Kernel of Doubt: A Neela Durante Mystery

by Hillary Avis

  She kept them stubbornly trained on the road. “The heater is broken. Sorry about that.” They rode for a while in silence as they backtracked down the dirt road to the two-lane highway into town. Another few miles of farms, fields fallow, and then they passed the ugly concrete grain elevator that served the whole town and surrounding farms and marked the city limits. Just a few more blocks and they were in downtown Sunflower Springs.

  Demetrius joked sometimes that if you blinked when you drove through Sunflower Springs at sixty miles an hour, you’d miss it, but it wasn’t really true. Sunflower Springs was a respectable little town. There was at least one of everything: an elementary school and a high school, a barber, a bakery, a grocery store, a diner, a hardware store, and a store that sold dresses to old ladies that had a hair salon in the back. A nice steak restaurant where married couples went for their anniversaries and the teenagers went on prom night. A movie theater with two screens that played movies after they were gone from other, bigger theaters. Plus, there were two bars and about ten churches—and a whole lot of farmers, who all grew dent corn that they couldn’t eat and whose children left town when they grew up and rarely came back.

  They passed the Waffle Nook where Demetrius had picked up the breakfast sandwiches on his morning run, and then it was another five or six miles of silence past Sunflower Springs before they could see the Broad Earth research center. It was strange seeing a building so big rise up out of the fields, four stories of glass and metal in the middle of nowhere. It glared and glinted in every direction. Beyond it, the five enormous greenhouses squatted in the middle of farmland. Breeding lines of corn were grown there after they passed the grow rooms, but before they were ready for field testing, and it was like a different planet in there, pale green and alive.

  She turned the truck into Broad Earth’s parking lot. Her usual spot was full, and they had to circle several times before they found a spot in a back row of the lot, far from the door.

  “Lunch today?” Demetrius asked as they walked across the lot together toward the front door where they’d part ways for most of the day. She would go to the fourth-floor lab; he’d walk through the front door and out the back door to the greenhouses, picking up a hard hat and a clean coverall along the way so he wouldn’t take any pollen or insects into the greenhouses on his clothes.

  She nodded, not ready to attempt speech just yet, afraid she’d start talking and be unable to stop. The tide of words pressed against her teeth. A few slipped through the cracks. “I’m sorry to be so antisocial. I got some bad news last night. I’ll explain this afternoon, I promise.” She put on a smile but then quashed it when she realized her teeth were still furry. She’d forgotten to brush them in her hurry to get out the door. Gross.

  The yerba mate was doing its job conquering her hangover, though. Neela could feel the headache uncoiling its grasp from her temples, her stomach settling, her balance returning. The world still echoed between her ears, but that was bearable. She’d distract herself from it by burying her miserable brain in testing a new trait.

  She didn’t encounter anyone on the way up to the fourth floor. One of the benefits of being fifteen minutes late, she guessed, since she’d never arrived at work at this time before. The hallway to QA was oddly quiet, and her sneakers squeaked on the tiles.

  She was grateful, suddenly, that she worked in the west wing instead of the east. While the R&D group was more prestigious and higher-paid, their labs looked out on the parking lot. Neela’s wing jutted out into the test fields. She got to watch the fields blush green in the spring as little seedlings got their first taste of sunlight. In the summer it was almost like being at the beach, the broad, grassy corn leaves moving in waves when the wind blew.

  Just as she was putting away her things in her office, Cassie Tremblay, one of the research associates, opened the door without knocking. Cassie was the most well-groomed person Neela had ever met. She wore a white lab coat every day without getting smudges on the sleeves, had fingernail polish without chips, and her blonde ponytail had a certain flip that never sagged, even in the humidity of the greenhouses.

  “Dr. Campbell wants to see you right away.” Cassie clearly resented taking and delivering the message, but then Cassie resented most things having to do with Neela. Neela had gotten the QA director position that Cassie had been angling for, and Cassie had never forgiven her for it.

