The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook Part 10

'Yeah. But when He's in town, or has guests, He likes to come up here and look at the cars. He strokes their hoods. He talks to them. They're nice to have. And they're an investment. They acc.u.mulate value. The cars in this building are worth almost as much as a decent-sized skysc.r.a.per.'

Wong was prowling around the floor. 'What are in those rooms?' He pointed to the doors on the east side of the building.

'Those doors lead to the stairs, and those lead to staff accommodation,' said Puk. 'On the second floor, we have some rooms-we keep junk in there. There's a laundry room with spare uniforms and stuff, and a storage area where we keep car parts and that sort of thing.'

'I need somewhere to work,' said Wong. The feng shui feng shui master had subcontracted his afternoon appointment and those of the following days to a fellow pract.i.tioner named Sum, so that he could concentrate on Nevis Au Yeung's garage for as long as needed. 'I need a room to work from, small table, two chairs, good light.' master had subcontracted his afternoon appointment and those of the following days to a fellow pract.i.tioner named Sum, so that he could concentrate on Nevis Au Yeung's garage for as long as needed. 'I need a room to work from, small table, two chairs, good light.'

Puk looked dismayed. 'There are no rooms with decent light in this building. There are just the cubby holes we use for offices downstairs . . . I know-you can use the table in Allie's flat. We play mahjong on it sometimes.'

He led them over to a door that appeared to have been badly painted with leftover grey primer. Puk hammered on it. After two minutes, a thin, small man in striped pyjamas appeared. 'Morning, Puk,' Allie Ng said, his voice thick with sleep. 'Or afternoon, is it?'

'These are feng shui feng shui people,' Puk said. 'They're going to use your table for their work for a couple of days, can or not?' people,' Puk said. 'They're going to use your table for their work for a couple of days, can or not?'

'Yah, sure, no problem,' said Ng. His nostrils suddenly whitened, and it was clear that he was trying to suppress a yawn. ''Scuse me,' he said to the visitors, putting his hand to his mouth. 'I'm a s.h.i.+ft worker.'

'Poor you,' said Joyce. 'What hours do you work?'

'I'm on from six in the night to six in the morning six days a week.'

'That's terrible,' she exclaimed. 'Is that allowed? That's- er-let me see-seventy-two hours a week. Don't you have unions and stuff?'

'I don't mind,' said Allie Ng, yawning again. 'Especially in a difficult situation like now, with the cars disappearing.' He put his arm on his colleague's shoulder. 'We are in this together. We are brothers.'

Puk turned to Wong. 'Allie and I are are in this together. The Chairman said that if one more car gets stolen, we're both going to lose our jobs.' in this together. The Chairman said that if one more car gets stolen, we're both going to lose our jobs.'

'Why don't we let the poor guy go to bed?' Joyce said.

The diminutive night guard ushered Wong and McQuinnie into the three-room flat. His wife Suma had gone out to the playgroup with their child, so the living room was empty. A small table about a metre square was cleared of plates and toddler playthings for them to work on. Then he went back to his bed.

Wong began the long process of examining the floor plans and mapping the directions of the influences. He started by making notes on the structure with the help of Harris Wu. The garage was well designed, with a total floor area of 4,500 square metres on four floors, including the roof. It had two hundred and forty vehicle s.p.a.ces, plus the large enclosed workshop for the Alfa 24, staff accommodation, and some small offices on the ground floor. It was steel framed with a facade of mesh panels, architectural bracing and insulated cladding. The floors were pre-cast concrete, covered with a watertight membrane. The roof deck was covered with mastic asphalt.

The geomancer thanked Wu for his help, and the architect bowed once and left the room.

Looking at the floor plan, Wong noted with approval that Wu had cleverly managed to minimise the use of columns- not only were these irritating to drivers, but they sometimes chopped up the flow of ch'i ch'i into awkwardly small tributaries. into awkwardly small tributaries.

