by Kevin Kwan
“I would like to see him, but it’s going to be rather awkward, isn’t it?” Rachel said, her face clouding over a bit.
“Well, I’m sure he feels even more awkward than you do. I mean, his wife is one of the prime suspects in your poisoning. But at least he’s making an overture to come and see you.”
Rachel shook her head sadly. “God, this is all so fucked up. Why do things always get fucked up when we come to Asia? Don’t answer that.”
“Would it make you feel more comfortable if he just came over here? I’m sure Eddie would relish the opportunity to show off his Biedermeier furniture or his humidity-controlled shoe closet.”
“Sweet Jesus, that shoe closet! Did you notice that all his shoes were arranged alphabetically according to brand?”
“I sure did. And you think I’m obsessive with my shoes.”
“I will never say anything about your weird OCD habits again, not after meeting Edison Cheng.”
• • •
At four forty-five, Eddie was rushing around his apartment like a madman, yelling at his maids. “Laarni, that’s the wrong one! I said Bebel Gilberto, not Astrud Gilberto!” Eddie screamed at the top of his lungs. “I don’t want the Girl from fucking Ipanema to be playing when Bao Gaoliang arrives—he’s one of my most important clients! I want track two of Tanto Tempo!”
“Sorry, sir,” Laarni called from the other room as she nervously tried to find the song on the Linn music system. She scarcely knew how the damn thing worked, and it was even harder to use the remote with the cotton gloves that Mr. Cheng made her wear whenever she came near his precious stereo, which he kept harping was worth more than her entire village in Maguindanao.
Eddie stormed into the kitchen, where the two Chinese maids were sitting by the small television watching Fei Cheng Wu Rao.* They jumped up from their barstools when he entered. “Li Jing, is the caviar ready?” he asked in Mandarin.
“Yes, Mr. Cheng.”
“Let me see it.”
Li Jing opened the Subzero fridge and proudly took out the sterling silver caviar server that filled up an entire shelf.
“No, no, no! You’re not supposed to refrigerate the whole thing! Only the caviar gets refrigerated! I don’t want the whole damn caviar tray to be sweating like a Cambodian whore when it comes out of the fridge! Now wipe it dry and leave it out. Right when our very important politician guest arrives, you put the ice in here, see? And then you lay the glass caviar bowl over it. Like this, see? And make sure you use crushed ice from the fridge, not the cubed ice from the ice machine, okay?”
These maids are useless, absolutely useless, Eddie lamented to himself as he walked back to his dressing room. It didn’t help that his maids never seemed to renew their contracts after the first year. He had tried to steal away some of his Ah Ma’s impeccably trained staff while he was in Singapore, but those servants were more loyal than the Nazis.
Eddie checked for lint on his herringbone jacket for the tenth time in his gilt Viennese Secession mirror. He had paired it with his tight DSquared jeans, thinking it made him look more casual. The doorbell suddenly chimed. Fucky fuck, Bao Gaoliang was early!
“Laaaarni, cue the music! Charity, turn on the accent lights! And Charity, you’re having a better hair day—you answer the door!” Eddie yelled, as he rushed into the formal living room. Nick looked on in amazement as his cousin began doing karate chops on all the tasseled throw pillows, frantically trying to create the perfect fluffed-up look.
Rachel, meanwhile, went to the front door. “I’ll get it, Charity.”
“Nicky, you really need to train your wife to let the maids do what they’re supposed to do,” Eddie said to his cousin sotto voce.
“I wouldn’t dream of trying to change her,” Nick responded.
“Hiyah, this is what happens when you go and live in America,” Eddie said disparagingly.
Rachel opened the door, and standing in front of her was her father looking like he’d aged ten years. His hair wasn’t as meticulously combed as it normally was, and there were heavy bags under his eyes. He reached out and hugged her tightly, and Rachel knew at that moment that there was nothing to feel uncomfortable about around him. They entered the formal living room arm in arm.
“Bao Buzhang, such an honor to have you in my home,” Eddie said cordially.
