Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (12 page)

“I still remember in the old days, if you wanted to find
buah keluak,
you looked for where the older wild pigs went to eat. Those
babirusa
always knew where to find kepayang trees with ripe
buah keluak
. Nowadays Singapore has no space for old pigs any more than for old people. I usually
go and buy my
buah keluak
nuts from the sellers in Tekka Market.

“When we were children we used to go and collect them ourselves. In those days no
matter how poor you are, no money too, you could find food. Tapioca,
kang kong,
chicken, fish . . . as long as you got space you can grow your own. Nowadays no money
means no food. And they say we are better off.

“The women collect nuts and bring them over from Indonesia. There they still have
many wild trees, so they gather them and treat them first to remove the poison before
selling them. But to be safe I always soak my
buah keluak
at least overnight in water before cooking. See? Like these ones. I don’t need them
until next week but I’m soaking them already.”

Salim looked into the large tub of water. The (dangerous?) dark nuts looked like misshapen
golf balls. He wondered whether Aunty Lee was trying to convince herself she could
not have made such a terrible mistake. Nina had looked cross when he came in, but
now she brought them glasses of cold lemongrass tea. She did not even pretend to be
listening to her boss. Salim guessed she had heard it all before.

“I am very careful! All the people who come and eat my
ayam buah keluak
and
nasi
rawon,
they don’t know that
buah keluak
seeds contain cyanide. Even the wood and the leaves of the tree are poisonous. People
crush raw
buah keluak
kernels to poison lizards, insects, and animal ticks. If you eat even a small amount
you get trouble breathing, you get dizziness and headaches and seizures. If you eat
too much you get heart attack and die. People don’t know that but I know. That’s why
I am always very careful!”

Salim thought this did not sound too different from what had happened to Mabel Sung
and her son. He knew
ayam buah keluak
was chicken stewed with
buah keluak
seeds and
nasi rawon
was an Indonesian rice dish cooked with the same. Because of its distinctive rich,
oily bitterness,
buah keluak
was an acquired taste not everyone shared.

“Of course you are careful,” he said soothingly. “But you know the police have to
suspect everybody who was there when it happened.”

“They should be suspecting everybody who was there, but it is easier for them if they
decide to blame my cooking and close the case and never eat
buah keluak
again. At least they will never eat my
buah keluak
again. I might as well close shop now, nobody will ever come here to eat again,”
Aunty Lee said dramatically.

“But you said eating
buah keluak
isn’t really a risk if it’s properly prepared, right? How is that done, Aunty Lee?”

“To make sure all the poison is removed, the seeds are removed from the fruits and
boiled and then buried in ash pits lined with banana leaves and covered with earth
for over a month. At the beginning the seeds are hard and yellow, but by the time
they are dug up they are dark brown, almost black color, and after fermentation the
insides are soft like lumpy tar. Some people say they smell like opium. Then they
have to be washed because fermentation releases the hydrogen cyanide, which is water-soluble.

“I usually get them from dried food stalls in Tekka Market or Geylang Serai Market.
The sellers already do the whole poison removal process, but to be on the safe side
I always soak them again. In fact I leave in the water until I need them, up to four
or five days. Nina changes the water twice a day, so no mosquitoes. Not just because
of the poison but to get rid of the taste of mud—most of the time the trees grow in
the mangrove swamps, very muddy there—and to make the shells soft enough to crack.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“That’s only the beginning!” Aunty Lee crowed, the current sad state of affairs pushed
aside by the thought of work.

“After that, you have to scrub every nut one by one and then chop off one end and
dig out all the flesh inside. You combine all the insides and pound it and season
it. Sometimes you must use a small cutter to trim smooth the opening you chopped into
the nut so that when people eat it they won’t cut their mouths. And then you stuff
the flesh back in, along with all the other ingredients, and cook on a low fire for
a few hours until the soup is thick and everything has the flavor. Now, that is a
lot of work!”

