Twenty-Five

Fried sweet sesame balls, sometimes called smiling sesame balls, are often served at the New Year to represent happiness, good luck, and fortune.

“WAIT. YOU SAW HIM? IN THE BASEMENT? HERE?” I POINTED downward.

“Is this the guy who died? Was killed, or whatever?” the busser asked, his face ashen.

“In our basement?” Keith interjected.

“When?” I said. Bless him, the young man stayed calm despite the firestorm of questions. “Sorry. Let’s slow down. Yes, this is the man who was killed, probably murdered, in the basement of the Gold Rush Hotel. His name was Terence Leong, and no one knows what he was doing in Seattle or in the building. Anything you remember could be important.”

The four of us traipsed down the narrow stairs to the basement.

“It was about ten days ago, before the food walk,” the busser said. “I’d have to check my work schedule to tell you what day for sure. I came down to get a bundle of clean towels and ran into this guy. It was raining, I remember that, and his hair and jacket were damp.”

“What was he doing?” I asked. “Had you seen him in the café?”

“No, but I’m always on the move. I could easily not see a customer. I assumed he was waiting for the restroom, but a woman came out and he didn’t go in. I opened the door to the storeroom, and he left.”

Keith opened the door. Eight by ten, the wire shelving stacked with supplies, neatly organized. Boxes of paper goods sat on the floor.

“Does this lead anywhere?” I asked Keith. “Any doors or tunnels that connect with any other buildings? The Gold Rush, in particular.”

“No. The plumber and I looked. We asked Bobby—”

“Bobby?”

“One of the rare days when he bothered to show up. If I owned all this”—he gestured, meaning not the cramped basement where we stood but the whole shebang—“I’d pay a lot more attention to it.”

I didn’t correct his assumption about the ownership. Instead, I turned to his young employee. “I’m going to relay all this to the police. They’ll want to interview you, I’m sure. It’s critical that you tell them everything you told us.”

He nodded solemnly.

Then I spoke to Roxanne. “Meanwhile, you and I have some exploring to do.”

WE HADN’T found what I’d expected. Maybe my theory was wrong.

Only one way to tell.

The rain had let up and the bricks in the alley behind the Gold Rush glistened in the light that filled the space between the shadows. Oil had left a palette of blue, gold, and purple on the pocked surfaces of the bricks and gathered between them in wraith-like shapes that shimmered, the way the past does when you peer into it too closely.

“What are we looking for?” Roxanne asked. Her boots had higher heels than I would have wanted to wear while traipsing uneven surfaces, but she didn’t complain.

“This.” She watched my screen as I scrolled for the pictures I’d taken in Maynard Alley Sunday afternoon. I pointed at the shot of a curved course of bricks inches above the alley surface, a narrow rectangle of glass visible below them, and explained how the alleys had been filled and rebricked to alleviate flooding, covering up doors and windows. “These buildings are all interconnected, whether they were built before the fill or after, on top of old foundations or new. If I’m right, there are hidden rooms all over this alley, accessible only from inside.”

“Wow,” she said, and we turned our attention back to the rear walls of the Gold Rush block.

“There.” She pointed. “That’s got to be a window.”

She was right. A curved arch of old bricks was plainly visible, the glass below it hard to pick out, if you didn’t know what you were looking for.

“The secret doorways,” she said, turning to me. “What Terence Leong was searching for in the basement of the café.”

“Searching for the door to his great-grandfather’s pharmacy.”

Above us, a window squeaked open and we glanced up. An elderly woman glared down at us, then jerked her head back and slammed the window shut.

“That’s the woman,” Roxanne said. “The one who threatened us. She was in your pictures.”

“What?”

She grabbed my phone and scrolled back to my selfie of Seetha, my mother, and me mugging for the camera in front of the dim sum booth. Behind us, an unwitting photobomber, was the old lady that Rose had called Auntie when I’d seen her scowling at me in the Red Lantern. The woman she’d mentioned earlier at the bus stop. Above us, the window was closed and dark. I noticed the changes in construction where one building ended and another started. The upstairs window wasn’t in the Gold Rush itself, but in the next building, all part of the block old Mr. Wu had pieced together after his first wife’s tragic death.

Living well may be the best revenge, but doing so at your enemy’s expense is even better. Or so the old man had thought.

“You might be right,” I said. “But why? Why did she care if we poked around in the past?”

I scrolled backward. There. I’d taken a couple of shots of the lion dancers, as Roxanne had.

“She saw Seetha and me talking to Oliver, in his lion dancer costume. She must have seen you taking pictures, too.” I held up a hand to stave off a protest. “I saw them on your Instagram. I wondered if you thought the dancer we were talking to was Oliver, or Terence. Maybe she wondered, too. But what’s her connection to all this?”

