Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (26 page)

While Patrick was contemplating Aunty Lee’s recipe, Commissioner Raja Kumar was alone
in his office reading an e-mail, then making a call to Aunty Lee on his cell phone.

“So, has Salim told you what he found out about the people on the Never Say Die prayer
list?”

“Why should Salim tell me?” she asked.

“Because you gave him the list and asked him to look them up. I thought we agreed
we were going to let this die down naturally.”

Aunty Lee had the grace to feel embarrassed. “If there’s nothing to find, then whether
I look or not everything will die down. Anyway, if they want us to pray for people,
we should know who we are praying for, right? It is like making investments: you should
always check the background first. Anyway, just because a harmless old lady like me
is being
kaypoh
I don’t see why Salim had to go and complain to you. Because if that woman’s missing
boyfriend is an illegal organ donor, somebody must be paying for his organs, right?
And I ask you, who can afford to pay for something like that? Most likely somebody
living around here or across the canal, right? I can read you the list of praying
and paying people I gave him . . .” He heard Aunty Lee fumble around for her spectacles.

“It’s all right, Rosie. I don’t need the list.”

“There are people I know recently suddenly got better from having to go for dialysis
every week. And they did not go for operation to any of the government hospitals in
Singapore.”

“Salim didn’t complain about you. He just thought I should know what he learned.”

“He told you before he told me? When I’m the one who set him on the track? What is
wrong with young people these days, no sense of respect!”

“Hey, I’m the boy’s boss,” Commissioner Raja protested.

“I am also trying to track down the connection bringing the dead man to Singapore.
Surely he must have given an address when coming in? Didn’t he have to fill in a disembarkation/embarkation
[D/E] card? What address did he put in? I asked Inspector Salim to look it up. That
handsome boy Timothy Pang is now in Immigration, right? So I asked him to look it
up for me.”

“He did. The address that the dead man gave was a small Frangipani Inn–type thing.
And you know what? The booking was made by Beautiful Dreamers, Edmond Yong’s old clinic.
According to clinic records, the man was coming to Singapore for a medical checkup
but never turned up.”

“But his body was not found?”

“No body was found.”

And those were not the only results Salim had passed on to Commissioner Raja. In the
case of Mabel Sung, fifty-five, and Leonard Sung, twenty-eight, the forensic pathologist
reported finding an accidental ingestion of pesticide. A fatal dose of cyanide for
humans is 1.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight and both victims had ingested
at least three times that. Death had most likely occurred in minutes. More important,
the cyanide in their bodies carried markers that suggested it came from a commercial
pesticide product.

There was a short silence on the line after the commissioner mentioned this fact.

“Then it could not have been the
buah keluak
,” Aunty Lee said.

And Commissioner Raja knew from her tone that despite all her assertions to the contrary,
Aunty Lee had wondered if she had made a fatal mistake.

Investigating Sung Law

Aunty Lee surfaced groggily from a dream of trying to find her way to the kitchen
through the many rooms of a mansion. She kept finding herself back in the bedroom.
Then she was back in bed again and Nina was standing next to her in her nightdress.

“My friend just phoned. She said GraceFaith Ang went back to the Sung Law office.
They all left together last night as usual. Then this morning at around five GraceFaith
came back by herself. You said you wanted to know right away, right?”

“Right.” Aunty Lee sat up. Was it a sign of aging that she found it difficult both
to get to sleep and to wake up? “Please tell your friend thank you for me. And give
her a small present, okay?”

It was so lucky Nina had a friend working at the 7-Eleven in the lobby of the building
where Sung Law had its offices.

“I’m looking for Sung Law.” Aunty Lee was in the office lobby in under an hour.

“Take lift to seventeenth floor then turn left.”

It was just before eight in the morning. The night security guard, waiting for the
morning shift and used to clients arriving at all hours, buzzed Aunty Lee through
without removing the phone from his ear.

GraceFaith finally unlocked the door in response to Aunty Lee’s persistent knocking
and calling after the lift deposited her on the seventeenth floor.

“What do you—”

“Good morning! I saw the light on, so I was sure somebody was already here. Is Sharon
here also?”

