She turned her computer on and checked her inbox. Still nothing more about Duncan’s firing. That had definitely been some hoax. It made her shiver to think that she’d almost got shot on a wild-goose chase.
There was still information she needed to finish the grant application, but there was nothing in her inbox from Gigi. This was the problem with relying on students to get work done. No sense of urgency. Then it occurred to her that Gigi might have emailed her again from her ridiculous Gmail address. The message would have been flagged as junk. She couldn’t remember what the email address had been. Something like sillychick71 or hotgirl94. She had told her research assistants repeatedly that graduate students with such unprofessional email addresses would not be taken seriously. She opened her junk mail folder, her jaw clenched with irritation. She skimmed the subject headings. Just the usual spam. Then one caught her eye: From a friend of Angie Osborne. She clicked on it, frowning.
The message was from [email protected]. It said simply, Danibel Garwick knows what Angie was working on. Speak to her privately. The address is 335 Sugarvale Road, Lodi, NJ. The message had been sent on Thursday evening at six thirty, and Grace saw with a jolt of surprise that it had been sent to both her own and Duncan’s work addresses. That had been the evening before Duncan left for Sri Lanka—had he seen it? Who was Danibel Garwick? She was certain she had not heard the name before. She tried Googling the name, but nothing came up. Did it have something to do with Cinasat? She called Mo and left him a message to call back.
He was going to be at his dinner meeting. She could go herself to the address, she thought. She could easily get to Lodi before eight. It wouldn’t be too late for a visit.
She took Route 46 to Lodi and, following her GPS, drove down Main Street, past a row of pear trees standing like dark sentries and a deserted strip mall, to a narrow residential street. It was still dusk, the absence of streetlights not yet a hindrance. The houses were small and rather run-down. The area appeared to be a flood zone. She could see the evidence of high water on the discolored walls of several houses. Yards were a little unkempt. When she saw a green metal mailbox with the number 329 painted on it, she parked at an empty spot along the curb, noticing a black sedan double-park half a block behind her, its lights off. Number 335 was only a few doors ahead. The smell of barbecuing meat was drifting down the street. She passed two people conversing in a front yard and approached a bushy rhododendron that hid the front door of number 335 from view. Through the street-facing windows, she could see light inside the house. As she turned around the rhododendron bush, the two people who had been in the yard next door hurried up.
“Are you a reporter?” one said, her tone gossipy. She was a middle-aged woman, rail thin, with protruding collarbones above her hot-pink tank top. “You can’t go in.”
Grace shook her head, frowning. “I’m just here to see Danibel Garwick. She lives here?” she said, still moving forward. She halted, confused, when the green front door came into view. Yellow police tape stretched in an X across the door. “This is Danibel Garwick’s house?” she said again.
The man who had come forward with the bony woman said, “What’s your business?” He was elderly, with a stocky body that gave him the air of an aging bouncer. A small black terrier that was on a leash wrapped around the man’s fingers pranced over to sniff Grace’s shoes.
“I’m a friend of a friend of hers,” Grace said. “I’m here about a personal matter.”
“You didn’t know her, then?” the bouncer said.
“Did something . . . What happened here?” Grace said, looking again toward the door.
“She died,” the bony woman said, coming up to stand beside Grace, her skinny arms akimbo, her hip bones jutting through the stretchy fabric of her black workout shorts. She leaned close. “I was the one who found her. Poor thing.”
“Police were here half the day,” the bouncer said. He pulled at the leash as the terrier stood on two legs to sniff at Grace’s hand.
“What happened?” Grace said again, incredulous. Was this really happening again?
The bony woman planted herself more firmly beside Grace. “I went over yesterday morning with her cat,” she said. She jerked her head at the house next door. “I live at 333. Dani’s cat was in my yard, so I took him back. The door was open. I found her on the living room couch.” She shook her head over and over, her eyes glazed. “I can’t get it out of my head. The way she was lying there, staring at the ceiling. Her tongue was hanging out.” She looked at the man, and he put his arm around her, squeezing her shoulders. “That was the worst part. The way her tongue was dangling out like that.”
Grace’s breath had stopped. She sucked in a gulp of air. She could feel the warm whiff of the dog’s breath on her hand. “Was she . . . How did she die?”
The woman shook her head again. “They don’t know. There was no blood or anything. One officer said it was being investigated. They kept asking us if we’d seen any strangers around. But no one saw anything. I heard drumming from over here the night before. She must have been listening to music when she collapsed. She might have had a heart attack, one of the officers said. It must have happened suddenly. There was a glass on the floor when I went in. Orange juice by the look of it. The floor was sticky. Bunch of flies.” She shuddered. “Flies all over her.”
“Does anyone else live here?” Grace said.
“No, she’s . . .” The woman looked over at Grace, examining her closely for the first time. “What’s your name? What exactly did you say you came about?”
Grace pushed back an impulse to turn on her heel and run. But there was no reason not to say. “Grace McCloud,” she said, hearing the reluctance in her own voice. “It was about something . . . personal. It’s not important.”
