“They were very good. You know, at first I had my doubts about that pet psychic in Ojai, but wait till you read her report. Pippa is still traumatized by the time she almost got blown out of the Bentley convertible. That’s why she tries to burrow under the backseat and poo-poos every time she rides in it. I told the woman nothing—how did she know you had that kind of car? I am a total believer in pet psychics now,” Roxanne reported earnestly.
Colette petted her dog with tears in her eyes. “I am so sorry, Pippa. I’ll make it up to you. Roxanne, please take a picture of us and post on WeChat: ‘Reunited with my girls.’?” Colette posed expertly for the picture and stood up, smoothing away the wrinkles on her skirt. She then said to Roxanne in a blood-chilling tone, “I never want to see that Bentley again.”
The group approached the final pavilion, the largest building of all and the only one that did not have any exterior windows. “Roxanne—code!” Colette ordered, and her headset-wearing assistant dutifully punched in an eight-digit code that unlocked the door. “Welcome to my family’s private museum,” Colette said.
They stepped into a gallery the size of a basketball arena, and the first thing that caught Rachel’s eye was a large silkscreen canvas of Chairman Mao. “Is that a Warhol?” she asked.
“Yes. Do you like my Mao? My father gave that to me for my sixteenth birthday.”
“What a cool birthday present,” Rachel remarked.
“Yes, it was the favorite out of all my presents that year. I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and Andy could do my portrait.” Colette sighed. Nick stood in front of the painting, staring with amusement at the Communist leader’s receding hairline, alternately wondering what the dictator or the artist might have made of a girl like Colette Bing.
Nick and Rachel began heading toward the right, but Colette said, “Oh, you can skip that gallery over there, that’s just filled with boring junk my father had to have when he first started collecting—Picassos, Gauguins, that sort of thing. Come see what I’ve been buying lately.” They were steered into a gallery where the walls were a veritable checklist of the artists du jour from all the international art fairs—a mouthwatering Vik Muniz chocolate syrup painting, Bridget Riley’s migraine-inducing canvas of overlapping tiny squares, a heroin-fueled scrawl by Jean-Michel Basquiat, and, of course, an immense Mona Kuhn image of two preposterously photogenic Nordic youths posing nude on a dewy doorstep.
Rounding the corner, they came into an even larger gallery that contained only one enormous piece of art—twenty-four scrolls that were hung together to form a vast, intricate landscape.
Nick was taken aback. “Hey, isn’t that The Palace of Eighteen Perfections? I thought Kitty—”
At that moment, Roxanne gasped in alarm and put her hand over her earpiece. “Are you sure?” she said into her headset, before grabbing Colette’s arm. “Your parents just checked in at the guardhouse.”
Colette looked panic-stricken for a split second. “Already? They’re much too early! Nothing’s ready!” Turning to Rachel and Nick, she said, “I’m sorry to end the tour now, but my parents have arrived.”
The group rushed back toward the grand salon, as Colette barked out orders to Roxanne. “Alert all staff! Where’s that damn Wolseley? Tell Ping Gao to start cooking the parchment chicken now! And tell Baptiste to decant the whiskey! And why aren’t the bamboo groves around the central pool lit?”
“They are on a timer. They don’t come on until seven o’clock along with the lights,” Roxanne responded.
“Turn everything on now! And turn off this silly whimpering man—you know my father only likes listening to Chinese folk songs! And get Kate and Pippa into their cages—you know how allergic my mother is!”
Hearing their names, the dogs started yapping excitedly.
“Kill the Bon Iver and put on the Peng Liyuan!”*3 Roxanne rasped into her headset as she ran toward the service wing with the dogs, almost tripping on their leashes.
By the time Carlton, Colette, Nick, and Rachel reached the front door of the main pavilion, the entire staff was already assembled at the foot of the steps. Rachel attempted to count the number of people but stopped at thirty. The maids stood elegantly in their black silk qipaos on the left and the men in their black James Perse uniforms on the right, creating two diagonal lines in V formation like migrating geese. Colette took her place at the apex of the V, as the rest of the group waited at the top of the steps.
Colette turned around and made a final inspection. “Who has the towels? The hot towels?”
One of the younger maids stepped out of the line holding a small silver chest.
“What are you doing? Get back in formation!” Roxanne screamed, as the convoy of black Audi SUVs came speeding up the driveway.
The doors on the lead SUV flung open, and several men in black suits and dark sunglasses emerged, one of them approaching the middle car and opening the door. Judging by how thick the door was, Nick surmised it was a reinforced bombproof model. A short, stocky man in a bespoke three-piece suit was the first to emerge.
Roxanne, who was standing next to Nick, let out a barely audible gasp.
Seeing that the man appeared to be no older than his mid-twenties, Nick asked, “I take it that’s not Colette’s father?”
“It’s not,” Roxanne said curtly, before stealing a quick glance at Carlton.
* * *
*1 A body-hugging one-piece Chinese dress for women, created in the 1920s in Shanghai and perennially fashionable since Suzie Wong famously seduced Robert Lomax in one. In Singapore and Hong Kong, it is known by its Cantonese name—the cheongsam.
*2 Mattress makers to the Swedish royal family since 1852; the basic H?stens mattress starts at $15,000, and their top-of-the-line 2000T will set you back $120,000. But how much is it worth to you to sleep on a mattress that aficionados claim can actually prevent cancer?
*3 Not only is she China’s most renowned contemporary folk singer, she’s also the First Lady, being married to President Xi Jinping.
9
MICHAEL AND ASTRID
SINGAPORE
“Is that all you’re wearing?” Michael asked, lurking by the doorway of Astrid’s dressing room.
“What do you mean? Am I too scantily clad for you?” Astrid joked as she struggled to fasten the delicate clasp on her sandals.
“You look so casual.”
“I’m not that casual,” Astrid said, standing up. She was wearing a short black tunic dress with crochet panels and black fringe.
“We’re going to one of the best restaurants in Singapore, and it’s with the IBM people.”
“Just because André is a top restaurant doesn’t mean it’s formal. I thought this was just a casual business dinner with a few of your clients.”
“It is, but the bigwig is flying in and he’s bringing his wife, who’s supposedly very chic.”
Astrid shot Michael a look. Had aliens secretly abducted her husband and replaced him with some finicky fashion editor? In the six years they had been married, Michael had never made a single comment about what she wore. He had, on certain occasions, grunted that something looked “sexy” or “pretty” on her, but he had never used a word like “chic.” Until today, it wasn’t part of his vocabulary.
Astrid dabbed a little rose essential oil onto her neck and said, “If the wife is as chic as you say, she will probably appreciate this Altuzarra dress—it’s a runway look that never went into production, which I’m wearing with Tabitha Simmons silk stripe sandals, Line Vautrin gold earrings, and my Peranakan gold bracelet.”
“Maybe it’s all the gold. It looks a bit kan chia*1 to me. Couldn’t you swap it out for diamonds or something?”
“There’s nothing kan chia about this bracelet—it’s actually part of an heirloom suite that my great-aunt Matilda Leong bequeathed to me, which is now on loan to the Asian Civilisations Museum. They are dying for me to let them display this piece too, but I held on to it for sentimental reasons.”