by David Dagley
Rayman kept his calm and focus and replied, “Of course. They are one of the major contributors to the Cho Estate Museum. They’re also silent partners in other historically significant ventures.” He rolled the ruby in the light then put Cale’s stone down close to the edge near Cale. Rayman picked up one of his own rubies and looked at it in the light.
Cale picked up his ruby and put it back in his pocket, “Do you think Mr. Bower is capable of murder?”
Rayman opened a drawer, handed Cale a small, flat, square box with a clear plastic lid, and offered, “Here. Put your stones in here so you don’t damage them with whatever else is in your pocket.”
Cale took the box and put his stones between a square of foam and a thick pad of cotton. He pressed the lid down snuggly with a snap.
Rayman began collecting his stones to put them back in the floor safe and responded, “I don’t think killing is Mr. Bower’s style, but like I said before, I’ve never met him. I suppose it’s possible.” He thought about it as he placed the thermos in the safe, “Na, I don’t think so; he wouldn’t have left the stones. He might kill for them, but he would never leave them. These are very rare, and both of us have been collecting them for quite some time.” Rayman closed the safe and stood up, “He wouldn’t have left the stones.” Rayman paused, assured. “How about that tea?” Rayman turned to move to the kitchen, “What kind of tea do you like? I’ve got almost everything.”
“Earl Grey? Cream and sugar?”
“All right.”
Cale turned his attention to the artifacts in the room again. “This is amazing stuff. You must travel everywhere to get all these pieces.”
Rayman smirked as he turned on one of the gas burners to heat the tea kettle and said honestly, “You really can’t imagine. But lots of those pieces aren’t mine. I’m hired on consignment or commission, so when I tell the buyers that I have the piece, sometimes they don’t have the whole sum of money we agreed upon. So I hold onto them until I’m paid in full, or enough time goes by and I sell the items at an auction, usually at an even greater sum than my commission would have been. On the other hand, I’ve had a few of these pieces for over a year. I can’t seem to part with some of them.”
Cale looked into a glass showcase with a thermostat mounted on the inside to view some primitive sketchings on the inside of wood bark slabs. Cale inquired, “Have you picked up anything from Indonesia recently?”
Rayman moved to the sink, resting his palms on the sill and leaning forward to look deep into the darkness of the drain. He was fixed on his father’s cage and funeral pyre, still smoldering in his mind. “No. Why?” The darkness of the drain was somehow comforting as he listened to Cale.
Cale moved to the next case. It was full of gold trinkets, earrings, a jeweled tiara, bracelets, and two large amethyst necklaces. “The victim had some sand or coral stuck in his shoe below the footpad, and a few grains were stuck in the pattern of the sole of his shoes, as well. The lab said it was coral sand from Indonesia.”
“What color was it?”
“Pinkish,” stated Cale. “It seems odd to me that a man can travel halfway around the world, thousands of miles, and still have something stuck to the bottom of his shoe.” Cale picked up an odd string instrument, noticed Rayman’s datebook, and asked, “Do you mind if I look through your datebook again?”
Rayman thought back to the beach. It didn’t make sense to him that someone had honored his father’s death with a burning. He knew it wasn’t the Won’s who burned his father’s body, but Rayman was glad he had sent the letter to Father Won because they seemed to understand that he didn’t kill their son. But Cale was getting close. Rayman pushed off the sink and headed into the living room.
Cale began plucking the stings of the old instrument.
Rayman leaned against the kitchen doorjamb and folded his arms. He politely warned, “That’s old and is worth more money than a detective could possibly make in three years.” Rayman moved over to the table by the door, picked up his datebook, brought it to his desk, opened it to November, and wrapped his knuckles on the page, “This is the time you asked me about earlier. Help yourself.”
