Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

attacked my meals, I jumped on the auntie bike and set off for the plastic awning shop. I could have walked. It was only three hundred meters. But I felt I needed to be traveling at speed to get past Ed who was still there at the concrete table.
    “ Koon Jimm…?” I heard over my shoulder.
    “Not now, Ed.”
    What kind of man, I ask you, given the current economic turndown, would have two and a half hours to waste in the middle of the day? An unemployed loser, that’s who.
    But now I wish I’d walked because a stroll in the midday heat would have been preferable to being eyed by every motorcycle and truck that passed along our village’s one road. At last I heard voices emerging from the shop, and Auntie Summorn, the mother of Maprao’s only known villain, Daeng, was thanking the detective and walking with him to the roadside.
    “That makes me feel much more comfortable,” I heard her say, and I didn’t get the feeling she was talking about awnings. A truck that was neither a taxi nor the vehicle of an abductor of elderly people stopped beside her and swept her off. That happens a lot down here. You go for a stroll and everyone stops to give you a ride. Annoying in a lovable kind of way, I suppose. The detective turned to me. If you already have an image of a private detective in your mind, you’ll need to delete it and start again. Koon Meng was about my height but skinny as an ink line. I was surprised he could stand up under the weight of his clothes. I assumed it was the pen in his shirt front pocket that gave him his stoop. He had a five hair mustache and long gray hair tied in a ponytail.
    “Sorry to have kept you,” he said. “It’s getting to the stage that I could use a waiting room.”
    He laughed with only his bottom teeth which I thought was impossible.
    “Nice to see the detecting business is doing so well,” I said with a thick smattering of irony I didn’t expect him to get.
    We walked to his office which was merely the front room of his single-story house with a desk off to one side. I sat. He sat.
    “How can I help you?” he asked.
    “I want to know what service you’re performing for my mother and how much you intend to charge her for it,” I said.
    I hoped he wouldn’t ask me if I’d posed this question to Mair because then I’d have to admit I hadn’t, not directly, which would make it look like I didn’t communicate with my own mother. And then, as I’d been sitting on his humiliating little stool I’d wondered how I might react if he cited the problem of detective-client confidentiality, at which juncture I’d point out that he was a plastic awnings installer and, as far as I knew, there was nothing in the Awnings Code of Honor that covered such ethical dilemmas. But he didn’t give me a chance to use any of my smart-arsed retorts.
    “I’m chasing up some poison for her,” he said.
    All right. I gave him points for honesty.
    “And how would you go about that?”
    “Take a sample to the lab in Chumphon.”
    “A sample of what?”
    “Stomach contents. From your poisoned dog.”
    “And where did you…? Oh, yuck.”
    The plastic container in the freezer flashed into my mind. Surely she didn’t…She couldn’t have. I shook the thought from my head like a dog shaking off a bath.
    “And what did you discover?”
    “Lannate 90.”
    “And that is?”
    “A common pest control. It was considered too toxic for use as an insecticide but it’s still available. A nasty way to go, I’d imagine. A lot of restaurants and resorts use it to keep down the stray dog population. They don’t like dogs worrying customers. They mix it with scraps and leave it out front overnight.”
    “And this poison has the ability to distinguish between stray dogs and dogs in collars with their telephone number printed on them?”
    “No. Kills em all.”
    “But the only resort or restaurant for five kilometers is ours.”
    “Right.”
    “And we didn’t…”
    “Right.”
    “So, was that the end of your involvement in this case?”
    “No.”
    “What else are you doing?”
    “Your mother wanted to know the strength and effects of Lannate 90 and who’d have access to it. I told her anyone can buy it but most people with plantations or orchards would have it handy. But that’s most of the population of Maprao.”
    “And that was it?”
    “Almost.”
    “Almost?”
    He twirled a plastic curtain ring around his little ringer. I glared.
    “She asked me to buy some for