Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness (35 page)

“So you met this man Zhang Wei—the most recent one—through this establishment,” Wiriya prompted. “And then what?”

“We corresponded by e-mail and then by phone. He was much slower than you were. More… selective.”

“Ah, well… I’ve been told by a close friend that I’m quite ugly.” He smiled and snuck a quick look at the camera. “So I could not afford to be too selective.”

Oh dear.

“And then what happened?”

“Then he wanted me to meet me at Kunming, where he lived, but I said he should come here.

“He was reluctant at first, but eventually I convinced him. It took more than a month but finally he arranged a visit to Chiang Mai. He said he was coming here on business anyway, but I think he came here just for me. So we met here and then we went to his hotel, the Shangri-La. Do you know it? Very nice.”

Wiriya nodded.

“Anyway, we went to his hotel and we spent the night there. But the next morning he wasn’t feeling well. Upset stomach. It was the spicy
panang gai
we had for room service that night before. He said Thai food didn’t agree with him.”

Ladarat could imagine that.
Panang gai
was one of her favorites—crispy fried chicken in red curry and coconut milk. Wonderful, but very spicy, and very rich.

“And what was in the Thai food that didn’t agree with him?”

Peaflower looked at him blankly for a moment. Then she began to smile.

“It was ipecac. A syrup that loosens your bowels and makes you throw up. You or I would taste it in food—or at least we’d know something was strange. But a Chinese man not used to our food… well… to him it’s just one more example of why he should have stayed in China.”

“Very clever. Yes, I know it, but it doesn’t last long. Maybe a couple of hours at most. Wasn’t he better the next morning?”

Now Peaflower was grinning happily. It was as if she’d forgotten for a moment that she was confessing to murder.

“Ah, but he was still feeling weak, so I went to the drugstore to get him a tonic that would improve his strength. But before I got back, I opened the tonic bottle and put in—”

“More ipecac.” Wiriya nodded. “Very smart. So by later that morning, he was probably feeling very ill. He was probably convinced that he had some infection that needed medical treatment, am I right?”

Peaflower nodded. “But not just any medical treatment. His experience with Thai food had convinced him he needed a real Chinese doctor. Well trained, with the best credentials. So I said I knew just the doctor, and he had an office right near the hotel. I could describe his symptoms and get a prescription for antibiotics. It would be better for him to stay in the hotel room and rest.”

“And he agreed.”

“Of course he agreed. He should have been suspicious, but Chinese men always expect that women will do their bidding. A woman offers to do something for them, they accept. It’s the way they’re programmed.”

She was still smiling, but it was a smile of revenge. Her own version of the winner’s smile.
Yim cheua cheuan.
But she wasn’t the winner now, was she?

“So then you went to the doctor—the same one who had treated your husband?”

“My real husband, yes. He had pancreatic cancer and other ailments. He was weak and tired most of the time.” She seemed to think about that assessment for a moment. “So I would say that he had an infection and he would give me a prescription for an antibiotic, of course.”

“Of course? Why wouldn’t he ask to see your husband—his patient? Why would he simply trust you?”

Peaflower shrugged. “I’m not sure, but he probably thinks I’m the dutiful wife. So kind and loyal and caring. That’s the secret to a trick like this. You need to give people exactly what they expect. If they expect you to be rude or nice or confused or angry—be what they expect. Do what they expect. The more you act in a way that fits with their view of the world, the less suspicious they are. I fit so well with the stereotype the doctor carries around in his head of the way wives should be, that he never thought twice about a part of the story that doesn’t fit, like the fact that this man with pancreatic cancer is still alive so many years later.”

Ladarat made a note to herself to think about Peaflower’s advice about anticipating other people’s expectations. There seemed to be a lot of wisdom in that. When someone does what we think they should do—when they behave as we expect—we stop paying attention to them. Like all of the people in the waiting room outside the ICU. She’d walked past them a couple of times a day all week, but she couldn’t remember any faces. It was only the one man who was acting in unexpected ways who was memorable. And Peaflower had learned that. She made herself and her actions invisible, because at least superficially she was doing exactly what a wife was supposed to be doing.

