Chapter 12
“There was no note, but it had to have been from Liam.” Mae’s voice was shaky. “I don’t know anyone in Hong Kong who would have sent this to me. Maybe he meant it as a Chinese New Year present?”
“But why not just bring it with him?” asked Mary.
Alice pulled a small wooden box from the package and carefully opened it. Inside was a painted glass ball.
“It’s a li bien ball,” she said, holding the delicate object.
She had one too, given to her by a family friend when she was a child. It was a traditional Chinese ornament.
What made li bien balls so extraordinary, and cherished, was that the image on them was painted from the inside. The artist had to poke a slender brush, often little more than a single strand of hair, through a tiny hole and from there create the intricate scene.
The image on the ball Alice held was of a misty mountain, and a river, and some trees. There were smudges on it, maybe black birds.
It was, Alice had to admit but did not say out loud, not exactly a fine example of the ancient technique. Especially the birds. The image was crude, though still better than anything she could have done.
“Why would he have sent this to me?” asked Mae. “And without a note?”
Alice shook her head. The other question was why send one that was so obviously inferior? Wouldn’t Liam, kind Liam, have made sure he sent his sister a better example of the art form?
“Could it be a message? Code?” She waited for the blowback. Last time she tried that out, her mother fried her. But these two women were taking her suggestion seriously. “Li bien. ‘Li’ can mean a lot of things,” she thought out loud. “In Confucianism, it can mean ritual, rite, propriety…”
“The inside of things,” Mae added.
Inside, inside. Painted from the inside. Maybe Liam was on the inside? But which side?
“Can I take a picture of this?” Alice asked, pulling out her phone.
“Do you really think he was sending me a message?” Mae asked. “It sounds ridiculous, and I’d never have thought that, but after what happened…” She looked at her mother, who was staring at the ornament. As was Alice. Trying to parse meaning from a painted ball.
Maybe the meaning was that he loved his sister and had seen this and thought of her. As simple as that.
Alice took a video of the ball, then returned it to its box.
“Do you mind if I go to Liam’s home? He had an apartment, right?”
“A condo, yes, right downtown,” said Mary. “I’ll get you the address and the key. We haven’t been in since…”
“Thank you,” said Alice.
“I’ll come with you to his condo,” said Mae.
“Are you sure?” Alice asked.
“Of course. But I don’t think you’ll know what to look for.”
“And you do?”
Mae actually smiled. “I, at least, know Liam. Better than you, I’m betting. He never mentioned you.”
Alice wondered if Mae meant to twist the knife.
Though what she said was true, and begged the question, why would Liam send his sister the li bien ball and her, a relative stranger compared to family, the email and photo?
To spread out the messages? To increase the chance that one of them would understand? Would act?
Would ask questions, should anything happen?
Though there was another possibility. Her message, the photo and email, was really meant for someone smart enough to decode it. Her mother. Was he going through her to get to her mother?
But again, why send such cryptic messages? If he was in danger, and desperate to let them know what was happening, why not just fucking tell them?
The most likely answer was that her email and the photo were just that. Messages from a friend, with no hidden meaning. And this ornament, picked up at some cheap tourist market, was a Chinese New Year’s gift for his sister. Nothing more.
Alice and Mae drove without conversation, the air in the vehicle getting thicker and thicker with unspoken tension.
Liam’s condo was on the tenth floor. Alice, no fan of elevators, would always avoid getting into one if given a choice. But the tenth floor was too far up to walk. Besides, she didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of an already judgmental Mae.
The elevator jerked to a stop between floors, then continued on. At Liam’s floor, the doors took their sweet time opening. Just as Alice could feel her anxiety turning to panic, the doors slid open. Closing so quickly they almost hit them on their way out.
“It’s never done that before. Needs maintenance. I’ll have to let Liam—”
How often in the coming hours, days, weeks would Mae and Mary get that far into a sentence, into a thought? How much silence would there be as they teetered on the edge?
They let themselves into Liam’s condo and began to look around.
Had Alice imagined his home before, it would have looked pretty much like this. It was in a new building, of glass and concrete. A faux-industrial loft with straight clean lines. The tall ceilings and huge windows let in cheerful light and warmed up what could have been a cold space.
The place was neat, tidy, but not to any extreme. It felt lived in, as though he’d walk through the door at any moment. As though when he left, he fully expected to return home.
“Does anything seem strange to you?” Alice asked.
Mae was standing in the middle of the living room, looking around. She shook her head but didn’t speak.
It smelled of Liam. That was, perhaps, the worst. And would be for the rest of their lives. Every time they passed someone who wore Polo cologne, Liam would appear. Summoned by a scent.
