The Geomancer's Compass (10 page)

“I thought you two looked kind of young to be married,” mused Oscar. “But I never can tell with your people. Old, young, whatever … you all look kind of the same to me. Could you sign this?” He handed Brian a form; Brian pushed it over the counter to me. While I was signing it, Oscar handed Brian two keys – not key cards, actual keys. “Rooms 14 and 15. Third floor. There's an elevator through those doors. You enjoy your stay now.” He chuckled. “And don't worry if you hear some strange noises while you're here. The way the wind blows across the prairie sometimes makes our old plumbing howl like a ghost in a bottle.”

“We ‘all look kind of the same'?” I hissed to Brian, as he toted our luggage to a small mirrored elevator flanked by two desperate-looking palms. “Was that racist or what?”

“Take it easy, cuz,” said Brian. “Poor old Oscar isn't a racist. He's just easily confused. How about we grab some lunch once we've dumped the luggage? Then we can suss out the tunnel tours.”

“This isn't a vacation, you know. We have work to do.” I peered at the elevator button with distrust. “Would you …?” I gestured toward the button.

He shook his head. “You and germs.” He pressed the button. “Don't you want to see where Al Capone hung out?”

“Uh … no. Why would I?”

“Why would you do anything? Because it's fun and interesting. But I forget, you don't like fun.”

“I like fun.”

“Oh, sure you do. ‘Fun-loving.' ‘A barrel of fun.' That's the way I describe you to people.”

“You talk about me to people?”

“Of course I do. You're my cousin.”

That pulled me up short. I rarely talked about Brian; in fact, I rarely talked about any member of my family. Why was that? Because I found the subject depressing? Because, if people knew the truth, they might think there was something wrong with me too?

The elevator door shuddered open. We stepped inside and Brian stabbed the button for the third floor. The elevator lurched its way up and the door creaked open. It sounded like a tomb creaking open, or what I imagined a tomb creaking open would sound like. I had never actually heard one and hoped I never would. Wherever Qianfu was buried, I sure as hell hoped it wasn't a tomb. I stepped out into a narrow, sloped hall flanked by numbered doors, with Brian on my heels, begging, “Can we go to the tunnels? Please? Please?”

I pointed at the door to room 14. “Unlock, please.”

“Randi, it's just a key.”

“You don't know where that key's been.”

“Where would it have been? It's a key.”

“Just do it.”

Brian grinned. “Oh, now I get it, Miss Germaphobe. You've brought me along to do all your dirty work for you: pressing
buttons, unlocking doors … I hope you don't expect me to flush your toilet for you.”

I shook my head. “True germaphobes wash their hands compulsively and avoid contact with all surfaces. I wash my hands as needed and only avoid contact with surfaces that might be contaminated. I'm just cautious.”

“Sounds pretty cautious to me.” He unlocked the door and held it open for me. I peeked inside: beige wallpaper, two lumpy looking twin beds with off-white chenille covers separated by a bedside table, a dresser on which was mounted a WebTV, and an armchair drawn up close to a window looking out onto the roof of the adjacent building. It was like something from the early twentieth century, circa the Great Depression. “Oooh,” crooned Brian. “Now this is what I call
classy
.”

“Mom is so going to hear about this.” I crossed over to the first bed and tossed my carry-on onto it. I unzipped it and rummaged around for the two sets of I-spex. Brian could be counted on to be distracted by gear. Anything bright and shiny and technological drew him – he was like a techno-crow in that respect. I handed him a set.

He exhaled slowly. “Are these what I think?”

I nodded.

“I-spex. You brought me I-spex? I've heard about them, of course. Too cool.” He turned them over and over in his hands, admiring them.

“Let's get something to eat,” I said. “Otherwise I'm going to keel over.”

He slid the I-spex carefully into one of his vest pockets and buttoned it. “If you ate like I do,” he said, “this wouldn't happen to you. I never feel hungry.”

“But you eat constantly,” I objected. “You never
don't
eat.”

“That's because I'm a grazer.”

“That's because you're a swarm of locusts. If I ate like you, I'd look like a manatee.”

He smiled slyly. “Hate to tell you, cuz, but you sort of do anyway.”

I punched him in the ribs. “I do not. Take that back.”

I continued to pummel him as he cried, “Uncle! Uncle! You don't look like a manatee. Well, you do actually. A really small, skinny little manatee. Ouch!” He fled to the hall, waving his hands in mock submission. I started after him, then remembered the
lo p'an
. A-Ma had told me to take it with me to Moose Jaw, and here I was in Moose Jaw. “Dump your stuff in your room,” I called out. “I'll be with you in a sec.” Returning to the bed, I dug around in my carry-on for a moment before locating the cherrywood case containing the geomancer's compass. I tucked it into my knapsack alongside my travel pack of wipes and re-secured the strap on my trusty Zypad armband – the latest thing in wearable technology; never leave home without it. Then I remembered the key A-Ma had given me, the old-fashioned black one; I slipped that into the knapsack as well.

W
e ate at Nicky's, a little Italian restaurant next door to the hotel with red checkered tablecloths and a not very happy waitress who was, maybe, eighteen. She was probably bummed out about the fact that she had no eyebrows. I know I would be.

“What's your name?” Brian asked. Because that's what he did: made human contact. Whether whatever human he was making contact with wanted to or not.

The waitress did not. She pointed sullenly to her nameplate.

Brian looked at me.

“Svetlana,” I read.

“What?” Svetlana asked me, her face slack and her forehead a big blank. “Can't he read?”

“Bingo,” I said.

“No tip for Svetlana,” Brian whispered cheerfully as she trudged off. “What's with the eyebrows, anyway? Was she attacked by rabid tweezers?”