GraceFaith, expecting a building technician or cleaner, was not prepared for Aunty
Lee, who stepped swiftly past her and headed toward the only office with a light on.

It was clearly GraceFaith’s office and Aunty Lee saw at once that GraceFaith had not
come in early to catch up on her work. The office was a chaos of box files, plastic
bags, and papers. On one side of the desk was shoved a heap of desktop decorations
with motivational messages and several pairs of high-heeled shoes. GraceFaith was
wearing Crocs and looked as though she had been crying. The girl was packing up to
leave, Aunty Lee saw.

“Sharon’s not here.” GraceFaith followed Aunty Lee into the room and sat down heavily
on the chair by the door. Aunty Lee saw an empty Styrofoam cup and plastic salad box
in the bin next to it. It looked like the remains of GraceFaith’s dinner from the
night before. All this was out of character for such a fastidious girl. GraceFaith
was exhausted, Aunty Lee realized, probably dazed from lack of sleep.

“You’re packing up your things,” Aunty Lee chirruped even more brightly than usual.
“Are you leaving the company? I thought you loved working at Sung Law so much. What
happened?”

“I got fired,” GraceFaith said dully. “What are you doing here?”

“My bill, for the catering.” Aunty Lee waved the invoice she had hurriedly scribbled
in the car park to serve as her ticket onto the premises should one be needed. “For
the party that day. I thought I would save you coming over to the café,” she chattered
loudly. GraceFaith winced as though her head hurt. “You know they’ve made us close
the kitchen, right? But of course, even with no customers coming in, I still have
to pay rent or they will kick me out, so I need the money even more—”

It was not necessary to mention that since Aunty Lee had bought up several shop houses
along the row Aunty Lee’s Delights stood on, she was her own landlord and hardly likely
to evict herself.

“Oh—about the catering bill. Of course. But the thing is—”

GraceFaith had dark circles under her eyes. She had tried to disguise them with concealer
but the thick artificial paste only made her look worse.

“It’s not that I want to chase you for the payment. But since I can’t open for business,
I thought I might as well clear up all my back accounts.” Aunty Lee smiled encouragingly
at GraceFaith. “Why did you get fired? After big boss died company closing down, is
it?”

GraceFaith looked suspiciously at Aunty Lee but the old lady was all busybody curiosity
of the most innocent kind. “Well, things are a bit complicated here right now. Not
that Mabel left things in a mess—oh no. But handovers are always complicated, right?
Now Sharon is the boss and she—”

“She’s jealous of having a pretty girl like you on the staff!” Aunty Lee crowed.

“Of course.” The jealousy of other females was something GraceFaith took for granted.
But in such times of upheaval a little reinforcement was always welcome. “I’m sorry
I can’t do anything for you. Sharon has frozen all the business accounts, even the
petty cash and the charity donations. And she’s been letting people go—firing them—people
who have been working here for her mother longer than she has! Even me, and I’m the
one that’s been taking care of all her mother’s stuff for her. I offered to stay on
until next month, just to explain things to her. I’m the only one who knows how all
Mabel’s accounts work and even Sharon can’t figure them all out overnight. But Sharon
said she’s cutting all unnecessary expenses. Honestly, I wouldn’t stay on even if
she wanted me to. Can you believe she called me an unnecessary expense?”

“Change is always difficult,” Aunty Lee said in her best old-lady voice. “I’m sure
something better will come along. And maybe not even another job—I remember you were
getting along quite well with that nice young doctor at Mabel’s house that day?”

“Oh, Dr. Yong.” GraceFaith shook her head. This was obviously another sore point,
though a minor one compared to Sharon. “Previously he used to come in all the time
to talk to Mabel. I used to joke with her that he had a crush on her. It wasn’t true
of course, but Mabel thought it was funny. I think they were discussing plans for
her son Leonard’s treatment. They didn’t want Leonard to know they were talking about
him, so they couldn’t meet at the house.”

“So now the poor boy is dead you don’t get a chance to see Dr. Yong anymore?”

“Oh, Edmond has still been coming to the office. But he only talks to Sharon.”