The structure was basically very simple-each floor was a rectangle of just over 1,000 square metres, with parts of the east and north sides closed off for other purposes. There was a 40-square-metre set of rooms used for offices on the ground floor, 25 square metres of storage rooms on the second level, and 42 square metres of s.p.a.ce used for staff accommodation on the top floor. Wong calculated that the flat in which he was sitting was a thin rectangle, having a frontage of about 12.5 metres and a depth of about four metres. The living s.p.a.ce in which he sat was four metres wide, and contained a kitchenette. The main bedroom next to it was also four metres wide, part of which had been hived off to form the unit's only bathroom. Then there was a small room about one-and-a-half metres wide, which housed the baby's cot.

Wong smiled as he noticed that Allie Ng's flat was facing due south. It wasn't an ideal location, but it was better than Nevis Au Yeung's accommodation, which faced northeast, precisely the wrong direction for a tyc.o.o.n born in the year of the rat, 1940.

Joyce, quickly bored, made a token effort at helping her employer, and then went for a walk. Allie Ng's flat was airless and filled with the rank odour of sleep-breath and the sour milk smell of babies.

At first, she had no idea what to do. They were stuck in a car park for the entire day-perhaps for two days or more. There were no shops, no people, no coffee bars. Why on earth did no one have the idea of putting CD shops or boutiques into car parks? To her, that would be such an obvious obvious thing to do, and what was really needed to brighten up the place. Perhaps she should suggest it to the tyc.o.o.n? He might be really grateful to her for the idea. thing to do, and what was really needed to brighten up the place. Perhaps she should suggest it to the tyc.o.o.n? He might be really grateful to her for the idea.

She wandered around aimlessly for a while, not knowing what to do with herself. Then an idea came into her head. Suddenly she knew exactly what she was going to do-sneak a peek at that rare car that Harris had talked of.

She looked behind her guiltily as she turned a corner towards the back of the third floor-and walked straight into Harris Wu.

'Oh. Sorry.'

'No harm done,' said the architect. 'Where are you off to? Can I help you?'

'I was just-I was just wandering around a bit, you know, getting a feel for the place.' She gave an involuntary glance at the shuttered workshop.

He smiled at her, a grin that said he knew exactly what she was doing. 'You want to have a look at the Alfa 24? It's really quite something.'

'Can I? Will we get into trouble? Have you got the key?'

'Come.'

As they walked towards the enclosed area, he patted his pocket. 'There's no key. The only way you can open it from the outside is with a dedicated remote control device. The front door works like a shutter, but it's four times as thick - I designed and installed it myself. Impossible to break through.' He pulled a pair of small metal devices out of his jacket. They looked like miniaturised television remotes.

She expected them to go to the shuttered front, but when they reached the walled-in area, Wu beckoned to her to move past the door and round to one side. 'The Curdy boys are doing some work in there today. Replacing something on the dash. They're very temperamental about being disturbed. The air in that room is kept at a certain temperature and all that. Let's just have a look through the window.'

He led her around the side of the enclosed area where there was a window, about two metres long, set into the wall. Peering in, she saw that everything was a bright orange-yellow colour, as if at the bottom of a sea of artificial fruit juice. She saw a slightly blurred image of d.i.c.k Curdy sitting in a car which looked as if it was a century old.

'Why is everything orange?'

Wu said, 'The Curdys installed a yellow filter to protect the paintwork against fading. The Chairman looks after this car better than He looks after His children or His staff, if you ask me. Don't tell anyone I said that. The inside of this particular garage has its own climate control station-cost more than fifteen thousand dollars.'

'Sing?'

'US.'

'Geez.'

She peered through the gla.s.s again. As her eyes got used to the scene inside the orange sea, she could locate both men. d.i.c.k Curdy was adjusting the left side headlamp, while younger brother Petey was in the pa.s.senger seat, with his arm half-buried in a hole in the dashboard. Petey turned and saw her looking at him. He gave her a smile and a wink.

Joyce was astonished. Cheeky! She decided not to respond. But somehow her face had its own ideas. Before she could stop herself, her mouth opened to reveal a bright, toothy smile, and her right eye winked back.

Petey lasciviously licked his lips with the tip of his tongue and then puckered them in her direction.

Joyce, shocked, again decided that she wouldn't react. But still her features appeared to be in a state of mutiny. She heard herself laugh, and her lips drew themselves together and blew him a kiss back.

