Desert Jade

by C. J. Shane

  "Who is Seri?"

  "She's a research librarian at the University. She's kind of like Mycroft to Letty's Sherlock Holmes."

  Zhou frowned and shook his head. He knew Sherlock Holmes, but not Mycroft.

  "Mycroft was Sherlock's brother. He occasionally helped solve mysteries, but he never left his room. Seri sometimes consults with Letty, but she never gets involved directly. They are both really smart. So I went to China with Seri."

  "Where did you go?"

  "Beijing, Xi'an, a river cruise, Shanghai. The typical tour. Then we took a little side trip to Hong Kong"

  "You like China?"

  "I loved it! The people were very friendly. The farther we got from the big cities, the more curious they were about us. They liked Seri especially – she’s a blondie, and they found my red hair fascinating. Seri and I felt like movie stars! People took our pictures!"

  Zhou smiled. He remembered his first time to touch a Western woman’s hair. So soft. "Later I ask about trip, but now we search."

  There was a large floor-to-ceiling bookcase in the office. He systematically took out each book, opened it and shook it for loose papers. Nothing fell out but for a few odd scraps of paper acting as book marks.

  In the bathroom Zhou looked through a large cabinet holding towels. He looked under the sink, and in a medicine cabinet over the sink. There were feminine products there, make-up, sunscreen, bottles of female things for skin and hair, a hairbrush full of tangled red hair, and one prescription bottle. He took the prescription bottle out and looked at it. Jade's name was on the bottle. It was empty.

  "Oh, I should have thrown that away. I had to take antibiotics last winter for a respiratory infection that I got from the kids. I was in such a stressed state that I seemed to catch everything that came along. I'm doing better now."

  Zhou nodded, smiled, and returned the bottle to the shelf.

  Jade's bedroom was next. He tried his best not to be embarrassed in this intimate space. Like the sleeping bag, the entire room was filled with her fragrance. He checked under the mattress and the bed, in the drawers where he carefully moved aside lacy lingerie, and then turned to the large walk-in closet filled with her clothing and shoes. There was no sign of a man at all in the room.

  As if she could read his thoughts, Jade said, "Maggie thought that it would be better for me if I packed up Carlos's things. His mother, Maria, thought so, too. So I put his clothes and other things in boxes in the garage."

  Zhou nodded. The kitchen was next, but like the rest of the house, he found nothing. No hidden cameras watching Jade, no secret hiding places, nothing at all unusual except that she had visited China.

  "Jade, in China, did you form a friendship with Chinese people?"

  "Not really. We were on the tour the whole time. We did visit some friends of Seri's in Hong Kong. They used to live in Tucson, and now they live in Hong Kong and teach English." Jade paused. "I sort of became friendly with the tour guide when we were on the mainland. His name was David. That's not his real name. I don't remember his real Chinese name. I brought some pearls home for his girlfriend."

  "Please explain."

  "David has an American girlfriend in Phoenix. They met when she was on a tour about a year ago. They fell in love and decided to marry. He asked me to take a gift to her when I passed through Phoenix. When I stopped at the airport in Phoenix, she was there to receive the gift, which was a red-velvet box with a pearl necklace. Actually, I sort of broke the rules. I didn't declare this at customs. But it was all for love so I thought it would be okay."

  Zhou considered this. It could be as she said, a simple gift from a Chinese man for his American girlfriend. But he knew that Chinese men were usually not interested in marrying foreign women, especially Americans. Women were considered carriers of the culture. They were the ones who taught children how to be truly Chinese. American women could not do that. Also, American women were thought to be too wild. As one of his friends put it, "American women are too hard to control." Usually relationships worked the other way. That is, Chinese women married American men. This, of course, created a great deal of resentment among Chinese men. So the story seemed possible but unlikely.

  Could Jade have inadvertently carried some contraband or counterfeit jewels or something illicit without knowing it? He wondered if the triads had found a way to disguise heroin as pearls, or injected inside pearls. Or perhaps the case carrying the pearls had something illicit hidden in it. Jade's trip had occurred months after the disappearance of her husband. Perhaps Bao being here at her house had nothing at all to do with the missing husband. Maybe he was looking for that pearl necklace. Jade's voice interrupted his thoughts.

