After a few seconds, Ms Alegre continued: ‘Ze personal trainer just over-did it, basically. I don’t know. Perhaps he read ze chart wrong, or perhaps he’s hopeless with numbers. Whatever, ze result was a disaster. Ze client was a woman of sixty-six. Ze trainer put her on ari amazingly ’eavy schedule of exercises—too ’eavy for a client so old. She did all right ze first couple of sessions, but complained a bit. Ze third session, she was twenty minoots through on ze treadmill and simply— how you say?—keeled over. Hit her ’ead on ze railing as she fell. Infarction, Doctor Brackish said.’
‘Why the trainer did not follow the instructions on the computer?’
‘Don’t know. He was an idiot, I suppose. Zey seemed clear enough to me. It was a shame. He may have been a liability, but he was a sweet kid—and très good-looking. He had ze chin of Kirk Douglas.’
After spending a further twenty minutes talking to Kirk Douglas’ chin (this time on the telephone during a tea break), Joyce McQuinnie was convinced that this was a key moment in her life. Jimmy Wegner was the guy she had always dreamed of meeting. Okay, so he might not have been absolutely the cleverest fella in the world, but he was a nice guy, which was what really counted.
And they both adored Tom Cruise movies, so they were practically twins! Or perhaps they both hated them—she couldn’t remember. Anyway, it didn’t matter. What was important was that she had now known him for ages— hours—and had this really really strong feeling that he liked her as much as she liked him.
The timing was perfect. Here she was, stuck in Perth for a few days with not much to do, and there was Jimmy, suddenly unemployed and needing someone sympathetic to talk to.
Joyce did the rest of her share of work at The Players that afternoon in a daze, looking at the clock every two minutes, since Jimmy had agreed to meet her after work. She spent most of the time doing a lo shu chart for the owner of the club and the general manager.
But she was bursting to talk about any aspect of Jimmy Wegner with anyone. She was intrigued to find that Wong had sneaked out for an hour during the mid-afternoon to visit the personal trainer’s previous workplace.
‘We both like DVDs. Isn’t that amazing? By the way, do the people at that club want him back? He needs a job.’
‘They don’t want him back I think.’
Joyce was surprised when her boss explained that Wegner had apparently committed precisely the same mistake twice— misread a list of clear instructions from a medical database. The question that was implicit in Wong’s view of events was clear: Was Jimmy Wegner incompetent or was he just pretending to be?
Joyce found neither view acceptable. ‘Okay, so he’s a bit stupid-ish, but he’s not that stupid. I mean, if the doctor tells you to make a guy walk at three kilometres an hour for four minutes, you wouldn’t make him sprint at 15 kilometres an hour for twenty-five minutes, would you? I mean, he’s a fitness guy. He knows all this stuff. We talked about this. He did exactly what it said on his instructions.’
Wong was sceptical. ‘If he knows this, why he keeps killing his client?’
Joyce had a straightforward answer to this: ‘The doctors’ database has a page for each old person, with a list of mild exercises. But there’s also an individual bulletin that the doctor writes sometimes. Anyway, this bulletin told him that the person needed a circulation boost and a super-heavy workout and a high-speed run or something. Jimmy did as he was told. It turned out to be too much for the person. But when Jimmy looked back at the website, the bulletin had gone and just the usual exercises were left.’
The geomancer shook his head. ‘Impossible. Numbers is in health club computer. How will doctor get in? Will he sneak into health club and change the computer?’
She slowly shook her head. ‘You really don’t understand the Internet, do you, CF?’ She pulled her chair over to where he was sitting. She placed a white sheet of paper on his table and started drawing a diagram.
‘This is the doctors’ computer in the doctors’ office.’
‘In office of EDOC.’
‘What?’
‘Executive Doctors on Call.’
