The Ambassador's wife ist-1

by Jake Needham

  “Yes?”

  “It might be better if we met to talk about it.”

  “You mean now?” Tay asked.

  “No, not now. How about…”

  That hesitation again.

  “Look, let me buy you a drink at the end of the day,” Dr. Hoi said. “Will that work for you?”

  The invitation was so unexpected Tay didn’t immediately know what to say.

  “You do drink, don’t you?” she asked when he said nothing at all. “You’re not one of those boring people who go to meetings and devote their lives communing with some higher power are you?”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “Then is there a problem with today?” Dr. Hoi continued. “If there is, just say so. We can meet another time.”

  “No, sorry. I just suddenly thought of something else. Today’s fine. Did you have a place in mind?”

  “How about Harry’s Bar in Boat Quay? Six o’clock?”

  Tay hated Harry’s Bar.

  “Fine,” he said. “I love Harry’s Bar.”

  Harry’s Bar was all dark wood and ceiling fans, a place that Tay figured was some local entrepreneur’s idea of what an American bar was supposed to look like but didn’t. Why would anyone think building such a place in Singapore was a good idea? Tay didn’t have a clue. Worse, it was usually full of Australian tourists. Either that or it was full of self-important local yuppies doing something or another in the financial district and wearing suspenders they thought looked classic but were actually twenty years out of date. He loathed the place.

  “Harry’s Bar at six it is then,” Dr. Hoi said.

  “Right,” Tay said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  After Dr. Hoi hung up, Tay thought about what it was she might want to tell him while he sat staring out the window at a British Airways 747 drifting over the towers of the city in the direction of Changi Airport. All at once he thought of a day twenty or more years earlier when he had stood on a street not far from where he was now and watched a supersonic Concorde, looking like a colossal prehistoric falcon, on almost exactly the same flight path. Back then, supersonic air travel had seemed a glorious vision of the future, but time passed and all thought of it ceased, and now the Concorde was nothing more than a vague historical oddity.

  Could it have really been only that short a time ago that mankind had dreamed so extravagantly of taming time itself and bending it to our will? And why in God’s name had we given it all up so meekly, surrendering such huge dreams with so slight a struggle?

  The thought caused Tay to wonder for a moment if he hadn’t surrendered his own dreams exactly the same way, so quickly and completely that he could hardly remember them now. If he had, like the Concorde, he supposed it really didn’t matter that much to anyone anymore.

  He took a notebook out of a desk drawer and put it in his shirt pocket. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he took an unopened box of Marlboros and some matches, too, tucking them into his pocket with the notebook.

  Tay stood up, slapped his open palm against his desk, and went to lunch.

  TWELVE

  Tay walked down New Bridge Road, turned right on Temple Street, and took his usual seat in a Chinatown dim sum place where he liked to eat whenever he had the time.

  The idea came to him just as he was finishing his third char siew pau. He poured himself another cup of black tea and when he spotted a passing waitress with a tray of steaming hot egg tarts said to hell with tormenting himself about cholesterol and took two. As he ate the first, he cautiously turned his sudden inspiration over in his mind and tested its implications.

  It had been nearly a year since Tay had seen Lucinda Lim, a divorcee he had once gone out with occasionally. Their relationship — Christ, how he hated that word — had not ended badly so much as it had just run out of gas and coasted to a stop.

  Most of the people Tay knew thought Lucinda was quite a catch for him. She was young, gorgeous, spirited and, as if to demonstrate yet again the fundamental unfairness of life, the only daughter of one of Singapore’s wealthiest men. Those were exactly the same reasons most of Lucinda’s friends thought she could do a lot better than Sam Tay. It was true Tay had inherited some money, but Lucinda had no use for money. What she needed, her friends said, was a worthy companion for her excursions through Singapore’s world of the socially important and the culturally fashionable. Samuel Tay was a policeman. That ruled him out right there.