Cale put the instrument down very carefully and walked over to Rayman’s desk as Rayman entered the kitchen. Cale sat at the desk and began reading through November. He pulled out his notepad and reached for one of Rayman’s pens. Rayman’s passport was partially sticking out of a small drawer in front of him. He looked over his shoulder quickly, then pulled it out, opened it, and found nothing. It was a brand-new passport with no entry or exit stamps and no visa stamps. Cale put it back in the drawer and looked at the datebook again.
Rayman returned to the sink and watched a deer walk off his back field and traverse the hillside through the trees. The silhouette of the deer moved innocently between the trees and faded into the darkness. A memory ripened like a rosy red apple full of razor blades:
Looking out through condensation on the inside of a window at ground level, Rayman watched blurry people in trench coats dodge puddles and walk, sheltered under umbrellas, around the edge of an English square he now knows as Slone square. Gunfire broke out down the wet, gray, stone street. He wiped the fog off of the window, pressed his cheek against the cold damp surface, and looked towards the noise. A man in a white trench coat ran out of a small antique shop, shooting a pistol back into the entrance. Someone fired back, and the man in the street fell off the curb. Two policemen ran towards the downed man in the street, night sticks in hand and blowing their whistles. The man on the ground rolled over and shot both of the police officers. One after the other their faces crashed into the pavement and bounced limp in what seemed like slow motion. The man in the trench coat struggled to get up and run. He ran towards Rayman, staring at him eye to eye as he got closer. More police came from all directions. Sirens sounded. Whistles blew.
… The teapot was screaming.
Cale stopped writing down notes and turned his head to listen for movement in the kitchen to see if Rayman was going to remove the kettle from the stove.
Rayman snapped out of his memory trance and went to the stove to fill two cups with hot water.
Cale moved to the kitchen doorway. He noticed all the jars of herbs and dried plant parts. There was a ceramic wide-mouth pitcher with an assortment of strange wooden utensils.
Rayman looked at Cale, “What?”
“Is there anything normal in this house?” asked Cale.
Rayman smiled and handed Cale his Earl Grey with a loose-leaf ball hanging by a clip to the side of his cup, saying, “Not exactly. There’s sugar and half-and-half on the counter.” Rayman pointed.
Cale took the cup, went to the counter, and doctored his tea, then returned to Rayman’s daily planner. Before he sat down, he looked over some loose papers that were scattered on the top of the desk above the small set of drawers where the passport stuck out. There was something lumpy under the papers. Cale lifted some of the papers and found three framed photographs pushed over their stands, lying flat on their backs. Cale picked up one of the photos and looked at it. In the photograph were two men, a woman, and two children. Cale brought it into the kitchen and asked, “When was this taken?”
Rayman looked up from straining his loose-leaf green tea and stated, “Halloween, many, many, moons ago.”
Cale looked closely, “Is that you in the Flash Gordon outfit?”
“Yep.”
“And the others?”
Rayman spoke without looking at the photo, “My dad is the man on the left, dressed as a sultan, and my uncle is next to him, dressed as a mummy.”
Cale noticed red dye or blood on the mummy’s shoulder and interjected, “I don’t know of any mummies that bleed.”
Rayman responded, “Actually, my uncle was out bow hunting deer nearby and was hit by a stray bullet, if there is such a thing. He was wrapped in a sling, and we just continued wrapping him up.”
“This family sounds accident-prone,” remarked Cale.
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br /> “The best is yet to come, Detective.” Rayman walked over to Cale’s side and pointed at the picture, “My mother is Emma Peele from the Avengers, me, of course, and my cousin, Monica Won Stell, in the mask and ears as Catwoman.”
Cale stared blankly at the photo, “Your uncle married into the Won family?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s your uncle’s wife now?”
“I never met her. They got a divorce right after Monica was born, and then she killed herself with, I think, the same Un Jang Do as your victim; it’s a type of ceremonial knife.”
