The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries) (7 page)

“And you’re planning on swimming out there?” I asked.

“I’ll be getting a ride from Nu’s husband,” she said. “He goes out every morning to check his squid traps.”

I decided it was probably for the best. A couple of hours on the turbulent sea and she’d be screaming to come back. Togetherness on a wooden boat in a hostile environment was a real test of compatibility. Everyone should have to do it.

UNPOSTED BLOG ENTRY 2

(found two weeks too late)

I’ve found another one. She has a family and people who’d miss her, but she’s adventurous. Nobody would be surprised if she got herself into trouble, vanished one weekend. And if it doesn’t work out, no problem. There are a lot of lonely women out there. She came under the pretense of an interview, but I could tell there was more. It wasn’t just a job. She was lonely. She needed somebody in her life. That’s why I agreed. I’m not sure I have a “type” exactly, but if I did, she wouldn’t be it. Too short. Too heavy. But I have a copy of her résumé. The Internet is very accommodating like that. It yielded up an essay of her more personal thoughts. I know her desires. I can play on them. That’s the modern age for you. Nobody is private anymore. Social networks are dark alleyways for people like me.

I can’t believe I waited this long to satisfy my urges. Now I know how frightfully simple it is I can’t wait to try this new me out. I’ll wait a few days before I call her. I don’t want to seem too keen. I’ll invite her for a meal and let her know she’s the lucky candidate. She can be my next. She’ll be so pleased she won’t see me for what I have become, until it’s too late.

C.C.

5.

Ladies Are Requested Not to Have Children in the Bar

(hotel sign)

E-MAIL FROM CLINT EASTWOOD TO JIMM JUREE

Dear Jimm and Sissi,

I’m sorry to have taken so long to reply to your many fascinating e-mails. Of course I’m not mad at you for hacking into our accounts here at Malpaso. It shows great initiative and drive. You were right about the jerk I hired to assess your earlier works, and I apologize for any embarrassment he may have caused you and your family.

You were right too about the great material you’ve been sending my way. The latest really topped the lot. Man, we all adored that last screenplay. I would just love to sit down with you both to discuss rights, financing, and perhaps a directorial collaboration.

I’ll be passing thru Thailand over the Christmas period, and it would be peachy if we could get together and discuss money. Perhaps you could give me an address so I can swing by your place when I’m there. Failing that, give me your phone numbers so I can give you a call and arrange a get-together.

I’m real excited about this project, and I have a strong feeling it’ll work out great for all of us. I look forward to meeting two really creative people such as yourselves.

Your pal,

Clint

“OK. It’s well written.”

“Thank you.”

“If you like your prose flowery and girly.”

Khun Boot, the proprietor and chief editor of the
Chumphon News
, found it impossible to give you a compliment without taking it away again. He had a complexion like an aerial photo I’d seen of Afghanistan. I’d never met him standing up. I wondered whether he’d lost his legs in a Weedwacker accident and they’d grafted a desk onto his lower torso.

“What can I say?” I said. “I’m a flowery girl.”

“I was expecting more grit from a journalist from Chiang Mai.”

Ooh, bitchy.

“You mean more than throwing axes half-naked at watermelons?” I asked.

“That’s exactly what I mean. You lead with that, so we expect you’ll go on to … to more. But we’re halfway through it and you’re talking about books.”

“He’s a writer.”

“Our readers don’t give a shit about writers.”

“Then why send me to interview—”

“They want smut. They want confirmation that
farang
living in Thailand are all losers and maniacs and mafia. They don’t want nice guys being successful. Did you really not find anything sleazy about him? Abused wife? Love affair? Gay liaisons?”

I hadn’t mentioned the departed wife or the horny maid. If I had, I knew Khun Boot would have led with a good old traditional Thai headline: FAMOUS FARANG WRITER KICKS OUT WIFE FOR ILLEGAL BURMESE. And I’d get the blame for both the story and the break-up. In fact, I didn’t think Conrad’s sex life was any business of the populace of Chumphon. I would have been happier to hope there were enough sophisticated readers to warrant an actual literary piece. I’d obviously been aiming too high.

“It’s an okay start,” he said. “Now I want it more sexy. More decadent. Dig the dirt, Juree. You’re supposedly a crime reporter. Find some.”

