The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries) Read Free Page B

had we never bumped into each other? Tesco Lotus? The Saturday market? Pak Nam Hospital? The two restaurants with menus? Passing on bicycles, sweaty from the climb over the Lang Suan river bridge? It seemed almost impossible not to have seen him. Good. A mystery.

 
    3.
    Make You Ten Years Older than You Look
    (soap ad.)
    It was mid-December and I’d just been to the post office to send off my packages to California. The wind had me home in half the time it usually took on a bicycle. It was the time of year when monsoons crept up from nowhere. When rainstorms drowned your carrots. When you walked along the beach and noticed a meter’s depth of sand had been slyly eaten away by the storm surges overnight. Twelve beachfront coconut palms had been whisked away since we arrived, leaving just one column of trees to protect us. The previous year the freshwater bog behind the resort had filled up with salt water and messed up the ecology. For six months there was no life there at all. Migrating birds rearranged their flight itineraries because there was nowhere to stop for a drink. Mair bought an inflatable paddling pool, put it on the roof of our potting shed, and filled it with tap water. Birds have beaks and claws, so she had Arny out there every day with his bicycle puncture repair kit until the pool was irreparable and the birds were long gone.
    When I reached the resort, I found Mair up a tree and the dogs below, barking. I stood with them.
    “Mair,” I shouted. “Why are you up that tree?”
    “There’s a cat stuck up here,” she said.
    “I don’t see it.”
    “It’s camouflaged.”
    “That would make it a green cat, Mair.”
    “Don’t be silly, Monica. It’s white.”
    “And you can’t see it because of the snow?”
    She laughed.
    “The clouds, child,” she said. “That’s why you can’t see it from the ground.”
    “The clouds are dark gray.”
    “It’s a dirty cat.”
    “Of course.”
    I found myself bogged down in conversations like this more times than I cared to remember. She always won because she was the mistress of her own logic. She climbed higher. One of her flip-flops fell off and the dogs gasped. Sticky ran off with it.
    “Mair,” I shouted, “have you ever seen a reasonably good-looking old farang with a beautiful Thai wife living over in Kor Kao?”
    “That would be Conrad and Piyanart,” she replied.
    Mair knew everyone by name for twenty kilometers around.
    “How come I’ve never seen them?” I asked.
    “They drive a big gray S and M. Tinted windows.”
    “Would that be an SUV?”
    “That might be right.”
    “So, how do you know them?”
    “They stop at the shop sometimes. They get their drinking water here. Catch!”
    The kitten dropped between the branches, screeching and flailing her claws. As cats have nine lives, I considered stepping back and letting her use one up. But Mair wouldn’t have forgiven me. So I held out my arms and steadied myself. I’ve never been much good at sports. If it had been a basketball, I would certainly have dropped it. But that’s because basketballs don’t dig their claws into your forearms and hang on. Before I could scream, it had disengaged, was on the ground, and fleeing the dogs. I swore and held my arms out in front of me so as not to drip blood on my white shorts.
    *   *   *
    “I’ve never tried it myself, but they say you stand a better chance of bleeding out if you run the razor blade along the artery rather than across it.”
    “What?”
    “If you’re going to slash your wrists.”
    “I didn’t … it isn’t a suicide attempt, Da.”
    “Right.”
    “It isn’t. A cat did it.”
    “OK.”
    “Really.”
    “Whatever you say.”
    Each district down here has a health center. They’re identical. Designed by a sadist. No matter how sick you are, you have to do a Rocky Balboa up a steep flight of steps to get to the surgery. If you make it, you can’t really be that sick. But that’s just as well because,