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“You’re free to look through the room. I don’t have it.”
Hulan thought for a moment, then said, “I’d like to go back to something you mentioned earlier. You said your brother was worried about who else might be looking at his website and if his e-mails were private.”
“Which was why he wouldn’t tell me what he’d found.”
“Have you found anything in this room or since you’ve been here that has helped you determine what that was?”
Angela shook her head. Her eyes welled with tears. “Do you think someone saw what he wrote and killed him because of it?”
“It’s possible.”
Angela bowed her head and began to cry softly.
“Who else have you told about this?”
“Lily,” Angela replied quietly.
Hulan remembered on that first night how obliging Lily had been to Angela. Stuart had spoken of Lily as smart and manipulative, hardly the kind of person who would have befriended a bereaved young woman, even if she was the sister of someone Lily had slept with.
“Did you know Lily before you came out here?” Hulan asked.
“No, but when I got here and the desk clerk told me Brian was missing and presumed dead, Lily was very good to me.” Angela began to pick up speed as she relieved herself of those early hours and days. “She took me down to the police station. She helped me deal with Dr. Ma, who kept telling me I wasn’t allowed at the dig. She went with me to where Brian had fallen in the river. She liked to eat alone, but at night, after dinner, we’d come back here, sit on the bed, and talk. It was sad but like a slumber party too in a way. We talked about places Brian had gone and things he’d seen. I hoped she’d know what he’d found that was going to be so important to me, but she didn’t. What I liked best about her though was that she told me stuff about him. You know, how he slept around and things like that. I guess other people wouldn’t want to remember someone that way, but my brother….” Angela smiled wanly. “He had a way with the ladies. He liked them. He liked making love to them. Lily was willing to share that with me.”
Hulan wondered if Angela had any idea of how peculiar she sounded, but in this recounting, another piece of Lily’s life—and perhaps her death—fell into place. Lily normally stayed in China for a few days. After Brian died, she had remained here, near Angela. Lily had courted the American and worked her way into this room. But whatever Lily was hoping to find had eluded her, otherwise she would have moved on.
Who else had Lily told what she’d learned? Who else had Angela confided in? Who else had Brian spoken to about the mysterious discovery that would change his sister’s life? Hulan tactfully maneuvered Angela through these questions. The American didn’t think Lily had told anyone about their meetings. What about Stuart Miller? Hulan asked. Angela didn’t think so, because Lily had been pretty adamant that the two women keep their friendship a secret. (Which didn’t mean that Lily hadn’t told Stuart, only that Angela didn’t know about it.)
“Could your brother have told Catherine Miller what he’d found?” Hulan asked.
“He wouldn’t have shared anything important with her.”
Maybe, maybe not. If Brian had confided in either Lily or Catherine, one of them could have passed the information on to Stuart. They both would have had their reasons: Lily was always shoring up her relationship with her client, while Catherine was always trying to gain her father’s respect.
What Hulan couldn’t piece together though was what special thing could change a mycologist’s life forever and still be even remotely valuable to Lily. Hulan suspected, but didn’t have the heart to break it to Angela, that her brother may indeed have found something that would have helped his sister in some way, but that others had interpreted his cryptic messages to her as meaning that he’d found something of profound archaeological interest. Which brought her back to the missing notebook. Who else knew it existed?
“Everyone, I suppose,” Angela answered. “Just about everyone told me he was always writing in it.”
“Has anyone asked to see it?”
“Besides Lily?”
“Besides Lily.”
Angela’s face scrunched in that way of hers and she shook her head.
“But people knew Lily had asked you about it.”
“I’d have to think about that,” Angela said. “Maybe.”
No matter which way Hulan looked at all of this, she had to rethink Lily’s death. She’d been tortured, possibly for the purpose of obtaining information. Maybe someone had wanted the notebook, and if not the notebook, then the information contained in its pages. Would Lily have passed on what little she knew? Given the extent of her suffering, probably yes.
“I’d like you to do me a favor,” Hulan said at last.
“I’m not leaving here, if that’s what you’re going to suggest.”
If Angela had followed this conversation at all, she would have understood in just how much danger her life had been since she’d arrived, though why she hadn’t yet been killed was an unanswered question in Hulan’s mind. But if Angela thought, as Hulan knew she did, that her brother’s dying wish had been for her to come to China and find something that was going to change her life, then there was no way Hulan was going to get her to leave this place. Hulan could try to have Angela deported or expelled from the country, but the truth was she didn’t meet any of the legitimate grounds. Still, there was one way to protect Angela’s life….
