Free The Thai Amulet by Lyn Hamilton Page A

you,” I said. “I’m sure I will.” I found myself wanting to talk to him more, but it was clear Wongvipa had other plans. She was signaling me to rejoin the group.
    As I turned to do so, I had a sense the woman in the portrait was watching me.
I wonder,
I thought, and went back to check for a signature. It was there, Robert Fitzgerald, signed with something of a flourish.
    “Do you know anything about the artist?” I asked our hostess. “This Robert Fitzgerald. Is he well known in Bangkok? The paintings are really exceptional.”
    “I know nothing, I’m afraid,” Wongvipa said. “The paintings have been in the family for years. My husband likes them.” Something in her tone told me she did not.
    “I was interested to read the paper you sent me, your thesis, Chat,” Thaksin was saying as we returned to sit with the others. “On the possibilities for true democracy in southeast Asia. I am interested in your theories about…”
    Dusit sat down at the piano and started playing, not particularly well, but loudly.
    “I have a gift for you,” Wongvipa said, handing me a beautifully wrapped parcel.
    “And I have one for you,” I said, “And some little things for the family.” I had arrived with some packages, which I’d placed on a side table. When I’d seen my surroundings, I’d felt that it would not be possible to give anything to this family that they didn’t already have, but I soldiered gamely on. I had brought a pair of lovely old sterling silver candlesticks for Wongvipa, which rather paled in comparison to all the lovely silver she had, but they were unusual and, as I’m always telling my customers, you can always use more candlesticks. She seemed pleased, but perhaps she was just being gracious. Fatty declared the maple sugar candy to be excellent, and Thaksin asked a number of questions about the piece of Inuit soapstone I’d chosen for him. They were all rather perplexed by the cranberry preserves and the Ontario ice wine, but you can’t win them all.
    My gift was quite lovely. A padded silk box contained four unusual, cone-shaped silver pieces, with a beautiful repousse design, and each of them different. “They are betel nut containers,” Wongvipa said. “Not very old, I’m afraid, only two hundred years or so. I find them very useful as napkin holders.”
    “What a creative idea,” I said. “I love them.” I did, too. I like original uses for old things a lot, but I was getting hard pressed to come up with new superlatives for everything I’d seen that evening.
    “And here is another small gift,” Wongvipa said. “I have one for you and another for Jennifer.”
    I opened the package to find a terra-cotta amulet. I just didn’t know what to think about that, nor could I think of anything appropriate to say. I just sat staring at it for a moment, thinking about Will Beauchamp’s apartment and the missing amulets.
    “They are for good health, speaking of which, you must be exhausted,” Wongvipa said. “After all that traveling. Please do not feel you have to stay if you are tired.”
    “You know, if you don’t mind, I think I will retire for the evening,” I said, and after an exchange of pleasantries with everyone there and profuse thanks all around, I went to my room. Still, sleep wouldn’t come. I blamed it on jet lag, but I knew it was more than that, even if I couldn’t articulate it right at that moment. Perhaps there was something unsettling about the family. Jennifer certainly thought so. It was hard to think what it might be. Dusit was a rather tiresome young man, obviously jealous of his older sibling, but there was hardly anything earth-
    shattering about that, nor the fact that the matriarch was a paragon whose only fault that I could see was that she was something of a control freak. Wannee, Sompom’s wife, was jealous of her, but it would be hard not to be. Maybe, I thought, as a vision of splatters of red crossed my mind, my sleeplessness had nothing to