by Rhys Ford
“A family thing,” I said, stepping in to take vegetables from his hands as he unloaded the refrigerator.
“Yes, a family thing. A Korean thing.” He risked another look at me, looking more than ever like the feral cat I’d tried to get to come home with me. “You don’t need to help. I can do this.”
“The most help I can give you is chopping things up and putting on water to boil. After that, you’re on your own. And I can probably open a can or two. It’ll give me something to do while we talk.”
“There’s not much to talk about. Hyun-ah lived with his wife. I didn’t socialize with him unless it was for a holiday or a funeral.”
“His wife, Victoria.” I had to look in my papers to find her name. “How does she get along with the family?”
“She’s hyung’s wife.” He said it like those three words explained everything. A small shrug when he turned, but other than that, nothing more.
“Was she supportive of him? Did he have problems with her?” Trying another angle, I dug a little deeper. “Was he unhappy with his marriage, or was he cheating on her with someone else?”
“Hyun-ah wasn’t seeing anyone else.”
“You say that like you know, but you said the two of you didn’t socialize.”
“We talked, sometimes.” There was a tiny verbal step toward me, just enough to reach for something else. Jae placed a large pot in the sink, filling it halfway with water before putting it on the stove. The gas ignited under it, and he began to chop up stalky green vegetables that I couldn’t identify if my life depended on it. “There was only Victoria and their son, Will.”
“Will?” That seemed out of place with the rest of the family’s traditions, despite Grace’s dismissal of her given name. “Odd choice.”
“He has a Korean middle name. Chang-shik.” He had to brush past me to get to a cabinet, and my body sang from the casual, warm contact. If I stayed around Jae-Min much longer, I was going to have to take a very cold shower when I got home. Or pray for a thunderstorm to hit me when I got outside. My notes were lying open, and he stopped, looking at my block lettering. Taking the pen from my hand, he crossed out something I’d written, correcting it underneath. “It’s Jae-Min Kim, or just Jae. With an E. Not a Y.”
“I promise I would have clarified spelling before I wrote my report.”
“You’re writing a report?” He frowned, returning to nibble on his lip. “Who for? Vicki?”
“No, Mr. Kim. Technically I’m working for my brother, Mike, but it’s at your uncle’s request. I file a report for every case. Sometimes even two or three, depending on how extensive of an investigation it is.”
“This should be short then, right?” The greens waited while he added some brown flakes to the water and a fishy aroma filled the kitchen. It wasn’t unpleasant, a whiff of sea and meat around the stove. “How much more is there to find out?”
“I don’t know.” Leaning my elbows against the counter, I watched his face, wondering why his eyes were dull and shut down as he stirred the broth. “What did Mrs. Kim say to you?” It was bold to ask, and I knew it. “What did she say that hurt you?”
“She said that I should be the one who died in that place. That Hyun-Shik should be here instead of me.” The flatness in his voice never wavered. It was as if he were discussing something mildly unpleasant, like someone crossing the street against the light or finding a dead bug on his windshield. “Auntie thinks that I deserved that kind of death, not her son.”
“Why would she say something like that?” I wanted to reach out to touch his stiff shoulders, but I’d been scratched before, by more feral things than a pretty-faced, young Korean man. “Yeah, Hyun-Shik made a choice, however fucked-up it might be. You had nothing to do with it. Did you?”
“No.” His black hair gleamed under the soft lights in the kitchen, and he turned to grab handfuls of the chopped leaves, adding them slowly to the simmering liquid. “I had nothing to do with Hyun-Shik’s death.”
“Then why say something that hateful? Or is that a Korean thing too?”
“No, she’ll either apologize or we’ll pretend as if nothing was said. That’s how we deal with uncomfortable things that happen.” More vegetables were pulled from paper bags, and an onion lay in line for execution under his sharp knife. “She said that because Hyun-Shik shouldn’t have died in a gay club. It’s one thing to kill himself, but to shame the family that way is too much.”
