The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook (33 page)

‘Ha ha
ha!
’ Plodprasad shook his head, suddenly laughing. ‘Woo hoo! You know what the strangest thing about this whole incident is?’

‘What?’ Joyce asked.

Plodprasad wiped tears out of his eyes. After all these years, poor Warin has finally turned in a performance worthy of winning the best actor award. But unfortunately, nobody filmed it.’ He started clapping.

Suchada Kamchoroen joined in the applause.

Joyce raised her hands and clapped. ‘Yaaay, Warin. What a star!’ She turned to Suchada Kamchoroen. ‘It’s a bit of a shame, really. He really was a
major
hunk. Can I keep the photograph?’

Wong was the only one who failed to react in any way. He sat in the wicker chair, tapping his finger against the dressing table, still unsettled.

The Thai woman draped an arm warmly around his shoulder. ‘Not celebrating, Mr Wong?’

‘Cannot work out why my
lo shu
charts for actors all wrong,’ he said.

Suchada smiled, and patted the
feng shui
master’s bald pate. ‘If that’s all that’s worrying you, it’s a question I can answer in two seconds flat.’

‘You can?’ He looked up at her.

‘Sure. You obviously haven’t spent much time with actors. Actors are one group of people you will never be able to do successful birth charts for, Mr Wong.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they lie about their age. Every single one of them. Every single time you ask. I guarantee it.’

Wong blinked. Of course! Boontawee wasn’t a 1951 thunder tree earth dragon. He was much older. Something quite different. Same with the other two. They were actors. They needed to stay young forever. How could he have failed to realise this!

The
feng shui
master picked up his
lo shu
charts, rolled them into a bundle, dropped them in the dressing room bin, and allowed himself a smile.

7 The case of the
late news columnist

In ancient China lived a very bad king named King Zhou. He always drank too much wine. When he drank too much
he became suspicious. He became dangerous.

One time he spent the whole night drinking wine
with his friends. He became very drunk. They became very
drunk also.

The next morning he woke up. He did not know what
time it was. He did not know what day it was. He did not
know what his duties were for the day. His friends also did
not know.

King Zhou said: ‘Don’t worry. I have one wise and
capable official in my government. His name is Ji Zi. He
knows everything about running my kingdom.’

The king told his servant to go and ask Ji Zi what day
it was.

But after the servant went, King Zhou became suspicious.
He said: ‘Ji Zi very smart. Maybe TOO smart.’

The servant reached the house of Ji Zi. The servant said: ‘The king drank two bottles of wine and has forgotten what
day it is today. Can you tell him?’

Ji Zi replied: ‘Tell King Zhou I drank three bottles of
rice wine last night. I cannot remember anything. I cannot
remember my own name even.’

The servant told King Zhou what Ji Zi said. The king
stopped being suspicious of his official.

Blade of Grass, always be smarter than people think you are. The best way to do this is to act more stupid than you are.

This is even truer in times of danger. If a forest has a
beauty contest, the judge will choose the tree who stands up
tall. But when the woodcutter is walking around, the tall
trees wish they could bow their heads.

From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’
by CF Wong, part 31.

A guttural banshee howl erupted from Madam Xu’s room.

It was a heart-stopping wail reminiscent of nothing but a pterosaur losing a game show final. The dying cry rose sharply and petered out slowly into a cracked whimper.

Alarmed, Joyce raced out into the corridor and hammered on the door. She was wearing a fake DKNY (it said DNKY) oversized T-shirt and had a ring of toothpaste around her mouth.

‘You okay in dere?’ she asked indistinctly, the toothbrush rattling against her teeth.

There was no reply.

She knocked again, and then took the obstruction out of her mouth to speak with more volume. ‘Madam Xu? Something wrong? I’m coming in.’

She noticed with horror that she had spat Colgate Sparkling White With Tartar Control against the door and was instantly aghast, feeling a powerful urge to return to her own room to fetch something with which to wipe the door down.

Dismissing that thought as impractical in the circumstances, she reached for the brass-plated handle, repeating: ‘I’m coming in.’ But it was locked, so she was left rattling it uselessly.

Joyce used her fist to bang on the pale satinwood door as heavily as she could, splattering more toothpaste on it, this time from the toothbrush in her hand. Bugger! She gritted her teeth. Did Colgate Sparkling With Tartar Control damage wood varnish? Would they be charged for this?

‘Chong-Li? Chong-Li? You okay?’

Still no reply. She wondered what to do. Should she call the hotel reception, get a spare card-key? Or perhaps call an ambulance—the animal-like squawk she’d heard had chilled her to the bone, and suggested that some
thing
in there was attacking Madam Xu. Or should she call security? Someone with a gun might come and shoot whatever it was!

But what if the people she summoned to open the door were men and Madam Xu was not properly dressed? Or had her teeth out? Or had no make-up on? She would never be forgiven.

Wracking her brain for alternatives, Joyce recalled that the guest rooms had connecting balconies. It might be possible to clamber from one to the next.

She raced back through her room and out onto a tiny terrace. Taking great care not to look down, she gingerly lifted her right leg as far as she could and heaved it across a tiny space on the left side of her balcony so that it hovered over the floor of the terrace of the neighbouring room. She could see nothing but concrete in front of her eyes, and was surprised that it had pores in it, like skin. She tilted her toes and stretched her leg until it touched the floor on the other side, and then carefully shifted her weight so that it was on the side to which she was moving.

