Murder on the Silk Road (19 page)

“I’ve been there,” said Charlotte. “We filmed
Big Sky
in Bozeman. It’s beautiful country. Besides, maybe he’ll commute to New York.”

Marsha considered. “Maybe.”

“It might be fun spending your summers in exotic places looking for dinosaur fossils,” Charlotte added.

“More like backward, dirty, and roach-infested places.” Marsha stuck out her foot to crush a huge cockroach that had just crawled out from under the bed; the carcass smelled like a bus-stop urinal. “That’s the one thing I can’t stand about Dunhuang, the roaches.” She looked up at Charlotte. “Listen, Stepmom. I don’t need you to egg me on.”

Charlotte laughed. “As long as you don’t—”

“I know,” interrupted Marsha. “As long as I don’t marry him.”

One of the many things Charlotte and Marsha shared was their readiness to march down the aisle. In Marsha’s case, it had been twice instead of four times, but she was a lot younger than her stepmother. Charlotte had often counseled her not to marry every man she fell in love with, which had been her own mistake.

“What does the
I Ching
say?” asked Charlotte. The book lay open on the bed, along with the plastic tray that usually held the teacups and thermos bottle, but now held three of the antique Chinese coins that were used for casting a hexagram, and a notepad on which a hexagram had been written down.

Not surprisingly for a Chinese scholar, Marsha was also a fan of the
I Ching
, though she frowned on using it for what she called “parlor game divination.” To do so was to trivialize a deeply profound book, she said. She called it “a key that unlocked the unconscious mind.”

Marsha passed the book over to her. The hexagram she had cast was Hexagram 31: “Wooing.” Charlotte read aloud from the interpretation. “‘This hexagram represents the universal attraction between the sexes.’ Sounds like it’s to the point,” she observed. “What does it advise you to do?”

Marsha sighed. “I haven’t gotten to that part yet.”

Charlotte laid the book down on the bed. “To get back to the subject at hand: I don’t think Dogie killed Larry.…”

“Dogie wouldn’t kill a flea,” protested Marsha, which showed how much she had already come under Bert’s influence.

“Granted. I don’t think he’d kill a flea, but you never know, Question: What time did Bert leave to go back to his room?”

“A little after four-thirty.”

“Four-thirty! Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. I looked at the clock.”

“Why so early?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to sleep in his own bed. Maybe he didn’t want Dogie to find out about us for some reason.”

Or maybe he was with Dogie, Charlotte thought. Maybe Dogie had been covering up for him, figuring that she wouldn’t bother to check with Marsha. Maybe Bouchard wasn’t the only one who was spying on the competition.

“Why don’t you ask him?” said Marsha.

“I will.”

Back in her room, Charlotte lay on her bed and studied the patterns on the stucco ceiling. She was exhausted—it had been a long day: the meeting with Reynolds, the tour of the Cave of Unequaled Height, the discovery of the
T. rex
skeleton, and the excursion to the Lake of the Crescent Moon. But she didn’t feel sleepy; her mind was spinning with questions. If Bert was with Dogie, why hadn’t Bouchard seen him? she wondered. Maybe he just hadn’t noticed a second person. He said he had been half-asleep. Or maybe it had been Bert that Bouchard had seen rather than Dogie. He had really only admitted to seeing a light tan Stetson, which could have been worn by either one. And if either Dogie or Bert or both
had
been in the desert, what was their purpose in being there? If they weren’t really hunting for fossils, that is. And, if it was to murder Larry, how had they managed to cook up the scheme to frame Feng so fast? Unlike Bouchard, they had arrived in Dunhuang only the day before. Or, if they hadn’t murdered Larry, might they have taken advantage of Larry’s being dead to steal the critical page from his field diary? Unlike Bouchard, they wouldn’t have needed a spy to tell them that Larry had struck pay dirt: he had told them so himself the night before. Dogie had condemned Bouchard for poaching on his rival’s territory, but who was to say that poaching wasn’t as endemic in the paleontology business as bribing building inspectors was in the construction business? Finally, if what Dogie said was true—if Bert hadn’t been with Dogie and he hadn’t been with Marsha—where the hell
had
he been? When it came to all-night places of entertainment, Dunhuang was about as meagerly endowed as Bozeman, Montana.

