Under the Eye of Kali by Susan Oleksiw

Author:Susan Oleksiw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cozy mystery, india, crime fiction, traditional mystery, south india, foreign sleuth
Publisher: Susan Oleksiw

Chapter Fourteen

At five o’clock, Anita sent Peeru off to buy a few items for the gallery and then closed up, hanging a sign on the front handle promising to return by eight that evening. She wasn’t sure she would actually return, but it at least covered things for her. People were less apt to ask nagging questions about closing early if they thought she was opening later for evening sales.

Anita scanned the lane, but found no sign of the man she had chased earlier that afternoon. She had asked the bookseller and some others nearby, but they had paid little attention to him, since he showed no signs of purchasing anything. Resigned to having lost him, perhaps for good, Anita turned her mind to other questions. First on her list was learning more about the homes on the hill behind the temple, where she had wandered briefly after dinner with Anand the night before. She hurried down the lane and up the hill past the temple, onto the dirt path leading around the temple compound and into the small enclave.

Small neighborhoods such as this one usually reflected an expanding family trying to remain close as more successful families or businesses closed in around them. Anita climbed up under the trees onto the path, and uncapped her lens. By now most of the resort residents were used to her, and let her and her camera blend into the scenery; she was counting on that this time too.

After a few minutes Anita arrived at the house with the sign Nuisance Works: All Problems Solved. Anand was right—this was a great idea for a business, whatever it was. In the courtyard was an old hibiscus tree, its blood-red flowers so thick on the branches that it seemed more shrub than tree. This seemed a good excuse to stop and hang about for a while. She sighted her camera and began taking photographs. She had all but let herself fall into the compound before a curious woman appeared in the doorway, a towel in her hands. Anita offered her apologies, profuse compliments on the gorgeous tree, and a timid query about getting a different angle on the tree. The woman seemed to think it over, then with a warm smile invited her into the compound.

Anita was right. The three houses clustered together along the dirt path belonged to members of a single family, and they did feel crowded from all sides. Holding their own against encroachment had taxed their ingenuity and financial resources. “Our paddy fields are long gone,” the woman said, motioning Anita to a chair while she herself sat on the cement steps. “Such change. But we are having television now! But so much money.” Anita commiserated but secretly wished all televisions in India would implode. And what about work, she asked. What sort of work did the families do now, now that the farming was literally impossible?

“A good thing it is too,” the woman continued. “Weren’t the farmers in the hills

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