海外逸士 偵探小說連載 KungFu Masters 7 (part 2)

Back in the office, Tricia acquainted Lois with all the details of the case, accompanied with a series of gestures and laughter, seconded by Sally. Each girl was seated in her own chair behind the desk. Then their brains set to work looking for some ways to go on with the case. Lois picked up the phone to get to some of her connections in New York for a list of the registered go-go bars and waited for the fax to come in.


“Can we change the color of our uniforms?” asked Sally uncertainly, moving her eyes bashfully from Lois to Tricia. “I am sick of being mistaken for a UPS woman.” She put a new gum into her mouth.


“What color do you like?” asked Lois, her right foot under the desk tapping on the floor while she sipped hot cocoa from the china cup in her hand, the cup with a cracked line on the side. This cup was really a sentimental memento. Her grandfather had used it all his life. It was a two-hundred-year-old antique from the Qing Dynasty.


“Certainly not something resembling postwomen,” said Tricia, hooking a loose strand of her sunstreaked blond hair behind her ear.


“We adopted this color because of our nickname Lioness Team so that the color and the lioness head on the back can remind people of our nickname, our team, serving as an advertisement. If any of you can come up with a better idea, I have no objection,” said Lois, sipping more cocoa from the cup.


Sally buried her fingers in her shiny, short ink-black hair and scratched a bit, a mannerism reflecting that she was cudgeling her brains hard.


“Don't do that again, Sally!” moaned Tricia, who knew that Sally would eat a huge meal afterwards, saying that she needed to restore all the brain cells she had killed when she had cudgeled them.


“Okay,” she said at last, holding up both her hands in sham surrender. “I'll take a course in uniform designing before I can get any really worthwhile perception.”


Tricia smiled at her with an I-know-you-can't-do-it expression. Sally didn't even look at Tricia, busy with her mouth moves.


A humming noise was heard from the fax machine. After it ceased, Lois turned to take the fax. She looked at the fax sheet and made a grimace. Sally was sent on the wild-goose chase with Frank's photo in her purse and one-zillionth chance of hope.


“Why me for this stupid task?” she asked with a frown and a practically wrinkled nose.


“Because you like adventures more than either of us,” Tricia answered for both Lois and herself.


“It doesn't sound like an adventure. Anyone can go to such places,” Sally said doubtfully.


“You can see how girls act on the stage. It will be a new experience for you,” Tricia remarked.


“Thanks. I've seen enough of such things on TV.” She shouldered her bag and spat the gumball towards Tricia before she left the office. Tricia flipped her middle finger at the oncoming gumball, sending it into the garbage pail a few feet away in the corner.


“Score two points.” Sally left the words trailing behind her as she slammed the office door shut.






***






“It's lucky for me that Frank's father remembers his son's plate number. We can use this clue,” Tricia commented.


Lois thought for a moment, then agreed. Tricia called detective Sam Dawson. They were acquainted with each other, of course, having been on some cases together. Tricia liked Sam a lot and Sam liked Tricia, too. But sometimes there seems to be a long way from liking to loving and even an abyss between the two feelings. Only a bridge of karma can span the abyss. According to some old Chinese sayings, karma can bring the spouse to a person from a distance of a thousand miles away. But if karma won't grant it, even neighbors can't unite in holy matrimony like Romeo and Juliet.


“May I speak to Sam?” Tricia talked softly into the mouthpiece, tugging at a disobedient strand of her golden hair and slowly hooking it behind her ear.


“Detective Dawson's not in his office right now,” his assistant, Pedro, answered. “May I take a message, ma'am?”


“Hi, Pedro. This is Tricia. Tell Sam to call me back. I'll need his help in a new case.”


“Okay, I'll pass the message to him,” replied Pedro cordially.


“Thank you very much, Pedro.” Tricia let the receiver fall into the cradle with a clatter.


Tricia's theory was that if something serious had happened to Frank, his car might have been deserted somewhere. She wanted to check, or rather to exclude, the possibility.






***






It was ten twenty in the evening. Lois and Tricia were still in their office when the phone rang. “The Lioness Team. Lois speaking.”

“Hello, Lois. This is Sam. What's up?” Sam was panting like he had just run a Marathon race.

“Hi, Sam. Tricia wants to talk to you. Will you hold on, please?” She pushed down the hold button and made a gesture to Tricia.

Tricia picked up the phone on her desk. “Hello, Sam. This is Tricia. Can you help to check a car which might be deserted somewhere?” She gave Sam a description of Frank's car and the plate number, her hair falling again before her right eye with the forward move of her head. This time she didn't bother to pull it back. She was talking to Sam. No distraction whatsoever.

“No problem. I'll call you if I get anything. I'm kind of busy right now.” He hung up. No wonder he could never get a steady girlfriend.

Then both girls left the office for home. Their father hadn’t returned yet. Their mother was still up and waiting. It was too early to go to bed.

“Hi, Mom,” Lois and Tricia sang out in unison.

“Hi, girls. I've cooked some dumplings. You want to eat now or wait for your Dad?” Mrs. Lin always had some kind of food ready for her hu*****and and daughters when they came home late, and everyday saw a different recipe. She didn't look her age. Chi exercising always kept people looking younger than they really were. When she went out with her daughters, she looked like their older sister.

Mr. Lin came back a few minutes later. The four of them sat at the dining room table with a bowl of hot dumplings before them.

Alida was enjoying herself in some wonderland of sweet dreams, or falling in a bottomless chasm in some nightmare, or dropping into a hole to meet a Mr. Rabbit of hers.

“Where's Sally?” Mr. Lin asked between chewing the dumplings.

“She went to New York on investigation,” Tricia said, swallowing a dumpling. “She may stay there for the night. She'll call to let us know.”