Thirteen Orphans Read Online Free

then carefully locked the door behind him. The stairway was narrow, but he squeezed by them and led the way up. Auntie Pearl followed, and Brenda came last. She felt like she’d been appointed rear guard, until she noticed that when Dad got to the top, Auntie Pearl stopped and waited until he had unlocked the door and motioned for them to come ahead.

    I guess Auntie Pearl is watching out for me, not the other way around.

    Brenda didn’t know whether to feel annoyed or relieved by this, and decided she could settle for a little of each.

    Albert Yu’s office was unchanged from when they had left. Auntie Pearl moved immediately over to the table and studied the scattered mah-jong tiles.

    “It looks as if he had just completed a reading into the status of the Thirteen Orphans,” she said. “Whoever interrupted him deliberately scattered the tiles, so I can’t guess what Albert saw.”

    Brenda waited for her father to laugh or say something like “Be serious,” but instead he nodded.

    “I couldn’t tell anything either,” he said. “I didn’t realize the tiles had been deliberately scattered though. I thought they’d just been displaced when the table was moved. It’s usually parallel with the front window, the one into the shop.”

    “Look at how the tiles rest,” Auntie Pearl said, pointing to the bone and bamboo rectangles with her index finger. The fingernail had been polished bloodred, and was absolutely perfect. Brenda would have killed for nails like that. “If the tiles had simply shifted when the table was pushed, then some tiles would have remained on their marks. Not one does. Moreover, one side of the wall would have collapsed more completely than the other according to where force was applied. This wall has been completely broken. You can tell, however, that the tiles were in wall formation because the majority still remain facedown.”

    “I didn’t notice,” Gaheris Morris admitted.

    “You were shocked by what you found,” Pearl Bright said matter-of-factly. “Moreover, I have an eye for such things.”

    Brenda had listened in silence, but as the sensation built that she had entered a madhouse, she broke in.

    “Why are you talking this way? I mean, it’s odd that this guy was playing mah-jong by himself. Fine. I’ve got that. But why aren’t you calling the police? Why are you standing here studying a messed-up game board?”

    Auntie Pearl looked at Gaheris Morris.

    “How much does Brenda know?”

    “Not much. Letting her know was the reason for this trip. I wasn’t going to do to her what my dad did to me, but I didn’t think I should tell her too soon. Look what knowing too much too soon did to Albert.”

    “I have long held,” Pearl Bright said, “that it was less the knowledge than his father’s refusal to act that marked Albert. However, that old argument is not worth reviewing now.”

    She shifted her gaze to Brenda, and the young woman fought not to squirm under its unrelenting scrutiny.

    “Brenda, what do you know about mah-jong?”

    Brenda replied promptly. “It’s a game, sort of like gin rummy, only it has trump suits, too. They’re called winds and dragons. There are bonus tiles called flowers and seasons. Those can do a lot to help your score if you have a cruddy hand. Oh, and instead of four suits, like in a regular card deck, mah-jong has only three: dots, bamboo, and characters.”

    “You play?”

    “Sometimes, mostly with Dad and Mom, and one of my brothers. We don’t play as often now that the boys are getting older. Only four can play, at most, and my brothers don’t like being coached, but they don’t like being left out either.”

    “That wouldn’t make for a very good game,” Auntie Pearl agreed. She beckoned with those long red nails. “Come here and look at what Albert left.”

    Brenda moved obediently to the woman’s side, her curiosity overwhelming the almost unconscious trepidation that had kept her at a distance from