by Lisa See
“Maybe in America, but this is China, David. ‘Leniency to those who confess….’”
“A witness is not a criminal who has to confess.”
“Of course not, but the idea could apply to witnesses, too, in terms of the common good for society.”
“What about the day workers?” he asked.
“Pretty convenient that their families have been moved,” she responded. “On the other hand, it’s common knowledge that the poorest of the poor are being sent to faraway lands. But the Wus are still here, and we should talk to them.”
Finding out what had happened to the site workers was David’s assignment, but he and Hulan had been sent down here together. It was only natural that lines would blur.
“There’s always circumstantial evidence,” he offered.
“Yes, lawyers love that, but what circumstantial evidence do you see?”
“The contractor and the police captain are brothers-in-law.”
“That’s not circumstantial! That’s dead-on proof of corruption as far as I’m concerned, but we’re not here to investigate local corruption.”
“What do you make of Lily?”
“The others don’t like her, but I don’t see her as a murderer. Do you?”
“No,” David said, then after a beat added, “I find it interesting what people don’t talk about. We’re at a famous Ba site, but have you heard anyone talk about the Ba?”
“Only in the context of the Four Mysteries.”
“Right. These people are choosing to spend all of their waking hours in difficult living conditions absolutely removed from the rest of the world because, we must assume, they’re passionate about the Ba, but the way they were discussed was in the philosophical context of those four archaeological mysteries. No one seemed particularly concerned about the artifacts missing from the site.”
“They talked about the ruyi.”
“Not exactly. Everyone went on about Miller’s ruyi collection. Only Dr. Ma mentioned that a ruyi was missing and that it didn’t have much value. I mean, it sounded like a mushroom on a stick. What’s the value in that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it fills a hole in Miller’s collection.”
“Which is why his daughter is out here?”
As soon as the words were out of David’s mouth, Hulan let her hand trail down his torso. She put her head on his shoulder. “I was wondering how long it would take you to get to her.”
“I just find it hard to believe that a girl like that would want to spend the summer in a place like this.”
“Just because she’s beautiful doesn’t mean she doesn’t have her interests.”
Hulan’s voice had a teasing quality about it, which he hadn’t heard in over a year, and it had an immediate effect on him. She sighed deeply, and her warm breath traveled downward, doing little to relieve his suddenly heightened state.
“You said we were here about Brian, and yet we heard almost nothing about him,” David said, trying to change the subject.
“He was one of Miller’s protégés.”
“Yes, we learned that, and I have to tell you I’m concerned about Stuart Miller,” David said.
“Because he’s a businessman?”
“He’s not just any businessman, Hulan. He’s Miller Enterprises!”
She pulled away and got up. She picked the wet clothes up off the floor and draped them over a couple of chairs. He watched as she opened her bag, pulled out a dress, shook it loose, and put it on a hanger. She was naked and unabashed as she went about her mundane tasks.
“We’ll stay awhile longer,” she said, “talk to Lily and the Wus, and see if one of those pieces of circumstantial evidence shifts and becomes tangible.” She turned to him again, put a hand on her hip, and asked, “Do you think they have hot water in this place?”
His voice was gruff as he said, “Come here.”
A little after seven, David and Hulan emerged from their room. The rain still came down in sheets, and they strolled under the covered corridors that edged the linked courtyards back toward the main entrance. The restaurant was in the largest pavilion in the compound. It had a veranda—dotted with potted plants and wicker furniture—which overlooked a lotus pond. Faded vermilion brocade covered the restaurant’s walls. The tables and chairs dated from the Ming Dynasty, and had all the scuffs and dings of four hundred years of use. David and Hulan sat at a table for two. Little dishes of lotus root, string beans with chilies, and salted cashews were already set out as appetizers.
