The Thai Amulet (16 page)

Then the party got going in earnest. David, true to his word, introduced Jennifer to some younger people, and she seemed to be rallying. She’d been terribly shocked by Thaksin’s death and our unpleasant task of finding the rest of the family and telling them. Wongvipa had betrayed no emotion whatsoever when I found her in her room. Dusit looked merely puzzled. Chat was clearly devastated by his father’s death, but he did not seek solace with Jennifer. Instead, he stood by his mother and brother, without saying so much as a word to either of us, and watched as we drove away.

Jennifer cried all the way back to Bangkok and spent most of the next day in bed. I finally managed to get her up and to the party, something I think she did only to make me feel better.

At about ten in the evening, I noticed she looked very tired, and suggested we retire for the night. David walked us out to the main road and hailed us a minicab. “Thanks for coming,” he said to me. “I’m sorry about your troubles, Jennifer. I hope everything works out okay.”

“He’s very nice,” Jennifer said as we sank into the cab. “His aunties are cute, aren’t they? I love the house, too. I’m glad we came. Maybe if Chat and I decide to live here part of the year, we could find ourselves a little house like that. Oh, what am I saying?” she said. “What a dope I am. This will never happen.”

“I think you should just give this a little time,” I said. “See how you feel in a day or two. Couples do have spats, you know. They aren’t necessarily terminal.” We sat in silence for a few minutes.

“You want to go shopping tomorrow?” the cabdriver said.

“I don’t think so, thank you,” I said.

“No pressure,” he said. About twenty seconds went by. “I know very good places. Sapphires, rubies. Also good tailor for
farang
sizes.”

“No thanks,” I said.

“Okay. No pressure. I give you my card. You call tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You could go shopping tonight. Some places still open. Very good.”

“I think we’ll go right back to the hotel,” I said, but then I changed my mind. “Are you up for one more stop?” I said, as a familiar building appeared off to one side.

“Sure,” she said. “You want to go shopping?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “Information only.”

I managed to convince the cabdriver to pull over, and we entered Will Beauchamp’s apartment building. “I’ve been intending to come back here at night,” I said. “But I’ve never really had the opportunity. I didn’t want to come alone, for one thing. I’m trying to talk to one of Will’s neighbors, and she doesn’t seem to be here during the day.”

There was light under one of the doors beside Will’s. I knocked and heard footsteps, and someone, whom I couldn’t see, opened the door only a little. The door was still held by the safety chain. “Are you Mrs. Praneet?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“My name is Lara McClintoch, and this is my niece, Jennifer. I am a friend of Will Beauchamp’s wife, and I’m trying to find him.”

The door shut. I thought that was that, and turned to go away. But I heard the chain slide in the lock, and the door reopened. “Hello Lara, Jennifer,” a woman’s voice said. “Please come in.”

“Nu?” I said. “It is Nu, isn’t it? I’m delighted to find you, but I was looking for Mrs. Praneet.” It was indeed Nu Chaiwong, daughter of Sompom and Wannee, granddaughter of Khun Thaksin.

“I am Praneet,” she said. “Actually it is Dr. Praneet. I am a medical doctor. You perhaps don’t understand our custom of nicknames. I am always called Nu by friends and family. Nu means Mouse. Many of us are named after animals. Would you like some tea, soft drinks?”

“We’re really sorry about your grandfather,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. “But please, sit down. I think you want to talk to me about Mr. William. I did not know how to get in touch with you and couldn’t ask Wongvipa. She doesn’t like me very much, and she obviously did not want me to talk to you. I was wondering how to reach you without her knowing.”

“I did come here a few times and knock on your door,” I said. “Even if I didn’t know it was you.”

“I work at a hospital, and my hours are quite irregular, so it is sometimes difficult to reach me,” she said. “You are here now, though, and I will tell you whatever I can.”

“Give me a minute,” I said. I went downstairs and tried to pay off the cabdriver, but he insisted upon waiting and charging me an hourly rate to do so. No pressure of course.

