“I’ll take care of it as soon as I can.”
“Thank you very much.”
Following that call, his mother phoned and told him the family was planning a barbecue for the next Saturday to celebrate his dad’s birthday. Luckey promised he’d be there unless his latest case prevented him from making it. Once they hung up, he fixed breakfast before going out to the barn to exercise Persey. Riding his horse gave him time to think.
He couldn’t expect TJ to get a warrant before Monday morning. As for Mr. Guan, he would need time to find a silk merchant from Chengdu who might be able to help Luckey. For the moment it was a waiting game.
Until he went to Ally’s house, Luckey intended to research the personnel working for the International Junior Olympic Committee. He was intent on finding out what had happened to Yu Tan. Her disappearance had become personal to him. Someone on the committee could help him get in touch with gymnastic organizations within China that prepared young girls like Yu Tan to enter Olympic competition. If there was a tie-in to the murdered girl—who was also suspected to have been a gymnast—he wanted to find it.
Sundays were hard on Luckey because he couldn’t conduct business as usual. For one thing, he wanted to get a surveillance team over to the orphanage to watch the comings and goings of Shan, the young Chinese woman he’d met who worked with the children. That would have to wait until tomorrow. If she was a trafficking victim, any testimony she could give would be helpful in hunting down predators like the ones dumping girls’ bodies in the streets.
For another, he needed help from the passport office finding a person or persons who traveled between Texas and China and Indonesia on a regular basis over the last few years. But the official he needed to talk to, Mr. Jesse, wouldn’t be available until tomorrow.
Luckey was glad when four o’clock finally approached. After a shower and shave, he dressed in jeans and a pullover before leaving the house to drive to the Duncan ranch. Ally came to the door wearing jeans and a pale yellow sweater that provided a stunning contrast to her black hair, which she’d left long today. Her eyes lit up. “Ni hao, Luckey.”
That’s right. She’d taught him that word at the or
phanage. “Ni hao.”
“Good.”
“How do I say ‘Doctor’?”
“I’m not a medical doctor. You can say Laoshi hao, which means ‘Hello, teacher.’ Let’s do it again. Ni hao, Luckey.”
“Laoshi hao.”
Her smile widened. “Perfect. You’ve just had your first lesson in Mandarin Chinese. Come on into the dining room. We can work at the table.” He supposed it was too much to ask that they get comfortable somewhere in the house on a couch.
When he’d come before, he’d noticed a Western motif dominated Ally’s family home. She led him through a hallway lined with dozens of family pictures to the dining room, where twelve or more people could fit around the table easily. The large antique armoire had two Texas stars carved into the woodwork.
Ally saw where he was looking before she sat down at the head of the table. “When I was little, I used to pretend that those stars were Texas Ranger badges.”
From a distance, that was exactly what they looked like. He grinned. “A precursor of things to come?” Luckey took the chair on her right. “It’s a good thing for me you came back from China to fulfill your destiny. I’m eager to get started, but first I need to know how much you charge for lessons.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. ”Before we get started, would you like coffee or a soda? Maybe some tea?”
“Nothing right now, thank you. Don’t I need a book or paper?”
“Not yet.” The seductive curl of her lips intrigued him to no end. He couldn’t go much longer without tasting them, but he’d promised not to touch her. “Mandarin is a tonal language. You need to master the tones. When you do that, we’ll add new words. I’ve labeled these cards for you in order.
“Look at these first two cards. Both are labeled 1-1. The left one shows an arrow indicating the direction of the sound of this Chinese word. The card on the right holds what’s called a tone pair. Notice how the pair of words follows the graph on the left, with the arrow in the same direction and the same tone mark over the vowels.”
Luckey studied both cards to get the drift. She made him pronounce the sounds several times.
“All right. Now I’ll take the next two cards, labeled 1-2. This time notice that the arrow on this one goes in a different direction. Now look at the two words on the other card. They follow the arrow, and the tone marks are different. One is level, the other goes up.”
“I get it.”
“Good. There are four different tones. The fifth set of cards shows a dot to indicate that you will pronounce the word in a middle-toned voice, but we’ll get to that later.
“Your first assignment will be to memorize these twenty tone pairs, since most Chinese words are made up of pairs. You must learn to pronounce them absolutely perfectly. I’ll drill you until you can do them in your sleep. Then I’ll teach you the writing.”
He had news for her. His sleep was filled with dreams of her that had nothing to do with homework.
“They will form the basis for everything you learn. When you add a new word, you’ll recognize which tone pair it matches and you’ll be able to learn new words that much faster.”
“You mean like memorizing your times tables?”