“Thank you so much for inviting me over on such short notice,” Gaoliang said to Eddie, before turning back to Rachel with a tender look. “I am so relieved to see you looking so well. I’m very sorry that this trip has turned out so badly for you. It was truly not what I had intended when I invited you to come to China. I’m not just talking about your, er, incident. I’m talking about myself, and all the complications that have prevented me from spending more time with you.”
“That’s okay, Father. I have no regrets about this trip—I’ve enjoyed getting to know Carlton.”
“I know he feels the same as well. By the way, I really must thank you for what you did for Carlton in Paris.”
“It was nothing,” Rachel said modestly.
“Which brings me to what I’m really here to talk about. Listen, I realize what a strange situation this must be for both of you. I’ve had many meetings over the past few days with the commissioner of police in Hangzhou, and I just came from meeting his counterpart Commander Kwok in Hong Kong. Now, I believe with all my heart that my wife has nothing to do with your poisoning. I don’t think it’s any surprise to you at this point that Shaoyen has been harboring some issues around your visit, and I can only blame myself for that. I handled things badly with her. However, she’s just not the sort of person who would ever harm a soul.”
Rachel nodded diplomatically.
Gaoliang let out a sigh. “I’m going to do everything in my power to help bring whoever was responsible for this terrible crime to justice. I know that the Beijing police have Richie Yang under twenty-four-hour surveillance now, and the entire city of Hangzhou has been turned inside out with this investigation. I have every confidence that the police are getting closer to the truth with every hour that passes.”
Everyone else remained silent, unsure of what to say after Gaoliang’s monologue, and Li Jing chose this moment to enter the living room pushing a gleaming silver cart with the caviar. Eddie noticed in annoyance that the bottom was filled with ice cubes, and not crushed ice as he had specifically requested. Now the glass bowl sat on the cubes at a slight angle, and he tried not to be distracted by it. Charity followed along with a just-opened bottle of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay and four champagne flutes. Fucky fuck, he’d told the maids to get out the vintage Venini glasses, not the everyday Baccarat!
“Some caviar and champagne?” Eddie said, trying to lighten the mood, all the while shooting daggers at Charity, who wondered what he was so upset about. Did she bring the champagne in too early? He did say to bring it in eight minutes after the important guest arrived, and she had timed it exactly on the grandfather clock. Sir kept glaring at the champagne flutes. Oh shit, she’d used the wrong glasses.
Rachel and Nick helped themselves to some caviar and champagne, but when Gaoliang was offered a glass, he shook his head politely.
“No champagne, Bao Buzhang?” Eddie said, rather disappointed. He would only have served Dom had it been just Nick and Rachel.
“No, but I wouldn’t mind a glass of hot water.”
These Mainlanders and their hot water! “Charity, could you see to it that Mr. Bao gets a glass of hot water at once.”
Gaoliang gazed intently at Nick and Rachel. “I want you both to know that Shaoyen has cooperated one hundred percent with the investigators. She has submitted herself to countless hours of questioning, and she’s even handed over all the surveillance videos in our plant in Shenzhen, where the drug is manufactured, so that the police can analyze everything.”
“Thank you for making this trip to tell me all
this, Father. I know how difficult this must be for you,” Rachel said.
“My goodness, it’s nothing compared to what you had to go through!”
Charity entered the living room bearing a tray with a carafe of boiling hot water and one of the antique Venini flutes. She set the tray down next to Bao Gaoliang, and before Eddie could fully process what was happening, she began to pour the boiling hot water into the eighty-year-old venetian glassware. A high-pitched cracking sound could be heard as the glass began to crack down its side.
“Nooooooooooooooooooo!” Eddie suddenly screamed, leaping off the sofa and knocking over the caviar server. A million tiny black fish eggs went flying across the faded antique Savonnerie carpet, and as the other maids ran in to see what the commotion was, Eddie looked down in panic and began to pant. “Don’t move! This rug cost me nine hundred and fifty thousand euros at auction! Nobody move!”
Rachel turned to Laarni and said calmly, “Do you have a Dustbuster?”
