Thai Die (16 page)

Doris clenched her fists in her lap. “Do you know who found her? Their son, Burke. He’s just fifteen. Can you imagine? He came home from basketball practice and found her in her car. He was all mad because she was supposed to pick him up, and he couldn’t find her in the house and he went to see if the car was gone and . . . Oh, it makes me so
angry
! What a cruel thing to do to your own child!”

“Yes,” said Betsy softly. “How much does Lena’s husband know about this Thai silk business?”

“Nothing, I would guess. What could Lena tell him? If she confessed, she’d be in jail, not down at the morgue.”

“She must have felt totally desperate and sad. Which is precisely the opposite of the way she was acting on Saturday.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do. For one thing, we don’t know that Lena was involved in the smuggling operation. For that matter, Carmen went to Thailand with Wendy and Lena. If Lena’s a part of it, could Carmen be, too?”

“Oh, no! I’m sure she’s not!”

“Where does Carmen live?”

“Wayzata. Lena was from Maple Plain.” Wayzata was just across Lake Minnetonka from Excelsior, but Maple Plain was a half hour away.

Betsy didn’t know any members of the police department in Maple Plain. And she did not think intruding on the Olson family with some scary questions was a good idea right now.

“I’m going to phone Mike Malloy. Maybe he knows something.”

But he didn’t. “It’s out of my jurisdiction,” he said. “And none of my business. It ought to be none of yours.”

“Now, Mike,” Betsy said, “if it’s connected to the mess Doris is in, it
is
my business. And it ought to be yours.”

He sighed gustily. “All right, yeah, you’re right. Oh, and speaking of that, the gun that Ms. Applegate was carrying in St. Peter is the same gun that killed Oscar Fitzwilliam in St. Paul. So there, at least, is a case that’s closed. I tell you what: When I get a copy of the report on Lena Olson, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you, Mike.”

Betsy told Doris about Wendy’s being the murderer of the antiques shop owner.

Doris said, “She’d already murdered someone?” Her eyes were wide with shock. “I touched a murderer?”

“You were very brave,” said Betsy. “You did just the right thing.”

“I wasn’t brave, I just wasn’t thinking,” said Doris. Still, Betsy’s praise calmed her enough to go back to her apartment across the hall.

Betsy returned to her bookkeeping for a while, but by eleven she was in bed and fast asleep. Then, a noise that began gently and quickly grew into barrage, woke her. Sophie the cat leaped onto the floor and ran under the bed.

Betsy got to her feet and slid her feet into her slippers. “All right, all right,” she grumbled as the loud banging continued. She fumbled in the dark for her robe. She was still trying to get into it as she came into her living room, pausing to flip on the light switch with a robe-covered hand. “Ow!” she muttered as the light came up like thunder out of China ’cross the bay.

“All right, all right, I’m coming!” she shouted.

Getting her hand through the sleeve with a last savage shove, she yanked the door open.

Doris was standing there, one hand clutching an old pink chenille robe closed at the neck, her other hand raised to knock again. Her eyes were enormous in her pale face, and her short red hair was more tousled than Betsy would have thought possible. There were brown smudges under her eyes and a scared look to her mouth.

“What’s the matter, what’s happened now?” asked Betsy, alarmed.

“I’m so sorry to wake you, but may I sleep in your guest room? I just can’t stay in my apartment—there’re strange noises, and I keep having nightmares.”

“Yes, of course.” She stepped back. “Come in, come in. Sit down.”

Doris obeyed, going to sit hunched on the couch, still holding her robe closed. It was several sizes too big; its shoulders came halfway to her elbows. On her feet she wore fleece-lined pink slippers. She was staring sightlessly at the carpet.

Betsy looked at her for a moment and said, “I’ll make us some cocoa.”

A few minutes later, Doris took a second sip from her steaming mug and this time her teeth did not chatter against the rim.

Betsy sat down in her easy chair, took a drink of her own cocoa, and said, “This is such a terrible time for you. I wish I knew what I could do to help. I’m not surprised that you’re all upset. I’d have nightmares, too, if I were you.”

“I was such an
idiot
to agree to bring that statue back with me!” Doris’s voice was low, but trembling with vicious self blame.