She turned around, ignoring their now-intent stares.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried away. They were saying something to each other. As she reached her car, the woman shouted out, “Hey, wait a minute!”
The man ran out to the sidewalk. “Hold on!” he yelled. The dog started yapping.
Grace got quickly back into her car. They were probably writing down her license number. But why did it matter? She had done nothing. She couldn’t make sense of what was going on. How could she come across three unusual deaths in one week? It was statistically improbable. Impossible. Something had to be going on. Was it all connected to Cinasat? Or just to Angie?
She drove back home, her thoughts roiling in a sea of worry. She didn’t know why she felt frightened. The lights were on in Gordy’s house. Somehow, that was a comfort, even though she had no intention of telling him any of what had been going on. What was going on anyway? She had no idea.
Inside, she tried calling Duncan again, with no success. She logged in to her email and reread the message about Danibel Garwick. The neighbor had said she’d been found the previous morning. Had she died after this message had been sent? Should she call the police and try to find out? Should she tell the police that she’d got this message? Her head was starting to hurt. She wished she could talk to Duncan. There was nothing from him in her inbox. But a new message had arrived, she saw, from someone named Yak Adura. The subject line said, Vishesha panividayak. It took her a few seconds to realize that it was not gibberish but transliterated Sinhala. Important message. Then she realized that adura wasn’t some feature of a yak. Yak adura was a Sinhala term. Exorcist. An innovative way to avoid the spam filters, she thought, clicking on the message. To her surprise, she saw it was written in formal Sinhala, not transliterated but in Sinhala letters.
Respected Dr. McCloud,
I am a friend of Angie Osborne. I must speak with you about an urgent matter. Your husband is in danger. Please call me. Do not call from your home or cell phone number. Do not tell anyone about this message. Do not reply to this email. Write down the phone number and delete this message now. Trust no one.
Sincerely,
Yak Adur
a
Grace read the message three times, her heart pounding. What the hell was this? It couldn’t be a joke or a coincidence. Two messages from friends of Angie? In all the years she had been using email, she had never received a message written in Sinhala. Not even spam. The number below the message appeared to be a Sri Lanka number. The digits were spelled out in Sinhala letters. Why had that been done? For secrecy? Where would she call from at this hour if she couldn’t use her phone?
She checked her watch. Twenty-six past ten. Late, but she had to talk to someone. She picked up her phone to call Mo, and then put it back down. Trust no one.
She called the Taj Ocean Hotel again. The same female receptionist answered.
“Hello, I think I spoke to you earlier. I’m trying to get in touch with one of your guests, Dr. Duncan McCloud. Could you connect me, please?”
“Yes, please hold the line, Mrs. McCloud.” The woman sounded exasperated, Grace thought.
The phone in Duncan’s room rang shrilly, but once again, no one picked up. Grace left another message: “Duncan, this is really urgent. Call me as soon as you get this. I need to talk to you right away.”
What did the email mean? Do not call from your home or cell phone number.
She dialed the hotel again ten minutes later. The receptionist sounded distinctly irritated at hearing Grace’s voice.
“Yes, Mrs. McCloud, correct?”
“Yes, hi. I haven’t been able to reach my husband, and I need to get in touch with him urgently. Could you put me through to his boss, Bentley Hyland, please?”
“Please hold,” the receptionist said, and then, after a pause, “I’ll connect you to room 358.”
There was no answer from room 358 either. Grace left Bent a message, asking him to call. She wondered if she should call her parents. But what would she tell them? They would worry. Your husband is in danger. This had to be linked somehow to all the deaths. Or was she being pulled into Mo’s conspiracy theories? Should she call Mortensen? She didn’t even know how to reach him. And what would she say? Trust no one.
She paced the living room, wondering what to do. She had to call the number, she decided. Find out who Yak Adura was. She could drive to her office and call from there. The drive would be short at this hour, and it would calm her down. Give her time to think. She picked up her purse and keys and walked out into the night.
29
DUNCAN
Sunday
The drive through Colombo was slow even for a Sunday morning. Janie, after complaining half-heartedly about leaving the hotel, had fallen asleep again, her head on Duncan’s shoulder. Duncan was exhausted. The conversation with Bent kept replaying in his mind. It still seemed dreamlike. Were they really in danger? From whom? What could happen? He wished he had asked more questions: about the intern, what was known about Novophil, how Bent had got his information. There were too many unknowns.
This was a job that had promised safety, in contrast to the one he’d had at St. Casilda, where there had been no tenure, no financial security. Employees had always been afraid that the college would go under. But now here he was, running for his life. For all the frustration he had felt in his last months at the college, he missed it. He thought of his small office there, the worn blue carpeting, the scratched wooden bookshelves loaded with dusty books, the lumpy upholstery in his chair. Despite its unglamorous fittings, he had felt welcome. And it had been predictable, until the day he received his notice of dismissal. The only unpredictable things that had ever happened were unexpected visits from colleagues wanting to chat or students needing advice. He sighed. The grass was always greener.
