Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (21 page)

“If we all lived like him the economy would collapse.”

“That’s why we don’t all live like him. You can see why it must be very difficult
for Selina. By nature she’s the sort who is very organized, very systematic, very
good at keeping money in the bank.”

A small, automatic snort came across the line when Mathilda heard the name “Selina.”
But she was a fair person, and besides, it was much easier to be charitable about
the Selinas of the world from a safe distance. “I’m surprised she’s stuck with him.
I suspect Selina married dear Marko meaning to make him over and do him some good.
And Mark probably went along with her until he got tired of it. Remember they were
signing up for all those public-speaking and investment courses together? They were
going to be incredibly successful entrepreneurs or something. But Mark couldn’t decide
what business he wanted to succeed at, so that fell through. Poor Selina. Actually
I’m glad Mark stuck with her. It would have been terrible if he was going around changing
wives instead of jobs. We have an uncle like that, you know. He’s off somewhere in
Canada or Australia with wife number four or five now.

“Anyway, has he signed over the wine business to Mycroft’s wife yet?”

“The drinks business,” Aunty Lee corrected automatically. “No. There’s the issue of
some wine missing from the wine room. Selina was checking the inventory and she says
several of the more expensive bottles are missing. I think she suspects Nina and I
go in there and drink it when there are no customers around.”

“You know Mark’s probably taking them himself, don’t you?”

Aunty Lee thought so too. Mark wouldn’t see it as stealing. As far as he was concerned,
he had selected these wines and they belonged to him even if it was not his money
that had paid for them.

“Mark is like a small boy.”

“And he’s never going to grow up if you and Selina keep treating him like one. But
honestly, I don’t know that Mycroft’s wife is going to be much better.”

“Cherril? Why not?”

“She’s so skinny, for one thing. I can’t see her working in a café if she doesn’t
like eating.”

Aunty Lee knew Cherril loved eating. She was one of the few who could eat huge amounts
without putting on weight. That was part of what made her such a good air stewardess
but it set other women against her.

“But there must be something in her that made Mycroft marry her,” Mathilda said thoughtfully.

“Cherril is actually very smart and capable of learning almost anything. Except she
never got to study. She became a stewardess because she wanted to see the world. But
going around the world shopping with colleagues was not really what she wanted either.
I think she has potential.”

“I think I’m jealous,” Mathilda admitted.

“Jealous? Of Cherril?” Aunty Lee’s mind spun. “Hiyah. Don’t tell me you also like
that Mycroft.”

“No, no, no. Of course not. I mean because you seemed to get along so well with her
at once. And after I tried so hard to show you I was okay with you and Dad—sorry,
I’m talking rubbish.”

Sometimes parents did not even realize they had favorites, Aunty Lee thought. And
sometimes the favorites themselves did not realize it. Because Mathilda had never
given her any trouble, it had never occurred to Aunty Lee that she might feel overlooked.
Mathilda changed the subject.

“What are you going to do while your shop is closed, Aunty Lee?”

“I’m going to lunch with the commissioner of police tomorrow and then to a prayer
and healing meeting tomorrow night.”

“Covering all the bases, eh?”

“You know what I do,” Aunty Lee said with a laugh before her voice grew serious. “But
you don’t know me. Mathilda, ah, you listen to me. I like that Cherril because she
reminds me of myself. But you, you remind me so much of your father. Once when somebody
saw your photo in the shop and thought you were my daughter I didn’t correct her because
I wished so much I had a daughter like you.”

“Thank you,” Mathilda said. Then, after a pause, “Mum.”

To Aunty Lee’s surprise her throat knotted up and she could not speak as sudden tears
welled up in her eyes. Like her brother, Mathilda had always addressed her as “Aunty”
with their late father’s full approval.

Lunch with Commissioner Raja

“I thought this would be a nice change,” Commissioner Raja Kumar said. “Since you’re
not cooking for once, I thought we should have something totally different.”

