Sunset Bridge (13 page)

She described the situation to Marsh, pausing only for the delivery of their salads. Hers was ridiculously plain, a wedge of iceberg lettuce with a creamy herbal dressing. She took a bite, then another. The dressing tasted like all the good things in the world whirled together. She dived in as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks, which was more or less correct.

“Like that, do you?” Marsh asked.

She had managed with great aplomb not to pick up the plate and lick every drop of dressing off it once she’d finished.

“Very nice,” she said.

“Must have been. You never finished your fascinating story. Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“They’ve been hoping the parents would show up again on their own, and they didn’t want to involve the authorities.” She sadly watched the waiter carry off her plate, but managed not to grab his arm.

“I’m the authorities?”

She turned back to him. “You’re a lawyer.”

“Since when does going to bat for diamondback terrapins and sandhill cranes make me such a scary guy?”

“Consider yourself one of the anointed few, Marsh. This has been kept under wraps. I’m only telling you now because they set a deadline, and it’s up tomorrow. They’re going to tell Ken in the morning and let him figure out what to do. But I think it’s going to be difficult. They’re already attached to the children, and they don’t want to give them to strangers.”

“It’s a messy situation. Those maternal hormones get flowing, and all kinds of things can happen. Secrets, lies, bad decisions…” He raised a brow in punctuation.

“Which is why it’s disturbing that the Duttas just aban
doned the children the way they did and never got back in touch. Janya says Kanira was beleaguered and angry, but the children were all she had. She wasn’t a model mom, but the children were cared for, clean, fed. They had toys and clothes and everything they needed.”

“Is that the hallmark of a good mother?”

“I didn’t say she was a
good
mother. An adequate mother, though, and Janya says unlikely to just leave them without a word.”

“So there’s a difference between good and adequate?”

“Duh…you can’t tell?” She didn’t add that Marsh, of all people, should be able to, since he’d married a woman who was at best adequate, with little real interest in their son, even now. Bay had come home from his recent weekend in California evincing no interest in going back. At the center, he had told Tracy that California was okay and he liked the San Diego Zoo. Whatever else he liked or didn’t, including his mother, he kept to himself. But at the end of the conversation he’d given her the biggest hug she’d ever gotten from anybody. “I
can
tell, most of the time,” Marsh said. “It seems to revolve around how much a woman wanted the child in the first place, and what her reasons were for having it.”

“The same could be said for a man,” Tracy said. “Although too many don’t take responsibility.”

Their entrées arrived, which pleased Tracy, because with them came a change of subject. She was full now, satiated by iceberg lettuce, but she gamely pushed her fish around the plate, taking bites now and then until half of it and all the rice pilaf were gone. Marsh had already finished and suggested she take her leftovers for tomorrow’s dinner. She agreed happily.

Tomorrow could be a whole new story, and she might be hungry again.

“Didn’t like the wine?” the waiter asked as their table was being cleared and her full glass was removed.

“A little too dry for me,” she said. “A little too oaky.”

He looked surprised but didn’t argue. “May I get you something else instead? Our compliments?”

She pretended to glance at her watch. “Thanks, but I’ll fall asleep if I drink at this hour. I’m just fine.”

They were offered dessert menus, and both declined.

The time had slipped by. She hadn’t really expected a proposal—nor would she have known what to say if he’d made one—but as nice as the evening had been, there had also been a curious lack of intimacy.

She thought about all the things she knew. Marsh appreciated her. That was clear now. He liked sex with her. That had been clear before. Despite all the old-fashioned warnings she’d been given as a girl—
who’ll buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?
—this man hadn’t abandoned her when they finally slipped between the sheets at summer’s end. So apparently he also enjoyed being with her—or else he was secretly scouting for his next conquest, and she was just a convenience in the interim.

Of course, she knew better. She knew
him
better. Marsh
was
better. She definitely meant something to him. She just wasn’t sure exactly what.

It was time to go, but he reached across the table and took her hands just as she expected him to stand.

“This has been nice,” he said. “We need to do more of it.”

“It’s not exactly your thing, though, is it?”

“When I’m with you, Trace, I don’t care where we are.
Here, the middle of a swamp, filling water balloons for a dozen screaming ten-year-olds… I hope you know that.”

She thought of all the lines she had heard from other men, all the lavish compliments CJ had paid her when he wanted something in return. She weighed Marsh’s words against those of men with names she couldn’t remember.

She would never forget this man’s name. She would never forget this
man
. Now if she could only figure out what she should do about him. Luckily Marsh didn’t know she was pregnant, and she had weeks yet to test the waters of their relationship without that life-altering complication.

She squeezed his hands in hers. “Speak for yourself, Nature Boy. This has been better than a swamp any day. Now let’s go to my place and do a test.”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s go measure how much you like being with me in my nice soft double bed.”

