She had never been to the Red Dragon before. It was fairly new, and she didn’t know the family that owned it. There seemed to be two daughters and two sons working as waiters, with their mother as the hostess. The kitchen was presided over by a man in a white chef’s jacket who was probably the father of the family. He deferred only to his mother, a tiny, elderly lady who seemed to rule them all with an iron fist.
An hour’s observation told Eulalie that one of the family members was out of step with the rest. He was one of the sons who worked as a waiter. Whereas everyone else wore pleasant expressions, he had a frown on his face that no amount of chiding from his grandmother would lift. He was slow, sullen, and uncooperative. His movements were sluggish, and his pupils constricted to pinpricks, which suggested that he had taken some sort of downer.
Sampling his own merchandise? It seemed likely.
To Eulalie’s eye, this was not the kind of place to be doing drug deals under the counter. But Jimmy the Knife was never wrong. If he said this was the place, then this was the place.
That meant that someone was dealing out of here, and the grumpy, sluggish son was her number one suspect. His family might even know what he was up to but would be too loyal to tell him to go and do it somewhere else.
The next time one of the daughters came to her table to refill her tea, she showed her a photo of Emma Egger and asked if she had ever seen her before.
The waitress took a long, hard look at the photograph. Then she nodded.
“I have seen this lady. She used to come in here about once a month. Always on her own, and never stayed long.”
“Did she ever speak to your brother?”
Eulalie saw a flash of comprehension in the young woman’s eyes. She nodded slowly.
“Yes. Yes, I believe she did.”
Chapter 13
By the time Eulalie had paid her bill, the slow-moving young man with the sluggish eyes had disappeared. His sister said she didn’t know where he was, and the worried look on her face told Eulalie that this was true. In family-owned restaurants, there was usually a policy that no one was finished for the night until everyone was finished. That meant everyone would be expected to stay behind to help clean up. The fact that one brother had absented himself would be regarded with concern.
Before she left, Eulalie managed to establish that the family’s name was Huang, and that the young man she was looking for was Cheng-Han. She decided to pay Mr. Ling a visit to see if he had any ideas about where she might find Cheng-Han.
It was nearly eleven by the time she stepped out into Little Taiwan and rounded the corner into China Town proper. There were tourists milling about, absorbing the sights and sounds of the neighborhood after their dinner.
Several of the locals greeted the granddaughter of Angel de la Cour as she walked the streets, her eyes watchful. Angel was known as a friend of the Chinese community – one who had gone to the trouble to learn some Mandarin and knew how to adopt correct, respectful manners. There was also her friendship with Mr. Ling, one of the most powerful and respected members of the community.
Eulalie knew he was most likely to be found in the little bar and restaurant above his drycleaner. It was the first drycleaner he had ever opened on Prince William Island, but now he owned a chain of them throughout Queen’s Town. The restaurant above it was a place for locals, not for tourists. It was a place where the men of China Town went to drink beer, rice wine, and tea according to their tastes. Pig intestine soup was served for those who hoped to avoid a hangover.
Eulalie knew a shortcut through an alley that would take her right to the door of Ling’s drycleaner. As she stepped into it and the darkness swallowed her up, she had a sudden vision of a dark figure lurching out behind her and lunging at her with a knife. She pivoted around to face the light and saw the silhouette of a figure coming towards her. She had all the time in the world to grab his outstretched arm, shift her body out of the way, and use his forward momentum to send him sprawling into the gutter as he tripped heavily over the foot she had put in his way. The knife he had been holding jerked out of his hand and landed on the cobblestones, glinting in the low light of the alley.
Eulalie picked it up unhurriedly and knelt next to the figure in the gutter who was trying to lift himself up onto his hands and knees. She pressed the point of the knife against the little pulsing artery just below his ear and whispered in Mandarin, “Stay where you are.”
His body was instantly still. He breathed heavily.
“How? How did you …?”
“Be quiet!” she said, still in Mandarin. “I ask. You answer. Understood?”
He nodded, then groaned as the movement caused the knife to pierce his skin.
Eulalie had run out of Mandarin, so she continued in English. “Why did you attack me? I meant you no harm.”
She felt his shoulders tense. “You were asking questions about me in the Red Dragon. You make my family think badly of me.”
“You make your family think badly of you,” she corrected. “Do you really think they don’t already know what you’re up to? And I wasn’t asking about you. I was asking about a woman who used to come into the restaurant. She is dead now, and her husband wants to know why. He’s the one who hired me.”
“You think I don’t know that?” he hissed. “You come into my restaurant flashing around photographs of a dead woman, trying to make trouble for me.”
“You make trouble for yourself, Cheng-Han.” She gave him another taste of the knife, to remind him that it was there. “Emma Egger didn’t die of a drug overdose, she was murdered. You only have something to worry about if you were the one who murdered her.”
His body twitched. “I never laid a finger on her. I just bought pills for her sometimes.”
“Was she a good payer?”