“Now what can I tell you about William?” she said, pouring us each a cup of jasmine tea. “I am very sad he is gone, but also angry.”

“Angry?”

“Yes, that he should go away like that without telling me. Unfortunately, it seems that is the kind of man he is.”

“What do you mean?” Jennifer said.

“He left his home in Canada, didn’t he? He told me about his wife and daughter, his house, his store there. He also said that when he left to come to Asia, he intended to go back the way he always did. He didn’t, though, did he? He just started all over again here.”

“Is that, like, normal?” Jennifer asked.

“Are you asking me as a doctor?” she said. “No, of course it isn’t. I wondered whether he had had a psychotic episode of some kind, a breakdown. And then having left like that, he couldn’t go back. But when he just disappeared again, I thought this was a pattern for him. Perhaps he is just a wanderer, the kind of man who really cannot make a true commitment to anyone or any place. The other thought I had was that he owed money to his landlord, which you may or may not know, is Ayutthaya Trading. This has caused me some embarrassment, you will understand. I introduced him to the family, and they lent him money to start up the store. It was a kind of partnership arrangement between William and Wongvipa. Not only that, but they invited him to their home, both the apartment in Ayutthaya and their place in Chiang Mai. I was disappointed that he returned their hospitality and my friendship with such behavior.”

“So you have assumed that he just up and left again.”

“Didn’t he?” she said.

“If I told you that he had enough money in the bank to pay them what he owed, but that the bank account hasn’t been touched since July, would you feel differently about him?” I asked.

She paused for a moment. “I think I would.”

“Can we start at the beginning?” I said. “How you met him, and what you knew about him while he was here?”

“Of course,” she said. “I met him here. We were neighbors. We would see each other in the hallway, and after a time we talked a little. He invited me to a party he had, and we became friends, at least I thought we were. When I was working very long hours, sometimes he would make tea for me when I got home late. When he went away looking for antiques for a few days, I watered the plants on his balcony. He did the same for me when I went to Chiang Mai for a holiday.”

“So when did you realize he wasn’t there?”

“A few months ago,” she said. “I had knocked on his door a few times. I have a key, just as he had a key to my place. I put a note under his door, but there was no answer. Finally I went in. The place looked as it always did, except he wasn’t there. My note was still on the floor inside the door. I looked around. All his clothes were there, so I assumed he would be coming back, but when he didn’t, I decided… well, you know, what I thought. I feel dreadful now that I may have been wrong, that something terrible has happened to him, and I did nothing.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“July, I think. He had a party to celebrate American Independence Day. I went to that. I don’t recall having seen him since then.”

“Did he have a lady friend? Or perhaps you…

“No, I was not his lover,” she said. “We were just friends. He did have women there from time to time, but I didn’t have the impression there was anyone special. I think he still felt married.”

“Tell me about that party. It seems to be the last time almost anyone saw him.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said.

“Who was there?”

“I didn’t know a lot of the people. There was a very nice man from the American Embassy, David something, and another one, very blond and very sarcastic.”

“Ferguson,” I said. “The nice one, I mean. The other might have been Charles Benson.”

“Yes, I think so. There was also a rather unpleasant man who said he was William’s literary agent.”

“Bent Rowland,” I said.

“Something like that. Yutai was there. You met him at dinner, I think.”

“Yutai!” I exclaimed. “When I asked him about William the other evening at dinner, he said he didn’t recall the name. How could you come to someone’s party and not remember them?”

“Perhaps he misunderstood you,” Praneet said. “His English is not perfect. No one else from my family came. There was a young woman, a
farang.
Sorry, I shouldn’t use that term. An American. Very pale, with a lot of blond hair.”

“Tatiana Tucker. She said William was making a big play for her.”

“What does this mean?” Praneet said.

“It means he was interested in her and was trying to seduce her,” Jennifer said.

