A Deadly Business (22 page)

“What did happen?” Charlie asked, as if he had not seen it on the videotape.

Manny’s head came up and his face was animated. “It was cool! It, like, exploded.” He put his fists together and pulled them apart, spreading his fingers to mime the explosion.

“Did you talk about what would happen if a can hit a person?”

“No. But nobody tried to drop ’em on anybody. And then we ran out of cans.”

“What did you do then?” Mia asked softly.

He dropped his head. “We started giving each other rides in a shopping cart, seeing how fast we could make it go.” As he spoke, his words came slower and slower.

“And then what happened?” Charlie prompted.

Manny rested his fingertips on his forehead, hiding from them even further. “If they didn’t mean for it to happen, how much trouble will they get into?”

“Are you saying they didn’t mean for it to happen?” Charlie asked. “Did they know that lady was down there when they dropped the cart?”

“What if they didn’t know? What if the cart just slipped out of their hands?”

“Well, they should still have foreseen that something bad would happen,” Mia said. “So I don’t think they would get off without any consequences at all. But it would certainly be a different story than if they meant to do it.”

Manny was silent for so long that Mia thought about prompting him. Then he said in a voice so soft Mia could barely hear it, “It’s all my fault.”

Her heart contracted. “No, it’s not, Manny. We saw you struggling with them. You tried to stop it, Manny. It’s not your fault you couldn’t.”

“It’s more than that,” he said and then fell silent.

Mia opened her mouth to ask him what he meant, but Charlie laid his hand on her knee and shook his head. All three of them—Mia, Charlie, and Dr. Sandstrom—waited for him to speak.

“It is my fault, it is. Even after they lifted it up, I knew they were teasing, they really wouldn’t let go, but I still grabbed the cart. I grabbed the cart and yanked, but instead of pulling it back, I made them let go. I made them drop it.” Manny’s breathing was heavy with repressed tears. “It’s my fault,” he repeated. “It’s my fault that lady is going to die.”

CHAPTER 42

M
ia didn’t say much to Charlie for the first part of the drive to Coho City. Finally he broke down and asked, “So whatcha think about what Manny said?”

“You heard Dr. Sandstrom,” Mia answered. “Just because Manny believes it happened doesn’t mean that it did.”

“But his story makes sense.” Charlie thought about the videotape. “I can see it happening the way he said.”

“But what about Dylan and his clip-clop shoes? Or Luke saying he heard the boys laughing?”

“I’m not sure that adds up to criminal intent,” Charlie said. “Plus, those carts weigh a lot. And once the balance was tipped over the railing, it would have been very hard for them to bring it back. Even if Manny hadn’t grabbed it, they still could have just been playing around with it and lost control.”

“I still have about twelve hours to decide. Meanwhile, we’re going to be at the Jade Kitchen pretty soon, right?”

He glanced at the clock on the dash. “In about twenty minutes. So I’ve been thinking a lot about what might have happened. Scott used to work for a big firm, right?”

“Right. And then before Brooke was born he went out on his own.”

“So big accounting firms deal with other big companies. Companies that have compliance officers and are maybe publicly traded and have their books regularly audited. But when you’re a one-man shop, you’re gonna have smaller clients. And once the economy started to tank, businesses started going down the tube, meaning there was less demand for accountants and more newly laid-off accountants competing for the same work. If you wanted to get and keep clients, I’d imagine the best thing would be not to ask too many questions or look too closely.”

He saw Mia shake her head.

“I remember Scott giving a cashier back a five-dollar bill because she gave him too much change.”

“That’s a person, Mia. A person who might get in trouble if her till didn’t balance.”

Maybe because she was a prosecutor, Mia tended to see things in black and white. In Charlie’s world, there were a million shades of gray.

“But when you cheat on your taxes, it’s cheating a big, faceless government that wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s way easier to cheat if you think it’s not really hurting anyone. And I’m not saying Scott actively cheated. He may simply have not asked many questions.”

