Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery Read online

  "Oh… Very good, Lee Laoshi. Very, very good! No wonder you smile, eh?"

  She winked at me as if we shared a secret and finally told me the total. I handed her the money and she said, "You do know what pink rose mean, right?"

  "I’m sorry?" I said.

  "All flowers have meaning. Pink rose mean perfect happiness."

  "Oh. Well, that’s nice." I said, helping her bag the groceries. "Thank you."

  Again with the nice.

  I took my bags and told her to have a nice day. She said, "You too, Lee Laoshi, and good luck. It is a horrible thing, to have to be alone."

  I stopped and turned. "Yes. It is," I said, and left.

  I got back to the apartment, set the groceries on the counter, and went to check on Tracy. The bed was empty. The shower was running. Clothes, sheets, mozzarella cheese, and black olives were strewn across the room. So much for the cleaning.

  I went to the kitchen and got to work. I had just finished with the pancakes when I heard the bathroom door open. I took a bowl from the cupboard and cracked six eggs into it. I added milk, some grated cheese, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a few super secret ingredients. With a whisk from the drawer, I proceeded to beat the shit out of the mixture. I melted some butter in a pan and poured in the egg mixture. These were the world’s best scrambled eggs, and this was the first time I’d made them in years. If nothing else had impressed her, I knew the eggs would make her swoon.

  Assuming that she actually ate eggs…

  I would’ve panicked, but she came up behind me then, slid her arms around my waist, and held me tight. I scooped the finished eggs onto a plate and turned off the stove.

  "Hey," I said. "Sleep well?"

  "Like the dead," she said. "I hope you don’t mind that I helped myself to your shower…"

  "Not at all." I said.

  "I borrowed a t-shirt too."

  I turned around to face her. Her hair was damp and brushed back, tucked behind her ears. The black t-shirt looked huge on her, but it was only long enough to cover the tops of her thighs. It was obvious that the shirt was the only thing she was wearing.

  Gulp.

  "That’s fine. It…looks good on you."

  She grinned and said, "Thanks."

  I gave her a quick kiss. Anything else would’ve led places I wasn’t sure I had the energy for. At least not until after breakfast.

  She said, "Ooh, what are we having?"

  "Well, what do you like? I’ve got pancakes, eggs," my heart skipped a beat, "we can make bacon, sausage, toast… I could make French toast…"

  "Oh, gosh, I’ll eat anything," she said.

  Phew.

  "Do you need any help?" she said.

  "Um…you could put the bread in the toaster," I said.

  She went into the living room and put on some bouncy, punky music. She came back, bebopping to the beat, and started making toast.

  While she was occupied, I took a knife from the drawer, cut the thorns from the roses, and laid them on the table, beside her plate.

  "Coffee, tea, juice, milk?" I said.

  "I’d kill a drifter for some coffee." she said.

  I paused. "…Alrighty, then."

  I made coffee. I wasn’t sure if I was any good at making coffee or not. As far as I’m concerned, the nasty burnt bean water always tasted like shit, so I had no real frame of reference. I only ever drank the stuff when exhaustion loomed.

  While making the coffee, I heard her gasp. I turned and saw that she’d found the roses.

  A few moments later, she tackled me, and we ended up on the kitchen floor. Luckily, I’d cut out the thorns. It turned out that I did have some energy.

  And the food wasn’t too bad reheated, though if this trend kept up, I was going to need to buy a new microwave. Once we were capable of sitting at the table and keeping our hands to ourselves, Tracy said, "So, do you have to stab anybody today?"

  "Are you referring to my clients?" I said, after swallowing a bit of bacon.

  "Yeah."

  "No. I’m free today."

  "Sweet. You wanna hang out?"

  I almost choked on a bite of pancake. Hang out?

  "Um…sure." I said.

  "If you don’t want to, that’s okay," she said, though it clearly wasn’t okay.

  "No, I do. I’d love to."

  She beamed. "Excellent."

  "So…" I said, "Do you like the eggs?"

