That woke them up. They cheered as Andrea turned left onto Alexander Road and headed toward the Bagel Hole. She checked the dashboard clock: 6:10 a.m. Could she go to Brianne’s immediately after breakfast or was that too early? Of course it was too early, but her mind raced with all the things she wanted to do today.
At 7:02 she was ringing the doorbell to Brianne’s house in Plainsboro’s Princeton Collection. In her pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, hair unkempt, but still able to look casual sexy, Brianne opened the door. Her triplets, Morgan, Mary, and Madison, charged downstairs to devour the bagels Andrea had brought.
“Sorry for coming so early,” Andrea said.
“What else am I going to do?” Brianne replied.
“Can you watch them this morning?”
“Doctor visit?”
“No, I have to make some calls at eight and deal with some township stuff,” Andrea said, knowing that part of the truth would be easier to control than all of a lie.
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s great.”
They took tea out to the patio. It was early enough that the August humidity had yet to become oppressive. The screen door was left open so they could hear the kids. They sat down and Andrea wished she could say something about the murder, about her frustration, her sadness, and especially the excitement she felt because someone had been murdered.
Yeah, she thought, better to keep your mouth shut.
“I can’t believe she’s outside doing yard work,” said Brianne.
Andrea looked up to see Brianne’s neighbor in her vegetable garden. The woman was small, a shade shorter even than Andrea, but she was wispy thin. Eight of her could fit inside one of Andrea. Her wide-brimmed straw hat provided shade from the sun, which had just crept above the tree line. Andrea watched the woman weed around the eggplants and bok choy, which had grown well during the humid, rainy summer.
The clatter of the 7:41 New Jersey Transit train disrupted the quiet. Having left Princeton Junction station on its way to New York, it rumbled by not even twenty-five yards off Brianne’s backyard. The receding noise of the train was followed by the sound of a crash from inside the house. Sadie started crying. Brianne and Andrea exchanged weary glances. Andrea braced for the ordeal of lifting herself out of her chair. Brianne put a hand on her forearm and said, “I’ll get it.”
Andrea smiled as Brianne went to check on Sadie. She heard her friend talk to her daughter with a comfortable ease that Andrea could rarely muster. Was it normal for other people to be better with your children than you were?
As if on cue, she felt the baby kick, a reminder that it was only going to get harder. Before she knew what had compelled her, Andrea pushed herself up from the chair and waddled across the backyard toward the fence between Brianne’s house and the neighbor.
“Good morning,” she said as she leaned against the fence post for support. “I’m Brianne’s friend, Andrea.”
The woman looked up. She pushed back her straw hat. She was in her early forties and beautiful, in a natural way. After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I’m Simpei.”
“Your garden looks great this year,” said Andrea. “I recognize the bok choy, but what’s that one there?”
“Daikon,” Simpei answered.
“I wish I could set up a garden, but . . .” said Andrea, patting her stomach.
“You are pregnant,” said Simpei. “Again.”
“I’m working on a world record.”
A nod from Simpei, a lull in the conversation. This woman wouldn’t abide small talk.
“It came up in conversation the other day that you were denied a pool permit by the township?” she asked.
Simpei seemed confused, but said, “Yes. Many years ago.”
“Can I ask why?”
“I think it had something to do with the groundwater. They told us this entire development was built on marshlands. Devils Brook runs on the other side of the tracks. Why do you ask?”
Half-truth better than a full lie.
“It was during a conversation about the township discriminating against Indians and Chinese,” said Andrea. “I know it sounds odd, but a group of women we were talking with felt they had been discriminated against for permits and things like that.”
“I don’t know,” said Simpei. “I imagine in some cases, perhaps, though the mayor is Chinese and she’s been mayor for over twenty years, right? To tell you the truth, I never really wanted a pool, so I was just as glad when they said no to us.”
Andrea nodded. “Do you remember who it was that rejected the permit?”
Simpei gave it a moment’s thought, then said, “It was a woman, I remember that.”
“Thanks,” said Andrea. “When they’re ready for picking, I’ll trade you one of my four kids for one of those eggplants.”
Simpei laughed, deep and throaty. “I’ll give you an eggplant for free if you take my nineteen-year-old who decided after his freshman year at MIT that he doesn’t want to be an engineer like his father.”
Andrea smiled and started walking back to the patio. After about ten yards, Simpei called out, “She was from the Division of Health.”
Andrea looked back over her shoulder.
“The woman who denied the permit. She worked in the Division of Health. I remember because I thought that was an odd department to be approving pool permits.”
Andrea nodded and headed back to Brianne, who waited on the patio with a curious gaze. The conversation between Andrea and Simpei was probably longer than any Brianne had ever had with her neighbor, after living there for seven years. Andrea slogged past her friend, addressing her confusion. “I just offered to trade one of my kids for an eggplant.”
Brianne laughed. “Andie, that’s awful.”
“For her,” said Andrea. “Those look like great eggplants.”