Only two other tables in the vast room were occupied, but instead of clustering guests together, each party had been isolated, which was just fine with David. He’d done his work for the day and didn’t want to make small talk either with Lily, who sat alone reading a book, or with the archaeological team—minus the Millers—who’d gathered at a large round table. With them was a young woman with cropped hair whom David didn’t recognize from the dig. Aside from the occasional bouts of drunken laughter from that table, the only sound came from the comforting sough of rain through the stand of bamboo outside the window. Beijing’s horns, smog, and crowded streets seemed very far away.
David took a quick look at the English menu, then set it aside. He’d let Hulan read the Chinese menu and question the waitress about local specialties. He felt incredibly and surprisingly happy. Hulan appeared peaceful and relaxed. She should be, he thought, his mouth spreading into an unselfconscious grin. Her inhibitions, reserve, walls, or whatever you wanted to call them had fallen from her this afternoon in layers. He’d done that for her—again and again.
The young woman at the archaeologists’ table got up and crossed over to David and Hulan. She wore a sleeveless black top and trim khaki pants. Her arms were strong and tan, and she was pretty in an athletic sort of way.
“They tell me you’ve come to look into my brother’s death,” she said to Hulan. “My name is Angela McCarthy. May I talk to you for a minute?” Without waiting for an answer, Angela pulled over a chair and sat down. “I’d like to know what you can tell me about Brian.”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” Hulan answered. She glanced at David. This was not the way either of them had planned on spending the evening.
Angela bit her bottom lip and confided, “I knew something was wrong when I didn’t hear from my brother.” She smiled sadly and explained. “Our parents died in a car accident ten years ago. Because of that we had a rule that we had to make contact every two days. We kept in touch on the Internet. He was able to send or receive e-mail at least once a day. Anyway, when I heard he’d disappeared, I suspected the worst and decided to come here.” Her eyes reddened as she fought back tears. “Our family has not been lucky.”
The waitress arrived with notepad in hand. Hulan said a few words in Chinese, but when the waitress turned away, Angela said, “Oh, please, don’t let me interrupt you.”
She made a move to leave, but David grabbed her wrist. “Stay.” Then, “Hulan, why don’t you go ahead and order? Angela, have you eaten?”
She had, but she readily agreed to have a glass of wine. Hulan placed the order, and the waitress left. Hulan said, “I have to admit, I’m surprised to see you here when your brother’s still in Beijing.”
Angela looked back and forth between David and Hulan despondently. “I need to know about Brian.”
“We may never know exactly what happened,” Hulan said, not without some sympathy in her voice. “You should prepare yourself for that.”
“Dr. Ma already told me what happened to my brother. He fell in the river and drowned. There are risks in everything we do. I know that. My brother knew that too. There’s nothing I can do about how he died, and a few more days in Beijing won’t hurt him now. But I need to understand his last days. How did he spend them? Who did he talk to? What was he interested in?”
“For what purpose?”
Hulan was so matter-of-fact in her question that Angela answered in the same pragmatic way. “Do you know what it means to los
e someone?”
Hulan kept her face expressionless, but David knew the impact the question would have on her, for he felt it too.
Angela didn’t wait for a response. “Grief counselors would probably say I’m looking for closure. If I can piece together….”
At last Angela’s toughness cracked and the tears flowed.
The waitress returned with a bottle of wine and three glasses. By the time the wine was poured, Angela had regained her composure. David suggested she tell them about her brother. As she spoke, he saw in her face that same forlorn look of grief that he’d seen so many times this past year when he’d looked in the mirror or at Hulan.
“Brian always loved dirt,” she began. “I’m two years older, but some of my earliest memories were when we were—gosh, I must have been about four, so he would have been two. He’d play in the dirt all day if our mother let him. I know it sounds hokey, but dirt was one of his first words. He was entranced by it. So I guess it was only natural that he’d end up digging in it for a career.”
She faltered again, and David said, “I understand you’re from Washington.”
“We grew up in Seattle. We were both doing graduate work at the University of Washington, but these last couple of years we hadn’t seen much of each other. I’ve been out in the field myself working on my dissertation. He was over here last summer as a Miller fellow. This year he was going to stay until October, then come home and write his master’s thesis.”
