Dragon Bones (Red Princess 3)

“I heard the two of you talking yesterday,” Hulan explained.

“At lunch,” Catherine remembered brightly, “of course.”

Hulan acknowledged that this was so, but Catherine had also given her an opening. “I heard you before that too. Your father said something about you running out of time….”

Catherine winced. Hulan waited.

“My father….” The words closed in on themselves, and the young woman tried again. “My father wants the best for me. For him that means a good marriage.”

“Another old-fashioned view—”

“But still as common as air,” Catherine finished bitterly. “I’ve told him that his views are so antiquated they belong in one of the Site 518 pits.” After a moment, she added, “My father is very hard to please.” Another beat, followed by “All men are when you think about it.”

“Is that why you’re here? To prove something to him?”

“Maybe to myself. How pathetic is that?”

They talked for a few more minutes. Catherine had no idea where Lily had been going. She regretted now that she hadn’t asked, but at the time she honestly hadn’t thought about it. They simply weren’t that close.

“How about your father and Lily? Were they close?”

“Do you mean did they”—Catherine searched for the appropriate words until she settled on—“have sex?” When Hulan nodded, Catherine laughed and her whole face changed. She appeared for a moment as she truly was behind the facade—young, open, and naturally beautiful. “Probably, although Lily definitely wasn’t his type.” Still smiling at the idea of it, she added, “Don’t get me wrong. He had a lot of respect for her. She helped him a lot with his collection.”

“But she wasn’t as knowledgeable as you.”

“I know more history and art. She knew more about the business of art—museu

ms, auctions, private collections, and financial transactions above and below the table.”

“Was Lily the person responsible for artifacts disappearing from Site 518?”

“Probably.”

“Do you have any knowledge of her taking artifacts out of the country, whether from Site 518 or elsewhere?”

Catherine answered with determined frankness. “Over the years Lily obtained amazing pieces for Cosgrove’s to put up at auction. Where she got them, how she got them, I don’t know, but if she did it illegally, it wouldn’t surprise me. If my father bought some of those pieces, well, that wouldn’t surprise me either. He’s a man of many passions, and he doesn’t take no for an answer.”

Hulan thought about that, then asked, “Will you be going down to the dam site with him?”

“My father? Oh, I’m sure he’s halfway there by now,” Catherine answered, her lightness returned. “But, no, I wasn’t going with him. I’m part of the Site 518 crew. I’ll be here all summer.”

Hulan had gone about as far as she could with these preliminary interviews, and she still had other people she wanted to see. She and Hom walked with Catherine as far as the lotus pool, then said good-bye. Then Hulan and the captain went to the restaurant’s veranda, where a couple of Hom’s men reported that the search of the interior and exterior of the compound had been completed. No murder site or blood trail had been located. Someone had gone to considerable lengths to make this element of Lily’s murder an enigma. Hulan would come back to this, but for now she and Hom went on to the dining room, where Officers Su and Ge sat at small tables interviewing employees one on one. Everyone else sat at the larger banquet tables, smoking cigarettes and drinking tea. A hush settled over the room while Hulan spoke quietly to Su and Ge. Hom took a chair between his men, lit a cigarette, and exhaled the smoke through his nose.

With the limited scope of questions on which Hulan had insisted, the two officers had been able to get through twenty employees, most of whom were on the day shift and hadn’t arrived until this morning. None of this first group had ever observed Lily Sinclair in an argument. None of them had seen or heard anything near her room. Three people had caught sight of her in town last night. No one admitted to being an All-Patriotic Society convert, but then, Hulan hadn’t expected that anyone would at this point.

“We’ve had a good beginning together,” she announced to the room. “If Officer Su or Officer Ge has already spoken to you, you may go. I may still call on some of you individually.”

Hom leapt to his feet. Before he could voice his objections, Hulan continued, “Captain Hom will preside over the rest of the interviews. You must be as honest with him and Officer Ge as you would be with me in Beijing.” The thinly veiled threat was met by sullen silence. “Officer Su, please come with me.” With that she and Su left the room.

Hom was right behind her, though. “You can’t dismiss those people!”

She turned to face him, trying to keep hold of her temper. “You will not tell me what to do. You will not tell me how to run an investigation. If you do, you will become the subject of my interest. Do you understand?”

Hom’s face bloated in ill-disguised anger.

“I’m going to Site 518,” she went on. “Officer Su will drive me. You will stay here and arrange round-the-clock guards for the guesthouse and Site 518. We will not have a repeat of what happened to Miss Sinclair.”

David left the vultures’ cave and approached a group of day workers, who told him that they came to the dig in the morning, left in the evening, and got paid once a week.