“I saw Oliver leaving his apartment in the hotel, in costume,” she said. “Later, I went out to get some pictures. I decided it would be a good addition to the story of the Gold Rush, if in fact we could establish that it had historical significance.”

“Why not just ask him if you could take his picture? Why not tell me you’d left the hotel?”

“By then I knew Abigail was tending the building—I saw her cleaning it. But I didn’t know she owned it. I thought if I could show her that Oliver, the family, and the hotel were an important part of the community, she might agree to try to save the hotel. And the pharmacy.”

I didn’t think Abigail needed convincing. But when it came to the hotel, would she go against her husband’s wishes? Decision-making within a marriage can be complicated.

Despite the ominous shadows growing as the light faded, we picked our way through the alley, pointing out the brick arches of half a dozen old doors and windows buried by progress more than a century ago. The cold began to seep into my bones, and I grabbed Roxanne’s arm to hurry us along. I didn’t breathe easy until we reached the street. We rounded the corner and merged into the Friday evening bustle of people leaving their offices, rushing for the bus or the light rail, stopping for a drink with a friend, or grabbing takeout.

Then we arrived at the familiar double doors of the Gold Rush. The flowers and other offerings left in memoriam were starting to look bedraggled.

“You’re sure,” I said as we climbed the steps, “that you never saw Terence in the building?”

“I never saw him,” she said, unlocking the door. “But now I wonder if he wasn’t here. If he wasn’t the presence Oliver had me half-convinced was the ghost of Bruce Lee.”

INSIDE the lobby, I shoved my phone in my pants pocket and dropped my tote bag and coat on a chair, intent on searching the basement.

“Secret passages,” Roxanne muttered. She was standing in front of the reception desk, coat on. A fine layer of dust lay on the counter, as if recent goings-on had stirred it up and it was only now settling back down.

As if the hotel itself had given up waiting for the guests’ return.

“Secret doors, secret rooms.” She darted around the end of the desk. Unhooked the velvet rope. Sat in the small chair and leaned over, out of my sight, but I could hear her opening and closing doors and drawers.

“The year we lived in Malaysia, the organization my parents worked for had taken over an old hotel. We kids had the run of the place and made a game of pretending we’d found hidden passages and secret chambers. But I’m not finding anything here.”

I surveyed the tiny space. On the wall behind the desk, each of the cubbies held a key and a numbered fob. Except the top row, where each cubby held a small, lidded jar, just out of my reach.

“Hold that chair for me,” I said. Roxanne stood and steadied the wheeled chair as I stepped on the seat. First jar, empty. Second, empty. I rattled the next.

“They’re all empty,” Roxanne said as I opened the third, a plain white ginger jar.

I turned over the lid. “Jackpot!” Inside, taped to the gleaming porcelain, was a small brass key. I pried it loose and held it up.

I climbed down and we scouted for a lock, me crawling on my hands and knees. Nothing. I leaned back against the paneled wall. I could almost see the gears churning behind Roxanne’s eyes.

The gears clicked. She snatched the key from my hand, then charged past me. I pushed myself up, grabbing at the velvet rope for help, and followed her. Up the stairs she went, up the red carpet runner, past the displays of musical instruments and objects I couldn’t identify. She picked up speed, running in heels, me on her tail. At the second floor, she tore down the long hallway to the room at the end. Turned the porcelain knob and entered. Sat on the bench in front of the dressing table and lifted the lace scarf.

There, beneath the rounded edge, was a recessed lap drawer. And in the middle, in the center of a small brass circlet, was a tiny keyhole.

“How did you know it was there?” I asked.

“I didn’t. The dresser scarf hid it.” She held up the key. “I’m almost afraid to open it.”

“I’m not.” I slipped the key into the lock. The same reluctance that had stopped Roxanne hit me like a warning. A lady of another era might have kept her rouge in such a drawer, her favorite earrings, or the locket her lover gave her. But the woman who had last lived in this room, the woman who had taken her baby and left everything else behind, that woman had hidden something in here. Who had she meant to find it?

I turned the key and slid the drawer open. Inside, underneath a stone chop, the kind once used in China to dip in a pot of thick ink and stamp a signature on a letter or a painting, lay a large piece of paper folded several times. I lifted it out. A tiny strip of paper drifted to the floor. Roxanne picked it up.

“‘Fortunate is the son,’” she read, “‘who knows his mother’s love.’”

A shiver ran through me. A mother and son had lived in this room.

I laid the paper on top of the dressing table and unfolded it.

“Rice paper,” Roxanne said.

At first the hand-drawn diagram meant nothing to me, squares and rectangles and lines, some labeled with tiny Chinese characters, as mysterious as the genealogist’s charts. Roxanne pointed at the characters in the corner. A signature, stamped by the chop?

And then I thought I knew what we’d found.

A drawing of the rooms and passages beneath the Gold Rush. Made by Dr. Chen himself?

I’d have bet money on it.