Charlotte’s eyes traveled around the room: the towels hanging on the rack, thin as T-shirts, full of holes, and stiff as cardboard from being hung in the desert air to dry; the ever-present thermos of hot water and packet of tea; and the ever-present bugs, namely the huge cockroach that was slowly making its way across the floor, feelers waving. And on her dresser, the gray-jacketed volume of the
I Ching
that Kitty had given her as a going-away present.

What the hell? she said to herself.

She wasn’t usually given to this sort of thing, she thought as she sat back down on the bed with the book. In fact, she despised this sort of thing. She had worked with actresses who wouldn’t show up if their horoscope wasn’t favorable. They were like the Roman senators who wouldn’t go to the forum if they tripped on the doorsill on the way out of the house. Unprofessional. And if there was one thing Charlotte despised, it was the lack of professionalism.

But … Marsha considered the
I Ching
a profound book of spiritual guidance, the oldest book of spiritual guidance in existence, in fact—over three thousand years old. Her attitude toward it was entirely pragmatic; its function was simply to satisfy specific psychological needs of the user. “Don’t ask it a question,” Marsha had advised her. “Trust it to give you insight into whatever it is that is troubling you at the moment.”

Fetching her purse from her dresser, she pulled out her wallet, opened the change compartment, and fished out the square-holed antique coins that Kitty had given her. She also took out a pencil and a pad of paper. Then, kneeling down on the thin pink rug between the beds, she threw the coins down on the tiled floor. She threw them six times, marking the result down each time on her notepad.

The hexagram she cast was Hexagram 57: “Wind.” The interpretation was “Success will be achieved by unceasing effort toward a clearly defined goal, like the wind that bends trees and sculpts mountains.” Her reading included lines that expanded on the initial judgment. The first warned her that by drifting “indecisively to and fro,” she was dissipating her energy. Instead of deliberating on the problem, she should act with “military decisiveness.” The second advised her that by taking “energetic action,” she would catch her prey. And the third informed her that although “the beginning has not been good, the moment has come when a new direction should be taken.”

As before, the
I Ching
had gone right to the heart of the matter. It had told her in no uncertain terms that it was time to stop fooling around and
do
something. But what? She reviewed the
I Ching
’s advice. While keeping her goal clearly in mind, she should take resolute action. But in a new direction; her current deliberations weren’t getting her anywhere. She decided that the question it was answering had to do with Larry’s murder. Her object was to find out who had killed him. What could she do to advance that goal? Talk to his servants, but that was hardly a new direction. And then it came to her: she could find out who it was that had planted the shortwave radio on Feng!

And for that, she would need Marsha.

She found her stepdaughter where she had left her a few minutes before, sitting cross-legged on her bed, studying the
I Ching
. Or rather, a book of interpretation. “I’m still on ‘Wooing,’” Marsha said. “Listen to this: ‘If you are trying to make a decision with regard to a relationship, you should give close scrutiny to the attitudes, surroundings, and friends of the other person. By taking stock of the forces influencing him in such a way, you will gain insight into his character and his life pattern. You will then be able to better judge his effect on your own character and needs, and come to a decision about whether such a relationship will ultimately be of benefit to you.’” She sighed.

“Sounds like excellent advice,” said Charlotte. “I guess you have some serious thinking to do.”

“Yes. I guess I do,” Marsha replied, then smiled at her stepmother. “But so do you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Daddy just called. I just came back from talking with him. He’s going to call you back in a few days. He wants to know if you’ll go with him to a businessman’s round-table convention in the Virgin Islands. It will be four days—September fourth through the eighth—at Little Dix Bay on Virgin Gorda.”

Charlotte sighed. Jack’s expectation that she attend functions of this sort had been one of their main areas of conflict. To put it simply: she hated them. The forced company of the other wives drove her crazy. She had absolutely nothing in common with women whose idea of achievement was finding a bargain at Neiman Marcus. Then again, a few days in the Caribbean didn’t sound too bad. And Little Dix was spread out enough that she could get away from the others. There was also Jack: in spite of everything, he was good company.