“Now, not necessarily,” said Betsy. Then curiosity won out over sympathy. “But why did you agree to do it?”

“I already told you,” Doris said, her voice turning sullen.

“I guess I mean, what was it about him that made you decide to trust what he said? Doris, you’re normally very level-headed, you aren’t at all the kind who is constantly being taken advantage of. Yet, in this case, there was no alarm going off in your head, right? And you’d think there should have been, considering the mess it led to. So why?”

As Doris stared at her, a frown slowly formed. Distracted from the late-night horrors by the need to think logically, she sat back and considered Betsy’s question. “You’re right,” she said at last. “I’m not usually taken in by strange men trying to talk me into doing something common sense says not to.”

Betsy sipped her cocoa and waited.

Doris thought some more. “I think it was because everything else over there was so foreign, so exotic. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being in a place that’s really exotic. That’s the purpose of travel, isn’t it? To see things you don’t see at home? But Thailand is truly different, in every way. Palm trees, banyan trees, strange flowers. The people don’t look like us. They speak a language I couldn’t understand—I couldn’t even pick up a few phrases, because it’s one of those languages where intonation can change the meaning of a word. Even the writing isn’t like anything I’d seen before. And their religion is not like Christianity, either—or Judaism or Islam. Their culture shares our attitudes in some ways, but then you suddenly realize they’re coming at life from a whole different direction. Again, this wasn’t bad; it was exciting and interesting. But suddenly, in the middle of all this was an American, an ex-marine, tall and strong and . . . familiar.” She looked at Betsy. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do. You meet someone in a foreign place who’s from your own country, and while back home you would barely talk to him, overseas he’s a good friend.”

“Yes, that’s it, exactly. I felt comfortable with him right away.”

“Wasn’t there some other American you met over there?”

“Yes, Ron Zommick. But he was only there for a few days. The manufacturing end of his company is in Thailand, but its headquarters is in Los Angeles, and he was winding up some business over there before he had to go home.”

“You talked about him in your e-mails. How did you know to contact him?”

“You know Lillian Banchek? Of course you do. You introduced me to her online—she lives in New Jersey, I think.”

Betsy nodded. Lillian, a funny, opinionated woman with a clever needle, was a regular on RCTN, a stitchers newsgroup.

“Well, Ron is her ex-brother-in-law. She and I were exchanging e-mails about a pattern I was working on, and when I mentioned I was going to Bangkok, she told me to contact him and gave me his e-mail address. So I did, and he told me to call him in Bangkok, so I did.” She took a drink of her cocoa. “He was great. He took me to some interesting restaurants and to some really amazing temples. But like I said, he had to get back to L.A., so we didn’t get much time together. He was very charming.” Doris smiled. “Good looking, too.”

Betsy smiled back. “Yes, you sent us a photograph of him. Was he the one who put you onto the other American—what was his name?”

“David Corvis. No, he wasn’t the one who told me about David. It was . . .” She rubbed her face with the palms of her hands. “I can’t think very clearly.”

“Want to turn in?” asked Betsy, trying to keep the hope out of her voice.

“No, not yet. Even thinking about closing my eyes starts the ugliness.”

“All right, I understand.”

Doris sighed. “But I apologize for keeping you up. If Goddy were only back from Florida, I’d’ve gone knocking on his door.”

Betsy was surprised at that. “Goddy?”

“Oh, yes. He and I are really good friends.”

“I know you’re friends,” said Betsy, “but I didn’t know you were that close.”

“Well, we are. Have been right from the first day I came into Crewel World. Remember? He sat down with me and showed me how to do the cross-stitch. He was so nice and friendly—” Doris broke off with a sob. “When will he be home?”

“Sunday. That is, his plane gets in late Sunday night so we probably won’t see him until Monday. Doris, what else happened on your trip to Amboy?”

Doris set off on a ramble about the trip, the long drive, the nice restaurant, even the immense rabbit. She told Betsy about the blizzard and how scary it was driving through it. “I wish we had stopped in Mankato. I’d have liked to see the old place. I went to school there. So did Phil—we took the same courses, a few years apart, so we weren’t classmates. Interesting how we both got into steam. He’s going to introduce me to Lars Larson’s Stanley in the spring.”