“Mostly, yes. Sometimes she would ask for a week to find the money, but she always got it in the end.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I … I’m not sure. It must be two weeks or more. I thought maybe she had found another supplier or was trying to get off the pills. I just assumed she would be back in the end.”
Eulalie gave his shoulder a pat. “Good chat, Cheng-Han, thanks. Now why don’t you try looking for a new line of work and stop bringing shame onto your family?”
Suddenly the knife was gone and the weight that had been pushing him into the cobblestones was lifted from his back. Cheng-Han sprang to his feet, ripe for murder. There was no one there. He looked wildly from side to side.
Where had she gone? How could she have disappeared? There had been no sound of receding footsteps. It was as though she had been plucked into the air.
He shivered as a breeze tickled the side of his neck where blood was drying. He had heard it said that those people from the village in the deep forest were half human, half spirit. This was the first time he had believed it.
Eulalie watched him peering from side to side in the dense gloom. Then he hunted around for his knife. When he couldn’t find it, he ran out of the alley as though demons were behind him.
Only then did she climb down from her perch on a first-floor ornamental balcony.
When she woke up the next morning, Eulalie fired off a memo to Mark Egger detailing her interview with Dr. Jaspan, her investigations into other general practitioners on the island, and what she had discovered at the Red Dragon. She believed it would be more than enough to keep him happy. It was important for the client to believe that his or her money was being well spent.
She hoped that the diligence of her investigations would make it easier for her to interview Mark himself soon. His interview was one of the biggest missing pieces in her investigation. She believed he would also be happy with her assignment for that morning, which was to talk to Emma’s ex-husband, Michael Hagan.
After pressing SEND, she sent a much more candid email to Chief Macgregor setting out what she had learned so far and letting him know that she was going to interview M
ichael Hagan.
She had just finished her breakfast when her phone buzzed.
Chief Macgregor: I’m coming with you to interview Michael Hagan.
Eulalie could make no sense of this.
Eulalie: Why?
Chief Macgregor: I need to visit St. Michael’s Cay.
Eulalie: It’s the middle of the week, why would he be on St. Michael’s Cay?
Chief Macgregor: He has been staying there in a guesthouse ever since his ex-wife was killed, to be close to their sons.
Eulalie: I’m leaving for the docks in twenty minutes. I guess I’ll either see you on the ferry or I won’t.
Eulalie went down to the office to leave a note for Mrs. Belfast telling her she was still in one piece, but her secretary was already there.
“Morning, Mrs. B. As you can see, I survived dinner in Finger Alley without so much as a bout of food poisoning.”
“I suppose I was being a little fanciful,” said Mrs. Belfast. “I had visions of you running away from armed marauders.”
“Funny you should say that. I was attacked by a knife-wielding drug dealer last night. But that was in China Town, not Finger Alley, and he didn’t hurt me. Now I’m off to catch the eight-thirty ferry to St. Michael’s Cay. Apparently, Emma’s ex-husband is staying there.”
Mrs. Belfast adjusted her cats-eye glasses and patted her beehive hairdo. “Have a nice day, dear. And don’t worry about a thing. It’s all under control here.”
Eulalie put on a jacket to protect herself from the sea breezes on the ferry. Then she slung her messenger bag over her shoulder and headed out the door, almost colliding with Chief Macgregor.
“That was fast,” she said as they fell into step on their way to the docks.
“I was already on my way to you while we were texting.”
They crossed over Lafayette Drive and took Dockside Lane towards the sea. They had to wait for the traffic lights to be in their favor to cross Beach Road, which was already crowded with tourists looking for a breakfast spot with a sea view. Dockside Lane continued all the way to the busy quay from which all the island’s ferries departed.
Prince William Island was actually an archipelago of little islands grouped around the large central land mass. Most were uninhabited and had been turned into nature reserves, but several others were in regular use.
Eulalie and Chief Macgregor bought return tickets for St. Michael’s Cay and boarded the ferry with five minutes to spare.
“What’s taking you to St. Michael’s Cay on this fine morning?” she asked as they settled on a plastic bench facing the sea. “Police business?”
“That’s right. Huge amounts of sugarcane brandy are being smuggled off this island. It’s breaking the backs of the whole supply chain, from farmers to merchants. We suspect that one of the cays is being used as the main point of exit, but we don’t know which one. St Michael’s Cay is under suspicion because it is such a busy place. Supply boats come and go all the time because of the school. It would be a good cover for smuggling.”
“I presume you’ve thought of Logan Cay as well? With all the nightclubs there, there must be crates of liquor coming and going all the time.”
He nodded. “Yes, Logan Cay was the first focus of our investigation. I’m sure a lot of stock gets sold off privately between here and there, but we haven’t found a clear link to it yet.”
The ferry sounded its horn in a long warning blast and they felt the hum of the motors increase in strength. Soon they were chugging out towards the open sea.