They were almost to Tracy’s house—somehow she had managed to stay awake and carry on a conversation—when she realized the police car in the distance was not Ken’s normal ride, parked for the night in front of the Grays’ cottage. This was another car, lights slowly flashing, parked in front of Janya’s.

She didn’t have to tell Marsh to pull over. By the time she realized what was going on, he had parked and turned off the engine.

“Let’s check this out,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Tracy got out and started up the path to the Kapurs’ front door. Jasmine scented the air from one of Janya’s clay pots, and the police radio blared with unfamiliar codes and chatter. The car doors were closed, and no one was inside. She was
relieved that nobody she knew was sitting in the backseat in handcuffs. Stranger things had happened at Happiness Key.

The front door was ajar, and Tracy could see lights inside. A uniformed officer was standing in the doorway, writing on a pad.

“Excuse me,” Tracy said. “I’m the owner of the property. Is there a problem?”

“Nothing that concerns you, ma’am,” he said.

“These are my friends, and—”

Ken came into view, a Ken in a polo shirt and jeans. Even in informal clothes he still looked like a cop, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, and eyes that saw everything set deep in a serious face. Ken was definitely attractive when he smiled, but he wasn’t smiling now. Just beyond him, Tracy thought she could see Janya’s shadow drawn out along the floor.

“Ken!” Tracy beckoned, hoping he would come to the door.

He nodded at the other officer, who moved out of the doorway so Ken could fill it.

“Did you know about this?” Ken asked her.

Tracy was genuinely confused, but she wouldn’t have answered anyway. She’d had her own encounters with police in California after her ex-husband was arrested for his shady financial dealings. Even though this was Ken, Wanda’s husband, her neighbor and friend, she knew better than to blab.

“Did I know about what?” She could feel Marsh’s arm come round her waist, and, at her answer, his fingers digging into her side.

“That the parents of the children the Kapurs have been caring for were missing?”

“Does it matter?” The fingers were digging deeper now.

“Tracy…” Ken’s tone made it clear he was in no mood to coax.

She gave in to both men. “Janya told me. She and Rishi have been trying to find them. They were almost sure they were going to return. Did they?”

Ken looked as if he was trying to decide how much to say. Then he shook his head. “They aren’t going to return. Not in this lifetime, anyway. The Miami police found them dead in a hotel room late this afternoon. From the look of the crime scene, they think it was probably murder-suicide.”

T
his morning Wanda wasn’t just preparing pies in the kitchen of her shop. After a fitful night’s sleep—and who could have slept after the story Ken had told her?—she had decided what to send to Janya and Rishi’s house for the Dutta children. Even though it was only seven o’clock, she had already finished a batch of oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies, along with two quarts of citrus ambrosia liberally sprinkled with coconut. She knew Janya liked her ambrosia, and she figured it was something little ol’ meat eater her could make for the vegetarian Kapurs, who must surely be at their wits’ end about now.

“It’s just about the worst story I ever heard,” she told Maggie, who had just come in and was learning what had happened from Wanda’s own lips. “Your dad says they were in some seedy motel room and the gun was in the husband’s hand. Awful scene, and they’d been there for so long, some of the evidence was destroyed, if you know what I mean.”

“I wish I didn’t.” Maggie made a face. “But I don’t under
stand why Janya and Rishi never reported that the parents had dropped off those babies and never returned for them.”

Wanda understood only too well. Both the Kapurs were as tenderhearted as anyone she’d ever met, and even without having the chance to talk to Janya herself, she guessed her friend had wanted to shield the absent parents from the long arm of the law. She and Rishi had probably hoped that the Duttas would settle whatever problems were between them and return, ready to take their children back home.

“Your daddy told me Janya and Rishi went looking for the Duttas themselves, with no success. They’d set today as their deadline to tell him the whole story and see what to do next.”

Instead, sometime this morning the Kapurs were facing an interview with Child Protection Services, and Ken hadn’t been able to predict the outcome. Quite possibly the agency would remove the little ones and place them with a trained foster family, if one was available. He had promised to vouch for his neighbors if they wanted to keep the children while a search for relatives began, and Janya and Rishi had been grateful.

“They’ll want to keep the children with them as long as they can,” Wanda said. “They’re settled in now. Of course, that house is no bigger than a minute, even though it’s got an extra bedroom. I don’t know what an agency will say about that.”

“Good foster parents don’t grow on trees. Besides, there’s the cultural issue. The Kapurs will better understand any customs the kids might have been raised with, plus the father did ask them to care for the children. That will add weight to their request.”

“So you think they have a chance?”

“It seems possible. Are they citizens?”

“Rishi is, and Janya will be once she jumps through all the right hoops.”

