, it was clear to Maya that Sylvie would have been attracted to his easy-going manner, charm and muscle-chested sensuality.
‘Did you know Sylvie for a long time?’
‘Well, we spent a most pleasant eight months together.’ Ivan lowered the towel from his hair. ‘People called me lucky, like I’d won a prize. She was a senior scientist, the goddess of vaccines, and pretty. We’d have dinner after work and end up at her place.’
‘When did you last see her?’
Ivan rose, picked up the athletic bag sitting next to the towel basket and pulled out a protein bar, which appeared to be chocolate-flavored from the color of its wrapper. He lowered himself to the chair again while unwrapping the bar and began munching without bothering to answer her.
Maya kept her hands motionless in her lap. ‘Will you be going to the memorial service?’
Ivan shook his head, his forehead scrunched in a frown, and became lost in his thoughts. When halfway through the bar, he asked, ‘Excuse my poor memory – what did you say your name was? Did I even ask?’
‘Maya Mallick.’
‘You’re not from the club, are you?’
Maya blushed; smiled at him.
He seemed amused. ‘Are you Indian?’
Taking it as a sign that they’d established a rapport, she nodded.
He turned to her earnestly. ‘You single?’
‘Why is that important?’
‘Please don’t be offended. It’s a habit I got from my mother. She says, “We Russians like to know a little about a person before talking about serious matters.”’
Yet another Russian link. ‘Excuse my question, but were you as much in the dark about the intended suicide as Sylvie’s family and I were?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Then, after a long pause, ‘Sylvie was shy, sensitive and secretive – the effect of being adopted, I think. She didn’t talk much about her cares, although family issues were in her mind constantly. She didn’t believe her adopted family really loved her. She felt she was simply a showpiece for them, except for her mother.’
A shocked reaction went through Maya. She arranged herself differently in the chair. ‘Well, she had you in her life. Where were you when it happened?’
‘I know all this is important to you – you’re loyal to your friend – but it’s difficult for me … You understand, I hope.’ Ivan’s voice was gentle – he didn’t seem offended. He stood and picked up his athletic bag. ‘It was nice of you to stop by, Maya. I have to go back to the lab now. I just stopped here for a while to clear my head but I’m not being paid to swim. Or to stand around talking to beautiful women.’
Maya stood and gave him a small, sympathetic smile. His compliment, she assessed, was not so much a pick-up line as the result of his natural charm. ‘Besides swimming, do you also walk the trails of the lake?’
‘Yes, several times a week. I know every single duck that lives there.’
He’d started for the locker room doorway and she walked along beside him, saying, ‘I love seeing the ducks as well. I also like to check out the flowers.’
‘I respect people who take an interest in growing things.’ He stopped and turned toward her. ‘And Sylvie’s friends are my friends. Maybe I’ll run into you on the trails one of these days. You can teach me about the plants that make their life around the lake.’
‘How about Friday?’
‘Yes, why not? About this time? Shall we meet just north of the Aqua Theater?’
Maya glanced down at her watch. It was 1 p.m. She nodded and smiled, bid him goodbye, walked back to the entrance, thanking the receptionist as she passed the counter, and went out the door. Out on the sidewalk, she called Hank and left a message: ‘How would you like a free, two-week gym membership?’
She paused for an instant to collect her thoughts about Ivan. Despite the rapport, this Adonis had left her with at least one grave, unanswered question: what role did he play, if any, in Sylvie’s suicide?
Justin’s voice leapt to her mind: Where there are questions, there are usually leads.
NINE
‘Any breakthroughs?’ Simi Sen asked from the other end the following day when Maya called to discuss the case with her.
