Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness (38 page)

“Ah, Khun Ladarat. I didn’t expect to find you in your office. I thought you had a Royal Inspection this week.”

Ladarat sighed. “We do. Oh… we do. I’m hiding.”

Wiriya chuckled, and Ladarat decided she very much liked that sound. It was very comforting, but just a little bit cynical at the same time. As if daring her not to take things too seriously. Which she vowed she wouldn’t do. Just as soon as these inspectors left.

“I have some good news, Khun,” was all he said.

“Good news?” Ladarat realized she shouldn’t sound so surprised. However, in fairness, good news had been in short supply in her life lately.

“About your car. You see, the police have found it.”

She sighed with relief. She hadn’t realized how much she missed it. When she had to take a
sengteo
—a pickup truck taxi—to work this morning, that was an inconvenience. But she really did love that car.

“Is it all right? I mean, it’s not damaged?”

Again, that chuckle. “No, but the thief apparently did a few things to it.”

Ladarat waited, fearing the worst. Engine removed? Wheels stolen?

“Well, to begin with, your brakes were very old, so he replaced them. And new tires, of course. Those tires were fifteen years old at least.”

Ladarat was having trouble processing this information. Did you have to change tires? Didn’t you just wait for them to go flat?

“And he fixed the locks, so they actually work. Oh, and he put a new stereo in. It sounds very nice.”

“Ah,” was all Ladarat could think of to say.

“So I thought I would drive it over to the hospital for you. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Well, I drove it to a reputable garage to have it checked out, and the man there wants to buy it. He says it’s a classic. He’d restore it perfectly and then sell it to an American. Lots of Americans want to buy a Beetle that’s in perfect condition, without many kilometers on it.” He paused. “He’s willing to pay six hundred thousand baht.”

Ladarat thought about that proposition for a full minute as Wiriya waited on the other end of the phone. The Beetle did have sentimental value. That was true. But wouldn’t it be better to see it restored? And honestly, what would she do with it? She didn’t know how to take care of an aged car.

“You don’t need to make a decision now…”

But she’d made her decision. Almost without realizing it. She would sell the car to the dealer. That was the right thing to do. With just one caveat.

A SMALL GIFT TO THE BOON LOTT ELEPHANT SANCTUARY

I
t wasn’t until after dark on Friday evening that Ladarat could prop her feet up on the other chair on her patio—the chair that Wiriya had occupied a week ago. Just a week ago? Really? It felt like it was years ago that they’d sat out here eating
kai jiew moo ssap
and talking.

So much had happened since then. It had been a long, long week. The inspectors had… inspected from Monday through Friday. Each long day, they started at 5
A.M
., and continued right through to past 7
P.M.
Today, Friday, it was past nine o’clock when she left, and close to ten by the time she swung down off the
sengteo
that she’d flagged outside the hospital. But it was a weekend, so Duanphen was open late, and she’d gotten a plate of
kao ka moo
—pork that had been simmered for hours in a rich broth seasoned with cinnamon and anise. It required so much time to simmer that it was usually only available late in the evening. Some sticky rice and
tom yam
made a meal.

The inspection, at least, had gone well. Very well.

As she’d expected, there were no difficult questions about the American’s unexpected recovery. Indeed, the inspectors interviewed both the young people and their parents, all of whom couldn’t say enough good things about the care they’d received.

There had been some… consternation when the mahout appeared in a downstairs waiting rom. Shoeless and threadbare, his materialization caused fits of anxiety among the well-meaning receptionists. One had apparently heard inflated stories about the strange man who was stalking an American patient, and she called security.

But even that ended well. Apparently the man had a cousin—a distant cousin, but a cousin nonetheless—on the sanitary inspection team. So the mahout heaped lavish praise on the cleanliness of the hospital, noting particularly how the cleaning staff waxed even the basement floor of the stairwell. So they passed the inspection with high marks. They received a 98 percent, which was higher than any other hospital in Chiang Mai had received in the past five years. That, she thought, was something to be very proud of.

And in that week, she’d finally sold the Beetle. It was time, she knew. And when she met the mechanic, she knew she’d found someone who would give it a good home. She particularly liked the way he talked excitedly about the car’s inner parts, and how they were in very good working order, considering. It was like he was talking about something she herself had personally accomplished—keeping an old car running. When in truth she knew she deserved very little credit. All she’d done, really, was to drive very little. No more than the short trip back and forth to the hospital every day, with a very few side trips.

Perhaps she could have gotten more money for it? But 600,000 baht was plenty. Plenty, at least, for what she had in mind.

In short order, she arranged for the sale. The mechanic found her a lightly used car, which was previously owned by a professor in the Chiang Mai University History Department. Nothing fancy, but it was all Ladarat need. And he sent the balance, about 300,000 baht, directly to the Boon Lott Elephant Sanctuary, an organization started by an idealistic young British woman named Katherine Connor. The sanctuary saved elephants from brutal work logging teak and trained them for lighter, happier work in tourism. There was even an elephant that the sanctuary was hoping to rescue, so Ladarat was able to arrange that ownership would pass from the current owner via the sanctuary to the mahout. So he would have a living, and a life.