“I know what it is. It’s made of gold and silver with sapphire and ruby inlays. Yeah, your right; when the lab tested the knife, they found a female family member’s blood on the knife. The same knife, coincidentally, killed two lab technicians at the museum last night. It’s being treated as a separate case at the moment.” Cale could barely control the urge to pick up the phone and call Victoria and tell her about the girl. Instead he sipped his tea and burned his lip. As he inquired, his voice broke, “Is Monica around?”
“Yeah. But she’s busy getting on with her life, as I am. She and my uncle lived on the East Coast,” Rayman explained.
“I was looking through some newspaper articles on your uncle’s disappearance. The newspaper said, ‘your girlfriend joined you.’ That wasn’t your girlfriend, was it?”
Rayman laughed lightly and confessed, “No. That was Monica. We still joke about it. She doesn’t quite look like the rest of the Stell family, being the only one that’s half-Korean. We all kind of look, act, and dress a bit more blue-collar than she does. She’s much more into fashion—cosmopolitan, if you will—wearing Banana Republic and J. Crew kind of crap. In Driggs she looked more like a tourist or an exchange student with an eye for catalog clothing.”
“Yeah, there’s nothing on her in any of the clippings I dug up on your family history. How did your uncle end up here after your father disappeared without his daughter?”
“Apparently my uncle and his wife led a very private life—so private that I don’t think the Won family knows of Monica’s existence to this day. And you know my mother died before my dad disappeared. So rather than be orphaned, my uncle came here and took care of me while I finished school. Monica was already in boarding school on the East Coast because my uncle was often away on business. It was the easiest thing for everybody and didn’t disrupt anybody’s lifestyle particularly. Once I started going to college in California, my uncle showed up less frequently, splitting his time up between the East Coast and here. I wouldn’t have known of his disappearance until around Thanksgiving or Christmas if our dog hadn’t run off to a neighbor’s down the road and been picked up.”
“I’m sorry to hear about all that. Everybody looks so happy in the photo. I was just curious,” Cale said. Cale was about to explode.
Rayman swirled his cup, looked through his tea at the loose-leaf particles circling freely around the bottom of his cup, and explained, “It’s not a problem anymore. It was rough when I was growing up, when things were happening around me that I didn’t understand. The other students and the town’s people harassed me with questions to which I didn’t have the answers and couldn’t explain. My uncle didn’t want me talking about it with the other kids because they’d go home and tell their parents. Then the telephone game began—on an adult level, which is actually crueler than kids could ever be. The locals get bored looking at their own misery and just go off talking about someone else’s misfortune, issues they knew nothing about and never could understand. The rumors and stories that were created were really out there. It made me angry.”
Cale wanted to change the subject and said, “So the ranch and whatever other family holdings are all yours now?”
“Mine and Monica’s. She’s our accountant. She allocates funds evenly between us, pays our family bills and stuff. She says she likes doing it, and I don’t care. It makes her feel connected.”
“Do you and Monica get together for holidays or anything?”
Rayman shook his head regretfully and said, “No. I’ve seen her a few times in New York and in DC when I’m there on business, but not too often.”
“Did you see her in November?”
“No. I didn’t even have time to call her,” Rayman replied.
“Where does she live, and what does she do for work?”
“She lives in DC, somewhere around Dupont Circle. She works for a lobbyist, or used to, anyway. She said something about congressional recess or time off; I can’t remember exactly. I may be mixing it up,” answered Rayman.
“Do you have her address? I might want to talk to her,” Cale asked politely.
“Yeah. It’s here in my desk.” Rayman searched for his address book and noticed that many of his papers had been rifled through and that his passport was upside down in the drawer. He opened another small drawer next to the passport drawer and pulled out his address book. He wrote down Monica’s address and phone number on a slip of paper and handed it to Cale. “Is that all you need, Detective, ‘cause I’ve got some other things to do, and I feel I have been helpful enough for one day, unless you really want me to look at those photos of yours.”
“Would you mind? It’ll just take a few minutes,” responded Cale.
Rayman walked over to his worktable where Cale had left the photos in their folder.