  There were other reasons he and Lucinda hadn’t come to anything, of course. Tay preferred quiet evenings at home, sitting with his feet up reading a book, where Lucinda preferred to hit the party circuit with the chic and glamorous. It was on one of those excursions into what passed for high society in Singapore, one into which Tay had been drawn much against his better judgment, that he stumbled into the most embarrassing experience of his life.

  Lucinda had coaxed him into going to Singapore Tatler’s anniversary ball, and as they entered the Four Seasons she positioned them directly in front of the mob of photographers who were recording the parade of arriving guests. When the strobe lights started firing, Tay reacted like a deer caught in headlights. He froze at the first flashes then, when the second volley fired, he turned his head and jerked away. The resulting photograph, inexplicably featured in the magazine’s next issue, had shown Tay looking as if he were trying to bury his face in Lucinda’s gloriously displayed cleavage. Tay couldn’t remember for sure how many months it took for people to stop pinning copies of that picture to bulletin boards around the Cantonment Complex, but it was far too many.

  Tay wasn’t really sure he wanted to see Lucinda, or if she wanted to see him. He certainly didn’t want her to jump to any inaccurate conclusions as to why he was calling again after all this time, but he didn’t know anyone else he could ask about Elizabeth Munson. Lucinda loved gossip and whatever she knew or even thought she knew about what local social circles had to say concerning Elizabeth Munson she would probably tell him. For that, Tay decided, it was worth taking his chances on the possibility of personal complications.

  Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he turned it on. He fumbled with the buttons until he remembered how to get into the address book and then fumbled some more until he found Lucinda’s telephone number. When he called the number, he got a mechanical voice telling him that Madam Lim was not able to take the call at the moment but would return it as soon as possible. Tay started to hang up since it was something of a religious principle with him not to talk to a machine, but then he bit his tongue and left a brief message asking Lucinda to ring him.

  Tay polished off the second of the two egg tarts, finished his tea, then walked slowly back up New Bridge Road toward the office smoking a Marlboro. Unless you were in your own home, walking on the street was about the only place you could smoke in Singapore anymore and he had no doubt that some goddamned bureaucrat in some goddamned government ministry was plotting right at that very goddamned moment to stop him from doing that, too. He used to think of Singapore as a bastion of self-reliance and independence, but somewhere along the way it had turned instead into a nitpicking, overregulated nanny state where some government weenie tried to run every detail of your life. The whole idea upset him so much that he lit up a second Marlboro.

  He was strolling past the delightfully named Horse Brand Birds Nest Company when he heard a cell phone ringing very close by. He looked around in annoyance until he realized that it was his own phone that was ringing. He had forgotten to shut it off again.

  “My God, it is Sam Tay!”

  Lucinda’s voice jumped out of the earpiece with all the alarming assertiveness Tay remembered, although he had to admit there was something quite nice about the sound of it after all this time. “I thought someone was playing a joke on me. How have you been, Sam? How in the hell have you been?”

  “I’m fine, Lucinda. How are you?”

  “Ah, Sam, I’m still in mourning for you. Wearing black every single day since you dumped
me.”

  “I thought you dumped me.”

  “Yes, well, maybe I did, but being left makes for better drama than doing the leaving, don’t you think?”

  In spite of himself, Tay chuckled. “Lucinda, I need to talk to you. Is this a good time?”

  “For you, Sam, I am as free as a bird, always and forever.”

  Tay knew he was supposed to say something witty to that, but he couldn’t think of anything so he settled for getting straight to the point. “It’s important and it may take rather a long time. Can I come around to your place?”

  That brought a silence from Lucinda that Tay interpreted as slightly speculative so he figured he had better put an end to any suppositions in which she might be inclined to engage before they got out of hand.

  “I’m working on a murder case that hasn’t become public yet,” he added quickly, “but when it does it’s going be a real mess. I think you might be able to help me with it.”

  “Help you? With a murder case? A secret murder case? Oh, how exciting! Since you dumped me I’ve had so little to do with the criminal classes.”

