A Death in Bali. Nancy Tingley
come back to the biggest question.” She looked at me questioningly, which made me think she hadn’t heard all I’d said. “What I can do about his death.”
“That is for Tyo to figure out.” She spoke forcefully as she patted my hand. “This is not your job.”
I shrugged off her words, knowing I couldn’t argue with her about this. “I’m jet-lagged, too. When you’re jet-lagged you feel so out of it. I couldn’t anticipate this, a murder, an interrogation, my plans shot to hell.”
“Was the interrogation difficult?”
“You know, I hardly remember it. They just asked me a series of questions. I suppose it was pretty obvious that I had just arrived at the house. I mean, after all, the girl met me at the door. I don’t think they believe I did it.”
“No.”
I took that to mean that Tyo had told her I hadn’t killed him, but I went on. “I don’t know that a woman could have driven that spear through him. Someone needed a great deal of strength to kill him instantly, so that he didn’t cry out.” I pictured myself getting the spear halfway through him, unable to complete the thrust.
I said, “Maybe that was what Tyo thought when he saw the body. It didn’t even occur to me that a woman would be able to do it. So why would the police suspect me? I suppose that they probably just had to question me.”
“Probably,” said Ani. I looked around the kitchen and felt a bit like those policemen when Ulih had fallen to the ground in front of Flip’s house. Useless and not knowing where to put my hands. “They also wanted to make certain you had not disturbed the crime scene.”
I looked down, hoping she couldn’t spot a lie, my deflection, as easily as my father. “As I said, I didn’t move my feet.”
She looked at me closely. “You need to chop these beans. Small and thin, like this, and we will add coconut and sprouts. This is a side dish to the meat that we will grill. We will eat together tonight, though we usually each eat when we feel like eating. In the morning we cook a large amount of food, and whenever someone wants something, they come and get it. This is more common in Bali than the Western way of sitting down to a meal. Do you remember this?”
I shook my head and picked up a knife.
“Now tell me about your family. How are they?” She began to lead me away from death, back to normal.
“My mother and father are both fine. Still working. My father plans to retire from teaching; my mother continues with her job, though she could retire if she wanted. She’s a bit of a workaholic.” I didn’t say that she wouldn’t want to be around the house with my father day in and day out. His temper, the boredom that would surely paralyze and further anger him, his need.
“Do you see them often?”
“Pretty much every week. We live close enough to each other that either I drive over to the East Bay, where they live, or they come over to Marin for a hike or a visit to their favorite restaurant. They’re both healthy now, though my mother has had some back problems.”
“Yes, we are aging. And your brothers? Are they well, too?”
“Byron lives back east, in New York. We hardly see him—lucky if it’s once a year. He’s married, and his wife is pregnant with their second child. Sean lives very near my parents and sees a lot of them. I see quite a bit of him, too, even though he’s the youngest, and we’re nine years apart in age. We are very close.”
“I do not know Sean. He had not been born when you were here.”
“He’s a sweetheart. He lives on a boat—he’s crazy about boats and has been working for someone who designs them. It’s what he wants to do. Eric.” I hesitated. “Eric has some problems. He uses drugs, and we think that he deals drugs, though we aren’t certain.”
“He was only a baby, but he was a troubled baby.”
“He was?”
“He made a good deal of noise.”
I laughed. “He still does.”
“We are ready to eat now. You will tell me more later.”
I was happy that we were going to eat together. In the courtyard the men clustered under the tree, while the women chatted and ate around a table set a little apart. I sat with the women. Tyo’s sisters-in-law included me, cheerfully putting up with my attempt at Indonesian until I discovered their English was far better. It shouldn’t have surprised me, as everyone seemed to speak English. My attempts to communicate in Bahasa generally meant I said a word or two, then the conversation reverted to English. Still, I knew that the few words I spoke were appreciated.
10
At some point Tyo joined us, asking me, “How are you?”
The women gave each other a look I couldn’t interpret. “Fine, they are putting up with my Bahasa. My very minimal Bahasa.”
He said something to one of the women in Balinese and they all laughed.
I wanted to ask about his wife, but sensed that this was not a conversation that he wanted to have.
His brothers soon joined us. His friend Esa was the last, moving reluctantly in our direction. Wayan Tyo made a space between where he and I sat. Esa hesitated, then squeezed in, his shoulder against Tyo’s older daughter, who sat to one side of me. He took her hand. She gave him a smile. The younger girl leaned against me on the other side.
“Do you live nearby?” I asked.
“No. I am on the other side of town.”
“Do you work with Wayan Tyo?”
“No,” he said, a master of brevity.
I felt the emotional push he was giving me, the unwillingness to talk with me. He turned to listen to one of Tyo’s brothers, cutting me off, his shoulder a blade between us.
Everyone spoke English, even the children, though forgetting I was there, they began to chat in Balinese. I became aware Wayan Tyo was watching me, a questioning look on his face. I pushed my hair behind my ear, a nervous habit that drove my mother mad.
“How is it possible, in that house with numerous servants, that no one saw the killer?” I asked him. I had tried not to think about the murder, but now that I found him looking at me I could think of nothing else.
“We haven’t found anything about Flip’s killer. The only fingerprints at the scene are yours, those of the girls who do the cleaning and serving, and the gardener who waters the plants in that room. Well, there are also some prints at the table, but we can’t identify those. He had many visitors dining with him, and his servants don’t seem to know any of their names, other than the women that he entertained. That was all that interested them.”
Esa leaned back, our conversation bouncing over him.
“There are no fences, so someone could walk in through the trees and remain invisible. A person who knows the household might well know their routine. Or, if they knew that Flip was having guests for lunch, the killer might have assumed that the women would be in the kitchen cooking. The killer might even have been the third person dining. You saw that the table was set for three?”
I nodded.
“The girls didn’t know who was coming.”
“I suppose. You would think that Flip would have called out, yelled, responded in some way when this person came into his living room with a vicious-looking weapon.” I felt Wayan Tyo’s younger daughter lean harder against my side, so I reached around and gathered her into my arms.
“It all suggests that Flip knew the killer and just didn’t feel threatened.”
“I suppose. So, since you have absolutely no idea who the killer is, you haven’t any clue to a motive?”
Tyo