Killed at the Whim of a Hat

“Did they treat you well?”

I was mired in cliches, too. I needed a good clean out.

“Yes.”

“I’m assuming they didn’t actually charge you with anything.”

“No.”

“Can I ask you some more questions about that day? The day you found the body?”

I hoped I could come up with a question or two that evoked more than one word answers.

“Yes.”

“Did you notice anything odd about Abbot Winai when you found him lying there on the path?”

“Odd?”

“Incongruous, illogical, downright weird.”

“Are you talking about the hat?”

Bingo.

“I am.”

“I mentioned it to the detectives. It’s been on my mind since that afternoon. The officers dismissed it. They said it was a hot day — late afternoon glare of the sun. The abbot could be forgiven for slipping on a hat, they said.”

“But you don’t agree.”

“I know how strictly my friend followed the regulations. That’s why he was elected to conduct inquiries on behalf of the Sangka. It’s clearly stipulated in the Disciplines, book five, regulation four, that a monk cannot wear a hat.”

This was starting to feel rather silly.

“So what do you think would possess him to break with tradition and put on a hat?”

“That’s just it. He didn’t. We had been debating my prickly situation with regard to the precepts…”

“Arguing?”

“More like a philosophical discussion. We’d been mulling over points for two days already. It was his habit to walk and digest his thoughts, then return with more questions. He was a very logical and fair man. He stood and stretched and told me he would be back soon and began to walk along the concrete path. As soon as he stepped out of the shade of the fig tree he readjusted his robes and covered his head with one flap of material. He wasn’t wearing a hat, of course.”

“Perhaps one of the gardeners left it there? He could have picked it up on the way?”

“What for?”

Good question. I had no idea.

“So, when you reached him, that was the first time you’d seen the hat?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of hat was it?”

“It was very bright orange with a red flower.”

If I’d been wearing glasses, I would have looked down them at him.

“Orange?”

“Bright orange. Like the traffic cones.”

“And the police didn’t see anything odd about that?”

“Again, they assumed he’d grabbed the first thing he could find to go on his walk.”

“But you told them…?”

“I am a suspect. They were more interested in the abbot’s investigation of me.”

“Do you want to talk about that?”

“There is nothing to talk about.”

“But you were engaged in long philosophical discussions with a man who was killed. It’s all relevant.”

“Philosophy has no personal investment. We discussed theory.”

“The theory of a relationship between a monk and a nun.”

He smiled. That was always a bad sign with an abbot. I could see he was rearranging his sandals with his feet for a quick getaway. I was about to lose him.

“There is nothing there of relevance,” he said, and stood.

“One last question, then,” I said.

“You must be heavy with answers by now.”

“I can squeeze in one more dessert. Do you remember seeing a camera?”

“Where?”

“At the crime scene.”

“No, but I was far away.”

“You didn’t approach the body?”

“No.”

“You didn’t kneel down? Feel his pulse?”

“No.”

“Then how did you know he was dead?”

He smiled as he started away from me.

“Of course, I knew,” he said.

He walked so evenly across the dirt ground it was as if he had little hover jets on the soles of his sandals. If only I’d paid more attention in Religious Instruction. Of course he knew? Why? Because he’d killed him? Because he’d witnessed his girlfriend kill him? How do you know a man’s dead without touching him? I could see why the detectives still had their doubts.

Abbot Kem was gone and the nun was nowhere to be seen and I decided there was nothing more to be learned from Wat Feuang Fa. I had things to do elsewhere, starting with a lunch to cook. A peculiar family to feed. It was time to get back on my bicycle and head off home. It would be another long cycle but I was starting to enjoy the rides. I could feel tone in muscle that I’d long since given up on. I was sleeping whole nights rather than segments. Exercise had its place. I was starting to see myself as this Maprao-based Agatha Christie character pedaling off to solve crimes on her two-gear shopping bicycle and modeling in her spare time. I reached down for my flip-flops and found just the one. I looked around at the frogs-wouldn’t-melt-in-my- mouth expressions of the half-dozen dogs that hadn’t left with the abbot. They were all as ugly as sin, Fellini dog extras: silvery eyes bulging, sores gleaming, this or that limb missing. These were the dogs who came to temples to see out their final days. But, as is always the case, the most innocent-looking suspect is invariably the culprit. And Sticky Rice sat at the corner of the hut with an obviously fake expression of innocence on his face. He was sitting on my flip-flop as if it was a surfboard and he wasn’t about to give up his ride. When I reached for it he tore off, my sandal between his teeth.

I hopped after him to the rear of the nuns’ quarters and homed in on the back of a hut I knew to be one of his stash houses. There was no sign of cute but fat Sticky R. and I really wasn’t in the mood to play. I considered leaving my flip-flop behind and riding home without it but it was the principle of the thing. I’d watched The Dog Whisperer on Animal Planet once when there was nothing else on. If dogs think you’re weak they’ll take control of your world. I had horror visions of them walking through police lines and taking over Government House. I needed to stop the revolution right here. I lowered myself into a push-up and stared into the forty-centimeter gap below the hut. The shadows were dark but, sure enough, one black eye like that of a rogue panda stared out at me from the gloom. The pup let out an unconvincing juvenile growl which failed to terrorize me. I growled back. I edged forward on my belly and he retreated with my sandal. Edge, retreat. Edge, retreat. The farther in I crawled the darker it became so I took my cell phone out of my back pocket and turned it on. A warm blue glow emanated from the screen.

In this swimming pool light I could make out Sticky Rice backed into a corner. He was trembling. It made me feel like a terrible bully. I was sure if he kept up his current regimen of eating everything he saw, he’d soon outweigh me, but at that moment he was still a little fellow.

Life hadn’t been kind to him. Barely six months on the planet and he was already in the doghouse. An inmate of the mutt penitentiary where all bad street dogs came to die a slow death. I decided I wouldn’t thump him with my shoe once I’d retrieved it. He’d suffered enough. But he was still a meter from my grasp. Luckily I was wearing