The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries) (15 page)

“Conrad?” I tried louder. “Conrad, don’t be dead.”

I was about to go to the bedside lamp when I heard a distinctive sign of life. I’d need to look it up later, but I was reasonably certain that dead men didn’t fart. Good old
som tham
. I was so delighted I jumped onto the bed and fell on top of my author. He grunted.

“What? What?” he said.

“You farted,” I said with undisguised joy.

“You don’t say. Can we discuss that in the morning?”

“Certainly.”

And he was asleep again.

10.

Fresh Grave Juice

(restaurant menu)

I skipped breakfast at the Coralbank mansion for two reasons. First, I didn’t want to be served impolitely or be macheted on my way out of the gate. Second, because I had a lot to do back at home. My schedule was:

1. Text Sissi to let her know I’d done it again.

2. Make sure the dogs were still alive and give them a walk.

3. Conduct a search for Grandad Jah and force him to eat something.

4. Phone Mair on her cell and tell her to come home.

5. Work on my DNA comparison.

6. Get my next rabies shot.

7. Follow up on Dr. Somluk’s disappearance.

In fact, the last item became the first. As I drove into our little car park, I saw a tall man in luminous green Bermuda shorts, pink Crocs and a Kylie Minogue T-shirt sitting at our concrete picnic table. Our palms were being battered by the wind all around him. Three potted plants were on their sides. The Mighty X shuddered to a stop and I barged open the door.

“Well, Lieutenant,” I said. “I can only assume you’re undercover.”

My sweet Chompu
wai
’d me as if I were a duchess.

“I’m hiding out,” he said. “I can’t take any more caring and sharing.”

“Have you been here all night?”

“Yes. I hope you don’t mind.”

“What happened to your clandestine love nest overlooking Pitak Island?”

“I rented it out to an old gay couple. I needed some spending money.”

“So where did you sleep?”

“Your room. And I think we need to take a little time to discuss personal hygiene.”

“Don’t bother. Our drug-challenged dog slept and emptied her bowels there. It needs fumigating. I haven’t had a chance to clean up. I keep forgetting. I haven’t slept there.”

“Why not?”

“None of your business.”

“The ancient foreigner?”

“He’s forty-eight. Same age as Boy George.”

“Don’t get me started. Talk about letting yourself go. And I didn’t say ancient was a bad thing. So…?”

“So what?”

“How is he?”

I blushed.

“He’s very well, thank you.”

Chompu let out one of his raving queen squeals, and all the dogs came running because they thought it was a downed heron. That took care of item two on the agenda.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said, taking my hand. “Is this a relationship or are you merely taking advantage until you tire of him?”

“I don’t know, Chom. He has an estranged wife who looks like a fashion model. He makes more money than Boon Rawd Brewery, and he’s gorgeous.”

“And the problem is?”

“Why does he want me? Even for a quickie. He can have his choice.”

“There you go throwing mud at yourself again. Look at you. You’re stuntedly beautiful, pleasantly breasted, you have legs I’d die for and you’re funny. If this psychologist cures me of my horrible affliction, you’ll be the first girl I bed. I swear it.”

“You’re a darling. Thanks. Did you manage to…”

“Your inquiry? It was a pleasure to have an excuse to dodge Madame Freud.”

“Great. What did you get?”

“Your Dr. Somluk has nobody to miss her, and don’t I know how that feels. No brothers or sisters. Parents long gone. Friends scattered here and there haven’t heard from her for a long time. I could find nobody who’s seen her since the conference. She was booked into the hotel for three nights but didn’t stay there. If only I’d known. They have such yummy cocktails at the Novotel. It appears she didn’t show up until an hour before her appearance on the video. So it looks like she went there specifically to embarrass the speaker or the organizers. They have no cameras in the car park, but the front gate logged her car in at eleven a.m. and out again at three p.m. The attendant didn’t notice who was in the car.”

“Anything on the speaker? Dr. Aisa Choangulia?”

“Not a tinkle. She’s as clean as a whistle—although I’ve had a lot of whistles in my mouth that weren’t particularly clean, and I’m not speaking metaphorically. They give us training courses on—”

“Chom.”