Although as far as Charlie was concerned, the note they had found to Kenny Zhong, the restaurant owner, was more than that. The note to Zhong was a warning.

“So you’re saying there might have been some ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ situations?” Mia said.

“Exactly. I’m guessing it’s just easier to take the information they give you and prepare the books and the returns from that. And if they don’t give you everything, well, that’s on them.”

Kenny Zhong, owner of the four Jade Kitchen restaurants, turned out to be no bigger than Mia’s son, Gabe. In fact, Charlie thought as he shook the other man’s hand, staring down at the top of his head, he might even be smaller.

“I really appreciate you coming out here to meet with me and my friend Charlie,” Mia told Zhong. They were standing in the lobby. The restaurant was crowded. Only a few of the customers were Asian.

“I am honored.” Zhong clasped his hands and made a little bow. If he was wondering who Charlie was, his face did not betray it. “Have you eaten?”

When Mia hesitated, he said, “Please, please, you must eat.” He barked an order in Chinese at a young waitress in a high-collared silver blouse. She wore her long hair pinned up, her bangs falling slantwise over her eyes.

She led them to a table in the back. Charlie automatically took a seat on the banquette so that he faced the door. His cop habits were so ingrained in him that they were second nature. Whenever he encountered someone he looked at their hands first even before he looked at their faces. His first partner had drilled it into his head, saying over and over, “They can only hurt you with their hands.”

Mia sat on the other end of the upholstered bench, and Zhong took a chair opposite. The waitress scurried over with three menus, but he waved them away. “I order for you, okay? Specialties of the house.”

After they both nodded, he rattled off orders in rapid-fire Chinese. Then he turned back to them. “America is a great country. I came here seven years ago with nothing, and now I own four restaurants.”

Hard work would get you a lot of things, but would it really get you four restaurants in seven years? Was Zhong in debt? Or was he cheating the tax man, as Scott’s letter had suggested, and plowing it back into his business? Or maybe the Chinese community had all pulled together to make one of their own successful.

“Is the food you serve here like what you ate at home?” Mia asked.

“No.” His tone was amused. “Not at all. I am from the Guangdong Province. Here they call it Canton. Everything at home is so fresh. You walk into a restaurant, you pick out what you want to eat from a cage or tank or bucket.”

Charlie did not want to think about what might be kept in a bucket.

“You mean it’s still alive?” Mia asked, wrinkling her nose.

Zhong laughed. “The rest of China say we will eat anything with legs that is not a table and anything with wings that is not a plane. No one here really wants to eat like that. Americans won’t eat snake, except as a joke, and they would never eat dog or rat. Even if they say they appreciate authentic cuisine. Even though eating snake make you stronger and rat keep you from going bald.” He must have seen their expressions. “No worries. Chicken, beef, pork, shrimp—that’s all we have on the menu here.”

Charlie was pretty sure that only shrimp looked like shrimp. He resolved to stick with that.

Mia cut to the chase. “I should have come to you earlier,” she said, “but I only recently learned that this restaurant is where Scott ate his last meal. But I don’t know who he was with. Did he eat here with you that night?”

“Oh no, no.” Zhong frowned and shook his head. “We meet many times in our main restaurant, which is on Queen Anne in Seattle. And of course we always eat there. But I never met him here.”

“Do you have any surveillance tapes we could look at?” Charlie asked. “To maybe see who he was with that night?” After seven months it was a long shot, but sometimes if you took enough of them, one hit a target.

“No, I don’t,” Zhong said. “Sorry.”

“Would you mind if we asked the staff after we talk?” Mia asked. “Just in case one of them remembers who he was with that night?”

“Of course,” the other man said. With his unlined face, it was impossible to guess how old Kenny Zhong was. He might be thirty, he might be fifty. The only thing Charlie was sure of was that his name probably wasn’t Kenny. “That is not a problem.”