Wanda certainly hoped the Kapurs could keep the children. Of course, she knew Janya—and probably Rishi, too—was growing attached to little Vijay and Lily. And who wouldn’t? They were sweet and bright, and the boy, especially, was mature beyond his age. Wanda just hoped that if they were allowed to keep the children while relatives were contacted, they didn’t get so attached that the final separation knocked them off their feet.

“I don’t understand how the children were traced to Rishi and Janya,” Maggie said. “Who told the cops where they were?”

“Nobody.” Wanda hated everything about the situation, but she did enjoy being the one to part with the facts for a change. “They found Rishi’s phone number on Harit Dutta’s cell phone. They were calling everybody who was listed, and Rishi immediately told them that the children were with him and his wife, and how that had happened. The Palmetto Grove police were asked to go and interview them, and that’s how your dad found out what was going on.”

“Murder-suicide, huh?”

“They think maybe she left him for another man, and somehow he found out where she’d gone and went there to talk some sense into her. With a gun.”

“But there was no man with her?”

“Not so’s I’ve heard.”

“Where did all this happen, do you know?”

“Some ratty old hotel on Biscayne Boulevard. Just over from Little Haiti.” She glanced up and saw Maggie frowning. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You always did that. Right from the time you could manage two syllables. Something bothered you? Didn’t matter. ‘Nothing’ was always the right answer.”

Maggie chewed her bottom lip, a sure sign she was either thinking or trying not to snap at her mother. Then she gave a short nod. “That’s my department’s territory,” she said. “I should say, my former department.”

Wanda understood immediately, and she knew Maggie wasn’t saying she was glad she hadn’t caught this case herself. She was mourning her life as a cop. The instinct to get in and find out what had happened was still strong.

“I don’t mean to do that,” Maggie said.

“What?” Wanda was mystified.

“Shut you out.”

Wanda just stared at her. She was at a complete loss for words. They were talking about their relationship. Feelings. History.

“Maybe sometimes you have to,” she said cautiously, after she’d recovered for a moment. “I can be overwhelming. It’s just who I am.”

“And I can be underwhelming. Do you think you picked up the right baby in the hospital?”

Wanda wanted to wrap her arms around her daughter and squeeze, but she knew better. She just nodded. “Doesn’t really matter whether I did or didn’t. I got the baby I wanted, and don’t you forget it.”

Janya wasn’t sure she slept at all after the police finally left. She tried, knowing that she had the children to think about. Now, more than ever, they needed patience and support. But instead of sleeping, she’d lain in bed asking herself over and
over how she and Rishi would explain Harit’s and Kanira’s deaths to Vijay. No matter what they said, baby Lily would not understand, but Vijay, young as he was, seemed to understand more than he should. The first day he’d come to stay at Happiness Key, he had barely spoken. But in the days since, he had frequently asked about his parents, and once he had said that his mother was often angry at him, and now she might be gone because he had teased Lily on the day she left.

When did children learn about death? Had Vijay lost a pet? Killed a fly or an ant, and watched it go still and lifeless? Did he understand that when someone died, they never returned? She and Rishi had very little time to discuss this and figure out together what to do. Children’s Protective Services would be visiting this morning, perhaps taking the children with them to a foster home. Would the news be better understood and accepted if learned from a stranger? That answer, at least, was easy. Of course not. Vijay was still wary and far too self-contained for a four-year-old, but slowly he had warmed to both Rishi and her. Bad news was best heard from someone who cared about you.

So how was she also going to explain that he might not be able to stay in this tiny house with people who were at least familiar?

She got up at six, because she was more exhausted from trying to sleep than from not sleeping. She wasn’t alone long. In the midst of beating eggs for one of the omelets both Rishi and the children enjoyed, she felt a presence behind her and turned to find Vijay, hair standing on end and eyes crusted with sleep. He looked somber, as he always did, and he didn’t smile when she greeted him.

“Is my daddy coming today?” he asked.

Janya considered how to answer, as she had considered all
night. “No,” she said as she had decided. She would let the boy take the lead in this conversation and answer only what he asked. At least at first.

“When is he coming home?”

She squatted in front of him so they were eye to eye. “I am so sorry, but your daddy and mommy will not be coming home.”

He bit his lip, as if trying to decide what this meant. “Not at all?”

She shook her head. “They can’t come. Never again.”

“Why?”

She was sorry Rishi was not yet up, but in the end, the answer must be the same, no matter who gave it.

“We found out last night. I know they wanted to come back for you and Lily, and planned to. They loved you very much, but there was an accident, and they died.”

“No, they didn’t.”

She waited, hoping he would say more, but instead he went back to the tiny bedroom he shared with Lily and closed the door.

Janya felt tears running down her cheeks and wiped them with the palm of her hand. When she stood she saw that Rishi was in the doorway.

“I heard,” he said.

“He does not believe me.”

