Elke?”
“Yes. The worst that can happen is she says no to you. Talk to her.” La Señora smiled at Rosa, and patted one of her hands. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” she said, once again thankful for the power of a cliché.
“I will, Señora, I will. Bless you.” Rosa turned to go. “Oh, can I get you anything, tea, perhaps?”
“Not right now. I may send Willy along later to fetch me something.”
La Señora turned back to her desk and the pile of paper on it. She sighed. Willy came out of the shadows in a corner of her office. He stood mutely by her, dutifully wearing the shorts she insisted on. He didn’t speak for a long time.
“Señora,” he said, “when were you in love?”
La Señora started. She hadn’t head Willy’s approach. He so seldom initiated a conversation that his question particularly startled her. She took a deep breath before answering.
“It was long ago,” she said, “in a city filled with flowers under a pearl gray sky beside the green ocean.” Willy waited mutely, his shining eyes begging her to continue. She looked at the pleading boy and recognized this was a new step for him, to take interest in someone other than himself and something other than cookery.
“The city was Lima, in Peru, my mother’s country. In a part of that city, the people grow many flowers. So many flowers that section’s name is Miraflores, which means ‘look at the flowers’ in Spanish. I was a guest there, in the home of one of my father’s friends, when I met him.”
“Him?”
“Reggie. O. Reginald Shinn. A ‘leftenant’ in the British Army. He worked at the Embassy in Lima. He was so handsome, blonde, and blue-eyed, with the form of a god. So wonderful to look at in his uniform. And a dancer, lighter on his feet than any feather on the breeze. When I danced with him, I became a feather adrift on the wind.” La Señora sighed.
“He escorted me to all the major social events that season. And then my father and mother came to bring me back here, to the City. Reggie promised to write me, but I never got a letter. I was so disappointed with Lt. O. Reginald Shinn I vowed never to fall in love again, and I haven’t.” Tears stood in La Señora’s eyes. Willy stood on tiptoe and kissed her on the cheek. He handed her a tissue from the box on her desk, and softly left the room. La Señora sat in the gathering shadows, remembering the pearly light of Lima.
The Pitts
La Señora read the letter the tall, awkward man in front of her had presented. It was from the Rev. Bobbo Link, whom La Señora had long respected for his judgment and kindness to various strays. One was Dickon Shayne, who had come to her down on his luck, and stayed to help the homeless and hopeless find new life within them. Now Rev. Link had sent her another case. She looked up from the brief letter. True to his discrete nature, Bobbo Link had not detailed the troubled history of Harry Pitts to her.
“Rev. Link says here,” she said to the man in front of her, “that you will tell me your history. You are, he indicates, fresh from the Central American Mission Field?”
“Yes, in Belize.” The man mumbled.
“You were asked to leave?” La Señora inquired. The man stared at her with a look of almost terror. She looked severe in her black dress. Its neckline was high, and unrelieved with lace, brooch or pectoral cross. She wore a black poke bonnet on her head. Other times she wore a scarf. The poke bonnet she thought of as her “Salvation Army” outfit. The scarf she thought of as a wimple substitute. Either gave her an air of nineteenth century dignity and puritanical righteousness. She found the costumes useful theater in dealing with the alcoholic indigents and drugged homeless who formed such a large part of her clientele.
“Why were you asked to leave?” she said. The nervous man in front of her shuffled his feet, and cleared his throat several times, before he answered.
“Because of the boy, Ma’am,” he said.
La Señora stared up at him over the tops of her reading glasses. It increased the severity of her black eyes measurably. “The boy?”
“A boy my sister rescued, just a babe he was.”
“For an act of your sister’s charity you were asked to leave your mission?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Please explain.”
“The Mission Board listened to gossip, and misunderstood,” Harry Pitts said. “Olive, my sister, went into the highlands to train the women of several villages in elementary sanitation and other housewifely improvements. She was gone nearly seven months. While she was there, she found Hiram, that’s the boy, alone in a hut with his dead mother. She brought him home.” Harry stopped. La Señora sighed.
“How was that misunderstood?” Harry blushed deep red and cringed.
