For a few Dumplings More Page 11

  “My son’s going to Harvard!” Dad beamed, looking happy.

  “Your mother…” Motee Ba started, and stopped.

  Sally put a hand on her shoulder and smiled.

  “This chicken is just awesome,” Tony gushed, asking for a second helping. “I know it’s Meera’s recipe but this is different.”

  Sally smiled and thanked Tony.

  “Lots of chili peppers,” Pappa laughed, wiping the sweat off his brow.

  Jeet came to my room early the next morning. I patted the space next to me and he sat on the bed, sliding his feet under the covers.

  “I’m so happy for you,” I said, pulling his cheek.

  “Do you think I can survive at Harvard?” he asked. “They say it can be tough.”

  “Of course you can,” I assured him.

  My excitement ramped up as the day passed. Saturday morning couldn’t come soon enough.

  Motee Ba and I had decided to hold the party on the patio behind the guest house. Tony and Jeet made sure there were plenty of logs for the fire pit. They brought out a couple of space heaters, just in case.

  We set up a few trestle tables and I covered them with the checked table cloths we use for barbecues and picnics. I had no idea what Sally had planned to do during this party.

  “She’s going to Oklahoma City,” Motee Ba said, reading my mind. “We need some groceries anyway.”

  Mary Beth Arlington was the first to arrive. She was carrying a Crockpot with potholders.

  “My special barbecue wings,” she said. “They’re slow cooked so the sauce seeps into them. Everyone loves my wings!”

  I thanked her and put her Crockpot on one of the tables.

  Mary Beth greeted Motee Ba and looked around, her bosom heaving with barely contained excitement. She was clearly looking for Sally.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked, leading her to the soda station we had set up.

  I had done a grocery run and brought dozens of disposable plates, glasses and silverware. We had plenty of food coming in but we would need something to put it on.

  A few older women I didn’t know arrived next, clutching Tupperware containers. Motee Ba greeted them and I took the containers off their hands and offered them drinks.

  “So, where is she? Where is your mother?”

  Mary Beth Arlington had snuck up to me. She was whispering in my ear. I jumped involuntarily and smiled at her.

  “Inside. Getting ready. She should be here soon.”

  Sylvie arrived with Becky, lugging a few big boxes of pies.

  “These are for inside,” she said, handing me two boxes. “For later,” she said, holding a hand over her mouth.

  Becky put the rest of the boxes on the food table.

  “You ready for this?” she asked.

  Henry arrived with her sister Carl. Carl was wearing a flower patterned dress with a cardigan and a hat that must be stylish in some universe. Henry was wearing tie dyed palazzo pants and a plain top. She had tied a scarf around her head like some sort of headdress.

  “Meat pie,” she said, handing me a pie plate that was still warm. “Carl makes the best mince pies.”

  A gentle buzz rose around me as more people arrived. The food table was pretty heavily loaded. Someone finally took up a plate and a line formed. People started noshing on stuff, exclaiming over the food.

  “Is your mother ready yet?” Mary Beth asked me again. “Why don’t you go check, Meera?”

  A cruiser pulled up into our yard and Stan Miller got out.

  “What is he doing here?” Henry’s voice boomed.

  Fiona had arrived a few minutes before, much to my surprise. Henry had cornered her and was grilling her about something. Stan’s arrival shifted everyone’s attention.

  “Hello ladies,” he said cheerfully. “I hear there’s a lot of fancy food to be had here.”

  “Mooch,” someone muttered.

  Stan walked up to the table and loaded his plate. He took a few bites, looking at me. I nodded, signaling almost everyone on the list was present.

  Motee Ba was talking to a brown haired girl I had never seen before. She seemed older than me but lacked confidence. She wrung her hands every few minutes, and shuffled her feet. Her gaze was leveled at the ground. I decided to ask my grandma about her later.

  Stan had polished off the plateful of food and was eyeing the pie, wiping his mouth.

  “There’s plenty of that to go around,” I assured him.

