“I expect it’s your mother’s.”
“I will see to this,” he said. “But I have a favor to ask of you, Aunt Lara. I am wondering if you can help me with a business matter. I am not, as Jen has probably told you, very inclined to business. I do not have a head for it. I have no wish to manage my father’s company, but I realize in the short term it is necessary for me to do so. You know about business,” he said. “And I am hoping you will give me some advice.”
“Chat, I will help you any way I can, but I own a little antique store. I know nothing about big business like Ayutthaya.”
“But you can read financial statements, can’t you?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “But…”
“You know so much more than I do,” he said. “I studied the arts, political science. I did not take commerce or finance.”
“I didn’t either,” I said.
“Please,” he said.
“Okay,” I replied. “Is there something you want me to read?”
“I would like you to come to the offices on the main floor,” he said.
“Now?”
“No. Tonight. Late. When everyone has gone home. Perhaps midnight?”
Midnight? “Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the glass doors at midnight.”
Chat was waiting for me when I arrived, having just finished moving back into the gold room. I was once again living in luxury, while Yutai, now my bitter enemy, I was sure, was elsewhere.
I smiled as pleasantly as possible at the chauffeur who was doubling as a security guard in the lobby, and went in. Chat might be trying to do this secretly, but I didn’t think much went unreported in that place.
We sat down at a computer, Chat pulled up some financial charts, and asked me to have a look through.
“The spreadsheets are in English,” I said. “But you may have to translate some of the notes.”
“I will,” he said.
“So what do you think?” he said, after awhile.
“I think Ayutthaya acquired a new partner last spring sometime.”
“Busakorn Shipping,” Chat said. “Blue Lotus, in English.”
“Khun Wichai’s company?”
“Yes,” Chat said. “It is Khun Wichai’s company. He named it after his daughter. His wife is dead. His daughter is everything he has.”
“Then you have a new partner in the form of Khun Wichai.”
“I’m not sure this is something I would want. Khun Wichai is… I’m not sure about him. I’ve always had a sense he was in businesses one is better off not to ask about. I told my father that, and we had a fight. He said I’m not very practical, not very skilled in the ways of the world. I told him he was exploiting people. I am very sorry about that now, as you can imagine, but I remain convinced Khun Wichai is not the kind of man we want to be in business with.”
“It looks to me as if this is now academic,” I said. “I think he’s a partner, or at least a minority shareholder, already. What else have you got there?”
“Figures for my mother’s business,” he said.
“She’s doing awfully well, isn’t she?” I said. “Good for her. She’s in partnership with Busakorn again.”
“Now take a look at these,” he said.
“These are financials for…” I didn’t know what to say.
“Tell me,” he said.
“They are financials for the same company, but they’re different. In this second set… where did you find these?”
“Dusk found them. He was just fooling around. My little brother is rather good with computers. Now tell me.”
“It just looks as if there are two sets of books for your mother’s business,” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Would there be a good reason for that?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, but I was thinking, Not likely. I couldn’t imagine what a reason might be, at least not one either Chat or I wanted to hear. “And by the way, a couple of others have or have had a small share in the company as well.”
“I noticed. William Beauchamp is one,” he said.
“Could I help you, Mr. Chat?” a voice said.
“And here is the other,” he murmured. “I was just showing Ms. Lara our computers,” Chat said aloud. I gave him a questioning look, and he nodded. Yutai, apparently, was the shareholder in question.
“I’m very impressed,” I said. “By your computers, I mean.”
Yutai looked at his watch. “It is very late,” he said.
“We didn’t want to bother people when they were hard at work,” I said.
Chat said something to Yutai in Thai, and after a very slight hesitation, the man turned and left. “We’d better go,” I said. “Let’s just print a copy of these financial statements, and I’ll have a closer look at the numbers,” I said.
“Thank you. I believe I may have to go to Chiang Mai and pay a visit to my proposed father-in-law.”
“I know I shouldn’t ask,” I said. “But what are you planning to do about that? I’d prefer you not string Jennifer along if you have other plans.”
“I would not do that, Aunt Lara,” he said, looking wounded.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that…”
“You love her,” he said. “I do, too.”
The next morning I looked at the two diaries, and then at the pile of financial statements, trying to decide where to start. “Diaries or numbers,” I muttered to myself. My hand hovered over first one, then the other. In the end, Will Beau-champ won. Why did I, after all, have to be the one to tell Chat his mother was cooking the books, no doubt with the help of her lover, the guy Chat thought was a secretary? It wasn’t going to help his relationship with Jennifer if I was the one to bring some unsavory facts to his attention. Praise be to whatever guardian spirit was looking out for me that I had not agreed to do business with that woman, only to make enquiries.
If my views on Wongvipa and company were crystallizing, my image of Will was not. He remained an enigma to me, a man who had deserted his wife and child, but had not succumbed, like Bent Rowland, to the sensual enticements of Bangkok. He’d started a business much like the one he had at home, lived what seemed to be a relatively quiet life in a nice but not luxurious apartment, was a pleasant enough neighbor, held a party every now and then and went to bars on occasion, but didn’t seem to have done anything too awful. Perhaps, as Praneet had suggested, he hadn’t been able to handle the pressure of a disabled child anymore and just flipped out temporarily. Maybe all it would have taken was one phone call from his wife to have him fly back home, but it never came. It was sad to think of Natalie and Will as two lonely people who loved each other, thousands of miles apart and both unable to make the smallest of gestures toward the other.
Presumably too, if Will had asked the mysterious Mr. Prasit to send that envelope to Natalie when he hadn’t heard from him in awhile, worthless though the contents might be, he must have had an intimation of his own mortality. The note he’d sent to Natalie personally could be said to have an impending sense of doom. Perhaps Will thought writing about Helen Ford was a dangerous thing to do. Maybe it was.
I turned back to the diaries. They were written in a small, tight script. I figured it would take days to work my way through them, even if I worked steadily, but I started into them anyway, and soon I was hooked.
They were a fascinating account of life in Bangkok after the war, but they were also personal, Fitzgerald writing about his painting, the people he met, the meals he had eaten. It was during this period that he had begun to build the tree house studio and to work there. Two of the first people to sit for their portraits were Mr. Thaksin and Mr. Virat, obviously the two Chaiwong brothers of the portrait in the living room. According to this account, the two men had come to see Fitzgerald Senior, but he had gone to Thaksin’s home to do the portrait of Thaksin’s first wife, Somchai, and little Sompom. While these four names were quite clear, some of the people referred to were only initials. I had no way to be certain why that would be. Perhaps it was for reasons of discretion, if not secrecy, or it was simply that these were people he knew very well and therefore did not need to write out their names.