The Nitrogen Murder(63)

I bore left, around the circular part of the road, heading home. An enormous house faced me as I passed the eleven o’clock position in my counterclockwise drive. Flat gray and orange stone, as many of the houses were, this home was set closer to the road than most, but its trees hid most of the facade. The address was spelled out in blue and white tiles, probably imported from Holland, over an elaborate wood-and-glass door.

127 WOODLAND ROAD.

My stomach clutched.

Not that I couldn’t simply keep Elaine’s car in drive and continue on.

The whole of Woodland Road was quiet, and even more so around the house isolated at the end. I cocked my head to get a closer look at the large stone structure. Like the other houses in this neighborhood, it seemed to belong in another country and time, with its dark, majestic lines and overwhelming greenery. I imagined servants’ quarters in the basement. A stark contrast to the bright new developments growing up these days, where the trend was pastel stucco landscapes with only the hint of trees to come.

There was no sign of life inside or outside the home, no open windows, no mothers with strollers or minivans, no gardener’s truck on the street. The newspaper reports of Patel’s death hadn’t mentioned a family, and I felt certain we would have known by now, from the media or from Verna Cefalu, Patel’s Dorman Industries secretary, if there had been a widow or children.

The Saab was in park. My palms were sweaty, my fingers alternately slipping and tapping on the shiny wooden knob of the gearshift. I needed to make a decision. Go shopping and surprise Elaine with a little gift from a bath shoppe? Take in a movie at the nearby Elmwood Theater? Get some exercise on a long walk through the winding campus roads? Just because I’d found the address didn’t mean I had to do anything about it.

In fact, this might not even be where Patel lived. Rose could have read the address incorrectly. PDA screens were hard to read, and her eyes weren’t what they used to be. Or Patel might have entered a false address. He was a spy, wasn’t he?

I reasoned carefully. If this was not Patel’s house, and I went in, it would be a serious B&E perpetrated on some innocent people. If this was Patel’s house, the police had surely been here, and there would be nothing for me to discover.

Either way, it was a bad idea to enter.

But what’s one more bad idea in a career full of them? I asked myself.

I moved the car about twenty yards farther around the circle and partly onto the gravel that served as a sidewalk, until tree branches brushed the windshield. I was grateful I wasn’t driving my own car, a Cadillac handed down from the Galigani Mortuary fleet and much too difficult to maneuver on these roads or to hide under a tree.

I turned off the ignition, got out of the virtually hidden car, and walked toward 127 Woodland Road.



Once I realized how absurd it was to try to break into the house, it seemed quite reasonable to just look around outside. I’m thinking of relocating to this area and I thought I saw a FOR SALE sign on this house, I could tell a suspicious neighbor. Or the police. I put thoughts of my cop fiancé out of my mind.

I wished I’d seen more contemporary movies—I was sure there was a standard way to do this. I began by slipping into the side yard through the unlocked garden gate. The heavy, old wooden door was splintery, reminding me I should have gloves, for more reasons than one.

I stepped onto the loose gravel path that surrounded the house and faced the side wall, glad I’d changed into indestructible black oxfords. I kept my body close to the building, my shoulder brushing the cool stone. I moved along the wall slowly.

The first window I came to was almost as large as a typical patio door, but raised a couple of feet from the ground. I peered in through gauzy curtains at an elaborate living room suite with a maroon velvety look that reminded me of the Galigani Mortuary parlors. The objets d’art seemed perfectly placed. Godlike statues on small tables, vases in all sizes on the floor and mantel, paintings hung in complementary groups of three. Everything said professional interior decorator—no ordinary Pottery Barn shoppers had furnished this home.

A breeze ruffled the trees behind me, making a low, whispery sound, almost hissing, as if to warn me. If the noise had been a word, it would have been tresssspassing.

I traveled more quickly to the other side of the window, still conscious of the crunching gravel, scanning the room as I moved. There were no photos or personal items that I could see; no books other than a matched set in the built-in bookshelves. Too far away for me to make out the titles. The Harvard Classics, or the works of Shakespeare, I guessed. Or the Indian equivalent.

Maybe Patel had a family still in India. My grad school classes in the sixties had been filled with men whose families had stayed behind in other countries. Wives who’d been given in arranged marriages waited in China, Taiwan, Thailand, India, for their husbands to return. One Korean student I’d gotten to know hadn’t seen his children in more than two years. The plan was that Ha-Neul would earn his degree and then go home to make a good life for them. I wondered if that cultural pattern had survived into the new century