by Leena Clover
“We don't use them fancy phones, Meera,” Jon said. “Our old phone works for us.”
I curbed myself from frowning and begged them again. “I have one at home, I think. Can I please take this home?”
“Let her,” Jon said to Sylvie.
And she finally nodded.
“I’ll be careful, I promise. And I’ll let you know soon as I find something.”
Becky and I headed home.
Chapter 36
Back home, we swooped into the kitchen and ran into Tony and Jeet devouring a large pizza.
“What's this?” I cried.
“Leaving us out?” Becky joined in.
The large pizza box was almost empty.
Tony roared with laughter and Jeet sniggered.
“Relax. There's one more box.”
I spied a box on the table in the dining room.
“You rats. I’m starving. Wrong time to make fun of me.”
“Dad ate some of this too. Go scream at him!” Jeet dared me.
I huffed but couldn't stop smiling when I spied the print on the box. Leonardo’s is the top pizza joint in town, and expensive.
“Anything special?” I mumbled through a large bite of Chicken and Onion pizza.
“Consider it a late Diwali gift,” Tony said magnanimously. “And finish up and get ready.”
I chewed down the large bite and raised my eyebrows in question.
“Girls! I've got tickets for the Charlie's Angels movie. The 8:30 show.”
“That's great,” I hesitated.
“But?” Tony prompted.
We poured out the story of the backpack while decimating the pizza. Jeet had gone out, bored by the talk.
He came in with a couple of chargers in his hand.
“Let's just plug the darn phone in. Sorry!” He made a V sign with his fingers before I could call him out on the French.
“Yes. There's still time for the movie. You girls may just have to cancel the primping.” Tony kidded as Becky whacked him in the head.
All eyes were on the cell phone as Jeet plugged in the charger and pressed the phone button. The welcome screen came on, and unlike earlier, when the phone had shut down, the music started and the main screen came up. The phone started searching for a network.
My eyes riveted to the name displayed on the screen – Jyothi!
“Bingo!” I screamed.
“Atta Boy!” Tony yelled.
I snatched the phone from Jeet's hands and went through the address book. It was empty. Then I clicked on Call History. There were no incoming calls. I looked up and found three pairs of eyes staring at me, spurring me on. I clicked on the Outgoing Calls and finally found something.
There were two numbers that had been called repeatedly. Both had an area code of 316.
“Isn't that …” I started.
“Wichita!” Tony finished for me.
Wichita, Kansas is another university town a couple of hours north of us.
“Who's she calling in Wichita?” I wondered. “Does she have any family there?”
“Family would have called back,” Tony objected. “You notice there are no incoming calls?”
I scrolled through the call history again.
“And most of these are a minute or 5 minutes max.”
“Maybe she didn't have daytime minutes,” Becky offered.
“But then she would've called at night. And there should've been some calls with a longer duration.”
“Maybe she was hassling someone. Giving blank calls, hangin' up!” Jeet chortled.
Trust a teenager to spot a prank everywhere.
“How profound. Don't you have homework or something?” I shooed Jeet away.
Tony looked thoughtful.
“Jeet may be right.”
“What?” I squinted at Tony as if he'd lost his mind.
“Just sayin'. Not impossible. Maybe she was trying to transfer out.”
I thought for a while and the idea appealed to me even more.
“Obviously, she wasn't doing good here. Neither in school, nor out of it. Maybe she thought of getting admission over there. These could be calls to the admissions office, or maybe to some professor.”
“That's a pretty wild guess,” Becky said.
“Wild or not, we’re getting late. So are we catching the movie or not?” Tony interrupted.
“I'm beat. My brain's fried thinking of all this. So yeah, let's go see Drew Barrymore land some punches.”
“Yeah! Let's go drool over a voice on the wireless,” Tony teased back.
The evening passed pleasantly and I was fast asleep the moment I snuggled into my bed later that night.
Saturday morning passed lazily and I finally fired up the home computer. I wanted to do a reverse search on the phone numbers Jyothi had called. After some trial and error, I soon figured out that one number belonged to the computer science department at Monterey Central University, a top graduate school in Kansas.
I paused. Could my speculation be right? Was Jyothi trying to switch colleges?
The second number was a bit tough but it gave me an address and a name. Spotting an Indian name, I again thought it might be someone related to Jyothi. There was only one way to find out.
I decided to bear the cost of a long distance call and started dialing from the home phone. The phone rang a few times and the answering machine picked up. The greeting mentioned two names, and asked the caller to leave a message. Judging by the message, the phone belonged to a couple of Indian students.
I hung up and called again.
A voice yelled in my ear. “What's your problem?” The voice launched into a tirade in Hindi.
My knowledge of Hindi is limited, picked up from Closed Captioning of Bollywood films. But I could sense the ire in the voice.
