The Mia Quinn Collection

by Lis Wiehl

  She had thought of trying to get to David Leacham. Sneaking up behind him as he pressed the fob on his keychain to unlock his car on some dark street. Imagined saying Dandan’s name so that he turned. Imagined plunging a knife into his chest, just as he had done with her daughter. And then she would whisper her daughter’s name in his ear again as he died. She would erase him from the world, and he would die knowing why.

  Or if Bo were to dress a certain way, make up her face, she was sure she could catch his eye. And then all it would take would be a few moments alone.

  But after watching the trial, she guessed his attorney and his wife would keep him on a short leash. They would never let him get close to another Asian woman.

  So what did that leave? Leacham had thought he could buy justice by bribing that juror with the ugly hair. The paper had identified him as Warren Paczkowski. Mia Quinn had said that without any proof of what had happened, there was nothing she could do.

  But if Bo could expose what Paczkowski had done, then Leacham would be punished for both things: killing Dandan and bribing Paczkowski. And Bo had seen the hungry way that Paczkowski looked at one of the other jurors, a young women dressed in clothing that was too revealing, heels that were too high, makeup that looked like a clown’s. He had ogled her like a starving man outside a mansion, staring at a feast with his nose pressed against the window glass. With his two-toned hair, it was no wonder the girl had clearly not returned his interest.

  In the phone book, Bo had found Paczkowski’s address. He lived in an apartment not that far from her, in a little neighborhood filled with restaurants, coffee shops, and pubs.

  Bo had already talked to the people at her job and at her church. Everyone understood, their voices soft with sadness. Of course, if she needed some extra time to recover, she should take it. It wasn’t fair, they told her, what had happened. They had reassured her that in the next trial, Leacham would surely be convicted. They didn’t know that Mia Quinn’s boss had said there would be no next time. Not without more evidence.

  So it was true that Bo needed extra time away from work and her duties at the church. But it wasn’t to come to terms with what had happened. It was to get the proof of what she knew to be true.

  Forty-five minutes later, she had bangs cut straight across, just above her eyebrows. The stylist offered her a mirror, and when she took it from him, her hair swung back and forth. He had cut it into a short, slanted bob that ended in points on either side of her chin. Slowly he spun her chair so she could see how he had layered it in the back so that it followed the curve of her skull, angling down to the shaved nape of her neck.

  “Wow, that’s quite a change,” the woman in the next chair said. “No one would even recognize you.”

  Bo allowed herself something that was not quite a smile.

  At Macy’s she bought a padded push-up bra, two low-cut sweaters, high-heeled shoes, large hoop earrings, a fake leather jacket, and a pair of jeans so tight she could barely pull them over her feet. She regarded herself in the mirror.

  She looked nothing like what she was: a mother, an immigrant, a woman who worked on an assembly line at a tea factory wearing a smock and a hairnet and blue rubber gloves. Too many Chinese who came over eventually “ate American,” ate food that came from cans, went to McDonald’s, and it showed. Bo still kept to the old ways. It took time to prepare good food, and you did not eat too much of it.

  Her skin was unlined. Her figure slender. She looked like a college student. A fresh-faced college student.

  Too fresh-faced for Paczkowski.

  Carrying her bags, she went back down to the first floor and looked at the various white-coated women selling makeup. She chose the one who looked the most colorful.

  “I’d like a makeover,” Bo said. She never wore makeup.

  The saleswoman began, “So do you want smoky, colorful—”

  Bo interrupted her. “Both. Everything. I want it to be dramatic.”

  She nodded. “And what feature would you like to emphasize? Lips, eyes, cheeks . . .?”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Bo said patiently. “I want lots of makeup on every part of my face. I want people to look at me and notice my makeup.”

  The girl clapped her hands. “A woman after my own heart! Dramatic, mysterious, adventurous.” She had Bo sit in a black swivel chair and then set to work.