  "We'll search the garage later. It's time to go meet Letty."

  ***

  The meeting with Homeland Security agent Sam Lambert was tense from the outset. Zhou was immediately separated from Letty and Jade and escorted alone into a separate office. Through the office’s glass windows, Zhou could see the two women sitting on a couch in the hallway. There was also a Tucson policeman present with Lambert in the office. The policeman represented Tucson Police Department’s Homeland Security Intel section of the Special Investigations Section. However, Lambert didn’t bother to introduce the TPD cop to Zhou.

  Letty saw him, though, and made a note to find out what his name was. The Tucson cop might be a way to bypass Lambert later.

  "So, Mr. Zhou, I received a fax from the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing. Almost all of this is in Chinese and might as well be hen scratches on a paper as far as I'm concerned. I can't read a word of it." He shook the papers as if they were covered in ants. "But finally on the last page I see here that your Ministry is sending an agent, I guess that would be you, right? You’re here because you have information from Interpol that a Chinese criminal gang may be operating in our city."

  Lambert tossed the papers on his desk, and then glared at Zhou as if challenging him to contradict anything he'd said.

  Zhou politely introduced himself for a second time. He handed over his Inspector Second Grade identification card and his passport. He outranked Lambert by several levels in official hierarchy, but the Homeland Security agent would never realize that. Lambert gave only a cursory glance to the ID and passport. More Chinese hen scratching.

  "I am very sorry not to have a translation of the documents. Perhaps the triads are in Tucson. Perhaps in Arizona or perhaps elsewhere. We do not know why they are here or where they are headquartered."

  Zhou observed Lambert as he spoke. The Tucson cop was tall, about the same size as Letty, but outweighed her by forty or fifty pounds. He had blue eyes and short blond hair. He wore a rather rumpled light-colored suit. Beneath the jacket, his shirt was unbuttoned at the collar. Lambert's skin was patchy and florid, as if perhaps he got too much sun or drank too much alcohol, or a combination of the two.

  "Explain how you got involved with those two?" Lambert tossed his thumb toward Letty and Jade.

  Zhou briefly explained how Bao had showed up a day early, and luckily, Zhou had spotted him. He told Lambert about following Bao to Jade's house and watching Bao enter, then leave the house. Zhou did not expand on this. He did not tell Lambert about the brief physical altercation with Bao, or about catching the beautiful young teacher as she fell from the ladder, or about eating dinner with her, or about spending the night in her sleeping bag in the back yard, or about meeting Letty and talking to her as well. Zhou had the sense that there was some tension here, but he didn't know what was causing it. Did Lambert have some kind of history with Letty or Jade? Or was it simply that Lambert liked to be in control and he didn't like having some foreign cop show up on his doorstep with an unconfirmed story about Chinese criminal gangs in his territory?

  "They claim they know nothing about this?" Lambert demanded.

  "That is correct."

  "What do you plan to do?"

  "I will find these criminals. Stop them."

  "You’re pretty sure
of yourself, aren’t you? I want you to report in regularly. Got that? No independent action. You have no authority here."

  Zhou nodded. "I understand."

  Lambert motioned to one of his officers to bring Letty and Jade into his office.

  "So what do you have to say for yourselves?" Lambert demanded.

  "I am very grateful to Mr. Zhou for his concern about me," Jade said. She tossed her head back. "I do not know why that intruder was in my house."

  Letty said nothing.

  "You didn't see him?" Lambert asked.

  "Yes, I saw him but from above. I was on the roof."

  "On the roof?"

  "Yes." She tossed her head again. Those red curls went flying.

  "Okay," Lambert decided to let that pass. "Call us if this guy shows up again."

  Jade said nothing.

  "And you," Lambert turned to Letty. He was frowning and sounded very irritated. "What have you got to do with this?"

  "Jade is my friend. She called me."