“Sorry. She’s a top pediatrician, thirty years’ service to the hospital, good but humble family, father dead, aging mother in a hospice. Plus, she’s a Christian, and I’m told they aren’t allowed to do anything wrong.”

“I wonder if she had any private dealings with Dr. Somluk.”

“No. I called her.”

“The pediatrician? You did?”

“Well, it seemed a better option than just guessing.”

“Right. And?”

“Said she’d never seen the woman before in her life. She’d been surprised by the fuss. She was later told that the questioner had mental problems and had embarrassed a number of speakers during the conference. That’s why they felt they had to remove her.”

“Which wasn’t true because she’d just arrived.”

“Quite. Look, I don’t suppose I could get something to eat, could I? You had nothing but stale M&Ms in your room.”

“You ate them?”

“My stomach was rumbling.”

I walked Chompu to the kitchen, having decided it was best not to tell him those M&Ms were Gogo’s antidiarrheals. I made him a breakfast that promised to be with him for a long time.

“I went to see Dr. Somluk’s boss at the hospital,” he said.

“Dr. June? Gee, you’re thorough. You must have got there just after me. I hope you weren’t dressed like this. She wouldn’t have seen the funny side of it.”

“No problem. I have a lot of dress-ups in the back of the car. But, as it turned out, she wasn’t there. She had some function or other. I did talk to her colleague, a Dr. something-beginning-with M. I forgot to write it down.”

“There’s the mind of a great detective.”

“Look, honey, I’d just arrived from one of our Mekhong whiskey therapy sessions. I had to put the siren on just so I wouldn’t be pulled over for drunk driving. I reeked of peppermint. But over tea and coconut macaroons I did manage to pick up one or two delightful snippets from Dr. M. First, were you aware that your Dr. June, the head of the Regional Clinic Allocations Department, was at the conference in Chumphon for the entire three days?”

“The lying cow.”

“She told you she wasn’t there?”

“She … no, not exactly. But she pretended to be vague about it.”

“Not vague at all, it seems. She was one of the organizers.”

“You don’t say? Huh! She certainly didn’t tell me that.”

“Well, in fairness, she didn’t have to tell you anything at all. You weren’t there in any official capacity.”

“I went as a friend of Dr. Somluk’s nurse, Da.”

“And she saw you and answered the questions she thought were relevant to Dr. Somluk’s disappearance.”

“No, she was being sneaky.”

“You’re right. What time is it?”

“Eight.”

“Doctors get up early, don’t they?”

He took out his phone and speed-dialed.

“Hello,” he said. “This is Lieutenant Chompu. I talked to … Yes, me too. I was wondering…”

While Chompu yakked, I fed the dogs. I couldn’t be bothered to fight the wind on a morning walk. They could go themselves if it was important. When I returned to the kitchen, Chom was smiling.

“It looks like there’s something else Dr. June didn’t tell you. I phoned my doctor friend from yesterday whose name began with M but turned out to be called Niramon.”

“Close enough.”

“Who do you suppose Dr. Niramon has just recently been drafted in to replace?”

“You’ve got me.”

“Your own Dr. Somluk.”

“No.”

“Dr. Somluk worked in the Regional Clinic Allocations Department for nine months before she was moved down to the Maprao clinic.”

“Why wouldn’t the director have told me that?”

“Did you ask?”

“No.”

“Then, that’s why.”

“No. This is all wrong. Director June was organizing the conference, but her name didn’t appear in the program or on the list of speakers. Dr. Somluk turns up and tries to ask a question in a room full of health professionals but is dragged away from the microphone. She subsequently vanishes.”

“Her car left at three.”

“But we don’t know who drove it. Everything revolves around what answer Dr. Somluk was expecting to get to her question in the conference hall. When you spoke to Dr. Aisa in Bangkok, did she mention who funded her appearance?”

“She said she paid out of pocket. A charitable act.”

“No sponsor?”

“She said she often agreed to public appearances as a public service. She sounds like a saint.”

“Drives four hundred kilometers, puts herself up in a four-star hotel to talk to a couple of hundred rural health workers, most of whom are only there to stay in a fancy hotel and claim overtime? Call me cynical, but that doesn’t sound very likely to me.”

“I doubt there’s any way we can prove her a liar.”