“He must have been smart,” David said.
“He was book smart.” Angela did nothing to hide the sisterly impatience in her voice. “But he was dumber than a toad’s butt when it came to just about everything else.”
David restrained himself from looking in Hulan’s direction.
“He was ambitious too,” Angela continued, still irritated. “He wanted a lot more than a Ph.D. and tenure. Out here he made great new contacts, but what does he do? He fucks them.”
“He couldn’t or wouldn’t follow through?” David tried to clarify.
“No, I mean he fucked them.” Angela looked at each of them, saw their confusion, and spelled it out. “Sex. Women. Every time he had an opportunity put in front of him, he literally screwed it up. He gets the Miller Fellowship, then sleeps with the daughter. He gets some freelance work with Cosgrove’s, then sleeps with the woman who hired him. You’ve met Lily Sinclair, haven’t you? She’s sitting over there.”
Although it was a large room, Lily heard her name and looked up. When Angela smiled and lifted a couple of fingers in salutation, Lily put her book down, got up, and began walking toward them.
“She’s really quite nice,” Angela said under her breath. “We’ve talked a lot since I got here. I can see why my brother liked her.”
When Lily reached the table, Angela said, “I’ve just been telling them about you and Brian and what a dumb ass he was….”
Just then the waitress arrived with dinner. Hulan had ordered well, selecting dishes that utilized local ingredients—pan-fried dumplings in hot chili oil, a river fish steamed with ginger and scallions, and braised pork with pickled mustard tuber. Neither Lily nor Angela made any move to leave.
“Are you sure you won’t join us?” Hulan asked. “I can order more.”
Both women said they’d eaten already.
“Well, then, let’s talk.” Hulan asked the waitress to bring another wineglass. Lily, sensing David and Hulan’s hesitation, encouraged them to eat. It was all terribly rude by Chinese mores, but Hulan didn’t waver for a second and with her chopsticks began pulling the delicate flesh from the bones of the fish.
“So now you know about Brian and me,” Lily said. Her English accent made it seem more sophisticated than it probably was. “I didn’t bring it up before. How could I in front of the others?” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “The men. They’re real gossips, and you can imagine what it would mean if it got out that I’d slept with Brian. They’d think they’d have a chance.”
David suspected Stuart Miller already knew, which was why he’d needled her so mercilessly at lunch.
“I can tell you it wasn’t true love or anything like that,” Lily conceded. “It was just a way to spend the evenings in this place. And the boy was talented. Brilliant.”
Was she referring to Brian’s sexual prowess or his brain?
“I told them that already,” Angela confirmed. “He was brilliant.”
“Angela told us he did work for you,” Hulan addressed Lily.
“Freelance work. Research mostly. It wasn’t related to the Ba or this site, but he could do a lot of it on the Internet after hours, so it suited him. He could find anything.”
“What kind of research exactly?”
A shadow fell over Lily’s face. “If you’re asking if it had anything to do with his accident, I can guarantee you that it didn’t.”
“My brother was into all kinds of stuff,” Angela said with studied candor. “And Lily’s right. He loved the Internet. He loved technology of all sorts. He had one of those digital cameras, and he used to put snapshots on a website so all of his friends back home could see them.” Angela took another sip of wine. “That’s how I knew about Lily and Catherine. I recognized them as soon as I got here.” She caught herself. “They weren’t dirty pictures or anything like that! Just—oh, I don’t know—the hillsides, the dig, the people he was hanging out with.”
“Actually, I felt he put up rather barren landscapes,” Lily said. She thought for a moment, then added, “Those shots must have been taken in the area around Site 518. He probably posted them so his friends wouldn’t be envious.”
Angela concurred. “What better way to divert attention from his good luck than to show his friends and colleagues that he was living on a mound of dirt in the middle of nowhere? There’s nothing worse than academic jealousy. Believe me, I know.”