“Is this just your sweet way of asking me to rewrite a perfectly good interview?” I asked.

“You’ve got it.”

“And you’ll be paying me for both versions?”

“I’ll pay you for the final version if you get it right. You’re a freelancer. You do what I tell you. I don’t need your big Chiang Mai attitude in my office. You do it right or you don’t do it at all. Get it?”

As I was walking out of the
News
’s,
one-room house, I noticed the week’s headline on the fresh batch of newspapers. It was pure class. DRUG ADDICT HAS SEX WITH DEAD GRANDMOTHER. I realized I had a long way to go.

The drive to the coast helped me focus on the decline in journalism. It wouldn’t be long before the planet got its daily news in tiny boxes to one side of the celebrity scandal sites it subscribed to. Technology was making people even dumber. Moronicism was the new religion. As I drove out of the city, I repeated the mantra, “Keep it brief. Keep it vulgar.” Until I heard a
look tung
tune on Radio Chumphon that I recognized. I turned up the volume and sang along.

I’d passed the Novotel before on my way to the Ko Tao ferry. It was a vast place with its own nine-hole golf course, behind an ugly fence. Noisy road between it and the sea. No public transport into town. I’d always wondered why anyone would stay there. I parked in the car park and sought out Administration. There was one person at the front desk, who told me the manager was away. It was mid-week. There were no guests. The words “money laundering” passed through my mind. But the receptionist, Doy, was perfectly sweet. She was pretty and delicate as a hibiscus—the way I’d always appeared in my own dreams. When she found out I was inquiring about conference facilities, she
wai
’d me respectfully and asked how she could help. I suppose I could have told her I was an unemployed journalist looking for an old doctor I wasn’t particularly interested to find, but that wouldn’t have got me anywhere, would it now? So I leaned across the marble counter, took hold of her arm, and said, “Doy, I’m at my wit’s end. You’re my last hope.”

“Me? Why?” she said. “I mean, what can I do to help?”

“My mother,” I said. “She suffers from dementia. We can’t find her.”

“Oh, my word.”

“The last time anyone saw her was here at your hotel at a conference.”

“Oh!”

“It’s just … it would be really bad publicity for the hotel if she’s lying dead in a flower bed somewhere.”

“Well, yes. Certainly. Do you know what conference it was?”

“Child care.”

“That was just this weekend.”

“Yes.”

“I … I should tell somebody.”

“Thank you. And perhaps they’ll suggest you find the hotel reservations for a Dr. Somluk Shinabut and the list of conference attendees.”

“Yes. Yes. Good idea.”

She started to rifle through a drawer.

“And perhaps you could put me in touch with someone from the hotel who attended the conference.”

She looked up.

“We … we don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Attend. We just rent out the space. The organizing is all up to the people who book it.”

“So, they could all be running around naked up there and you’d never know?”

“Oh, I doubt whether … they wouldn’t do that.”

“Who was it that booked the conference room last weekend?”

“Right. I should know. There was a welcoming sign up at the front of reception. It was … The Bonny Baby Group. The sign said: THE BONNY BABY GROUP YOU’RE WELCOME TO MIDWIVES AND PEDIATRIC NURSES.”

“Good. I’ll look it up. But you’re sure nobody from your staff dropped in to see what was happening?”

“Yes. Unless…”

“Yes?”

“Well, I’m not on at the weekend so I don’t know, but if they wanted the event recorded, our IT person might have been there.”

“An inspired thought. And where would I find the IT department?”

“It’s not a department as such. He shares a room with the chamber maids,” said Doy, as she led me along the dark corridors of the swimming pool wing. We disturbed four maids, sitting with their feet up drinking chocolate milk. They didn’t jump to attention when we entered their room. In the far corner was an alcove. It was wide enough for two chairs and had high banks of shelves crammed with electrical equipment. A young man was sitting there repairing a coffee percolator. He’d allowed hair to grow wherever it wanted on his soft face, and as a result, he had a rambutan beard and I counted six mustache hairs. Doy left me with him and went off in search of someone who might be able to give me permission to look at the privileged hotel files. The young man was looking at me suspiciously even before I finished my story.

“You have a photo of her?” he asked.

I produced the Maprao Medical Clinic brochure open at the photo of Dr. Somluk.

