The Fourth Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (A Tenzing Norbu Mystery series Book 4) Read online

  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

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  CHAPTER 1

  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 …

  CHAPTER 2

  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.

  Time has a way of changing everything. Now my father had passed, Yeshe and Lobsang were themselves abbots, and I was living thousands of miles away in the City of Angels. But the Buddha’s pearls of wisdom followed me across the ocean. It turns out they have value whenever and wherever you live.

  Let go of expectations. Our Tibetan teachers at Dorje Yidam had urged us to practice this simple yet powerful step at every opportunity. According to legend, a monk once asked the Buddha (the bhikkhu’s voice, in my imagination, plaintive): “But how can I actually live as you suggest, without expectations?” The Buddha had answered with a question of his own: “How can you actually live if you have expectations?”

  Just in case, I dialed back the anticipation of Maude and Lola peppering me with kisses. They were just about three years old, and it had been a few months since we’d spent any extended time together. In toddler years, that’s a long time, and I didn’t know how they might now express affection toward Uncle Ten.

  Before I could knock, Martha flung open the front door, her smile wide. I stepped into her hug, but not before noticing weary crumples of gray skin under her eyes. I chalked it up to an over-40 mother with twin preschoolers.

  She accepted my six-pack with a quick nod of thanks before calling over her shoulder, “Girls! Uncle Ten’s here!”

  I squatted just in time, as Maude and Lola careened into me and wrapped their small, dense bodies around mine. I hefted the girls, wiggling and squealing, through the foyer and living room and on out the open French doors to the backyard.

  “Beer, please!” I shouted back to Martha, laughing.

  Bill, as I had guessed, presided over the grill, dressed in full suburban finery. A towering red chef’s toque was perched atop his head and he was sporting a blue apron with the embroidered words Best Dad in the World. A bit over the top, but I was inclined to agree. As midlife parents who’d been rewarded after years of IVF with the appearance of twins, Bill and Martha had showered their girls with the freely flowing love and joy reserved for unexpected gifts.

  I set the girls down and looked them over. Lola was wearing black leggings, a pink T-shirt, and sparkly shoes. Her red hair was plaited into some sort of complex, inverse braid. She clutched a small stuffed monkey.

  “I like your monkey,” I said. “What’s his name?” Lola studied her toy for a full minute.

  “Monkey,” she finally said. Lola tended to be long on contemplation but short on words.

  Maude was dancing from foot to foot, her hair a nimbus of red wires, as electric as her personality. She wore a miniature version of a sports uniform, the bright-blue shorts long and baggy, the matching top emblazoned with the words Property of the L.A. Dodgers. Bill, a diehard Dodgers fan, had passed his passion along to at least one of his girls.

  “Nice uniform,” I said.

  “This isn’t a uniform, Uncle Ten,” Maude scolded. “This is my teamer outfit!”

  “Ahh,” I said. Maude grabbed at my hand.

  “Did you bring a treat?” she said, bright with hope.

  “Not today,” I admitted, mentally kicking myself. Maude’s face fell. Her eyes glittered with welling tears, and her lower lip trembled. A beer magically appeared in my hand as Martha stepped in, her mother-radar sensing imminent disaster. She knelt and cupped Maude’s reddening face in her hands.

  “Maude, sweetheart, we just talked about this, remember? How sometimes when Uncle Ten comes over he brings you girls a little something, and sometimes he doesn’t? How you love him either way, just like he loves you no matter what?”

  “I know,” Maude wailed, tears now streaming down her cheeks. “But in my mind, he bringed me something!”

  Expectations. The Buddha in me nodded and smiled with compassion.

  “Get your butt over here, Ten!” Bill called, as Martha held Maude against her chest until the flash-storm passed.

  I crossed the yard as Bill deftly flipped a burger. He stepped back from the grill and joined me for our ritual, awkward man-hug.

  “Don’t worry,” Bill said. “I make Maude cry hourly. It rarely lasts more than two minutes. Check it out.”

  Sure enough, both girls scampered off giggling.

  “So, here you are,” Bill continued. “Glad to see you’re still alive and well.”

  “You’re the one who keeps
canceling. What was it last week? The mayor needing to meet with you?”

  “Right,” he said. “Me, plus his personal army of network news reporters. God forbid he shows up when there aren’t any cameras rolling.” Bitterness spiked his voice. He rubbed his head, realized he was wearing the chef’s hat, and yanked it off, irritated. He stuffed it into the front pocket of his apron.

  I studied my friend with concern. His frame, always lanky, looked even thinner than usual. Martha’s eyes may have been ringed with gray, but all Bill’s gray had migrated to his hair. The last month alone had added a large swatch of silvery strands, turning his dark-blond hair almost platinum. As a police administrator, Bill earned a lot more than he had during our days as lowly homicide detectives, but the job came with a serious stressor: daily political wrestling matches between the city administration and police headquarters.

  I pointed to his hair. “Very distinguished. Almost foxy.”

  “Just call me George Clooney,” he said. He called across the lawn to Martha. “What do you think, honey? Am I sexy, or is it time to break out that bottle of hair dye for men?” Martha was either out of earshot or chose to ignore Bill. As she disappeared into the house, I watched Bill’s smile fade. I stepped in.

  “Or you could get a job that doesn’t bore the living crap out of you.”

  “Ouch.” Bill clutched at his heart. “You really know what buttons to push, don’t you?”

  “Says the man who taught me how to push them.”

  That earned a laugh, and for a moment Bill looked young again. I wanted to probe a little deeper, but Martha and the girls reappeared with several more guests in tow, mostly divorced detectives. I tipped my bottle at Sully O’Sullivan and his partner Mack, still with Robbery/Homicide and joined, as usual, at the hip. Marty Schumacher, another veteran detective, trailed behind them, his cheeks ruddy and veined from a few too many happy hours. He spotted me and beelined over.

  “Norbu! How the hell is civvy life treating you?”

  “Not too bad,” I said.

  “You gettin’ any these days? Or are you, you know, still going without?” Marty was obsessed with the notion of monastic celibacy and convinced I must be a staunch practitioner of sexual abstinence. For once, he was right, but no way was I giving him any satisfaction in that quarter.