  “Next time, knock,” Neela said. Like it or not, Cassie would have to learn to respect her.

  “NEELA,” ART SAID WARMLY when she entered his office. The room was paneled in dark wood the way you’d expect a hundred-year-old office to be, not one built just a few years ago, but Art himself looked plucked from another time. He wore a sport coat with elbow patches and had a large white bristly mustache that appeared to operate separately from the rest of this face, as though a Charadra deridens caterpillar inhabited his upper lip. He started chuckling when she sat down. “You gave me a run for my money yesterday.”

  “I know, sorry about that,” Neela said, and ducked her head a little. “You have to keep me up to speed on these things.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a little bit of trust now and then. You and Miles are going to give me a heart attack one of these days, with your unwavering skepticism. You should probably apologize to Ms. Ming, too. I think her feelings were a little hurt when you scowled at her report with such ferocity.”

  “Miles was scowling, not me. I was simply applying my keen scientific mind to a regression that I’d never laid eyes on before. Perhaps my expression was quizzical, but not ferocious.” Neela blinked innocently.

  “Hm, I can see why you have so many friends,” Art said, and his mustache twitched with amusement until he noticed her expression. “Oh, Ms. Durante, now now. I was just poking a little fun. I hope I haven’t touched a nerve.”

  “Dr. Durante,” Neela sniffed into her sleeve, returning the handkerchief unsoiled. “Who knows for how much longer, though.”

  “Thinking of renouncing your degree?”

  “Mr. Durante might want me to renounce my last name once the divorce is final.”

  “Oh, Neela.” Art looked pained. “I wish I spoke from a place of authority, but my only credential is my own divorce, and it wasn’t pretty. My advice is to keep your head down. The only way out is through. I’m sure there is another cliché I can work in here that will help you. The best is yet to come? You can see what a glamorous life I am living now that Lisa is in St. Louis.” He gestured at himself and at the office around him and winked at her. “I’m not helping, am I?”

  “I’m just a little shell-shocked still. And hung over,” Neela said ruefully. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Yes, why I asked you here. Now that 375 is finally on its way down the pipeline, I was taking a look at the rest of the traits you’re working on still. It’s a light load, am I right?”

  Neela nodded. “I was hoping you had something new for me.”

  “I shan’t disappoint you then. I was impressed with your tenacity on 375 and was hoping I could talk you into moving to the R&D group. It would be under Miles, of course.”

  “A demotion?”

  “Oh heavens, no! A lateral move. You wouldn’t be a director, but we’d call you something like ‘Principal Scientist.’ It would pay more, you could work on independent projects, and you’d have a little more visibility. There’s some travel. I thought you might appreciate the change of pace. You’re a bit wasted in QA.”

  Neela’s heart sunk, which was not the feeling she expected to have. Her goal when she came to Broad Earth was to work in trait development, but now that she was presented with the opportunity, she wasn’t sure she wanted it.

  “I’m flattered, Art,” she said.

  “But...?”

  “I really love my team in QA. And my office.”

  “You’d have an office in the east wing. And really? You love your team?”

  “Well, I love them more than the jerks in R&D.”


  Art threw back his head and barked a laugh. “I was going to say, I don’t think the feeling is mutual!”

  “You’ve been talking to Cassie, I see,” Neela said. “I’m sure she loves me deep down.”

  “It must be really deep down. Really really deep down.”

  “Enough!” said Neela, putting on a smile but meaning her words. The feeling in the pit of her stomach remained. “I think I want to stay in QA. At least for a while. Can I take some time to decide? I’m kind of afraid to work for Miles.”

  “I shouldn’t tell you this, but he’s the one who brought it up.”

  That bit of information shocked Neela, and they sat for a moment in silence. “He wants to work with me?”

  Art nodded.

  “I need some time.”

  “Fine. Give it a month and see how you’re feeling. And in the meantime”—Art handed her a fat file—“move this over to QA. BE-13 got a re-vamp. We’re calling it 13X now. We’ve got plants in Grow Room Six already, and the access has been coded for your team. The old BE-13 seeds are down in the archives for comparison. Can you get me an initial report by the meeting this afternoon?”