  Tay was momentarily at a loss for words, but words from him were entirely unnecessary since Lucinda started talking again almost immediately.

  “I was just going to the club to play tennis, but I wouldn’t dream of that now. Do come over right away, Sam. Don’t waste a moment. Do you remember where I live?”

  “I do if it’s in the same place.”

  “Of course it is, Sam. I’ll never leave this house, not unless you ask me to move in with you and there’s no chance of that, is there? Are you coming right now? Have you had lunch?”

  “Yes, thank you, I’ve had lunch.” Tay glanced at his watch. “I could be there in a half-hour. Would that be okay?”

  “Wonderful, Sam, I’ll put some champagne on ice. Ciao!”

  LUCINDA Lim lived in a big house on Cluny Road, a neighborhood that radiated exclusivity to the point that visitors felt unwanted. Perhaps that was because visitors were unwanted. Tay gathered that was exactly the point of building all those high walls with heavy gates. He couldn’t be bothered walking all the way back to the Cantonment Complex to sign out a car, so he found a taxi in Chinatown and directed the driver by memory.

  Tay recalled the drive to Lucinda’s house clearly. He loved the thick jungle that swallowed the roadway just past the Botanical Gardens, leaving you wondering if you were still in Singapore at all. A tropical forest of palm and banana trees were knitted together over the roadway and bound with swirls of gray moss. They turned the last moments of a drive to Lucinda’s house into a slide down a dark, green, sweetly cooling tunnel.

  Although he couldn’t summon up any recollection of Lucinda’s address, he thought he could find her place without too much trouble. The house, he remembered, was dark red brick with green shutters. It sat so far back off the road, as most of the houses in the area did, that nothing could be seen from Cluny Road but a pair of black iron gates. He recognized the gates as soon as he saw them.

  When Tay told the taxi driver where to drop him off, he saw a flash of suspicion in the man’s eyes. He wondered briefly if he should show the driver his police warrant card to prove that he wasn’t a burglar casing his next job, but the idea of that was so humiliating he quickly pushed the thought aside. After he got out of the taxi, the driver gave him a long look. Tay just stared back without saying anything until the man finally drove off.

  When he pushed the intercom button on the gate box there was no answer, but the gates began to swing open and he walked down the driveway toward the house. Even before he got there, Lucinda burst out the front door and stood watching him with her hands on her hips. He crossed the red graveled parking area at the front of the house and mounted the stairs to the veranda.

  “You still don’t own a car, Sam?”

  “No car. But I did buy a bicycle. That’s almost the same thing, isn’t it?”

  Lucinda stared at Tay as if she was deciding whether or not he had gone completely mad, then broke into an enormous grin, threw her arms around him, and kissed him on both cheeks.

  “God, some people never change, do they?”

  He pecked at her cheeks in return.

  “I keep trying,” he said, “but nothing much happens.”

  Lucinda grabbed his hand and pulled him inside, closing the door behind them. Her hand felt warm and smooth. It was also somehow smaller than he remembered it.

  “Come into the living room,” Lucinda said. “Would you like a drink? Champagne? Yes, of course. Let’s have some champagne, Sam.”

  “Just a glass of wine maybe. I don’t like to drink during the day.”

  “Ah yes, I forgot. The stalwart Inspector Samuel Tay manning the ramparts of the country, single-handedly repelling the onslaught of the barbarians and keeping us safe from criminals and the lower classes.”

  “I wouldn’t put it exactly that way.”

  “Of course not, silly. That’s why I did.”

  When they reached the living room, Lucinda waved Tay toward the fireplace where two silk-upholstered couches and two wing chairs formed a cozy-looking group.

  “Make yourself at home,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Lucinda disappeared through a door Tay knew led to the kitchen so he took his time crossing the living room and stopped to examine two paintings that had appeared on the walls since the last time he had been there. He didn’t recognize their style so he bent to try and decipher the artists’ signatures. Not surprisingly, that didn’t help either since Tay knew almost nothing about art. Lucinda, on the other hand, seemed to know a great deal, at least enough so that he had no idea how much she actually knew and how much was just bluffing.