  "That's right," Jade said. "I called her and asked her to come over."

  "Did you see this intruder?"

  "No." Letty wasn't about to add anything. She didn't like this guy. Not just because Marv didn't like him, but because she could see he had a very inflated opinion of himself.

  "All right, then you stay out of this. You understand? And tell Marv Iverson to stay out of this, too. This is Homeland Security business. Got that?"

  "Got it," Letty said. "Any chance of getting protection for Jade Lopez?"

  Zhou wondered who Marv Iverson might be.

  Lambert continued. "Not much to go on here. You told me yourself that it wasn't really a break-in, and no one has threatened Mrs. Lopez. I'm too understaffed to assign an officer to protect her. I think she can call us if she has a problem. And keep in mind that Zhou is off limits to you, Valdez. He's here on official business so don't waste his time. Not that you would understand him anyway. His English isn't all that great."

  Jade's face turned red. "His English is excellent! And way better than your Chinese," she blurted out.

  Lambert glared at Jade and said, "All of you. Get out of here."

  Out in the parking lot, Jade fumed. "Can you believe how incredibly rude he was! What a jerk!"

  "Yes, Marv and Lambert don’t get along and I think it’s easy to see why. Look. I have to go to work now," Letty said. "I haven't actually seen this guy Bao. I can think of no reason why he should be at your house, Jade. Maybe it's all some kind of mistake. But it pays to be careful. I think you should seriously consider leaving town for a while or staying with a friend or maybe just going someplace safe until we figure out what's going on here."

  "My parents are off on a trek in South America so I can't visit them now. If there is some kind of danger, I don't want to get my friends involved by staying with them. If there's any sign of this Chinese man again, then I'll seriously consider staying somewhere else for a while. Maybe I could go up on Mt. Lemmon and rent a cabin or something like that. But for now, Zhou is here. I feel safe with him, and I'd like to try to help him. And maybe we will discover that this is all some kind of gigantic mistake. It wouldn’t be the first time that criminals got the wrong house."

  Zhou said nothing, but he knew it was no mistake. Ting sent Bao, and Ting didn't make mistakes. He was pleased that Jade felt safe with him, though. Yet being her bodyguard was only going to slow him down.

  "I want to go to airport car rental and find information about Bao and the rental car," Zhou said.

  Letty nodded. "That's a good place to start. We need to find out where this Bao is and what he's doing, before he comes looking for Jade again. As for me, I have to see a new client this afternoon. I still have to make a living. I'll call you after that, and we can meet later."

  Letty got into her little sand-colored Toyota pickup truck and left the parking lot first. She headed north. Jade and Zhou followed in Zhou's rental car, turning south.

  Behind the midtown police department complex and parking lot was the municipal golf course. Beyond that, stretching out to the west was a large urban park, Reid Park. Neither Letty, Zhou, nor Jade saw the slender, well-dressed Chinese man under the trees watching them through his high-powered binoculars.

  Chapter 8

  Jade directed Zhou south toward the airport.

  "What are we going to do?" she asked.

  "We ask about Bao's rental car."

  "They may not want to tell you anything. A lot of businesses won't give out information about customers."

  "We could give a gift of money."

  Jade laughed. "You mean a bribe? No, I don't think so. We should make up a story so they'll give us the info." She fell silent for a while as he maneuvered through traffic.

  "You are my sister," Zhou said, and grinned. "We look for lost baggage in a car."

  "Hmmm..." Jade returned the grin. "Brother through adoption? Somehow I don't think you will pass as Irish-American."

  "Seriously. I have a plan." He explained and Jade listened intently.

  "Remember, Jade," Zhou said. "If clerk is a woman, you talk to her like sister. Ask for help. If clerk is man, you ask for help in flirt way.”

  Jade laughed. "Flirt way? You mean flirtatious. I don’t know. I’m not sure I know how to do that.”

  Zhou smiled. "You will do very well, I think."

  They arrived at the airport and went into the terminal. Zhou led Jade to the area outside the terminal where car rental companies were located. He had been there when he first arrived in Tucson. The clerk at the car-rental agency was a young Mexican-American man dressed in dark pants and a neat white shirt. He was staring intently at a computer screen.