She’d heard that the mahout wanted to name the elephant Ladarat. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. But then it wasn’t really her choice. Anyway, she would like to meet her namesake some day.

And the American—he continued to progress quickly. He was even starting to get out of his wheelchair with difficulty. Not surprisingly, his parents wanted him to travel home as soon as he could, but inexplicably he wanted to stay. Ladarat had heard that he and Kate were taking an apartment near the hospital so he could come in for physical therapy once or twice a day. He wanted to practice his Thai, and perhaps even to stay here. There was talk that he might open a travel business.

Peaflower, of course, went to jail. Certainly her case had been complicated by… nuance. But not enough to make a difference.

Still, Ladarat could not quite convince herself that justice had been done. Certainly Peaflower deserved to go to jail. That much was clear.

But was it fair to say that Peaflower was entirely responsible for what she’d done? Ladarat could imagine a different story in which a much younger Peaflower’s life might have taken a very different road. What if her mother had married a kind, caring man? Chinese or not.

Would she still have grown to become a murderer? She most certainly would not have. She was, one might say, a murderer by chance.

It was true, of course, that her history didn’t determine that she would become a murderer. She could have survived that childhood to emerge as an adult who did not kill Chinese men. She deserves some of the blame, but surely not all of it? So there was perhaps some wisdom in Wiriya’s plan to charge her for only the most recent murder.

Whether Peaflower would cooperate, though, was anyone’s guess. As they’d learned that evening in the House of Rooster Happiness, this was a woman who was very proud of herself and her cleverness. Once she was in a courtroom, granted the opportunity to show the world just how clever she was, it seemed entirely possible that she would become eloquent. But time would tell.

Time would tell, too, about the future of her fledgling detective agency. Ladarat would take it slowly, that was certain. Didn’t she have enough careers already? She was already a nurse and an ethicist. It was difficult indeed to imagine how she could find time to be a detective as well.

Although just this afternoon one of the monks at Wat Sai Moon had asked her quietly whether she might look into a small matter. Apparently a group of nurses at Loi Bahn Nursing Home had been making very lavish donations to the temple and to other causes, such as the Chiang Mai Canine Shelter. The monk admired their charitable inclinations, of course. And making merit in this way was a core tenet of Buddhism.

But he could not understand how these women could afford such largess on their modest salaries. And he worried that they were stealing from their elderly patients to fund their charity. Since it raised difficult ethical questions, he’d pointed out, would she help? She said that she would.

She’d even begun to think about calling herself a detective. At least in between Royal Inspections. If she were to be a detective, Ladarat knew that she would need to be an ethical one. That is, she would solve ethical problems. It was one thing to catch a murderer. Many detectives could do that.

But Khun Wiriya had paid her that compliment of saying that he valued her advice when there was… nuance. Ethical nuance. So that was the sort of detective she would be. How that would turn out was anybody’s guess, of course. But she herself was game for another adventure.

Other outcomes were easier to predict. Sisithorn and Dr. Wattana seemed to be spending a lot of time together. Sisithorn said it was related to the inspection, and perhaps it was. Who was Ladarat to judge? But still, she thought there was more… togetherness there than any inspection could possibly explain.

And speaking of togetherness… well, it was too soon to tell about her and Wiriya. They’d had dinner together once this past Tuesday, and it went well. She was even able to relax a little, and he told funny stories about his colleagues who had been caught taking bribes. Including one cop who demanded such generosity from the owner of a go-go club that the owner quit and the place was taken over by a McDonald’s.

Yes, it was, truly, too soon to tell. But he was willing to put up with her limited culinary skills, and
Maewfawbaahn
was certainly fond of him, which was a good sign. In any case, it was time for her life to take a different direction. Learning the skills of a detective was all well and good. But that was a hobby. There was real life to be lived, too. And she’d been neglecting that for too long.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the past ten years, I’ve been very fortunate to be able to travel often to Thailand. On those trips, I’ve been welcomed by the Thai people, and I’ve had a wonderful time exploring Thailand’s culture, language, and food. But my most meaningful experiences, and my fondest memories, have been in interactions with my physician and nurse colleagues there. It’s struck me many times that Thai culture highlights some of the best aspects of health care and healing, and offers lessons that I’ve learned a great deal from in my work as a doctor. Ladarat is, alas, not an actual person. However, her skill and wisdom are very real among the colleagues in Thailand I’ve worked with over the years, and I’m grateful to them for helping me to become a better physician.

MEET THE AUTHOR

David Casarett, M.D.

D
AVID
C
ASARETT,
M.D.,
is a physician, researcher, and tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He is the author of three acclaimed works of nonfiction,
Last Acts: Discovering Possibility and Opportunity at the End of Life
(Simon & Schuster, 2010),
Shocked: Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead
(Current/Penguin, 2014), and
Stoned:
A Doctor’s Case for Medical Marijuana
(Current/Penguin, 2015). His studies have resulted in more than one hundred articles and book chapters, published in leading medical journals such as
JAMA
and
The New England Journal of Medicine
. His many awards include the prestigious U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He lives in Philadelphia.