The Fourth Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (A Tenzing Norbu Mystery series Book 4)
Read The Fourth Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (A Tenzing Norbu Mystery series Book 4) Online
Authors: Gay Hendricks
PRAISE FOR
THE FOURTH RULE OF TEN
“Talk about a ‘perfect Ten!’ Savvy, sharp, and spiritual,
Tenzing Norbu is one of the most compelling
detectives I’ve encountered on the page.”
—Alison Gaylin
, Edgar-nominated author of
Hide Your Eyes, Heartless,
and
You Kill Me
“Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay have created highly
engaging crime thrillers, packed not only with action,
but also with insights, making the series
a wonderful genre-buster.”
—David Michie
, author of
Why Mindfulness Is Better
than Chocolate, The Dalai Lama’s Cat,
and
The Dalai
Lama’s Cat and the Art of Purring
ALSO BY GAY HENDRICKS
AND TINKER LINDSAY
The First Rule of Ten
The Second Rule of Ten
The Broken Rules of Ten
The Third Rule of Ten
All of the above are available at your local bookstore,
or may be ordered by visiting:
Hay House USA:
www.hayhouse.com
®
Hay House Australia:
www.hayhouse.com.au
Hay House UK:
www.hayhouse.co.uk
Hay House South Africa:
www.hayhouse.co.za
Hay House India:
www.hayhouse.co.in
Copyright © 2015 by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay
Published and distributed in the United States by:
Hay House, Inc.:
www.hayhouse.com
®
•
Published and distributed in Australia by:
Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.:
www.hayhouse.com.au
•
Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by:
Hay House UK, Ltd.:
www.hayhouse.co.uk
•
Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by:
Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.:
www.hayhouse.co.za
•
Distributed in Canada by:
Raincoast Books:
www.raincoast.com
•
Published in India by:
Hay House Publishers India:
www.hayhouse.co.in
Cover design:
Charles McStravick •
Interior design:
Pamela Homan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use—other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales, or persons living or deceased, is strictly coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hendricks, Gay.
The fourth rule of ten : a Tenzing Norbu mystery / Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay. -- 1st edition.
pages ; cm. -- (Dharma detective series ; book 4)
ISBN 978-1-4019-4594-7 (pbk.)
I. Lindsay, Tinker. II. Title.
PS3608.E5296F68 2015
813'.6--dc23
2014023073
Tradepaper ISBN:
978-1-4019-4594-7
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
1st edition, January 2015
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Topanga Canyon, Calif.
July 5, Year of the Water Snake
A vast herd of faceless children. Thick. Boundless. They slog forward, their pace slow and strained, their arms outstretched as if striving to get somewhere that’s perpetually out of reach. They are compelled by yearning, by faint hope mixed with despair.
Now I am in the midst of them, pushing through the morass of mixed and sticky emotions. I cast my eyes around, searching for a tool, a magic wand maybe, to wave over these struggling young souls that I might ease their effort and aid them in their journey.
Fear invades. Acrid and biting, it’s sharp enough to pucker my mouth. What if I’m one of them? I’m in the middle of the herd, after all. My own footsteps are labored and sluggish, as if I’m wading through tar. My own heart is filled with a nameless longing. Am I, too, trapped in a futile journey?
No. This is not real.
I bend my knees and drop into a crouch. With a burst of muscle and hope, I propel myself up, away from the throng, and out of the oppressive grip of the dream.
My heart thumped against the struts of my rib cage. I turned my head to check the red digits of the clock beside my bed. Three forty-three
A.M.
and dead quiet except for a low rumble emitting from Tank. My cat, too, had been pulled from sleep. Now he sat upright next to my head, Sphinx-like, purring, gazing at me with wide-eyed interest.
I slid my palm from the dome of his skull to the soft fur that surrounded his neck like a downy muffler.
“It’s okay, big guy. Just another weird dream.”
Tank lowered his head and placed it between his paws. His eyelids dropped like blinds, snuffing out a pair of glowing green coals. Within seconds, he was sound asleep again. At 3:43 in the morning, this was a good skill to have. Unfortunately, only one of us had it.
I lay in the darkness as my pounding heart returned to a steady, slow beat. I consciously revisited the dimensions and images of the dream. There was something compelling about its emotional tone.
Allow.
I softened my awareness to feel into this particular flavor and found it buried in the borderland of belly and solar plexus: fear fueled by desperation.
