Act I
“Trust your instincts. Your brain picks up details about everything around you all the time. Unconscious information, or that which is outside of your conscious focus, is assembled and analyzed based on previous experiences. These seedlings of thoughts send signals to your body—an unsettled feeling in your gut, hair rising on the back of your neck in warning. Do not ignore these signals. Sometimes they can be wrong, but the more time you spend doing fieldwork, the more often they are not.”
—from Lessons from the Field by Harry Lancaster, Ph.D.
Chapter One
A thwack against the dark sunroom window startled Harry back into the plush club chair, smacking the binoculars into his eyes. Pain surged through his left hip, and he blinked away stinging tears.
“Dagnabbit.”
The propped-up iPad on the nearby end table chirped with a FaceTime call. He blindly poked at the screen to connect. The force of his jab sent the iPad tumbling over the table’s edge. It hit the rug, bounced, then landed against his walker to face the bookshelves that lined the wall between the room’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Dad. Dad.” Ceci’s voice called out from the iPad’s glowing screen. “What’s happening?”
“I’m fine,” he grumbled, hoping the blow from the binoculars wouldn’t leave him with two black eyes. No way he could explain himself out of that one.
Harry placed the binoculars on the end table and bent over to retrieve the iPad. His daughter’s concerned face came into view, connecting his Sunday night in central Ohio with her Monday morning in India.
Ceci was the spitting image of her late mother: high cheekbones, cobalt eyes, and an impish grin—now replaced with a frown. Her chin-length jet-black hair, which seemed to change as frequently as the weather, was the only thing that differed from Margaret’s, which had been steadfastly shoulder-length and honey-brown.
“What happened?” She was sitting in her office at the American Embassy in Delhi, where she was stationed for her State Department job. A lonely fern sat on a stand in the corner to her right. Behind her cluttered desk was a packed bookshelf, much like his own. Though proud of his daughter, who was following so closely in his shoes that she practically wore them, Harry wished Ceci and her family didn’t live so far away.
“Something hit the window and made me knock over the iPad as I answered your call.” It was close to the truth.
He looked out onto his dusky front yard. The hydrangea next to the window moved. A crow emerged and scampered a few steps. Its onyx eyes fixed on Harry. It stretched its iridescent wings, and with three powerful flaps, returned to the darkness.
“Just a bird.” He propped the iPad on the end table and settled into the chair. “How was Evie’s birthday party?”
Ceci beamed. “It started off sedate for five-year-old kids, then Evan joined, and you know how Evie gets with him. Within minutes, cake was flying everywhere, and the kids were laughing and covered in icing. Steve turned on the sprinklers so they could rinse off. Everyone left damp but happy.”
He smiled, wishing that Margaret could have seen their grandchildren grow.
As if reading his mind, his daughter’s tone grew somber. “You doing okay?” She cocked her head to the right, a trait she’d picked up from him.
Harry knew she was asking about more than his fractured hip. “I’m getting around better each day.” He ignored the throb in his left side. “I’ve read three of the anthropology books you sent. Have to keep my analytical skills sharp.” He glanced at the titles underneath the iPad: Bog Bodies Uncovered, Age of
Wild Ghosts, and Purity and Danger.
“Did you get the binoculars? They should have arrived yesterday.”
Heat warmed his cheeks. The Sharper Image binoculars she’d sent had impressive daytime and nighttime ranges thanks to built-in infrared lights. He’d been figuring out how to focus them when the crow had slammed into the window. “I did, thank you. They’ll be perfect for birding.”
“Please. We both know you’ll use them to snoop on your neighbors. Your chair is already angled for a better view out the window.”
He caught his daughter’s contagious smile. “I don’t snoop,” he said with mock dignity. “I’m an anthropologist. I make observations.”
“Sure,” she made air quotes with her fingers, “observations.”
“I never look into windows, but anything outside, I reckon is fair game.”
Ceci started grumbling about office politics, and as the woes and seconds ticked by, his eyes reverted to the window. Though the light outside was dim, years of familiarity helped Harry make out the details of the nearby Craftsman-style patio homes and duplexes that sat loosely scattered around an oval pond. Next door at the Buchanans, an Ohio State banner wafted in the wind, cheering for the Buckeyes with each flap. At Diana Middleton’s majestic abode, potted plants in Tuscan urns stood guard by the front-porch steps. On the far side of the lane, a high-end golf cart perched in the Patels’ drive, a symbol of their love for tee time and nineteenth hole martinis.
A shadow glided along the pond’s edge. Harry tracked it as it moved along the water. Bigger than a fox, smaller than a deer. It progressed eastward and vanished behind a towering oak.
