The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook (10 page)

The
feng shui
master’s meeting with Dominique Alegre was not a particular success. For a start, he found it difficult to concentrate sitting in a small office with a woman in a leotard. There was a certain physicality about her, a thrusting animal vitality that made him uncomfortable. She was glistening with sweat, although she smelt only of some sort of flowery oil. He kept his eyes on his papers in front of him.

Wong explained that he heard there had been a death in the gym, and he wanted to offer to help. But as soon as she started speaking, a second problem emerged. Ms Alegre, thirty-four, explained that she did not take
feng shui
at all seriously. She said it ‘wasn’t for her’ although her mother-in-law was crazy about it and would be thrilled to know there was a real Chinese
feng shui
expert visiting town. ‘I will tell
ma belle-mère,
ze mother of my ’usband. If you don’t mind, I will give your number to ’er.’

As for her members, she said that it was true that they had been upset by the death of a woman being trained earlier that year, but an initial drop-off of attendance had only been temporary, and had barely lasted two weeks.

‘We got rid of ze personal trainer involved. After zat, everyone felt a beet more relaxed,’ she said.

‘Was it his fault?’

Ms Alegre considered the question very carefully before replying. She tilted her head to one side. ‘Yes and
non
,’ she said, slowly. ‘We always make sure older clients get medical clearance for personal training sessions. We have a tie-up wiz a medical agency called EDOC—Executive Doctors on Call —so zey get a full check-up before we start. And zen a doctor and ze personal trainer work together to design a suitable exercise programme. It was set up by Dr Frankie Brackish, who’s quite well known in Perth. Ees all kept on a database ’ere.’ She tapped her computer monitor.

‘So what went wrong?’

‘For ze club, fortunately, nothing. All clients sign a disclaimer zat removes any liability we may ’ave.’ She paused. ‘Sorry, zat came out badly. What I meant was, things went wrong very badly for ze client, of course, although ze club, fortunately for us, was not considered liable.’

She stopped there and folded her arms.

Wong was intrigued. What exactly had gone wrong? He said nothing, knowing that he could use his strangeness to get away with disregarding the rules of conversation. He said nothing but merely looked blankly at her.

After a few seconds, Ms Alegre continued: ‘Ze personal trainer just over-did it, basically. I don’t know. Perhaps he read ze chart wrong, or perhaps he’s hopeless with numbers. Whatever, ze result was a disaster. Ze client was a woman of sixty-six. Ze trainer put her on ari amazingly ’eavy schedule of exercises—too ’eavy for a client so old. She did all right ze first couple of sessions, but complained a bit. Ze third session, she was twenty minoots through on ze treadmill and simply— how you say?—keeled over. Hit her ’ead on ze railing as she fell. Infarction, Doctor Brackish said.’

‘Why the trainer did not follow the instructions on the computer?’

‘Don’t know. He was an idiot, I suppose. Zey seemed clear enough to me. It was a shame. He may have been a liability, but he was a sweet kid—and
très
good-looking. He had ze chin of Kirk Douglas.’

After spending a further twenty minutes talking to Kirk Douglas’ chin (this time on the telephone during a tea break), Joyce McQuinnie was convinced that this was a key moment in her life. Jimmy Wegner was the guy she had always dreamed of meeting. Okay, so he might not have been absolutely the cleverest fella in the world, but he was a nice guy, which was what really counted.

And they both adored Tom Cruise movies, so they were practically twins! Or perhaps they both hated them—she couldn’t remember. Anyway, it didn’t matter. What was important was that she had now known him for ages—
hours—
and had this really
really
strong feeling that he liked her as much as she liked him.

The timing was perfect. Here she was, stuck in Perth for a few days with not much to do, and there was Jimmy, suddenly unemployed and needing someone sympathetic to talk to.

Joyce did the rest of her share of work at The Players that afternoon in a daze, looking at the clock every two minutes, since Jimmy had agreed to meet her after work. She spent most of the time doing a
lo shu
chart for the owner of the club and the general manager.

But she was bursting to talk about any aspect of Jimmy Wegner with anyone. She was intrigued to find that Wong had sneaked out for an hour during the mid-afternoon to visit the personal trainer’s previous workplace.

‘We both like DVDs. Isn’t that amazing? By the way, do the people at that club want him back? He needs a job.’

‘They don’t want him back I think.’

Joyce was surprised when her boss explained that Wegner had apparently committed precisely the same mistake twice— misread a list of clear instructions from a medical database. The question that was implicit in Wong’s view of events was clear: Was Jimmy Wegner incompetent or was he just pretending to be?

Joyce found neither view acceptable. ‘Okay, so he’s a bit stupid-
ish
, but he’s not
that
stupid. I mean, if the doctor tells you to make a guy walk at three kilometres an hour for four minutes, you wouldn’t make him sprint at 15 kilometres an hour for twenty-five minutes, would you? I mean, he’s a fitness guy. He knows all this stuff. We talked about this. He did exactly what it said on his instructions.’

Wong was sceptical. ‘If he knows this, why he keeps killing his client?’

Joyce had a straightforward answer to this: ‘The doctors’ database has a page for each old person, with a list of mild exercises. But there’s also an individual bulletin that the doctor writes sometimes. Anyway, this bulletin told him that the person needed a circulation boost and a super-heavy workout and a high-speed run or something. Jimmy did as he was told. It turned out to be too much for the person. But when Jimmy looked back at the website, the bulletin had gone and just the usual exercises were left.’