  Thirty minutes later, thick strokes of black eyeliner emphasized Bo’s tip-tilted eyes. Purple and green eye shadow shimmered on her lids. Her lips were a scarlet slash.

  “Wow.” The girl stepped back to admire her own work. “You don’t even look like yourself. If I hadn’t been the one who did it, I would say you were not the same person who walked in here.”

  Bo smiled. That was the point. She looked garish, like the picture on the first TV set she had owned, where the colors had all been too bright and slightly wrong.

  “Show me again how to make those rings around my eyes.”

  The girl picked up the black pencil and pulled down her own eyelid as she leaned toward the mirror. “When my mom used to get all dolled up before going out to dinner, she would say she was putting on her war paint.”

  “War paint?”

  “Like Indians do? Um, Native Americans?” She held her palm out flat and then tapped the insides of her fingers against her lips, making the faintest ululation. “They would paint their faces before they went to war.”

  Bo nodded. She liked the idea. War paint.

  CHAPTER 23

  It was after five, and Charlie was driving Mia to the Jade Kitchen to see if they could track down Lihong. Driving in theory, anyway. On this stretch of I-5, nobody was doing any driving, just sitting. Seattle rush hour traffic was notoriously bad, and on a Friday night it was even worse. They hadn’t moved more than a couple of car lengths in the last ten minutes. Times like this it was pretty tempting to use the lights hidden in his grill. But this wasn’t exactly official business. It was a hunch.

  “Even though it’s clear Warren was the only holdout,” Mia said with a frown, “Frank still doesn’t seem persuaded that we should refile.”

  “Let me guess,” Charlie said. “Did he tell you that you need to look at the big picture? Because I hear that all the time. Finite resources, need to prioritize, if this were a perfect world, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, we’re the ones dealing with the victims’ families. We’re the ones trying to explain that justice is sometimes just too expensive. That sometimes you have to forget it and walk away.”

  Charlie never forgot, though. If you pulled the pencil drawer in his desk all the way out, tucked in the back you would find photos families had given him of victims, photos from cases that were so far unsolved. And every four or five years or so, he was able to close a case that everyone else had long ago written off.

  “Reading between the lines of the Seattle Times story,” Mia said, “it’s clear that Warren simply refused to participate. But based on the voir dire, I would never have guessed that he was going to be the lone crazy holdout.”

  “Don’t second-guess yourself, Mia.” Charlie feathered the accelerator. Traffic was finally moving again, if you called thirty miles an hour on a freeway moving. “I didn’t hear anything that made me doubt him. Maybe the power of being able to have the final word went to his head. Maybe he secretly has something against capital punishment.”

  “The thing is, Bo Yee thinks he was tampered with.”

  Charlie stiffened. If that was true, this was a whole different ball game. “What makes her say that?”

  “Bo says she saw Warren talking in a low voice to some guy in the hall the day the trial began. And a few days later, she saw that same guy with Leacham’s wife, Marci.”

  “Did she hear what they said? Did she see them shaking hands, exchanging a package, anything like that?”

  “No, the guy took off after she noticed him.”

  Charlie settled back into his seat. “There could be a million explanations. And it’s not like
I could get a warrant to go trolling through Warren’s bank accounts, see if he’s picked up a new life for himself. Not unless there was a lot more proof.”

  “That’s what I told Bo.” One hand briefly covered her eyes. “I talked to her a long time. Bo told me that when Dandan was three, Bo got pregnant with a second child, but the Chinese government forced her to get an abortion when she was seven months along.”

  “Seven months?” Every part of him recoiled.

  “And now both her children are dead. I look at her and try to put myself in her shoes, but I can’t stand even to think about it.”

  By the time they finally reached the Jade Kitchen, it was bustling. But they weren’t going into the restaurant. At least not yet. Instead, they were lurking behind the Dumpsters, trying to spot Lihong.

  “And I thought the dead guy smelled bad,” Charlie complained. The reek of rancid cooking oil, rotting shrimp, moldy rice, and a few other smells he was pretty sure he did not even want to identify filled the air.

