A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves (18 page)

I didn’t begrudge Papa the laurels Rudd mistakenly heaped on him in print this morning. The banner headlined feature was far more beneficial to Sawyer Investigations than a boxed advertisement inserted between one for fancy sewing—a euphemism for prostitution—and another heralding the latest advance in magnetic vigor restoratives—a euphemism for impotency cures. Whether ascribable to newspaper editors’ senses of humor or irony, the two neighbored each other more often than not.

An hour later, I concluded that bordertown ruffians had superior manners to members of the fourth estate. I left the coffeehouse in a huff, vowing to post a bill for my delicious, but extravagant snack to Mr. Rudd as soon as I reached the office.

Rare had been days when, in retrospect, getting out of bed had seemed like an act of valor. It was a sore temptation to chuck the remainder of this one and go home, crawl back under the covers and pull them over my head.

What stopped me was the inevitability of Won Li’s disapproval. It would be expressed with a quote from Confucius criticizing the luxury of sleep in the daytime, unless one is a victim of a debilitating illness or one’s demise is either imminent or has already occurred.

“Good people nurture character with fruitful action,” my patron would intone, with the haughty scowl only those of Asian extraction can produce. “Rotten wood cannot be sculpted, a manure wall cannot be plastered.”

Astonishing though it may be, in twelve years, I’d yet to devise a sufficiently clever retort to that philosophy.

Had I guessed that being gulled, robbed, and stood up at the coffeehouse would rank as the high points of my day, I’d have gladly risked Won Li’s reproach.