Winter Time Rendering

Friday night?

Or Saturday?

Or Sunday?

Zhang Shutong ruled out the first one immediately.

No matter how rough around the edges Song Nanshan was, he would have called at least once over the weekend. Besides, Gu Qiuyan’s father would have checked in as well. Tonight was impossible.

He felt this was like some kind of salami-slicing tactic. At the very least, he’d managed to slice off tonight.

Whether it was Saturday or Sunday wasn’t the issue at hand. Zhang Shutong reined in his churning thoughts and focused on the most pressing problem—

how to find the person who did these two things.

Just then, Song opened the car door. He ran a hand through his hair, squeezing out a handful of water, his face grim.

"I can’t get through to her dad’s phone. He must have it on silent."

Zhang Shutong glanced at his watch. It was already past seven.

Song tried to light another cigarette, but it was soaked with water and wouldn’t catch. He crumpled it and tossed it out of the car in frustration.

"Li Yipeng’s mom has got me all wound up. Smashing a flowerpot and poisoning a dog shouldn’t be that big a deal, but... ugh, of course it’s a big deal. What I mean is, I’m afraid the dog was poisoned as a means to do something else..."

"That’s why something about this is strange," Zhang Shutong said, wiping the water from his forehead.

"How so?"

"Poisoning the dog and smashing the flowerpots are contradictory," Zhang Shutong said with a frown. "Gu Qiuyan’s housekeeper is a live-in, right?"

"Right..."

"But of these two things, one is meant to eliminate noise, while the other is meant to create it. So..."

Song already understood.

"You’re saying if they really wanted to do something else secretly, they shouldn’t have smashed the flowerpots?"

"Exactly."

"So it was just to vent their anger?"

"Hard to say." Zhang Shutong hoped so, too, but right now, all he could say was, "Call the police."

Song picked up his phone. The two men sat huddled in the car, silently staring at the lit window of the villa.

The call connected quickly.

"Hello? Hello, can you hear me..." The signal wasn’t great. Maybe the villa had a signal booster, but they were outside. "Hello, Officer. My name is Song Nanshan. I’m a teacher at Yingcai Middle School... That’s right, I’m at my student’s house... Yes, you’ve probably heard of her, Gu Jianhong’s daughter... A guard dog has been poisoned... Yes, I suspect it’s retaliation related to a business dispute, yes, yes... What?"

Song Nanshan suddenly frowned.

He spoke a few more quick words, then hung up, cursed, and slammed his phone on the steering wheel.

"What’s going on?" Zhang Shutong asked immediately.

"They’re giving us the runaround," Song said angrily.

"The police don’t know about her family’s conflict with the commercial street?"

"They do, that’s why they’re like this. You’ve got a big-shot businessman on one side and the island residents on the other. It’s a powder keg if they handle it wrong, so they’re trying to avoid it. They just told me they don’t have enough manpower. Three officers are off-island on business, and the station is busy. They said they can come by and patrol a little later, but for a dead dog, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow for them to dispatch an officer to investigate..."

Zhang Shutong was silent. It was true. Besides himself, no one would connect a dead dog to a person’s life.

Song said dejectedly:

"What a bullshit excuse. They all just had to go off-island today, huh?"

Zhang Shutong knew the island’s police station only had five or six officers in total. With half of them gone, and minus the one on dispatch, it was unlikely they would send anyone out for something like this.

"It’s not necessarily an excuse," he reminded Song. "They just caught two poachers with a gun the day before yesterday. They might really be escorting them to the city’s Public Security Bureau."

"Then I’ll just call her." Song suddenly seemed to have made up his mind. He muttered as he scrolled through his contacts, "It’s not like she seemed that fond of the dog when I saw her yesterday anyway..."

The call connected quickly, and the piano music from the practice room stopped.

"Hey, Qiumian, have you eaten? I noticed your dog wasn’t moving just now... Oh, well, it was an old dog anyway... Don’t worry about it... Okay, so your housekeeper stays the night, right? Uh-huh, I was just calling to see if you were okay. Shutong and I, we’re about to go find a place to eat. Alright, you be careful tonight, don’t go out. I’ll come by first thing tomorrow morning..."

Song was about to hang up, but Zhang Shutong grabbed his arm.

"Wait. Have her ask the housekeeper if she heard anything unusual today."

After a moment, a response came from the other end. Song shook his head.

"Then what did she have for dinner?"

"What are you...?" Song was at a loss for words, but he forced himself to ask, repeating the answer back. "Sweet and sour pork ribs, braised fish, scrambled eggs, and a pot of old duck soup... Quite a feast. It’s nothing, your teacher was just worried you weren’t eating well. I feel much better now..."

’Any more questions?’ Song gestured with his eyes.

Zhang Shutong shook his head.

Song Nanshan finally hung up the phone. But in the end, he still hadn’t told her the truth.