“The Mission Board took it that Hiram was my son, begotten on my own sister.” Harry’s misery was evident.
“Why?”
“Rumors, we guess, or jealousy.” Harry bowed his head and studied his hands rolling and unrolling the papers he held. “We don’t know how the talk started.”
“Where is Hiram now?”
“The Mission Board took him from us, to provide him a Christian home. We aren’t allowed to know where he is.” The man looked La Señora straight in the eye. “We would still serve, if you have a place for us.”
La Señora folded the letter and put it in the envelope. She tapped a corner of it against her teeth. Harry Pitts waited quietly in front of her.
“I think I may find a place,” she said. “Do you have living quarters?”
“Not as yet. The Mission Board offered us no stipend.”
“I can’t pay you, but I can offer you food and shelter for a little while, in return for practical help with my work here at the Mission. You and your sister can move in tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Ma’am, and God bless you.”
“She already has,” La Señora said, and pretended not to notice Harry’s shock at the gender she gave the Divine Pronoun.
When Harry and Olive came the next day, they had only two battered suitcases each. One held clothes for Harry, another clothes for Olive, the third held a skillet, a pot, and two place settings of heavy earthenware and a small set of stainless steel flatware. Someone had wrapped these items carefully in bath towels and hand towels. The fourth suitcase held books and papers, primarily Biblical tracts and engineering books on primitive septic system construction. La Señora saw this poverty because she helped Olive unpack.
Olive Pitts could have been a pretty matron, had she not eschewed cosmetics and styled hair. She wore her hair in a severe bun. La Señora privately labeled Olive’s coiffure the “Missionary Position” hairdo. Olive’s face, just a few years past its petite and pretty youth, teetered on the brink of pinched spinster. She said very little, until La Señora mentioned the baby she had left behind in Belize. That opened a torrent of talk that did not stop until Harry returned from some errand he had invented in order to avoid the unpacking. Only days later would La Señora learn Olive was an accomplished plumber and electrician.
Last of the Kuanyins
Malcolm took a call from Chief Inspector Pryor.
“Mr. Drye? Chief Inspector Pryor here.”
“Yes, Chief Inspector. What may I do for you?”
“I’ve consulted with my superiors. They see no reason for us to keep the black book or the statue. By rights they’re your property.”
“Oh. All right.”
“By the way, do you have a sister?”
“Heavens, no, Chief Inspector. Mother only raised boys.”
“A woman called, said she was your sister, Vanna Dee.”
“She’s mistaken, at best, or up to no good. We Dryes never had a sister.”
“She claims she has a receipt from a Wong Brothers Import/Export Emporium in Chinatown for the statue.”
“Quig may have had a secretary. He was devious enough to hire a devious secretary. Is there any way to get that receipt?”
“Yes.
I’ll tell her I need it for verification, or something. Then I can ‘lose’ it.”
“If you’d do that, Chief Inspector, I’d be most appreciative.”
“Glad to foil a scam, sir, any time.” The Chief Inspector rang off.
Two days later, he came by Malcolm’s apartment and brought the receipt and the statue, as well as the black book. Malcolm, being at leisure that day, sat down and deciphered the book. He learned that the statue was one of three, and that it contained some kind of treasure. Quigley’s notes were vague about the nature of the treasure, but he had guessed it must be small to be contained in the three statues. Quigley, of course, had hoped it was gems.
Malcolm set the little black book aside and thought. He took the statue out of its Wong Brothers bag and turned it over and over in his hands. He saw nothing to indicate what, if any, treasure it could hold. He got his coat and a bowler, took up his cane (which he carried for effect) and the bag with the Kuanyin. He caught the bus for Chinatown.
Mae Ling was at the cash register when Malcolm came in. The Wong brothers were in the back, reviewing their inventory.
“May I help you?” Mae asked.
“Yes,” Malcolm said. “I have a receipt from your shop. My brother had it in his pocket when he died in the recent quake.”
“My condolences on your loss.”
“Thank you. We were not close.”
Mae kept silent. She did not want to explore anyone else’s troubled waters. Her own pond was ruffled enough with conflict. Her father disapproved her pretensions to authorship. He wanted her to