They had been friends for years but Aunty Lee knew better than to ask Commissioner
Raja to pull strings and get her kitchen ban lifted. This was Singapore, after all.
Tattletale bloggers with camera phones lurked everywhere, eager for material. Aunty
Lee had no wish to draw any more attention to her (temporarily) closed café. She knew
Raja Kumar would do all he could for her without her having to ask. Aunty Lee usually
enjoyed talking to Commissioner Raja. But today she felt uncomfortable. It was the
first time she had been a suspect in a police case, no matter how nicely he put it
when he asked her to have lunch with him.

They were upstairs (and barefoot) in a little restaurant along Upper Dickson Road
in Little India.

“They serve both North and South Indian food and they can prepare dishes for meat
eaters and non–meat eaters alike.”

Commissioner Raja was no longer as familiar with the neighborhood and its people as
he had been when his grandfather had a shop in the area. But he still knew a few of
the long-term shopkeepers. As was happening throughout Singapore, fewer and fewer
children were going into their families’ businesses and more and more of the old medicine
shops were being transformed into nail-art boutiques and 7-Elevens.

Floor cushions were provided and it was cool and comfortable in the private upstairs
room. It had been a long time since Aunty Lee sat on the floor. She patted the polished
floorboards beneath her bent knees and was reminded of long-ago family gatherings
where children always ended up sitting on the floor “picnic style” because there were
never enough chairs.

“I don’t know if you like Indian food,” the commissioner said lightly, “but you will
after today.” Memories of the vegetable curries his late grandmother used to cook
and her special-occasion fish-head curry were making him hungry. He wondered whether
there would be fish-head curry today, hot and sour and tender.

“Shall we order?”

But Aunty Lee had fixated on his opening comment. “I cook Singapore food. Singapore
food is a mixture of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Indonesian food. And then because
of the English we eat sandwiches and chicken puff pie and because of the Americans
we eat burgers. My cooking is not limited to what I picked up in my family. Of course
I like Indian food. I even cook Indian food!”

Commissioner Raja held up his hands in surrender. “Not here to fight, Rosie. But since
I’m buying today, let’s have a good lunch. Their mutton biryani sounds good.”

“If the mutton they use is from a castrated male sheep, then it should be good. But
if it comes from a female sheep killed after it is too old to have any more babies,
then it may be tough.”

Commissioner Raja debated between chicken and beef for a moment but decided against
provoking another information attack. “Ambur mutton biryani,” he said to the waitress.
The commissioner’s ability to make quick, calm decisions under pressure was one of
the reasons he was so respected within the force. Singaporeans generally liked having
decisions made for them. They much preferred complaining to making decisions on their
own. Besides, Raja Kumar was sure Aunty Lee would enjoy the sour, curried
brinjal dalcha
and
raita
of sliced onions mixed with curds and chili tomatoes that made up Ambur biryani.

“Rosie, I don’t want to fight with you. You know I can’t do anything about the order
to close your kitchen.”

“I never said I want to fight you, what. Did you invite me for lunch just to tell
me that?”

“I just wanted to eat lunch with my old friend, cannot meh?

“You’ve helped us before. You made us look good,” Commissioner Raja said. “I’m asking
you for your help again. I know you didn’t poison those people but we have to follow
procedures.”

“If you won’t help me reopen my café at least you can help me with this—the newspapers
printed a translation of the PRC woman’s suicide note.” Aunty Lee had come prepared.
She took out her reading spectacles and a folded newspaper cutout with yellow highlighter
markings.

“The woman wrote to her missing fiancé, ‘Because of me you were willing to sacrifice
part of your own body.’ So clearly the man she was looking for came to Singapore to
be an organ donor, right? Have you found any unidentified bodies that you didn’t put
in the newspapers yet? I am thinking the man obviously came to Singapore to sell his
kidney or something. Then the operation must have gone wrong and he died. A man who
loved a woman enough to want to sell a kidney to marry her would not just go off without
a word to her. Then the illegal organ-donor people just disposed of the body in a
reservoir or a construction site or somewhere like that. The point is somebody must
have organized it. What if Mabel Sung was talking to organ-donor people to get a transplant
for her son and she found out they were illegal and being a lawyer she tried to stop
them and they sent somebody to silence her. They probably murdered her and her son
as a warning. Criminal gangs are always doing things like that to warn people, right?”