Amazed at herself, she blushed painfully and raised her hand to cover her mouth. Her face was burning. She hoped that her red cheeks wouldn't show through the tinted window. Why on earth had she done that? And in front of a witness, too! She thanked Wu and fled to the safety of the room in which her boss was working.

The following day, Wong arrived at the car park early in the morning. It was a hot, glaring morning, and the building was baking when, a little after 9:45, he was handed a written message from Alyn Puk. It had been faxed to the security guard's office from Winnie Lim. 'Friend of Joyce came yesterday afternoon to try to fix stain on wall with stain remover,' it said. 'He made it worse. Now big red splodge on wall. Splodge is shape of cow.'

'Aiyeeah.' Things in his office were going from bad to worse.

Meanwhile, Joyce McQuinnie arrived at work at 10:30 am in a state of acute embarra.s.sment at her exchange the previous afternoon with Petey Curdy. She found it hard to even think of yesterday's encounter without blus.h.i.+ng. Yet at the same time, she could think of nothing else. It was so strange. She had barely swapped two words with the guy in her whole life-and he had blown her a kiss. Was he saying that he had fallen madly in love with her? Or was he just teasing her? And what on earth had she been thinking of, blowing him a kiss back?

She spent the rest of the morning carefully avoiding the sealed workshop, walking long distances around it when she went out to take measurements, and using the stairs at the north end of the building when she needed to change floors.

But as noon approached, Joyce started to question whether she was taking the right approach. She tried to visualise what her older sister-a spectacularly successful tormentor of the male s.e.x-would do in such a situation. Melanie certainly wouldn't skulk around in a state of abject embarra.s.sment.

Joyce asked herself why she should feel cowed. She was a single adult, and so, presumably, was Petey. There was absolutely no reason at all to be ashamed about a mildly flirtatious exchange. The truth was, Petey might well be very attracted to her. She was an attractive young woman, after all. Her dad always called her 'Beauty' and 'Princess'. You couldn't blame men for fancying a young woman like her. It was biology.

But as for herself, she had no interest in him whatsoever. She and Petey could be friends or not friends. It made not the slightest bit of difference to her. She was far too busy to be distracted by stuff like that. She had a job to do. So for her, the best reaction would be to continue with her life exactly as normal. If they b.u.mped into each other at any time in the next few hours, so be it.

But they didn't. By mid-afternoon, Joyce found her att.i.tude had changed yet again. His face kept popping into her mind. In her mind, she replayed yesterday's scene continuously, zooming in on the way his lips slowly puckered themselves up and then-pop!-a little kiss shot out in her direction. She was soon longing to see Pete Curdy again-but only so she could show by her cool, detached expression that she had absolutely no need whatsoever to see him again.

By four o'clock, she found herself sitting outside Allie Ng's flat, on the hood of one of Nevis Au Yeung's spare BMWs, trying to think of an excuse to re-visit the workshop. But even if she thought of something, what would she say when she got there? And anyway, how could you strike up a conversation with a gorgeous guy through a soundproof gla.s.s window?

No solution presented itself until Wong had nearly finished his work making feng shui feng shui charts for the building, its owner and the missing cars. She had an idea. She strode into Ng's living room, where the geomancer was sitting, poring over twenty pages of charts for the building, its owner and the missing cars. She had an idea. She strode into Ng's living room, where the geomancer was sitting, poring over twenty pages of lo shu lo shu charts he had drawn. charts he had drawn.

'You know, I was thinking. If that Alfa thing is the most valuable car in the building, you better see how it fits into the calendar,' said Joyce. 'Remember how you told me that cars have birthdays and ages too?'

'Ah,' said Wong. 'Yes. How old is it? I think he say made in 1910.'

'We'd better make absolutely sure. I'll go and ask the Curdys for you. They'll know.' Before he could say no no, she raced out of the door and headed for the sealed workshop.

She pressed the b.u.t.ton at the garage's front door. A buzzer sounded, but time pa.s.sed and there was no response. The shutter did not move. She tried to lift it, but it was firmly locked. So she walked around the side. She found the tinted window and raised herself on her toes to peek through.