  I didn’t think anyone would want to eat pie after Stan finished talking. More pie for him.

  I silently rallied around the troops. We had decided to position ourselves in different clusters so each of us could watch over 4-5 women.

  Stan cleared his throat.

  “I don’t how to begin,” he started. “I’m not supposed to say this, but since you are all here, I figure I might ask your advice.”

  People gradually stopped eating as they realized what was happening. Everyone turned to look at Stan.

  “This is about Dot…”

  Some people crossed themselves.

  “We found a diary among her things. It’s got names and stuff. Hard to say why she had those names.”

  There was a heavy silence in the air. Someone fidgeted. Another woman suddenly scratched her head. The women began to murmur.

  “There are some letters she wrote. They are all neatly filed, with instructions on when to mail them.”

  Stan seemed like he was rambling. But he wasn’t. We had worked out a mock script for him. We were going to take random potshots and hope something stuck.

  Judging by the reactions around me, a lot of them had found the mark. I couldn’t hold in my excitement. Stan finally shut up and drove away.

  “Does he get dumber by the day?” Mary Beth snorted.

  Henry cackled wildly, but it was just false bravado. I had seen through her.

  “I say, Meera, what’s your mother up to?”

  I finally went in for some time, pretending to check on my mother. I came out and gave her apologies to everyone.

  “She’s coming down with something. You’ll have to meet her some other time.”

  Some of the ladies expressed regret. Many of them had no idea who my mother was. They had completely forgotten why they were partying on my lawn.

  The group broke up some time later, and the cars pulled out one by one. Finally, only Sylvie and Becky were left.

  Tony drove in soon after, followed by Stan. They burst out of their cars and hurried toward us.

  I had finally loaded a plate with stuff from Sylvie’s. I had secretly decided not to touch anything the WOSCO ladies had brought over.

  “Well Meera?” Stan raised an eyebrow. “Any luck?”

  “Mission successful!” I said, high fiving Stan, Tony and Becky one by one.

  The afternoon wind had picked up and Motee Ba was looking frail.

  “Let’s go in,” I said.

  We urged Sylvie and my grandma to go inside. It took us fifteen minutes to clean everything up.

  Motee Ba was making Masala Chai when we finally trooped into the kitchen. Sylvie was dishing out fat slices of pecan pie.

  We sat around the table, ready to get to work.

  Chapter 16

  “What do you say Meera? Was it worth all that trouble?” Sylvie asked.

  My smile was answer enough.

  “So you’re ready to drop this ridiculous notion about Dot?” Motee Ba spoke up.

  “On the contrary…”

  Stan was giving me a look, hoping I would be the bad guy.

  “Why don’t you guys tell what you saw? We were all observing different groups of people, right?”

  “Henry almost choked when Stan brought up the file. But Carl didn’t react at all.”

  “That new girl dropped her plate,” Sylvie said.

  “Which one?” Becky and I chorused.

  “The one with the green eyes.”

  “Oh, you mean Tony’s lady love.”


  “She’s no such thing,” Tony protested. “She didn’t even remember our date.”

  “Which you are now going to use to our advantage,” I told him, holding a finger up in the air.

  Becky spoke up without any urging.

  “Mary Beth Arlington was a bit flustered. She dabbed her brow with a paper towel. But maybe she was standing too close to the fire?”

  Stan Miller added his two cents.

  “I think it’s fair to say our statement had quite a shocking effect.”

  “That’s not usual, is it?” I directed the question at Sylvie and Motee Ba. “What’s the general reaction when something like this is revealed?”

  “You know them women, Meera!” Sylvie shook her head. “Gossip hounds all of them. The moment they get the scent of something scandalous, they start sniffing, asking questions.”

  “Aha!” I was triumphant. “But that didn’t happen today, did it?”

  “What do you think was their reaction then?” Tony asked.

  I waved a hand around the room.