“Yes. There’s a way,” I said.

With Chompu sitting opposite me at the kitchen table, belting down French toast, which he found terribly exotic, I called Sissi.

“I was just about to call you,” she said.

“Why?”

“Surely you don’t think a text stating ‘I did it again’ is going to satisfy the curiosity of a retired sex goddess like me.”

“What is it with you confused gender people?”

“Hi, Sissi!” Chompu shouted.

“Is that the fairy policeman I hear?” Sissi asked, then shouted, “Yoohoo!”

“We’re working on the missing doctor case together,” I told her. “We’re at a juncture where your input could be vital.”

“Oh, marvelous. I phoned you last night full of excitement to pass on the news, and you turned off your phone so you could run off and have geriatric sex. Yes, I do have some information.”

“About the free gifts at the conference?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“It’ll cost.”

“You’re charging your own relatives for information now?”

“Not money. I want a blow-by-blow of your nights with the writer.”

“That would be very tacky of me, don’t you think?”

“Non-compliance would be a deal breaker.”

I confess I’d had my sister tell me the details of all her conquests when she was still the conquistadora.

“All right, but you first.”

“Hold on to your hat. All the conference participants got …
dadarada
 … a carton of chocolate milk.”

“That’s all?”

“Yup.”

“I take back my offer.”

“You can’t.”

“What brand was it?”

“Medley.”

I had to think about it. Medley, the multinational milk and coffee people. Why would they be interested in a little conference in the Thai outback?

“Are they one of the companies in the Thai Food Group?” I asked.

“They are.”

“Why would they be sponsoring a medical convention?”

“Ah. So it wasn’t just the pert buttocks and the looks in our family that went to me. And I thought you were a journalist.”

“It’s easy, is it? Okay. Don’t tell me. Doctors … are up all night so they need Medcafé to stay awake.”

“I think you’re toying with me.”

“No? All right. Milk. Babies drink milk.”

“Bravo.”

“But they drink breast milk.”

“They used to.”

“They gave it up?”

“Don’t you notice anything on your supermarket adventures?”

I’d noticed they play Christmas carols ad nauseam until you’d want to run out into the car park and scream. But that didn’t seem relevant.

“I’m still not getting it,” I said.

“You haven’t spotted there’s an entire aisle dedicated to babies?”

“Milk?”

“Formula. Cocaine for the under-twos. It outsells Pepsi and Coca-Cola combined.”

I could see I’d been in denial for too long. I’d noticed the aisle but never ventured through it. All those grinning fat baby faces and blue teddy bears. I knew nothing at all about formula.

“Medley make it?” I asked.

“They are the brew-meisters. The witches who stir the cauldron. A blend of vitamins and minerals and rapid-growth fertilizer all mixed together with milk powder to spare Mummy the inconvenience of flopping out her titty on the bus.”

“So, it’s not healthy?”

“It would appear to be astoundingly healthy.”

“So … it’s a good thing.”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. That’s as far as I got on my Internet trek. A lot of people appear to be against it. But I’ve found that multinationals do attract more than their fair share of weirdos like your Dr. Somluk. Just the fact that they’re ginormous and successful and rich is often reason enough to hate them.”

“But I wonder why Dr. Aisa’s appearance at the conference being sponsored by Medley would upset our Dr. Somluk so much. I mean, she obviously asked the question because she knew the answer. She wanted all the participants to hear it. What was so important that Somluk would be dragged away from the mic?”

“Right. And these are questions you can ask yourself on your own time.”

“That’s true.”

“So now it’s my turn.”

“I don’t know, Siss. Do I strike you as the type of person who’d describe intimate details of the two most passionate nights of her life on an insecure phone line?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, it all started with cocktails…”

*   *   *

With that case simmering nicely at the back of the gas range, I left Chompu to his Sudoku and went in search of Grandad Jah … or his body. I stopped off at my cabin and put A’s hair in test tube B before heading for the beach. Very little happened down here that every man, woman, and child of speaking age didn’t learn about in the space of half a day. It was either the worst or the best thing about Maprao. The first person I met on the beach was Uncle Rip, who collected plastic bottles. This was his high season. I used to think it was desperation until I found out you could make more out of recycled plastic in a month than you could working on a building site.