Dragon Bones (14 page)

David suspected Stuart Miller already knew, which was why he’d needled her so mercilessly at lunch.

“I can tell you it wasn’t true love or anything like that,” Lily conceded. “It was just a way to spend the evenings in this place. And the boy was talented. Brilliant.”

Was she referring to Brian’s sexual prowess or his brain?

“I told them that already,” Angela confirmed. “He
was
brilliant.”

“Angela told us he did work for you,” Hulan addressed Lily.

“Freelance work. Research mostly. It wasn’t related to the Ba or this site, but he could do a lot of it on the Internet after hours, so it suited him. He could
find
anything.”

“What kind of research exactly?”

A shadow fell over Lily’s face. “If you’re asking if it had anything to do with his accident, I can guarantee you that it didn’t.”

“My brother was into all kinds of stuff,” Angela said with studied candor. “And Lily’s right. He loved the Internet. He loved technology of all sorts. He had one of those digital cameras, and he used to put snapshots on a website so all of his friends back home could see them.” Angela took another sip of wine. “That’s how I knew about Lily and Catherine. I recognized them as soon as I got here.” She caught herself. “They weren’t dirty pictures or anything like that! Just—oh, I don’t know—the hillsides, the dig, the people he was hanging out with.”

“Actually, I felt he put up rather barren landscapes,” Lily said. She thought for a moment, then added, “Those shots must have been taken in the area around Site 518. He probably posted them so his friends wouldn’t be envious.”

Angela concurred. “What better way to divert attention from his good luck than to show his friends and colleagues that he was living on a mound of dirt in the middle of nowhere? There’s nothing worse than academic jealousy. Believe me, I know.”

Lily’s responses to further questions about Brian were vague, perhaps out of consideration for Angela. So he faded from the conversation, and Lily regaled them with tales of the Panda Guesthouse, which for hundreds of years had been the compound for the Wangs, an extremely wealthy and very corrupt family that had once controlled all of the salt in the region.

“In addition to his salt wells,” Lily explained, “Wang was a smuggler of some note. Until Mao took over, Wang had his own troops and a fleet that plied the river from Wuhan to Chongqing. But his businesses aren’t what make him memorable. He was reputed to be quite insatiable in his appetites. He had close to fifty concubines and apparently took them in a variety of combinations. You’ve seen the decoration in this place. It’s beautiful and tasteful, but I’ve been in rooms in the more interior courtyards with truly stunning pornographic scenes.”

“What happened to the family?” Hulan asked.

“During the revolution—Liberation, as you call it—most of the Wangs were wiped out.” Her slim fingers gestured delicately toward the veranda. “All of the women were decapitated in the third courtyard, where I’m staying. The blood was ten centimeters deep. At least that’s the legend.”

“And Wang?”

“He got to see his women killed one by one. They say that by the end of the massacre he’d completely lost his mind.”

David watched Hulan through all of this. The similarities between the Wang and Liu families—though in different provinces and different times—were striking.

“So Wang was assassinated,” Hulan prompted.

“Not at all!” Lily exclaimed. “In his madness, he wrestled away from the guards and
poof—
disappeared. To hear people around here tell the story, it’s as though he had supernatural powers. One minute he was in the courtyard, the next he’d vanished from sight. It’s said he ‘rode the current out to sea,’ meaning that no one knows exactly how he got out, except that he showed up three years later in Hong Kong. He was only sixty-seven. He married again, outlived that wife by a couple of decades, and married again just before he died. The last Madame Wang lives in great opulence in Hong Kong.”

“How do you know all this?” Hulan asked.

Lily looked at them in surprise. “I thought you knew. Cosgrove’s has represented the family since Wang arrived in Hong Kong. Mr. Wang didn’t have much cash, but with the profits from the sale of the family heirlooms he’d smuggled out with him, he was able to start an import-export business. He became quite the Hong Kong tycoon.” She shook her head in admiration. “It’s amazing, isn’t it, how the rich always get richer even when they ‘lose’ everything?”

“Did he ever explain how he got his treasures out of the compound and to Hong Kong?” David asked.

“Of course not! A family’s got to keep its secrets! But Wang did capitalize on the mythical elements of those stories, which only added to the mystique—and value—of his artworks. Anyway, that’s why Cosgrove’s is tied to this godforsaken place. We still do business for the family. I have lunch with Madame Wang once a month.”

“She owns the property now?”

“Mr. Wang lived just long enough to get his properties back during the PRC’s campaign to bring in capital from Overseas Chinese in the early eighties. Madame Wang has even relaunched the salt business.”

“Are the salt wells near the Ba dig?” Hulan asked. “Is that why that area is so barren?”

Lily smiled. “There are other reasons for that—”

“If the family’s so wealthy,” David cut in, “why would they turn their compound into a hotel?”

“Money,” Lily answered, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together. “The family wanted to restore it for themselves, then the government decided to build the dam. When Madame Wang learned that the compound would be inundated, she abandoned further renovations and decided to open a guesthouse to recoup her initial investment. The Panda Guesthouse, no less! How many Panda Guesthouses do you think there are in this country? Thank God for the discovery of Site 518, otherwise she would have gotten none of her money back.”