“Is that what she said?” Praneet replied. “I saw it differently. In my opinion, she was—what was that expression?— making a play for him. Very definitely. I don’t think he was interested at first, but then, you know, the party went on, there was much American wine and beer for the occasion. They did disappear into the bathroom together and stayed there for some time. One makes certain assumptions about what they might have been doing in there. Still, I would have said that she was more interested in him than the other way around.”

“Anybody else?”

“Some of the neighbors in the building stopped by. There was another man, I can’t recall his name, but he was very interested in a painting that William had in the bedroom. He told me his father had painted it.”

“Robert Fitzgerald,” I said. “He seems to have forgotten being there, too.” Apparently the rather grumpy wood-carver belonged to the ranks of those who had not been entirely forthcoming with me on the subject of Will Beauchamp.

“Perhaps that was his name,” she said. “I really can’t recall. I don’t think we were introduced, but I did speak to him for a few minutes. He brought his mother with him. She was visiting from England.”

“Do you know a Mr. Prasit, by any chance?”

“I know many Prasits. It is a very common name here. Can you narrow it down a little?”

“He’s the assistant manager of the PPKK.”

“What is that?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. He said he came and talked to you, asked you if you had seen Will.”

“There was someone who came asking for Will. I told him I hadn’t seen him in a long time. I have no idea who he was, and if he mentioned his name, I don’t recall it.”

“You implied Will and Wongvipa were in business together. Are you sure? That isn’t the way she describes it.”

“He certainly seemed to think so. He had cards printed up with some of her merchandise and sent it to his contacts. He even got an expression of interest from a couple of people. It seemed to me, though, that he worked hard at it for a while, but then lost interest. Instead, he started writing a book. I don’t know how serious he was about it when he started, but as time went by, he spent more and more time working on it, and he finished it last spring, some time.”

“Are you sure he finished it?” I said.

“He told me he had.”

“Do you know what it was about?”

“He told me it was about a murder that occurred in Bangkok many years ago,” she said. “He said he had happened upon the story quite by chance, but that the more he looked into it, the more interesting it got. That’s all I know. He did not share any of it with me, so I can’t tell you anything more.”

“He was looking for a publisher,” I said. “That horrible man Bent Rowland was his agent. He told me he was shopping it around in Singapore or something.”

“William had a publisher. He had received, what do you call it in publishing, money before the book is published?”

“An advance.”

“Yes. He was waiting to see if the publisher wanted any changes. He told me he had decided to throw the party to celebrate. The strange thing is, he didn’t mention it at the party. I would have thought he would have made an announcement or something, but he didn’t. He and Mr. Bent—is that his name?—had an argument about it at the party. They were in the kitchen with the door closed, and I was trying to help, so I went in with some of the plates, you know, that needed more food, not realizing they were in there having a private conversation. William was very upset about something, and Mr. Bent looked to me very, I don’t know the right word, but like he was avoiding telling the truth.”

“Evasive should about do it. Mr. Bent told me he was still looking for a publisher, and that William hadn’t yet finished the book,” I said. “Not quite the same story. Are you sure about the publisher?”

“Yes,” she said. “William told me last spring some time, perhaps April or May. He showed me the check from that Mr. Bent. It had the name of the agency on it. It was for about two thousand U.S. dollars. William said that was for half of the advance, and he would
get
the other half when the publisher finished reading it. He joked about the name of his publisher. I didn’t understand the joke, but he called them after a dessert you have in your country. It is a pie with limes in it, or something.”

“Key lime pie?” Jennifer said.

“Exactly,” she said. “That was not the name of the publisher, of course, but that is what William called them. I asked him if he was going to serve this at his party, and he said something about how it wasn’t funny any longer, and he was going to have to have a serious discussion with Mr. Bent. I am certain they were having that serious discussion in the kitchen at the party.”

“Did he say where this Key Lime Pie company was located?”

“I don’t recall. I had the impression it was here in Bangkok.”

“Where did Will work on his book?”

“Here, in his apartment. He had a laptop, and he worked on that. He also went away from time to time to work on it. I arranged for him to use the family home in Chiang Mai when he found he needed quiet.”