Wiriya was nodding. “You’d make a good detective, Khun Anchan. A very good detective. But once you got the drugs from the pharmacy, how did you get Khun Wei to take them? All of those pills at once?”

“Well, all of the medications were liquid. Highly concentrated. So I emptied out the bottle containing the antibiotic and filled it with the pain drugs I’d gathered from my last visit to the doctor. I told the gullible Mr. Zhang that the doctor said he should take them both at the same time. All at once.”

Then she giggled. A strange, girlish sound coming from such a person.

“No, that’s not quite true. Actually what I said was that the doctor told me that he should
try
to take them both at once, but that most people couldn’t because they tasted so bad. Most people had to dilute them and take them over twenty-four hours.” She giggled again. “And of course, once I said that, he had to prove himself. He had to prove that he could drink the whole bottle at once. Like a man. Stupid, but that’s the way that men are.”

“Indeed,” Wiriya said slowly. “Indeed. And you are truly a remarkable psychologist, Khun Anchan.”

Perhaps some of Wiriya’s response was merely flattery to get her talking. But Ladarat suspected that he really was impressed. Ladarat certainly was.

“So he drank the bottle all at once…”

“That was about a thousand milligrams of morphine and a hundred milligrams of lorazepam.”

If Wiriya could have heard Ladarat’s sharp intake of breath, he would have looked at Peaflower with very different eyes. Ladarat knew that a normal dose of morphine for someone who isn’t used to it is about ten milligrams. And lorazepam is half a milligram.

“And then what happened?”

Peaflower looked at him strangely. “Then, he went to sleep and never woke up.”

“That’s all? That was enough to cause him to die?”

“Well, he was lying in bed, and I don’t know, but I think he may have gotten smothered in the pillows. He wouldn’t have been able to move, you see. So in the wrong position, and weak and unconscious… well… the pillows might have smothered him.”

Odd that she was being so careful, even at this stage, not to incriminate herself more than she absolutely had to. But that wouldn’t matter. She’d admitted everything. Everything except the ending.

“So then what happened?”

“So I bribed one of the bellhops in the hotel to help me drag him to my car. He was dead—or almost dead, but you couldn’t tell unless you checked for a pulse, and the bellboy wouldn’t do that. Then I drove him to the emergency room and gave them the story that you know—that my poor husband was suffering from multiple medical conditions, including heart failure, and died suddenly. Such patients often die suddenly, you know. Here was his birth certificate, and here was our marriage certificate, that he’d put in an envelope in his study for just such an eventuality.”

“So then you got the death certificate, but what about the life insurance money? How did you know what his policy number was, and what company?”

“Ah, I appealed to his vanity, of course.” Ladarat sensed another lesson in male psychology was on its way, and she wasn’t mistaken.

“As we corresponded, he tried to convince me that he was wealthy. I said I’d heard that before. He asked me what would convince me, and I told him…”

“You wanted to see his life insurance policy. Very clever. You weren’t asking for his bank account, so there was nothing for him to be concerned about sharing. If you weren’t married, there’s no way that information could harm him.”

“Exactly so.”

“But why didn’t you ask about my life insurance policy?”

“Ah, well, you see things were moving too quickly. There was no time. And besides, it was a small investment of time only. I knew I could meet you here within a day. And if things did not work out, there was no point in asking about life insurance.”

Alas, Wiriya did not ask Peaflower whether, in fact, things had worked out. Instead, he asked about the way that life insurance policies were handled in China. A dull subject perhaps, but he was being careful.

“And in China?” he asked.

“A wife generally gets the insurance policy by rights,” Peaflower explained. “Even if the husband doesn’t name her. As long as there is a valid death certificate.”