As the metal cover of the kiosk was rolled upward, Eulalie stood up. “Coffee?”
“Green tea if they have it, thanks.”
She smiled at him. “Mens sana in corpore sano?” A healthy mind in a healthy body.
“Always.”
She returned with their drinks and they sat side by side watching the early morning sunlight glinting on the water. Eulalie couldn’t suppress yawn. “Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“After your China Town adventure? I should imagine not.”
She eyed his shoulder, which was conveniently situated at the level of her cheek. “I feel like taking a nap against your arm.”
He turned on the bench so that he was facing sideways. Then he pulled her so that she reclined against his chest. “Be my guest.”
Eulalie exhaled happily and slipped into sleep.
Chief Macgregor sat still for forty-five minutes, his hand resting lightly against her hip. What was it about this woman, he wondered, that made him accept these intimacies so gladly?
Eulalie woke when she felt the bump of the ferry docking at St. Michael’s Cay. She sat up and yawned, aware of having made up some of her sleep deficit.
“Wow, I really passed out. Hope I didn’t drool on you.”
“I hope so too.”
“What do you want to do first? Michael Hagan has set up a home office at his guesthouse and will be working from there. He said I could stop by any time this morning. Do you want to come with me, or do you want to go and look for your smugglers?”
“I’ll come with you if you don’t mind. I read over the interview notes my officers made when they spoke to Mr. Hagan, and they weren’t exactly thorough. They were too quick to rule him out just because he had an alibi.”
“He wouldn’t be the first man to hire someone to kill his ex-wife while he was safely and publicly alibied somewhere far away.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“I also want to speak to the headmaster at the school. If anyone can give you real insight into how a divorced couple get along, it’s the teachers at the school that their children attend. If there’s going to be a battleground, it will be over the kids.”
“I agree, and I might come along for that too. It depends on how my other investigation is going.”
They hired scooters called tuk-tuks at the ferry-master’s office. Most of the cays discouraged cars except for delivery purposes and made tuk-tuks cheaply and readily available instead. The scooters had less of an environmental impact on the little islands.
St. Michael’s Cay consisted of the prestigious boarding school, and not much else. A few years earlier, a smaller girls’ school known as St. Michael’s College had been added. The plan was to grow it into the equivalent of the boys’ school over time.
A five-minute scooter ride took Eulalie and Chief Macgregor past the gates of the gracious old French Colonial building. It was set in many acres of landscaped grounds where the children of the wealthy could be safely and expensively educated.
Eulalie knew that Michael Hagan was a financial advisor for a London-based company that maintained a branch on Prince William Island for tax purposes. His was the kind of work that could be done remotely, provided one had a high-speed internet connection.
They by-passed the entrance to the school and kept going left, until they came to the first of the many guesthouses and boutique hotels that existed for the convenience of parents who had come to attend a sports match or one of the other regular school events.
“St. Michael’s Corner,” said Eulalie. “This is the one. He’s staying in the executive suite.”
If Emma Egger had a type, it wasn’t easy to discern it from looking at her two husbands. Where Mark Egger was tall and slim with an open, boyish face and curly brown hair, Michael Hagan was a short, dark bull of a man with a barrel chest and powerful shoulders. His expression was permanently pugnacious, but that seemed to be more a trick of his features than a personality trait.
He welcomed them into the suite and invited them to sit down. A slight wariness came over his face when he realized that Eulalie was accompanied by the chief of police.
“I already gave a statement to the cops.”
“I know you did, Mr. Hagan, and it was much appreciated,” said Chief Macgregor. “But some new information has come to light about your ex-wife, and we would very much appreciate your take on it.”
“Oh, really?” His wariness i
ncreased. “Like what?”
“Were you aware of her substance abuse problem, Mr. Hagan?” asked Eulalie.
There was a pause while he seemed to consider how to answer. “It wasn’t enough of a problem to call it substance abuse while we were still married. It was more of a tendency.”
“A tendency that started when she was given Pethidine after her second Caesarean section?”
He looked surprised. “How do you know that?”
“We’ve been speaking to her doctor.”
“Well, you’re perfectly correct. That gave her a taste for it, but the tendency was already there. Whether it was a glass of wine in the evening to take the edge off bath-time with the kids, or a handful of Tylenol for a stress headache, she liked using substances to help her cope. She even used to joke about it, but at that stage I would say it was still under control. What makes you think it had got to the point of abuse?”
“We don’t think, Mr. Hagan, we know,” said Chief Macgregor. “Your ex-wife was addicted to a number of opioids. The question is whether you or your children were in any way aware of it?”
“The boys? God, I hope not. They are probably still too young to recognize the signs. You must understand that Emma and I hardly ever saw each other. Because the boys are at boarding school, we could pick them up and drop them off for our respective weekends, without ever intersecting with each other. Obviously, there were school events that we both attended. While Emma was still single, we tried to sit together for the sake of the boys, but once she got married she sat with Mark, poor bastard.”
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 33