‘Whatever. Yeah. In the doctors’ office. It has all the medical results in it. It is called a database. That’s because all the data—that means numbers and stuff—is in it. That’s the base where the data is kept. Now over here’—she drew separate rectangles on the other end of the sheet of paper —‘are the health club’s computers. When they switch their computers on, they read what’s in the database at the doctors’ place. If the doctors add a bulletin here in their database, it would be read on the computers at the health club. It would be really easy to get someone at the gym to do whatever you wanted him to do. Jimmy says they sent him the wrong instructions. They added a note to his client’s section telling him to double the weights and increase the speeds and so on. And then, after the guy died, they deleted that bit completely.’
Wong was not interested.
Joyce knew she had failed to convince her boss that her new friend had been grievously wronged, and was left in a state of frustration. How could anyone believe that someone with a face like Jimmy’s was capable of wrongdoing? Just look at him! That chin could never lie.
As the working day drew to a close, the geomancer received a call from Dominique Alegre’s mother-in-law, the elderly feng shui fan, and soon found himself on his way to a paying assignment for the evening. His Perth trip could after all prove to be pleasantly profitable.
Joyce, delighted to be left on her own, met up with Jimmy who told her about a former fitness teacher called Stan Eknath, who apparently had a similar story to his. Now knowing that young male gym instructors were more interesting in the flesh than on telephones, she asked Jimmy to track Stan down.
An hour later, the three young people met at Stan’s father’s restaurant, The Perth Indian Balti House.
‘Yeah,’ said Stan, over a rogan josh. ‘The instructions I got on that fateful bloody day clearly said that she needed a great deal of exercise and had to be walked at a six per cent gradient for at least ten minutes at eight kilometres an hour.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jimmy. ‘That’s like what the report I got said about my guy.’
‘And she had to cycle for twelve minutes.’
‘Mine had to cycle for fifteen.’
‘And she had to get her heart rate up to ninety-two per cent of maximum. I thought that was way dangerous at the time, but that’s what the report for the day said. I had to do what it said. I would get in trouble if I didn’t. Once she’d keeled over and the ambulance had taken her away—well, I went back to the website a couple of hours later, and the special instructions had disappeared. Just the usual ones were left.’
Jimmy shook his head slowly in wonder. ‘This is what happened to me. Exactly what happened to me.’
Joyce, recalling what she had learned from previous cases, turned to Jimmy with a question. ‘Who benefits from this? Like, who did the old geezer who died leave his money to?’
‘I don’t know, but I think it was his doctor. That’s what I heard. There was a lot of gossip about the whole thing among the staff at the club.’
She turned to the other trainer.
He said: ‘I don’t know who the dead old bird at my place left her money to. But I remember her saying that she joined the health programme because her doctor told her to.’
‘Why did your guy join the club?’ she asked Jimmy.
‘I think he joined for medical reasons, too.’
Stan bit into a poppadum thoughtfully, crumbs exploding over his chin. ‘Just supposing both were sent by their doctors—and both left their money to their doctors. That would mean —’
‘A motive!’ the young woman said.
Jimmy asked: ‘What was the name of the doctor at your gym?’
Stan’s brow wrinkled. ‘I don’t remember. I don’t think we ever got individual names of doctors. The reports were on a website. The company paid some money and we got access to it. It was call
ed Executive something.’
Joyce interrupted. ‘Hang on a minute. Lemme think. Er— what was it? Was it—Executive Doctors on Call?’
Stan nodded. ‘Yeah—I think—yeah, that was it. You got it.’
‘I think maybe we really have got it,’ she replied, her mind racing.
Dominique Alegre dropped Wong off at her mother-in-law’s residence at precisely 6:30 pm.
The 72-year-old woman lived in an apartment block three storeys high on a steep slope on the outskirts of town. It was called The Regalia and had become a popular haunt for the elderly, since it was not far from a hospital specialising in outpatient services with a Senior Citizen Clinic.
‘I don’t sink ma belle-mère wants you to feng shui her place tonight,’ Ms Alegre said as she punched a four-digit code into a panel at the main door.
‘Just have a look-see,’ Wong agreed.
‘Oui. She wants you to meet a few friends, too. Zey’re all interested in feng shui these days.’
‘Ah.’ Wong felt like rubbing his hands together. The stars were in his favour and his luck was in. He visualised two or three little old ladies, all of whom would hire him to poke around their apartments for a couple of hours each at his usual outrageous fee.