  “Sure. Thanks, Art,” said Neela, grateful for a sympathetic ear and a new project to work on. The man was like Santa Claus today.

  WHEN SHE BREEZED INTO her office a few minutes later, Cassie was hovering around the door, waiting for her return.

  “What did Art want?” Cassie asked, a little too casually.

  Neela gestured with the file. “New trait. Old trait, actually, but they tweaked it and we have to run it again.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No, what would there be?” Neela worked to keep the irritation out of her voice but was mostly unsuccessful.

  “I don’t know, I thought...”

  Neela finished the sentence in her head. I thought he was going to move you out of the group.

  “Nothing like that,” she said pointedly, and Cassie turned on her kitten heel and made a quick exit. Who wears heels to work in a lab? Neela realized that they were the only two women who worked on the fourth floor. Obviously, Neela didn’t wear heels, but that was a pretty small sample size. Not that she had anything against heels. She had a pair. Had, until Molly chewed the straps off, rendering them impossible to wear. Of course, she didn’t have anyone to wear them for, anyway.

  Neela tried to put the divorce out of her mind. She poked around on her computer, but couldn’t figure out where Art had hidden the new 13X files in the central system, so she texted Chalk. While she waited for him, she looked through An-Yi’s analysis of the animal trials data for 375. The sheep autopsy listed the cause of death as “malignant catarrhal fever caused by ovine herpes virus 2,” unrelated to the dent corn they were testing, so An-Yi had excluded those deaths from her analysis.

  Neela’s forehead crinkled. It was normal for sheep in this area to have the virus, but it was highly unusual for a sheep to contract a catarrhal fever from it. Cows did when they were infected by sheep, but sheep were always subclinical. In fact, the only time she had even read about an instance of MCF in sheep, the virus had been introduced into the sheep’s nasal passages with a nebulizer, like asthma medication.

  If these sheep somehow had MCF, symptoms would have been showing well before the end of the 45-day trial. The sheep should have been flagged for exclusion the minute they got a runny nose. Why weren’t they? It wasn’t hugely important now that the trials were over, but Neela made a note to discuss it with Cassie. She ran all the animal trials and was probably present for the autopsy as well.

  Chalk finally arrived with a box of mail for her under one arm.

  “I was getting mine already,” he said, plunking it down on her desk. “I didn’t go out of my way, so no need to thank me.”

  “Oh no!” said Neela.

  Chalk looked taken aback. “I can take it back down if you don’t want it. I shouldn’t have assumed that someone might actually want to read their mail in a timely fashion.”

  “No, not you, sorry, I just forgot to put something in the mail this morning. I’ll have to run home at lunch. Thanks for bringing the box up for me,” Neela said. The check addressed to Robin was still sitting on the kitchen counter back at the cottage.

  “I said I didn’t go out of my way. Anyway, I set up 13X in your group folder and I pulled the BE-13 seeds out of the archives for you while I was still in the basement. Saved you a trip.” He put a fat, vacuum-sealed packet on top of the box of mail.

  “Thank you so much, Chalk.”

  “It wasn’t out of my way!” Chalk was clearly irritated now. “If you insist on unnecessary thanks, I’m going to stay in the basement and communicate only by interoffice memo.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up.”

  Chalk raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that.”

  Ah, Chalk. He wasn’t particularly lovable, but he was dependably prickly, and Neela appreciated having someone she could count on.

  BY LUNCHTIME, NEELA had buckled down and reviewed most of the 13X file despite her aching head. She swung by the cafeteria to tell Demetrius that she had to run home during her lunch hour to mail the check to Robin. She almost didn’t see him because he was tucked away at a table in the corner with An-Yi, who was wearing a polka-dot cardigan the same shade of pink as her cat-eye glasses.