  Zhou faded into the shadows. Jade entered the car rental office.

  He couldn't hear them talking, but it was clear from the smile on the young man's face that he found Jade attractive. Who wouldn't? Zhou could tell that the clerk was resisting the idea of leaving the desk unattended. The clerk frowned, looked around and said something to Jade with a slight shake of his head. She persisted, leaning over the desk toward him. Zhou couldn't see her face, but could easily imagine a seductive smile coupled with a persistent request.

  Finally, the two left the office together and walked quickly into a large parking garage. The young man did not look back. He didn't see Zhou slip quietly into the office, nor did he see Zhou go behind the desk and insert a USB drive into the company's computer. Zhou stared intently at the computer screen for a few seconds. Then he began clicking commands with the mouse. Two minutes was all it took, and he was out of there.

  Five minutes later, Jade and the clerk reappeared.

  "Well...I don't know what happened to my purse. I'll look at home again. I'm very sorry to have bothered you." She walked away, turning briefly to wave goodbye to the clerk. Once out of sight, Zhou rejoined her and they returned to his rental car.

  "We will go to your house now and use your computer. I will look at the record of rentals for yesterday," Zhou said.

  They went through the booth at the airport exit where parking tickets were paid. The line of cars was longer than usual, and they had to wait. Out of habit, Zhou periodically checked the rearview mirror. He noticed the small gray car in the line about five cars back, but because of the angle in the road and cars passing in front of his view, he couldn't tell much about it. It appeared to be a Honda but he couldn't be sure.

  After paying the parking fee, he pulled over to the right lane and slowed to about twenty-five miles an hour, ten miles under the speed limit. Most of the cars zipped past him, but the little gray sedan fell back at least ten car lengths and maintained the same speed as Zhou. Not a good sign, Zhou thought to himself.

  "Why are you driving so slowly?" Jade asked. "Do you see something back there?"

  "Not certain." He turned suddenly without signaling into a hotel parking lot and quickly pulled into a spot facing the road. The gray car suddenly picked up speed and zipped past. Zhou pulled and followed
. The little gray car, definitely a Honda that looked suspiciously like the one Zhou had followed the day before, was now at a major intersection, still in the right-turn lane. Before the light changed to green, the Honda took advantage of a lull in the traffic and turned right. Zhou had to wait for a car to pass. Then he turned right. The Honda was well ahead of him and changing lanes as needed to keep moving fast.

  At the next major intersection, the Honda was first in line in the left-hand lane waiting for the turn arrow. Zhou was several cars back in the same lane. When the arrow turned green, the Honda didn't turn. The driver waited a good five seconds, which caused all the cars behind him to sit on their horns. Then he turned just as the arrow changed from green to yellow, then red. That left at least five cars, including the one driven by Zhou, waiting for another cycle of the traffic lights to change. The traffic was too heavy for Zhou to do a run-around the lights and pursue. It was too dangerous. So he waited, knowing that it was very likely that he'd lost the car. He was right.

  Zhou was left with a very unsettled feeling. He had not seen the license plate on the car, and so he could not confirm that it was the same car he’d seen yesterday driven by Bao. And he wasn't able to a good look at the driver. Even so, his gut told him that it was Bao.

  How could he have known Zhou would be at the airport again? Had Bao been following him earlier and Zhou just hadn’t seen him? Did Bao know that he’d met with Homeland Security and the police this morning? Or was it all some gigantic piece of luck for Bao to spot Zhou and follow him? Zhou had this kind of luck himself the day before. But his intuition told him that it wasn't luck. Bao was there following him and Jade, which meant that Bao was either incredibly lucky or he’d been tipped off. By whom? Were there more triad gang members here than Zhou knew about? Had they been watching him? Again, he felt regret that he’d been forced to reveal himself in Jade’s backyard. It couldn’t be helped. If he hadn’t been there, Jade would have been Bao’s first victim after his arrival in Tucson.