The geomancer shook his head. ‘Impossible. Numbers is in health club computer. How will doctor get in? Will he sneak into health club and change the computer?’

She slowly shook her head. ‘You really don’t understand the Internet, do you, CF?’ She pulled her chair over to where he was sitting. She placed a white sheet of paper on his table and started drawing a diagram.

‘This is the doctors’ computer in the doctors’ office.’

‘In office of EDOC.’

‘What?’

‘Executive Doctors on Call.’

‘Whatever. Yeah. In the doctors’ office. It has all the medical results in it. It is called a database. That’s because all the data—that means numbers and stuff—is in it. That’s the
base
where the
data
is kept. Now over here’—she drew separate rectangles on the other end of the sheet of paper —‘are the health club’s computers. When they switch their computers on, they read what’s in the database at the doctors’ place. If the doctors add a bulletin here in their database, it would be read on the computers at the health club. It would be really easy to get someone at the gym to do whatever you wanted him to do. Jimmy says they sent him the wrong instructions. They added a note to his client’s section telling him to double the weights and increase the speeds and so on. And then, after the guy died, they deleted that bit completely.’

Wong was not interested.

Joyce knew she had failed to convince her boss that her new friend had been grievously wronged, and was left in a state of frustration. How could anyone believe that someone with a face like Jimmy’s was capable of wrongdoing? Just look at him! That chin could never lie.

As the working day drew to a close, the geomancer received a call from Dominique Alegre’s mother-in-law, the elderly
feng shui
fan, and soon found himself on his way to a paying assignment for the evening. His Perth trip could after all prove to be pleasantly profitable.

Joyce, delighted to be left on her own, met up with Jimmy who told her about a former fitness teacher called Stan Eknath, who apparently had a similar story to his. Now knowing that young male gym instructors were more interesting in the flesh than on telephones, she asked Jimmy to track Stan down.

An hour later, the three young people met at Stan’s father’s restaurant, The Perth Indian Balti House.

‘Yeah,’ said Stan, over a rogan josh. ‘The instructions I got on that fateful bloody day clearly said that she needed a great deal of exercise and had to be walked at a six per cent gradient for at least ten minutes at eight kilometres an hour.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jimmy. ‘That’s like what the report I got said about my guy.’

‘And she had to cycle for twelve minutes.’

‘Mine had to cycle for fifteen.’

‘And she had to get her heart rate up to ninety-two per cent of maximum. I thought that was
way
dangerous at the time, but that’s what the report for the day said. I had to do what it said. I would get in trouble if I didn’t. Once she’d keeled over and the ambulance had taken her away—well, I went back to the website a couple of hours later, and the special instructions had disappeared. Just the usual ones were left.’

Jimmy shook his head slowly in wonder. ‘This is what happened to me.
Exactly
what happened to me.’

Joyce, recalling what she had learned from previous cases, turned to Jimmy with a question. ‘Who benefits from this? Like, who did the old geezer who died leave his money to?’

‘I don’t know, but I think it was his doctor. That’s what I heard. There was a lot of gossip about the whole thing among the staff at the club.’

She turned to the other trainer.

He said: ‘I don’t know who the dead old bird at my place left her money to. But I remember her saying that she joined the health programme because her doctor told her to.’

‘Why did your guy join the club?’ she asked Jimmy.

‘I think he joined for medical reasons, too.’

Stan bit into a poppadum thoughtfully, crumbs exploding over his chin. ‘Just supposing both were sent by their doctors—and both left their money to their doctors. That would mean —’

‘A motive!’ the young woman said.

Jimmy asked: ‘What was the name of the doctor at your gym?’

Stan’s brow wrinkled. ‘I don’t remember. I don’t think we ever got individual names of doctors. The reports were on a website. The company paid some money and we got access to it. It was called Executive something.’

Joyce interrupted. ‘Hang on a minute. Lemme think. Er— what was it? Was it—Executive Doctors on Call?’

Stan nodded. ‘Yeah—I think—yeah, that was it. You got it.’

‘I think maybe we really have got it,’ she replied, her mind racing.

Dominique Alegre dropped Wong off at her mother-in-law’s residence at precisely 6:30 pm.

The 72-year-old woman lived in an apartment block three storeys high on a steep slope on the outskirts of town. It was called The Regalia and had become a popular haunt for the elderly, since it was not far from a hospital specialising in outpatient services with a Senior Citizen Clinic.

‘I don’t sink
ma belle-mère
wants you to
feng shui
her place tonight,’ Ms Alegre said as she punched a four-digit code into a panel at the main door.

‘Just have a look-see,’ Wong agreed.

‘
Oui.
She wants you to meet a few friends, too. Zey’re all interested in
feng shui
these days.’

‘Ah.’ Wong felt like rubbing his hands together. The stars were in his favour and his luck was in. He visualised two or three little old ladies, all of whom would hire him to poke around their apartments for a couple of hours each at his usual outrageous fee.

Arriving at flat 3B, Dominique Alegre introduced him to a tiny, wrinkled woman named Eleanor Mittel. She jabbed a quick kiss onto her mother-in-law’s cheek and fled. ‘
Au revoir
, Eleanor. Look after Monsieur Wong and make sure ’e gets back to his hotel safely, will you? See you Sunday.’

Old Mrs Mittel grabbed Wong’s upper arm unnecessarily firmly and steered him along a neat little hallway containing two slim tables, each bearing a bouquet of flowers.