  “Ms. Ming,” Neela nodded at her. The data analyst looked at her expectantly, and Neela realized, too slow, that An-Yi wanted her to continue a train of thought that didn’t exist.

  She must assume I came to the table to talk to her.

  “Thanks for doing extra work to get the regression analysis done in time for the FDA,” Neela said. “It wouldn’t have happened without you.”

  An-Yi flushed. “I was just doing my job.”

  “Sit with us,” Demetrius said, but Neela waved at him apologetically.

  “I came to say that I have to run home. I forgot to mail something.”

  “Are you okay? You seem...weird.”

  “I will be.” She still hadn’t told Demetrius about the divorce papers. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could just drop into a casual conversation.

  An-Yi was watching them closely. “I didn’t know you two were friends.”

  Demetrius nodded. “We carpool.”

  “That’s why I wanted to let you know,” Neela said. “I’m going to work late tonight to make up for going home in the middle of the day. I thought you should to find a backup ride so you’re not stuck here with me.”

  “I can take him home. It’s no problem.” An-Yi smiled shyly.

  “Great. I’ll leave you to your tuna melts,” Neela said, and stole one of the fries off the plate An-Yi and Demetrius were sharing on her way out.

  BY THE TIME SHE GOT back from the post office, it was time to prep for the meeting. There wasn’t much to say, really. The new 13X looked a whole lot like 13, so it was just a matter of running some standard tests and shuffling it off down the pipeline to production. Kind of a snooze. A rubber-stamp job.

  Had Art had given her this project so she’d rethink his offer to move to R&D? There was not a more ideal project for the task. It illustrated perfectly the endless frustration that was double-checking someone else’s work instead of doing her own. She flipped through the file on her phone as she perched in the window seat of her office. Everything was there and in order. The stats were done yesterday, thanks to someone in An-Yi’s group, and the comparisons between the PCR results from BE-13 and BE-13X were the last piece of the puzzle.

  Neela texted a meeting reminder to Cassie and the two research lab assistants. She would have texted Chalk but she figured he was probably monitoring her texts somehow anyway. She was 90 percent sure he watched the footage from the hallway surveillance cameras because of his uncanny ability to find her in any corner of the building.

  To her happy surprise, everyone showed up on time, and they were all waiting when Art and Miles arrive at four o’clock
sharp. Art feigned shock when he saw the QA and R&D teams all in their seats at the large oval table, Chalk perched behind them on the bookcase.

  “Are we late? Or is this four o’clock actually starting at four o’clock? I don’t think that has ever happened before.”

  The table gave his teasing a round of halfhearted smiles. It was probable that nobody thought it was funny, but he was their boss’s boss so they played along. Even Miles smiled. Cassie was thoroughly engaged in something on her phone with the same scientific intensity as when she looked through a microscope in the lab. Chalk—well, getting a smile out of him would take more than gentle teasing. That made Neela smile a little bit more.

  Chalk had already set up the screen, so when Art sat down, up popped the 13X file, as though the seat cushion had a direct line to the computer. Really it was Chalk’s prompt and well-executed keystroke that brought up the file, but the effect was sufficiently amusing that Art stood up again, as if to see whether the file would disappear. Which it did, because Chalk seemed to be playing along, despite his outwardly serious expression. Art sat down and 13X reappeared on the screen. At that point even Cassie looked up from her phone and could not suppress a giggle.

  “Well now,” Art said, “I can see that this is going to be a serious and productive meeting. Dr. Durante, the floor is yours.”

  Neela mock-bowed from the waist. “I am pleased to report that the work on BE-13X will be swift! Animal trials are unnecessary, as 13X resembles 13 so closely that it is identical in virtually every way. As you can see, the tweaks that R&D made have had a negligible effect other than the improved herbicide resistance. My recommendation is that 13X move down the pipeline to seed production this season.”

  As she spoke, Neela flicked through the file. When she got to the new lab results, she stopped. “I haven’t taken a look at these, so I’ll turn the floor over to Cassie to explain.”