  He had just seated himself on one of the couches when Lucinda returned with two glasses of white wine. Handing one to Tay, she took the couch opposite him, curled her legs up under her, and lifted her glass in a toast.

  “To old friends.”

  Tay summoned up a small smile, but avoided catching Lucinda’s eye as he lifted his own glass and drank.

  “Okay, Sherlock.” Lucinda took another sip, then put her glass down on the coffee table between them and folded her arms. “So what’s going on?”

  “Does the name Elizabeth Munson mean anything to you?”

  “You mean the American ambassador’s wife?”

  Tay nodded and put his own glass down on the coffee table.

  “Are you telling me she has something to do with your murder case?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “What?”

  “She’s the victim.”

  Lucinda’s right hand flew to her mouth. It was a movie pose, a stagey and artificial gesture, but somehow Lucinda made it look natural.

  “Liz is dead?”

  Tay nodded.

  “Murdered?”

  Tay nodded again.

  “Oh, God.” Lucinda shook her head as if to clear it. “What happened? Can you tell me?”

  Tay did.

  “Oh, God,” Lucinda said again.

  She took her hand away from her mouth and folded her arms, pulling them tightly around her body as if that would keep her safe from the malevolent forces loose in the land.

  “I need to know whatever you can tell me about Mrs. Munson,” Tay said.

  He thought he saw something like a flicker of wariness behind Lucinda’s eyes, but he might have been mistaken.

  “Such as what?” she asked.

  “Anything really. If I can start building up a picture of her life, it would be a start. Without that I can’t even begin to guess at a motive.”

  “I only knew her socially.”

  “How else is there? She was an ambassador’s wife. She didn’t have a professional life, did she?”

  “No, I guess not.” Lucinda hesitated. “What I meant was that I didn’t really know her personally. I just saw her at parties now and then.”

  “Go on,” Tay said.

  He
leaned back on the couch and took a notebook and pen from his shirt pocket.

  “I’m interested in where you saw her,” he said. “Who she was with, what she was doing, that kind of thing. I’m also interested in what you may have heard about Elizabeth Munson in general, you know, around town.”

  Lucinda raised one eyebrow at that.

  “Why, you old gossip. You’re here because you want to hear the dirt, don’t you?”

  Tay shrugged. “You never know what might be useful.”

  Lucinda uncoiled herself from the chair and leaned forward.

  “Where do you want me to start?”

  “I haven’t any idea. Start wherever you like.”

  Lucinda picked up her wineglass in both hands. She held it, not drinking while she seemed to think, and then she began to talk.

  Over the next fifteen minutes, Tay heard all about last year’s Red Cross ball, the opening of the concert season at the Esplanade the year before, the Fourth of July party given by the American ambassador, and the charity premiere of the new Jackie Chan movie that was being planned for later in the year. He heard about small dinner parties and large cocktail parties, he heard about symphonies and operas. He even heard about a charity sale of used designer dresses and a golf tournament, the details of which he blocked out as well as he could.

  Lucinda talked and Tay listened until both their glasses were empty. Eventually Lucinda was talked out and a silence fell. Tay did nothing to break it. He merely sat and waited to see what might come next.

  THIRTEEN

  “More wine, Sam?”

  “Not for me, thanks.”

  “I notice you didn’t write anything down.”

  “No.”

  “It’s okay with me. I don’t mind. You can quote me on any of it.”

  “I’m not trying to protect you, Lucinda. I just didn’t hear anything that was worth writing down, let alone quoting.”

  Lucinda looked genuinely hurt and Tay immediately felt embarrassed he had spoken so brusquely.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that you’ve been talking about parties and clothes. You haven’t told me anything at all about Elizabeth Munson. Who were her friends? How did she spend her time? What do you know about her private life?”