“Okay then, who does have it?” David asked. Li waited for him to delve further. He did his best to oblige. “Where is the ruyi now? How did it get there? And who’s going to be the ultimate owner?”
“The ruyi’s in Hong Kong. Ask Lily Sinclair how it got there. Then ask her how it can be going up for auction at Cosgrove’s tomorrow night.”
David felt foolish and a little miffed, for neither Ho nor Ma had told him any of this, yet it seemed to be common knowledge.
“I don’t see Lily here,” David went on evenly. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Suddenly Li Guo stepped out of his guise of a vulture who’d been fortunate in his work unit. “Once artifacts are out of the country, false papers of provenance are easily created,” he said. “Auction houses, dealers, collectors, and museums all choose to accept these implausible claims, even as our superiors expect us to find our missing objects. Meanwhile, we’re still trying to figure out who has jurisdiction.”
David had encountered this before. Was it the responsibility of the State Cultural Relics Bureau, the Provincial Relics Bureaus, Customs, or people from museums to track down stolen artifacts? It always seemed like bureaucratic buck-passing to him. After all, how could a small museum in a poor, isolated region—or the men in this cave—have the ability to find where artifacts had appeared abroad or, if located, negotiate for their return?
Hulan had deliberately left Catherine for last. The young American was dressed in an outfit nearly identical to the one she’d worn yesterday. Full makeup highlighted her eyes and lips. Her posture was perfect, to accentuate her most notable physical attributes, but Hulan was not impressed by Catherine’s beauty or intimidated by her sexuality. If anything, they were off-putting.
“I didn’t see Lily last night,” Catherine recounted. “I had dinner with my father, then I went for a walk.”
“Alone?”
“I’m not afraid, if that’s what you mean. China’s very safe.”
It would be very safe for a woman of Catherine’s race, especially in a small town such as this; however, it obviously hadn’t been safe for Lily.
Hulan tried to reconcile the rather dim young woman who sat before her now with the young woman who yesterday knew more ancient Chinese history than anyone else at the table. She was deliberately acting dumb, which Hulan took to mean that Catherine was hiding something.
“Catherine—do you mind if I call you that?” When Catherine nodded and her posture loosened, Hulan confided, “People always think it’s a mistake to get involved in a murder investigation; however, the person who killed Lily needs to be caught and punished before he does it again. Now please answer my questions truthfully.”
So they began again at the top. Catherine had eaten dinner with her father on the hydrofoil at eight o’clock. After dinner, Stuart had gone to his stateroom to handle some business. She’d returned to the hotel around eleven to get a couple of things from her room. She hadn’t seen anyone except the desk clerk. While walking back to the boat she’d spotted Lily in one of the alleyways that led off Bashan’s main road. They’d walked together for a while until Catherine realized that they were heading out of town. She’d said good night at the bridge that crossed Bashan Stream, then gone back down to the dock.
“What did you talk about?”
“Nothing in particular. We didn’t like each other very much—”
“I noticed that at lunch—”
Catherine’s eyes widened as she remembered the conversation from yesterday.
“Do you really think she sent the day worker to ‘a watery grave’?” Hulan asked.
“That was a joke! We picked on Lily because she was such an easy target. All she cared about was her career—”
“And the others don’t?”
“Inspector, Site 518 isn’t exactly the path to fame and fortune.”
Unless you stole from the site, Hulan thought. But Catherine was already wealthy, and if she wanted fame, all she had to do was slip on some Versace and return to the social whirl of her economic class. “Okay, I accept that,” Hulan said. “So let’s go back to last night. You’re walking together through town. You must have talked about something.”
“Lily was fishing for what my father was going to bid on at the next round of auctions, but the truth is, he doesn’t share that information with me. I’m only his daughter, not his curator.”
“He’s old-fashioned, you mean.”
“He believes women have their place. Look, he’s wealthy, he’s a widower, and the kinds of women he meets…. Well….”
“It’s hard to get his attention.”
Catherine nodded. Hulan thought about Catherine in a new light. How could she compete with the other women who must flow through her father’s life? Hulan didn’t think that Catherine’s dressing and acting like Electra would have much appeal to Stuart, or would it?
“Still,” she resumed, “he values your opinion.”
Catherine cocked her head questioningly.