  A middle-aged man came out with a white bucket full of shrimp shells. Charlie looked over at Mia, but she shook her head.

  Even though Charlie would have said it was impossible, when the man lifted the lid of the Dumpster, the stench got stronger. Beside him, Mia was shielding her mouth with her cupped hand, breathing shallowly.

  Five minutes later, a younger man came out, this time with a bulging black plastic garbage bag. Again Mia shook her head. But this time when the man was done, he leaned against the wall, pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket, and lit it. The flare of his lighter showed a thin, tired face. And something else. Mia nudged Charlie at the same time that he noticed it. On one wrist, two dark lines. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought they looked like the burn marks on the floater.

  They waited another fifteen minutes, but no one else came out. Time for Plan B. They walked around the corner and in the front door. Inside the restaurant smelled of ginger and garlic and red chiles. Charlie took deep appreciative breaths, trying to scour the old fetid air out of his nasal passages.

  “It’s kind of disconcerting that it smells so good in here and so bad out back,” Mia whispered.

  “Yeah, but have you ever smelled a potato when it goes bad? That’s got to be one of the worst smells in the world. And I still love potatoes.”

  At the host stand, Charlie gave his name to the manager, a Chinese guy sporting a clip-on bow tie. They waited in the small entryway along with a family of seven, a couple who appeared to be on their first date, and two tired parents who couldn’t keep their eyes off their sleeping newborn.

  A few minutes later, a couple of muscle-bound teenage boys swaggered in to pick up a takeout order. When one of the kids caught sight of Charlie, he froze for a half second. Even dressed in plain clothes and with his hair touching his collar, Charlie was identifiable as a cop to some people. They seemed to have a sixth sense about it. He was willing to bet there was beer in the kid’s car or a joint in his pocket, or maybe both. They were minors, but they also didn’t seem inebriated, so he figured he didn’t have a dog in this fight. After picking up their food, they hurried out.

  Seated near the waiting area was a family with two kids, an older boy and a younger girl. The dad reached for a dish of string beans just as the teenage son, grinning mischievously, put out his hand and spun the lazy Susan built into the middle of the table, rotating the beans out of reach. Smiling, the dad lifted the serving spoon mock-threateningly.

  When Charlie looked over to see if Mia had caught the scene, she wasn’t smiling. Instead, she looked on the verge of tears.

  “How’s Gabe?” Charlie asked, guessing she was thinking of the family she used to have. The family she might still have if Scott hadn’t decided to cheat her and the government.

  “I definitely know I’m living with a teenager. He’s gotten so moody. I never quite know what’s going to upset him.”

  “I can remember being so embarrassed by my mom when I was his age. Once she took me shopping for school clothes, and I insisted she stay a minimum of fifty feet away from me at all times.” His face got hot, remembering. Poor woman had complied too.

  Mia shook her head. “I don’t know if that would be easier or harder to take, but that’s not it. He just gets angry over the littlest things. He’s definitely going through puberty. Suddenly he’s got all these muscles. And acne. He must be a stew of hormones.”

  “Testosterone can make guys do some crazy things.” Not that he knew anything about that.

  “Table for two for Charlie?” the manager called out in accented English. When they nodded, he took them to a booth and set down two menus and two sets of silver wrapped in salmon-colored cloth napkins.

  Charlie and Mia had eaten here once before, when they were trying to unravel what Scott, who had been Kenny Zhong’s accountant, might have done to get himself killed. Today Charlie observed again that all the workers, from the waitresses to the bus boys, looked Chinese. Kenny Zhong had talked about how supportive the Chinese community was of each other. Maybe only hiring other Chinese immigrants was Kenny’s way of giving back.

  Charlie looked over the menu. Lo mien, spare ribs, pork-fried rice, beef with broccoli, General Tso’s chicken. All of it, according to Kenny, modified for American tastes. He had spoken enthusiastically of the rat and snake they served back home, which had made Charlie glad the dishes here were something less than authentic.