“And she thinks it would be okay for you to die there?” My opinion of Mrs. Kim was falling lower and lower as Jae minced a clove of garlic on the chopping board.
“Yes, because in her mind, my family has little to lose.” The bits of garlic joined the vegetables in the pot. “She’s one of the few family members that knows I like men. If someone in the family had to die there, it would have been better if it were me and not Hyun-Shik.”
Chapter 3
I’D NEVER been smooth with men. This wasn’t any exception. I struggled with the possibilities of what to say. Eventually, my brain kicked out something brilliant.
“Wow. Um, okay.” Not my best, but after the closed-mouth atmosphere in the household, I was struck speechless.
“Are you going to put that in your report?” Jae stopped fiddling with the soup and turned to face me. There was more than suspicion there. With his chin tilted up, there was a definite challenge in his stance. I might have outweighed him by forty pounds, but he wasn’t going to go down without some kind of fight.
I was left to wonder: who was he fighting?
“No,” I replied. “How long has your aunt known?”
The tautness was back around his eyes. Steam rose from the soup pot, a light, fragrant mist that made my stomach rumble. It’d been a long time since I’d had that piece of Claudia’s pie, and my body was letting me know it. While the soup smelled good, I wasn’t certain I wanted to eat anything in that house. The Kim family seemed like the type that regularly poisoned one another just for kicks.
“I don’t know,” Jae said, frowning slightly. “She blames me for what happened to Hyun-Shik.”
“Why?” I stole a bit of a chopped vegetable and was about to put it in my mouth when Jae’s long fingers closed over my wrist. “What? You can’t eat this raw?”
“It’s bitter melon. You won’t like it.” He went into the fridge and came out with something that looked halfway familiar. “Here, leftover bao. There’s char siu inside.”
“The red pork stuff? Yeah, I like that. I thought it was Chinese.”
“It is. We also eat hamburgers and spaghetti.”
“Cute. I was joking.” I smiled as I bit into the cold, white-bread dumpling. Cold food and I have always had a loving relationship. “So, before you distracted me with food, why does your aunt blame you for Hyun-Shik’s death?”
“She thinks I’ve been a bad influence on him.” More guilt surfaced as he struggled again with the changing of tense. “Hyun-Shik made up his own mind on what he wanted to do or not do. He didn’t need me to influence him to do anything.”
I let that sink in. My picture of Hyun-Shik wasn’t a clear one, far from it. On one hand, he’d taken a handful of pills and died in a gay escort club, hardly the picture of self-esteem. Jae-Min saw him differently, and it was at odds with the personality I’d formed in my head. Sure, people often didn’t show their true selves to people around them, but the Kims were an opaque mess. I didn’t know which Hyun-Shik to buy as the real one.
But I did know what I could ask Jae to help me with. Then again, I was going to have to trust he’d tell me the truth on that too. He was hard to read, other than flashes of anger under the surface. Pulling out the copy of the suicide note, I placed it on the counter for Jae to look at.
“Have you seen this yet?” I wanted to see Jae’s gut reaction to his cousin’s note. Surprise is usually an investigator’s best weapon when asking questions. “Can you tell me what this says?”
His fingers trembled when he touched the paper. A softn
ess warmed his mouth, giving me wicked thoughts I didn’t need at the moment. “No, I haven’t seen it. Is this…?”
Jae left the question unfinished. Another secret lurked around us. Now I was certain there was something more than a light acquaintance between the two. He was troubled, stricken at the sight of his cousin’s handwriting on a copied piece of paper.
“Can you tell me what this says?” I asked again, hoping to jar him from his distress. “I have a translation in the file, but I don’t know Korean and I wanted someone who knew Hyun-Shik to tell me what they thought.”
“I guessed that. The not reading Korean part.” Tracing the symbols with his fingers, Jae pursed his mouth, a look of confusion briefly flitting over his face. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“Suicide rarely makes sense.” I’d heard that in the past. A couple of years ago, I’d found out how true that saying was. “Believe me; it always leaves more questions than answers.”
