Boston Cream by Howard Shrier Page B

I called Sheldon. His cell went straight to voice mail. I left a message asking him to call on his next break.
    Jenn had David’s phone bills on her lap: they showed regular long-distance calls to his parents in Toronto. Nothing else jumped out.
    I picked up the research papers we had taken. From between them a folded sheet of paper fell to the floor like an autumn leaf.
    It was a missing person poster. It showed a middle-aged Indian man named Harinder Patel, and he had vanished the week before David Fine.
    Because Jenn is so much better at extracting information from people over the phone, she got to lie in bed in her room and make calls, while I got my first taste of driving in Boston. I took out the GPS unit, nestled it on the dash in its weighted sack and plugged it into the lighter socket. Once it was on, I punched in the address I wanted in Somerville, which I could see on the screen was north of Cambridge. I followed the posh gal’s instructions to Mass Avenue and took the bridge there across into Cambridge, where low-hanging clouds seemed to be trailing veils of rain. It reminded me a lot of the Annex at home, the streets lined with bookstores, cafés and indie restaurants. Young people walking everywhere, lost in their earbuds, cellphones and the occasional conversation with an actual person. Older lefties and ex-hippies, holding out against age, prowling around the bookstores in jeans, moccasins and soft leather jackets, grey ponytails poking out the backs of their ball caps.
    As I got into Somerville, construction narrowed the road to a single lane, and many horns blared as one as drivers tried to force their way right. When that finally cleared, the GPS told me to turn left onto a street that was closed off and dug down to the pipes. As I missed the turn, she said, in an icy tone, “Recalculating,” then gave me a new route.
    Madras Grocery was situated in the ground floor of an old house on Bow Street, whose name derives from its semicircular shape. The street was hard to find, which may have contributed to the business’s rundown look. That and the apparent scarcity of people of South Asian origin who might be in the market for its goods.
    A bell tinkled over the door as I went in past a billboard stuffed with notices for local movers, tutors, music teachers and dog walkers. And a copy of the same poster we had found asking for help finding Harinder Patel. As I walked to the counter, the smell of spice crowded in: cumin, turmeric, others I knew but couldn’t name, all in a pungent swirl around me. Thewoman at the front cash was wrapped in a yellow-and-orange sari with silvery trim. She smiled warmly without saying anything. I took out my copy of the poster and she looked at it through glasses whose panes were scratched and fogged.
    “I’d like to speak to you about this man,” I said. “He might be connected to another missing person’s case.”
    She turned to face the back of the store and called out, “Sanjay!”
    A well-built young man in his twenties came up the aisle. He wore a long-sleeved grey sweatshirt and blue jeans, and had jet-black hair combed straight up in front but forward from the back, giving him a fearsome cresting pompadour. A beard no thicker than wire traced his jawline and chin.
    “Help you, sir?” he asked. He looked to be in his early twenties. But already serious. Serious about something.
    I flashed the poster. “You’re looking for this man?”
    He started to look hopeful. “Yes, yes. He’s my father. Have you found him? Found something?”
    “I’m sorry, no.”
    The expression sagged back to neutral. “Oh. Then why are you here?”
    I showed him a picture of David Fine. “Because this man is missing too, and he had your flyer among his effects.”
    He knew David. From the first widening of the eyes to the slight opening of his carefully barbered jaw, I could tell he knew him.
    “Come to the back,” he said.
    He led me past an office too tiny and crammed for the