* * *
■ ■ ■
LESS THAN AN hour later, Andrea sat at her kitchen table. She jotted notes in a spiral-bound notebook. She’d printed out the contact information from the township’s website:
DIVISION OF HEALTH
The Division of Health, headed by the health officer, is responsible for enforcing state and local laws and regulations related to public health, administering laws related to vital statistics, and administering public health programs in the township, including public health nursing, community health education, communicable disease control, and chronic disease control.
Wendy Schimmel
Health Officer
Thomas Robertson
Manager, Environmental Health Services
Dolores Johnson
Registrar of Vital Statistics
Andrea looked at the clock on the microwave: 8:26 a.m. She held her finger over her phone, hesitating. If she dialed, she would never be able to dial it back. Once she asked the first question, there would be hundreds more. How would this choice affect her town? Her marriage? Her life?
8:27.
She dialed.
She felt the baby kick.
She felt alive.
An automated answering system picked up. All the wind rushed out of her sails as she heard a recorded voice reading through the prompt, “Thank you for calling West Windsor Township’s municipal building. If you know your party’s extension you may dial it now. For police or fire emergencies please dial nine-one-one. For . . .”
She suffered adrenaline withdrawal through four automated prompts before hearing her target named. She pressed five. A woman answered on the other end.
“Division of Health and Human Services.”
Smooth English. A higher-pitched voice. Sounded late forties to early fifties. Caucasian. Andrea pla
yed the odds. Affecting a mild but, she hoped, accurate Indian accent, she said, “Hello, my name is Sharda Sasmal and I am following up on our pool permit application which was rejected.”
“What is your address?”
Andrea replied, “Twenty-three Dickens Drive, Princeton Junction.”
“Spell your last name.”
Andrea almost spelled her own last name, but corrected herself quickly after the S. She waited as the woman said, “Yes, I have the application here. It was rejected three times for the same reason. Groundwater issues on your property.”
“Yes, that is what we were told, Mrs. . . . ?”
“Gorman,” she replied. “Elizabeth Gorman.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Andrea. “But it was never explained to us exactly what that means.”
Andrea heard an audible sigh from Elizabeth and the clicking of her keyboard as she scrolled through the file she was reading. “Yes, see, you have Bridegroom Run Creek running near your development. Underground soil saturation makes your property untenable to safely set a pool.”
“I understand,” said Andrea as she scribbled notes. “Does the application permit include the environmental report that would have verified the safety issue?” she asked, obviously catching Elizabeth off guard.
“The . . . ? No, no,” she stammered slightly. “I don’t see that in the file.”
“It might have been on a day I was not home,” said Andrea, “but did an inspector come to test the water table in my backyard?”
“I don’t see that here either,” she replied.
“Can you tell me who signed the denial for the application?” Andrea asked.
Elizabeth hesitated.
Andrea prodded, “Was that Dolores Johnson or Thomas Robertson?”
“It was . . . it was Thomas,” said Elizabeth, now a wary tone in her voice.
Andrea had gotten as far as she needed to. “Thank you so much,” she said. “Have a good day.”
She hung up before Elizabeth had a chance to respond.
She navigated the basement steps and went to Jeff’s office. She flicked on the lights and sat down in the high-back leather chair. She was frustrated to realize he had changed his password without telling her. Trying to keep his porn history away from her more than to keep the porn away from the kids.
She had given him the puzzles for all of his previous passwords. If he were coming up with one on his own, what would he do?
She typed: Password. Nothing.
She typed: Password34, for his age. She was in.
Jeff was such an imbecile, she thought.
She googled “Topographical printable map of West Windsor & Plainsboro NJ.” She downloaded two maps in vector grids. She printed out the maps, which resulted in sixty-six 8.5-by-11 pages. Eleven pages across and six high, it would take up an entire wall. Even Jeff might notice an eight-by-five-foot map on the wall of the family room.
Andrea searched the unfinished portion of the basement for something she could mount the pages on. Tucked into a corner, propped diagonally behind several large containers, was the perfect solution: an area rug they had grown tired of before moving here but had held on to in case the new house could accommodate it.
It had been kept tightly rolled and tied with thin cord on each end. She struggled to remove the rug. She had to shift all the containers and then drag the rug toward an open space in the middle of the unfinished concrete floor. She got a pair of scissors from the office and cut the cords, then unrolled the rug.
She laid out the stack of papers she’d printed. All she could find in the office to fix the pages down with was Scotch tape, but that wouldn’t work. She trudged up to the garage and found a roll of packing tape. She trudged back downstairs, her knees and lower back starting to burn. She squatted down on all fours. Her stomach practically touched the floor. She taped down the pages and stood up to admire her handiwork. She realized she’d left her notebook upstairs, cursed a blue streak, and trudged up to the kitchen. She came back with the notebook and a red Sharpie.
Andrea found the address for Brianne’s neighbor on Parker Road South in the Princeton Collection. She drew a red circle around Simpei’s house on the map.
She smiled.
Nothing made her happier than knowing she was on the trail of a murderer.