  She set her fork down on her plate and leveled her gaze at me. She said, "Randall, I have told you at least five times that they are the best scrambled eggs I’ve ever had. Do not ask me again."

  "Okay," I said sheepishly.

  We talked for a bit about what we were going to do while we ‘hung out.’ She asked if I would take her to the movies.

  "Like a real date," she said. "Dinner and a movie. No mysterious phone calls that pull you away… no beating up poor, clueless Tai Chi teachers…"

  "Yeah, I’ve been meaning to explain about that," I said.

  "Do you have a computer?" she said.

  "Yeah, in the office. Why?"

  "Then you can explain while I look up movie times."

  I led her back to the office and gave her the short version of the story. Though I meant to make myself sound like some cool, exotic expert, it clearly didn’t work.

  She sat at the computer desk, started typing, and said, "So why do the cops need your help with a murder investigation?"

  "Well, I told you… it started out that they needed a translator, but then, with the girl who was killed…"

  "What’s this?" she said, cutting me off. She held up the crime scene photo of Mei Ling that Knox had given me.

  "Oh." I said. "That’s her…that’s the girl."

  "What girl?"

  "The one who was killed. We’ve been trying to find out who she is."

  Tracy stared at the picture for a long time. "She’s dead?" she said.

  "Yeah, and she had no identification. The cops ran her prints and couldn’t come up with anything. The detective I told you about gave me that photo. I was going to take it around the neighborhood, see if anybody knew her."

  Tracy looked up at me, eyes wide, and said, "I know her."

  16

  Nothing cool or funny or clever to say came to mind, so I stuck with the time-honored, "…What?"

  She looked down at the picture again and said, "Yeah. I’m sure of it. It’s her."

  "You know her?"

  "Well, not know know, but she came to the club like a week ago. Dressed to the nines, y’know? I’m not the best with faces, but she bought a virgin Pina Colada, an eight dollar drink, with a hundred dollar bill and told me to keep the change… I’d remember anybody that treated me that well."

  "You’re sure she’s the girl in the picture?" I said.

  She held it up and said, "Look at her, she’s gorgeous. More so in person. And breathing. And not blue."

  I picked up the phone and dialed Knox’s cell. When he answered, I said, "I think we’ve got something on your girl."

  I asked Tracy for the name and address of the club and relayed it to him, saying we’d meet him there in twenty minutes. I hung up, grabbed Tracy, and kissed her hard on the lips.

  On the way to the club, Tracy asked how Mei Ling was killed.

  I told her.

  "That’s why we went to that idiot’s school," I said. "Whoever murdered Mei Ling, he knows what he’s doing."

  "How do you know?" Tracy said.

  "Not just anybody can do that… it’s not about muscular strength. This guy is adept at one of the internal styles, maybe even Tai Chi Chuan."

  "You just lost me." Tracy said.

  "In Chinese martial arts," I said, "there are literally thousands of different styles, but they can be divided into two main types – internal and external. External is the designation given to styles like Shaolin, Wing Chun… the stuff an untrained person might generically call ‘Kung Fu’ or ‘Karate’. External styles, to a great degree, rely
on outer strength. In a fight, typically the bigger, stronger, faster guy wins.

  "Internal styles, on the other hand, cultivate internal energy and whole-body coordination. Tai Chi Chuan is probably the most well known internal art, but there are others, like Pakua Chuan and Hsing I Chuan. The strikes in internal arts aren’t designed to cause surface level damage or even to break bones, necessarily; the kinetic energy is meant to sort of bounce around on the inside, tearing up organs, things like that.

  "In Mei Ling’s case… what we’re talking about is a two hand palm strike to the rib cage. A good external stylist would have no problem breaking ribs or causing organ damage, but the extent of damage to her organs, combined with the relative lack of damage to her body superficially, that’s the classic trademark of an internal stylist."

  "So you went to the school looking for someone good enough to have killed her."

  "Yeah."

  "And that dude wasn’t it, huh?"

  "He could barely stand up on his own without assistance." I said.

  "Where are you gonna look next?"

