“I told them that already,” Angela confirmed. “He was brilliant.”
“Angela told us he did work for you,” Hulan addressed Lily.
“Freelance work. Research mostly. It wasn’t related to the Ba or this site, but he could do a lot of it on the Internet after hours, so it suited him. He could find anything.”
“What kind of research exactly?”
A shadow fell over Lily’s face. “If you’re asking if it had anything to do with his accident, I can guarantee you that it didn’t.”
“My brother was into all kinds of stuff,” Angela said with studied candor. “And Lily’s right. He loved the Internet. He loved technology of all sorts. He had one of those digital cameras, and he used to put snapshots on a website so all of his friends back home could see them.” Angela took another sip of wine. “That’s how I knew about Lily and Catherine. I recognized them as soon as I got here.” She caught herself. “They weren’t dirty pictures or anything like that! Just—oh, I don’t know—the hillsides, the dig, the people he was hanging out with.”
“Actually, I felt he put up rather barren landscapes,” Lily said. She thought for a moment, then added, “Those shots must have been taken in the area around Site 518. He probably posted them so his friends wouldn’t be envious.”
Angela concurred. “What better way to divert attention from his good luck than to show his friends and colleagues that he was living on a mound of dirt in the middle of nowhere? There’s nothing worse than academic jealousy. Believe me, I know.”
Lily’s responses to further questions about Brian were vague, perhaps out of consideration for Angela. So he faded from the conversation, and Lily regaled them with tales of the Panda Guesthouse, which for hundreds of years had been the compound for the Wangs, an extremely wealthy and very corrupt family that had once controlled all of the salt in the region.
“In addition to his salt wells,” Lily explained, “Wang was a smuggler of some note. Until Mao took over, Wang had his own troops and a fleet that plied the river from Wuhan to Chongqing. But his businesses aren’t what make him memorable. He was reputed to be quite insatiable in his appetites. He had close to fifty concubines and apparently took them in a variety of combinations. You’ve seen the decoration in this place. It’s beautiful and tasteful, but I’ve been in rooms in the more interior courtyards with truly stunning pornographic scenes.”
“What happened to the family?” Hulan asked.
“During the revolution—Liberation, as you call it—most of the Wangs were wiped out.” Her slim fingers gestured delicately toward the veranda. “All of the women were decapitated in the third courtyard, where I’m staying. The blood was ten centimeters deep. At least that’s the legend.”
“And Wang?”
“He got to see his women killed one by one. They say that by the end of the massacre he’d completely lost his mind.”
David watched Hulan through all of this. The similarities between the Wang and Liu families—though in different provinces and different times—were striking.
“So Wang was assassinated,” Hulan prompted.
“Not at all!” Lily exclaimed. “In his madness, he wrestled away from the guards and poof—disappeared. To hear people around here tell the story, it’s as though he had supernatural powers. One minute he was in the courtyard, the next he’d vanished from sight. It’s said he ‘rode the current out to sea,’ meaning that no one knows exactly how he got out, except that he showed up three years later in Hong Kong. He was only sixty-seven. He married again, outlived that wife by a couple of decades, and married again just before he died. The last Madame Wang lives in great opulen
ce in Hong Kong.”
“How do you know all this?” Hulan asked.
Lily looked at them in surprise. “I thought you knew. Cosgrove’s has represented the family since Wang arrived in Hong Kong. Mr. Wang didn’t have much cash, but with the profits from the sale of the family heirlooms he’d smuggled out with him, he was able to start an import-export business. He became quite the Hong Kong tycoon.” She shook her head in admiration. “It’s amazing, isn’t it, how the rich always get richer even when they ‘lose’ everything?”
“Did he ever explain how he got his treasures out of the compound and to Hong Kong?” David asked.
“Of course not! A family’s got to keep its secrets! But Wang did capitalize on the mythical elements of those stories, which only added to the mystique—and value—of his artworks. Anyway, that’s why Cosgrove’s is tied to this godforsaken place. We still do business for the family. I have lunch with Madame Wang once a month.”
“She owns the property now?”
“Mr. Wang lived just long enough to get his properties back during the PRC’s campaign to bring in capital from Overseas Chinese in the early eighties. Madame Wang has even relaunched the salt business.”
“Are the salt wells near the Ba dig?” Hulan asked. “Is that why that area is so barren?”
Lily smiled. “There are other reasons for that—”
“If the family’s so wealthy,” David cut in, “why would they turn their compound into a hotel?”
“Money,” Lily answered, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together. “The family wanted to restore it for themselves, then the government decided to build the dam. When Madame Wang learned that the compound would be inundated, she abandoned further renovations and decided to open a guesthouse to recoup her initial investment. The Panda Guesthouse, no less! How many Panda Guesthouses do you think there are in this country? Thank God for the discovery of Site 518, otherwise she would have gotten none of her money back.”
And on it went. Lily’s tales made for lighthearted conversation, and even Angela seemed to brighten. After dinner, David and the three women walked out into the night. The rain still came down in a warm rush, and the air smelled of wet bamboo. They walked under the covered corridor to the next courtyard. When they reached a door marked Room 5, Lily said, “This is me. I’m going straight to bed. I’m exhausted.” Then she asked if David and Hulan would be going back out to the dig tomorrow. “There’s a bus that takes the team out there at eight, but I’d be delighted if I could avoid riding with that lot.”
They agreed to meet her downstairs at 7:30 and take her with them in Ma’s Jeep. Lily gave a slight wave, and her cheeks had that heightened color that made her appear younger than her age. As she slowly closed her door, David thought that Brian McCarthy must have been an interesting young man to have attracted two women as different as Lily Sinclair and Catherine Miller.