Luke wasn’t sure she was being completely honest, but he appreciated her courage. “Mrs. Lin, so far all we have is circumstantial evidence, but we believe Park Mi Cha was in a car with my friend, Thad Baker, and was killed in a car bomb in February. We’ve been piecing things together, and we believe she had found him through a DNA registry site and knew they were related through their grandfather. But beyond that, we know almost nothing about her, and we can’t locate her father or anyone who knew her well.” He didn’t mention Ivy Collins. “Anything you can tell us would be a huge help.”
She nodded and straightened in her chair. “Park Mi Cha.” Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked rapidly.
Faith snagged a tissue from a box on the table and handed it to Mrs. Lin.
“Thank you.” She dabbed under her eyes. “Mi Cha was a sweet girl. So excited to be in the States. She booked a room with me for her entire time here. Her parents wanted her to have good food and some cultural familiarity. I don’t know how she heard of me, but she booked her room before she left Korea.”
Faith was writing on her iPad at a furious pace, and Luke trusted she’d get the details. He wanted to focus on listening to every word. Was it significant that Mi Cha’s family had known to book a room with Mrs. Lin? Maybe. Maybe not.
“When she arrived, she was nervous about her new job. Shewanted to make a good impression and make her parents proud. Her mom had been sick, but she was stable. Mi Cha would never have come if she’d known her mother’s health would fail so dramatically while she was gone.”
“Did you talk to her a lot?” Faith asked.
“I did. Her mom had cancer. They were hoping to find a donor for a transplant, but it was proving to be difficult because her mother’s biological father was American. He was half-Korean himself, and he’d been in the American military. Her grandmother got pregnant but didn’t know it until he was already back in the States. The way Mi Cha told the story, her grandmother had been sent to stay with family in a remote village. They told everyone in the village that her husband had died. You have to understand—having a child out of wedlock was frowned upon, but having a child with an American father was even worse, even if he was half-Korean.”
She gave them a rueful look. “Her family wanted her to abandon the baby, but she refused. She had loved the American, and she loved the baby. In the village, the baby, Mi Cha’s mother, was accepted. She looked Korean and had almost no Caucasian features, so no one knew. Mi Cha’s mother didn’t know the truth about her father until she was in her twenties.”
“Did her grandmother marry?”
“She did. She married a boy in the village who raised Mi Cha’s mother as his own. I’m not sure if Mi Cha would have ever been told about the American if her mother hadn’t gotten sick. But when they began searching for donors, her mother told her the whole story. Mi Cha signed up on all the DNA registry sites and prayed for a miracle. And she got it. She found a relative who lived out West somewhere, and that relative had a sibling in Raleigh. She was so excited to find him. Scared too. She confided all this to me but made me promise not to tell anyone.”
“She found Thad.” Luke wished Thad had told him.
“I don’t think he believed her at first. Here was this Korean girl telling him they had the same grandfather. His grandfather had never mentioned he’d fallen in love with a Korean girl to anyone, including his American wife, but to be fair, he’d never known he had a Korean daughter.”
Faith turned to Luke. “Is Thad’s grandfather alive?”
“No. He died before the twins were born. I remember Thad saying how much he wished he’d gotten to see them.”
“What about his grandmother?”
“She’s passed as well.”
Hope cleared her throat, and Faith and Luke, like naughty schoolchildren caught talking in class, sat straighter and gave her their attention. “We need to discuss the person who might be trying to kill you and the connection to the dead body in Mrs. Lin’s establishment,” she said as she turned to Mrs. Lin. “Can you tell them about David Lee’s connection to Mi Cha?”
Mrs. Lin wrung a tissue in her lap. “She was a sweet girl.” The words were defensive, apologetic. “I don’t know what she saw in him. I’m not even sure if she liked him.”
“Did you?” Faith asked.
“No.” Mrs. Lin’s face clouded. “He was no good. Too possessive. They’d only known each other a few weeks and already he was showing up unannounced, texting her all the time, getting angry if she couldn’t go out with him when he wanted her to.”
“What did Mi Cha say about it?”
“She told me not to worry about it. Said he was nice, and he took her to fancy places, and she was having fun. That it didn’t matter because she would be back in Korea and would never see him again.”
“This David Lee. Was he Korean?”
“Yes, but he grew up in the States. His parents moved here when he was two. At least, that’s what he told me. I don’t know if it’s true. I didn’t trust him.”
“Did she talk to him about Thad?”
“No.” Mrs. Lin shook her head furiously. “She had me cover for her a couple of times. To say she was at a work dinner when she was meeting her cousin.”
“Do you know why she didn’t want to tell him?”
“She told me she was honoring her mother’s wishes. Her mother knew what Mi Cha was doing, but no one else did. Not even her father. I’m not sure her father knew that her mother wasn’t one hundred percent Korean.”
“Was Mi Cha afraid of what would happen if he found out?”
