432 Scams
“Only the toys carved with the term mother have been destroyed?” Han Fei held the puppet and examined it closer. He noticed there were blood stains around the puppet’s neck. “Why would a children’s toy be stained with blood?” An image surfaced in Han Fei’s mind. “Perhaps the boy had witnessed his father murder his mother?” The boy heard the argument between his parents and walked out from his room fearfully holding his toy. At that moment, he saw his mother’s head fall to the ground. Blood splattered onto him and the toy.
It would explain why all the toys with ‘mother’ had been destroyed. “Why wouldn’t the head fit…”
“Hey!” A woman’s voice suddenly rang out above Han Fei, it caused him to shake in shock. “What are you doing?” Huang Li stood beside the counter with the clean sweater and sack. She looked at Han Fei who was hiding behind the counter with confusion.
“It’s nothing. A boy came earlier to beg me to help him keep his toys.” Han Fei’s expression quickly returned to normal.
“The boy was here?” Huang Li shook her head. “He probably snuck out without his parents knowing. If his father found out, he’d be so angry.”
“You’ve seen his father?”
“It was his father who dropped off the toys. The man is tall and muscular. His arms are thicker than my legs.”
“I heard he dropped off plenty of old furniture too, were they moving?” Han Fei placed the puppet some place away from the rest of the toys.
“I have no idea.” Huang Li looked around. “Where’s the boy?”
“He was here earlier, he probably slipped away.” Han Fei walked out from the counter. “Can I look at the furniture he sold to us?”
“Most of the stuff he sold was new so I placed them at the front of the furniture zone.”
Han Fei walked to the furniture zone and examined the merchandise one by one before his eyes landed on the largest single couch. ‘If one hollows out the couch, the inside is large enough to hide a body.’ Han Fei pulled out the cushion and he slowly examined the couch. He didn’t find any dead body but he did find a very thin notebook stuck in the edge. This should be the boy’s homework. The language teacher required him to write a weekly diary and for a whole month, the boy wrote that his father brought him to the garden to play. ‘Based on the description, he should be talking about the abandoned garden. Could the body have been buried there?’ The boy’s diary mentioned a small pond downstream from the cement bridge so Han Fei suspected that the father had buried his wife in the pond after killing her.
‘The boy’s body is soaking wet and his eyes are as bloated as a goldfish, perhaps he’s been thrown into that river too.’ Han Fei turned to the last entry of the diary. It described how much the boy’s father loved him and bought him many new toys. There was one thing that caught Han Fei’s attention. The boy mentioned a few of his favorite toys in the entry but Han Fei didn’t come across any of them in the paper box.
In a way, this was normal. The father didn’t have the heart to sell the boy’s favorite toys but the premise for that had to be that the boy was still alive. If the boy was already dead, then one had to wonder why the father purposely kept these few toys. Did he keep those toys out of guilt or were they too stained with blood to be sold? Or the man simply wanted a keepsake of his son?
The door chimed again. Han Fei was surprised that the shop would be so popular after midnight. He silently snuck the boy’s diary into his shirt, recovered the sofa and then walked towards the door with a professional smile.
The new customer was a deliveryman. He held a plate in his hand and he kept stuttering. The man stood right at the door, he didn’t want to enter or leave so the electric buzzer kept chiming.
“Sister Li, did you order a delivery?”
“I didn’t! He probably got the wrong address.” Huang Li signaled for the man to come in but the deliveryman kept shaking his hands. His mouth opened and closed but he couldn’t finish a single sentence.
“Don’t be nervous.” Han Fei noticed the butt of the man’s trousers was covered in oil and food stains, and a patch of his arm was scalded as well. “Did you run into some accident? The food you were supposed to deliver toppled over?”
Hearing that, the deliveryman nodded heavily. He opened his mouth wide and finally managed to squeeze out, “I… am sorry.” When the deliveryman spoke, his facial muscle twitched, he couldn’t control his expression.
“We didn’t order anything, are you sure you got the right address?”
“The address, mall… here.” The deliveryman took out his phone and showed it to Han Fei. “Phone, phone, no, no, no answer.”
