Thai Die (25 page)

“I think so—at least they knew they had something very rare and valuable. Look at all the trouble they took to disguise it when they tried to sneak it into the country.”

“There’s a difference between ‘rare and valuable’ and something as wildly rare and historic as the silk you pulled out of the wastepaper basket. I’m wondering who knew what it was. Did Wendy Applegate? Did Oscar Fitzwilliam? Maybe only the person who arranged for it to come over and the ultimate buyer knew, everyone else was satisfied to get a few thousand dollars.”

“I don’t know about that, Mike. Look how desperate Wendy was to get it back. Driving to St. Peter in a blizzard, bringing a gun with her—she doesn’t seem the type when you look at her background.”

“That’s true. She must have been fantastically anxious to get hold of it. I wonder who set this up.”

“You don’t think she did, in conjunction with Mr. Corvis?”

“No, I don’t.” He sat back and took another sip of his coffee. “Let me tell you something. Smuggling on this level isn’t like bringing back some marijuana from Mexico or a little cocaine from the Bahamas. It takes high-level organization and some serious connections. Doris Valentine seems to be innocent, from her behavior since this mess started. I think she was deliberately aimed at this Corvis fellow, possibly by a tour guide or maybe someone at her hotel, and she stupidly agreed to do him a favor. Who set that up, I don’t know. But those three ladies who went to Thailand a few years back—that’s different. I think it’s significant that Wendy Applegate had been to Asia before. And that she had some connections with Asian people in the silk business. I think she’s the one who is the link between Corvis and Fitzwilliam’s Antiques. Maybe even between Corvis and the ultimate buyer, as you call him. So I don’t think we’re talking about a nice St. Paul socialite here. Not at all. What we need to know is the rest of the organization. Wendy is dead, so who killed Lena Olson?”

“Could it be the ultimate buyer?”

“Maybe.”

“What kind of person would he be?”

“What am I, a profiler?” Nevertheless he thought a few moments and said, “Okay, he’ll be someone sane on the outside but crazy on the inside. He’s got the same kind of glitch in his brain as those people who are found with two hundred cats in their homes. They call them ‘collectors.’ But the kind we’re talking about will take some dangerous chances to get hold of whatever it is they’re obsessed about. They can be secretive about their collection; they’d buy the
Mona Lisa
and hide it in a storage locker or safe deposit box and visit it at night, and never tell anyone they had it. They aren’t usually organized enough to run a smuggling operation, so I think our murderer is more likely to be a smuggler than a collector.”

“Could they be the same person?”

“Well . . . there are some slick collectors, I guess.”

Betsy said, “Okay, who? Who do you think we’re talking about?”

“I have no idea,” Mike said.

Twenty

BETSY was in the process of closing shop. Sophie was already at the back door, calling in her high-pitched voice for Betsy to hurry. It was time to go upstairs and give the cat her dinner.

The phone rang. Betsy sighed, but answered it cordially, “Crewel World, Betsy speaking, how may I help you?”

“Betsy, it’s Carmen Diamond.” Her voice was frightened.

“Oh God.” Betsy closed her eyes for a second. “Is it Doris? Is she all right?”

“Yes, yes, she’s fine, but she’s packing up to leave. Phil is going to take her away, and he’s making a big secret about where they’re going. I tried to talk them out of leaving, but they won’t listen.”

“May I speak with her?”

“I was hoping you’d say that. Maybe you can talk some sense into her. Hold on.”

After about a minute Doris’s voice said, “Hello, Betsy.” Her tone didn’t seem quite as flat as usual.

“How are you? Are you feeling better? You sound better.”

“Yes. I look like a combat veteran, but I feel all right.”

“What a terrible experience that must have been for you!”

“You know something? I think I’m getting used to it. Getting shot at seems to be my newest sport, and so far I’m not too bad at it.”

It was a black jest, but Betsy rejoiced at this evidence of resilience. She forced a little laugh and said, “Doris, you are about the bravest person I know!”