  "Well, that’s the tricky part. The other teachers that I know of in town won’t take outsiders. They teach only to family and to personally chosen students, so it’s tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys when they’re all basically hiding."

  "What kind of bullshit is that?" she said.

  I shrugged.

  After a minute or so, she said, "What happens if you find the guy?"

  "The killer?" I said.

  "Yeah," Tracy said, brushing a strand of purple hair from her eyes. "What do you do if you find him?"

  "To be honest, I really haven’t thought that far ahead."

  17

  Knox muttered an unsavory word to himself as we watched the security tape. The Outer Limit had cameras over its back door, and, when Mei Ling left, she ran out the back.

  We watched it again.

  It was her, alright. For all the good that did. Knox swore again; a different word this time, at least.

  "You don’t seem happy." I said.

  "It’s just another dead end. I‘m glad your little girlfriend spotted her, but this doesn‘t mean a fucking thing."

  "The glass is always half-empty to you, isn’t it?" I said. "You know she was here, at least."

  "Yeah. Which means exactly dick. She’s got no record, we know that already. So we get to see what she was like when she was up and walking around. Whoopee-shit."

  "Hey," I said, "every piece of information is one more piece of the puzzle."

  "Thank you, Charlie-fucking-Chan," he said.

  "You’re grumpy." I said. "See if I call you next time I find a witness to one of your damned crimes."

  He was not amused.

  After Knox took down all of Tracy’s information, we left.

  When we were outside, I said, "Do you have a pen?"

  She checked her purse and found one.

  I didn’t have a piece of paper, so I scribbled a few notes to myself on the skin of my inner forearm. Just in case.

  I looked up from my arm to see Tracy watching me curiously.

  "Still want to catch that movie?" I said.

  Tracy reminded me that she was still wearing an old pair of my practice pants, cinched and held with safety pins, and my trusty black t-shirt. She asked if we could swing by her place first so she could change.

  She lived in a loft in Soulard, ten or fifteen minutes from the club. I parked the car, and we hiked up the four flights of stairs to her apartment. Neither of us huffed or puffed, probably due to all the cardiovascular exercise we’d gotten lately.

  She’d painted the huge windows with a translucent paint to mimic stained glass. One scene depicted a group of happy skeletons dancing in a cemetery. Another showed impossibly thin vampires in capes and party masks at some sort of ball. Still another showed a pumpkin patch in a full moon, but all the pumpkins were leering jack-o-lanterns.

  She must’ve seen me staring. She said, "I did those for Halloween a couple years ago, but they turned out so good I decided to keep them."

  "They’re pretty amazing," I said.

  "Thanks," she said.

  She flitted off to the bedroom to change, and told me to feel free to look around.

  Framed prints of Edward Gorey’s Alphabet hung here and there, in no discernable order, along with other prints by Gahan Wilson and Charles Addams.

  She had more CD’s than most music stores I’ve been to, and they filled numerous racks throughout the apartment and spilled over onto the nearest available flat surfaces. The dining table and chairs stood out, painted as they were to match the night sky. The stars, arranged into constellations, were done in glow in the dark paint.

  I heard a rasping snuffle noise and turned to see a horribly ugly creature staring at me.

  "Jesus Christ," I said.

  The thing was perched atop a cinder-block-and-two-by-four bookshelf like a wrinkly miniature gargoyle and glared down at me with yellow eyes. Tracy appeared at my side, wearing a black tank top and baggy black cargo pants. I felt a sorrowful twinge that those legs were covered, but I’d get over it.

  Eventually.

  "It’s alright, baby. He’s a friend. C’mon," she said, patting her chest. The horrific greyish thing jumped down onto her shoulder and situated itself. It never stopped glaring at me.

  "Will you be offended if I ask you what the hell that thing is?" I said.

  She gave a playful glare and said, "Randall, this is Titus Andronicus, Tito for short. Tito, baby, forgive Randall, for he knows not what he says."

  She kissed the thing on its nose.

  Ew.

  "Okay, but what is it?" I asked.

  "Randall! You’re going to hurt his feelings. Tito is a cat, silly." I could tell that on some level she was enjoying this.