“Maybe in the West,” Commissioner Raja said.

“And in the West they probably say it only happens in the East.” Aunty Lee was not
discouraged by the police commissioner’s tone. “The point is, it must be happening
somewhere or people wouldn’t be talking about it all the time, right?”

One problem with a mind that worked as quickly as Aunty Lee’s was how fast and how
far wrong it could go with just a nugget of information, Commissioner Raja thought.

But why not?

“How would they have contacted her?”

“I already thought of that. Through her prayer and healing group. Because all the
people there are desperate. Desperate people don’t ask too many questions.”

“I’m not saying there aren’t people here looking for illegal organ transplants. But
it’s not as easy as all that, you know. You need the doctors, the anesthesiologists,
the donors, the facilities—operating theaters, recovery space. You just consider cost
and you’ll see why people go to Thailand or to India for procedures. And the controls
here are so much stricter, the risk is just not worth it.”

“If your life is at stake, then of course it’s worth it. What do you have to lose?”

Commissioner Raja looked at Aunty Lee’s earnest face. Singapore people did not think
like that, he wanted to say. Singapore people would think about what people would
think of them if they survived thanks to an expensive operation that their family
could not pay for (and insurance was unlikely to cover transplants of organs, especially
illegal ones). In such cases the medical expenses would most likely ruin them. But
instead he said, “You would do it?”

“Not for myself. I’m not interested in letting people cut me up and put funny things
in. When my time comes to go I will just go. But if I had a chance to save somebody—”

Aunty Lee was thinking of her late husband. She would have broken any laws she had
to if there had been a chance to give him a few more pain-free years. And she could
see Raja Kumar’s thoughts turning to his lovely Sumathi. Watching as the cancer ravaged
her, he had prayed for her to die, to end her suffering. If he had had the power to
save her, would the cost—or the law—have stopped him?

It was as though Aunty Lee could read his thoughts. “That’s why I keep busy,” she
said. “But now you all close down my shop, what am I supposed to do?”

“Just don’t do anything I have to arrest you for, okay?”

“Are you wearing a wire?” Aunty Lee leaned over the table and whispered.

“No I’m not,” Inspector Raja stage-whispered back. “And if I was, whispering wouldn’t
make a difference. Our devices are very sensitive.”

“You said you don’t think I had anything to do with poisoning Mabel and her son, right?”

“If I thought you were going around poisoning people’s food, would I be sitting here
eating lunch with you?”

“Here we are!” Shanti, the hostess, appeared with a tray full of dishes; an assistant
who came in behind her was equally laden. “Kaesevan sent you a mix of northern and
southern dishes with your Ambur biryani.

“Time out,” Commissioner Raja said. “Let’s eat.”

“I’m going undercover,” Aunty Lee said.

Normally Aunty Lee enjoyed spending time with the commissioner. Raja Kumar had ML’s
way of listening to her go on without feeling any need to comment. And then saying
something that showed he had got it. And she enjoyed his company because few other
people understood it was easier to lose a life partner after a happy marriage than
a difficult one, because it was a loss not warped by regret. But then there were times
(like this) when Raja Kumar could be as irritatingly overprotective as the late ML
Lee had been. Playing the “man of the world” role, never mind it had always been the
women of the world who wrung chickens’ necks and scraped the guts out of still-flapping
fish.

As they ate, Commissioner Raja explained to Aunty Lee in great detail why she should
not get involved in things beyond her control. Despite his admonishments, Aunty Lee
enjoyed her lunch.

Commissioner Raja sighed in contentment as he finished his lecture and started on
his dessert
laddus
. Nothing could be more familiar than these traditional soft, sweet dessert balls,
but even so he paused in surprise after the first mouthful.

“Grated coconut.” Aunty Lee had also tasted the innovation. “And spicy pine-nut paste
inside, interesting.”