• • •
After the caviar incident had been resolved safely with nary a casualty to a single knot of carpet, the group took their aperitifs onto the terrace to enjoy the sunset view. Now that Gaoliang had unburdened himself of all he needed to say, the mood had lightened considerably. Eddie stood at one end with Gaoliang, pointing out the houses of every famous tycoon who lived on Victoria Peak and estimating the value of their properties, while Rachel and Nick perched at the corner looking down toward the water.
“How are you feeling, hon?” Nick asked, still concerned about how Rachel was handling everything.
“I feel good. I’m so glad I’ve cleared the air with my father. I’m just ready to go home now.”
“Well, Commander Kwok said we could leave at the end of the week if nothing new develops. I promise, we’ll go home as soon as we possibly can,” Nick said, wrapping his arms around her as they looked at the lights coming on all over the city.
Later that evening, while Nick, Rachel, and Gaoliang were in the middle of dinner with Eddie and his mother, Alix, at the Locke Club, Gaoliang’s cell phone began to ring. Seeing that it was the Shanghai chief of police calling, he excused himself from the table and went out to the foyer to take the call. A few moments later, he came back to the table with an urgent look on his face. “There’s been a huge break in the case, and an arrest has been made. They want us to come back to Shanghai immediately.”
Rachel felt her gut tense up. “Do I really need to be there?”
“Apparently they need you to identify someone.” Gaoliang said gravely.
A little over three hours later, Rachel, Nick, and Gaoliang were back in Shanghai, speeding along in a chauffeured Audi to the Central Police Station on Fuzhou Lu.
“Still no word from Carlton?” Rachel asked.
“Er, no,” Gaoliang said tersely. He had been trying to contact Carlton and Shaoyen even before the chartered jet had departed from Hong Kong, but their phones were both going straight to voice mail. Now he was nervously hitting the redial button to no avail.
They arrived at the station and were escorted upstairs to a reception room ablaze in fluorescent lights. An officer with magnificently droopy jowls came into the room and bowed to Rachel’s father. “Bao Buzhang, thank you for returning so speedily. Is this Ms. Chu?”
“Yes,” Rachel said.
“I’m Inspector Zhang. We are going to take you into an interrogation room, and we would like you to tell us if the person we are holding appears familiar to you. You will see them behind a two-way mirror, and they will not be able to see or hear you, so please do not be afraid to speak up. Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes. Can my husband come in with me?”
“No, that won’t be possible. But don’t worry, you will be with me and several other officers. Nothing is going to happen.”
“We’ll be right out here, Rachel.” Nick squeezed her hand encouragingly.
Rachel nodded and went along with the officer. There were two other detectives already in the first room when she entered. One of them pulled at a cord, and the blinds over a viewing window were lifted. “Do you recognize this person?” Inspector Zhang asked.
Rachel could feel her heart beating furiously in her throat. “Yes. Yes, I do. He was the man who was rowing our boat on the West Lake in Hangzhou.”
“He’s not a real boatman. He paid off the regular boatman so that he could poison the tea you drank while you were on the boat ride.”
“Oh my God! I forgot all about that Longjing tea!” Rachel said in astonishment. “But who is he? Why in the world would he want to poison me?”
“We’re not done yet, miss. Come into the next room.”
Rachel walked into the adjoining room, and the officer opened up another set of blinds. Rachel’s eyes widened in disbelief. “I don’t understand. What’s she doing here?”
“Do you know her?”
“That’s…” Rachel stammered. “That’s Roxanne Ma—Colette Bing’s personal assistant.”
* * *
* An immensely popular Chinese dating game show, known in English as If You Are the One. A national uproar occurred after a poor suitor asked a female contestant whether she would ride a bicycle with him on a date and she famously replied: “I would rather cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle!”
14
CENTRAL POLICE STATION
FUZHOU LU, SHANGHAI
Nick and Gaoliang were allowed to join Rachel in the viewing booth as Roxanne was subjected to the official interrogation.
“For the millionth time, I keep telling you it was a horrible mistake. I was just trying to send Rachel a little message, that’s all,” Roxanne said wearily.