  “It’s like what these people observed, Tony. Most of them were flustered. They lost their cool. But hardly anyone asked what exactly Stan had found. No one asked for specifics. That’s fishy.”

  “Very fishy,” Stan agreed. “I mean, we made this up. And I had prepared for some follow up questions from the ladies. But there were none coming.”

  “What does this mean Meera?” Motee Ba asked shrewdly.

  She wasn’t going to like my answer.

  “Okay. I’m going to put it out there. What it means is that there were more notes. Plenty of them.”

  “You already thought of that,” Tony said.

  “No, Tony. We were looking for one person among those women. Judging by the reactions, I am willing to bet more than one person got the notes.”

  Stan banged his hand on the table.

  “Exactly. That.”

  Sylvie and Motee Ba looked troubled.

  “And you still think Dot was behind them letters?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  I thought for a moment more.

  “We know it now, and those women knew it. They knew Dot was writing those letters. Or they at least suspected her.”

  “That explains their reactions,” Becky nodded.

  “What do we do now?” Tony asked.

  “We don’t have any proof.” I shrugged my shoulders and looked at Stan.

  “I can go around asking these people if they got those letters,” he began. “But what if they say no? I can’t very well say they are lying.”

  “Tony’s taking Fiona on a date.”

  “I am?” he raised his brows.

  “Yes. You will get to know her and make her open up. Then we can ask her about the notes.”

  “What about the other women?” Stan asked.

  “I will talk to them one by one. I just have to think about how to make them talk.”

  “Sounds good, Meera. I need to be off now.”

  Stan put his hat on and walked out.

  “What is he going to do?” Becky smirked.

  “Work on some other aspect of the investigation,” I said pompously.

  That brought a smile out of everyone.

  “At least he’s not arresting anyone just for show,” Sylvie said maliciously.

  Sylvie is a mild mannered woman so we were all surprised to hear her talk like this. Maybe she was justified. Her diner had come under the radar during last winter and Jon had been arrested for questioning. It wasn’t something we would forget easily.

  “So what do I do with Fiona?” Tony asked again.

  “Just ask her out for now. Take her out to dinner.”

  “She’s probably in Texas right now, visiting her family.”

  “So take her out on a week night,” I rolled my eyes.

  “What about her son?”

  “She has a sitter, doesn’t she? We can take care of him for a few hours if needed.”

  Motee Ba nodded. We heard a car drive up outside.

  “That must be your Mom,” Motee Ba said.

  Jeet came bounding in, followed by Sally. I didn’t know he had gone out of town with her again.

  Tony leapt up to help Sally. They stocked everything in the pantry and Jeet piled all the frozen items in a big plastic bin. He went to put them in the spare freezer in the guest house.

  “You didn’t have to get all that,” Motee Ba said.

  I had no such objection. She was living with us, wasn’t she? Why shouldn’t she pull her weight like anyone else?

  Sylvie made a fresh pot of coffee and dished out some pie for Jeet and Sally. Jeet came in and pulled some milk out of the refrigerator.

  “Everyone was asking about you,” I said to Sally.

  She smiled.

  Would it hurt her terribly to say something?

  The group broke up gradually and Sylvie and Becky headed home. Tony and Jeet decided to go bowling. They dragged me along. A change of scene sounded good. I needed to rest my mind before I could force any ideas out of it.

  After two hours of trying to beat the crap out of each other, we were exhausted. I gobbled a double cheese burger and stole bites of Jeet’s pepperoni pizza. The bowling alley does good food but it’s mostly of the fast food variety.

  I was ready to turn in by the time we got home. Sunday wasn’t much different. I made chicken curry for lunch and finally set up the white board in my room. I wrote down the facts as I knew them, made a column for people involved. I started a column for people who had received the threatening letters. I added Henry’s and Fiona’s name to it. They would confirm it soon if I had anything to say about it.

  My Dad is a confirmed workaholic. I wish there was a Workaholics Anonymous for people like him. His work load had mysteriously gone up this semester. I suspected Sally had a lot to do with it. The only time I had seen Dad this last month was for meals, that too, not all of them. I decided to do a good deed and go talk to him.