‘I suspect the sweet-shop owner is hiding things from me, although her background is clean. I’ve shadowed her on a number of occasions and learned her patterns. Nothing much has turned up.’ Maya proceeded with a longer explanation. From private databases, the Internet, former employees and members of the Asian-Indian community, she’d gathered enough on Jeet. She had no criminal records of any sort. Due to job dissatisfaction, she’d walked away from a career in chemical engineering and started an Asian-Indian mithai shop in Seattle. Although the Asian-Indian community in the Puget Sound area numbered in the thousands, few such sweet shops existed. Despite it not being a high-profit operation, Jeet had been able to make a go of it. A childless, divorced woman, she resided alone in a one-bedroom apartment and rarely attended community festivities, the Diwali celebration being the only exception. Former employees and current customers, interviewed secretly by Maya, gave Jeet high marks for her gentleness and generosity. ‘Home, sweet shop, bank and grocery shopping seems to be her life,’ Maya said in conclusion to Sen.
‘Sounds like you’ve reached a dead end?’ Sen said.
‘Yes, I’ll have to go back to square one and pursue a different path, although I’ll certainly do a follow-up with Jeet. She has a malaria poster in her shop, I noticed, which is rather unusual.’
They chatted for a few more minutes. After clicking off, Maya considered the malaria angle once again, her memories coming to the surface. A year or so ago, she had gotten together with Sylvie at one of Veen’s parties. Standing in the kitchen, they’d sipped wine and traded views on the subject of global health, Sylvie’s primary concern as a scientist. Thin as a bamboo stalk, stylishly smart in a black-and-white pantsuit and French salon haircut, her face lightly made up, Sylvie had made clear what she stood for, starting with: ‘Everyone should be able to go to the doctor, regardless of how much they can pay.’ Maya had merely listened and made approving noises, until the conversation drifted to the topic of controlling malaria. Then she’d had plenty to add.
As a child in Kolkata, Maya was warned by her mother: if a mosquito infected with the malaria parasite feasted on your blood, it could transfer the disease to you by injecting a parasite from its own body into your bloodstream. So Maya would slap those bloodsucking creatures into submission in the daytime before they had a chance to bite her. At night, to ward them off, her mother would drape a gauzy, insecticide-treated net around the bed, which would form a tent over Maya’s hot, sticky body. ‘I hated crouching under the nets,’ she’d said to Sylvie. ‘But I managed to avoid infection so was ultimately thankfu
l for that low-tech solution. My mother hasn’t had such luck.’
Sylvie had regarded her intently, so Maya had continued on about Uma having been bitten by mosquitoes while traveling in the countryside in India. The symptoms had begun to appear upon her return to Kolkata. Maya, by then living in Seattle, had learned about it from a phone conversation: the high fever that would come and go, causing Uma to be down for days with muscle aches, sweating, nausea and hallucinations, the disease weakening her. Sylvie had recommended a highly respected specialist, Dr Palas, who practiced medicine in an exclusive clinic in Kolkata. Sylvie, a professional acquaintance of Dr Palas, had been well familiar with his work. Her recommendation yielded results. Although Dr Palas accepted few patients, Uma had got an appointment with him. She’d begun her treatment and over time developed immunity.
Seven months ago, Maya and Sylvie were together, again clutching wine glasses at Veen’s place. Maya had thanked Sylvie and said, ‘My mother’s symptoms do come back but they’re no longer severe.’
‘Glad to be of help,’ Sylvie had replied. ‘It’s a worldwide issue. Millions get infected every year. You know we could get rid of the bed-net and manage malaria if new low-cost vaccines were in place, and that’s what I’m concentrating on.’
How easily the scientific name of the parasite, plasmodium falciparum, had rolled out of Sylvie’s mouth, although she’d insisted that creating a fully effective commercial vaccine to control the disease was no easy job. Instead of using weakened parasites to trigger an immune response, as had been done for other infectious diseases, Sylvie had been scrambling for a lab-synthesized monoclonal antibody that would bind to the malaria parasite and alert the body’s immune system, which would then target the parasite for destruction. Sylvie had spoken about this game-changing new technology excitedly, her unrouged cheeks flushing as she hinted at having made a breakthrough.
‘So a commercial vaccine is in the pipeline?’ Maya had asked.
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