The waitress came up with three tall glasses filled with a pale yellow frothy concoction. She set them down, and Charlie saw that faint marks braceleted her right wrist. They were the size and shape of fingerprints. He was careful not to stare.

“This was Scott’s favorite drink when we met in Seattle,” Zhong told them. “Our honey ginger latte. All high quality—the best ginger and honey, and a superior grade of creamer.” He lifted his glass to them.

It was sweet and smooth, rich and creamy, with an underlying bite from the ginger. It was strange to think that Scott might have sat at this very table about seven months ago, drinking this same drink, not knowing he only had an hour or so to live.

“Did you ever see him drink alcohol?” Mia asked in a steady voice.

Zhong furrowed his brow. “Your husband did not drink. He was very clear about that.”

Charlie wondered what was more important to Kenny: to tell a widow the truth, or to keep the secrets of his dead friend?

Next came a selection of dim sum. One came with a dipping sauce that tasted of soy and honey, ginger and garlic. Charlie resisted the urge to double-dip. He also tried to get a second look at the waitress’s wrist, but she moved too fast. When the main courses came, some of the dishes were spicy and some were sweet, but whatever they were, it was all good. Charlie flung caution to the wind and even ate some smooth white meat that looked like chicken and some of the pale and more fibrous meat that certainly seemed to be pork.

As he chewed, he tried very hard not to think about what rat would look like.

“The other thing I wanted to ask you about was my husband’s
services as your accountant. I, um, found a note that he wrote you about your business.” Mia lowered her eyes to her lap, as if overcome by shyness, but Charlie kept his eyes on Zhong.

Who didn’t blink.

“Scott is always working with me, explaining how it is not like China here.”

“How is it different?” Charlie said.

“In China, we have
guanxi.
” He pronounced it gwan-she. “You want to get anything done in China, you need guanxi. It’s all about relationships. We have a saying, ‘No guanxi? No good!’ ”

“What is guanxi exactly?” Mia asked.

“In China, guanxi means you should give your customers a box of moon cakes during the Mid-August Festival. It’s just something nice you do, to be friendly. Or maybe it is a meal or a spa treatment or a ticket to a basketball game. It smooths the way.” He flattened the air with his hands. “It is absolutely key to getting things done in China.”

Mia said carefully, “In some cases in the United States, we would call that a bribe.”

He reared back. “It is not a bribe. It is a relationship. For example, Scott introduced me to Oleg Popov. And now I buy the jewelry I use for gifts from him. To thank Scott, I gave him free meals at our restaurant.”

“One hand washes the other,” Charlie said blandly.

He nodded at Charlie. “Yes. Exactly.”

“I found a note where Scott told you that you didn’t have enough cash receipts,” Mia persisted. “What happened after he told you that?”

“Scott knew how to give face,” Zhong said. “He never embarrassed me. He never made me feel like a stupid person who did not understand numbers. It made me take a closer look at how my business was being run. To make sure everything accurate, everything matching up.” He brought the fingers of his two hands together.

Charlie was willing to bet that he had just gotten better at hiding things. And that Scott had probably helped.

Mia asked one last question. “Did you know Betty Eastman?”

Now it was her face that was blank and Zhong who looked away. Looking at him, Charlie was sure Zhong knew the truth.

“She came with him to the other restaurant a few times. She helped him with his business, I believe. I did not know her well.”

When their meal was over, both Charlie and Mia took out their wallets. But Zhong refused to accept any payment, saying he owed it to Scott’s memory. Charlie whispered into Mia’s ear, “It looks like we’ve got a Mexican standoff,” but she didn’t smile. She also didn’t succeed in paying.

Then Zhong gathered the five waitresses and two busboys that he thought might have been working that night and spoke to them in Chinese. They all nodded, and then Mia found a photo of Scott on her phone and handed it to the nearest one. Charlie found himself wondering how often Mia looked at that photo and what she thought when she did.