Allow. Allow, Ten.
Inside the desperation two other distinct feelings huddled close, like fraternal twins fed by the same womb: the deep anguish of one being—trapped in a difficult journey leading nowhere good—and the powerlessness of another, unable to help.
I knew what the dream was about.
The clock had advanced an entire minute. Three forty-four
A.M.
Woo-hoo. I surveyed my brain-space to determine if there was any possibility that I might get back to sleep. The answer was an instantaneous negative. I slipped out of bed without disturbing the rhythm of Tank’s easy snores.
The wood floor felt cool and smooth against the soles of my feet. I reached my arms high, then bent to lay my palms flat against the hardwood. As I straightened, I declared the morning officially underway. A new day, and my first opportunity to practice a new rule: let go of expectations, for expectations lead to suffering.
A sigh escaped. No matter what events July 5th might bring, anticipated or not, I was fairly certain of one thing: the day was bound to be less upsetting than the Fourth of July had been …
The long line of cars snaked up and over the hill. Grumpiness emanated from the family-filled vehicles like toxic gas. The Fourth of July traffic was brutal. Where was everybody going, anyway? Why weren’t they home cooking burgers?
My car crawled, too, all the way from Topanga to Bill and Martha Bohannon’s home, just south of Hancock Park and a two-hour drive that should have taken less than half that. I finally parked outside their house—a simple, California craftsman with walls the color of moss—at 5:30. The smell of charred meat let me know Bill was already stationed at the outdoor grill. I was the first car there, so the bad traffic was probably citywide. That fact made me feel a lot better, which tells you what kind of mood I was in.
I climbed out of my Shelby Mustang. Streaming slants of sunlight framed the Bohannons’ bungalow in burnished gold. I tipped my head back, closed my eyes, and then inhaled and exhaled three times, deeply. Children’s laughter floated from Bill’s backyard. I searched for and found gratitude—for the promise of frosty cold beer and friendship, and for the ability to reset my mood at any given time, if only I remembered to reach for that tool, the one that lets go of what was and accepts what is.
I have two favorite American holidays: the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, probably because my parents celebrated neither. No fraught history to haunt current traditions. For the past decade I’d spent both at Bill and Martha’s house. My ex-partner from the LAPD Robbery/Homicide division might be married to a woman of German descent, but Martha’s commitment to celebration was decidedly un-Teutonic—sometimes I think she chose their house primarily because of the annual fireworks display visible from their backyard.
An American flag flapped merrily from its pole by their front stoop, and red-white-and-blue ribbons were tied in bows on the wide branches of their front lawn’s pride and joy, a stately magnolia tree. Some bows were tied more neatly than others, signaling that the twins must finally be old enough to participate in decorating.
Life was good. I had just successfully closed three missing person cases—to be accurate, two missing adolescent persons, and one runaway hairless Chihuahua who turned out to be stolen—but all three came from blue-blooded stock, with the kind of pedigrees that meant I was paid well. I hadn’t dipped into my Julius Rosen emergencies-only fund for months, and had even taken on a part-time—very part-time—personal assistant. Most impressive, at least to me, I had made it for more than a year without getting entangled in any romantic relationships—a record.
Tank seemed to approve. I was a steadier, happier roommate without a girlfriend.
For a brief moment, I allowed myself to wonder if my ex, Julie, might be inside, but I brushed off the thought. It floated away, the faint trace of longing I still harbored for her almost as insubstantial as a feather.
Besides, Martha would have told me if her sister was coming.
My smile widened in anticipation of fabulous food and drink, a slew of grimy kisses from a pair of twin redheads, the warm love of best friends, and fireworks: like Martha’s red-white-and-blue bows in the branches, my expectations for today were elevated, jaunty, and filled with promise.
As I reached into the back of the Mustang for the six-pack of Chimay White, a whispered warning slithered into my reverie:
Take care, Tenzing. Remember what the Buddha taught: expectation is the enemy of serenity and a root cause of suffering.
I recognized the voice’s source—Lama Yeshe, one of my two best childhood friends. Yeshe and Lobsang had anchored me throughout the troublesome early years spent in my father’s Buddhist monastery in Dharamshala, India. My father had served first as monastic disciplinarian and then as head abbot, but whatever his role, he was none too pleased with his rebellious son.