The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook (38 page)

Ferdinand Cabigon rose to his feet and shouted at the visitors. ‘That’s enough. This is slander. You and your crazy friends will get out right now.’ He tried to speak with authority, but his voice shook. He turned to his staff. ‘Throw him out.’

Boy Santos Jr rose to his feet. ‘I’ll throw them out. But first I want to hear the rest of what Mr Wong is saying. About what happened on Friday evening.’

Journalist and editor stared at each other.

Cabigon opened his mouth. ‘I —’

Santos interrupted. ‘Free speech. Isn’t that what newspapers are all about? Sit down,’ he ordered. ‘Boss.’

The reporter looked to his colleagues for support. Several of them nodded.

Cabigon reluctantly took his seat.

Wong continued: ‘So editor call her to executive office on top floor—he says he wants to give her goodbye gift. She go upstair with him. He asks her to wait. Then he run downstair. He type suicide message on her keyboard to him. He clicks “send” button. He rush upstair to executive floor. He take her up to the roof to show her something—then he push her off. He goes to executive toilet to wash his hands, make sure no fibre from her clothes on him. He goes downstair back to his desk.’

There was a scraping sound. Ferdinand Cabigon had pushed his chair back again. All eyes turned to him. His face was wet and his eyes staring.

‘Stay,’ Santos said.

‘Soon, body is found, splat, dead on ground,’ Wong continued. ‘Many photographer, reporter, they run downstair, out of building, have a look. They see Gloria is dead. Mr Santos he run upstair and run into editor’s room to tell him Gloria dead. At that moment, editor press send-and-receive button and receive her final email. He reads it, pretends to be very shocked.’

Cabigon shrieked at Wong. ‘There is no proof of this. There is no proof of this at all. It’s just a wild story. She never wrote any final column. What you’ve said is pie in the sky.’

‘No, it isn’t.’ The quiet voice came from his secretary, Baby Encarnacion-Salocan.

Everyone in the room turned to stare at her.

‘Gloria thought you might just delete her final column, so she sent an extra copy to me. I kept it. She treated me decently. So did Mr Wong and his assistant. So I printed it out and passed it on to him.’

Madam Xu clapped her hands. ‘So that’s how you worked it all out. Damn clever of you Wong. I thought for a moment that you must be psychic, to know so much detail about what happened. But you had the full story from the victim. That’s cheating, Wong.’

Santos rose to his feet, and with the help of the business editor and the sports editor—the two bulkiest men in the room—escorted Ferdinand Cabigon back to his office, where he was incarcerated until the police could be summoned.

Back in the conference room, Wong was defending himself from Madam Xu.

‘Column of Gloria did not tell me everything. Just bit about how editor ask her to censor herself. How she decided to leave job instead.’

Joyce leaned into the conversation. ‘But how d’you know about how he pushed her? She couldn’t have written all that down. And how come you suddenly know how to send emails?’

‘How to do email I don’t know. Baby told me all that stuff. I just repeat it.’

Ms Encarnacion-Salocan bowed her head. ‘I was sitting outside the editor’s office the whole time. I saw him rushing in and out. I checked the send and receive times on Gloria’s intra-office emails. Remember, I’m the editor’s secretary. I have top level clearance. It was easy for me to work out what had happened. Gloria was my best friend. She confided in —’ The woman burst into tears.

Madam Xu was still annoyed with Wong. ‘You had too much help. This doesn’t count.’

Boy Santos Jr re-entered the room and turned to the visitors. ‘Thank you for your help.’

‘Thank you is very nice,’ said Wong. ‘But we still get paid I hope?’

‘Don’t know. Cabigon signed the contract. If what you say is true, and he gets arrested, the owner might nullify things he signed. Especially as you make him look bad. Hard to say.’

The
feng shui
master looked depressed.

Joyce’s mind was whirling with the excitement of the past days: a murder, an investigation and a spell in jail— she felt bonded with Santos. ‘What an amazing three days. I never realised being a reporter was such a complicated and exciting job.’

Santos smiled at her. ‘It can be. But sometimes it all seems to go out of control.’

‘But even then—I mean, it’s amazing how you always find the right thing to put in the paper.’

The investigative reporter sat down next to Joyce. ‘Thanks, Joyce. But you know what? For the first time since I started this job, I have absolutely no idea what we should be putting on the front page tomorrow.’

At Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Wong peered at the piece of bread that Madam Xu had purchased for him as a snack. Joyce was in the airport CD shop.

‘This is what?’

‘Authentic French cuisine, according to the
table d’hôtel,
’ she said.

‘Looks funny.’

‘Adobo Croissant, it’s called. Try it.’

He took one bite—and then set it aside, wiping all traces off his lips with his napkin.

‘Not hungry,’ he said.

‘Me also,’ said Madam Xu.

The case had been interesting, but the two Chinese mystics were still depressed about how wrong they had been when examining Gloria Del Rosario’s apartment. How could two so-called experts in the predictive arts have missed something as large as the imminent death of their subject?

‘I’ll buy you a much better snack, Mr Wong,’ said a voice.

They looked around to see Baby Encarnacion-Salocan. The editor’s secretary sat down, explaining that she needed to tell them something before they left the Philippines.

She told them that she had been miserable for the past six years, working for a wily and increasingly untrustworthy boss. She had desperately been seeking changes in her life, and wanted to quit the newspaper and start working independently.