'Huh?' This time she couldn't see anything at all in the room, except some tools hanging on the wall. The lights were off. Had they gone home already? Bother!

Perhaps she just needed to get a better angle. She gripped the edge of the sill and pulled herself up. It was hard to see, but there appeared to be nothing there-not even the car. 'b.u.g.g.e.r,' she said. 'Missed 'em.'

'Can I help you?' said a voice.

She looked behind to see Alyn Puk standing next to her.

'Oh, er, yeah, hi!' Joyce stammered. 'I was just looking for the Curdys! Are they in today? Mr Wong needs to ask them something!' She flashed him a pleasant smile. 'I'm just taking a message!'

Joyce bit her lip. Why did she suddenly have to speak like a child doing an errand for a grown-up? Why did she feel she needed an excuse? She was an a.s.sistant feng shui feng shui consultant, and was fully ent.i.tled to walk around the premises. consultant, and was fully ent.i.tled to walk around the premises.

Puk looked coldly at her. 'I suggest you stick to your job, which is wandering around with a compa.s.s, and keeping black magic out, isn't it?'

'Okay!' she said, suddenly meek. 'I didn't mean any harm! Just wanted some info from them about the age of the Alfa! I didn't know they'd taken it out.'

She had taken a few steps away when Puk spoke again. 'What did you say?'

'I didn't know the guys'd taken it out,' she repeated. 'It's not in there.'

'What do you mean it it's not in there?' Puk suddenly looked alarmed.

Joyce, wondering why this was so difficult for him to understand, spoke slowly. 'There's nothing in that garage. It's empty.'

His eyes full of horror, Puk leapt to the workshop window and peered through.

'No,' he breathed. 'Dear G.o.d.'

He fumbled with a leather pouch hanging from his belt to get his communicator out. He was so nervous that he couldn't open it with his fat fingers.

'Want me to help?' Joyce offered.

'NO!' he shouted. Finally managing to open the latch, he s.n.a.t.c.hed out the walkie-talkie and yelled into the microphone. 'Harris. Come up to level three, now, urgent, code red. Run, d.a.m.n you. Bring the remote key for the workshop.'

They waited in silence for one hundred and twenty seconds until Wu arrived at a sprint, pointing the remote at the front shutter of the garage.

For twenty agonising seconds, the three of them waited until the metal garage doors swung upwards to reveal what they had all already realised. It was empty. The Alfa had gone.

Harris Wu was speechless. His jaw dropped open and he stopped breathing. Beads of sweat sprouted from his forehead. He wandered through the yellow-lit workshop and then wandered out again in a daze. 'Oh my G.o.d,' he whispered.

Joyce tried to comfort the two of them. 'I'm sure it's fine. Maybe d.i.c.k Curdy has taken it out for a test drive. To see if whatever he did to it was okay. Or maybe Nevis Thing's gone for a drive in it himself.'

But Puk was inconsolable. 'd.i.c.k and Peter both left early today. d.i.c.k went to collect an over-sized pre-war spark plug from a parts store and Pete's gone to their home workshop to reline the clutch friction plate.' He reached out with a fat arm to steady himself against the wall. 'The Alfa's gone. And so am I. I'm b.l.o.o.d.y history, man.'

He was right. The car had vanished. And Puk and Ng were given notice of termination immediately by Nevis Au Yeung himself, over a mobile phone, in the most colourful of language.

d.i.c.k and Petey Curdy, who had left the premises at one and three o'clock respectively, had been summoned back to the site immediately. d.i.c.k was close to tears as he wandered around the empty workshop. 'I've been working on that car, on and off, for ten years,' he said. 'It's like losing a family member. b.l.o.o.d.y, b.l.o.o.d.y b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l.' His younger brother, his face heavy, put an arm around his shoulder to comfort him. Any glimmer of flirtation between him and Joyce was forgotten. The missing car was the only object of adoration now. h.e.l.l.' His younger brother, his face heavy, put an arm around his shoulder to comfort him. Any glimmer of flirtation between him and Joyce was forgotten. The missing car was the only object of adoration now.