“I think perhaps he does, at least a little. It will take time. He is too young to understand this.”

“Do you understand it? I do not. Not even a little.”

Rishi put his arms around her and held her close.

Breakfast an hour later was a silent affair. Vijay said no more about his parents, and when asked a question, merely nodded or shook his head. Afterward, the telephone rang,
and Rishi answered it in their bedroom. When he returned he took Janya to one side and told her that Protective Services was on the way. Together they decided not to explain the visit in advance, since nothing would be gained. They also decided not to pack what few possessions the children had.

“I will not make this easy for the authorities,” Janya said. “And I will not look as if I can hardly wait for them to take these children away. It’s wrong, Rishi. They have been through enough.”

“We will have little to say about it today, but I will speak to a lawyer if the children are removed.”

Janya was surprised. “You would do that?”

“Harit was my friend, and that is more connection than anyone else in this country can claim. He left them with us. He wanted us to care for them. This is a wish we can honor, until someone from the family makes arrangements.”

“Kanira told me the families wanted nothing to do with them, including the children. They would not answer letters or phone calls.”

“Yes, and Harit’s family is poor, and his village is remote and susceptible to floods. Sometimes it is what they call here a ghost town. The family could be difficult to track down.”

“If we are allowed to keep them until the family is contacted, they could be with us a very long time.”

“Will you mind?”

She shook her head. “And you?”

He smiled just a little. “No.” The smile disappeared. “But this is not the way I wanted to put children in our home. I…” He paused; then he pulled her farther from the bedroom door, as if to be sure their voices didn’t carry into the living room, where a long-faced Vijay was guiding metal cars between blocks of scrap wood Rishi had brought home from
work yesterday. Lily knocked down the blocks the moment the cars passed between them.

“I have thought and thought about this, Janya. I thought of little else all night. I don’t believe Harit killed Kanira. In fact, I am sure he didn’t.”

“How can you be sure? You certainly weren’t there.”

“He is—
wa
s—not a violent man. He was a follower of Gandhi. And his novel? I read the first chapters. It was brilliant. He was so…” Rishi swallowed, as if swallowing tears. “He was remarkably talented, and the novel was destined to be an important one. It is about a young skeptic alive during the time when Gandhi was leading India to freedom and the young man’s journey toward nonviolence. Once he told me it was not so hard for him to write because he, too, took that journey in this modern day. Before coming here, Harit was a community organizer devoted to peaceful solutions, and he despised the way people in this country so often settle problems at gunpoint. He would never buy a gun. I can hardly believe he would even pick one up.”

“They found it in his hand. People change when they get angry.”

“I don’t think he changed enough to give up all his ideals, abandon the children he loved, seek out someone to sell him a gun, hunt down his wife and shoot her in a strange bed before turning the gun on himself.”

Janya had her own doubts. Yes, Kanira had made comments that
could
be construed as admitting to an affair. But what had she really said? That perhaps soon she would change her life for the better. And couldn’t that mean almost anything? A job she had secretly applied for so that the struggling family had more income? A chance to go back to school to learn a profession? Even, perhaps, some new hope that a distant relative
or friend might welcome her and smooth the way with her own family if she left Harit and returned to India with the children.

“It is hard for me to believe Kanira, with all her faults, would have deserted her children for a man,” Janya said. “If anything, she would be unlikely to trust any man to give her a better life, not after Harit failed to give her the one she wanted.”

“The police seem certain they know what happened.”

“The police can be wrong, here as well as in India.”

Janya heard a car engine, then silence as the car stopped. Her limbs felt heavy as she went to answer the door, and her stomach was in turmoil. Only as she reached for the knob did she realize exactly how badly she wanted to keep the Dutta children with her in this house. The revelation frightened her as much as the thought of losing them to the state of Florida.

Maggie wasn’t sure why she had agreed to another date with Blake Armstrong. He’d arrived at Wanda’s Wonderful Pies almost the moment they’d opened that morning and invited her to dinner. He’d promised someplace casual, saying that after a long day at the shop, he guessed dressing up and late hours wouldn’t appeal to her.

Maybe, she thought, that was why she had agreed. Blake seemed like a considerate guy, thinking ahead about how she might feel and working around it. He’d already scouted a mom-and-pop spaghetti joint and promised the best calamari in town. Partial to calamari, she’d heard herself agreeing.

Of course, the best reason for spending the night in Blake’s company was to avoid her own. Evenings were the worst time for her. She disliked television, was out of the habit of reading and was usually too tired from working at the shop to whip
herself up to try something new. A quiet evening with a pleasant, attractive man would be a respite. She had warned Blake she didn’t want a relationship. She certainly wasn’t ready for a new lover, either, and even if she had been, she wasn’t sure he would make the cut. Nice as he was, good looking as he was, she didn’t yet feel that electric charge that was so important.