“Maybe she lost them in a fire,” I whispered back.

While we waited for our order to arrive – a Caesar salad with shrimp for me (low carb) and, for Brian, spaghetti and meatballs (high carb; I wasn't Aubrey's impressionable little cousin for nothing) – I told him about my conversation with A-Ma. I mean, I had to tell him sometime.

“Before I tell you what A-Ma told me, you've got to promise you won't interrupt me every two seconds,” I told him. “Because that's what you usually do.”

“Interrupt you every two seconds?”

“Yes. It's very annoying.”

“That's because I have ADHD,” Brian defended himself. “As in, not great at paying attention.”

“Well, it's really rude.”

“I'm sorry.”

“So you're not going to interrupt me?”

He nodded.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I took a deep breath. “OK,” I said. “I'm going to start at the beginning.”

“A very good place to start. Which is?”

“Which is, I'd always thought the Lius were from
Vancouver, but it turns out we're from Moose Jaw.”

“I thought we were from Quongdong Province.”

“Well, originally. But more recently. Once we came to Canada.”

“Hence the us-being-in-Moose Jaw thing?”

I nodded. “Hence the us-being-in-Moose Jaw thing.” So far, so good.

“Which is why The Grandfather's brother is buried here as opposed to in Vancouver? The one whose grave we're supposed to sweep. Old Uncle Fu Manchu.”

“Qianfu,” I corrected him. “And yes.”

“But why now? It's August. Qingming is usually at the start of April.”

“Yeah, well, I guess it hasn't been swept in a really long time and A-Ma thought sooner was better than later.”

Brian reflected on this. “That's cool. Can we set off firecrackers?”

I steeled myself. “There's more.”

“See? I knew you were holding out.” He grinned and leaned over the table toward me, his dark eyes button bright, his crazy hair exploding from his head in gelled spikes. He looked like a demented Halloween pumpkin.

I took the plunge. “Qianfu was murdered,” I said. “Beaten to death.”

“Here? In Moose Jaw?”

I nodded.

Brian considered this. “Cool.”

“Not cool,” I retorted. “He was our great-great-etcetera uncle.”

“OK, you're right. Not cool. But interesting. Definitely interesting. Was it your basic hate crime? You know, a couple of good old boys on a Saturday night looking for some good, clean, angry, redneck fun?”

I sighed. “No, as a matter of fact. He was messing around with a white girl. They worked in the same restaurant.”

“I hope she was better looking than Svetlana,” Brian whispered, as the waitress emerged from the kitchen with our food, a steaming heap of spaghetti festooned with meatballs and a bowl of romaine drenched in dressing and dotted with small pink shrimps and brown croutons.

“Hey, Svetlana!” he called out. “What do they call you for short? Svet or Lana?”

“My name is Svetlana.” Svetlana looked angry, but that might have been the no eyebrows.

“Well, I'm going to call you Svet,” Brian decided. “Or Svetty. Like Betty. That's kind of cute, don't you think? Svetty. May we please have a refill on the bread, Svetty?” He held out the empty bread basket. The last time I'd looked, it had been full. That was the danger of eating with Brian. Food disappeared as if by magic – magicians use sleight of hand; Brian relies on sleight of mouth. And he's good.

Svetlana snatched the bread basket from him and stomped back to the kitchen.

Brian turned back to me. “So old Uncle Fu Manchu was murdered because of some girl.”

“Old Uncle
Qianfu
.”

“Like I said. Old Uncle Fu Manchu.”

I started to correct him once again, then thought, why bother? With Brian you have to pick your battles; this was one I wasn't going to win.

“Yum,” said Brian, unrolling his napkin with a flourish and tucking it under his chin. He picked up his knife and fork and smiled at his heap of spaghetti the way a shark might smile at an unwary swimmer. (That is, if sharks smile. At the thought of sharks I shuddered. Must not think of sharks, I told myself.) He began to catapult meatballs into his mouth with lightning speed.

“So Qianfu was buried and, seven years later, the family dug him up.” I picked up my own fork and scrutinized it for cleanliness. I don't trust restaurant cutlery.

“Uh-hum?” Through his mouthful of chewed beef, I could just make out something that sounded like “Good meatballs.”

“Because apparently that's what they did in those days,” I continued. “They scraped off whatever … I don't know…
stuff
was left on the bones and put them in a burial urn and shipped them back to China.”

“Wow.” Brian was so impressed that he stopped eating for a nanosecond. “That's fairly gross.”

I shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. “A-Ma said they didn't like the thought of being buried in Canada. They wanted their bones to lie in the ancestral graveyard – in their village back in China.” I wiped the tines of my fork carefully with my napkin, then laid it down and eyed my salad. “This is
so
not the sort of conversation you want to have over lunch.” I took a deep breath.
Down, boy
, I instructed my stomach. “So anyway, there Qianfu is, in this Death House … that was what A-Ma called it.” (This in response to Brian's incredulous glance.) “To make a long story short, the Death House catches on fire, the local fire brigade arrives on the scene, and do they freak?”

“Let me guess. They freak.”

“They totally freak. A bunch of dug-up bones lying around,” I said. “And then, post-freak, they insist on holding the body as, I don't know, evidence or something, and by the time the court rules that The Grandfather can have it back, it's disappeared.”

Brian put his fork down and stared at me. “What do you mean, disappeared?”

“Disappeared, as in vanished. As in, somebody must have buried it, only no one knows where. Or at least no one's talking.”

“So this grave that we're supposed to be honoring … we don't know where it is.”

“Right.”

“And we are supposed to … what?”

“Find it.”

He considered this. “And this was … how many years ago did all this happen?”

“One hundred and six.”

“So basically he could be pretty much anywhere?”