Kim Jae-Min was more perceptive than I gave him credit for. His tawny gaze raked over me, a silent question in his eyes, but he left the matter alone and picked up the piece of paper to hold it in his hands. “I meant the note. It doesn’t make sense.”
“The report said it translated as he was sorry for doing this… the suicide.” I came closer, looking over his shoulder. It wasn’t an excuse to press against him. Actually, I wasn’t even sure why I drew near since I wouldn’t be able to read what he was pointing out to me. It seemed rude to suddenly jerk back, and the scent of him filled me, that tangy masculine smell sweetening the strain of the conversation.
“Hyun-Shik wrote, ‘Mian, naneun igorseul haeya haeyo’.” Jae looked up from the note. I turned, giving him some room. His shoulder brushed my arm, and he left it there, the barest of touches between us. He moved with an unconscious sensuality. Either that or it was so practiced that he didn’t think about it anymore. “It would make more sense if the note said, ‘Irokke hal su pakke obsor yukamida’.”
“And the difference is?” I was going to have to learn Korean before the end of this case. The subtleties in the culture and language were going to kill me.
“It kind of means the same thing, but what he wrote has to do with an obligation. Not that he regretted causing pain to others.” Jae struggled to find the right words to express his thoughts. “The other one is closer to, ‘I regret I have to do this’. Hyung wrote, ‘Sorry, I’m obliged to do this’.”
“Maybe he was thinking of the family’s honor?” I dismissed that as soon as I said it, and not just because Jae-Min rolled his eyes at me.
“We’re Korean. We just avoid doing things to embarrass ourselves. We don’t slice ourselves open like gutted fish because we’ve dishonored our family.”
“Hey, I was thinking out loud,” I protested. Jae’s reproachful look was nearly as searing as Claudia’s. “And I rethought it. He wouldn’t have killed himself in a… um.”
“You can say sex club.” Jae went back to stirring the soup, checking the firmness of the vegetables, taking his warmth with him. “I know what Dorthi Ki Seu is.”
“Okay,” I replied. “So what was he obligated to do? And why did he kill himself at the club?”
“Isn’t that what Uncle is paying you for? To find those things out?” There were sounds coming from the living area, a loud chatter of women’s voices, and he glanced at the door as if expecting Grace to come flying back into the kitchen.
“The truth is, I’m being paid to sniff around a little bit and then go away.” Diplomacy was never my specialty. I was more of a “club people over the head to get information” and apparently “running away from shotgun-toting elderly lesbians” kind of guy, but I wasn’t going to share that with Jae-Min. Our relationship hadn’t progressed to a point where humiliation was served up with a cup of tea and a smile. “But I’ve never liked following orders.”
“Someone ordered you to walk away from hyung’s death?” His hands stilled, holding a handful of mushrooms over the broth.
“No, not walk away. It’s just assumed that Hyun-Shik killed himself, so there wouldn’t be much to investigate.” The soup now had mushrooms in it, the curled ears bobbing in the hot liquid.
“Is that what you think? That Hyun-Shik killed himself?” Jae’s teeth returned to their nibbling, marking his lower lip. If he kept it up, he’d draw blood in a few minutes. “It looks like he did, but I knew him. Not like this. He wouldn’t have done this to his family.”
“People keep saying that. Your uncle included.” Resting an elbow on the counter, I picked up one of the mushrooms he’d left on the chopping board, sniffing at its aromatic meatiness. “I guess the question really is, how are you going to feel if I find out he did kill himself? What then?”
My phone rang before he answered me, and I debated letting it go, but Jae-Min returned to his soup-making, leaving me with his back to talk to. Cursing under my breath, I checked the number and cursed again, louder and with more fire than the first spate. Jae spared me a flick of his attention, then ignored me as I answered it.
“Yes, Claudia?” I took a look at the clock on the wall, frowning at the time. “What are you still doing over there? I thought you were going home.”
“I was planning on it, but those people who hired you are here. You know, that man with the wife.” Claudia was good about keeping secrets, so I guessed that there was someone in the office with her. “They’d like to talk to you.”