Marsha was looking up at her, awaiting her answer. She was sympathetic. She too would have hated the life that her father expected of Charlotte, but she also loved him and wanted to see the two of them stay together.

In any case, Charlotte was too tired to think about it right now. “To change the subject …”

“Avoiding it is more like it,” said Marsha with a smile.

“That’s exactly right,” said Charlotte. “Or putting it off, anyway. Do you have anything on your schedule tomorrow?”

“I’m supposed to be giving a lecture on the Tang Dynasty murals in the caves in the afternoon, but my morning’s free.”

“Good. How would you like to take a break from matters of the heart and go into town?” She explained about her consultation with the
I Ching
, and about her decision to look into who had planted the shortwave radio on Feng. “I thought I’d ask around the market, but I’ll need an interpreter.”

“Sounds fine to me. I was thinking about visiting the bazaar tomorrow morning anyway. There’s a market every day, but the big bazaar is on Sunday. It’s supposed to be one of the most fascinating on the Silk Road.”

“Great. I’ll make the arrangements for transportation. Is right after breakfast all right with you?”

“It’s a date,” said Marsha.

9

Charlotte awoke with one thought: more than anything else, she wanted to be clean. She desperately wanted a hot shower, or even a cold shower. She felt as if she had spent the day on a windy beach. She was coated with a fine layer of grit. There was grit in her hair, grit in her teeth, grit between her toes. Even the creases in her pillowcase were brown with grit. But a shower was an impossibility until this evening; and even then the chances that she would beat out the Germans who had been monopolizing the showers for the last two days were slim. What she really wanted was a long soak in a hot tub, but she wasn’t asking for miracles. Instead she settled for a thorough wash-up in her enameled washbowl, and a prayer for enough hot water to go around that evening. She was getting quite adept at washing up in her washbowl, but it wasn’t the same. When it came to hardships, she was of the same mind as Roy Chapman Andrews: she didn’t believe in them; they were a nuisance. At least she had a good breakfast to look forward to, she thought as she brushed her teeth a few minutes later at the communal spigot. The breakfasts here were wonderful. In fact, the food in general was very good, just as Peter had said on the train.

She met Marsha in the dining hall at eight-thirty. Since dawn didn’t come until seven-thirty, everything was behind time here. People went to bed later and got up later. Breakfast was at nine, lunch at one, and dinner at eight, which was fine with her—she was on a New York schedule. Breakfast consisted of a delicious omelet, toast with fresh butter (in contrast to the rancid butter that had been served on the train) and a delicious pear jam, coffee lightened with warm milk, and “orong juice,” which was one of the beverage specialties posted on a sign in the dining hall, along with Luoky Cola and Ven Mouth Wine.

Eating in the dining hall was a little like eating in a high-school cafeteria—you never knew who you were going to sit with. Their dining companion that morning was a slight young Chinese man with a thick shock of black hair. He wore tinted aviator-style glasses, blue jeans, and a red-and-white Boston University T-shirt. His name was Chu and he was the director’s son, home from college in the United States on summer break. He had Chu’s broad face and flaring eyebrows. He had just arrived the night before, and would be working at the caves for the summer.

“My father has spoken of meeting you,” said Chu junior, once they had introduced themselves. He smiled, a grudging, toothy grin. “He wouldn’t admit it, but I think he was quite thrilled to meet you.”

“Why is that?” asked Charlotte.

“He was quite a fan of yours in his youth. He used to see all of the Western pictures in Shanghai.”

Charlotte found this to be one of the oddest things about being a star—having fans in these remote corners of the globe. For a time, she could have gotten off a plane almost anywhere in the world and been recognized. “Your father didn’t say anything about having seen my films,” she said.

“He wouldn’t have,” said Chu junior. “He doesn’t like to talk about his past as a member of a counterrevolutionary bourgeois family. Though I don’t see why it matters now that he’s been rehabilitated. I saw one of your films myself a couple of years ago, before they were banned.”

“My films have been banned?” said Charlotte.

“Not only your films. All forms of Western culture have now been banned as part of the national campaign against spiritual pollution. The party is trying to halt the spread of decadent bourgeois ideologies, which it views as being culturally contaminating.”