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TAL STOOD IN THE RESTROOM’S doorway, his frame more upright than usual. Where was his usual muscle soreness that required a perpetual tube of smelly ointment?
Tal’s eyes widened at the sight of Orchid. “Ah, the wicked stepmother, always overworking me until my body feels like it’s broken. Well, all the better. Two for the price of one.” After Tal marched in, he slammed the door shut and locked it.
“Why are you trapping us inside?” Orchid asked. She looked back and forth between Winston and Tal as if waiting for an explanation.
Winston pointed at Tal. “Your stepson, he’s responsible for Ming’s death. Didn’t you read the spreadsheet?”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Orchid rubbed her forehead and peered at Tal. “You’re not ambitious. You always complain about the business.”
Tal sneered at his stepmother. “This was my golden opportunity to stop the work abuse, to change things.”
Winston could feel Tal’s anger at Orchid and tried to shift the focus from her. “Why mess with the pills?” he asked Tal. “You could’ve won the competition and took control of the company fair and square.”
Tal shook his head. “That would take too long. Ba didn’t want to retire. And besides, Fort was always his favorite, so big and strong. The contest would’ve been rigged.”
Winston could see how Tal might feel overshadowed by his older brother. Although Tal seemed quite the leader now.
Winston tried to reason with him. “Why don’t you let Orchid go? She’s old—”
Orchid shot Winston a dirty look, but he didn’t care. He’d play the age card if he needed to. Besides, if Tal freed Orchid, she could alert the authorities.
“I can’t release her,” Tal said. “She knows too much and will tell on me. Besides, she’s the reason we were pushed to work so hard in the first place. When Ba remarried, he gave us a ton more to do—because he had to support his new wife.”
As Tal rifled through his murse, Winston tried to calm him down. “Don’t do anything rash. I’m sure you can explain everything away to the police. After all, you were under a lot of stress.”
Winston saw Tal pull out a familiar bottle. The baijiu he’d ordered at Sambal. Was he going to break it over Winston’s head? Had Winston unwittingly paid for his own instrument of death?
Tal gestured with huge hand motions. The contents of the full bottle sloshed around. “You couldn’t leave things alone, could you? Even after I gave you a warning with the van—”
“It was you who tried to drive into me?” Winston backed up against the counter. The edge of the sink dug into his hip.
“Who else? But you didn’t take the hint. Kept on investigating.” Tal growled out the next words. “Even left a message with the motel that you’d found something at the Mystery Shack. I thought I’d been so careful, too. What was it?”
Winston gulped. “It was . . . nothing, unimportant.”
“Yeah, right.” Tal twisted off the bottle cap. “Was it the muscle rub? Too much on the staircase?”
Aha. Tal’s greasy ointment. That had made the stairs super slippery.
“The pills weren’t enough for you to mess with . . . You had to ensure your dad fell,” Winston said.
“I couldn’t rely on his weak heart. Needed to up the stakes, so I made sure to grease the steps right before Ba climbed them. I pretended I was putting on my muscle rub ointment but added some to the stairs when the rest of the family wasn’t looking.”
That explained the lingering sharp odor in the Mystery Shack. “And how did you get rid of Fort? There were so many witnesses at the restaurant.”
Tal pulled out his handkerchief and stuffed it into the mouth of the bottle. “Ha. Lots of people eating, chatting, fighting. It was super easy to slip peanut sauce into Fort’s dessert.”
Orchid sat down in the corner of the bathroom and started rocking. “You killed Ming. And then Fort. To take over the family business.”
“Now you get it, dear stepmother.” From his murse, Tal retrieved a book of matches.
Orchid stopped rocking and looked at Tal’s hands. “What are you going to do with those?”
But Winston knew exactly why Tal had alcohol, cloth, and matches. And it wasn’t any kind of cocktail Winston wanted to taste.
It’s now or never, Winston thought. He had to find something in the bathroom to help him. Too bad old Mrs. Chan looked useless curled in the corner.
But she surprised him. As Tal lit his match, Orchid let out a blood-curdling scream. Shocked, Tal dropped his match onto the checkered floor, where it sputtered out.
Meanwhile, Winston found a weapon. He launched at Tal with the potted flower in his hands. Aiming for the base of Tal’s head, he swung hard. A resounding thud. Then Tal crumpled to the ground.
Orchid screamed again, a piercing shriek that wouldn’t let up. It was so loud he missed the pounding at the door. He only knew others had come to check on them when the door splintered open.