The Thai Amulet Read Online Free PDF Page A

the first six floors; the family lives on the top four. We go this way.”
    A separate lobby with another two elevators was off to one side. Yutai beckoned me into one, and using a key, pressed Nine. “The guest floor,” Jennifer explained. “There’s just you and me, and we have the whole wing to ourselves. I’m really glad you’re here. It was a little daunting all by myself.”
    “Khun Wongvipa would like you to have the gold room, if it is to your liking,” Yutai said, as the elevator door opened to an entranceway the size of my living room. The walls were stenciled in gold, figures of some kind of deities as guardians, perhaps. Extraordinary carved wood doors led off the foyer on either side.
    “This way,” Yutai said, sliding out of his shoes before turning left. I stopped gawking long enough to follow him. Jennifer, beside me, giggled.
    The gold room was just that. It was paneled in teak, but then gold leaf had been rubbed into the wood to give it a rather sensuous sheen. There was a canopy bed in black lacquer, already turned down. In addition to the bed there was a sofa, a coffee table, an armchair with a reading light, and a desk. There was a platter of fresh fruit on the coffee table and a large bouquet of orchids on the desk. Heavy silk curtains were pulled against the darkness. “Your dressing room,” Yutai said, leading me into another paneled room with rows of hangers and a bench where my suitcase already rested. Beyond that was a huge bathroom with tub, glass shower stall, two sinks, and a toilet and bidet. Fluffy white towels and a bathrobe awaited me. A spray of orchids graced the space between the sinks. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
    “And now I will leave you, if there is nothing else I can do for you,” Yutai said. I assured him there wasn’t. “I have arranged for jasmine tea to be sent up. It will be here in a minute or two. Extension forty-three,” he said, pointing at the phone beside the bed. “Call me at any time, day or night, if there is something you require, or, if you wish, you can come to my quarters, which are on this floor on the other side of the foyer. In the morning when you wish breakfast, dial forty-two. The cook will have whatever you like sent up. There is a small kitchen, again on the other side of the foyer, which you are most welcome to use. There is bottled water and some light food in the refrigerator. Dinner is at eight P.M. tomorrow evening on the tenth floor. This key activates the elevator. In the meantime, the car and driver are at your disposal if you wish to do some sight-seeing while you are here.”
    “I, too, will leave you,” Chat said. “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow and hearing about your journey, Aunt Lara. Also telling you about ours,” he said, smiling at Jennifer.
    “Isn’t this something else?” Jennifer said as their footsteps faded. “Rather grand, wouldn’t you say? Especially after the dump we stayed in on the beach near Phuket.”
    “This would be rather grand after Buckingham Palace,” I said. “So where is your room?”
    “I’m just down the hall. The silver room, my dear. Do join me, won’t you?” she said, affecting a veddy British accent. “Oops, here’s the tea.” A pleasant woman in bare feet knelt by the coffee table and set down a tray, then poured tea into exquisite little celadon porcelain cups, before backing out of the room.
    “Who is Khun Wongvipa?” I said.
    “Chat’s mother,” she said. “The woman I have been incorrectly referring to as Mrs. Chaiwong. You’ll meet her tomorrow. I don’t know what you’ll think of her. I find her kind of scary. His dad seems nice, but he’s really old. Everybody calls him Khun Thaksin. I call him sir.”
    “What do you mean by old? Marginally older than your father and I?”
    “Even older than you and Dad. Like ninety or something. Well, eighty anyway. His first wife died, and he married Chat’s mother. Chat has a half brother, the first