start?” We both glared at him. “All right. The good news it is. First, the girl child was indeed a genius because the Benz number checked out. They found the car. The bad news is that it’s a rental from a company in Phuket, and the fellow that stayed over at the resort was one of their hired drivers. His name’s Wirapon, nickname, Keeo.”
“That shouldn’t rule him out,” I said. “Rental car drivers can be murderers, too.”
“That’s true. But it appears he’s more than happy to help the police with their inquiries. They’re driving him over from Phuket along with the details of the customer who hired the car and the daily log.”
“Doesn’t sound like a criminal to me,” said Granddad Jah.
“Me neither. He’ll be here by three so we should have some answers then. So, where was I? All right. Good news number two is that the court gave us the go-ahead to trace the number of the person who called in the accident of — aka attack on — Sergeant Phoom. The cell number belongs to the owner of a wheelchair and crutch dealership in Lang Suan. The bad news is that the owner says he wasn’t the person who called in. He’d lent his phone to his brother who was visiting from Chonburi that day. He was doing some business down here and had forgotten to bring his phone charger with him. He said his brother was due back to his home the next day and didn’t want to hang around here making police reports. The hospital number was on speed dial on the phone.”
“Well, if that’s true…” I said.
“…and if the second witness was correct about seeing a man and woman at the accident scene,” Chompu added, “it means that the other car at the scene was driven by a woman. The police here can’t get hold of the brother. He presumably hasn’t yet worked out how to charge his cell phone. But the crutch dealer said his brother had mentioned the accident. He’d said something about a Chinese woman in an expensive car who couldn’t speak any Thai. She was all aflutter because she was the first at the scene. Once the brother arrived she drove off. He was by himself. He didn’t have any choice but to phone for help.”
“This is all getting rather complicated,” I said.
My head buzzed. There was a road team in there working on my narrow mind. Trying to broaden it. I had to go over all the events of the previous week, deleting a male perpetrator and replacing him with a female. How sexist was I? I hadn’t once asked the hotels and resorts about women. I hadn’t once considered the possibility of a female being capable of a series of violent acts. Even when they presented me with a female suspect, I balked at the possibility. I was a chauvinist of the worst kind.
“She wasn’t necessarily Chinese at all,” said Granddad Jah in his annoying unexpressive tone. “She could very easily have been a Thai with a wig.”
I laughed.
“Why would she need a wig to convince anyone she was…? Oh.” I got it. “You’re still with the nun, aren’t you?”
“It all fits,” he said. “She sets it up to look like someone from outside has done it, puts on a disguise. Car rental. Sneaks in and out of the temple without being seen. Motive. Opportunity. Plus, she’s a classic psychopath, following this monk around for two thirds of her life. She takes my bet.”
I didn’t buy it. It wasn’t just because she was a nun who’d spent most of her life in pursuit of true love. It’s possible I might have empathized, but a good journalist is able to remove herself from a case. Even if I went along with Granddad’s scenario and I arrived at the point where I needed to exterminate Abbot Winai from Internal Affairs so I could be with my lover, it could never have been planned this methodically. I didn’t see the murder of the abbot as a mid-play act. This wasn’t the bumping off of a threat, the removal of a plot spoiler on the way to the final scene. I’d seen the photos. Abbot Winai was undoubtedly the star of the show and his demise was the climax. This was all about him, not her.
“I think it’s time to show your granddad the photos,” said Chompu.
I’d considered it myself, of course, albeit briefly. Granddad Jah had earned our trust, but this was more than just sharing information. It was sharing a secret. The lieutenant and I had deliberately withheld evidence. It was a criminal offense. Granddad Jah couldn’t even drink a beer without Breathalyzing himself. He was a stickler. He’d made his own life miserable by being honest. I had no idea where this would fit in his moral code book. Chompu could lose everything he’d fought for on this one throw of the dice, but he’d tossed the suckers anyway.
Granddad Jah was pensive for several seconds. His head nodded in time with the bleating of the ‘door unfastened’ buzzer. Then he looked at the policeman.
“I was wondering when you’d get around to it,” he said.
“You knew I’d downloaded the pictures?” said I.
“You didn’t think I’d be curious as to why a police lieutenant was going with you to your room at ten thirty in the morning?”
I should have had a snide answer to that but I was still in shock.
“Were you spying?”
“Just happened to be sitting in a bush, minding my own business. But I confess I wouldn’t mind seeing those slides from closer range.”
Granddad was in. We were safe. An alliance of three untrustworthy people.
“Well, if that wasn’t good enough news in itself,” said Chompu, “I have even more information to impart on our own modest VW inquiry. In his statement,
Chompu dropped us home and promised to call as soon as the results from the Benz driver interview came to light. I put Granddad Jah in front of my computer and showed him where to click. I was on my way to find Mair in the shop when I noticed our young family of guests back on the balcony. I noticed Gogo sitting with the kids, showing them her belly. She never showed me her belly. She seemed to like everyone except me.
“Would you mind if I asked you a question?” said the father.
I hoped it wouldn’t be anything difficult: the tides, the names of the islands you could vaguely see on the horizon, or the genus of the bright turquoise birds that sat regularly on our back fence. My local knowledge was remedial.
“Certainly.”
He walked leisurely beside me along the path behind the beachfront tables. He was cheerful, attractive in a young-married-man kind of way, and very polite, and the question he asked was a lot simpler than I’d imagined.
“Would you be interested in selling this place?”
My first reaction was that this crowd must have escaped from some maximum security family asylum. I looked back over my shoulder at the young wife and the happy children. They seemed normal enough.
“Why?” I asked.
“We’ve been driving down the coast,” he said, “looking for a little place to take over. My wife’s father passed away last year and left us a small sum we hadn’t expected. We have a modest dream to make a go of something on the coast. We aren’t rolling in money but I can make you a fair offer. We like it here.”
“You do? Why?”
“Haven’t you looked around?”
At his bidding, I looked around. The noncommittal weather of the past week had finally got its act together and a black pudding of a storm cloud was rolling toward us, filling the entire vast sky to the east. It was a Steven Spielberg moment. I instinctively knew I should have been egging the young father on, but all I could see were the faces of his children starving to death.
“Look. Really. This is the toilet plunger of resorts. We’ve been here nine months and we haven’t made enough money to get the truck tires pumped up.”
“But that’s because you don’t love it.”
“What?”
“None of you is really here. I’ve been watching you. I see you all come and go but your hearts aren’t here with you. A place like this, you have to work at. You’ve got no food in the kitchen refrigerator, no stock in the store. The cabins are sparse and uninviting. Nobody sweeps the beach.” (People sweep beaches?) “You’re all just staying