Arriving at flat 3B, Dominique Alegre introduced him to a tiny, wrinkled woman named Eleanor Mittel. She jabbed a quick kiss onto her mother-in-law’s cheek and fled. ‘Au revoir, Eleanor. Look after Monsieur Wong and make sure ’e gets back to his hotel safely, will you? See you Sunday.’
Old Mrs Mittel grabbed Wong’s upper arm unnecessarily firmly and steered him along a neat little hallway containing two slim tables, each bearing a bouquet of flowers.
‘The second door,’ she muttered. ‘They’re in here.’
Keeping a tight grip on him, she kicked the door open and swung Wong into the room. ‘I got ’im,’ she crowed.
The feng shui master was aghast to see there were fifteen women in the room, aged from about forty-five to well over Mrs Mittel’s age.
‘Oh!’ he said. ‘You are having party. Very sorry. Maybe I come back tomorrow.’
‘Oh no-no-no,’ said his hostess. ‘You don’t escape that easily. I’ve invited the entire membership of the North Perth Handbag Society to meet you and we’ve got a forty per cent turnout, despite the fact that I only started making the calls mid-afternoon.’
‘You’re a very persuasive woman, El,’ one of the women called out, and the others laughed.
‘Harry would have said so,’ said another, triggering a louder laugh.
‘Behave yourselves girls,’ said Mrs Mittel, tightening her grip on Wong’s arm. ‘We don’t want to scare him off.’
The geomancer was forcibly placed in a dining chair in a position where all the women could see him. Sixteen pairs of eyes stared at him and gave instant feedback.
‘He’s kinda cute.’
‘Skinny though.’
‘Needs one of Bessie’s two-ton Lamingtons.’
‘Yeah, then I don’t have to eat them.’
‘Does he speak English?’
‘Prob’ly better’n you, Milly.’
Mrs Mittel clapped her hands sharply together to get her audience’s attention. ‘Come now, ladies, we need a bit of quiet here. Mr Wong has kindly agreed to give the North Perth Handbag Society a talk on feng shooeee. As you know, from the talk that Mrs Nimmo gave us last year, this is the ancient Oriental art of placement. Mrs Nimmo, God bless her, was just reading out of a book, but this Mr Wong is your genuine article. A real feng shui master who just happens to be in town and is a friend of my daughter-in-law.’
‘I don’t think —’ said Wong, trying to rise to his feet.
Mrs Mittel put a hand on each shoulder and pressed him down. ‘Come now, Mr Wong, no need to be shy. We don’t bite.’
‘Julia does,’ said a cheerful woman with a red, blotchy face.
This inexplicable remark caused hoots of laughter from the other side of the room, and one elderly woman had a coughing fit and had to be helped out of the room to recover.
‘Maybe she does, but we are not gonna let her bite you, don’t you worry,’ Eleanor Mittel told Wong. ‘Now how about you give us a five or ten minute talk, and then we do Q and A and general discussion?’
So saying, she spun herself round and squeezed herself, with a wriggle of her bottom, into a tiny space left on one of the three sofas in the room. ‘There. We’re ready.’
The geomancer loathed speaking in public—and was generally mistrustful of gwaipoh, an aversion that his time spent with Joyce had only reinforced. So the idea of addressing a whole roomful of them—well, it was one of the most hideous ways he could imagine spending an evening. He tried to calm himself by imagining that it was possible that several of the women in this room would hire him at exorbitant rates over the next few days to look at their houses or apartments.
But in the meantime, what was he going to say? Maybe he could do a basic introduction to feng shui, as he did when he occasionally found himself with a client who knew nothing about it.
‘Feng shui man use a compass first. This is to find out which direction.’
The blotchy-faced woman shouted out: ‘Show us your tool.’
‘Yeah, get yer tool out,’ her neighbour added.
This caused a riot of laughter, and a stern admonition from Eleanor Mittel. ‘Behave yourselves girls.’