  “What do you think the healthiest thing on the menu is?” Mia asked with a frown.

  Charlie rolled his eyes. “A—we’re in a Chinese restaurant where every dish has been tweaked to appeal to American tastes, which probably means more salt, more fat, and more breading. And B—you’re seriously asking me? You’ve seen me eat.” Life was too short to diet, Charlie figured. And while he did have a gym membership, he had not seen the inside of the place for several months.

  When the waitress came back, he ordered sweet-and-sour chicken while Mia got egg flower soup and a vegetable stir-fry.

  “What’s your name?” Charlie asked the waitress.

  “Chun.”

  “Your accent is beautiful. Where are you from?”

  She looked down. “China,” she murmured shyly.

  “And how do you like Seattle?”

  “It is hard to say.” She shrugged one slender shoulder. “I work many hours.”

  “What about Lihong?” Mia asked. Charlie wished she had been a little more subtle, hadn’t jumped in with both feet. “Is he working tonight?”

  An expression crossed the girl’s face at the sound of Lihong’s name, there and gone so fast that Charlie couldn’t identify it. Confusion? Anxiety? Or had it been something more primitive, like fear?

  She shook her head without saying anything. Underneath her black bangs, her face was once again impassive. But Charlie could tell that Mia’s words had rocked her.

  “Lihong.” Mia pointed. “He works in the back? As a dishwasher or a cook? He smokes?” She put an imaginary cigarette to her lips and took a drag.

  “Sorry!”

  As Chun started to turn away, Mia reached out and caught her wrist. The girl winced and Mia quickly pulled her hand back.

  Charlie saw why she had grimaced. An oval bruise, the size of the thumbprint, had been been pressed onto the inside of her wrist. When she saw Charlie noticing, the girl pushed the sleeve of her silver blouse down, but not before he saw a line of oval bruises less than an inch away from the bigger bruise.

  Someone had grabbed her. Hard. Just like they had grabbed Lihong.

  CHAPTER 24

  From across the room, the manager barked something in Chinese at Chun.

  She flinched and then nodded rapidly. “I will request your food now.” Before Mia could say another word, the girl hurried back to the kitchen. She was sure Chun had not only understood what she was asking but that the mention of Lihong’s name had startled her.

  “Did you see the bruises on her arm?” Charlie asked.

  M
ia nodded, feeling grim.

  “The body you looked at yesterday had bruises like that too. But I guess that doesn’t prove anything. They both got grabbed, but human beings like to grab each other’s arms. It could be whoever killed our floater grabbed him before shooting him. It could be that our waitress is in a domestic violence situation. She could even have gotten the bruises from practicing wrist grabs in kung fu. Bruises don’t tell you how they came to be there.”

  When a young man came to pour tea, Mia tried again. “Is Lihong working tonight? In the back?”

  His eyes widened at the mention of Lihong’s name, but she wasn’t sure if he understood more than that. He shook his head and left, not making eye contact.

  When Chun brought their food, Mia looked over her shoulder for the guy with the bow tie. He had his back to them, talking to some diners on the other side of the room, but she still kept her voice low. “Could we talk to you during your break?”

  The girl hesitated and then finally said, “No break.”

  Mia would not be deterred. “How about after work?”

  “Too late.”

  Her eyes cut to one side. She stiffened. The manager had turned back around and was now watching them, his face stony.

  “Here is your order,” she said in a louder voice. “Sweet-and-sour chicken and vegetable stir-fry with egg flower soup. Please to enjoy.”

  Even when Chun had left, the manager was still eyeing them. Mia picked up her fork. The food, which had smelled so delicious before, now just reminded her of the rotting reek behind the restaurant. Which was true and which was illusion? Or was it all just a matter of perception?

  “Do you think they don’t understand or they don’t want to say?” she asked Charlie.

  Charlie’s mouth twisted. “If you don’t want to talk about something, pretending not to understand goes a long way. Either way, it’s clear they’re not comfortable talking about Lihong.”