He sighed.

“The only photo you have of your mother is in a photocopied brochure?” he said.

“It’s the most recent,” I told him.

He sighed again, as if life was a disappointment. He knew I was lying.

“You have to show me an ID,” he said.

“What for?”

“The log book. You want to look at a copy of the weekend’s DVDs, you have to sign for them.”

I handed him my citizenship card. He looked at the surname and up at me.

“She remarried,” I said.

He sighed as he filled out my details in the log book. Half an hour later, I was in a hotel room with Rambutan Chin, Doy, and a stack of DVDs. By telephone, the manager had given permission to afford me every assistance in the search for my poor mother. The “bad publicity” gambit had worked. We skipped the bullshit opening speeches from local dignitaries and the keynote address from some renowned pediatrician from Singapore because the camera was fixed on the podium. Rambutan wasn’t big on audience shots. In fact, he only bothered during the Q&A sessions at the end of each panel. That was my chance to search for my lost mother. Doy had brought me the program for the Bonny Baby Conference and Dr. Somluk was listed neither as a participant nor a speaker.

“Are you certain she was here?” Doy asked.

“I’m certain she told her nurse she was coming,” I said. “Oh, wait. Here.”

On the back page of the program was a list of affiliates of the Bonny Baby Group. Halfway down was Dr. Somluk’s name.

“Then she might have been helping to organize it,” said Doy.

“You’d think you’d know if your own mother was organizing a conference,” muttered Rambutan. I wanted to pluck out those hairs with tweezers.

It was a three-day conference. We’d been through the first two days. Doy ordered us the staff version of room service, which was tasty but classless. We’d arrived at Sunday. It was the second session of the day. The speaker was a fat woman talking on the topic BREASTS—THE MYTH. As I watched her full-body articulation played fast forward, I had to admit there was something fabulous about her enormous chest, heaving from side to side. She finished her PowerPoint. There was a Q&A session, and as the camera swung around, I thought I might have spotted someone who looked like Dr. Somluk seated beside an aisle. I pressed normal playing speed on the remote. The camera had found the person asking a question, and I was about to rewind to check the woman in the aisle. But there she was, standing behind the young lady at the microphone.

“I think that’s her,” I said. “Blue top.”

“You only think?” sighed Rambutan.

“I’d be sure if the camera was focused,” I said.

“There’s nothing wrong with my—”

“No, that’s her,” I said. She was in the queue, up next to speak. She seemed nervous. Shifting her weight from foot to foot.

“Wait. I remember this,” said Rambutan. “It was the only highlight in a deadly boring weekend.”

“Why, what…?” I began, but at that moment the young lady stepped away from the mic and Dr. Somluk took hold of it.

“Dr. Aisa,” she said. “Perhaps you can tell all the people gathered here
who
funded your trip to Chumphon and why you’re rea—”

Suddenly, she was grabbed by the arm by one of two women who had been standing behind her in the queue. Both were dressed in mudmee silks and had impeccable but impossible hairstyles that stood up on their heads like Formula One helmets. The second of the two wrested the mic away from Dr. Somluk and proceeded to ask a question of her own. Something about breast disease. Meanwhile, woman one was escorting Dr. Somluk back down the aisle and out of shot. The doctor had been forcibly prevented from completing her question. I was delighted. It suddenly turned the whole venture from a futile favor for a skinny nurse into a fully fledged mystery. Da’s concern might not have been groundless after all.

“That was weird,” said Doy.

We watched the scene again up until Dr. Somluk was being frogmarched out of shot.

“Do you remember what happened to her … my mother, after that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Rambutan. “The woman in silk was joined by another woman and they walked your … mother right out the exit. I don’t remember any of them coming back in.”

We watched the rest of the day’s footage, and he was right. There was no more sign of Dr. Somluk or her abductors. We went back to the scene. Watched it several times. In the queue, Dr. Somluk was nervous. Getting more agitated the longer the girl in front hogged the mic. When she was finally nabbed, she treated it like a joke, laughed and smiled. We Thais have a nasty habit of smiling to disguise what we’re actually feeling. Dr. Somluk’s smile was vast, but it was a Band-Aid not broad enough to cover the wound. We zoomed in on her face. Her eyes were not smiling. Dr. Somluk was petrified.