“Can you believe she said that?” Ceci’s indignation caused him to meet her eyes and shake his head.
The shape reappeared on the road near Rachel’s condominium, heading in Harry’s direction. When it skirted by the pale light dribbling from a Victorian lamppost, he saw the flicker of a silver bob.
Huh. His neighbor Sue Daniels.
Harry shook his head again, pretending he’d been paying attention.
Was Sue out for a walk past 11 PM? Clad in black, she seemed a perfect target for a passing car. She was asking for trouble.
A rogue cloud cleared the moon, brightening the landscape. Harry glanced over to see Sue retreat through her side yard and behind her house.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, do you?”
Harry flicked his attention back to his daughter and tried to piece together what she’d said. “I see your point.”
“I knew you’d agree with me.” She sounded relieved, and he felt guilty for tuning her out.
A low siren sounded in the distance, and as it grew louder, Harry tried to discern whether it was coming from the iPad or outside his house. He interrupted her litany. “Sounds like a police car. I think the cops have been called to the lane.”
“Da-a-ad,” she chided.
He picked up the binoculars and wiggled them at her. “You’re the one who gave them to me.”
Ceci rolled her eyes and smiled. “Love you.”
“You too. Hug the kids for me.” They ended the call as the siren’s clamor grew.
Harry looked outside to see Sue’s porch light flick on. She walked out into her yard and stood beside a clump of flourishing mums. Gautam Patel joined her from next door, a surprise given the late hour. Gautam and his wife Sakshi habitually were up and out before seven for an early round of golf.
He fiddled with the binocular’s controls and the figures of Sue and Gautam sharpened. They chatted and gestured toward Sue’s condo. Gautam’s lanky silhouette contrasted with Sue’s stocky build. Both wore robes and slippers.
A police car squealed to a stop in front of Sue’s drive. Garish red and blue streaks bounced off the homes of Lakeview Lane and the pond at its center. Then the car’s flashing lights flicked off, and two uniformed officers got out. Gautam returned home. Sue and the policemen disappeared inside her house, with Harry’s curiosity not far behind.
That’s it, he decided. Despite needing a walker for now, that wasn’t going to stop him seeing what was going on.
Harry plodded to the foyer closet for his coat, turned on the outdoor light, then clambered out onto the porch, careful not to catch his walker on the doorframe or on the brick walk that led to his drive.
The police car was still parked outside Sue’s, and he inched forward, wary of the steep incline. The chilly night air clung to him with foreboding.
When he reached the bottom of his drive, Sue’s front door opened, and the two officers came out and returned to their patrol car. Headlights illuminated the lane as the vehicle snaked around the pond toward his home.
His mind flashed back to the crow and the loud thwack against his window.
Blinding beams flashed across his face seconds later and the car stopped next to him. The driver rolled down the window, but his face remained a silhouette. “Everything okay, sir?”
“I saw the commotion and wanted to make sure Sue was all right.”
“She’s fine.” The officer leaned his head out the window. His cherub face made Harry wonder if he was old enough to shave. “Would you like help getting back inside?”
Annoyance sparked in Harry. He wasn’t feeble. “Thank you, but I can manage. What happened?”
“Nothing. False alarm.” The officer’s eyes shifted to the precipitous driveway behind him. He cracked open the car door and started to get out. “Better safe than sorry. We don’t want you getting hurt.”
“I’m fine.” Harry spoke in a churlish tone not even appropriate for his granddaughter when she needed a nap. He softened his voice. “But I appreciate your kindness.” He started up the drive to prove his point.
“If you say so. Be careful.” The door closed,
then the car continued on.
Perspiration slid down the back of his neck as Harry struggled up the incline. Had Sue accidentally set off her alarm? She’d bragged about its bells and whistles at the Patels’ last cocktail party.
By the time he reached his front door, he was breathless and worn out.
Time for bed. He didn’t want his new caregiver, who seemed to have more zeal than a cheerleader after three double-shot lattes, to find him haggard in the morning. His dignity had taken enough hits over the past few months—with doctors and nurses poking at him, tracking everything from his pulse to his lungs to his bowels.
Harry trudged to the sunroom to turn off the light, then back through the living room, around the glass coffee table, and across the silky oriental rug that he and Margaret had bought in Nepal. When the rug ended, his metal walker thudded as he moved across the hardwood floor. In his mind, each step echoed the sound of that crow slamming into the window.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
He tried to put it out of his mind, but the crawling shiver up his spine wouldn’t let him. In many cultures, a crow flying into a window foretold an unexpected death. ...
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