Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (13 page)

“I didn’t recognize her at first. Then afterward I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognized
her.”

“She was your old school friend, ma’am?”

“No. She came from that girls’ school with blue sleeveless uniforms. My father would
never have let any of his wives or daughters wear sleeveless dresses. He thought it
was immodest. But we ended up running around like little ruffians in our sailor suits
and bloomers while they grew into ladylike girls who shaved their armpits and legs.”

Aunty Lee did not say anything about Henry and Doreen. She knew she was not mistaken,
but even the faithful Nina might doubt the evidence of words not said. And even if
Henry Sung was having some kind of relationship with Doreen, it might not mean anything.
She would talk to Doreen Choo herself first.

Who else had been there? Several assistants from the office had come early, then left
before the bodies were found. Two other lawyers had been invited but had not bothered
to show up. It seemed that things were definitely starting to fall apart at the seams
at Sung Law. All the other guests had been friends or members of Mabel’s Never Say
Die prayer and healing group. None of them had gone up to the big house. Apparently
there was a toilet on the far side of the little pool house that Aunty Lee (fortunately
enough) had not noticed.

Sharon Sung had been up at the house, of course. And Mabel’s assistant, that fair
girl with a complexion so perfect it had to be standard theater makeup—

“GraceFaith Ang,” Nina said.

“That’s right. GraceFaith Ang. She must have very Christian parents. I wonder whether
she has a sister called Joy-Hope or maybe CharityPeace. It must be very difficult
for a child to go through school with a name like CharityPeace. Just think of the
teasing.”

Nina’s ability to ignore Aunty Lee’s less relevant digressions played a big part in
how well the two women worked together.

“GraceFaith told the police that Sharon spent the whole night before the party in
the office going through her mother’s work folders that her mother had passed her.
I think she is lying. Why would anybody stay in the office and read old files all
night?”

“Maybe she fell asleep in the office and told the girl she was working all night.
Or maybe there was a deadline.” Aunty Lee knew this was unlikely even as she said
it. She had heard GraceFaith say there were no cases pending; in fact Mabel had stopped
taking on new clients since Leonard’s return to Singapore. And the office was closed
the next day for Sharon’s partnership party. How long could a law firm survive without
taking on new clients? Well, if the old clients were satisfactory, Aunty Lee supposed
it could continue indefinitely. Perhaps Mycroft would know.

“Or maybe Sharon went to meet a boyfriend her parents disapprove of. Then GraceFaith
told her parents and they scolded her and she got angry and killed her mother.”

“I don’t think so—and if that was the case, wouldn’t she have tried to kill her mother
and father instead of her brother?” Aunty Lee thought back to what she had seen of
Sharon Sung. She did not look like a girl who had a secret boyfriend. Of course different
girls reacted differently to boyfriends. Some took more pride in their appearance;
both triumphant hunter and trophy. Others dressed in their boyfriend’s old shirts
and settled down to grow fat and happy. No, Aunty Lee was sure Sharon Sung did not
have a secret boyfriend.

“And the day after her mother died, this Sharon went back to the office to work some
more. Can you believe that?”

Aunty Lee could believe it all too well. The day after ML’s death she had also gone
straight from his deathbed in the hospital to work in her kitchen. In her case, making
labor-intensive
orh kueh
or yam cake. The amount of work and mindless focus needed to soak, slice, and chop
dried mushrooms and dried prawns had got her through that terrible day. She felt she
could understand Sharon Sung and she felt sorry for her. Keeping her mother’s law
firm going was her way of paying tribute to her mother.

“It wasn’t an accident. That means either suicide or murder. Or suicide murder. But
why choose to do it like that? And why—”

In Aunty Lee’s opinion there were different kinds of murder. The quick flash sparked
by sudden rage and the slow stew, the boil that finally bubbled over. But which was
this?

The answer had to lie with the people involved. People were drawn to certain ways
of committing murder the same way they were drawn to certain foods. That was where
she had to start, Aunty Lee thought. Often what people ate was not even a matter of
conscious choice. They were drawn to a taste or a texture because on first encounter
(even if they hated it then) it had impressed itself on them as how the world was
and how it should forever be.

