Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

businessman.”
    “But back to the initial questions concerning Mi—or, I should say, some passing thoughts about a possibility that occurred to me at the crime scene,” Chen said, fingering the pointed tip of a bamboo shoot at his foot. “With Internal Security’s theory practically crossed out, I began to think in a totally different direction. What if Liu was already asleep or unconscious when the murderer struck? That could explain lots of things, but at the same time it led to another question. Who could have gotten into the room when Liu was sleeping? Or a variation of that question, who could have made Liu fall asleep and then delivered the fatal blow? Or instead, who could have then left the scene, with the door unlocked, for another to come along later?
    “Given the force of the blow and the amount of sedative in Liu’s system as estimated in the autopsy report, I was more inclined to this second scenario. But whatever the actual circumstances, these all pointed to one person. Someone very close to him, even intimate with him, and familiar with his whereabouts that evening.”
    “Mi, the little secretary,” Huang said. “The only one who could have had access to that place at night and wouldn’t have aroused suspicion. She could have given Liu a handful of sleeping pills in a drink, I would imagine.”
    “And here’s the blind spot. Everybody knew Mi was his little secretary. She was nothing without him, only a massage girl originally from a so-called hair salon. Why would she murder him? As a materialistic girl, she knew better. She would be the last one to be suspected of his murder.
    “Another stumbling block to those other possible scenarios is her alibi. Mi has a solid alibi for her whereabouts that evening, one provided by Fu. Of course, in turn she provided an alibi for Fu, as well.”
    “Chief, apparently I’m the dumbest of the dumb sidekicks, like the ones in the mysteries you translate. All along, I thought you were targeting Mrs. Liu.”
    “I was, and for quite a while too. In fact, Mrs. Liu also satisfied the necessary criteria of the scenarios I was working with. For that reason alone, she had to be included as a suspect with the means and a possible motive, considering Liu’s infidelity. Furthermore, her frequent trips to Shanghai—two trips over one weekend—were naturally a bit suspicious. The question for me then was: Why now? She must have known about Liu’s affairs for quite some time. Why kill him now? So I contacted Liu’s attorney, from whom I learned that Liu had had no plans to divorce his wife. Other sources said the same thing. On the contrary, with their son coming back to Wuxi, the family seemed to be far from falling apart. Still, there were things I found puzzling about her, like her frequent trips back to Shanghai. So I decided to look deeper into it, and it was in the course of it that something else occurred to me. ”
    “What?”
    “Mrs. Liu used to be the ‘queen’ back in school. Could someone be after her even today? You might say that she’s no longer young, but I once had a case where a successful Big Buck was chasing after a ‘loyal character dancer’ twenty years later, despite the fact that she’d been crushed by life—a haggard, sallow, middle-aged peasant with her beauty utterly ravaged. It’s not impossible that there was an old suitor after Mrs. Liu, however implausible it might seem after all these years. It would explain why she endured Liu’s affairs and why she went back to Shanghai so frequently. Thanks to the great efforts made by Detective Yu and his wife Peiqin, I was able to see that I was on the wrong track.”
    “So Detective Yu has been working along with you?” Huang asked, cutting in.
    “No. I asked him to check into Mrs. Liu’s Shanghai background. That’s about it. Indeed, people are complicated. They are capable of doing things that seem totally inexplicable to others, hence suspicious, but once you manage to see it from their perspective, it all makes perfect sense. That’s another story, of course,” Chen said, glancing up toward the closed window of the villa. “But excluding a possible change in Liu’s family life meant there was another probability: Mi would remain a little secretary indefinitely.”
    “I’ve never thought about that, Chief. But a girl like Mi might not necessarily see herself as the potential second Mrs. Liu. As long as Liu provided well for her, she might be content. She’s