A woman of about eighty with white hair cackled. ‘Hands, off girls, Eleanor wants him for herself.’
Wong’s lack of experience in making speeches in English proved to be no disadvantage at all. Whatever he said sparked off spontaneous and quite unintelligible comments that baffled him but greatly entertained his audience.
After five painful stop-start minutes, in which he had explained almost nothing about his science, it occurred to him that some of the women in this group were roughly the age of the people who had died at the fitness clubs.
‘In feng shui, health associated with yellow colour,’ he said. ‘Anybody here is healthy?’
The blotchy-faced woman, who was the quickest comedienne in the group, said: ‘I have a healthy appetite, but that’s all!’
Eleanor Mittel sniggered back: ‘The healthier your appetite the less healthy your fat gut.’
‘Oooh,’ murmured the other women at this personal attack.
Wong pressed on: ‘Anybody here use health club?’
‘I do,’ said a woman of about seventy. ‘Do I need to get them to paint my club yellow?’
‘You never belong to a health club, Bee,’ said a woman with grey hair.
‘I do. I did three K on the cycle yesterday.’
A fifty-something woman in a long, green, earth-mother dress raised her hand. ‘I’m doing a course with a personal trainer. I’ve only been once and it nearly killed me.’
There was general laughter at this, but Wong raised his eyebrows. ‘He make you work hard?’
‘It’s a she. And hard is not the word for it. I think she’s trying to polish me off.’
‘The lamingtons will get you first,’ said the blotchy-faced woman.
Two hours later, Mrs Eleanor Mittel placed CF Wong in a taxi.
‘Thank you, Mr Wong. You were a star.’
‘Ah. Okay. What time I do your flat tomorrow?’
‘Early. Nine-ish would be good.’
The Swan taxi pulled off into the road, leaving Wong with a welcome moment of peace.
It had been a stressful and strenuous evening, but it had worked out fine in the end. Four of the women had hired him to visit their apartments over the next two days.
During his talk and the general discussion over snacks later, he had learned that three of the women present were active members of a health club. One of them, an attractive woman in her mid-fifties introduced to him as Mrs Lavender, had recently embarked upon a course with a personal trainer that was proving to be extremely strenuous. ‘Getting healthy is going to be the death of me,’ she laughed.
&nb
sp; Of course, it was possible that she was just out of shape, Wong realised. Perhaps there was no connection at all with the incidents at the Millennium Health Centre and The Players, but it would be intriguing to check it out.
‘You have doctor?’
‘Yeah—and he specialises in sports and fitness.’
‘A good man?’
‘Very good. He does a lot of work for kids’ charities and stuff. If you haven’t written your will yet, Mr Wong, you could do a lot worse than write a bequest for him, as I’ve done.’
At 11:45 am the following morning, the juice bar of the Stretch Yoga Centre was occupied by six people—five of whom were women, the sixth being Wong. The feng shui master had long been proud of his traditional Asian misogyny and was irritated to find himself constantly in the company of females during this particular mission. Was it Perth that was at fault? Did Australian men all move to Sydney, leaving this side of the country over-supplied with the pestilent sex? Or was it something to do with health clubs? Maybe only women in Australia were healthy?
‘Are you married, Mr Wong?’
Mrs Lavender’s question brought him abruptly out of his reverie.
‘I know you’re not wearing a ring, but I didn’t know whether people in your country had the tradition of wearing rings.’
The geomancer shook his head. ‘Not married. No rings, no, no, don’t like it, Mrs Lavender.’
‘Call me Jackie.’
‘Yes, Mrs Lavender Jackie.’
‘Just Jackie.’
‘Mrs Jess Jackie.’
She reached over the table and took hold of his hand. ‘I can do a bit of palm reading, you know. I was taught by my aunt, who had a bit of Romany blood.’
She ran her fingertip over his palm, tickling him.
‘There are seven different categories of hand, you know,’ she said. ‘You have what is called a philosophical hand, gnarled with pronounced knuckles. This type of palm indicates —’ The geomancer snatched his hand back. ‘I think maybe we do this later.’
The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook Page 7