10
RUNNING late for his ten a.m. meeting, Kenny tossed his backpack on his chair and rushed to Janelle Simpson’s office. He updated her on what he had put together so far.
“Okay, so the police are fishing or your sources don’t know the Sasmals as well as they think they do or the Sasmals are dirty and good at looking clean,” she said. “You don’t have a story until you know which one of those it is, Ken.”
She was right.
“But you’re saying I might have a story, then,” he said.
Reluctantly, she nodded her head yes.
He got back to his desk at the four-cubicle workstation setup. In the cubicle to his right, Sandy was eating a doughnut and reading letters to the editor. In the cubicle facing Sandy, Judy was looking at the monthly events calendar on an Excel spreadsheet. In the cubicle facing him, Anita was writing a story about a fifth-grade math whiz who had recently won a master’s-studies-level multivariable calculus competition. All three women were perfectly pleasant people—and as reporters, perfectly useless.
He grabbed his backpack and started to head out. “Already?” asked Sandy through a mouthful of a strawberry frosted doughnut.
He waved a dismissive hand as he left.
Fifteen minutes later, Kenny pulled his Prius into the Valero station in West Windsor where Satkunananthan had been killed. The police had completed their evidence sweep yesterday and the station had reopened for business. Kenny stopped his car before the front island, where the attendant stood. He tried to glance innocuously at the flower memorial that had been placed around the second island.
“Ten, regular. Credit,” he said. He kept his window down as the man started the pump. He eyed the attendant, looking to see if there was some facial resemblance to the Sasmals. None. He wore a turban, which no one in the Sasmal family did.
“Sorry about what happened here,” Kenny said. “My condolences to your family.”
“He was not my relative,” said the man in heavily accented English.
“Oh,” Kenny said, satisfied with that answer. Employees were more likely to talk shit than a relative. “He was a little slow. The guy who was killed. But I thought he was nice. I come here regularly.”
“Satkunananthan was an idiot,” said the attendant. “But he was harmless.”
“The police are saying drugs.”
“Satkunananthan did not use drugs.”
“I don’t know,” Kenny said sheepishly. “Just what I heard. I don’t know. You always think robbery, but the police said maybe selling drugs.”
“Satkunananthan did not sell drugs. Tharani does not sell drugs; he does not need to sell drugs,” the attendant said, his voice rising in anger. “He came to this country and worked hard. He works hard and people are jealous, so they gossip and lie.”
“Okay, sorry,” said Kenny. “I didn’t mean anything. I just heard it.”
“The police lie. They lie about us all the time,” said the attendant.
“Why do they lie?” asked Kenny.
“They resent we are here,” said the attendant. “They resent we have changed their world. That is why.”
The man gave Kenny his credit card receipt to sign. Kenny rolled up his window and drove off, thinking about how his parents must have felt, both having been born here. His mother was sixth-generation American; his father’s parents had come to the United States from China after World War II. After decades of living here, was their presence still resented? How accustomed had his family, or the Sasmals, or this gas station attendant, beco
me to skewed glances and other signs of disapproval or suspicion?
Kenny was as American as American could be. He knew too many people who thought he wasn’t, but he had been born in Princeton and lived in West Windsor his whole life. The school system had been 10 percent Asian when he was a kid, then 40, and now it was over 60. The entire area had changed. Was that a reason to be anxious or angry enough to murder someone? Kenny couldn’t buy that. There had to be more.
He spent the rest of the afternoon on a listening tour of West Windsor and Plainsboro. He stopped at Dunkin’ and Subway and six Indian restaurants and four Asian food markets. He asked proprietors, employees, and customers if they knew the Sasmal family and if they’d known Satkunananthan and if they’d heard anything about the family being involved with drugs. He asked how they all felt about the police department and how they were treated by neighbors and longtime residents. In the late afternoon, he went to the cricket fields and talked to the men from two teams who were practicing.
He interviewed over fifty people. The consistency of the answers surprised him. Not a single person thought the Sasmals were involved in drugs. All of them had varying degrees of complaints about the police, from being targeted for traffic stops to lack of support when they had complaints or issues. All of them had felt, at one time or another, the burden of their race.
Kenny pulled into the municipal office complex parking lot on Clarksville Road with more anger than intent. He planned to confront Chief Dobeck, push his easily triggered temper into a flare-up, and get him to make a mistake. At the very least, he hoped to get someone in the squad to hear the commotion and reach out to him later with inside information.
He flung open the door of his Prius, and that’s when he saw Andie Abelman trudging up the steps from the lower-level parking in front of the main courthouse door. He had nowhere to hide. After learning she’d moved back to the area years ago, it was inevitable he’d run into her, but he’d honestly considered it a bullet dodged.
Stern, he corrected himself. Not Abelman.
Andie Abelman had been the girl he had loved—but Andrea Stern was an indescribably pregnant woman struggling to mount six concrete steps. Holding the handrail for support, she looked up. Her eyes grew even larger than he had remembered them.
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