Betsy said, “I’ve ridden in that car.”

“Really? What’s it like?”

“The car? Well, it looks pretty much like any other antique car. You know, thin, flat fenders, wheels with wooden spokes, a running board. His is from 1911, I think. But its insides are really different. For example, under the hood is a boiler, and there’s an enormous, complicated tangle of pipes running all over the underside of the car. The motor is about the size of a dishpan and it’s on the underside, near the back. And there are levers and dials and gauges that let you know you’re not dealing with an ‘explosion engine.’ ”

“What’s an explosion engine?”

“Internal combustion—the kind of car we all drive nowadays, or will until they get the electric cars figured out.”

“Does it go huffing along like a steam locomotive?”

“No, it doesn’t make any noise at all. Unless it blows up.”

Doris looked alarmed. “You mean it might actually explode?”

“Not the boilers. A Stanley boiler has never blown up. But it has two fuel systems. One is for the pilot light in the firebox, and the other heats the boiler. The pilot light pipes are very thin, and they can get clogged. And if that happens, the pilot light will go out. If the car’s been running for a while, the firebox is hot enough to ignite the fuel continuing to spray into it. This isn’t an internal compustion engine—the fuel is sprayed into the firebox, not contained in a piston.

“The Stanley brothers designed the firebox to withstand this happening, but it will scare the bejesus out of folks for a mile in every direction. I was out riding with Lars when his Stanley erupted. The car doesn’t jiggle like most antique cars, and it doesn’t have an engine noise. So I was admiring the spring flowers when all of a sudden there was a strong smell of gasoline. Lars pulled over and started to say something when the world turned upside down with the most enormous
bang
!”

Doris started, her eyes rounding, but then she giggled.

Betsy continued, “Red flames shot into the air, black smoke came up all around us, and I was standing across the road with not a clue how I got there. I don’t know how many people dialed nine-one-one and the fire department came, too. It was all very embarrassing, because we were just fine. So was the car. In a few minutes Lars had cleared the blockage in the pipe of the pilot light with a wire, relit it, rebuilt a head of steam, and we were on our way as if nothing had happened.

“But that’s when I really, really understood: a steam-powered automobile might look pretty much like any other old touring car, but it isn’t.”

Doris giggled again, then fell silent. Betsy yawned, but Doris was not ready to turn in yet. Casting about for a new topic, she said, “Did you know silk was discovered in China?”

Betsy had recently done a lot of research on silk, so she did know that, but she said politely, “Oh, really?”

“Yes. There’s a legend that a Chinese princess was having tea in her garden and a silk cocoon fell into her cup. The heat melted the glue that holds it together and as she was fishing it out with her chopsticks she noticed a loose filament. She pulled at it and the cocoon began to unwind. She saw how strong the filament was, even though it was very thin, and after a while she figured out that twisting several strands together might make it into a good sewing thread. She would have had enough from just that one cocoon to experiment—there are about five hundred yards in every cocoon.”

Betsy nodded, although she refrained from remarking that it was very doubtful a real Chinese princess ever did any sewing. Embroidery, perhaps, but not sewing. She also knew that wild silk cocoons were not only smaller than the 500-yard domesticated ones, but an ugly brown, not suitable for embroidery. A real Chinese princess would have called for a servant to bring her a fresh cup of tea. It was more likely that the humble servant, who could not afford more than one cup of tea a day, would go fishing for the cocoon with a pair of chopsticks. And it would be someone who didn’t mind brown sewing thread who discovered how to spin it from a dead worm’s shroud. Because the unwrapping of the silk cocoons involved the death of the budding moth.

Betsy couldn’t stifle another yawn.

Doris, heedless, nattered on. “They’ve domesticated the silkworm now. They breed them for bigger white cocoons, and because they don’t have to live in the wild, it doesn’t matter that the moths that come out nowadays are blind and can’t fly. They have to let some become moths, of course, so they can get more worms. They keep the worms in big barns, thousands and thousands of them packed together, and feed them mulberry leaves. David told me that when you go into one of those barns where the worms are eating, it sounds like a hard rain.”