She jumped down, painfully scraping her thigh against rough cement as she did so. Thrilled to see Madam’s Xu’s French windows partly open, she placed her fingers on the cold left doorjamb and yanked. It swung open.

Stepping inside the chilled, low-lit room, she found Madam Xu, fully dressed, lying flat on her back on the bed, eyes open and staring blankly at the ceiling. The room was filled with a thick cloud of floral perfume.

Had Madam Xu been Guerlained to death?

‘Madam Xu! You okay?’

The figure on the bed did not move. Joyce froze in horror.

Was she dead?

The young woman started feverishly biting her fingernails, unable to take another step forward. She felt an overpowering urge to back out to the balcony, to disappear and let someone else take responsibility for this problem.

No!
she told herself.
Every second counts.
Gathering her courage in both hands, she forced herself to move closer to the supine body. She passed her hand over the woman’s mouth and was relieved to find her still breathing. Then she waved her fingers over Madam Xu’s open eyes. Gradually, the dilated pupils drifted down and focused on her.

‘Phew! You’re not dead?’

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the telephone was off the hook, its handset dangling on the floor. Maybe the Chinese fortune-teller had had a call that had given her a terrible shock.

‘What is it? Have you had some bad news or something?’

Getting no response, Joyce gingerly picked up the handset to see if anyone was still on the line. ‘Hello? Anyone there?’

‘Hello mees. Who arr you?’
said a male voice with a Filipino accent.

‘My name’s Joyce. I’m travelling with Madam Xu. I’m afraid she’s not very well at the moment. Can we call you back?’

‘I guess you can.’

‘So, like—who are you?’

‘Metro Police Chief Deputy Director Danilo de los Reyes.’

‘Oh. Okay. Metro Police—ah. Maybe I’ll get a pen. Hang on a mo —’ She glanced around for paper and something to write with and was pleased to find both on the bedside table. ‘Okay, I gotta pen, can you say it again?’

‘Metro Police Chief Deputy Director Danilo de los Reyes.’

She started to repeat his name back to him as she wedged the handset between her shoulder and ear. ‘Metro. Police. Chief.’

‘Deputy Director Danilo de los Reyes.’

‘Deputy. Di—this pen doesn’t work at all. Sorry.’ She angrily scribbled blank circles on the page.
Bloody useless.

‘Maybe I’ll just remember it. Deputy Daniel, Director de Los Angeles—er?’

‘Metro Police Ch—never mind. My men are in a car heading to the hotel. They’ll bring you to me. What’s wrong with Madam Xu?’
Wuss wrong weed Madam Zoo?

‘Don’t know. I think she’s fainted. What d’you say to her? Did you give her really bad news or something?’

‘I suppose I did. I told her that Gloria Del Rosario was found dead last night.’

Joyce gasped and sat down on the edge of the bed. She felt that all the breath had been sucked out of her.

‘Miss?’

‘Geez. That’s—that’s—terrible.’

‘Yes,’ said the police officer. ‘It is, as you say, terrible. Especially since, I understand, your companion Madam Xu and a man named Wong were among the last people to see her. We have her appointments book and they visited her apartment yesterday morning, correct?’

‘Yes, they did. Me too. I’m kind of an assistant. We spent most of the day there.’

‘Fine. Well, I guess I need to tell you not to leave town. We’ll need statements.’

‘We’re supposed to be on a flight at lunchtime.’

‘Cancel it. My men are on their way. They’ll be at your hotel in a few minutes. We’ll want to take you all down to the station for some questions. I’m afraid I can’t tell you how long it will take. But I want you to stay in Manila for a few days. Very important.’

‘How did she . . . ?’

‘Jumped off the roof of the newspaper building early yesterday evening. Goodbye.’

Joyce, too shocked to reply, slowly lowered the phone.

Wong, like Madam Xu, reacted badly to the news, and appeared to be in physical pain. His eyes were screwed up into wrinkled ovals and his whole face had acquired a shar-pei look about it. The fortune-teller was moving in a zombie-like way, breathing slowly and heavily as if she was in a trance.

Joyce was also kind of shell-shocked too—but her reaction was not nearly as dramatic as that of her companions. She was more surprised than upset. She wondered if there was something wrong with her. It was very worrying.
I am incapable of
feeling emotions. I have been permanently damaged by my
upbringing. I need serious therapy. I should have got some chocolate
out of the mini-bar.

‘You guys are really shook up, aren’t you?’ she said as the three of them sat in the back of a police car on the way to the station.

Wong bowed his head once in agreement.

‘I know how you feel. It’s kinda weird to spend some time with someone and then to have them like
die.
It’s just so, like, utterly, totally, utterly . . .’ She was lost for words. Mind you, the truth was that they hadn’t spent much time with Gloria Del Rosario—barely ten minutes. They had met her at the apartment at 11 am the previous day. She had shown them in, given them coffee, and then gone off to work. They had spent the day at the apartment, and left two written reports for her.

‘The end. It’s the end.’

Joyce looked at Madam Xu, who had spoken in a watery croak of misery.

‘End of what?’

The older woman turned sad eyes to her. ‘End of my career.’

‘Oh. Why?’

‘Think about it, young lady. I did a fortune-telling session for a client yesterday. I told her all sorts of things about her future. That very evening she dies. No one will trust me ever again. This is very bad. I have been exposed as a charlatan. I am ruined.’