They looked around, in a half-assed search. Not knowing what they were looking for. There was mail, but it was mostly circulars for pizza specials. No one got actual personal mail anymore.
“Nothing,” said Mae. It was the first word out of Mae’s mouth since they’d walked into the condo. And now they left. Empty-handed.
Still, feeling she needed to do something to justify the visit, Alice first made a video on her cellphone camera.
Pressing the down button, they waited a long time for the elevator to return. The illuminated numbers above the doors were blinking.
“I’m not sure we should get in,” said Alice once it arrived.
“Well, you can walk down ten flights. I’m not.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Alice got in the elevator, cursing herself for caring what a relative stranger thought of her.
After an initial bump that sent Alice’s heart into her mouth and the blood rushing from her limbs in sudden panic, the elevator started down. At the main floor, Alice got out.
Quickly.
“I’m going to Garnett Foods,” she said. “You’re welcome to come along.”
“No, thanks.”
Alice drove Mae home. “Do you think I can borrow the li bien ball? I agree with you. I think he sent it for a reason.”
“And you’re better placed than me to figure it out?”
“Maybe not, but my mother is. I’m sure she’d like to see it,” said Vivien’s daughter, almost gagging on the words.
Mae’s right hand was resting on the door handle.
“We’ll take good care of it, I promise,” Alice pressed.
After what seemed like ages, Mae nodded.
“Wait here. I’ll get it.”
The box safely tucked into her knapsack, Alice drove to Garnett Foods. She’d expected a small place, maybe in an industrial park. Not the gleaming glass building that towered over everything around it.
Rice must be a good business, she thought as she walked into the lobby.
Liam’s office was on the nineteenth floor. Barb, his colleague and friend, had texted to say she’d meet Alice there.
Sorely tempted to suggest they meet in the coffee shop next door, Alice knew she really had to see his office for herself.
Pressing the elevator button, she waited.
Vivien was in the kitchen pressing the wrong button on the cappuccino maker yet again, and cursing, when her phone pinged.
She was distracted by the “goddamned fucking machine,” and since the text message that just arrived was not marked urgent, she didn’t look at it immediately. Though she should have.
The elevator was crowded with employees coming back from coffee break, all staring at the numbers as they climbed. A few chatted, mostly about the alarms from the day before. Comparing experiences of having to walk down any number of flights.
The elevator kept stopping to let people off. Occasionally someone got on. Shoving Alice farther to the back. Breathe. Breathe.
Finally, it was her turn to leave. “Excuse me, excuse me.”
She almost didn’t make it out. Someone had to hold the door open. It had decided to close quickly, as though it didn’t want any of them to get out.
“Alice?” A slender black woman in a business suit was waiting for her.
“Yes. Barb?”
The woman’s greeting was warm and her handshake firm. “I’m so sorry about Liam. We’re all devastated.” And she looked it. “I can’t believe it.”
How often would they both hear, and say, those words in the coming days? I can’t believe it.
“You were his … friend?”
Barb had obviously been crying, and Alice had the sudden realization that they were more than friends. Her already broken heart shattered a little more.
Her fantasy about Liam’s feelings for her was just that. A fantasy. She’d made it all up. And maybe she was making this up too, this fantasy that there was more to Liam’s death than an accident. And that she, a food blogger, could solve it.
And yet he’d sent her that last email, last photo. Not this woman. Or was it the last?
“When was the last time you heard from him?”
“He wrote to say he’d arrived,” said Barb. But there was a hesitation.
“What is it?”
They were walking down the long corridor, and now Barb stopped in front of an office door. “You said in your message that you knew him at Columbia.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re writing a piece on him for the alumni newsletter.”
“Yes.”
Barb’s hand was on the doorknob. She was looking at Alice in a way that made her uncomfortable.
“What’s really going on?” She’d dropped her voice. “Was it really an accident?”
“Why do you ask?” Alice felt a frisson, a tingling sense she’d all but forgotten about but that she’d first felt doing her investigative reporting. When something big was about to break.
She held on to Barb’s eyes, willing her to speak.
“He told me, told everyone, he was going to Osaka to meet clients.” She dropped her voice. “Japan. We had no idea he was in Hong Kong. Why wouldn’t he tell us?” She paused. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
Now there, thought Alice with more than a little satisfaction, was a very good question. “I don’t know.”
She felt herself warming to this woman who might not have been so special after all. It wasn’t noble, but it was human. It was Alice.
Barb glanced up and down the quiet corridor. “Does this have something to do with those alarms going off yesterday?”
“Why do you ask?”
Barb opened the office door.
The first thing that struck Alice was that, like in Liam’s condo, there was the slight scent of Polo cologne. The second thing was that it was completely empty.
Everything but the furniture had been removed.