This was where he was now, he told himself, twisting the ring on his finger. He would deal with whatever came up. This chaos was temporary. Bent was right. It would all get sorted out. Nil desperandum. He tried to focus on the scene outside the window. They were in an endless stream of cars and tuk-tuks. Motorbikes wove in and out of lanes, ignoring loud honks from car drivers. Pedestrians didn’t seem to care much about honking drivers either. The city looked more commercial than he remembered from his last visit three years before. Buildings seemed bigger. Stores seemed taller and closer to the street, and more of them had windows with showy displays. Billboards were everywhere. He didn’t remember paint companies—Robbialac, Nippon—advertising so prominently before.
But still, even in the city, Duncan observed the down-to-earth air that he found so attractive about Sri Lanka. Stray dogs lay calmly on the pavement, watching people go by. At bus stops, women stood nonchalantly with umbrellas spread against the sun, which in the midmorning, was already beaming down. Men chatted outside shops, picking their teeth, relaxed. People strolled here. It made the city seem leisurely, even with the bustle of the traffic. As always when he was in Sri Lanka, Duncan was struck by how much less artifice there was here. People seemed more mortal here than in the States. He was always surprised that he didn’t find this thought alarming. In fact, he felt lulled by it.
“So much traffic. But once we get out of Colombo, it’ll be easy all the way to Hikkaduwa, no?” Duncan said to the driver in Sinhala.
The driver glanced at him through the mirror. “Yes, sir,” he said in English, before lowering his eyes to the road again.
Definitely not a talkative man, Duncan thought. He couldn’t see the man’s face from where he was sitting. His hair was curly and grew over his ears in woolly puffs. There was an alertness to him, in the way he looked through the mirror, and the way he held the wheel. Duncan had made several attempts to engage him in conversation. At first, he had seemed startled at Duncan’s fluency in Sinhala, but although he had stared, he had responded only in monosyllables, all in English.
The concern about his present situation began to rear up again. Duncan pushed the worries resolutely aside, adjusted Janie’s drooping head against his shoulder, and closed his eyes.
It was only when a rut in the road jolted him awake that he realized he had fallen asleep. The slight stickiness of his skin reminded him immediately that he was in Sri Lanka. They were driving on the Colombo–Galle road, a route Duncan loved. On the left houses stood behind painted garden walls. He could see past the low and latticed ones into gardens with vegetation that looked too green for the seaside. Suriya and araliya trees leaned over oleander bushes, clumps of bamboo, and the occasional bougainvillea. On the right hotels and resorts of varying degrees of luxury eclipsed the view of the ocean with the studied tranquility of their buildings.
Here and there, small stretches of undeveloped land exposed the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, brilliant blue to where it met a sky of blazing white. Coconut palms, twisted by years of wind into arcs, and groves of screw pines propped on pyramids of roots shaded the smoothly packed sand. Those stretches were what Duncan waited for as the car sped ahead. Each brief glimpse reminded him that the simple splendor of the ocean was right there, free for all to enjoy, just past the businesses that were cashing in on its beauty. Duncan wanted to wake Janie to show her the view, but then he remembered the situation, that he might have explaining to do. He let her sleep.
He glanced at his watch and saw with surprise that it was later than he had thought. They should have been in Hikkaduwa by now. “How much longer to Hikkaduwa?” he said in Sinhala to the driver.
The driver regarded him briefly in the mirror. “Hikkaduwa back,” he said in English, gesturing toward the rear window. “Very soon Galle.”
“What?” Duncan said, surprised into English. “Wait, wait, we are going to a guesthouse in Hikkaduwa. Didn’t Mr. Hyland tell you?”
“Told, sir. Very soon Galle,” the driver said. “Five minutes.”
“We’re going to be there in five minutes?”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said firmly.
He could wait five minutes, Duncan thought. If it was the wrong guesthouse, he could have the driver go back. It was only about twelve miles from Galle to Hikkaduwa.
The road curved away from the ocean for a whil
e. They turned and drove along a narrow side lane that sloped up for a short distance past several tall gray garden walls, hedges of hibiscus and oleander bushes, and a couple of uncultivated weedy blocks of land with stray coconut and rubber trees. At the end of the lane, they came to a tall black metal gate set into an equally tall gray garden wall. A squat concrete structure that appeared to be a guardhouse stood to the right of the gate. The name of the house was embossed on a small rectangular brass plate on the wall: THE MAYA. Someone had recently polished the brass. The gate opened at the driver’s honking, revealing a middle-aged woman with her graying hair knotted into a meager bun, dressed in a rather shabby brown lungi and a floral cotton blouse. Down a short driveway stood a large whitewashed bungalow surrounded by a portico. Two massive gray urns with flowering bougainvillea shrubs stood by the steps that led up to the portico.
“This is a guesthouse?” Duncan said.
The gate clanged shut behind them as the car crept up to the front steps, the tires scrunching the gravel.
“Right place. Come, sir,” the driver said, opening Duncan’s door. He went to retrieve the bags from the back while Duncan tried to wake Janie. A line of drool was spilling down her chin. When he shook her shoulder, calling her name, she opened her eyes, grinned, and fell back asleep.
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