“Err, Hello?” I ventured. “Sorry but I don't speak Hindi.”
There was silence at the end.
“Do you know a girl named Jyothi Sudhakaran?” I pressed on.
“No! And I don't want to!” The phone was slammed down before I could say any more.
I let out a whistle. This was getting curiouser, as they said.
I snatched my car keys from the bowl in the foyer and stepped out. I started the car, cranked down the window and drove slowly toward the highway. I turned into the gas station, almost by habit.
Tony was at the counter, looking fresh out of the shower, smelling of Zest soap. His wet hair curled around his neck, and a cowlick came down on his forehead.
He beamed at me as I pushed open the door.
“Wasn't Drew fantastic last night?”
I was caught wool gathering.
“What?”
“Last night? Movie. Charlie's Angels. Drew Barrymore.”
He spoke slowly as if speaking to a child, no doubt getting a kick out of it.
“Oh. Oh yeah!” I muttered.
“What's the matter, Meera? Still groggy? I have just the thing for you. The new Holiday Blend has come in. And so has the Pumpkin Spice. Take your pick.”
I went over to the coffee station and poured a cup. I fixed the coffee to my liking and walked over back to Tony.
“I ran a search on the phone numbers,” I told him.
Tony looked up eagerly. I gave him the short version.
“So what are we waiting for? Let's hit the road. Go to Wichita.”
He made it sound simple.
“ Really? What about the gas station?”
“Don't worry,” he assured me. “Don't have to be here all the time.”
“Let me just make a call.”
I dialed home. Motee Ba answered.
“I’m going to Wichita with Tony. I will tell you more when I get back.”
Tony came out from behind the counter and went to his truck. I grabbed a couple of candy bars, a large packet of Doritos and a bottle of water. Long drives are no fun without the munchies. I parked my car in a space at the back and climbed into Tony's truck. Soon, we were mergin
g onto the Interstate, speeding up to a steady 75 miles per hour.
Chapter 37
The ‘Welcome to Kansas’ sign passed by as I snapped open the pack of Doritos. Soon my fingers were orange with the cheesy dust and I was thirsty from the salt overload. I chugged some water from the bottle I had picked up.
Tony looked at me and smiled indulgently. He pointed to a corner of his mouth, and I flipped open the vanity mirror at the top to check my face. There was orange goop all around my mouth.
I wiped it off with a tissue and asked Tony.
“So. What do you think we'll find?”
He shrugged. “Have some patience. We'll know soon enough, I guess.”
The time passed quickly as I fiddled around with radio stations. Country music is pretty much all you get in this stretch of the I-35. Soon we saw a couple of signs for the University and Tony was getting off the exit ramp into the town.
“Do you have the address written down?” he asked.
“Sure do.” I rattled off the street name. “I checked Mapquest. It’s near their campus.”
“Are there any landmarks?” Tony wanted to know.
I thought hard.
“Yeah. There’s a fried chicken place and a Taco Bell. This place is in between. There was a florist too somewhere nearby.”
“That's it!” I shouted as we passed a light. “Cypress Ave. To the right. You missed it.”
Tony was already making a right turn at the next one.
“They must be perpendicular. Let's see if we can merge onto it.”
He made a right again at the next block and slowed down until we came to the next light.
And sure enough, we were facing Cypress Avenue. I craned my neck to see what was on the right.
“Make a left,” I ordered Tony.
He had already turned on his turn signal. We soon passed a restaurant sign for Chucky's Chicken. Judging by the parking lot, it was doing brisk business.
“Do you think it’s an apartment building?” Tony asked me.
I shook my head.
“No idea. Since we are sort of crashing the party, we'll have to find out the hard way.”
“What are we looking for?” Tony asked.
“Number 1510,” I replied, as if it meant something.
Just then, we passed an old house that sat back from the road. There was a beatup Honda parked in front of it.
“Pull over. Pull over!” I commanded and Tony screeched to a stop. “Just a hunch.”
I jumped down and walked back a few yards to the mail box in from of the house. It confirmed my hunch.
I went back and climbed in.
“Yup. That's the one alright.”
“So. How are we going to handle this? And how much are we going to say?” Tony wanted to know.
I remembered how piqued the voice on the phone had been.
“Why don't you do the talking?” I offered. “Don't think these guys are feeling kindly toward girls.”
“No problem,” Tony said.
We walked back to the house and climbed three rickety steps to a porch. The paint was peeling off the railings. The iron grillwork was rusted. There was an old rocker with a broken leg in one corner. A dead potted plant languished next to it, with a beer bottle planted into it.
I had no doubt this was some cheap student housing, inhabited by the male species.