“It is.” Salim found himself wondering what could be worth all that effort.

“It’s delicious when you get used to it.” Aunty Lee smiled. “And even if you don’t
like the taste, when you know how much work went into making it, you’ll eat it.”

Evenings at Home

Having already announced that Aunty Lee’s Delights was closing early that day because
of the (now canceled) catering job, Aunty Lee and Nina took advantage of a night off
and went home early after Salim left. It had been a long time since they had had a
quiet night with no one to cook for but themselves.

In the smaller home kitchen, Nina made
arroz caldo
like she had done so many times at home in the Philippines. The thick, savory chicken
rice porridge reminded Aunty Lee of Chinese chicken congee and Korean ginseng rice
chicken soup. When it came to finding comfort in food, different peoples were often
far more alike than they realized. And the love of similar comforts went far beyond
food.

They ate together at the dining table instead of in front of the television because
Aunty Lee needed space to spread out all her notes.

“I’m seeing so many reasons why Mabel might have killed herself and her son. Leonard
became a drug addict while studying in America and had heart and lung problems and
was on the waiting list for a heart transplant.”

“Madam, if he is already on the waiting list, then what would she kill him for? Why
not just wait?” Nina asked dully, more because it was expected of her than because
she wanted to know.

“Because that is almost a hopeless case. The donor has to be a healthy person who
dies quickly in a way that doesn’t damage the heart. You must rush him or her to be
kept alive in hospital while they prepare you for the operation. Plus he or she must
have signed the donor consent form or the relatives must sign it and the police must
be satisfied there is no funny business because organ trading is illegal. Surely all
these things cannot happen together without some kind of funny business, right?”

“Why is organ trading illegal in Singapore? I thought in Singapore people can sell
everything. As long as can make money, it is all right.”

“We have got to protect people who are desperate for money. There are medical risks
and things like that.”

“If people are desperate for money they need money, not protection.”

Something in Nina’s tone made Aunty Lee really look at her for the first time since
sitting down. Nina looked tense and worried. She had barely touched her dinner. Aunty
Lee, gulping down delicious spoonfuls of creamy rice broth with chunks of delicately
flavored chicken as she leafed with equal relish through the notes that she had spread
across most of the dining table, had already finished her second bowl.

“Can I get you some more porridge, madam?”

“First tell me what’s wrong, Nina.”

Nina looked at the papers with notes and excited arrows and sticky tabs all over them
and said nothing.

“Nina, are you upset because you think they killed themselves?” Nina was Catholic
and Aunty Lee had a vague idea that Catholics considered suicide and birth control
far worse than murders and miscarriages. Ordinarily this might have been the beginning
of a very interesting discussion. But at the moment Nina had more pressing worries.

“Madam, you don’t understand. This is serious. The police went to Madam Cherril’s
house because they want to make trouble for you—”

“Nina, I’m sure Salim won’t—”

“Madam, people think it is because of your
buah keluak
that those people die. Maybe they will make you close down the shop. Maybe even if
they don’t close down the shop, people won’t come anymore. Today already somebody
canceled. Think about what is going to happen if everybody also cancels?”

Nina was not worried for herself, Aunty Lee realized. She had sent home enough money
for her mother and sisters to buy farmland in her name and was already the biggest
landowner in their village. She could stop work now and live a very comfortable life
back home. Nina was still in Singapore and worried because she cared about what happened
to Aunty Lee. And maybe because she cared about someone else she wouldn’t admit to.

“I have thought about it, Nina. That’s why it is so important that we find out what
really happened.”

“That is the policeman’s job.”

“But we have an advantage over the police, even your Salim. They have to consider
the possibility that Mabel and her son were accidentally poisoned by our
buah keluak
. You and I know very well that could not have happened. So it is up to us to find
out whether they poisoned themselves or were poisoned by someone else. Okay?”

Nina nodded. “He’s not ‘my’ Salim,” she said. But just saying the name made her smile.
Though she really did not know what that man was up to, or what she thought of it.