“I forgot to tell the police about the long-haired China woman,” Aunty Lee said. “I
don’t think she was a guest because she didn’t know Mabel Sung. I saw Dr. Yong introducing
them. I think they were talking about money. She wanted money from Mabel to finance
something or because Mabel owed her for financing something . . . I couldn’t understand
very much.”

“Madam, how do you know? You cannot understand Mandarin. You are imagining things
again.” Even Nina had picked up more Mandarin during her years in Singapore than Aunty
Lee had done during her whole life on the island.

“Mabel Sung’s Chinese is almost as lousy as mine. Edmond Yong translated for her,
so I could understand those parts. The woman sounded like a PRC, she had that posh
shwa-shew-shoo
accent that the local Mandarin speakers don’t have. Does your Salim know who she
is yet?”

“She is from the People’s Republic of China, here on a visitor’s pass.”

“I got the feeling Dr. Yong was trying to impress the long-haired woman. Men always
have that slightly off-center look when they are trying to impress someone and trying
to look as though they don’t care, don’t you think so? And he was very nervous about
something.”

Or the man was anxious by nature or had not been worried about anything in particular
that day. That was the difficulty in figuring out things about people you didn’t know
well. The only solution was to find out more about them.

And there was a name Aunty Lee knew would not be on the list. The vaguely familiar
young man at the gate looking for his friend had not been expected. He said his missing
friend had been doing some work for Mabel Sung. Aunty Lee did not know what the young
man’s name was but the friend he was looking for was named Benjamin Ng. That was a
start.

“Benjamin Ng,” Aunty Lee said. “Why did his friend go there to look for him? Did he
think his friend would be at the party?”

Nina had nothing to suggest.

Aunty Lee thought back. “I don’t think he even knew there was a party. He wanted to
talk to Mabel Sung and he couldn’t get in to see her at her office, so he went to
her house. For a moment I thought he was an undercover policeman, can you believe
it?”

“Why, madam?”

“Timmy Pang. The handsome staff sergeant who used to be here . . .”

“Tim Pang got big promotion already, not here anymore. Madam, what’s wrong?”

“I remember Timmy Pang very well.”

The phone rang, it was Cherril. Could she and Mycroft come over for a moment? Of course
Aunty Lee said yes. She was only surprised they had called to ask first. Neighbors
usually just shouted from the gate if they wanted to drop in. Aunty Lee hoped Mycroft
was not pressuring Cherril to drop the catering business. This was not purely selfish
on her part. Aunty Lee thought Cherril and Mycroft were a good match but how many
careers would Cherril think worth sacrificing for this marriage? And Aunty Lee was
glad to have a chance to ask Mycroft about the running of law firms.

Inspector Salim was also thinking over the people Mabel Sung and her son had left
behind as he drove himself home. From observing Henry Sung’s body language when he
took a phone call, Salim suspected the older man already had someone on the side.
It might not be relevant of course. And there had been tension between Sharon and
Mabel’s assistant GraceFaith. But what had Edmond Yong been doing at the Sung Law
office?

The easiest solution for everyone would be if this turned out to be an accidental
buah keluak
poisoning. The newspapers would run articles on the dangers of
buah keluak
alongside photos of Mabel Sung, new restrictions on importing it would be set up,
and the whole business would be forgotten . . . along with Aunty Lee’s Delights.

At Aunty Lee’s house, Mycroft Peters was saying much the same thing to Aunty Lee.

She had served a dessert soup; rice-flour balls stuffed with peanut paste served in
hot, sweet ginger broth that was both stimulating and soothing.

“You can’t tell that the rice balls came out of the freezer, can you?” Aunty Lee asked.

Instead of answering, Mycroft got straight to the point.

“You may be in trouble because of this
buah keluak
business.”

“I tell you, my chicken
buah keluak
had nothing to do with what happened to Mabel and her son. So many people ate it,
I ate it myself, why nobody else got sick?”

“That’s not relevant. The Sungs are important people. Mabel Sung was a real pain but
she had connections. If these people decide to make trouble for you, it could be very
messy.”

