TWO WEEKS LATER, the heat wave was gone. A cold wind blew again from the north. The residents were warned of another yellow sandstorm.
Mei was in her office writing up the notes on the Mr. Shao case. She was happy. As she put down the last word, she reflected warmly on the interest and variety her work brought.
The telephone rang in the entrance hall. A few minutes later, Gupin stuck his head in the doorway. “A Mr. Chen Jitian just called. He’d like to come and see you tomorrow. He says he is a friend of your family.”
“Yes, he is.” Mei’s eyes lit up.
“I’ve made the appointment. He will be here in the morning.”
“Very good.”
Mei leaned back in her chair and thought for a moment. She smiled. She was delighted to hear from Uncle Chen, though at the same time, she wondered why he wanted to see her. She looked out the window. The sky was dark. The wind lashed at bare tree branches. She thought of the last time she’d seen Uncle Chen, one and a half years ago, on a beautiful autumn day.
It is said that a daughter grows up and changes eighteen times, and the more she changes, the more beautiful she becomes. This was certainly true of Lu. By the time she met Lining, when she was twenty-five, she had turned out to be, in the words of her future husband, possibly the most beautiful woman in Beijing. Yet her beauty was only part of her story; she was smart, too. She had studied psychology at university and was considered one of the best students in her class.
After graduation, Lu was assigned to work in Beijing Mental Hospital. She hated the job. After a year, she left the hospital, first to teach at the university she had so recently graduated from, and then to join the Ministry of Propaganda.
Her swift moves from one job to another were nothing short of miraculous, given that changes like this had to be approved by the central government as special cases. But Lu was the kind of special person on whom good fortune always seemed to be bestowed.
Her job at the Ministry of Propaganda landed her in the media. Soon she became a guest psychologist for Beijing TV. It was in one of Beijing TV’s studios that Lu met Lining, an industrialist, who was appearing on the same program.
Three weeks before her wedding, Lu took Mei and her mother to dim sum at the famous Grand Three Element restaurant.
It was a Tuesday morning. The restaurant was nearly empty. Aside from the Wang family, there were only two other customers, a Cantonese-speaking couple who were probably guests of the nearby Shangri-La Hotel. Streams of waitresses—dressed in traditional embroidered figure-hugging qipao dresses with high mandarin collars and side slits—made the rounds with food trolleys.
Over tiny steamers of curried snails, red-oil beef tripe, and prawn dumplings, the Wang women discussed the seating arrangements for the honored guests at Lu’s wedding.
“I want people to remember my wedding for years to come,” Lu announced. “I want them to talk about it as one of the classiest events. I’m not going to copy the deputy mayor’s daughter. Do you know that her father shut down the entire route to her wedding so that she could have a hundred-car parade? And then she had five thousand guests at her reception.
“My wedding will be different. I have limited the guest list to four hundred people, so it will be the most exclusive wedding of the year. Only the powerful, famous, and wealthy have been invited.”
“That’s as it should be,” Mama endorsed.
Another food trolley arrived. Mama picked her favorite salted fish and peanut porridge. Mei chose a steamer of dragon buns.
“How is your new apartment?” Mei asked her sister.
Lining had bought a penthouse apartment near the Embassy District. It was being renovated by the best construction company in Beijing, according to Lu.
“It will be ready when we get back from our honeymoon. Did I tell you that they’re doing it for free?”
You did, thought Mei.
“The chairman said that it’s going to be his wedding present to us—isn’t that sweet?” Lu smiled. “Lining has so many friends, and they all adore him and want to help.
“When we go to Europe, Lining said to me that I must go to all the shops. He knows that I love beautiful things. But a shopping honeymoon, how dreadful. ‘No,’ I told him, ‘I want to see the sights and go to museums.’ I can’t wait to see the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and the Coliseum.
“Besides, I told Lining that I can’t shop even if I want to. We’re already running out of space as it is, so many wedding gifts—Chinese antiques, modern Italian furniture, German appliances. Where will I put the new things? The sad truth is, some of the stuff that we have been given is really not to my taste. Don’t get me wrong, they are perfectly wonderful, absolutely top of the line. But often I would have preferred a different color or style.”
As Lu spoke of her new life, she waved her hands in tender excitement. Her fingers—slender, perfectly manicured—seemed to express her sensuality as well as a recollection like the feel of a first kiss, or the aura of a girl becoming a woman.
She was wearing a long white dress. Just below the her breasts, yards of chiffon were gathered and tied together with velvet ribbons. When she moved, one of these secret folds stretched to reveal faint contours, a veiled suppleness that had been hidden before.
A food trolley once again lined up beside their table. Lu, her teeth white and complexion radiant, leaned over to check the selections. “Chicken feet,” she ordered.
The waitress removed the lid and placed the steamer on their table. She drew a stroke on the order slip and left.
“Oh, Mama, I almost forgot. Yesterday Lining gave me another present.”
“What is it?” Mei saw Mama’s face light up.
Lu tilted her head to the side, biting her lips. Then she swung her head back up, eyes shining like stars, and said, “An imported Mercedes-Benz.”
“Bravo!” Ling Bai clapped her hands together in a praying gesture. Her smile was as broad as that of her favorite daughter.
“Isn’t he wonderful, Mama?”
“It’s obvious that he loves you very much,” said Ling Bai, patting Lu’s hand.
“But what about your Mitsubishi?” Mei asked, spitting out a tiny bone from the chicken feet. Lu had a small red two-door car that had been given to her by a previous boyfriend.
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.” Lu stopped shifting her chopsticks.
Ling Bai frowned at her older daughter, who was, as usual, pouring cold water on a hot plate.
“Do you want it? I will give it to you,” Lu suddenly said cheerfully. After hearing her own words, she clearly felt pleased and quickly carried on with the idea. “Yes, you take it and do something with your life. Maybe you can…” She raised her eys to the ceiling in thought. “Maybe you can drive around Beijing solving crime.” She laughed.
Lu was only joking, but her words were more accurate than she realized. For some time now, Mei had been considering setting up her own business: a detective agency. The idea had come to her while she looked for work in the private industry. She had seen the freedom and prosperity that entrepreneurship could bring.
A detective service was a natural choice for her. She had worked for years in the Ministry for Public Security—the police headquarters—in the thick of criminal investigations. And she had always loved Sherlock Holmes books. As a child, she had even fantasized about being a detective like Holmes.
Having her own detective agency would give her the independence she had always longed for. It would also give her the chance to show those people who shunned her that she could be successful. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that she could make money with her agency. People were getting rich. They owned property, money, business, and cars. With new freedom and opportunities came new crimes. There would be much that she could do.