Salim had been trying to get Nina to take an online prelaw class with him. He knew
that with Aunty Lee’s full encouragement Nina had invested her spare hours in Singapore
studying. So why not law? But Nina was trying to learn all she could about cooking,
hairdressing, and massage—practical skills that could be practiced anywhere in the
world for pay. Nina knew she could never be a lawyer in Singapore. To her, working
toward an impossible goal like studying law was as much a waste of time as not working.
And it seemed as impossible for Salim as for herself. Salim could not or would not
see that. Much as he loved his work, he felt the system he was part of could be improved.
And the only way he could improve it was from within because throwing complaints and
criticisms from outside was about as effective as bird shit landing on a car.

As a favor to Salim, Nina had agreed to look at the syllabus and online material he
had printed out. Perhaps she could help him study, he had said shyly. Her friends
with male friends in Singapore were taken on picnics and out dancing and on movie
dates. Nina and Salim went to the library study rooms and discussed points of law
while walking along the Parks Connector green routes that crossed the island.

To her surprise Nina enjoyed their discussions. But when Salim brought online registration
forms for both of them, she had balked. It was a nice dream, that was all. And Aunty
Lee needed her in real life.

“Nina.” Aunty Lee’s voice cut into her thoughts.

“Yes, madam.”

“The big woman with the little-girl voice, do you know if she was one of the lawyers
or one of the Christians?”

“I don’t know, madam.”

Then again, life with Aunty Lee was not most people’s idea of “real life.”

With her eyes half closed, Aunty Lee was trying to match the people she had seen at
the party to the names on her list. She had not seen Leonard Sung while he was still
alive. Nina had found photographs of the young man online that showed his progression
from a smug, plump schoolboy to a painfully thin, sneering man. Tributes from friends
suggested most of his friends from school had not seen him for years but remembered
his “crazy sense of humor” and missed laughing at his “wild pranks.”

And Mabel Sung? According to the newspapers, she was seventy-four years old but she
had managed to appear younger despite the stress and worry in her life. A handsome
rather than a beautiful woman, Aunty Lee thought. Mabel Sung looked as though she
was used to taking the lead and standing out in a crowd. She reminded Aunty Lee of
someone—oh yes, her old mathematics teacher who had been so inflexible she had turned
a generation of schoolgirls off math forever. Why was it so much easier these days
to remember people from twenty, thirty, or even forty years ago than someone she might
have met last week? But wait—Aunty Lee returned to Mabel Sung. Had Mabel really seemed
stressed and worried? Aunty Lee remembered her short, unpainted fingernails drumming
on the buffet table, the barely covered irritation that caused her to lash out at
her husband and daughter . . . and the strange expression that crossed Mabel’s face
when she first caught sight of Edmond Yong’s long-haired woman. Yes, Mabel had definitely
been on edge. And for some reason she had been anxious to please the PRC woman, had
looked almost afraid of displeasing her.

Mabel Sung and her son were found dead in the boy’s bedroom. Her husband had been
in his office, farther along the corridor. Aunty Lee had seen Henry Sung several times
but the man left no lasting impression, unlike his wife. He looked like a successful
man, the sort whose funeral wake would be attended by former ministers of state and
whose idea of exercise was being driven around golf courses. But then, what was the
connection between Henry Sung and Doreen Choo? Aunty Lee had only seen them together
for a moment but it had been enough for her to see that the two were definitely not
strangers. Strangers, even friends and acquaintances, greeted and talked to each other.
Henry Sung was familiar enough to go up Doreen Choo and stand by her side without
a word. And she had reached out and steadied his tray on the railing post with an
automatic familiarity that told Aunty Lee as much as catching them in flagrante delicto
would have.

Aunty Lee paused. She had known Doreen Choo for many years. Doreen and her late husband
had not been particularly close friends of hers. But at their age even mere acquaintances
from the old days became a precious link to who they had once been. She said as much
to Nina.