“You thought poisoning a woman with a highly potent drug that shut down her kidneys and liver and could have led to her death was a way to send someone a little message?” Inspector Zhang asked incredulously.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like that. The drug was just supposed to make her vomit for a while and have really bad stomach cramps. It makes you feel like you’re dying, when you’re not actually. The plan was to send Rachel the flowers along with the note right when she arrived at the hospital in Hangzhou. But before we could get the lilies to her, she had been checked out of the hospital and evacuated to Hong Kong. How the hell was I supposed to know that was going to happen?”
“So why did you wait so long after she was admitted to Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong before you sent the note?”
“I had no idea where they took her. She just disappeared! We were frantically searching for her everywhere—I had people in Shanghai, Beijing, all the top regional hospitals looking for her. But we had to wait till her admission record popped up somewhere. It was never the intention to let things get as bad as they did. I just wanted to scare her and make her leave the country. The plan went terribly wrong.”
“But why would you want to try to scare Rachel Chu in the first place?”
“I told you this already. Colette was extremely distraught that Carlton Bao might lose part of his inheritance to Rachel.”
Gaoliang’s jaw dropped when he heard this, while Rachel and Nick looked at each other in confusion.
“Why would this happen?” Inspector Zhang continued.
“Bao Gaoliang and his wife were furious after finding out all the reckless things their son did in Paris.”
“Reckless things that were discussed during the dinner at Imperial Treasure?”
“Yes, the Baos got into a fight about Carlton, and Bao Gaoliang threatened to disinherit him.”
“This fight occurred in the presence of Colette Bing and yourself?”
“No, the fight happened after we left the room. I had intentionally left Colette’s iPhone in the room with the record mode on, and I went back to collect it later.”
Gaoliang put his hands to his forehead, shaking his head in disgust
.
“And that’s when you discovered the Baos talking about disinheriting Carlton?”
“Yes. It was a tremendous shock for Colette. She thought she was helping to smooth things out between Carlton and his parents, but instead it made things far worse. See, I told her, no good deed goes unpunished!”
“Why would Colette Bing care if Carlton Bao gets disinherited?”
“Isn’t it obvious? She’s pathetically in love with the loser.”
“So Colette Bing ordered all this to happen?”
“No, she didn’t! I keep telling you she didn’t. Colette was just very upset after realizing that she had put Carlton in jeopardy. She couldn’t stop crying, and she couldn’t stop cursing Rachel Chu, so I told her I would fix things.”
“Then she did know of your plan to poison Rachel.”
“No! Colette never knew what I was going to do. I just told her I would handle it.”
“This was such an important mission, and Colette had nothing to do with it?”
“NOTHING AT ALL! And it wasn’t an ‘important mission.’ ”
“Stop trying to protect Colette Bing! She ordered you to do this, didn’t she? This was her plan all along and you were just the minion who did all the dirty work.”
“I am not her minion. I am her personal assistant! Do you know what that entails? I manage a direct staff of forty-two employees and a support staff of countless more. I make $650,000 a year.”
“Colette Bing pays you so much money, and yet she does not know everything that you do for her? I find that very hard to believe.”
Roxanne glared at the inspector contemptuously. “What do you know about billionaires? Do you even know one? Do you have any idea how they live? Colette Bing is one of the richest women in the world, and she is an extremely busy and influential person. Her fashion blog is followed every minute of the day by more than thirty-five million people, and she’s about to become the international brand ambassador for one of the biggest fashion companies. Her schedule is packed—she has at least three or four social functions that she is required to show her face at every single night. She has six residences, three planes, ten cars, and she is traveling somewhere every week. Do you think she keeps track of everything that’s going on all the time? She’s too busy having important meetings with world-famous people like Ai Weiwei and Pan TingTing! My job is to make sure that everything in her professional and personal life goes smoothly. I post all her pictures to her blog! I negotiate all her contracts! I make sure her dogs’ feces are the correct shade of maple sugar brown! I see to it that every floral arrangement in six houses and three planes are exquisitely perfect at all times! Do you even know how many floral designers we have on the payroll, and the dramas they have? Those bitches could have their own reality show with all the conniving and backstabbing that goes on just to get one compliment out of Colette about some fucking delphiniums! Every single day, I have to make a million and one annoying little problems she is never even aware of go away!”