Cale opened the folder. “Some of these photos are a bit shocking, so beware.” Cale pulled a photo out and set it on the table, “This first photo is of Mr. Won, the victim at the morgue. Have you ever seen him before?”
Rayman shook his head, unsure, and said blandly, “I can’t really tell.”
“Yeah, it’s probably not his best.” Cale flipped to the next photo and explained, “This is a picture of the victim as we found him in the museum. Do you see the stones in his mouth and in the blood?”
Rayman winced, “Jeez, that’s terrible.”
Cale watched Rayman closely as he flipped over a third photo, “And this is the murder weapon.”
“What a beautiful knife. Ruby and sapphire inlays. Probably pure silver and gold. Expensive,” Rayman said admirably.
“Would you ever come across a knife like this in your line of work?” asked Cale.
“If I were looking for a knife for purchase, I would hit the Internet auction listings, private Asian artifact collectors, groups of like interest, then narrow my field down by description of pieces they had on the market. It’s really simple if someone wants to find a particular piece, if it’s for sale. It’s extremely difficult to find a piece if someone doesn’t want it found. The research and trail of a piece like this could take awhile,” explained Rayman.
“So, you’re saying it is possible to find the original owners of this knife?”
“I think you already know that answer. But if you didn’t, you would need someplace to start. For instance, if you have the knife, you can check the stones, where they came from; the silver, the gold, both purity and impurity are important. The age or story behind such pieces is usually detailed in the joinery and fasteners.” Rayman picked up the photo and looked closely at the exposed knife and the sheath lying by its side. “Do you have the knife?”
“No.” Cale said regretfully.
“Who has the knife now?” asked Rayman.
“It was taken after the two lab techs had their throats cut.” Cale flipped to the next photo and continued, “These etchings are on the knife. One of the lab techs told me, before he died, that one set of etchings are probably original, and the other set, on the other side of the knife, was fairly recent, within the last twenty years or so.”
Rayman looked at the photo then passed it to the pile. The next photo was of the more recent etching. Rayman looked at it then at Cale and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t read Hongul, which is what is etched on the blade.”
“I’ve already had it translated. The more recent etchings, from what I can now gather, were put o
n the knife around the time of your uncle’s wife’s death. It says, ‘One woman to one man; One man to one self.’ Could she have been talking about your uncle, hoping the knife would get back to the Won family? No pun intended. It is their family heirloom after all.”
“Yes, but I don’t think this knife was made in Korea. See these markings in the silver of the handle and sheath? It looks like art to the untrained eye, but in fact these are more like symbols from the Altaic group of languages, possibly Mongol, or even Hun, and not Hongul at all. Considerably older. Hongul is a rather contemporary form of writing compared to Chinese or the Ural-Altaic languages. It was probably made in the area we call present-day China and migrated south with the barer or new owner. Maybe you should fly to South Korea and talk with the elders in the Won family. I don’t think they’ll talk about it to a white detective. But that’s where I’d start. Speaking of flights, when’s yours?”
Cale looked at a wall clock and said, “My flight’s in a few hours.”
Rayman shrugged his shoulders and explained, “It takes an hour and a half to drive to the rental car place, and then it’s a ten-minute walk to terminal check-in, then security and the gate.”
“Thanks for the history lesson and again for your cooperation, Mr. Stell.” Cale took his cup into the kitchen and placed it in the sink. “You have a beautiful collection. I wish it was open to the public.” Cale picked up his folder of photos as he walked back through the living room. He shook Rayman’s hand, “Good-bye.”
Rayman followed Cale to the door and said, “Thanks for dropping in. It’s actually been kind of nice to talk to you, Detective. You gave me an opportunity to delve into someone else’s misery for awhile. I’m certainly bored with my own.” Rayman smiled.
Cale smiled back at the ironic phrasing as he walked to his car.
Rayman waved from the porch and watched Cale drive off towards the airport. Rayman’s face turned down as he clinched his teeth together on the evening chill. He felt the outside world begin to press in on him.