“Which you had from your… first husband.”

“Exactly so. Although not always. And not all of it. Sometimes there are legal challenges, which…”

“Which you avoid.”

“Exactly so.”

“So these arrangements are not always… fruitful?”

“Perhaps not. But nothing in life is certain.”

Wiriya took a deep breath, as if he was preparing for a difficult question. Ladarat leaned forward, paying close attention. What question could possibly be more challenging than the ones she’d already heard?

“I musk ask, Khun—your focus on Chinese men, is it motivated by… personal reasons?”

For the first time in their conversation, Peaflower looked at the detective in confusion. Then she smiled the
yim thak thaan
smile: the smile of disagreement. It said in essence, “I know what you’re trying to tell me, but you’re wrong, so I’m not going to listen.”

“Was there a reason you chose to devote your attention to Chinese men? Rather than Thai men, or Americans, or…”

Wiriya trailed off, looking unsure of himself for the first time in their interview. Perhaps he had not considered this line of questioning in advance? And perhaps he did not anticipate that their interview would proceed this far. At a loss for words, the detective lapsed into a silence that seemed to stretch on for minutes.

“Chinese men,” Peaflower said finally, “are all the same.”

“How so?” Wiriya leaned forward, nodding respectfully. This wasn’t a matter of interviewing tactics, was it? No, the detective seemed genuinely curious.

There was another pause. Not as long as the last, but long enough for Ladarat to wonder whether Peaflower was going to answer. At last, though, she did.

“Chinese men,” she said, “they don’t want wives. They want… servants. Women to do their bidding. That’s all we are to them. So why not make a living from these men?”

Wiriya paused for a moment as he seemed to search for an appropriate response.

“But many men have this characteristic, do they not?” he asked. “Many men want servants rather than partners. Thai men, in fact, often have this reputation. Yet you focused on Chinese men. May I ask why?”

Peaflower shrugged. “Certainly many men share this characteristic, it is true. But perhaps you do not?”

Now Wiriya shrugged. But he didn’t speak. He waited.

“What is a characteristic in many men is perfected to a high degree in the Chinese,” she said quietly. “I learned this at a very young age. After my father died when I was two years old, my mother remarried a Chinese businessman. He treated her poorly for the rest of her short life. He wouldn’t even pay for special medical care when she developed cancer. He took her instead to the state-run hospital, where she got no treatment.”

Wiriya nodded encouragingly. He was a good listener.

“When my mother was dying, this man—her husband—began to turn his attentions toward me.”

“When you say his attentions, Khun Anchan, you mean…”

“His sexual attentions. Yes. That’s what I mean. I was only fourteen, although old enough, apparently. But what he didn’t know was that I was also old enough to run away from home and find work in Bangkok, then here in Chiang Mai.”

“I see,” was all Wiriya said. Indeed, what else was there to say? Ladarat watched the detective closely now. Would he show empathy? Should he?

That was the better question. The more ethical question. Should this story—if it were true—excuse the actions of this woman? At least partially?

Perhaps. But this was a woman who had just admitted to killing several men. For revenge, yes. But also for financial gain.

The detective, though, seemed more positively disposed. He was still leaning forward and listening carefully to Peaflower’s tale. Was he harboring doubts?

But then he asked another question.

“And this man—your stepfather. What was his name?”

“Zhang Wei.”

Then Peaflower smiled the smile of a woman who was immensely proud. She smiled the smile of a woman who had won a national competition of skill and wits. She did not, however, smile the smile of someone who had confessed to murder. It was strange indeed how her pride overwhelmed her sense of what was right. And her own spirit of self-preservation. People could be evil, but they could also be silly.

Ladarat looked closely at the console and clicked the “stop” button. Then she removed the tape and put it in her handbag. There would be time enough later to puzzle through the ethics of what she’d just heard. For now, though, it was enough to know that they had captured the confession of a murderer.