  "Cats are hairy. Where is Tito’s hair?" I said.

  "He’s a sphynx. They’re a hairless breed."

  "Of course they are." I said.

  I normally had no problem with cats, but this thing looked like Satan.

  Tracy cocked her head, narrowed her eyes, and said with a grin, "If you want to spend any time with me, you’re going to have to get along with Tito… he’s my schmoopikens."

  "Isn’t he just everybody’s?" I said, reaching out to pet him.

  Tito inclined his head slightly, as if he had deemed me worthy to touch him. I scratched the top of his head lightly; he felt like a warm, dry peach.

  Funky.

  18

  We went to a local pub for dinner. Burgers and beer – maybe not the most romantic of meals, but it was alright. Given our track record with food, maybe romantic wasn’t what we needed.

  "So, when we last left off, I believe young Randall was learning how to stand around for hours? What happened next?"

  "A bunch of stuff that eventually brought us together here. I believe we’re supposed to… what was your phrase? ‘Live in the now?’ So what difference does it make?" I said.

  "It makes a difference because we don’t really know each other."

  "I think we know plenty."

  "Ahem, ‘every piece of information is another piece of the puzzle’. Sound familiar?"

  "What kind of asshole talks like that?" I said, biting into a fry.

  "C’mon, man, talk!"

  I took a swig of beer and said, "Alright. So the standing practice provides a foundation. When you stand in a posture, over and over, after awhile your body learns to relax into it. Once Master Wu was confident that I could stand, he taught me to move. From each standing posture to the next. Tai Chi Chuan."

  "Like the guy at the school we visited." she said.

  "No, nothing at all like that guy." I said.

  "But still, it’s like the stuff the old people practice in the park, right?"

  "There are a lot of teachers that teach a health exercise they call Tai Chi, but real Tai Chi Chuan is more than a health exercise, it is, first and foremost, a martial art. One of the trans
lations for Tai Chi Chuan is ‘Supreme Ultimate Boxing.’"

  "The inside kind," she said.

  "Internal, yes." I said. "Wu had me practicing the form, the movements all strung together, for four to six hours a day."

  "Damn."

  I shrugged. "It was fun compared to just standing. After a few months, he started to teach me about the energetic anatomy of the body. The meridians and acupuncture points, the ways that energy moves through the body, that sort of thing, as they related to my practice.

  "When I was fifteen, my father died of a heart attack. I didn’t really have anywhere to go, so Master Wu invited me to stay with him. From that point on, every moment was a training of some sort. Mornings belonged to Tai Chi Chuan, afternoons were for acupuncture and evenings meant studying Taoist texts and herbalism.

  "When I was twenty-three, I was allowed to take over a portion of my teacher’s case load. The simple ones, mostly. When I was twenty-five, he told me he had nothing more to teach me. So I moved to the states, opened a practice, and that’s that."

  I finished my beer and went back to my burger.

  Tracy was watching me.

  "What?" I said.

  "You know what."

  "Do we really have to talk about this?" I said. "What about you? Tell me about yourself."

  "I’m an open book. I have no secrets." she said. "You, however, are leaving out quite a big chunk of your life. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s alright, but just say so. Don’t insult my intelligence."

  She put up a good front, but I could tell that I’d hurt her feelings. And I didn’t want to keep things from her. So I put my food down, ordered another beer when the waiter came by, and I told her.

  I told her about moving to Seattle and opening a practice, about teaching Tai Chi in the park there, and about meeting and falling in love with one of my students, a Chinese-American woman named Miranda Chan. I told her how, after a long courtship, I married Miranda on a cool September day, and how our daughter, Grace, was born eight years later, two days after our anniversary.

  Tracy looked surprised, but she kept listening, so I continued. I wanted a drink, something stronger, or a diversion: a fire alarm, maybe, or a tornado, but nothing came. So I dug my fingers into that old wound and found it still fresh, still ripe with infection, and the words spilled out on their own. I listened passively and studied her eyes for that sickening pity that so many people exhibit, but, in her, there was none. Only concern.