Minutes later, Puk, Wong and Harris were summoned by telephone to a meeting with the chairman in conference room AY-1.

'Come,' sighed the distressed security guard, gesturing for Wong to follow. 'Let's go.'

The feng shui feng shui master was confused. Puk was moving away from the house. master was confused. Puk was moving away from the house.

'We should go to house for conference, yes?'

'No. The meeting is in conference room AY-1. That's Mr Au Yeung's car.'

'Oh.'

As they walked across a set of lush, carefully trimmed lawns to an open area containing a silver stretch limousine, Wong thought back over the past minutes of panic. The search for the car had been thorough and heartbreaking to watch. Allie Ng had once more been roused from his daytime slumber-clearly he was having a bad week, and it wasn't going to get any better.

Puk, Ng, several other staff and a group of police officers had crawled over the building, peering into every corner of the car park for clues. They had even stuck their heads into the small room where Wong had spent two days comparing measurements and drawing charts.

There was no sign of the vehicle. It wasn't to be found anywhere in the building. And yet both entry barrier guards-the 6 am to 3 pm man and the 2 pm to 11 pm man-were adamant that it had not been driven out of the only exit. An initial examination of the tapes from the security cameras backed up their a.s.sertions.

As Wong, Puk and Harris reached the limousine-an eight-metre-long stretched Lincoln Towncar imported from Chicago-they could see that it contained Nevis Au Yeung in a state of apoplectic fury. He was a short, fat, volcanic mountain of anger.

Four large bodyguards surrounded the car.

There were two rows of three seats facing each other in the pa.s.senger cabin of the limousine. A small, walnut coffee table lay between them.

Puk, Harris and Wong climbed in and sat with their backs to the driver. Nevis and a silk-clad woman sat opposite them. Joyce waited politely outside the car not knowing what to do, until the woman, whose body was twenty-ish and parts of whose face were thirty-ish, reached out and grabbed her hand, dragging her in to sit next to her. 'I don't know who you are, dear, but you might as well sit next to me,' she said. 'I'm Foo-Foo.'

Joyce was stunned by the sheer opulence on display inside the car. The seats were cream leather and as soft as cus.h.i.+ons. The inhabitants were sumptuously dressed. Nevis Au Yeung had a Jhane Barnes camel-cashmere blend one-b.u.t.ton jacket over Polo Ralph Lauren double-pleated golf trousers and A. Testoni caramel ta.s.selled loafers. The woman was wearing a Kay Unger light and dark pink paisley strapless crinkle dress with matching scarf, over Cesare Paciotti honey-suede bunched boots.

It was almost impossible to breathe. The air in the car had been entirely replaced by designer perfume, as Nevis's Bvlgari BLV Pour Homme did battle with his girlfriend's Clandestine by Guy Laroche.

The four new arrivals sat in terrified silence as the tyc.o.o.n growled a lengthy monologue. 'Idiots. You idiots. idiots. I am surrounded by incompetence. Do I have to do absolutely everything myself? Do I have to stay up I am surrounded by incompetence. Do I have to do absolutely everything myself? Do I have to stay up all all night guarding my own car night guarding my own car by myself by myself ? Do I pay security staff a huge fortune to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?' He continued in this vein for ten minutes, his statements heavily decorated with bursts of Cantonese Joyce could not follow (curses by the sound of them and by the way Wong winced). ? Do I pay security staff a huge fortune to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?' He continued in this vein for ten minutes, his statements heavily decorated with bursts of Cantonese Joyce could not follow (curses by the sound of them and by the way Wong winced).

The only person who remained calm throughout the tirade was the woman who was always referred to outside her presence as 'His latest-er-wife'. The implication, Joyce decided, was that she was the girlfriend of the moment.

Whatever her status, the woman-who went by the name Foo-Foo Au Yeung-was not only unperturbed by the tyc.o.o.n's outbreak, but was positively beaming. She felt that the latest disappearance totally justified her theory. She was having an absolutely wonderful day.

'I told you,' she said, during a pause in her partner's thunderous ranting. 'Black magic. The only explanation. I said this all along. Now perhaps you'll all believe me.'