“I don’t feel brave, but thank you.”

“So where is Phil taking you?”

“I don’t know, he won’t say.”

“Not even to you?”

“He says he doesn’t want me to hint where it is to anyone, even accidentally.”

“You must know I think this is a very bad idea. Can I talk to him?”

“When he heard it was you calling, he said to say he’s sorry, but talking to him won’t do any good. He said I could talk all I wanted because this is why he won’t tell me where we’re going. And you know, since nobody seems to know who’s doing this, I think it’s not that bad an idea to just disappear.”

“Well, if he won’t talk to me, I guess I have to lean hard on you. Doris, I think this is a terrible idea. I really, really, really think so. Please, tell Phil you won’t go with him!”

“No.”

“Oh, but—”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Betsy sighed. One-word answers meant a mind made up.

“All right, but once this is cleared up, you
will
find a bright new place to move into—at your old address.”

“You mean my old apartment?”

“Yes, of course.”

“No, I’m not ever coming back there. I’m going to get another apartment.”

“Oh please, don’t move out on me, Doris!”

“I already have. My rent’s paid to the end of the month and I’ll give you another month’s rent in lieu of thirty days’ notice. Betsy, that apartment gives me nightmares.”

“But I’m going to hollow it out—both apartments—and make them like totally different places, everything new. I’m calling the contractor tomorrow, and I’ll get him started as soon as possible.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line.

“Doris?”

She burst out, “Why are you doing this? It costs money to remodel!”

“Well, I can afford it. Plus they’re due. Those two apartments haven’t been seriously done over since Coolidge was president. You can only push ‘retro’ so far.”

That didn’t bring the laugh Betsy was hoping for. Instead, Doris said, “I’m sorry, I can’t see how it will make any difference. I’ll still know what happened there. And what it led to.”

“All right, all right, I can understand that. But will you agree to not sign a lease anywhere else until you see what I’ve had done here? You’ve been a great tenant, and I’d hate to lose you.”

“I think it’s good of you to do this, I really do. And all right, I’ll come and look at the result. But I can’t promise to stay.”

“And I don’t want you to make a promise you may find you can’t keep. The apartments need remodeling in any case, and you’ve provided the push I needed to get started. Now, may I ask you some questions before you go?”

Doris breathed a why-should-you-be-any-different sigh. “Sure, ask away.”

“Did either Lena or Wendy suggest you go to that silk factory outside of Bangkok?”

“No, how could they? I’ve never talked to either one of them, all I know about them is what Carmen told me.”

“They weren’t on your list of people to whom you were sending that daily Bangkok diary?”

“No, I didn’t send them my Bangkok e-mails . . . What?” The query was to someone in the room with Doris. “Oh, okay. Carmen says to tell you she was forwarding my Bangkok diary to them.”

“So who was it who told you about the factory?”

“The concierge at the hotel. I wanted to see silk being made, but the north part of Thailand, which is where the factories mostly are, seemed so far away, and she said it’s kind of primitive up there, no place for a foreign woman to go alone. I asked her if there was one closer to Bangkok, and she told me about Bright Works—that’s the name of it.”

“Yes, I remember.” Betsy had been amused to learn that Thai businesses often had English names that were only approximately appropriate.

“She even arranged for a driver to come along who could translate Thai into English.”

“That was very nice of her.”

“Oh, yes. The Thai people are just amazingly kind.” A sense of longing came into Doris’s voice. “I wish I could have stayed over there.”

“I don’t blame you one bit. I think those are all the questions I have for now. Thanks, Doris. And may your guardian angel be at the top of his game.”

“You’re welcome and thank you. Here’s Carmen.”

“Did she tell you anything helpful?” Carmen asked.

“Yes, I think so. But I wish one of us could have talked her out of going off with Phil. Thank you for calling me, Carmen.”