“I thought they were supposed to be so Christian,” Cherril said sullenly. “Aren’t
they supposed to forgive and forget?”

“People like them crush whatever they don’t like, so there is nothing left to forgive
or forget.”

But he didn’t say anything about Cherril leaving the partnership. Aunty Lee guessed
that had already been discussed and dismissed.

“My mother knew Mabel from school. She didn’t like her. Used to call her ‘porridge
face,’” Mycroft said. “Mum said Mabel Sung had a dangerously elevated sense of her
own importance and entitlement. Dad said as a lawyer she would bend the law to get
what she wanted. I just don’t like the idea of you people coming up against her. You
are nice people. You don’t know how people in her league fight.”

“Mykie, she’s already dead. There’s no reason for us to be scared of her now.”

“She’s dead but you don’t know what someone like her left behind. And this is confidential.”
He lowered his voice, “But Mabel Sung cashed out her personal insurance some months
before she died. So she can’t have been killed for that.”

“She could have, if the killer didn’t know Mabel cashed it out and still hoped to
get the money,” Cherril persisted.

“If you’re going through all the trouble of planning a murder, I’m sure you would
check up on that,” Mycroft said genially. It was clear he didn’t take his wife’s murder-solving
hobby very seriously. But it was also obvious that he was very fond of her. In Aunty
Lee’s mind, that made up for a multitude of defects.

“How do you know Mabel Sung cashed out her personal insurance?”

Mycroft shook his head. Aunty Lee knew there was no use pushing him further.

“Okay, you don’t have to tell me how you know. But I heard Mabel Sung stopped taking
on new cases and clients after her son came back to Singapore. Like that can also
do business, ah?”

“If the firm has strong retainers—sure it’s possible. But Sung Law . . . let’s just
say that it wasn’t in very good shape. They weren’t taking on cases because all the
lawyers who could find anything else have jumped ship. There’s even talk of them filing
claims that Mabel was financing her religious group with company money. Not that they’re
going to get anything. Sung Law is verging on bankruptcy. Maybe Sharon Sung can pull
things together, but if I were in her position I wouldn’t bother.”

Salim smelled his mother’s cooking as he got out of the lift. It reminded him it was
“cook a pot of curry” day. This year was the first time Aunty Lee had missed coming
round to the station with a pot (or several) of her curries in various degrees of
chili heat.

At his mother’s flat there were several neighbors sitting around the table and they
called out greetings to Salim as he took off his shoes at the door.

“Quick, go and wash and come and
makan
. Mrs. Kumar brought mutton curry and Vera brought
petai
.” Salim also saw his mother’s
ayam masak merah,
the golden-brown pieces of fried chicken in spicy tomato sauce that made him look
around for—

“Yes, here is your tomato rice. In the kitchen because no space on the table. Go and
wash, quick.” His mother was already setting out a plate with a mound of his favorite
rice. They were laughing affectionately at him, these old neighbors who had become
an extended family.

It felt good to be hungry knowing there was good food to come. Money was not everything.
Salim thought of the Sungs in their grand empty house and was grateful for his humble
family home. His mother would cook for him as long as she lived. All she wanted was
for him to marry and have children before she died. He was the only child left at
home now. He put the rich, dead people out of his mind as he washed himself. There
were unvoiced problems at home too. The subject of his marriage and future, for one.
But that could wait. At least till after the curry dinner.

Then his cell phone rang. His hands dirty, he let it go directly to voice mail: “I
know who that man trying to get in the gate at the Sungs’ house reminds me of!”

Police HQ

At Aunty Lee’s Delights

“Are you going to the service for Mabel Sung? I suppose they haven’t asked you to
cater it—ha ha.”

“Are you and Mark going?” Aunty Lee asked Selina. She suspected Mark and Selina happened
to “just drop by” the shop to find out whether she had been closed down.

“I don’t think so. I don’t think Mabel Sung would remember me,” Selina said. Aunty
Lee managed not to interrupt to say that the dead Mabel Sung would not remember anybody.
Unless of course she was looking back from the beyond with all her memories intact,
in which case she was as likely to remember Selina as anyone else.