“Dr. Yong” had become “Edmond,” Aunty Lee noted. And there was a sour note in GraceFaith’s
voice that Aunty Lee was quick to capitalize on.

“Maybe the young doctor has got a crush on Sharon!” she suggested with a gossipy nudge.

It worked.

“Oh, no way. I think Edmond’s trying to get her to pay the bills for Leonard’s treatment,
what he did for Leonard previously. But good luck to him getting anything out of Sharon!
She wouldn’t even give a severance package to people who have been working for her
mother for over thirty years!”

“Anyway, if Dr. Yong was interested in Sharon he wouldn’t have brought his PRC girlfriend
to the Sungs’ house that day.”

Aunty Lee had been wondering how to introduce the subject of Wen Ling. Would GraceFaith
respond? And would she know who Aunty Lee was referring to? These days there were
so many Mainland Chinese in Singapore, legally and otherwise. It was clear to Aunty
Lee from the way GraceFaith twisted her hands and twitched her mouth that she had
something to say but was not yet ready to say it. She added a little salt to her spiel.

“In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Yong is married to that China girl. These
days so many men do that. Sometimes I think that’s so sad. Not for them of course.
I’m sure they will be perfectly happy. But that some Singapore men have got no choice
but to look overseas for wives because Singapore girls are too fussy and look down
on them.”

Aunty Lee was only repeating what women’s lifestyle magazines had long trumpeted as
the cause for the rising number of unmarried Singapore women. Singaporean men were
looking elsewhere in the region for wives because they claimed Singapore women looked
down on them. Singaporean women swore such men were only after subservient women who
would stay home to produce meals and children. GraceFaith must have heard it before
but still she leaped to Dr. Yong’s defense.

“That’s not true! Not in Dr. Yong’s case anyway. I mean he’s a doctor, of course he’s
worth marrying. What he looks like is not so important because you know he’ll always
have a job and can make a living. Anyway he’s not Singaporean, he’s Malaysian. He
could easily have got his PR and citizenship when he was studying here but he didn’t
because he would have had to do NS and he said that was a waste of time.”

Aunty Lee looked thoughtfully at GraceFaith. She felt sorry for the girl and there
were so many things she could say to her about the qualities that made a man worth
marrying. But this was not the time. Neither was it the time to go into why, despite
his years in Singapore, Edmond Yong had not applied for the advantages becoming a
permanent resident (PR) or citizen would bring him. True, that would have meant National
Service (NS) as a medic. And Aunty Lee, of the generation of Singaporeans born before
the independence of their country, did not think much of a man who begrudged spending
that time.

“There’s some kind of business deal Sharon and Edmond are working on. That China woman
represents their China partners. Mabel set it up, but now of course Sharon’s taken
over. I heard her saying that this is worth more than the rest of the firm put together.”

Aunty Lee waited hopefully but GraceFaith could not or would not say more. Instead
she picked up a coffee mug with a smiley face, considered it, and dropped it in the
already overflowing wastebin.

“How is poor Sharon holding up? It can’t be easy, losing your mother and your brother
so suddenly and in such a horrible way,” Aunty Lee said conversationally.

“She’s probably depressed. That would explain the stupid things she’s been doing.
But she won’t listen to anybody. Good luck to her! It’s not just the firm, you know.
The house is also under a double mortgage. They may be kicked out if they can’t sort
that out.”

Aunty Lee had heard rumors of the Sungs’ financial troubles, but it was always nice
to have inside confirmation. GraceFaith had returned to her packing and dumping. She
obviously thought Aunty Lee was just one more of Sung Law’s creditors, and was doomed
to disappointment no matter how long she hung around the office.

Aunty Lee could tell from the vehemence with which GraceFaith’s “good performance”
plaques and birthday cards were being tossed that the girl was distancing herself
from the company once so dear to her. It seemed worth risking another nudge for information.
She didn’t know how much time she had before the rest of the office staff showed up.

“I don’t believe that,” Aunty Lee said with casual dismissiveness. “Those are just
rumors. Mabel Sung was an icon for all women lawyers. How can Sung Law be bankrupt?”
She hoped these words would be provoking enough. They were.