The Thai Amulet by Lyn Hamilton Page B

the two of us.”
    “I’m so glad you’re here,” she repeated, taking a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
    To say that the Chaiwong family was wealthy was an understatement. They lived high above the troubles of everyday life, the poverty, the disease, the hopelessness of many a Thai’s situation, floating instead in a cocoon spun of golden threads. They lived ten stories above the Chao Phyra, where the lights of the barges could be seen below, and off in the distance, a
chedi,
or spire, of some ancient temple, was lit against the darkness.
    Khun Wongvipa was waiting to greet us as we stepped off the elevator onto the tenth floor. “You are most welcome to our home,” she said, shaking my hand, Western style. “I hope you’ve found your accommodation comfortable.”
    “It is absolutely wonderful,” I said. “Thank you.”
    “Doesn’t Jennifer look lovely?” she said, and Jen smiled shyly. She looked for a moment as if she was going to curtsy, but mercifully didn’t. I could immediately see why she felt the way she did about Chat’s mother. Khun Wongvipa looked too perfect, for one thing. Her dark hair was immaculately coiffed at chin length, her skin was almost impossibly smooth, and, for a woman in her mid-forties, and the mother of three children, she looked to be in remarkably good shape, slim, almost tiny. If she had a flaw it was that her face was almost expressionless, which might explain the lack of any perceptible wrinkles. She did smile, of course, but her eyes did not smile with her. She was dressed in a spectacular green and gold silk dress, a modern version of the traditional
phasin,
with its long tube skirt, deep hem in contrasting fabric, and short jacket. “Please,” she said, indicating we follow her.
    “What a lovely home you have,” I exclaimed, as she led us into the living room, and I meant it. It could so easily have been overdone, but the room was huge, and it was decorated with impeccable taste. Furthermore, I loved the mixture of periods and styles. A lot of my clients want a particular look right down to the last detail: Victorian, Tuscan farmhouse, Provence, Georgian, whatever. I am, of course, always glad to sell it to them. But for myself, perhaps because I travel so much and like so many different things, I prefer a rather more eclectic mix of objects.
    The living room was an antique dealer’s dream. There were priceless objets almost everywhere you looked: stone carvings, Khmer-style wood carvings, antique textiles, and silver. There was more of the gold nielloware I’d seen in my bedroom; mother-of-pearl inlay on half the furniture; exquisite coromandel screens; gilded lacquer furniture; Chinese Shang bronzes along with artifacts from India, Cambodia, and Laos. Surprisingly, a lot of the furniture was European in design but covered in silk. There were a pair of wing chairs in a lovely pale green silk, a couple of Queen Anne side chairs, and in a corner, that most Western of instruments, a grand piano.
    While most of the art was Asian, there were two oil portraits, the kind you’d expect in an oak-paneled hall of some baron’s estate: the family ancestors on display, over a lacquered side chest.
    “Thank you,” Wongvipa said. “I’m honored that someone who knows so much about antiques and antiquities would be so kind in her comments about our home.”
    “My wife has done all the decorating herself,” a man said, coming forward to greet us. “It is her aesthetic alone that has made this place what it is. I am Thaksin,” he said, “and it is a pleasure indeed to meet Miss Jennifer’s stepmother.” There it was, that odious word again, the one Clive kept taunting me with. It wasn’t the
step
part I objected to, it was the word
mother.
I wasn’t her mother, I was her father’s partner, that’s all.
    Khun Thaksin was not as old as Jennifer had implied, but he was, I’d say, at least seventy-five. His obvious status in the room would indicate that I