  “Hey Dad!” I called out, pushing open his office door.

  Dad looked up with a frown. His hair was in disarray and his ratty old robe had seen one wash too many.

  “Can this wait, Meera? I’m in the middle of something.”

  What he actually wanted to say was ‘get out and leave me alone.’

  I ignored the brief panic that flared in his eyes and pulled up a chair. When I was a kid, a trip to Dad’s study meant I was in for some kind of punishment. The tables had been turned now. Dad was the one on edge when I went to talk to him.

  “You seem very busy these days, Dad,” I began.

  “No more than usual, Meera,” he said, peeking a glance at the papers he was reading.

  I gave him a look.

  He sighed and put the papers away.

  “Have you hired a replacement for Prudence yet?”

  Prudence Walker was my one time nemesis and Dad’s protégé. She had been found dead by the college pond last year. I was just using her as a crutch to move the conversation forward.

  “We don’t need to,” Dad dismissed. “We don’t hire professors for a specific class. She was being groomed to handle a lot of things. There’s plenty of other resources to pick up the slack.”

  I nodded. I kind of knew that already. I just wanted to get my father talking.

  “What classes are you teaching this semester?”

  “Don’t you have anything better to do Meera?” Dad grumbled.

  I stood my ground.

  “Ba wants me to take your mother to dinner,” he blurted out.

  Why was my grandma doing this?

  My emotions must have shown clearly on my face because Dad continued.

  “That’s not all. She wants me to do it on Valentine’s Day.”

  I flew out of my chair.

  “What?” I screamed. “Isn’t it enough that woman’s living in our home?”

  I paced the room, squeezing one of the stress balls I found on my Dad’s desk.

&nb
sp; “Don’t be disrespectful, Meera!” Dad ordered. “I have been meaning to talk to you about this.”

  “Your date?” I spit out.

  “No. Your attitude.”

  I rolled my eyes. Dad saw it and reddened.

  Anand Patel or Professor Andy as his students call him rarely loses his temper. But when he does, all hell breaks loose. I felt Dad beginning to lose his cool and hastened to cover up.

  “I’m sorry, Dad, I didn’t mean to be rude. Really.”

  He raised an eyebrow and snorted.

  “It’s just, it’s a bit hard, Dad.”

  “You were the one who started looking for your Mom, Meera. What did you expect to find? Nothing?”

  I thought a bit.

  “I don’t know, Dad. Maybe I would have been equally shocked by any outcome.”

  “Jeet’s taking it well.”

  “He’s a kid with a new toy,” I scoffed. “And he’ll be off to college soon. What if she stays here forever?”

  “What if she doesn’t?” Dad asked. “What if she goes away again? Are you ready for that?”

  “That’s exactly what I am afraid of, Dad!” I finally admitted the truth. “What if she takes off again and doesn’t come back. Or what if she decides she doesn’t want to associate with us? Can we take that kind of loss again?”

  “Talking to her might help.”

  “Have you seen her, Dad? She doesn’t even answer simple questions. All she does is smile in that horrific way of hers. I doubt she’s up for any serious conversations.”

  “Ba says we should give her time.”

  “Your mother’s being too easy on her, Dad.”

  Dad started frowning again so I tried to distract him.

  “So, Valentine’s Day, hunh? Doesn’t that sound drastic?”

  “She is my wife, Meera.”

  “Who hasn’t been around for the past 17 some years.”

  “We have to start somewhere.”

  “Why don’t you just have dinner first?”

  “You mean I should ease my way into it.”

  I sat up, smiling.

  “Yeah Dad! Like go on a date to ask her on a date.”

  I held up a hand as Dad started protesting.

  “Why don’t you go on a date right here? We’ll set up something nice for you on the patio behind the guest house. It won’t be family dinner, but you’ll be right here if either of you wants to pull out.”