Lily’s responses to further questions about Brian were vague, perhaps out of consideration for Angela. So he faded from the conversation, and Lily regaled them with tales of the Panda Guesthouse, which for hundreds of years had been the compound for the Wangs, an extremely wealthy and very corrupt family that had once controlled all of the salt in the region.
“In addition to his salt wells,” Lily explained, “Wang was a smuggler of some note. Until Mao took over, Wang had his own troops and a fleet that plied the river from Wuhan to Chongqing. But his businesses aren’t what make him memorable. He was reputed to be quite insatiable in his appetites. He had close to fifty concubines and apparently took them in a variety of combinations. You’ve seen the decoration in this place. It’s beautiful and tasteful, but I’ve been in rooms in the more interior courtyards with truly stunning pornographic scenes.”
“What happened to the family?” Hulan asked.
“During the revolution—Liberation, as you call it—most of the Wangs were wiped out.” Her slim fingers gestured delicately toward the veranda. “All of the women were decapitated in the third courtyard, where I’m staying. The blood was ten centimeters deep. At least that’s the legend.”
“And Wang?”
“He got to see his women killed one by one. They say that by the end of the massacre he’d completely lost his mind.”
David watched Hulan through all of this. The similarities between the Wang and Liu families—though in different provinces and different times—were striking.
“So Wang was assassinated,” Hulan prompted.
“Not at all!” Lily exclaimed. “In his madness, he wrestled away from the guards and poof—disappeared. To hear people around here tell the story, it’s as though he had supernatural powers. One minute he was in the courtyard, the next he’d vanished from sight. It’s said he ‘rode the current out to sea,’ meaning that no one knows exactly how he got out, except that he showed up three years later in Hong Kong. He was only sixty-seven. He married again, outlived that wife by a couple of decades, and married again just before he died. The last Madame Wang lives in great opulen
ce in Hong Kong.”
“How do you know all this?” Hulan asked.
Lily looked at them in surprise. “I thought you knew. Cosgrove’s has represented the family since Wang arrived in Hong Kong. Mr. Wang didn’t have much cash, but with the profits from the sale of the family heirlooms he’d smuggled out with him, he was able to start an import-export business. He became quite the Hong Kong tycoon.” She shook her head in admiration. “It’s amazing, isn’t it, how the rich always get richer even when they ‘lose’ everything?”
“Did he ever explain how he got his treasures out of the compound and to Hong Kong?” David asked.
“Of course not! A family’s got to keep its secrets! But Wang did capitalize on the mythical elements of those stories, which only added to the mystique—and value—of his artworks. Anyway, that’s why Cosgrove’s is tied to this godforsaken place. We still do business for the family. I have lunch with Madame Wang once a month.”
“She owns the property now?”
“Mr. Wang lived just long enough to get his properties back during the PRC’s campaign to bring in capital from Overseas Chinese in the early eighties. Madame Wang has even relaunched the salt business.”
“Are the salt wells near the Ba dig?” Hulan asked. “Is that why that area is so barren?”
Lily smiled. “There are other reasons for that—”
“If the family’s so wealthy,” David cut in, “why would they turn their compound into a hotel?”
“Money,” Lily answered, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together. “The family wanted to restore it for themselves, then the government decided to build the dam. When Madame Wang learned that the compound would be inundated, she abandoned further renovations and decided to open a guesthouse to recoup her initial investment. The Panda Guesthouse, no less! How many Panda Guesthouses do you think there are in this country? Thank God for the discovery of Site 518, otherwise she would have gotten none of her money back.”
And on it went. Lily’s tales made for lighthearted conversation, and even Angela seemed to brighten. After dinner, David and the three women walked out into the night. The rain still came down in a warm rush, and the air smelled of wet bamboo. They walked under the covered corridor to the next courtyard. When they reached a door marked Room 5, Lily said, “This is me. I’m going straight to bed. I’m exhausted.” Then she asked if David and Hulan would be going back out to the dig tomorrow. “There’s a bus that takes the team out there at eight, but I’d be delighted if I could avoid riding with that lot.”