“They?”
“Yep, both of them. The husband and the wife.” She paused, and I heard a murmur outside of my hearing range, then her speaking to someone else. “You go on down the street and get me something cold to drink. Here, get yourself something.”
“What the hell?” There was silence, and then I winced. “Sorry. They’re both there?”
“It’s okay. I understand that it’s probably been a long day for you, what with waking up so late and then driving down to Orange County.” Her voice was light, but Claudia’s sugar was laced with sarcasm. “And yes, both of them. They’re outside getting some air. I wasn’t sure if I should feel insulted or just glad they weren’t in the office.”
This coming from a woman I pay to watch television for most of the day, I thought. Not being stupid, I kept my mouth shut until the urge to speak those idiotic words passed. When my mind finally saw some sense, and I could trust my tongue, I said, “I’m about forty-five minutes out, if the traffic gods love me. Are they willing to wait?”
“I think so,” she responded smoothly, as if all was forgiven between us. “Both of them came in here as sweet as honey, asking if they can see you. And that’s not the type of woman you’d expect to be doing those things. Well, maybe doing, but not wearing that outfit.”
I suppressed the laughter choking my chest. “You looked?”
“Of course I looked!” Claudia snorted. “I’m human. I get curious. And that’s some sickness going on in that marriage.”
“I could give you the ‘everyone loves differently’ speech you gave me,” I reminded her.
“Yes, I know,” she replied. “Are you coming back here, or should I send them off?”
“No, I’ll be out there in a bit. Just give me some time. Ask them to wait. Thanks, Claudia.” I hung up the phone and rested it against my forehead. My life was getting stranger by the day, too odd for even me to imagine. The Brinkerhoffs would have to be dealt with, and I wasn’t even sure where to begin.
“Is Claudia your girlfriend?” Jae turned the flame off, covering the pot with a glass lid. It steamed up almost immediately.
“No, she’s my office manager.” I smiled at the idea of dating Claudia. Her being a woman aside, she was a hard taskmaster, and I imagined my life would be even more strictly run than what she dictated now. “She keeps my life in order.”
“So she’s your wife.” He grinned. His smile burned away any sadness left lingering in his face. Tucking a thick piece of hair behind his ear, he laughed when I grimaced.
“Not a wife, but s
he bosses me around like one.” I should have told him I was gay. Opening up would go a long way in cementing a camaraderie that I probably would need if I was going to go any further in Hyun-Shik’s death. My throat closed up around the words. It was like standing in front of my father again, unwilling to crack open and be vulnerable. There was nothing to lose, except perhaps the job. Suddenly, I wasn’t certain the Kims would appreciate a gay man looking into the death of their son. “You have my card, right?”
“Yeah.” Patting his front pocket, the smile dimmed just a bit.
“Call me, please,” I asked softly. The edge of my card was peeking out of the pocket, his thumb pressing down against the corner. “If you have anything to add or if you want to talk about your cousin.”
“Sure.” We both instinctively stiffened when the taps of high heels in the hallway alerted us to Grace’s approach. “You’d best head out before Almira Gulch catches you here.”
It wasn’t until I was halfway to my office that I realized I’d laughed more in that short time in the kitchen than I had for the last two years. My ribs ached a bit, and I rubbed at the scar stretching over my abdomen. It hurt, as did the one on my leg, but that was from running away from Mrs. Brinkerhoff. The pain stabbed into my gut. A treacherous twist echoed in my chest as I thought of Rick for a fleeting moment. With any luck, I wouldn’t hear from Jae-Min Kim again, and I’d be better off for it.
THERE was a section of a redwood tree standing on the front porch to my office. It wasn’t a real tree, just one of Claudia’s many offspring. In all of the time that I’d known Claudia and her brood, there was never a mention of Mr. Claudia, and I’d never worked up the guts to ask. For all I knew, he was alive and well, chained someplace in her house with a never-ending honey-do list, a fate worse than death in my book.