Gebhard rescued him. “She’s a Chinese graduate student on scholarship from her government, Dan. Donald insists she was kidnapped from the shopping mall on Tropicana a week ago.” Marty sounded more than a shade dubious.
“What do the FBI and the metros think?”
Donald paced and raged, “The police don’t believe there was a kidnapping! They don’t believe me or the witness. They refuse to even notify the FBI!”
This time I did arch an eyebrow. “Witness?”
Marty Gebhard said, “Donald found a man who was drinking coffee in the mall Starbucks.”
I looked from one of them to the other. “This man says he saw her kidnapped?”
Donald nodded eagerly. “He saw her talking to two men, and no one’s seen her since.”
Talking isn’t kidnapping. I could see from Gebhard’s carefully neutral expression that he knew it if Donald Lewis didn’t. “Why don’t the police believe the witness?”
“I don’t know,” Lewis was nearly wringing his hands.
“I take it no ransom notes, no contacts, no demands?”
Lewis said darkly, “Those aren’t the only reasons for kidnapping a woman.”
“No,” I said, “they’re not. All right, exactly what’s your relationship to Ms. Xiang, Mr. Lewis?”
“We’re going to be married.” A stubborn tone of defiance joined the distress in his voice.
That told me Xiang Fei might have a different slant on their relationship, and Gebhard knew it, hence the difficult and delicate part. He’d probably told Donald, as gently as he could, that Xiang Fei had simply gone off somewhere as college girls will, and the police had told him there was no evidence of a kidnapping. Donald refused to be convinced, and Gebhard hoped if a bonafide private detective backed him and the cops, Donald might finally believe and give up the idea.
I obliged. “I’ll be honest, Donald. The police take even a whiff of kidnapping seriously. They’re obviously not taking this kidnapping at all seriously. It looks to me like your girlfriendhas simply gone on a trip, and she’ll call when she’s ready. Marriage jitters, second thoughts, last fling, research, who knows? I get five hundred a day plus expenses and extras. This is going to cost you a large nut, and I don’t think you’ll get your money’s worth.”
Donald Lewis’s eyes flashed anger. “You’re wrong! I want her found! I want whoever kidnapped her caught! Money doesn’t matter.”
From the way he said it, there was a lot of money behind Donald. A privileged rich boy. It was there in the quick anger, the stubborn refusal to believe Xiang Fei could possibly have gone anywhere without him, the requests that were more like commands. The Metro cops must have loved him.
“She’s never been gone for a week before?”
“Not without telling me when and where and how long. We had a dinner and movie date for the day after she vanished. She’d never break it without letting me know why.”
Even if their relationship were nothing more than a college romance for a girl heady with the discovery of a different world, most college girls would have at least told him before they vanished for a week.
I asked Gebhard. “Is she missing classes?”
“She isn’t taking classes this quarter. She’s finishing her dissertation.”
“Does she need to do more research?”
“No, not really,” Gebhard admitted grudgingly.
So she should be at her computer. “You have a photo, Mr. Lewis?”
He dug into his wallet and handed me a small snapshot of the two of them in front of some building. Donald was easily six-three, and the top of the girl’s long, thick black hair came inches above his shoulder. Xiang Fei was tall by Chinese standards, probably five-ten. The oriental fold that gives Asian eyes the appearance of being slanted was barely there. She was lean, but not thin. Sturdy. Donald grinned in the picture like a schoolboy with a prized possession. Xiang Fei looked at the camera with a half-mocking smile.
That smile, and the photo, told me a great deal. Xiang Fei wasn’t a beautiful girl, she was a handsome woman. A woman who didn’t look the type to break a date or walk out on a manwithout explaining. It wasn’t much, but factor in the witness, and Donald Lewis’s anguish, and it rated a look.
I’ve learned to pay attention to emotions.
“Write a check for two days in advance. The bill comes later.”
Donald quickly wrote out a check for two thousand, more than I’d asked, gave me Xiang Fei’s address, and had to leave for a class. Marty Gebhard watched the closed door to his office as if he thought Lewis might still be standing outside with his ear pressed against it.
I asked, “How old is Xiang Fei?”
He nodded. He’d been waiting for the question. “She’s twenty-nine, has a master’s from Cambridge, and knows who she is. Donald’s twenty-four, has too much money, and no idea what he is or wants to be. She’s a strong woman. That’s powerfully attractive to some men, and Donald’s one of them. I don’t think-”
“Would you,” I interrupted, “be another, Marty?”
He thought about it. “I find her fascinating. The determined way she goes about everything. But I’m your standard quiet professor. A very nice wife, peace, and a routine low-stakes poker game suits me fine.”
“But not Donald?”
“Donald’s father is a self-made billionaire, and a powerful personality. His mother’s a gentle woman. I think Xiang Fei is the surrogate mother Donald always wanted to stand up against his dad for him.” He shrugged. “Sorry. Pop psychology. A simplified guess at a far more complex situation.”
“But you think their ‘marriage’ is mostly in Donald’s mind?”
“Oh, Xiang Fei seems to like him a lot. Why, I have no idea. But I don’t think he’s anywhere in her intended future, Dan.”
“You know what she intends her future to be?”
“I know it won’t include marriage to a spoiled American boy.”
“Not even for money?”
“That would be the last reason for Xiang Fei to do anything.”
“You’ve thought a lot about her,” I said.
He nodded. “She has that effect on people. She either fascinates them, or they’re afraid of her.”
I’d only seen a photo of Xiang Fei, but she was intriguing the hell out of me.
“Okay, she’s Chinese, smart, strong, and twenty-nine. What else? What did she do in China? Who are her parents?”
“She doesn’t talk about herself or her past. Or China, for that matter. Her records give only her parent’s names and occupations, and her academic transcript. Her father is Zhao Zhongwu, a minor civil servant, and her mother is Zhao Sooling. Xiang did her secondary school in Chongqing, her undergraduate in Beijing, and her M.Phil. at Cambridge.”
“Why isn’t her family name the same as her father’s?”
“I have no idea.”
After agreeing to get together with him and Carol at least for drinks, I left Marty staring into space as if seeing Xiang Fei, wherever she was.
Xiang Fei lived in a low-rise apartment building on a shaded back street near the university. The apartment she shared with two other girls was on the second floor facing the street. Her roommates were home, drinking beer and watching television. The police had talked to them. They weren’t too worried about Xiang Fei, but they were a little worried.
Sally Fanelli said, “Like, she still had laundry in the dryer. I mean, she was doing her laundry, and needed a coffee fix, you know?”
Nancy Devlin added. “We were out of coffee, so she went to the mall Starbucks. She was supposed to bring us back double lattes.”
“She didn’t?”
“She never came back.”
“What about Donald? Did she have a date with him the next day?”
Sally nodded. “He took her expensive places. She liked that, but, there was, like, you know, no spark.”
“It’s ‘cause she’s older,” Devlin explained with the wisdom of nineteen.