Gaoliang let out a sigh. “I’m going to do everything in my power to help bring whoever was responsible for this terrible crime to justice. I know that the Beijing police have Richie Yang under twenty-four-hour surveillance now, and the entire city of Hangzhou has been turned inside out with this investigation. I have every confidence that the police are getting closer to the truth with every hour that passes.”

Everyone else remained silent, unsure of what to say after Gaoliang’s monologue, and Li Jing chose this moment to enter the living room pushing a gleaming silver cart with the caviar. Eddie noticed in annoyance that the bottom was filled with ice cubes, and not crushed ice as he had specifically requested. Now the glass bowl sat on the cubes at a slight angle, and he tried not to be distracted by it. Charity followed along with a just-opened bottle of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay and four champagne flutes. Fucky fuck, he’d told the maids to get out the vintage Venini glasses, not the everyday Baccarat!

“Some caviar and champagne?” Eddie said, trying to lighten the mood, all the while shooting daggers at Charity, who wondered what he was so upset about. Did she bring the champagne in too early? He did say to bring it in eight minutes after the important guest arrived, and she had timed it exactly on the grandfather clock. Sir kept glaring at the champagne flutes. Oh shit, she’d used the wrong glasses.

Rachel and Nick helped themselves to some caviar and champagne, but when Gaoliang was offered a glass, he shook his head politely.

“No champagne, Bao Buzhang?” Eddie said, rather disappointed. He would only have served Dom had it been just Nick and Rachel.

“No, but I wouldn’t mind a glass of hot water.”

These Mainlanders and their hot water! “Charity, could you see to it that Mr. Bao gets a glass of hot water at once.”

Gaoliang gazed intently at Nick and Rachel. “I want you both to know that Shaoyen has cooperated one hundred percent with the investigators. She has submitted herself to countless hours of questioning, and she’s even handed over all the surveillance videos in our plant in Shenzhen, where the drug is manufactured, so that the police can analyze everything.”

“Thank you for making this trip to tell me all this, Father. I know how difficult this must be for you,” Rachel said.

“My goodness, it’s nothing compared to what you had to go through!”

Charity entered the living room bearing a tray with a carafe of boiling hot water and one of the antique Venini flutes. She set the tray down next to Bao Gaoliang, and before Eddie could fully process what was happening, she began to pour the boiling hot water into the eighty-year-old venetian glassware. A high-pitched cracking sound could be heard as the glass began to crack down its side.

“Nooooooooooooooooooo!” Eddie suddenly screamed, leaping off the sofa and knocking over the caviar server. A million tiny black fish eggs went flying across the faded antique Savonnerie carpet, and as the other maids ran in to see what the commotion was, Eddie looked down in panic and began to pant. “Don’t move! This rug cost me nine hundred and fifty thousand euros at auction! Nobody move!”

Rachel turned to Laarni and said calmly, “Do you have a Dustbuster?”

? ? ?

After the caviar incident had been resolved safely with nary a casualty to a single knot of carpet, the group took their aperitifs onto the terrace to enjoy the sunset view. Now that Gaoliang had unburdened himself of all he needed to say, the mood had lightened considerably. Eddie stood at one end with Gaoliang, pointing out the houses of every famous tycoon who lived on Victoria Peak and estimating the value of their properties, while Rachel and Nick perched at the corner looking down toward the water.

“How are you feeling, hon?” Nick asked, still concerned about how Rachel was handling everything.

“I feel good. I’m so glad I’ve cleared the air with my father. I’m just ready to go home now.”

“Well, Commander Kwok said we could leave at the end of the week if nothing new develops. I promise, we’ll go home as soon as we possibly can,” Nick said, wrapping his arms around her as they looked at the lights coming on all over the city.

Later that evening, while Nick, Rachel, and Gaoliang were in the middle of dinner with Eddie and his mother, Alix, at the Locke Club, Gaoliang’s cell phone began to ring. Seeing that it was the Shanghai chief of police calling, he excused himself from the table and went out to the foyer to take the call. A few moments later, he came back to the table with an urgent look on his face. “There’s been a huge break in the case, and an arrest has been made. They want us to come back to Shanghai immediately.”