And on it went. Lily’s tales made for lighthearted conversation, and even Angela seemed to brighten. After dinner, David and the three women walked out into the night. The rain still came down in a warm rush, and the air smelled of wet bamboo. They walked under the covered corridor to the next courtyard. When they reached a door marked Room 5, Lily said, “This is me. I’m going straight to bed. I’m exhausted.” Then she asked if David and Hulan would be going back out to the dig tomorrow. “There’s a bus that takes the team out there at eight, but I’d be delighted if I could avoid riding with that lot.”

They agreed to meet her downstairs at 7:30 and take her with them in Ma’s Jeep. Lily gave a slight wave, and her cheeks had that heightened color that made her appear younger than her age. As she slowly closed her door, David thought that Brian McCarthy must have been an interesting young man to have attracted two women as different as Lily Sinclair and Catherine Miller.

THE PACIFIED DOMAIN

(Sui Fu)

Beyond. Within the first 300
li,
the people cultivate lessons of learning and moral duty. In the second 200, they are exhorted to devote themselves to war and defense.

MORNING SLITHERED IN DARK AND WET. THE OVERHEAD FAN
swirled thick air, and a smell of mildew permeated the room. David took a shower and dressed but felt little refreshed. Hulan, who didn’t own a pair of shorts, let alone a T-shirt, dressed for the humid weather as a peasant might, in loose cotton pants that came to just above her ankles and a short-sleeved blouse with hand-tied frog buttons, all soft and faded from washings and age.

They were the first to arrive in the dining room. A radio blared news about the storm. Some evacuations had been ordered in the middle reaches of the Yangzi, and the People’s Liberation Army had been sent downstream to Hubei and Anhui Provinces to shore up levees, dikes, and embankments. As they listened, David and Hulan helped themselves to a breakfast buffet that included watery scrambled eggs, canned ham, fresh deep-fried crullers, and
congee
with pickled turnip, salted fish, and ginkgo seeds for garnishes.

Once they sat down, David stirred a little soy sauce into his
congee
and said, “Dr. Ma’s done a good job convincing the people out here that Brian’s death was accidental, but I don’t get Angela going along with it so easily.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to understand the emotions and actions of survivors.” Hulan blew into her tea, sipped, then said, “She’s suffering….”

David set his spoon down. “See, that’s what bothers me. She didn’t ask us for information and she didn’t share much either, except for making sure we knew who Brian slept with. I would have expected her to ask more questions. Wouldn’t you be curious if an investigator showed up? Wouldn’t you want to walk the site with someone from the police?”

A few of the scholars straggled in, but there was no sign of Angela or Lily.

“Maybe she already has with the locals,” Hulan said.

They ate quietly for a few minutes, then Hulan said she was far more concerned with Ma. “He hasn’t been forthright. He doesn’t want you here, and he wants me here even less. The innocent explanation is that running this dig is a big opportunity for him and he doesn’t want you to make him look bad to his superiors back in Beijing.”

“A not-so-innocent explanation,” David added, “is that he’s somehow involved with the thefts. But to me this all seems like a lot of trouble for some miscellaneous objects that have so little importance Ma didn’t bother to catalog them properly.”

Hulan disagreed. “If these artifacts have no value, then why are you here?”

“Director Ho may have arbitrarily picked this site as a lesson to others.”

“‘Beat one monkey to frighten the whole pack,’” Hulan recited. “That could be, but I doubt it.”

David signed the check, and they left the restaurant just as Stuart and Catherine entered. David and Hulan stopped back at their room so he could pick up a notebook and water bottle, which he put in his satchel, then they met Ma at the Jeep a little after 7:30.

“Lily’s coming with us,” David said, holding the front seat forward so Hulan could climb in the back. Then they waited. After fifteen minutes, Hulan volunteered to go in and call Lily’s room, but David jumped out because he was in the front seat. The desk clerk—an older man in a gold-braided uniform—called the room but reported no answer. David followed the main corridor back to Room 5 and knocked on the door. Lily didn’t respond. He looked around the courtyard, then walked quickly to the dining room. The others were grouped together. Lily wasn’t with them or even sitting alone, as she’d been the night before. He retraced his steps to the lobby, said a few words to the clerk, and went outside to get Hulan. Once they were back inside, he said, “I think something’s happened.”

“Lily?”

He nodded and watched Hulan’s features harden. They hurried back through the corridors to Lily’s room. David waited there while Hulan went to get her weapon. She kept it aimed down at her side as she returned to Room 5, where the elderly desk clerk now stood with David. At first the clerk tried to allay their fears, explaining that foreigners didn’t always spend the night in their own rooms. But when Hulan showed him her credentials, he turned the key in the lock. Hulan lifted her weapon. The clerk’s eyes widened, and he moved aside.

Hulan slowly pushed the door open with her foot. The shutters were closed and the lights off, making it hard to see anything in the dimness other than the shape of the bed illuminated by the hint of light that emanated from around the edges of the window. The smell of death oozed from the room.

David reached out and held Hulan’s arm to prevent her from entering.

“There’s no danger now,” she blurted staccato. “No one’s alive in there. Send the clerk to call the police.”

Hearing the cold detachment in Hulan’s voice, David felt a sense of dread that extended far beyond what awaited them in the room.

“Try the light,” Hulan ordered as the desk clerk scurried away.

David reached around the doorjamb and flipped the switch. He wasn’t sure if the
whoosh
of breath he heard came from himself or his wife.