Tony knocked on the door. We waited, trying to hear some kind of activity inside. Tony knocked again, this time with more force. He then pounded on the door and called out, “ Hello! Anybody home?”
The door swung open and I was presented with a broad chest in a navy cable knit sweater. Crisp khaki chinos were belted with a brown crocodile skin belt. I looked up into eyes as black as a dove. My mouth was hanging open, and I was staring at this specimen of male beauty. Something niggled at my mind for a second and then the moment passed.
I felt a sharp jab in my side and Tony cleared his throat.
“Meera!” He widened his eyes and gave a subtle nod.
I immediately looked down, remembering I was going to play mute.
Tony flung his hand in front of the guy introducing himself.
“Hi. My name is Tony Sinclair. And this is my friend Meera Patel. We are from Oklahoma. We need to talk to you about something. May we come in?”
The guy blinked and looked uncertain. Tony put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer. I snuggled into him. Maybe the guy wouldn't be weirded out if he thought we were a couple.
It seemed to work. The guy pulled open the door and ushered us in. We stepped into a sparsely furnished living room. The guy sat in an old wing chair and motioned us toward a Love Seat. Since it was the only seating option, I set myself down and immediately sunk in.
Thrift store, no doubt, I thought to myself.
A microwave dinged and the guy took out a plate of steaming chicken wings. He finally introduced himself.
“Hi. I’m Vicky Chopra.”
“Are you from India?” he asked me.
Tony's biracial heritage isn't always evident.
“My parents are. I was raised here.”
“My Mom's Indian too,” Tony offered. “From Bombay.”
The handsome hunk finally broke into a smile.
“I'm from Bombay too. I mean, Mumbai. That's awesome. Now tell me what you guys are doing here. Hope you don’t mind if I eat while we talk? I have a class in thirty minutes. This is my lunch.”
Tony assured him we had no objections and started.
“Do you know a girl named Jyothi Sudhakaran?”
“Why?” Vicky Chopra demanded, his suspicious tone back in action.
“Well, she's been missing for over a month now. Did you know that?”
“I had no idea.”
“Meera was falsely implicated in her disappearance. She has been cleared of it by the police. But then we found a backpack. And there was a phone in it. Your number was on the call list.”
We both looked at Vicky Chopra questioningly.
“OK. OK. I'll tell you but I don't want any trouble.”
Vicky paused to tear off a big bite off a chicken wing. He made a sucking sound and demolished a couple of wings. We waited, watching him chew. He sighed, wiping his mouth with a paper towel and continued.
“I am a PHD student over at Monterey,” he started. “I’m almost done with my work here. I am presenting my thesis in December but that's just a formality. Most of the committee has commended my work and I have two patents.”
He paused, wondering if we understood him.
“Tony's a law student. And my Dad's the Electrical Engineering Head at Pioneer Poly,” I volunteered.
He seemed a bit gratified by our credentials.
“So. You know how things work in academia in general.”
We nodded.
“I have a couple of job offers and a post doc waiting for me at Berkeley. But it all depends on finishing up this Fall, you know?”
“Where does Jyothi come in. Is she a family relation?”
“Anything but!” Vicky declared. “Being a PHD student, I was the TA for a couple of graduate courses.”
I nodded. Teaching Assistantships are common among PHD students. They give them some stipend and also groom them for jobs in academics.
“My name and contact information is displayed on class pages. Plus, I am the Secretary of the Indian Students Association here. Incoming students seeking new admission write to me a lot, asking about jobs or about the program in general. That is how I first got in touch with Jyothi. She wrote to me.”
“Was she trying to transfer here?” Tony asked, voicing one of our theories.
“I don't know. This was last Spring, before she shortlisted her colleges. She wanted to know the chances of getting financial aid here.”
“Go on,” I urged.
“I told her the same thing I tell such people. She wrote back saying she was applying here. Then she wrote to me asking me to recommend her to the department.
I couldn't do that!! I didn't even know the girl.”
“OK. That does sound reasonable.” Tony agreed with Vicky.
“Well, there was no response from her, and I thought nothing about it. Until I got an email again in August. She said she was at Pioneer and was having some trouble.”
We knew all about Jyothi and her troubles so we nodded.
“She called the lab where I work, and wanted me to come see her. She acted as if I was an old friend. I was busy with my research, so no way I was gonna go meet some strange girl, man.”
“Wait a minute. I know Jyothi. She's very, shall we say, countrified. Shy. Why would she behave this way with a stranger? Doesn't match what I know of her.”
Vicky Chopra looked guilty.
“Well, we did chat a few times, back in the Spring.”
“What did you chat about?” I was almost afraid to ask.
“The usual stuff. Where she was from. Her hobbies. What kinda music she liked.”
“So you were flirting with her.”