She led him into the rear of the house, unlocked the door with a key that was already in position, and turned on the lights. The chalked outline that had been on the carpeting was no longer there. Despite this last piece of cleanup, the presence of the former owner still seemed to hang in the air; Tibbs understood why Yumeko did not care to enter alone, and why she would probably continue to feel that way for some time to come.
"I'm trying to learn a little about jade," he said, "but the pictures in the books don't help a great deal."
She looked at him. "You like the jade?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm beginning to very much, but right now I want to learn certain things about it for another reason."
She understood. "I will help you. I myself do not know a great deal, but Mr. Wang is teaching me." She stopped abruptly and out of the comers of her expressive eyes twin tears began to roll down her cheeks.
Virgil stepped forward, folded his arms around her again, and patted her gently on the back, letting her recover herself while he remained quiet and waited. Even at that somewhat strained time he was intensely aware of her attractions. Then, reluctantly, he let her go.
It didn't make matters any easier when Yumeko looked up at him and said, "You are very good to me."
He swallowed and found his proper voice. "Explain to me about the jade."
Yumeko located the set of hidden keys and unlocked two of the cabinets. "In China they do marvelous work in many different stones," she explained. "Of these the best is jade, but also very good is rose quartz, rock crystal, lapis lazuli, and some others. There are also softer stones like serpentine and Bowmanite that are made into carvings; they look like jade but they are not real. Sometimes they are called *new jade,' but it is not so."
"I understand that there are two kinds of jade."
"That is so, Virgil. Nephrite, it is real jade, for a long time it was the only jade. Then they find a new stone, also beautiful and very, very hard. It comes from Burma in a small place and is called now jadeite. I shall show you."
From one of the cabinets she had unlocked she took out an immensely complicated carving of a vase surrounded by entwined stems and flowers. It was all one piece, milky white in color. Quite casually she handed it to Tibbs, taking it off the small, carefully carved wooden stand which obviously had been made to hold it alone.
"Please to examine," she invited. "Do not make upside down, for the lid of the vase is loose and it is all hollow inside. This is very difficult to do. It is a real vase and it can be used as one. But it should not be done; it is too valuable for that."
Somewhat gingerly Virgil held the remarkable carving in his dark brown hands and studied it. The man who had made it had been a true artist as well as a master of the technique of working one of the hardest and toughest stones known to man. He could not begin to estimate how many weeks and months of patient labor it had taken to create this unquestioned work of art. He was in awe of it and understood without question why it was so expensive.
"It is not always that jade is green," Yumeko said. "It is found in almost every color, even black. The Chinese say that there are one hundred colors of white jade. That is mutton fat that you have-it is a very good kind."
When he had finished studying the valuable piece she took it from him and handed him another. It too was largely white, but there was also in the stone a suggestion of a very light and delicate green. The carving was of two Chinese women poling a boat; the wooden stand on which it fitted had been shaped to suggest waves and the texture of water. 'This of the two sisters is jadeite," she explained. "It is harder than nephrite, rarer, and even more expensive. But it is also most beautiful. Do you have knife?"
"Yes," Tibbs said.
"Try to scratch it, you cannot. True jade is harder than any steel, so no knife can make even a small mark."
Virgil studied the carving he held, one which had been done halfway around the world by a man whose name was unknown, since all jade carvings were anonymous. "Yumeko," he asked, "do you have any funeral jades here?"
She looked at him, a little surprised that he was aware that such things existed. "Sometimes Mr. Wang had them, but not very often: he did not like. Jade for him was things beautiful; funeral jades are from tombs, sometimes made to bury with the dead for him to enjoy in the next world or to show his wealth, sometimes smaller ones to cover and fill the holes in the body."
"I'm studying about jade now," Tibbs said. "I will have to be careful or I will fall in love with it and I can't afford that."
"It is not always so expensive. Sometimes we have pieces for only maybe seven, eight hundred dollars. All are jade; sometimes people sent to Mr. Wang carvings that were very beautiful but not jade. He would not sell them except maybe to Mr. Wu who knew also that they were not real jade."
Virgil stayed for more than an hour, sensing that he was not wearing out his welcome, studying the many carvings that the room contained. He had not realized how many there were, they were so artfully displayed. He actually began to calculate if it would be at all possible for him to acquire a piece of his own someday, then he forced the thought out of his mind; jade was for those in the higher brackets and that was not a description which ordinarily applied to policemen, even top-ranking ones.
"Yumeko," he said when he was preparing to leave. "Did Mr. Wang import anything but the jades themselves? Was anything else packed with them?"
She shook her head. "His furniture, I think, it was made in Taiwan, but it came here many years ago. Otherwise he import nothing but jade. I think he have friends in many places in the Far East; they find for him real jades and send to him from places like Taipei, Singapore, and Bangkok. Never from Red China, for he did not like that place, even though it was his homeland."
That was interesting information if true. "You are sure about that?"
"Yes, very sure. Nothing ever comes in from the communist places: Mr. Wang would not buy pieces from the red people. Even though he had some of his own family people living in China, on the mainland."
Satisfied for the moment, Virgil thanked her once more for her hospitality and her help. Then he went to the door and, without lingering, took his departure. He drove straight to his apartment, let himself in, and then picked up his phone. After dialing he waited only a few seconds until Bob Nakamura answered. "Listen," Tibbs said, "I'm going into L.A.; I may be on to something. Feel like an evening on the town?"
"Why not. Where are you?"
"At home. Do you remember the outfit you wore when we staked out the bowling alley last month?"
"Right. Forty minutes OK?"
"Don't rush, we've got all night."
Virgil hung up and then walked thoughtfully into his bedroom. As he began to change his clothes he considered what he had learned that evening and how the pieces of the problem were beginning to fit together. From his closet he took out a pair of well-scuflfed workingman's shoes, faded blue jeans, a shirt that had nothing left of its pride and only part of its original substance, and a worn cloth jacket that had never had more than minimum pretensions.
Carefully he laid aside the well-tailored suit that had cost him almost a week's pay and put his neatly shined shoes on the floor in the corner. He stripped down to his shorts and then put on the old trousers and the shirt, which was worn dangerously thin at the elbows. When he had completed his dressing he looked completely the part of a Negro laborer, and his manner began subtly to reflect his new role. His mind was no longer on the case for the moment: he was living again some of the days he had spent when the type of clothing he now wore represented the best that he had had. That had been many years ago, but their memory remained acute and he could never purge them completely from his mind. It was not acting, it was a regression to a seventeen-year-old who was only eleven years past the shock of discovering that he had been bom a mutation of the majority who inhabited his country and that for the rest of his life he would remain one.