He stared blankly at the windshield and was about to reach for a cigarette again when a thought seemed to strike him. He slapped his thigh, startling Zhang Shutong.

"That’s right, Shutong! I just remembered, don’t your parents usually not come home? Why don’t we just take Qiumian over to your place? And this isn’t me trying to set you two up, I’m serious. My dorm’s no good, it’s just a single bed, you know that..."

Zhang Shutong considered the feasibility of this plan.

"We can, but not tonight."

Gu Qiuyan wouldn’t be in danger tonight. This was, in a sense, a precious "safe window." Tonight might be the only chance they had to investigate for more clues without having to worry about her personally.

"What’s gotten into you now? No, I don’t need your consent. I’m making the call on this one." Song was already about to dial.

Seeing this, Zhang Shutong sighed helplessly.

"The person who poisoned the dog is already gone."

"Who knows when they’ll be back?" Song’s eyes widened. He felt this kid’s problem went beyond just being dense.

"We can still catch them if we go now."

"What do you mean?" Song Nanshan froze, realizing his student seemed like a different person. He used to be a quiet little kid who barely spoke, but now he was staring at him with a burning intensity.

"I think I have a lead."

Zhang Shutong took out his phone and glanced at the time again. Water from his hair dripped down his chin, slowly soaking his pants, but he didn’t seem to notice.

"So we have other things to do right now. If we really can’t find any clues tonight, then tomorrow we can..."

He trailed off, feeling that waiting for that specific window didn’t make much sense. He changed his tune.

"Then we’ll pick Gu Qiuyan up and take her to my place later."

"We’re still going to investigate?" Song was somewhat reluctant. "Well, we could let Qiumian tag along..."

"I don’t mind, but you’re the one who didn’t want to worry her."

"That’s true." Song sighed, finally convinced. He started the car, only to realize a problem. "You almost had me going in circles. Why do you insist on investigating tonight? I only agreed before because we had nothing better to do, just for fun. Don’t we have something more important right in front of us now..."

As he spoke, it dawned on Song Nanshan.

"Wait, you already have a lead?"

"There are two key points: the dog and the flowerpots." The Fox pulled slowly away from the road in front of the villa. Zhang Shutong stared into the darkness outside the window. "I haven’t figured out the dog part yet, but the flowerpots are a crucial clue."

This wasn’t the time to be mysterious, so he explained directly.

"I saw the distance of that row of flowerpots. They aren’t far from the house. We could hear Gu Qiuyan playing the piano just now, which means the soundproofing isn’t that great.

"So, to smash an entire row of flowerpots without the housekeeper hearing, when would the perpetrator have to do it?"

"When she’s sleeping?"

"Wrong." Zhang Shutong shook his head. "Like I said, it wasn’t one flowerpot. One might not draw attention, but for a whole row of them to go unnoticed, there’s only one possibility—"

He gave the answer directly.

"The noise had to be covered up by something louder.

"The only thing left is to figure out what could be that loud. Cleaning? Not loud enough. Making the bed? Still not enough. Even doing laundry isn’t loud enough. I was just thinking about this, but there is one thing that fits..."

In his peripheral vision, Song kept his eyes glued to the road ahead, but his ears were perked up. Zhang Shutong took one last look at the villa.

"The range hood.

"It could only be the range hood, and it had to be during dinner. Breakfast is usually simple, and she eats out for lunch. The housekeeper probably just makes something simple for herself. But dinner is different. Three meat dishes, all the type to produce a lot of cooking fumes.

"So that’s why you asked what she ate?" it dawned on Song Nanshan belatedly.

The small car began to accelerate. The transmission shifted into second, then quickly into third. They turned onto the small road they had come in on, the hazy lights illuminating the contours of the path ahead.

"There’s one more thing that proves this." Zhang Shutong just nodded and began to speak faster. "The dog needs to be fed. Since it was poisoned and the housekeeper hasn’t found it yet, it couldn’t have happened this morning or at noon. And it’s not just about feeding the dog; she could have discovered it while watering the flowers or taking out the trash.

"So, the culprit had to poison the dog during a time when they could be sure she absolutely would not come outside. That only leaves the evening.

"This is the only window. The housekeeper has to cook for Gu Qiuyan. By the time she’s done cooking, Gu Qiuyan is about to come home. After she eats and the dishes are cleared, it’s about this time now. Who would come outside at this hour? The earliest it would be discovered is tomorrow morning.

"So, we just need to confirm one last thing: what time does she start preparing dinner? Around five o’clock sounds about right. So if we expand the timeframe from five in the afternoon until now, and think about when the three of us left the school gate and drove to Gu Qiuyan’s villa, we really only saw one so-called figure—"

The car entered a curve. Just then, Song slammed his hand on the steering wheel, and a harsh honk pierced the desolate night. He couldn’t stop a curse from escaping his lips, but he didn’t forget to shift into fourth, blurting out:

"That van!"