Rachel felt her gut tense up. “Do I really need to be there?”

“Apparently they need you to identify someone.” Gaoliang said gravely.

A little over three hours later, Rachel, Nick, and Gaoliang were back in Shanghai, speeding along in a chauffeured Audi to the Central Police Station on Fuzhou Lu.

“Still no word from Carlton?” Rachel asked.

“Er, no,” Gaoliang said tersely. He had been trying to contact Carlton and Shaoyen even before the chartered jet had departed from Hong Kong, but their phones were both going straight to voice mail. Now he was nervously hitting the redial button to no avail.

They arrived at the station and were escorted upstairs to a reception room ablaze in fluorescent lights. An officer with magnificently droopy jowls came into the room and bowed to Rachel’s father. “Bao Buzhang, thank you for returning so speedily. Is this Ms. Chu?”

“Yes,” Rachel said.

“I’m Inspector Zhang. We are going to take you into an interrogation room, and we would like you to tell us if the person we are holding appears familiar to you. You will see them behind a two-way mirror, and they will not be able to see or hear you, so please do not be afraid to speak up. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes. Can my husband come in with me?”

“No, that won’t be possible. But don’t worry, you will be with me and several other officers. Nothing is going to happen.”

“We’ll be right out here, Rachel.” Nick squeezed her hand encouragingly.

Rachel nodded and went along with the officer. There were two other detectives already in the first room when she entered. One of them pulled at a cord, and the blinds over a viewing window were lifted. “Do you recognize this person?” Inspector Zhang asked.

Rachel could feel her heart beating furiously in her throat. “Yes. Yes, I do. He was the man who was rowing our boat on the West Lake in Hangzhou.”

“He’s not a real boatman. He paid off the regular boatman so that he could poison the tea you drank while you were on the boat ride.”

“Oh my God! I forgot all about that Longjing tea!” Rachel said in astonishment. “But who is he? Why in the world would he want to poison me?”

“We’re not done yet, miss. Come into the next room.”

Rachel walked into the adjoining room, and the officer opened up another set of blinds. Rachel’s eyes widened in disbelief. “I don’t understand. What’s she doing here?”

“Do you know her?”

“That’s…” Rachel stammered. “That’s Roxanne Ma—Colette Bing’s personal assistant.”

* * *

* An immensely popular Chinese dating game show, known in English as If You Are the One. A national uproar occurred after a poor suitor asked a female contestant whether she would ride a bicycle with him on a date and she famously replied: “I would rather cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle!”

14

CENTRAL POLICE STATION

FUZHOU LU, SHANGHAI

Nick and Gaoliang were allowed to join Rachel in the viewing booth as Roxanne was subjected to the official interrogation.

“For the millionth time, I keep telling you it was a horrible mistake. I was just trying to send Rachel a little message, that’s all,” Roxanne said wearily.

“You thought poisoning a woman with a highly potent drug that shut down her kidneys and liver and could have led to her death was a way to send someone a little message?” Inspector Zhang asked incredulously.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that. The drug was just supposed to make her vomit for a while and have really bad stomach cramps. It makes you feel like you’re dying, when you’re not actually. The plan was to send Rachel the flowers along with the note right when she arrived at the hospital in Hangzhou. But before we could get the lilies to her, she had been checked out of the hospital and evacuated to Hong Kong. How the hell was I supposed to know that was going to happen?”

“So why did you wait so long after she was admitted to Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong before you sent the note?”

“I had no idea where they took her. She just disappeared! We were frantically searching for her everywhere—I had people in Shanghai, Beijing, all the top regional hospitals looking for her. But we had to wait till her admission record popped up somewhere. It was never the intention to let things get as bad as they did. I just wanted to scare her and make her leave the country. The plan went terribly wrong.”

“But why would you want to try to scare Rachel Chu in the first place?”

“I told you this already. Colette was extremely distraught that Carlton Bao might lose part of his inheritance to Rachel.”