‘I vacated my flat and moved in with Gloria three months ago. When she said that she was entitled to a free session from a top
feng shui
expert from Singapore, I asked her to accept,’ she said.

‘So birthday was your birthday, not birthday of Gloria?’ Wong was wide-eyed.

She nodded. ‘Gloria accepted Mr Pun’s offer of a free
feng
shui
and astrological consultation, but she gave you guys my birth date instead of her own. That home office area was mine, not hers.’

Madam Xu, shocked, put her fingertips to her lips, barely daring to believe her ears. And that handprint . . . ?’

‘That was my hand,’ said Baby.

‘Thank God.’

‘So when you both predicted that the apartment’s inhabitant would enjoy a full and rich life, you were talking about me, not poor Gloria,’ Baby continued. ‘I’m sorry to have deceived you. I couldn’t have afforded to employ you myself. It was because of the lies Gloria and I told that you got mixed up in all this.’

Madam Xu was stunned. ‘So I have not lost my abilities after all,’ she gasped. ‘And Mr Wong the same. We got it right!

Thank you for the best news we have had in days. That news earns you a big kiss and a hug.’

The two women clutched each other tightly.

Wong looked alarmed and slipped away.

Epilogue: Letters
from friends

Feng Menglong was a sage who lived in recent times, four
hundred years ago. He wrote a book called
Zhinang
.

In his book he said men always strived to have easy
lives. If any obstacles came their way, they would get off the
path of righteousness.

Feng Menglong wondered why Heaven made it so
difficult for men to attain enlightenment. While he was
thinking about this, he encountered an example of the
problem.

One farmer of his acquaintance wanted to study and
reach enlightenment. But his land was too dry that season
and he had to spend every day carrying water to it.

The farmer said: ‘I would study and acquire wisdom
and become enlightened if I did not have so many troubles
in my life.’

The difficult times continued. The farmer carried
water every day and forgot his pursuit of the truth.

But other people in the village continued to study and
seek enlightenment. Their fields became dry and dusty and
the soil was blown away by the wind. The farm became a
mound of lushness surrounded by baked hollows.

Then one day, after a long drought, the rains came.

The water sprinkled the mountaintops and ran down
the sides. The water filled the deep hollows of the land.

Feng Menglong saw that the lowlands had much more
water than the plateaus.

He realised that a life with highs and lows is richer
than a life with only highs.

Blade of Grass, learn from the words of Shanneng, a Zen
master during the Southern Song Dynasty. He said: ‘When
hardship is over, we look back and discover a certain joy in
it. But if you can discover the joy while the hardship is happening,
your winter will be as filled with as much wonder
as your summer.’

From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’
by CF Wong, part 33.

CF Wong sat at his desk and flicked through his invoice book. It had been a busy month, and he had not had time to sit down and go through his accounts for several weeks. Things were looking bad. He phoned his patron, Pun Chi-kin.

‘Wah, Pun-saang, so much properties this month, in so many different country. I think three trip in one month too much, cannot do good job, always too much hurry-hurry, no time for my other work, aiyeeah, big problem.’

‘I have every confidence that you can cope, Wong.’ The property developer’s voice was smooth and velvety on the surface, but was there just a hint of iron underneath?

‘Also, some job very difficult. Not easy. Take many days.’ The
feng shui
master tried to avoid a note of pleading, but it was difficult. ‘Maybe we look again at my retainer, Mr Pun, see what is suitable fee, can-or-not?’

Mr Pun gave a low growl in response. After a few seconds, he continued: ‘I realised you had a lot of work this month, visiting the board members, Mr Wong, but I thought you would be grateful. I know you never miss a chance to hit clients with extra fees for extra services. No doubt you lined your pockets, as you normally do.’ There
was
metal in his tone—not iron, but something harder and more dangerous: tempered steel.

‘Oh no, sir, no-no-no. Your board members get free service, everything included. Only sometime they force me to take extra money, I say no-no-no, don’t want. But they force me. Bad face for them if I say no.’

‘Ye-es.’ Pun was sceptical. ‘Whatever. Anyway, I have certain concerns about the way you carried out some of the assignments this month.’

Wong froze. ‘Oh. I do something wrong, boss?’

‘Mr Wong: One of my board members is dead and another is out on bail on charges of fish-theft. This makes things awkward. I accept that you had no direct involvement in the death of Ms Del Rosario, but I cannot say the same for your role in the arrest of Mr Tik.’

‘Ah. Mr Tik.’

‘Yes, Mr Tik.’ Pun gave a long sigh. ‘If, in future, you discover business people related to my company are engaged in wrongful acts, it would be wise to quietly forget what you see, do you understand? Or at least, tell me about them before you tell the police. I’m a conservative man, and I like things to go on exactly as they have for many, many years. Arrests of board members are awkward and unpleasant for me. Understand?’

‘Yes, Mr Pun.’

‘I am deducting a certain sum of money from your monthly retainer this month to help you learn that important lesson.’

The words were like a knife in Wong’s stomach. He sat down heavily.

‘Still there?’

‘Yes, Mr Pun.’

‘Now, you say you want a review of the overall level of your retainer?’

‘Yes, Mr Pun.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone. It seemed to go on for a long time. When Wong had begun to wonder if the line had gone dead, the businessman came back. ‘I’m glad you asked. I’ve been thinking about reviewing the costs of your operation. After all, this is a period of heavy deflation, as you know. Deflation should be applied uniformly, I’ve always believed.’