After she hung up, Betsy finished closing up the shop, setting aside the starting-up cash for tomorrow, drawing up a deposit slip for the rest. She would take it to the night deposit drawer at the bank later—in her newly acquired state of alarm, she had a notion that a robber could do worse than lurk outside a business waiting for the owner to come out with a bag of cash in hand.

She flipped the lights off and, with her impatient cat trotting ahead of her, went up the stairs to her apartment.

Supper was a quiet affair, with Betsy deep in thought, trying to figure out where Phil might have gone with Doris. He was a Minnesota native, one of the sort who had always taken most of his vacations within its borders, so he knew the state at a level that immigrant Betsy couldn’t even dream of. He was a retired railroad engineer, chummy with fellow railroaders, so he could doubtless have called on one of them to hide Doris—perhaps on a train. He knew people with cabins up in the north woods, many located down some obscure lane deep among the pines. He and Doris could rest secure before a roaring fire in a fieldstone fireplace with no one but the crows, eagles, and foxes as neighbors. It was also possible that he and Doris were flying out of Humphrey or Lindburgh Terminal on their way to Costa Rica or London or Singapore or South Africa. Betsy tossed her napkin down. There was no way to figure out where the two had gone.

Which, come to think of it, might make his plan not such a bad one after all.

Dishes done, Betsy went in to boot up her computer. Doris had put a message onto RCTN about a pattern she was having a problem with. Lillian Banchek had replied privately and Doris’s trip to Thailand came up in conversation. Lillian wrote that her ex-brother-in-law had a manufacturing business in Thailand, and she had offered Doris his e-mail address. Betsy and Lillian had exchanged messages both on RCTN and privately for a long time, so Betsy looked to send Lillian an IM. But Lillian wasn’t logged on. Betsy sent her a quick e-mail, asking for Ron Zommick’s e-mail address and phone number, adding,
This is urgent, so please let me know ASAP
.

She was about to settle down with her bookkeeping program when her phone rang. It was Carmen. “Mike Malloy just left. Does he treat everyone like he thinks they’re crooks?” Her tone was crisp, as if she was trying hard not sound as angry as she really was.

“Probably. Until he gets to know them. Was he really rude?”

“No, not rude, exactly. Just . . . Well, he wouldn’t take anything I said as true. He’d ask me the same question three different ways.”

“Oh, that. That’s not suspicion, that’s just how the police operate. They want to make sure you understand the question and that they understand the answer.”

“Oh? Well, it made me feel uncomfortable.”

“On behalf of the City of Excelsior, I apologize.”

With a hint of a smile in her voice, Carmen replied, “On behalf of the citizens of Wayzata, I accept your apology.”

“Did he get a chance to talk with Doris before she left with Phil?”

“No, and he seemed to think I should have tied her to a chair or something to keep her here until he arrived.”

“Mike usually suspects people are out to thwart his investigations. Sometimes he’s right, but it’s hard trying to remember the policeman is your friend when he’s acting like that. Meanwhile, would you care if I asked you some questions, too? While your memory is all warmed up?”

“Among other things,” said Carmen with a chuckle. “All right, I want somebody to make sense of this and bring an end to it. Doris says you have a wild card talent for solving crimes. If I can help you do that, I certainly will.”

“All right, thank you. When you went to Thailand with Wendy and Lena, whose idea was it to go?”

“Lena’s. She’s the one who talked to me about it, anyway. It might have been Wendy’s idea; she had been to Asia before, not Thailand but Indonesia and Japan and, I think, China.”

“How do you know Lena?”

“Through our husbands. They met in college. Richard hunts, and he collects guns. He has some excellent bird guns—shotguns. Lena’s husband, Tad, has always had a golden retriever or two. Richard and Tad go out together every fall hunting duck and pheasant, and so Lena and I started getting together with other hunting widows. I didn’t get to know Lena well until about five years ago, really. But Wendy and Lena go way back—they were like sisters. Lena introduced me to Wendy. I think they met in high school, actually. I know they both went to Northwestern, both got degrees in fine arts. I’m a U of M grad myself, a master’s in education.”