“Wait! I think that’s the security guard’s phone number.” Huang Li took out her phone to call the number. Her call went through immediately. “Did you guys order a delivery? The delivery is already here, where are you people?” Soon the elevator pinged and the 2 night guards arrived. When they saw the state the deliveryman was in, they weren’t surprised. It was as if they already knew the man would knock over the food.
“Can you two stop wasting people’s time?”
“The kid is late for 5 minutes so he’s the one wasting our time.” The guard who was scolded by Zhu Wei earlier lifted his head and extended his hand to the deliveryman, “Never mind that, where’s the food?”
“I’m, sorry.” The man was very afraid. His face was red.
“I’m asking you, where’s the food?!” The guard raised his voice. He vented the anger he got from Zhu Wei onto the man. The guard stepped threateningly towards the deliveryman. The latter was spooked. He ran to Entrance C where his bike was parked. Then he ran back carrying the delivery box which was leaking soup and sauces.
“Stand right there and don’t move! You’re dirtying the floor!” The deliveryman’s fingers were scalded and his arms shook. He stopped but didn’t dare to place the box on the ground.
“Give it to me.” Han Fei said as he reached for the box. The hot soup burnt Han Fei’s palm. It was sticky and hot. He opened the box and all 4 bowls of mutton soup were tipped over.
“Now what should we do? Don’t say that we purposely want to bully a retard! This is our first meal of the day, so how do you plan to compensate us?!” The 2 guards surrounded the deliveryman. The latter was gasping heavily for air, he couldn’t even say a word. “Since you knocked over the soups, then you’ll have to pay for them.” The guard took out his phone, “You’re not leaving until you pay.”
The deliveryman mumbled helplessly. He wanted to run but the other guard grabbed him by his neck. The guard seemed to know the guard well. He reached his hand into the deliveryman’s collar and yanked off the thread around the man’s neck. A work id hung from the thread. A child's handwriting could be seen on the id—Hi, I am Wang Pingan’s father. He has had autism since he was young. If he did anything wrong, I hope you can contact me and I will be there as soon as possible. My home address is No. 15 Sha He Street and my phone number is…
“Stop wasting time with him, just call his father.” The guard rattled off the number on the worker id and the other guard made the call.
“There are only 2 of you who work the night shift and you need 4 bowls of mutton soups? And all of them are extra large? Can you really finish them?” Han Fei took out the takeout boxes used to store the soups. “Soups are already hard to deliver but look at these boxes. They are of such low quality. Clearly someone is aiming to bully this deliveryman.”
“Who are you to say if the packaging has a problem or not?”
“Well, I was a deliveryman in the past so I would know about these things.” When Han Fei was at the Ziggurat, he used the deliveryman’s box to store many dead bodies. “I know you want to find someone to vent your anger after being scolded by Zhu Wei but you shouldn’t bully the deliveryman who hasn’t done anything wrong. The low-quality takeout boxes and the hurried way the soups had been packed, this is the restaurant’s fault, not the deliveryman’s.”
“Wait, I remember now!” Huang Li suddenly spoke as she pointed at one of the guards, “Xiao Lee’s wife just moved to town 2 months ago and opened a mutton dish shop near San Zhong!”
Han Fei glanced at the deliveryman’s phone, he did retrieve the delivery at San Zhong. “I think I get it now. The business at the shop is not good so this is the way your wife decided to deal with the rotted mutton? Based on the map, the deliveryman’s father lives close to San Zhong, that would mean this man would go to wife’s shop to complete the order pretty often.” Han Fei saw through the guard’s ploy easily.
“You aim to scam an autistic person, are you two even humans?” Huang Li was angry, “And I thought you two were good people.”
Since they were exposed, the guards stopped pretending. They glared at Huang Li. “Don’t make it sound like you’re so perfect either. If you’re really that kind, why didn’t you tell this newcomer the truth about your shop?”
Xiao Lee scoffed and then turned to Han Fei. “Silly kid, do you know why a 2nd hand store still needs to be operational after midnight? Do you know why someone has to be here 24 hours? Don’t be fooled by this vixen. Someone has died inside your shop before! Those who work the nightshift here will die!”
