expect the only daughter of wealthy Chinese parents to drive. She was no stranger to the breed. Not all of them were spoilt, arrogant, and manic about acquiring the latest fashion in clothes, cars, shoes, and purses. But more than enough were.
When Ava saw the BMW, she assumed Maggie Chew would fit the bill. But as she watched the short, pudgy girl walk into the restaurant, the image disappeared.
Ava stood up, and when Maggie saw her, she walked towards the table with her head down, her eyes fixed upon her unlaced white running shoes.
“Thank you for coming,” Ava said.
Maggie raised her head. Ava saw that her skin was marred by bright red pimples high on her cheeks and small pits beneath them. Her eyes were large, with dark circles around them. “I didn’t think I had much choice,” she said.
“Shall we order?” Ava asked, a believer in the calming quality of the dim sum ritual.
“I don’t know how much I can eat.”
“What would you recommend?” Ava persisted.
Maggie picked up the dim sum menu. “The sticky rice is good… the chicken feet in black bean sauce… turnip cake.”
“How is the har gow?”
“I prefer the shrimp-and-chive dumplings.”
When their order had been taken, Ava poured tea for Maggie. Maggie tapped her middle finger gently on the table as a sign of thanks. She has manners, Ava thought.
“I’m sorry I had to reach you through Auntie Lily. I tried Edward Ling first.”
“Aunt Lily is just about my mother’s closest friend, and my mother can’t stand Edward Ling. Besides, when he called last night, he insisted on talking to my father and didn’t even mention your name.”
“Did he speak to your father?” Ava asked.
“No. I told you, my father is not in a state to talk to anyone.”
“Maggie, do either you or your mother know what’s happened to your father?”
“My mother knows that something has gone wrong with the business, but she isn’t interested in all the gory details. She couldn’t handle them anyway. I’m a bit stronger.”
“So you know something? I mean, you know what happened? You know the details?”
Maggie closed her eyes, squeezed them tightly, then shook her head. “I’ve spent the last week at my parents’ home trying to keep my father sane and trying to get my mother to stop crying,” she said, waving a hand to indicate her sweatshirt. Ava noticed the cuffs were badly frayed. “I usually don’t dress like this, but I haven’t been getting much sleep and I’ve let myself go. When you called, I was at my condo getting some clean clothes to take back to West Van. That’s where my parents live.”
“The British Properties?”
“Yes. That was my mother’s choice.”
“And I hear you’re a student.”
“Law school. My father’s wish.”
“I’m an accountant.”
“I know; Louis told me. He said you were hired by Uncle Tommy’s company to look into some missing money, and he was shocked when he met you. Young, good-looking, female, capable — not my Uncle Tommy’s normal type of employee. Louis said some of the people in Manila were actually afraid of you, that you have some amazing connections.”
Ava didn’t want to talk about her connections. Instead she patted the envelope that held her paperwork. There isn’t much point, she thought, in being coy. “The money that’s missing — your father took it. I have all the records here.”
Maggie’s eyes flicked over the envelope. “I know he did,” she said.
Ava blinked. “Well, since you know,” she pressed, “I’d like you to tell me why he did it. And I’d like to know where the money is.”
The turnip cake arrived. Maggie Chew slathered chili sauce on a slice and bit into it. “Why haven’t you gone to my uncle with your information?”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“Because if you had, there’s no force on earth that would keep him from descending on my father, with every ounce of malice and viciousness he could muster. There are only two things he cares about: his position in the family and his money. When it comes to family, my Uncle Tommy talks a good story, but the reality is that he thinks of it as his family. He thinks that everyone should be grateful to him — the oldest son, the trailblazer — for whatever they have in life, and should express their thanks by being obedient, subservient, and loyal as a dog. Then there’s his money — he’s married to it. My father and my uncle in Hong Kong were supposedly partners in the business, but the truth is, all the purse strings are held tightly by Uncle Tommy. He decides how much money they need and then doles it out as he sees fit.”
“You’ve obviously done a lot of thinking about this,” Ava said.
Maggie laid down her chopsticks. “It’s all I’ve thought about for the past week. My father has committed two cardinal sins. He’s stolen from my uncle’s precious money hoard and in the process he’s betrayed the family. I’d be surprised if Uncle Tommy didn’t want him dead.”
“Do you know how much money your father appears to have taken?”
“He said it was more than fifty million dollars.”
“You say that so calmly.”
“It’s so big a number it hardly seems real.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s gone.”
“How can more than fifty million dollars just disappear?”
Maggie picked up her chopsticks and plucked a chicken foot from the bamboo steamer. Then just as quickly she put it back. “I really don’t think I can eat.”
“Me neither,” Ava said. A lump the size of a grapefruit was lodged in her chest. Any hope of a giant fee had been quickly dashed. “Tell me what happened.”
Maggie closed her eyes again. “My mother told me last week that my father had been acting strangely for months. I was so busy at school that I hardly saw them. She told me she would nag at him about what was wrong but he wouldn’t talk to her. He’d just retreat into his office at the house and spend hours on the computer playing online poker.”
“It’s popular these days.”
“That’s hardly the word for it,” Maggie said. “It’s become a life-sucking addiction. That’s how he lost the money.”
“Oh no, please don’t tell me that,” Ava said, struggling to believe it.
Maggie opened her eyes. The tears welling in their corners were threatening to spill over. “I know it sounds absurd. I know it sounds absolutely insane and improbable,” she said.
“You’re saying he lost fifty million dollars playing online poker? How is that even possible?”
“He was playing no-limit Texas hold’em at a table where the minimum blinds were $1,000 and $2,000. You can’t sit at a table like that without a starting stack of at least $100,000, and according to my father he normally started with $200,000.”
“Still — ”
“And then multiply that by five, because that’s how many tables he would play at one time.”
“A million dollars in one sitting?”
“Sometimes more. If he lost he would just reload,” Maggie said, wiping her eyes. “It started, I think, slowly. He began with his own cash but he quickly ran through that. When it was gone, he dipped into company money — always, he swears, with the intention of winning the money back. Of course, he never did, and it just got worse and worse. Some weeks he lost close to ten million dollars.”
“He didn’t always lose, did he?”
“No, just most of the time. Enough of the time.”
“Then why didn’t he stop?” Ava asked, realizing the second she did that it was a stupid question.
